Jason’s silence erases another sliver of hope.
“So what do you think it was? Am I not pretty enough?” she asks, knowing she sounds like an anguished, broken teenager. She desperately doesn’t want to be in this category of women who gauge their self-esteem by a man, pin their hopes on another. Yet that is exactly what she did, what she continues to do by asking these questions.
“Are you kidding? You’re fucking gorgeous,” Jason says. “You got the face. The body. The whole package.”
“So what, then? Do you think it’s the sex? Maybe I suck in bed?” she says, just as she pictures Nick’s face, twisted with pleasure as he came inside her. The way he stroked her hair afterward. Kissed her eyelids. Ran his hand over her stomach and thighs. Fell asleep holding her, clutching her to him.
Jason clucks his tongue and says, “It’s usually not about sex, Val.”
“Then what is it? Am I boring? Too negative? . . . Too much baggage?”
“None of those things. It’s not you, Val. It’s him . . . Most guys are assholes. The gay ones, the straight ones. Hank’s a diamond in the rough,” he says, his voice radiant, the way it always is when he speaks of his boyfriend. The way she might have sounded only a few days ago. “But Nick . . . Not so much.”
“He was so amazing with Charlie,” she says, snapshots filling her head. “They had a rapport. A bond. You could see it. You can’t fake that.”
“Just because he’s a great surgeon and became attached to the best kid in the world doesn’t make him right for you. Doesn’t make him a good guy, either,” Jason says. “But I can see why you’d confuse the two. Anyone would. That’s what makes it even worse—what he did. It’s like . . . he took advantage of his position.”
She sighs in agreement, although she can’t quite make herself believe that he is that manipulative, that awful. It would be easier if she could. Then she could agree with her brother, agree that this rejection would be about his flaws, not hers.
“Charlie has an appointment with him next week. And we have another surgery scheduled for February,” she says, thinking of the number of times she has looked at her calendar, wondering what she will say to him when she walks in his office. “Should we find a new doctor?”
Jason says, “He’s the best, right?”
“Yes,” she says quickly, her heart breaking, but her loyalty, bizarrely, still intact. She remembers how she continued to praise Lion’s talent for months after their breakup. “Nick is the best,” she says.
“Well, then keep him as Charlie’s doctor,” Jason says.
“Okay,” she says, wondering what she will tell her son, what explanation she will give him as to why Nick no longer comes around, why it isn’t a good idea to call him from school or anywhere else. Why they only see him at the hospital or his office.
“How guilty should I feel?” she asks, thinking of Charlie, his words in the car about wishing Nick were his daddy.
“About what? Tessa?” Jason asks.
She freezes in her chair. “I was talking about Charlie. Not Nick’s wife . . . And would you care to tell me how you know her name?”
“Didn’t you . . . tell me . . . her name?” he stammers.
“No,” she says with absolute certainty. “I did not.”
“You must have.”
“Jason. I know I didn’t. I’ve never said her name aloud. How do you know her name?” she demands.
“Okay. Okay . . . So get ready for this one . . . It turns out Hank’s her tennis instructor.”
“You’re kidding me,” she says, dropping her head to her free hand.
“Nope.”
“So Hank knows? About Nick and me?”
“No. I swear I didn’t tell him.”
She isn’t sure she believes him, given the fact that Jason is an open book even when he’s not in love, but at this point, she practically doesn’t care, and numbly listens to her brother’s ensuing explanation.
“She’s been taking lessons with him for a while . . . Hank knew her husband was some hotshot surgeon, but he didn’t put it all together until last week when she mentioned one of her husband’s patients—a kid who burned his face at a birthday party.”
Valerie’s heart races. “What did she say about Charlie?”
“Nothing. She just said that Nick works a lot . . . Hank asked what kind of surgeon he was—and she told him. Used Charlie as an example . . . Small freaking world, huh?”
“Yeah. But I wouldn’t want to carpet it,” she says, one of their father’s favorite sayings.
“Exactly,” Jason says, the smile back in his voice.
She sighs, processing this new profile of Tessa, picturing a country-club lady of leisure. A Botoxed, lithe-limbed blonde indulging in midday tennis matches, shopping sprees at Neiman Marcus, champagne lunches at white-linen-tablecloth restaurants. “So she plays tennis? How nice for her,” Valerie says.
“You should pick up tennis,” Jason says, clearly trying to change the subject. “Hank said he’d give you free lessons.”
“No, thanks.”