Page 130 of Shame the Devil

“Yep,” Harlan said. “Good job checking in. I’m shutting the door now. Good night.”

“Wait,” Jennifer said. Shedidkiss Dyma, and she held her head, too. Presumably smelling her breath. “All right,” she decided. “You can go to bed.”

* * *

It had been an interesting weekend.She’d keptmeaningto move back into her apartment, but somehow, she hadn’t. It had just been so …niceto be with him. To have him supervise her workout, because, oh, yeah. Still hot. To cook dinner with him. And going to bed with him? That had beenmorethan nice.

He’d said he had a limit. So far, she hadn’t seen it. She’d seen plenty, but she hadn’t seen a limit.

But then on Sunday night, he’d said, “Maybe bring your toothbrush over here. Shampoo. Like that.” In a casual way she hadn’t quite known how to interpret.

She’d wanted to say,What happened to the moving-on guy? Because I can’t forget that.She’d also wanted to say, But I’m going to love you anyway. I’ve got no choice.She’d decided, though, that as long as her clothes were still at her place, it was temporary. She could slide on out of here anytime.

Besides, he had a really nice bathroom.

She wasn’t going to guard her heart. Not possible. Her heart was all-in. She was going to guard her expectations, though. She wasn’t living in the future anymore, or in the past. She was living in the right-the-hell-now. Which was why, when Dyma had asked her yesterday afternoon, when shehadbeen at the apartment, showering and changing after another exhausting workout, “So what’s the deal with you and Harlan, exactly?” she’d answered, “I don’t know. I’d say we’re taking it one day at a time.”

“Mom,” Dyma had said. “You aren’t. You always worry. You know what I think it is? You’ve always been so focused on taking care of me, and of Grandma, too. And now that I’m graduating and Grandma’s gone and Grandpa Oscar wants his meatloaf sampled, you don’t have anybody to take care of anymore, so you’re focusing on Harlan instead, since the baby isn’t here yet. Like, everybody needs an object.”

Now herkidwas judging her. And judging her exactly wrong.

No. Just no.

She said, “You know what? I’m getting a little tired of hearing what I’m not and what I am. I love you, but you really don’t get my life. Focusing because you need to, because it’s your job to take care of somebody you love? That’s just a woman’s life. But maybe I’ve accepted that I can’t control forever. I’m here right now, and I’m loving being here. Harlan and I are having a baby, and I’m so excited about that. If it doesn’t work out between us, I’ll …”

“Yeah?” Dyma asked. “What, exactly? How do you move on when you have ababywith the guy?”

“The way women have been doing since forever,” Jennifer said. “I hate to tell you, but generally, a guy doesn’t show up with the engagement ring on your first date. Or on yourfifthdate. And if he does—run. You take your shot.Bothof you take your shot. It’s scary to date somebody. It’s scarier to love somebody. It’s a leap of faith. Sometimes, your leap doesn’t pay off. Sometimes, you fall. That doesn’t mean you don’t leap. People aren’t breakable. Or if they are, they’re mendable, too.”

“Whoa,” Dyma said. “That’s a surprisingly cynical outlook.”

“No,” Jennifer said. “You know—I think it’s something entirely different. If you’re always afraid, you hang on so tight that you lose all your chances, all the things you aren’t looking at. All the lives you could be living. You’re only living in one tiny piece of the pie of your possibilities, because you’re trying to wrap your arms around it all the time to keep from losing it. If you go on and … andgiveyourself, though, to somebody else, to yourlife,you get to live all the way. You get toloveall the way. Once you decide you’re mendable, you’re free. If I hadn’t been trying to hang on to Mark, because I didn’t want to be alone, because part of me kept thinking it could be forever and that I needed somebody forever, so I kept trying to shoehorn myself into that spot, what else might I have done? What else might I havebeen?”

“Wow,” Dyma said. “You realize that’s basically the Tao. I mean, that’sit.”

“That’s the other thing,” Jennifer said. “You get to be smarter when you get older, too. You get to make up your own Tao.”

* * *

Now,it was two-thirty on Monday afternoon, and she was packing up, telling her new boss, a guy named Ed who looked like an ex-linebacker and probably was, whose shaved head was as polished and dark as a newel post, whose face was scary but whose command of details was legendary, “So I’m out of here, but I’ll be in early tomorrow.”

Ed would have answered, but there was somebody in the entry to her cubicle. Blake Orbison, to be exact. Jennifer had noticed that Ed tended to shut up when Blake was around.

She said, “Hey, Blake. I’m just leaving.”

“Uh-huh,” he said. “I wanted to talk to you about that.”

“Well,” she said, “could you have picked another time? I literally need to be out the door.”

Ed looked up like he’d heard a signal called that wasn’t in the playbook, which was probably about right.

“Doctor’s appointment,” Blake said. “I know. That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

“All right,” she said. “I’m not going to ask how you know that, even though I have a bad feeling. Walk and talk, then. You know I hate to be late.”

“For such a model employee,” he said, “you have an authority problem.”

Ed grinned, then wiped the smile off his face.Definitelyan ex-linebacker.