Chapter 20
Wren staggered through the front door and kicked off her flats, sending them flying down the hallway. She slammed the door behind her. The apartment was dead quiet. It was weird being here without Arthur.
But she didn’t want to think about him right now. Or anything at all.
She’d been an idiot. Carrying around a ring, ready to propose to her boyfriend like this was all some modern fairy tale? What was she thinking? Of course it had been too good to be true, too good to last. Nothing good ever does.
It would persist, but she would be trapped.
She’d have no choice but to live in the barren house, sleeping on an air mattress while Arthur attempted to fix it up, putting their baby to sleep in a drafty corner somewhere and eventually letting it do its tummy time right there on the concrete flooring.
If and when Arthur was ever finished, she’d live out her days as the picture-perfect suburban mom, secretly getting by with various substances that allowed her to feel something, anything.
There she went, thinking again when she’d vowed not to.
She set her sights on the sofa, beckoning to her like a siren, and flopped down into its softness.
She turned on the TV. Wren and Arthur had promised they would start Cake Island 2: The Duel together, and for a second she felt bad queuing it up without him.
But this was, at the moment, the best revenge she could possibly get.
“Ferdie,” she called out, “get your ass over here. Mama needs snuggles.” She was also going to look into the feasibility of having an entire cake DoorDashed to the apartment so she could do terrible things to it.
Ferdie came limping in from the bedroom, moving glacially but happy to see her, tail wagging almost imperceptibly.
“There’s my boy.” Wren scooped him up and brought him into her chest, then started the show. “Love you the most, buddy.”
The two of them fell asleep like that before the first elimination.
In the morning, she opened her eyes with a tragic, naive hope that she’d feel better, that she’d discover a magical spring in her step.
But that pit in her stomach was still there, her heart was heavy, and Arthur’s side of the bed was empty and cold.
She’d never admit it out loud, but there was a part of her that had hoped he’d secretly returned in the night.
No such luck.
He was often up before her, but his spot was always warm, and though it usually annoyed her at the time, she was realizing just how quiet the apartment was without him clanging around, making more coffee, tapping away on his laptop, or “quietly” vacuuming with their little rechargeable hand vac.
It made her want to strangle him on many a morning. And now it was gone. Just dead quiet.
All in all, Wren decided that she couldn’t bring herself to get out of bed, and neither could Ferdie, from the looks of him. He was curled up in the same exact spot he’d fallen asleep in, contoured perfectly against the bend in her legs.
There were too many feelings weighing her down.
What she needed was to disassociate even further; yes, that would be the ticket.
But she found herself getting distracted upon resuming the show.
Not even suspiciously hot bakers competing in American Gladiator–style games, delivering towering cakes across long balance beams, could wrangle her brain.
She needed something even more brain-dead.
And that’s when she remembered Instagram.
She began scrolling. Here were a few photos of the wedding from friends of friends.
People out at breweries. Visiting the zoo with their kids.
A “get ready with me” reel. Soon she was absorbing all kinds of kooky misinformation about vaccines and food dye from the momfluencers, but she didn’t care.
Bring it on. Frosted Flakes leads to kids with low IQ?
Sure, why not? Formula linked to colic? If you say so.
She wanted more. Maybe she would become one of them and hide her pain behind a baseless campaign against Froot Loops.
The edges of her vision went dark and she lost all track of time and sense of reality, exactly as intended.
Until she saw something that caught her eye. Immediately, she called Charlie, whom she’d been texting on and off with most of the previous night—which just happened to be Charlie’s wedding night. She was a real one.
“Hi,” she said glumly when her friend answered.
“I was just thinking about you. You doing OK?”
“What, re Arthur? I’m fine. I’m barely thinking about it.”
“You should really call him,” Charlie said with concern. “He keeps texting me, begging me to let him know if you’re OK. I’ve said you’re fine, but—”
“He’s just some guy, Charlie. Some guy I’ve been casually hooking up with. For ten years. Now, believe it or not, I didn’t call you to talk about that.”
A pause. Wren waited to see if Charlie would let this go or if she would have to be steamrolled, which was never an easy task.
They were both stubborn, so stubborn, in fact, that they’d never even once agreed on who was more stubborn throughout their entire friendship.
An eternal stalemate. Finally, a small sigh came through from the other end of the line.
Charlie always sighed like that when she knew Wren was about to pull some bullshit. “OK, what is it, then?”
“I called to tell you that…we are so back.”
“What? Who’s back?”
“FORD THE RIVER. I just saw on Instagram. They kicked off a huge reunion tour a few weeks ago.”
“Aren’t those guys in their fifties now?” Charlie asked.
“Who cares! They’re coming to Baltimore tonight. You believe that? I know you’re leaving for your honeymoon in a few days, but we’re going,” Wren said.
“You want to go to a punk rock show? When you’re about to go into labor at any moment? And you just decided to stop speaking to or about the father? You could at least pretend to not be suppressing your emotions.”
“Maybe I am. Who cares? This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” Wren was getting uncomfortable, her legs pinned in place by a comatose Ferdie and falling asleep rapidly. “These guys hate each other’s guts and they’re likely to murder each other before they ever tour together again.”
“Or die of natural causes, at this point.”
“Exactly. I’ve never seen them live, and this is our last chance. I can be sad later. What do you say?”
“How are you talking me into this right now? It’s insane. I’m supposed to be packing for my honeymoon,” Charlie scoffed.
“Shut up, I know you did that days ago.”
Wren swore she heard Charlie curse under her breath. Busted.
“I will go without you if I have to,” Wren threatened. “Then I’ll have no one to supervise me.”
“Fine, but one rule.” Charlie sighed. “I am NOT getting into the mosh pit.”
“OK, no problem.”
“And neither are you!” added Charlie.
“We can discuss it on the way.”
Wren ended the call. She’d always wanted to clip off a phone call mid-conversation, like some Jason Bourne–esque action hero. Plus she knew any further discussion or negotiation would only cause Charlie to rethink their plans.
Now she had to get ready, find something to wear, listen to the official tour playlist, and practice her double devil horns in the mirror to make sure she was still young enough to pull them off.
True, most of the people at the show would be her age or older, but she also knew the music was starting to catch on with a younger crowd and she didn’t want to be banished to the elderly parents’ section of the venue.
Oh, and she had to do it all without thinking about Arthur and, ideally, not going into labor before she could figure out what to do about her relationship.
No sweat.
A few hours later, she was ready. In another world, Wren would have loved to go all out, outfit-wise, for the show.
But she had to settle for stretchy pregnancy pants and a loose-fitting top plastered with the logo for 408, another one of her favorite bands.
It had been a while since she’d been to a concert, a long while, but she was pretty sure it was still forbidden to wear a shirt of the band you were going to see.
With more time, she might have added a few accoutrements, a spiky wristband, a streak of purple in her hair.
But she more than made up for it by layering on an absurd amount of eye shadow, which not only looked punk rock but helped disguise her eyes, which were red and swollen from holding back tears.
In all the excitement, she realized, she’d forgotten to walk Ferdie. He’d surely need a pee before being left alone for the next few hours. Arthur might be back at some point. But then again…he might not.
“Come on, bud.” She groaned. In her current physical condition, she wasn’t going to be any more thrilled about a walk than he was. “Let’s get this over with.”
He was still sleeping in the same spot on the bed, the same exact spot.
It had been hours. The dog could sleep like a vampire, but this was rare, even for him.
She sat next to him and tried to gently rouse him.
When he didn’t twitch immediately, she freaked.
Call it instinct. She stood up and screamed.
No, this could not be happening, not to her, not right now.
He couldn’t be gone.
She left the room and looked up, as if to the heavens. “You’ve made your fucking point. Go pick on someone else for a while.”
The proper thing to do would be to sound the alarm, call Arthur, call the vet.
Do something. But what was the point? She’d known all along Ferdie wasn’t going to be with them for long, that was part of the deal.
And she couldn’t be in there with him right now anyway.
It activated parts of her brain, parts of her heart, that she’d long since drawn the curtains on.
It would hurt too much to try to use that atrophied muscle: hope. Better to just give in to the pain now.
She sat down on the sofa, sinking into it more than ever before, and allowed herself to cry.
But it wasn’t long before the tears ran dry.
She was surprised that this moment wasn’t hitting her the way she expected.
Not with the force of a freight train or a semitruck.
It was more like the disappointment of the inevitable.
The last bite of an amazing meal. The closing credits of a movie you don’t want to end.
You know it’s coming, but you’re hoping somehow that it won’t.
But it did. The whole thing, she realized, was anticlimactic and bleak.
She had no amazing parting words for her boy, no great speech or emotional plea.
He was there and then one moment he was just gone, and Wren sat on the couch, numb, unsure of what to do next.
She knew that’s how death was. It wasn’t an ending or a new beginning, the way people say. It just left a hole you couldn’t fill.