Lucian Divine(65)

She tore the shower curtain open and scowled. “Of course not. I’ve always been honest with you.”

“Who is it?” I said.

“Another surgeon.”

“Of course. Which one?” I knew a lot of the people she worked with.

“Tom.” She blinked, expressionless.

“Really? Tom? He’s like four inches shorter than you and how many years older… and he has no hair.”

She shrugged. “We have a lot in common. Don’t be so shallow.”

“Outside of the fact that you make good money and enjoy cutting people open, what else do you have in common with him?”

Wrapped in a towel, Laura, who I had been with for seven years, broke up with me by simply saying, “We haven’t really been a couple for a long time, Lucian. This will be like cutting out that fattening donut you have once a month.”

She compared our relationship to a fucking donut. Or maybe she was comparing me to a fucking donut.

“A donut?”

She nodded. “A donut.” She pecked me on the lips. “Good-bye. I hope we can always be friends.”

Not likely.

After she left, I found myself standing there, still in the same spot in the bathroom, staring at the towel she had used. She said we hadn’t been a couple in a long time. I thought about that remark the whole way to Sweet Maple.

When I got inside, my mother was already sitting at a table near the back. She stood to kiss me. Isla Bertrand was still a striking beauty at sixty-five, but it was her warmth that I always looked for in the women I wanted to date. I wasn’t a mama’s boy, but I didn’t take her for granted either. She was my biggest fan, always there for me.

“Laura broke up with me,” I said as my mother and I sat down. “She said we hadn’t been a couple for a long time, and then she compared me to a donut.” I opened my eyes wide and laughed. “Can you believe that? It’s over. I’m a donut.”

“Well, at least you’re laughing about it.” She took a deep breath.

My face fell. “You’re relieved, aren’t you?”

“I don’t want to say I’m relieved. I just never felt like you and Laura were right for each other. Something was always missing.”

“You mean like a spark?”

“Yes and love, real love. I think what you and Laura had was just for comfort, so you both could focus on your careers and not be distracted.”

I tried to think back to when Laura and I had first met, how we’d felt about each other back then, but nothing stuck out in my memory. “You think we kept it together because it was comfortable?”

“Comfortable and easy.” Her brow furrowed as she took my hand. “I’m sorry, Lucian. I know you’ve been together for a long time. Breaking up is never easy, even if you know it’s for the best. Maybe you should take a year and just be single.”

I scanned the menu and shrugged. “Maybe, although I’ve felt single for a long time.”

“Love doesn’t always have perfect timing. Just wait until you find the right person. Until then, live your life.”

We ordered from the server, sipped coffee, reminisced about my dad, and then she couldn’t help herself. “So any interviews coming up?”

“I don’t want to jinx it,” I said through a mouthful of French toast.

“Come on, you can tell your mom. Anyway, since when have you been superstitious? I could barely get you to go to church as a kid. I had to bribe you every Sunday.”

“I’m not superstitious. I just don’t want to get my hopes up. I have an interview next week with one of the top design agencies in the city. They specialize in branding and shaping passion-based companies. They also work with some of the biggest green companies in the Bay Area. It’d be a dream job.”

Her face practically exploded from happiness. “Oh, Lucian, that’s wonderful.”

“Mom, I haven’t even gone to the interview yet.”

“I know you’ll get it.”

“I should not have told you.”

She smiled knowingly. “You’ve always been too hard on yourself. When you go to that interview, Lucian, be confident, be enthusiastic. That little bit of cockiness you had before wouldn’t hurt either. Since you got laid off, that’s all changed. You act undeserving. You can’t help that the company was going under.”

After brunch and a long talk, I kissed my mother good-bye and headed back toward my apartment. I was walking up the hill in the Mission toward my apartment, feeling guilty about not feeling guiltier about my relationship with Laura being over. Kenny, a guy I used to work with, called me and asked if I wanted to go out.

“Go out?”

“Yeah, rumor travels fast.”

“What do you mean?”

“Laura told Cynthia what happened. Don’t ever tell Laura this, but Cynthia was so happy. She was like, ‘Good, now Lucian can find someone who doesn’t treat him like shit.’ Laura’s just not nice, man.”

“I know. I don’t want to go out. I’m gonna go home and work on some new presentations. Dude, I have to get this job I’m interviewing for next week, or I’m going to run off to a monastery. No girl plus no job equals turn to God, right?”

We both laughed at that.