Chapter 31
Will gets the same frozen mocktail Rachel has and returns to the table.
“Can I sit?” he asks.
“Yeah, I think you’ve earned that. I was proud of you back there.”
He takes the seat across from her. “Which part? The prematurely celebrant mechanical-bull riding or the awkward confrontation with the bride-to-be?”
“Both. Just because I wanted to shake things up a little doesn’t mean I want to see some chick in a tiara talk shit to you.”
“That’s what that was, shaking things up?”
“I think it’s good to get you out of your comfort zone sometimes and remind you that you can’t control everything.” She makes sure he’s looking right at her. “Then there’s also the fact that I’m still mad at you.”
“I know.” He remembers what he thought up on the bull and sets the hat down between them. “But you brought this.”
“Well, I figured you’d show up, or I’d call you, and either way, there was no chance you were getting out of wearing it now.”
“I’m so sorry, Rachel. I know that doesn’t fix it, but I’m—I’m just so sorry.”
“I know that. I know you’re sorry. But I need to know you understand why I’m mad. You can’t just say the words. This isn’t talking teddy bears in my apartment or bad coleslaw.”
Will doesn’t hesitate, and he doesn’t try to explain it away. He just owns it.
“You told me to leave it alone, and I ignored you. And I didn’t just ignore you; I deceived you. I pretended to be you. Over and over, for a week. Because even as I was doing it, I knew I shouldn’t be. But I did it anyway. I cheapened all the closeness we had on this trip by convincing myself I was being romantic. That this was what you deserved. But all I was really doing was telling you what would make you happy and taking away your control over your own career. I’m supposed to be the one person who always has your back, and I failed miserably at that. Not to mention I screwed with your relationship with your sister.”
Rachel stares at him with something between annoyance and confusion. “Um, yeah. Pretty much.”
“Okay. What else?”
“What else?” she cries over the music, which has switched to some indistinct song about a guy and a truck. “Let’s just start with that. You know all this. I know you know all this. So what in God’s name were you thinking?”
“I don’t know how to say it without it sounding like an excuse.”
“Try me.”
It comes out as both an invitation and a challenge, and he’s not sure how ready he is to accept either. But he doesn’t have much choice.
“I’m scared, Rachel.”
“Of what?”
“Of so many things. Of not being good enough for you—”
“Nope, pass. I don’t accept that.”
“Hey, you asked. Do you want to hear it, or do you want me to make more stuff up and say I’m fine? Because I’m not.”
She’s not used to hearing him this forceful and can tell instantly this isn’t some setup to a roundabout way of complimenting her, which is not at all what she wants right now.
“Okay,” she says. “Go ahead.”
“I’m scared I’m not good enough for you. That I’ve never been good enough for you. So I’ve always done these over-the-top things to try to compensate for it. And then with this job, I got scared you’d end up regretting passing on it and eventually get tired of our life. I’ve seen ... daunting logistics keep you from what you wanted before. So I fell back on what I always do and tried to turn it into a problem I could solve.”
“‘Daunting logistics’?”
“Like with your tattoo. We both knew how much you wanted it, and it still took a year of nudging you before you’d go.”
“You can’t possibly be comparing uprooting our lives and moving across the country to me getting a tattoo.”
“All right,” he says, hesitating over how to phrase the next sentence. “What about the art gallery?”
“What art gallery?”
“The one in New York.”
“After we graduated?”
“Uh-huh. You told me you regretted that decision and that you only made it because your parents convinced you that you’d be making a mistake if you went. Now you’re in a job that you yourself called boring. I mean, I’m pretty sure I heard you talking about quitting it in your sleep when we were in Milwaukee.”
Rachel turns that over for a second, and Will wonders if he’s just made things worse. But when she doesn’t object, he knows it’s okay to continue.
“Plus you were also kind of sick of how your mom and dad are treating your pregnancy, and then I saw someone like Lawrence and all the regrets he had about Josie never getting back to Boston, and I told myself I’d done the right thing. I don’t want us to live with that kind of regret.”
“That’s what you took from that story? Those two people sound like they had a beautiful life together—one that ended way too soon, but beautiful.”
“I know. I got there eventually. That’s why I felt like I had to come clean when I did in the hotel room. But still.”
“Also, I feel compelled to remind you that I was never offered a job, just an interview. Did it ever occur to you that I might be scared?”
“I know you were worried that you wouldn’t get it, but—”
“Not just that,” she says, cutting him off. “What if they did offer it to me, but it didn’t pay enough, and I had to turn it down? LA is super expensive. And as if that weren’t enough, it’s also a lot less forgiving about women’s bodies than Chicago. You can’t just cover up for like eight months a year.”
Will is taken aback by that. Even with all the thinking he’s been doing, not once had this crossed his mind.
“But you’re beautiful.”
“Rachel goggles,” she says.
“I’m being serious.”
“I know you are. And more importantly, I feel great about the way I look. But there’s a different pressure out there to be a certain way. I’ve talked to Rochelle about it. And I’m not ready to open myself up to that, especially not when I’ll be fresh off a pregnancy.”
“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I had no idea.”
“You put me on this pedestal, Will. Sometimes it’s sweet, and clearly, I’m amazing”—she does a kind of wave with her hands—“but it can also be a lot to live up to.”
“So you probably don’t want to hear that after you left, there was a part of me that was scared you might be done with me.” She doesn’t seem to be getting what he’s driving at, so picking at his paper coaster, he adds: “Like, forever.”
“What? Divorce?”
He’s too embarrassed to say yes and just nods.
“You thought I’d want to divorce you over this?”
“I mean, no. Not really. But I spiraled and didn’t feel like I could rule it out entirely.”
Her lips smack in a disapproving tsk. “Well, that’s kind of insulting. But the good news is that thinking I could do something like that is the opposite of putting me on a pedestal.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I don’t mean it that way. It’s about me, not you.” He tries to articulate something that’s with him all the time but he’s never had to put into words. “I just—it’s so much easier for me to see all the reasons why someone would want to be with you than they would with me. I think about you and talk about you the way I wish I could talk to myself. You know?”
His eyes start to sting.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ve never cried this much in one day in my life.”
Rachel’s expression has shifted. The exasperation with him is still there, but it’s now overshadowed by concern. She reaches under the table and puts her hand on his knee.
“Thanks,” he says quietly.
“This isn’t just about what happened yesterday, is it?”
Will steadies his breathing. “I talked to my dad today.”
Shock joins her exasperation and concern. “Oh my God.”
“Yeah. And yet another thing I lied to you about.”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember that gas station in Ohio where you got the slush, and I bought the movie?”
“Uh-huh.”
“My mom called while you were using the bathroom and said my dad asked for my phone number. I told her not to give it to him and then didn’t tell you about it at all because I didn’t want it to distract from getting you excited about going to LA.”
Rachel had started rubbing his knee but now stops to make sure he sees her withering glare.
“I know,” he says. “It was stupid. Again. But then I talked to Ali last night and my mom this morning—turns out my dad was even worse than we thought, by the way—and I realized I had to do it.”
“And?”
“And he was as awful as you’d expect. Turns out he’s getting remarried, and his superreligious fiancée wanted him to get my forgiveness first. And get is the operative word because he never really apologized, he’s not really sorry, and he doesn’t want me at the wedding. Which I had no desire to attend but made me feel like absolute crap regardless.”
Rachel gives him a minute to compose himself again.
“How did you leave it?”
“I told him all the rotten shit it wasn’t my place to forgive him for and all the rotten shit that it was, and that I’d do my best, because he’s incapable of being anything other than a terrible human being.
“Then I said goodbye. For good. It’s done. I’m done.”
Now she looks impressed. “Based on everything you’ve ever told me, I can’t believe you got him to sit there and listen to that.”
“Well, I may have threatened to expose his past to his bride-to-be if he hung up before I was done.”
“I have to say, for as much as I don’t like the lying from the past week, I support the light blackmail.”
“At least I got that right.”
“And you really think that’s it with him? Like, forever?”
“I think I need it to be. It’s the only way I have any hope of eventually moving past everything he did.”
She still has her hand on his knee, and he leans in over the table, their faces now close enough for him to see the specks of amber in her brown eyes.
“It’s not just thinking I’m not good enough for you. I’m scared I’m not cut out to be a dad.”
“Why? Because of your dad?”
“Partially. But also because I still don’t have a good answer to the God question. Or how to blow your nose.”
“No one has a good answer to the God question. And he or she will just be a nose picker.”
“I’m not kidding,” he says.
“Me neither.”
“No, really—I live in perpetual fear that as soon as I stop trying to control things, as soon as I let myself get comfortable, that’s when something awful is going to happen.”
“Like nose picking?”
“Okay, that was a bad example.”
“Give me a good example then.”
This is it, the tightest of the tightly kept secrets. He closes his eyes because he doesn’t even want to look at her while he says it.
“I’m scared that something will go wrong with the baby, and it will do to us what it’s done to Isa and Owen. I’m scared of losing you if something goes wrong with your delivery. And I think this Creative Vices thing was something big for me to focus on instead. Something I could try to solve.”
He opens his eyes to see her considering this, and she takes her time before responding.
“You’ve never said anything like this. Why have you been keeping it all to yourself?”
“You’ve been worried about your sister, and I was worried about you, especially after you came home so upset last Friday. So I didn’t want my stuff to stress you out even more. And honestly, I think I was also just scared to say it out loud because speaking it makes it feel more real. Like me even putting it out there is tempting fate.”
Rachel moves her hand from his knee and takes his next to their drinks.
“For one, I’m sorry if anything I said or did made you feel like you couldn’t talk to me. That was never my intention. This”—she points back and forth between them with her free hand—“this is always open. It has to be. We’ve seen the consequences when it wasn’t this week, and they were not good. No damsels here.”
“I admit telling you does feel good.”
“Two, you’re not tempting anything, Will. Just like I don’t believe we were destined to be together, I don’t believe everything happens for a reason. Was there a reason Josie died the way she did? Or Aunt Katie? Was there a reason your dad left you and your mom? No—other than sometimes, life sucks. It can’t help itself, despite any of our best efforts. Lawrence and Josie didn’t do anything wrong. Neither did Katie or you and your mom.”
She senses his emotion working its way back up to the surface, and it makes her tear up too.
“You’ve got me crying now,” she says. But she presses on. “I really truly believe everything is going to turn out well for us with this baby. Just look at how we tried to take care of each other this week.”
Will’s eyebrows raise, and he feels like he’s missing something.
“I didn’t hatch some elaborate plot,” Rachel says, “but I did try—and succeed—in getting you stoned when I could tell the weight of everything was bearing down on you.”
“I thought that was about relaxing me for my tattoo.”
“I don’t think you’re in a position to judge me bending the truth at this point.”
He sighs. “So, wait: We’re going to be nurturing parents because I lied to you and you got me high?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“How very Gretchen Grayson of us. I also told some little boy at the hotel to never let anyone tell him men or the PAW Patrol don’t cry.” Rachel looks confused, so he adds: “It was by the vending machines.”
Still confused, she smiles at him.
“Now,” she says, “can I absolutely, one hundred percent guarantee everything will be okay with me? With the baby? No. Can we control that? No more than anyone else can. But if the unimaginable were to happen, it wouldn’t be because it was supposed to. It would simply be because it did. And the idea of that scares me too.”
She squeezes his hand tighter. “But we would survive, Will. You would survive. Just like you survived your dad—devastated for a long time, changed forever, but still a person anyone would be lucky to spend their life with. Because I didn’t fall in love with the stuff you did. I fell in love with you, and I wouldn’t trade this version for anything.”
They’re both emotional at this point, so it’s a minute before she adds:
“Okay, maybe I’d trade you for a version who didn’t impersonate me to try to get me a job despite my explicit instructions to the contrary. But everything else I’ll keep.”
He laughs, shooting a small piece of snot out of his nose, which makes her laugh and him laugh harder.
“Does this mean my request to find out whether we’re having a girl or a boy is back on the table?” he asks.
“Not unless you’re going to start growing her or him in your uterus.”
“God you’re stubborn.”
She rolls her eyes in a way that concedes she knows he’s right. “I know. I’m going to try and work on that. Hopefully with slightly less unfortunate results.”
“Again, I am so, so sorry,” he says. “I hope this goes without saying, but nothing remotely like this will ever happen again.”
Rachel shakes her head. “Seriously, how could you have possibly thought it would work? Rom-coms aren’t real for a reason, you know.”
“Too much Date Me Now!?”
“Oh no, don’t you go dragging that fine American institution into this.”
She smiles at him again.
“I love you,” Will says.
“You’re not bad.”
She winks and sets his hand down.
“I think you can take that off now,” she says, looking at the bandage still on the inside of his wrist.
“I know. But it was too depressing to do it last night.”
“Can I do the honors?”
Will extends his arm toward her, and Rachel carefully peels off the dressing. Once she does, they both look at the date inscribed there together.
“What did you say I said to you when I called after our second date?” she asks.
“‘You’re you, and you let me be me.’”
“Ugh, it’s still so cheesy.”
“But it’s kinda perfect,” he says.
“Yeah. It kinda is.”