Chapter 45
Chapter Forty-Five
HAPPILY EVER DURING
Arden
I wake to cold sheets and the familiar absence beside me. I have no doubt he scattered kisses across my face before he left, but I've been sleeping just a little bit deeper in a way I don’t always stir when he leaves.
Those kisses each morning took root in the early years of our lives, not delicate seeds requiring tender care, but ancient acorns buried deep in fertile soil, destined to rise as oaks whose branches would shelter all generations in their steadiness. Within them all the power of patient, inevitable becoming.
Through our bedroom window, dawn is just starting to crack open the sky like a fresh egg, spreading its golden yolk across the horizon. Will's running shoes are missing from their usual spot by the door. Some things you can set your watch by: taxes, death, and Will Sterling’s morning run. Though now he drags Titian with him. Though I am unconvinced the dog goes for any reason more than a pup-cup at the end of it.
I roll over, watching the early morning shadows painted across our ceiling, thinking about the small white stick hiding in my purse. Actually, several boxes . I bought them yesterday three neighborhoods away, because this may be a city, but it's also the kind of place where you always run into someone you know at the worst possible moment and I didn’t want the usual cashier to give me that kind of face next month when I showed up to buy tampons instead of prenatal vitamins.
Instead, the unknown cashier just gave me that knowing look, that made me feel like I was a teen-mom not a grown-adult-woman pretending to be fascinated by the gum display. There’s something strange about the fact that even though sex might be the most natural thing on the planet to do, having someone see me buy a pregnancy test, or the shelf of them , feels more vulnerable than them seeing me by Plan B. For which I never went to a different neighborhood.
What started out as a ‘whatever happens, happens,’ situation when we decided to stop trying not to , eventually became a bit more methodical. We had wanted to avoid it as long as possible with the fear that introducing more regimen to our sex life would be pressure. Instead ending up with the kind of casual approach that actually requires tremendous effort to maintain. Like when he catches me reading parenting books or when I catch him lingering a little too long in front of the window display at that baby boutique in Beacon Hill. The benefit to not-really-trying meant that we also weren’t really failing. It wasn’t until one night a few months ago we were laying in tangled sheets as his fingers twirled around my belly button. Us both staring up at the same ceiling fan with the painful dichotomy of being wholly completely content but also wanting more.
For all important moments of my life, I prepared. So, for this, I would also prepare. It was then, I pulled out my phone and marked the date to begin tracking. Will simply rolled over in silent understanding, pressed his lips to mine, and whispered, ‘same team.’
Now, the thing about being married to a runner is that you learn their rhythms, their routes, the way they mark time in footfalls and miles. Six miles along the Charles, regardless of weather or season or how late we stayed up the night before watching ‘just one more episode’ of whatever show we're binging, or what book ending he has to comfort me through.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed, my bare feet meeting the cool hardwood. The pregnancy test feels like it's screaming at me, a Chekhov's gun waiting to go off in the first act of whatever play we're about to start. Or maybe worse, a red herring of hope.
In the bathroom, I go through the motions of my morning routine on autopilot, everything but peeing of course, because I’d read it’s more effective when it’s the first pee of the morning. Which is why it stayed hidden until now. It’s not that it's contraband, but more the idea that just knowing it was there, Will would want to be here, as he has been for so many negatives.
Three minutes that feel like three years.
I set the test on the counter and decide I’m just going to go ahead and add another layer of skin serum to keep my hands busy rather than pace in what suddenly feels like a space that's too small, too warm, too everything. I think about Will, probably hitting his stride right about now, his feet carrying him past the universities, past the boathouses. I wonder if he can feel it, this moment happening miles away, the way I swear I can sometimes feel when he's about to call before my phone even rings.
Two minutes.
I think about how we met. More than once. But eventually at the right time.
One minute.
I think about our apartment, how the extra bedroom is currently part home office, part book hoarders dream, but could be... something else. We’d talked about it. How this would work for a time longer. How the morning fills the space and how it has its own bathroom that would be perfect for…
The timer on my phone chimes and I wish he was here.
I check his location, right on track, making the loop home, meaning he’s only about a mile away.
Suddenly I'm moving, pulling on the first clothes I can find. Will's old college sweatshirt, a pair of leggings, running shoes I bought with good intentions but mainly use for errands. As I start frantically doing SAT level math in my head.
Let’s see… if he’s just a mile from home, and on average runs a seven minute mile, I am one mile from him, and can run… my mouth.
Ugh not helpful Arden.
Okay okay.
I can probably run a thirteen minute mile if I’m lucky. But then again, he’s already running, so… back to SAT math.
I’m shoving my foot in a shoe and tripping out the door with nothing but my phone and a stick, though capped , suspiciously covered in pee.
Let’s see, if Person A is running at a speed of 7 minutes per mile. And Person B is running at a speed of 13 minutes per mile. They are one mile apart. How soon will they meet in the middle. Lowest common denominator… seven and thirteen… is… ninety-one…
I’m stumbling down the street, not so much a run, not in any coordinated effort, though I’m surprised no one has stopped me to make sure I’m okay. Which obviously I am not.
So, our combined speed is… 20 over 91 miles-per-minute. Whatever the fuck that actually means. Time is the distance of combined speed… so… one mile over 20/91 miles-per-minute. Which would be one times 91/20… what is that… four minutes and… who the fuck cares.
I know his route by heart, could probably run it backwards in my sleep, or at least, walk it. Out the door, down our street where the cherry trees are just starting to bloom, past the coffee shop where I sneak out to sometimes meet him and wait for him on the course. The air hits my face, cool and sharp, filling my lungs as I start to run.
I'm not really a runner. Not literally . Only in the ways Will and I run away together, and that is rarely on foot. Despite the occasions when I need to expel energy and we just take off down the path as fast as possible. But this isn't that.
Somewhere ahead of me, Will is running, probably lost in whatever podcast he's listening to.
I scan the path ahead, looking for the back of him. Will runs, like he does everything else, with a kind of effortless grace that makes me both envious and hopelessly fond. I'd know his stride anywhere, the way I'd know his laugh in a crowded room or his footsteps coming to bed.
My lungs are burning now. God, how does he do this every morning? I've only been running for a couple minutes and I'm already questioning every life choice that led me here. But then I see him, his form silhouetted against the morning sky.
"Will!" My voice comes out embarrassingly breathless. A couple of other runners turn to look, but not him, his earbuds probably drowning out everything else.
I push harder, ignoring the protest in my muscles. "William Sterling!"
Nothing.
"TITIAN!" The name bounces across the path as our black-and-white collie freezes mid-stride, nearly taking Will down with him. The leash goes taut and he whips around at my voice, dragging Will with him as he bounds back toward me. Will’s face morphs from confusion to surprise, finally giving way to concern as he sees me running toward him. He pulls out his airpods, already moving in my direction faster than imaginable.
I crash into him, Titian jumping at my side. My momentum carries us all a few stumbling steps but he doesn’t let us fall. His hands come up to steady me automatically, and he's warm and solid against me.
"Arden, what's wrong?" His hands are on me frantically. Holding my face in fear as I catch my breath.
He’s glistening in sweat, so am I, as he brushes the hair from my eyes and tilts my face up to his for a better assessment.
“Are you okay? What’s going on?” He tries again. But as we take breaths long enough to fill out lungs something on my face relaxes him.
"I'm fine," I manage between gasps. "Everything's fine. I mean… my math skills aren’t what they used to be…” He looks at me more perplexed. “I just—" I look up at him, at his worried face, at the way the rising sun is turning his hair to gold at the edges, maybe even catching a single strand of silver, and suddenly I'm laughing as I seem to in all the most important moments of our life.
"Arden?" His hands cup my face, thumbs wiping at tears I didn't even realize were falling. "You're scaring me, darling."
"I just couldn't wait until you got home. I needed to find you."
“You never need to find me. Call me, and I will come home, to wherever you are.” He says as a promise.
"I'm pregnant?—"
His kiss cuts me off, tasting of salt and joy and morning air. When he pulls back, he's crying too, or maybe still laughing, his smile so bright it rivals the sunrise. Right there on the running path, with people streaming past and the whole city waking up around us. I saw the sun rise in his eyes and I realized the longer I stared, it was me. And for him, nothing would ever eclipse that.
The words spread into my chest like warm honey, sweet and golden and perfect. I hadn’t given myself a moment to feel them before needing to share them.
"Oh god." I look down at my hand, still clutching the test. "I just ran through Boston carrying my own pee stick… Chapter One of the baby book… ‘ How Your Mother Lost All Dignity Before You Were Even the Size of a Poppy Seed’ ."
He laughs and stares confirming the same thing I did. “I can hold on to that for us.” Slipping it into his pocket for safe keeping. I half expect him to label it and drop it in the canister with all the champagne corks we’ve collected.
We start the float home, not quite walking, but moving all the same. Carried by something much more than our feet.
"Hey Will?" I say, turning to face him. "Same team?"
"Same team. All three of us."