43. Chapter 43
Chapter 43
The present
DAVID: Yes, it’s me again.
DAVID: I’m starting to annoy myself, actually.
DAVID: You’re probably thinking about re-blocking my number.
Paige laughed softly to herself after reading the texts from David, before replying.
PAIGE: Well, now that you mention it …
PAIGE: Just kidding. You’re not annoying me. Yet.
DAVID: Good, because I was wondering if we could meet for dinner some night this week and talk?
PAIGE: That sounds ominous.
DAVID: It’s not.
PAIGE: Okay. How about after work tomorrow night?
PAIGE: I’m off at 6 p.m.
DAVID: Sounds good.
They agreed to meet at the Thai Garden, a place neither of them had ever been to. When David arrived at the designated time, it was to find Paige already there, waiting just inside the restaurant.
She was wearing a wrap dress that at first glance looked very elegant, because of its mid-calf length and deep eggplant color, but as he got closer to her he noticed retro elements: the silk sash at the waist tied in a bow with long, trailing ends, the exaggerated, wide cuffs at the wrists and the matching butterfly collar that screamed The Brady Bunch.
“You look great,” he told her, not caring if that was an inappropriate thing to say to one’s ex-wife.
“Thank you. So do you.”
He was dressed in dark washed jeans and the dusty blue V-neck sweater that she’d gotten him on his 27th birthday, with a white shirt underneath. His hair was down and wavy, and she found herself disturbed by how attractive she found him. Weren’t you supposed to not be attracted to your ex-husband?
The hostess led them to a booth with a view of the parking lot and they’d barely gotten settled on their opposite sides when the waitress came by and asked if they wanted something to drink. Paige ordered a glass of Merlot and then, before she could stop herself, added, “And he’d like a fancy craft beer with a strange name. The stranger, the better. And a glass.”
David coughed.
Belatedly, Paige realized what she’d done and felt herself flushing. “Shit, I’m sorry,” she said hastily, feeling utterly mortified.
David looked at the waitress. “What she said.”
When the waitress was gone, Paige shook her head. “I really am sorry. It just came out.”
“It was actually pretty funny,” he told her, experiencing a moment of warmth at the reminder of how well she knew him, even after all their time apart.
They looked at one another for a moment, then David took a deep breath. “So, first things first,” he said. “I confronted Ashley about the emails and her excuse for fucking around with them was basically the same as her excuse for fucking around with my phone. She was trying to keep you away from me, so she wouldn’t lose me.”
Paige took a deep breath and released it, leaning forward a little. “To a certain extent,” she began slowly, as if choosing her words carefully, “I can understand her motivation, because it hurt like hell when I lost you. But my understanding doesn’t extend to her being a lying bitch and screwing with our lives.”
“I know.”
She looked down at the table, the next part needing to be said without looking at him. “When we got divorced, I told myself I wanted you to be happy but it was in an abstract, nebulous way, right? I one hundred percent thought you’d move on and find someone, get married again and have kids …” She paused for a painful moment before continuing softly, “But I never wanted to actually be confronted with it, nor did I ever think I would.”
“I could say the same.”
“And I probably shouldn’t say this because it’s going to make me sound like a terrible person—well, maybe a more terrible person—but at the same time that I wanted you to be happy, I also was secretly hoping you wouldn’t really be happy with anyone but me. Which is stupid because you weren’t really happy with me—”
“Yes, I was.”
She looked up. “Oh, David, you couldn’t have been.”
“Yes, Paige, I was,” he insisted. “Not every day, maybe, but overall I was happy. And I’ve never regretted marrying you. I’ve regretted a lot of things in my life, but being your husband isn’t one of them. Our time together was the best part of my life, too.”
At the obvious reference to the note she’d written to him in her book, Paige’s eyes started to burn. She swallowed hard, attempting to push back any unwanted tears, really not wanting to get weepy here at the table in front of David. Especially since she was an ugly crier.
She was saved by the arrival of their drinks and mustered a smile as she took her glass of wine from the waitress. Paige then watched as a glass was set down in front of David, along with a bottle of an Imperial IPA called Green Flash Palate Wrecker.
As he poured his beer, she asked, “Did you find out what happened to the book I sent you?”
His expression tightened. “Ashley got to it first, read it, then threw it away.”
Even though none of that was unexpected, Paige still felt a punch of anger as she remembered the words Ashley had spoken that night at Bender’s, right before she pushed Paige to the ground. “‘No one calls me a cunt. Especially not a fucked-up bitch like you’,” she murmured.
“What?”
“That’s what Ashley said to me, right before she pushed me,” Paige explained. “At the time it didn’t seem personal. But it was. That’s what she meant by ‘fucked-up’. She’d read the book, so she knew what I went through and how it damaged me.”
David’s expression turned to one of disgust. “Jesus.”
Paige thought about the painfully honest details she had willingly shared with a faceless public—a decision she’d never thought would be regretted. But the part of Paige that had been violated by Ashley’s interference in her life, now felt violated by the fact Ashley had read her book and had gained so much inside information … information Ashley had been in possession of when they’d crossed paths at Bender’s.
The abuse.
The divorce.
The struggle with alcohol.
The extensive therapy.
The miscarriage.
“My miscarriage is in the book,” Paige said pensively. “So … that night at the restaurant, Ashley knew about it.”
“Shit, you’re right. I thought you had inadvertently told her, but she already knew.”
“Yes.”
“She knew telling you about Jacob would be even more painful. Fuck. It was probably why she did it.”
Paige nodded. “She knew exactly what she was doing when she threw Jacob in my face.”
They shared a look just as the waitress appeared.
“Are you two ready to order?” she asked them cheerfully.
David raised his eyebrows at Paige. “You game?”
She knew immediately what he was talking about. “Really?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“You still trust me?”
He nodded. “Rules are the same. Eat it, no matter what.”
“All right.”
They both grabbed a menu and quickly started scanning the entrees. David found what he was looking for almost immediately and smiled, before holding the menu up to the waitress and pointing at something.
“She’ll have this,” he said.
“Mild or spicy?”
“To the left of spicy.”
Paige debated between two items before finally choosing and pointing. “He’ll have this.”
“Mild or spicy?” the waitress asked again.
“To the right of spicy.”
When they were done ordering and the waitress had left, David took a fortifying sip of his beer and immediately jumped back into the subject of Ashley.
“I left her,” he announced evenly.
Paige, in the process of taking a drink of her wine, almost choked on it. “Ashley? You left Ashley? Like, left her?”
He nodded. “I moved out of our house a few days ago and into the loft above the studio. I also fired her.”
“Is that what you meant when you said you were going to ‘clean house’?”
He nodded again.
“Wow. Um, I was just thinking you were just going to yell at her, or make her, I don’t know, apologize or something.”
“We were beyond that.”
She frowned, her mind whirling.
“What?” he asked.
“I … I’m thinking …” She waved her hand in the air. “Never mind.”
“No. Say it. You’re thinking I’m an asshole.”
“No, I’m not thinking you’re an asshole,” she quickly denied. “I’m just kind of in shock. And I’m sorry that you’re having to go through all this—it must be a really difficult time for you.”
He considered how to respond to that and finally went with the truth. “It actually hasn’t been that difficult for me.”
She blinked at him. “It hasn’t?”
“No. In fact, the hardest part about leaving her was having to explain to Jacob what was happening.”
At the mention of the little boy, Paige felt her heart clench as she thought about the child’s involvement in all this. “How did that go?” she asked, even though the less she knew, the better.
“He was a little confused at first and a little upset, but once he understood that he’d be living with me most of the time, he was pretty much okay.”
“Wait, what? Does that mean you have full custody?”
He shook his head, then gave her a quick rundown of how the custody arrangement had been made, and what it entailed. “I don’t know how long it’ll last, since Ashley has no idea what’s involved in taking care of a child for more than an hour or two by herself, so we’ll see.”
“What do you mean, she has no idea what’s involved in taking care of a child for more than an hour or two by herself?”
David tapped his fingers against his glass of beer. “She isn’t a very good mother, to be honest. She’s pretty hands-off and because of that, Jacob isn’t very attached to her.”
“Are you fucking—” Paige broke off to take a long drink of her wine. All she’d ever wanted was a child, so hearing that Ashley was ‘hands-off’ with Jacob almost brought her to tears. “Jesus Christ. Why did she even have him?”
“Jacob was an accident,” David answered after a slight pause. “Supposedly.”
“Supposedly?”
“That’s what Ashley said.”
“You think she was lying?”
“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “But how he was conceived doesn’t really matter to me … it only matters that he was. He’s the best thing that’s happened to me since our divorce. He’s my life and I would do anything for him. Anything.”
Paige swallowed hard at the absolute devotion in his fierce words. “Can I ask you something?”
“Go ahead.”
“It’s kind of personal.”
“Go ahead,” he repeated, although this time there was a hint of hesitation in his voice.
“How did you and Ashley get together?”
He leaned back against the booth’s cushion. “Do you really want to hear this?”
“Yes. No. Yes.”
David looked at her for a long moment, before telling her, “It was on my birthday.”
Paige thought back to meeting David so many years ago on his birthday and made a face without realizing it.
“I knew you wouldn’t want to hear this,” he said.
“It’s just …” She took a long breath. “It’s fine. Really.”
It wasn’t, but what was she supposed to say? That she had a proprietary claim on his birthday and therefore he and Ashley should’ve gotten together on another day?
Reluctantly, David continued. “I’d had an appointment that ran a little late that day, so it was almost seven before I closed up. Ashley offered to take me out for a drink to celebrate and at first I said no, but she was persistent, so I finally said yes. She took me to a bar and had arranged for Miles, Nate, and Alex to be there. There was a fair amount of drinking and at one point, Miles tried to set me up with a woman at the next table. He said she could be my birthday present and before I could decline, Ashley declined for me and told Miles … uh …”
“That she’d be your birthday present, instead?”
He nodded, not looking at her. “A few hours later, instead of thinking about the reasons I shouldn’t go down that road, I was thinking of the reasons I should. And, I’m ashamed to say one of those reasons was that it would make it easier to stop associating you with my birthday.”
Hearing that actually hurt a lot and Paige couldn’t help but wonder if it had worked. However, she was too afraid the answer would be yes, so the question remained unasked.
“Anyway, after that night, we started seeing one another and three months later, she was pregnant and everything changed. We moved into a house together and went from a relationship based on—” he abruptly broke off, cringing a little.
“Sex?” she supplied, as neutrally as possible.
He took a drink of his beer.
“I’m a big girl, David.” Paige looked at him pointedly. “So, you went from a relationship based on sex, to … what?”
“To a relationship based on having a baby,” he finished quietly.
“But you didn’t get married.”
“No. There was a brief moment, right after Jacob was born, when I really thought about it. I talked to my mom and asked her about ‘doing the right thing’. I figured she’d want me to considering how my dad had treated her, but she didn’t. She told me that marrying someone I didn’t love for the sake of a child was not ‘doing the right thing’. She wanted me to marry for love and since I could honestly say I wasn’t in love with Ashley, I backed away from it.”
“But there must have been something on your end. When I first saw you two at the restaurant, you both seemed happy. Connected. You had a hand wrapped around her neck, for God’s sake. She called you baby.” Paige’s eyes widened. “Sorry. That came out really bitchy.”
“It’s fine.”
Still feeling embarrassed, she took a drink of her wine.
“I’m not going to say I didn’t feel anything for her, because I did,” David said. “But what I felt for her never evolved into love. We were just two people that had a baby and lived together. I was comfortable with our life and I was committed to her as much as I could be, but most of that commitment was because of Jacob.” He sighed. “Dick told me more than once I should’ve cut her loose, but—”
“Dick?”
“He’s a friend. I met him a few years ago,” David explained. Then in a lower voice, he added, “The day we got divorced, actually.”
“Well, I’m glad something good came out of that day, even if his name is … Dick. God, what a terrible name.”
He grinned. “That’s actually his nickname.”
“That’s a terrible nickname.”
His grin grew. “I’m the one who gave it to him.”
“Why?”
“Well, it started off as sort of a joke, because he was being a dick and then it just stuck.”
Paige was shaking her head at him when the waitress appeared with their dinners—Gang Gai with shrimp for Paige and Pad Kee Mao with chicken for David.
Just as they began eating their meals, David’s phone whooshed with an incoming text. When he glanced down and saw that it was from his mom he immediately opened it because she was watching Jacob and his first thought was that something was wrong. However, when he saw her message his ‘concern’ turned to amusement.
“Is everything all right?” Paige asked, having seen his initial reaction.
He typed out a quick response and then set his phone down. “Yeah. It’s just my mom, wanting to know if we’re talking about your book.”
“Really?”
“Really.” He picked up his fork and took another bite of his chicken. “She’s been wanting us to get together and talk about it and the fact that it keeps not happening has really pissed her off.”
Paige’s expression turned a little nostalgic. “I’ve really missed your mom.”
“She’s missed you, too.”
“So …” Paige picked up her glass and took a sip of wine. “I guess we should talk about my book, then? You know, to make your mom happy?”
David gave her a slightly embarrassed look. “I actually haven’t read it yet. I read the prologue, but I stopped after that.”
“Did you think it was that bad?” she half-teased, trying to camouflage the fact that his answer was important to her.
“Jesus, no. That’s not why I stopped. You originally wanted us to get together and talk about it and if Ashley hadn’t gotten in the way, we would have. So, I stopped, thinking we could still do that.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I’m absolutely going to read your book all the way through, but I want your version first, the way you’d have told me. We can’t get back any of the other things Ashley took from us, but we can get a re-do on this. You can tell me your story and I can hear it. We both deserve that.”
He looked so sincere, it made her catch her breath.
“Okay,” she agreed quietly.
“Let me know when you’re available. I know your schedule can be hectic—mine is too—but I can be available most days after six. So, let’s do this, all right? And the sooner the better. We’ve already lost two years.”