16. Isaac #2
Co-pilots.
For a baby that isn’t mine. With a woman I’ve been in love with for five years.
This is fine. Everything is fine.
***
In the parking lot, she turns to me with a grin that makes my chest hurt.
“You survived.”
“Barely.”
“You did hold your breath through the entire breathing section.”
“Seemed safest.”
“The point was to practice breathing.”
“I breathe all the time. Self-taught.”
She laughs - really laughs, head thrown back, hand on her belly. The sound hits me like a punch to the sternum.
“Thank you,” she says, sobering. “For coming. I know it was…”
“Awkward?”
“I was going to say ‘a lot.’ But yes. Awkward.”
“It was fine.”
“Isaac. You introduced yourself to a room full of strangers as ‘the friend.’ Brenda spent the entire class calling you ‘Friend Isaac.’”
“I panicked.”
“They think you’re my doula now.”
“She asked if I’d considered doula certification. There’s a difference. And a doula is a respected profession.”
“Is there? Is it?”
“I have intuitive hands, apparently.”
She grins, and something in my chest loosens. “You do. I wasn’t lying about that. My back hasn’t felt that good in months.”
“YouTube tutorials.”
“You keep saying that like it’s not the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”
I don’t know what to say to that. I never know what to say when she looks at me like this - like I matter. Like I’m not just Cedrick’s friend who’s been hanging around too long.
“You didn’t have to do this,” she continues, her voice softer now. “Any of this. The classes, the appointments, the midnight ice cream runs. Why do you keep showing up?”
Because I love you.
Because I’ve loved you for five years.
Because watching you go through this alone would kill me faster than any amount of awkward breathing exercises.
I don’t say any of that.
“Because you needed someone,” I say instead. “And I wanted to be that someone.”
She doesn’t look away. The silence stretches between us, heavy with everything we’re not saying.
The parking lot is nearly empty now, the setting sun painting everything amber and gold.
A strand of hair blows across her face, and I shove my hands in my pockets to keep from reaching out to brush it away.
“Come over tomorrow,” she says. “I’ll make dinner.”
“You don’t have to-”
“I want to.” She squeezes my hand, quick and warm, gone too soon. “I want you there, Isaac.”
She gets in her car and drives away.
I stand in the parking lot for five full minutes, trying to remember how my lungs work.
***
She doesn’t make dinner.
She tries - there’s evidence of an attempt when I arrive, cutting boards scattered with abandoned vegetables, a recipe pulled up on her phone, something that might have been marinara congealing in a pan - but by the time I walk through the door, she’s abandoned the project in favor of lying on the couch with her feet up and a pint of ice cream balanced on her belly like a shelf.
“Cooking is canceled,” she announces. “The baby vetoed vegetables. We’re having Cherry Garcia for dinner.”
“Sounds medically advisable.”
“The baby has spoken. Are you going to argue with a fetus?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
I sit on the far end of the couch - carefully, deliberately far - and she shifts until her feet land in my lap. It happens so naturally that I don’t realize the danger until it’s too late.
“My ankles are disgusting,” she says, eyes closed, head tipped back against the cushions. “I’m retaining water like a camel. Feel free to be horrified.”
“I’m not horrified.”
“You’re allowed to be horrified.”
“Your ankles are fine.”
“You’re looking at them right now, aren’t you.”
“I’m aggressively not looking at them.”
She laughs, and the movement sends vibrations through her feet into my thighs, and this is fine. This is completely fine. I’m a grown adult. I can handle having Chantal’s feet in my lap without making it weird.
“You could rub them,” she says. “If you wanted. Totally optional. No pressure. But if you were looking for a way to become my favorite person-”
“I thought I was already your favorite person.”
“You’re in the top five. Foot rub could clinch it.”
I should say no. I should make an excuse, extricate myself, go home and take another cold shower and try to stop thinking about the sounds she made on that yoga mat.
Instead, my hands are already moving.
I press my thumb into the arch of her foot - firm but careful, the way I practiced after the YouTube tutorials, the way I’ve imagined doing for her a hundred times - and she makes a sound.
A sound.
Low and breathy and completely involuntary. Almost identical to the one she made when I rubbed her back in class, except this time there’s no Brenda watching, no other couples pretending not to notice.
Just us.
Her lips part. Her back arches slightly off the cushions. The ice cream container wobbles dangerously on her belly.
“Sorry,” she breathes, eyes still closed. “That’s just - that’s really good. Don’t stop.”
Don’t stop.
I dig my thumb into the ball of her foot, working out the tension, and she makes the sound again - a soft moan that goes straight to my hindbrain and sets up permanent residence.
“You’ve gone all quiet,” she observes.
“I’m concentrating.”
“On my foot?”
“On the wall behind your foot.” I find a knot near her heel and press into it. “Very compelling wall. Excellent paint job.”
She laughs, but the laugh dissolves into another moan when I hit a particularly tight spot. Her hand comes up to press against her sternum, like she’s trying to hold herself together.
I’m not going to survive this.
I’m categorically, definitively, absolutely not going to survive this woman.
“Isaac.” Her voice is different now. Lower. Rougher. She opens her eyes, and she’s looking at me with an expression that makes my hands falter on her skin. “Why are you really here?”
“Because you asked me to come.”
“That’s not what I mean.” She pulls her feet back slowly, tucking them beneath her, and shifts until she’s facing me on the couch.
Close. Too close. I can see the darker ring around her irises, the tiny freckle near her left eyebrow, the way her pulse flutters in her throat.
“You’ve been here every day. Lamaze, groceries, foot rubs that are frankly unreasonable.
You fixed my locks, my banister, and a crib I watched you lose an argument with for three hours. Why?”
“I told you. I want to help.”
“Help.” She says the word like she’s testing its weight. “Is that all this is?”
My throat is dry. My hands are still tingling from her skin. I should lie. I should deflect. I should crack a joke and change the subject and get the hell out of here before I do something I can’t take back.
“No,” I hear myself say. “It’s not all this is.”
She doesn’t look surprised. She looks like she already knew - like she’s been waiting for me to stop pretending.
“Isaac-”
“I should go.” I stand up too fast and nearly take out the coffee table with my shin. “It’s late. You should rest. The baby needs you to rest.”
“The baby’s fine. I’m fine. Isaac, wait-”
But I’m already at the door. Already reaching for the handle. Already running, because if I stay another thirty seconds I’m going to kiss her again, and this time I won’t be able to stop.
“Isaac.”
I freeze, hand on the doorknob.
“I think about it too,” she says softly, to my back. “Just so you know. The kiss. Being close to you. I think about it all the time.”
I close my eyes.
Breathe.
In through the nose, out through the mouth, just like Brenda taught us.
It doesn’t help. It doesn’t help at all.
“Goodnight, Chantal.”
I leave before I can change my mind.
***
Midnight, and I’m standing in my own backyard in a t-shirt in forty-degree weather, letting the cold do what the cold shower couldn’t.
It’s not working either.
The porch light next door snaps on.
Earl. Bathrobe, garbage bag, the expression of a man who has been taking out his trash at midnight for thirty years and has never once been asked about it.
“Wren.”
“Earl.”
He drops the bag in the can. Doesn’t go back inside.
“You been out here about forty minutes.”
“I’m getting air.”
“You got air inside.”
“Different air.”
“Mm.” He pulls the robe tighter. Looks at the sky like he’s checking it for something. “Deadbolts working out?”
“Deadbolts are great, Earl.”
“Solid brass. Pick-resistant.” A pause that goes on too long. “Overkill for a rental in a quiet neighborhood.”
I don’t say anything.
“Sold a man three-inch screws at six-thirty in the morning once,” Earl says, to the sky. “Fella bought a doormat too. Stood in front of the doormats about ten minutes.”
“That’s a long time to look at doormats.”
“That’s what I thought.”
The cold is getting into my knees. Somewhere a dog barks and gives up.
“Well,” Earl says. He picks up the empty can. He does not go inside. “Cold don’t fix it, is the thing. I stood in a yard about six months in ‘ninety-one. Cost me a new furnace and I still married her.”
He goes in. The porch light stays on another minute, then quits.
I stand there anyway.
Then, just before one, my phone buzzes.
CHANTAL: Can’t sleep. Baby’s doing gymnastics and my back is killing me.
I’m typing on my way when the second one lands.
CHANTAL: Don’t. Stay there. I’m already in the car.
I read it four times.
She has never been to my house. Not once in five years - not for a barbecue, not to drop something off, never. My address is a thing she theoretically knows.
I put on a shirt. I take it off. I put it back on.
Headlights swing across my kitchen wall eleven minutes later.
She’s on my porch in the thin cotton nightgown with a coat thrown over it, unbuttoned, and slippers, and her hair loose, and she is standing in the open on a residential street at one in the morning where Mrs. Delgado or anybody else could put a phone on her.
“Chantal - the street-”
“I know what street I’m on.” Her chin is up, but her voice isn’t steady. “I’ve spent three months letting other people decide where I’m allowed to stand. I drove here. I’d like to come in.”
“Do you have any idea what Caroline would-”