Chapter 23 #2
“I don’t blame you,” May told her. “You were the one who let me know what was going on, which is more than I could say for Xavier. He and I will find a way to work through this. We are friends. And I’ve seen the way he takes care of his brother and his employees. He’s a natural. He’ll be a great dad.”
“Permission to speak freely?” Elliott asked, doing that scrunched-up thing with her nose again.
May nodded.
“If he’s used to taking care of everyone, wouldn’t it be natural for him to try and take care of you too?” Lisa narrowed her eyes at Elliott, who rushed to add, “I’m not saying he shouldn’t have told you what he was thinking—he totally should have.”
May sighed.
Elliott was right. Lisa was right. She was right.
“I know he means well, but I also know I’m not asking for too much. Including me in the conversation about the baby I’m carrying should be a no-brainer for him.”
“You’re right,” Elliott agreed.
“And he should lead with his love and never-ending devotion,” Lou said.
May heard the word love loud and clear, but she didn’t acknowledge it. It was too big, too much, and the last thing she wanted to think about right now.
So instead she looked around at the expectant faces of her friends and asked, “Is anyone going to eat that last garlic knot?”
Xavier sat on the edge of his childhood bed, his elbows resting on his knees. He felt like a giant in this room. The narrow bedframe had creaked when he sat down, his ass sinking deeply into the broken-down twin mattress.
The smell of fresh paint was in the air, and his baseball trophies were long gone, but the bed was the one he’d slept on as a kid, the beat-up dresser where he’d stored his geeky science magazines the same.
He’d been content as a kid. He’d been raised in a happy, stable household with a mother and father who had stayed together—who were still together. It’d been the three of them until he’d turned fourteen and his mother had given birth to Lynx.
Back then, Lynx had been nothing more than an inconvenience.
Xavier had wanted to go out with friends and sleep until noon.
A baby brother needing his parents’ full attention had complicated those plans.
As if being chauffeured around by his dad wasn’t bad enough, sitting next to a bulky car seat had been worse.
He’d been mortified whenever a friend had come home with him after school.
Sleeping until noon hadn’t worked out, either.
And he’d been required to do a lot of household chores since Mom had been nursing and was more sleep-deprived than anyone in the house.
He smiled to himself. He’d been a shit at age fourteen. A rite of passage, he supposed. Someday he would have to contend with his own fourteen-year-old.
Wild.
He’d thought of nothing but May since the evening she’d driven away from him. Like before they dated, he respected her boundaries. Everything about her body language and the finality of her goodbye warned him not to push.
After she’d left, he’d trudged inside, his mind spinning. He’d almost forgotten about Lynx, who had ultimately decided to eat the sandwich he’d offered May.
“I didn’t know you guys were having a serious discussion,” Lynx said in his own defense. Lucky for him, Xavier was clean out of fight.
“Yes, you did. And you also knew she didn’t want a sandwich.”
Lynx chewed, thoughtful for a moment. “Is she really pregnant?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.” Xavier opened the fridge to make himself a sandwich, not because he was hungry but because he needed something to do with his hands… Besides wrap them around his brother’s neck.
“Did you tell Mom and Dad?”
“No.”
“You hiding it?”
“I’m picking my moment.”
“Dude.”
Xavier glared at him. His brother was already on thin ice.
Lynx plopped down at the kitchen table and sucked down half a can of Coke. After a belch, he said, “Wonder what they’ll say.”
“Well.” Xavier piled his sandwich fixings onto the counter. “You can find out for yourself when we go there today.”
“We?”
“Yes. I’m taking you home.”
Lynx had argued about wanting to stay one more night, to which Xavier had replied, “Tough shit.”
Xavier had eaten the sandwich he hadn’t wanted. He’d also typed five texts to May but hadn’t sent any of them. He’d almost called her but chickened out in the end.
He couldn’t blame her for being pissed at him. When she’d listed the decisions he’d made without talking to her, he’d been pissed at himself. He hadn’t intentionally left her out, it’d just sort of…happened.
Which was no excuse at all.
Her leaving had felt final. Final, final. And while he hadn’t wanted her to go, he couldn’t blame her for that either. He’d told the truth when he admitted to failing in the past and not wanting to do it again. Screwing up a baby’s life was an awful prospect.
He supposed that worrying about screwing up their kids was every parent’s cross to bear. Fair or not, kids grew up thinking their parents were out of touch, only to realize they were doing their best at the time. Didn’t make him feel any better about leaving it to chance, though.
Xavier had arrived at their parents’ house, Lynx in tow.
Lynx had thrown him under the bus the moment they’d set foot inside.
Their father had remarked on Lynx’s black eye, and Lynx had used the perfect distraction tactic.
“Talk to Xav. He’s the one with the pregnant girlfriend. If she’s even his girlfriend.”
Lynx had practically sprinted to his basement bedroom. Every muscle in Xavier’s body had tensed. He’d wanted to chase him downstairs and blacken his other eye, but he didn’t. He’d stayed in the room with his parents to explain.
A soft knock at the bedroom door lifted him out of the memory. His mother peeked in, silently asking to come in. He patted the mattress next to him.
She was dressed in a pale pink sweater, jeans, and a pair of house slippers. Her chin-length hair was dyed blonde. Even so, there was more gray than he’d remembered being there before.
She sat next to him and rubbed his shoulder. “It’s called Robin’s Egg. The paint.”
“Looks blue to me.”
“Well, yes, smartass. Robin’s Egg is blue.”
“What color was it before?” Why couldn’t he remember that?
“Greige.”
“That’s a color?”
She hummed, but when she spoke again, she didn’t talk about paint. “You know, Lynx isn’t off the hook. He owes us an explanation about how he ended up gambling away his money and getting beat up. He’s too old to be acting like that.”
“I don’t know if he’s too old to be acting like that, but he’s too old to be living at home and acting like that. If he’s going to fuck up, he should do that while living on his own. Like I did.”
“Yes, well, you were more mature at his age.” His mother didn’t reprimand him for swearing, which was telling. This conversation was between a mother and son but also between two adults.
“Maybe he learned his lesson.” But he doubted it. Lynx was stubborn and thought he was right all the time. “That or he’ll learn it in a few years.”
His mom let out a small “ha” followed by, “Maybe.” Then she took a deep breath and said, “I would like May to join us for Thanksgiving dinner.” She folded her hands in her lap. “I intend to be a big part of my grandbaby’s life. I want May to like me and trust me.”
“Mom, name one person who doesn’t like and trust you.”
That made her smile.
“May’s a good person. She wouldn’t keep our child from me, or you, for that matter. Lynx, on the other hand…”
“Dodgy,” she said, which made him laugh. “You don’t have to put on a brave face. I can feel how heartbroken you are. It’s like this room is filled with maple syrup. I waded in here.”
He didn’t want to talk about that.
“Is it fixable between you two?” his mother asked.
“Trying to fix things is what got me into this mess. I made a lot of plans without asking her about them. I made a lot of assumptions.”
“Like?”
“I asked Ant to build a crib. I also told him that May was moving in with me, but I hadn’t talked to her about it.
” He took a deep breath and shared the most incriminating part.
“And I might have mentioned to her boss that she’d be working from home after she had the baby.
Which I also hadn’t talked to May about. ”
His mother raised her eyebrows and blinked. She had always worked, retiring from her corporate finance position a few years ago. He could only imagine what an asshole he must sound like to her.
“I didn’t want her to worry about anything. But in the process, I shut her out. She told me she doesn’t want to be managed.” He studied his folded hands. “Who does, right?”
“Oh, Xavier. Sometimes you’re just like your father.
That’s not always a bad thing. Over the years, I have learned that he’s trying to help when he’s manhandling everything.
Ever notice that they call it that? Manhandling?
You want to piss off an independent woman, offer her control dressed up as help. ”
“Where have you been for the last month or so?”
“Right here. Not knowing what was going on.” She elbowed him playfully. “Trust is built over lots of small gestures, Xavier. May trusted you with her body, but it sounds like you haven’t earned her heart yet.”
That felt really fucking true.
“Have you given her a reason to trust you?”
He frowned.
“All is not lost, sweet boy.” She rubbed her palm in circles on his back like she had when he was a kid and he’d been sulking about missing a fly ball or botching a school science experiment. And now, like then, it soothed his ragged nerves.
But he wasn’t sure all was not lost. May and Xavier had shared an amazing sexual relationship built on a foundation of friendship. But they had failed to build the kind of trust that bound two people together for life.
They’d truly put the cart before the horse. Leaped without looking. Attempted to run before they walked…
He was out of idioms. And possibly out of time.
May had been left behind by one side of her family and abandoned by the other. Xavier had offered some of the components of a relationship: a house. Stability. Friendship. Everything except what mattered most to her.
He hadn’t offered himself. Not really.
He’d been too busy planning not to fail, and in the end had failed her completely. He’d shared his feelings, his fears, and his plans with everyone but her. Ant, Brady, Griffin. Even Jewell.
He hadn’t been honest with her about how he was feeling. To be fair, he’d only recently figured it out himself.
Maybe that was why he admitted it now, to the Robin’s Egg walls in his childhood bedroom and to his mother, who sat by his side.
“I love her. I never told her.”
“Of course you do,” his mom said. “So, tell her. It’s not too late.”
He turned his head. His mother’s amber-colored eyes were an exact match for his own. “You don’t think?”
She patted his cheek. “Who could deny this face?”
May, he thought but didn’t say. She’d made a no-hot-men rule, one that had shut him down for years. He’d gained her trust once, now could he win her heart?
There was only one way to find out.