17. Sabrina
Pickles had stopped hissing at him.
It had been a week since Pickles last hissed at Beau, a small truce that felt surprising and fragile.
Beau was in Bonnie's room.
He was tucking her in, as he had on two previous nights that week.
The first had been at Bonnie's plea, born of fatigue and my inability to refuse.
The second came after I quietly allowed it.
The third required no permission: She moved toward her room at the usual hour, he rose and accompanied her, and the pattern held before we ever named it.
I didn't know how to feel about it.
He came out of her room.
He pulled the door behind him to the half-closed position Bonnie liked. A moment later, he came down the hall and into the kitchen. His arms settled around my waist, and his lips brushed the spot beneath my ear.
"She is asleep." He smiled.
"She is faking. She fakes for the first ten minutes."
"She is asleep, Sabrina. She tried to fake. It didn't survive contact with the mattress."
"Mmm…"
He held me.
His chin was on the top of my head. His breath was at my hairline. He smelled like the garlic from the dinner I'd made. The cologne was on the soft part of his shirt collar.
I poured two glasses of red wine.
He took his, leaning against the counter. He had on jeans and one of the soft shirts that I'd been sleeping in three nights ago and had returned to him reluctantly.
"How was your day?"
"Long. Three regulars insisted on telling me about their dating lives. Kit caught me staring at my phone twice. The second time, in fairness, I'd been reading a text from you, which Kit wasn't going to let go."
"Reading what?"
"You told me Bonnie sounded out the word cephalopod this morning unprompted."
"She did."
"I hadn't known that Kit was capable of making a heart with his hands."
He laughed, and he kissed the top of my head. "I went to the office today."
"The foundation?"
"No. The other one. The real estate one. I've been spending an hour, a few times a week, with the man my father had running the day-to-day. He is teaching me. He is also, not at all subtly, planning his retirement."
"Mmm…"
"I'm stepping into a pair of shoes I didn't plan on stepping into."
I tipped my chin at him. "You can make them your own now."
He looked at me for a beat that lasted longer than the beat the line had earned.
"Yeah."
He set his glass down, came across the kitchen, took the glass out of my hand, and set it on the counter beside his.
He kissed me.
We didn't make it to the bedroom or past the kitchen island.
He had me up against the side of the island with his hand at the back of my head and his mouth at my neck and his other hand at the hem of my shirt, and I was — I was — I was the woman who had told this man that we wouldn't be calling this anything.
We made it to the floor.
The floor was cold, and we made it happen there. I gave him what he was asking for by the way he was kissing me.
After — on the kitchen floor, half-dressed, with my head on his shoulder and my hand on his chest and his arm around my back — he said my name.
He said it as if it were the answer to a question he hadn't asked.
Neither of us said I love you.
A rule was a rule. The rule was straining. Each time we didn't talk about it, the feeling got harder.
I closed my eyes against his shoulder, letting him hold me.
I didn't say it because it would mean I had admitted that I was catching feelings.
But it was happening.
I closed my eyes a little tighter.
He stayed.
He was up before I was. When I came down the hall to the kitchen, the coffee was already on. A plate of toast sat on the table, cut diagonally. Beside it lay the cephalopod book Bonnie had left there the night before.
Bonnie was at the table. She was eating cereal. She was wearing her aquarium shirt — the one she had insisted on for the third time this month because Beau was taking her to the aquarium today.
He was taking her because she had asked, stating them as if they were already on the calendar.
"Have a good shift, Mom."
"Have a good aquarium tour, baby."
"Aren’t you coming?" he asked.
"I have a double shift today."
"Mmm…" She didn't look up from the cereal. She was registering the fact and putting it away.
"I'll come for lunch if I can."
"Mmm…"
Beau was at the counter, pouring coffee into a travel mug. He held the mug up to me. "For you."
I took it and kissed his cheek. I kissed the top of Bonnie's head.
Half Past was the same. The bar, the regulars, and the afternoon were the same.
I checked my phone seven times in an hour. Kit had caught me several times. He was holding the bar towel up to his mouth to hide the laughing.
"Sabrina. Again today?”
"Don't, Kit."
"You are checking your phone."
"I'm not."
"You are checking your phone for a man you’ve told me, on three separate occasions, wasn't your boyfriend."
"Kit."
"I'm only saying."
"I'll get you fired, Kit."
"You can't fire me."
"I'll write a letter to the manager."
"You are the manager on weekends, Sabrina."
"I'll write the letter regardless. I'll copy myself."
He laughed.
My phone buzzed.
Beau
Heading to the dumpling place on Park for lunch. Bonnie wants the dumplings. Come if you can.
I was already typing.
Sabrina
See you in twenty.
I told Kit I was taking my break. I left through the back, and I walked the four blocks to the dumpling place.
They were at a corner booth.
Bonnie had a dumpling halfway to her mouth. Beau had Bonnie's water bottle in his hand. They were laughing about something.
Bonnie spotted me. "Mom."
"Hi, baby." I slid into the booth and kissed the top of her head. I kissed Beau's mouth — short and quick. He raised an eyebrow at me.
"Are we doing this in front of dumplings?"
"I have twenty-two minutes. We are doing this in front of dumplings."
He laughed.
He pushed the plate of dumplings at me. Bonnie pushed the dipping sauce.
"Beau."
"Yeah, Bonnie."
"Are you coming to my birthday?"
I went still around the dumpling.
Beau — and this was the thing about him I hadn't yet figured out how to dislike — looked at me over the top of Bonnie's head. He didn't answer her until he had asked for my permission.
"If your mom says yes."
"She will. Right, Mom?"
I looked at her, at Beau, then back at her.
"Yes, of course, baby," I said, smiling.
Bonnie nodded and returned to the dumpling.
Beau's eyes didn't leave me.
I said yes, and I meant yes, and I also — and here was the part of the wrecking-ball voice I wasn't going to be able to mute — thought before I was able to say yes, If she makes it to her birthday.
I shoved the thought back where it lived, and ate a dumpling.
The next ten minutes were good. They were good in a way I hadn't budgeted for.
Bonnie told me about the octopus — the same octopus we had seen with Beau the first time, the same octopus Bonnie had named Walter, even though the octopus on the placard had a name I couldn't remember.
Beau told me the octopus had been moving on its tank wall in a pattern Bonnie had been able to predict by the third time around.
Bonnie told me the octopus had recognized her.
I let her tell me the octopus had recognized her. I didn't, for the first time in my life as a parent, fact-check her.
I had to go back to work.
I kissed Bonnie on the forehead. Then I kissed Beau. I left them in the booth with their dumplings and water bottle. Beau was looking at my daughter like she’d just said something remarkable. I walked the four blocks back to the bar at something faster than a normal pace.
I was — I was actually happy.
I was happy. But I was scared, too, and that was the part I didn't have words for. I might have been falling for him.
After work, I came home to find Beau on the couch.
Her was on the couch with the cephalopod book open in his lap. The book had three pieces of paper sticking out because it was being annotated, per Bonnie's specifications, with notes.
Bonnie was on the other end of the couch.
She was in pajamas, and Pickles was on her stomach. Pickles, who'd stopped hissing at the man on the couch, decided this morning that she would lie on him — especially if Bonnie was there too.
Bonnie was watching a movie I hadn't been consulted about. It had spaceships that were, by the look of things, doing something Bonnie had a lot of feelings about.
He looked up at me and smiled. I quietly sat down on the couch beside Beau and put my head on his shoulder.
He kissed my hair. "How was your day?"
"Long. Kit caught me checking my phone again."
"I caught myself checking my phone fifteen times."
"You aren't allowed to check your phone fifteen times when you are at the aquarium with my daughter."
"I checked it after the aquarium."
"Mmm… How was the aquarium?"
"Walter has been recognized as a regular."
"Has he?"
"He has. Bonnie says she made eye contact with the octopus, and the octopus did the curling thing it does when it is, possibly, communicating."
"Possibly."
"Bonnie has cited two papers."
"Yes, I’m proud of her."
"Me too."
He kissed the top of my head.
He went back to the book.
I closed my eyes against his shoulder.
I hadn't been on a couch with my head on a man's shoulder while my daughter watched a movie about spaceships. I hadn't, in any of the nine years of being Bonnie's mother, been on this couch with a man my daughter was attached to. The couch was, this evening, all of ours.
"Mama."
I turned my head.
Bonnie's voice wasn't the voice she used to say mama. It was thin. The thinner-than-usual was the part that put me on my feet.
"Bonnie."
She brought her right hand to her chest. "Mama, I think — I don't feel — "
I was on the floor in front of the couch in two seconds. Bonnie’s face was pale. Her lips were going blue. Her chest was rising and falling fast, very fast, faster than the medication was supposed to let it rise.