Love On Her Terms

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“You liked being married,” she interrupted. “Even if...”

“Yes. Even if Kimmie had entire weeks where she didn’t leave the house, I did like being married. But I’m thirty-seven years old, and I get to pick the women I date.” Even as the words came out of his mouth, he felt like her baby brother.

“And if you want to hear about any of them, you have to reserve judgment. At least until you meet them. And you have to pretend that I’m an adult and might pick out someone good. After all, I picked Kimmie.”

Silence reigned through the phone as Levi waited for Brook to point out that Kimmie’s clinical depression had eventually killed her. He could feel his phone shudder at the effort his sister was putting forth to keeping her mouth shut.

“Kimmie was great,” she said finally, her voice soft with affection. Because Kimmie had been great. She had been unable to be a light in her own life, but she’d been the sun, moon and stars for many others.

“Good night, Brook. Go remind Dennis to take his high blood pressure medicine or something.”

“I worry.”

Whether it was about him, or Dennis’s health, or any number of things, Brook didn’t say, and it didn’t matter. “I know.”

“Someone has to.”

“But it doesn’t always have to be you.”

On that note they finished their goodbyes, and Levi ended the call. Then he slouched in his chair to catch his breath. Talking to his sister for ten minutes was more exhausting than an entire day spent building a raised bed with Mina. For all Mina’s chatter and energy, Levi had felt better after building the raised bed than he had before.

This was why he didn’t call his family and only occasionally answered the phone when they called him.

His breathing back to normal, Levi glanced up at his windows. Mina’s blinds had all been closed, and her house was dark.

It was too late to go over and apologize, but he could at least prove his sister wrong about the baby thing. He sighed. He knew the growing list of items he needed to apologize to Mina for, though he didn’t know what he wanted out of it. To be back on her couch kissing? To be friends and neighbors? To make the barest effort at not being a total ass?

Or did he need to apologize simply because he was wrong and sorry about it?

Levi rolled his eyes at himself. No matter what he was sorry for and why, he could at least be less ignorant when he apologized. Gathering his phone, he went in search of his laptop.

* * *

IT WASN’T UNTIL Friday that Mina was finally able to be outside after work, hands shoved in the new dirt in her new raised garden bed. Even though the nights were getting cooler, the sun had shone on the dark dirt all day, and it pressed warmth and possibility against her skin. She didn’t even care if the greens she was planting grew into anything edible, so long as she had the excuse to be out here, away from her thoughts and her work and her problems.

The past week had been rough. Classes were starting, increasing the amount of work she needed to do and the amount of time she had to spend on campus. Departmental meetings, syllabi, double-checking on the assigned readings and that the bookstore and library both carried what the students would need, etc. The meetings were the worst. She could work on the syllabi from home, but the department wasn’t yet willing to hold meetings through Skype. She’d always suspected that her emotions played a big role in the side effects of all her meds, and this week had done nothing to disprove her theory.

She’d spent more time on the toilet than she cared to admit to herself. Today wasn’t just the first day she’d been able to be outside in the sun, it was the first day her stomach had felt like it belonged to a normal human being. Or mostly normal. She’d gotten accustomed to the base level of nausea her meds caused.

She patted the soil down over the seeds, trying not to let her feelings press down too hard.

Her emotions and her side effects fed off each other, making everything worse. She felt self-conscious about the time spent in the bathroom, which brought her thoughts back to Levi walking out on her, almost without a word. She’d stay later in her office, hunched over her desk, hand cramped from her tight control on her drawing—which meant her drawings were shit. And she’d both wish she were home where she would be more comfortable and be glad that she couldn’t see if Levi’s truck was pulling into his driveway and wondering if she’d catch a glimpse of him.

It had taken her three days of concentrated effort on what her therapist had said about thoughts just being thoughts before she had been able to say, “I’m better off knowing his true stripes now,” and mean it. Only then had she been okay with leaving her office and spending time at home, in her garden and near her own bathroom.

Of course, when her emotions had settled down, so had her nausea.

“Hey, Mina,” a woman’s voice called from behind her. Mina stood and turned around to see her neighbor Echo standing on the sidewalk with her fluffy little dog on the other end of the leash, the dog’s tongue flipping in and out of its mouth in exaggerated, adorable pants. “Nice garden bed.”

“Thank you.” Mina took advantage of the opportunity for a break. She and Echo had spoken a couple of times when her neighbor walked past with her dog. The woman seemed friendly and interesting and worth getting to know a little better.

“Was that Levi I saw helping you build it?”

“Yeah...” Mina replied, not sure where this was going.

Echo looked right and left, as if checking for spies in the bushes. “I’ve barely gotten Levi to say hi to me when Noodle and I walk by.”

Noodle? The dog with the papillon ears and dachshund body and Pomeranian coat was named Noodle? Echo might be even more interesting than Mina had thought.

“I’m not sure he wanted to help,” Mina said, feeling the lie stick on her tongue as she tried to make Sunday sound like no big deal. Echo caught the lie, too, because her eyebrows lifted up to her hairline.

“Okay, so he wanted to. And he’s brought over my mail and helped me buy a lawn mower, but there’s nothing more.”

Given the continued elevation of her eyebrows, Echo understood the subtext of there might have been something more as easily as she’d recognized the lie. “I want to hear about this. You have dinner plans?”

Other than pasta with butter and Parmesan cheese? “No.”

“The store had some nice-looking salmon. I bought myself a piece for tonight and a piece for tomorrow, but one indulgent dinner with a friend is better than two indulgent nights in by myself. Come over for dinner and a glass of wine, and you can tell me all about how Silent-Neighbor Levi ended up building you a garden bed.”

“Honestly, Echo, there’s not much to tell.” And Mina wasn’t certain she was comfortable sharing what information there was. After all, blurting out “I’m HIV positive” rarely went as well as she hoped with possible friends, too. And she still hadn’t figured out how not to overshare.

“Do you not like salmon? Or wine?” A teenager rode by on a bicycle, and Echo’s little dog barked and jumped about like the devil himself had been on those two wheels. “Or little barky dogs?”

“I like salmon. And I like wine. I’m okay with little barky dogs that aren’t coming home with me.” And she needed to make friends. So she needed to trust a little. Dinner and boy talk wasn’t a bad place to start. “Is there anything I can bring?”

“Bring dessert. Come over in about an hour.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“Gossip in the neighborhood.” Echo tapped the tips of her fingers against one another. “This is doubly exciting because no one ever tells me anything.” The movement of her fingers stopped, and she looked down at her dog, who looked up expectantly. “Probably because gossip is always a trade, and I only like to take. Greedy, my ex-husband always said.”

Mina laughed at the blatant attempt to reassure her. “I’ll be over in an hour, with ice cream.” She was less sure about bringing gossip.

CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_ed5372b6-9f7c-58e7-a409-7829dd3f3c66)

MINA STOOD ON Echo’s front stoop, ice cream in a plastic bag in one hand while attempting not to clench her nerves too tightly in the other. Once, in another lifetime, she would have been bouncing with excitement at a new friend. Her body still remembered those times, and wanting them back was the reason she’d made a point to introduce herself to as many people as she could in her new town, including her cranky, handy-with-a-drill-and-friends-with-the-hardware-store-guy neighbor.

But that Mina had a different, naive understanding of the world. She’d grown up in a happy household, with parents who loved each other and their children. Maybe they were too intrusive in their kids’ lives, maybe they just cared a lot; it didn’t matter. All Mina had known about the world was that it was a place full of nice people you could trust.

The world had acquired shadows since her diagnosis. She didn’t want to go back, really, because shadows added depth and interest, but she occasionally wished she could sink into her old happy-go-lucky self, the one who found the world to be full of friends rather than potential hurts. The one fascinated by the macabre but who didn’t understand it.

She took a deep breath and knocked. Noodle started yapping from deep inside the recesses of the house, a sound which got louder and louder until the front door opened, and the dog spun and leaped at Echo’s feet.

“Welcome,” Echo said with an expansive wave of her hand and a surreptitious sweep of her foot to push the dog out of the way. “Let me take the bag from you and get the ice cream in the freezer. Come in.”

“It smells delicious,” Mina said as she stepped through the doorway and waited to be sniffed and approved by the dog. “What is it?”

“Salmon in a cilantro sauce. Given how much cream is in the dish, it should be delicious. There’s rice and sautéed squash, too.”

Mina followed Echo and the aroma to the kitchen, waiting off to the side while her neighbor put the ice cream in the freezer.

“Dinner’s pretty much ready,” Echo said, balling up the plastic bag and tossing it to the back of the counter. “The table’s even set. And there’s a bottle of wine out there, if you want to pour us some. I’ll feed the beast, so she doesn’t try to get in your lap, then bring the food out, and we can serve ourselves.”

The table was set with matching floral china, silverware and what Mina assumed to be crystal. Despite the casualness of the invitation and Echo’s manner, she felt underdressed in her jeans and cream tank top with a big black bow. It was the flats. A girls’ night in with crystal deserved heels.

“Like my china?” Echo asked as she came from the kitchen into the living room. Noodle was chomping happily on kibble in the background. “When my ex left me, I got to keep all the trappings of having once been married. The china, the crystal, the silverware. For a long time after I moved, it stayed in the cupboards, and I ate off regular plates and drank out of cheap glasses. Then I decided I was worth fancy, and I haven’t looked back.”

With a closer look, Mina realized Echo was not only older, but older than Mina had thought. “It’s nice. I won’t feel underdressed, then.”

“Feel like you deserve better. And sit, sit. Let’s eat.”

Maybe it was the wine, maybe it was the good food, and maybe it was that Mina felt like herself for the first time in a week, but she relaxed into dinner and conversation with Echo like they were old friends. Well, not quite like old friends, because they were sharing basic bits of information with each other such as where they were from and what brought them to Missoula. But, much like she had felt with Levi on Sunday, Mina was immediately comfortable with Echo.

They laughed and joked as they cleaned up the kitchen together and scooped ice cream into bowls. Mina had purposely brought over different kinds of ice cream than she’d had last week, not wanting to make dinner at Echo’s feel too much like dinner with Levi. Not that she would confuse the neighbors, but one of those dinners hadn’t turned out as she’d planned.

They ate their ice cream at the dining room table, and this time Noodle got to help with the cleanup. When those bowls were put in the dishwasher, Echo poured them each a full glass of wine, and they moved to her living room for a chat.

“So,” Echo said as she curled her legs around her on the couch, and her dog settled into her lap. “Tell me how Levi came to be at your house swinging a mighty hammer.”

Mina sank into a deep armchair with plush cushions and a high back and sides. She’d probably had a little too much to drink, because the armchair felt like the closest thing she’d had to a hug in ages. “I don’t know. I introduced myself to him shortly after I moved in and was trying to meet my neighbors. He helped me get a good deal on a new lawn mower, and I was outside struggling with the raised bed when he came over to help. He said he couldn’t concentrate if he knew I was outside struggling so much. He seemed gruff and standoffish when I first met him, but after that he just seemed gruff.”

“I’ve lived here for two years, and he’s still standoffish to me.” Echo’s lips were pursed in disappointment, and Noodle looked up at her with disgust at the heavy pat on the head she got.

“Did you want something more?”

Echo shrugged and went back to petting Noodle in a way that made the dog relax in her lap again. “In reality, probably not. In my fantasy world, yes. I was newly divorced and thought the solution to my problems was someone who would stick around. Levi always struck me as the kind of guy who sticks.”

“Yeah. He does seem that way, doesn’t he?” It was the jawline, Mina decided. And the broad shoulders. The handiness with tools and that stupid hodgepodge lawn mower of his. A man who would stick with that lawn mower had to be a man who would stick in a relationship.

That was the same kind of reasoning that made a known jerk seem like a nicer person because he got a chocolate Lab puppy. That kind of reasoning got women into relationships that went nowhere but in downward spirals.

Or out the front door.

“Do you know something about him that I don’t, Mina?” Echo was looking intently at her glass of wine, as if the light bouncing off the crystal held the secrets to the universe.

Mina wasn’t the only one who’d had too much to drink tonight. She was grateful that tomorrow was Saturday, and she could sleep off whatever headache she was sure to get.

Which didn’t stop her from reaching forward and pouring more wine in her glass. At Echo’s gesture, Mina topped off her glass, as well. She drank deeply out of the garnet courage, giving the buzz time to reach her brain and cloud her thinking. She wanted the edges of her mind to go fuzzy, to stop thinking, can I trust this person?

If she didn’t say anything to Echo, then she continued to be just-Mina. The friendship would develop as if Mina were another neighbor, and, depending on how close their friendship got, eventually Mina might tell her. Maybe Echo would be upset that she hadn’t been told until then, and maybe she wouldn’t be. The problem was you never knew. Rarely did the opportunity come up naturally for Mina to hear someone’s ignorance or otherwise on HIV, and, as she’d learned the hard way, people’s words and their actions could be diametrically opposed.

Mina took another sip. But alcohol never could dull her mind. All it ever did was make her riskier.