20. Alex
CHAPTER 20
Alex
“ I think Vicki’s calmed down a bit,” Sophie said, walking ahead of me. She had a cotton picnic blanket slung over her right shoulder and two throw pillows—both taken from the living room couch—in her arms. “This morning she asked me for the stapler without raising her voice or shooting fire from her eyes. I call that progress.”
Sophie stopped short of the sliding door leading out to the back deck and I nearly collided with her. Luckily, I sidestepped and then wrapped my free hand around her waist to steady myself—my other hand still gripping the picnic basket I’d packed earlier.
“Sounds like Vicki’s turned a corner.”
“Or,” Sophie said, glancing up at me, her gray eyes light in the evening sun shining through the windows. Outside, the sky was that perfectly crisp blue you only ever saw on a summer's evening. “She’s just biding her time, waiting for the right moment to pounce.”
I chuckled and let go of her waist, pulling open the sliding door instead. “How about we choose to believe that Vicki’s changing her ways? Even if it’s just for the evening.”
“For the picnic’s sake,” Sophie chuckled, tilting her head at the basket. “You know when you texted that we’re having a picnic for dinner, I thought you were joking.”
“I never joke about a picnic,” I replied, face deadpan, which got another laugh out of her. She walked through the sliding door onto the deck and gazed around, her head flicking left, then right. “Where do you want to set it up?”
“How about on the grass?” I said, pointing to a spot just off the deck where neatly trimmed grass led to a hedge.
The hedge surrounded the back part of the property, only interrupted by the trunks of two large trees. The real estate agent had mentioned that the previous renters kept a vegetable garden, the remnants of which were still visible at the far end of the outdoor space, just waiting for a few seeds to bring them back to life. Given that I had never successfully looked after a plant in my life, I was more than happy for that spot to remain empty.
“I hope you don’t think I’m trying to one-up your date with what’s-his-name? The one who hated picnics,” I said, remembering our conversation from many moons ago.
Sophie, who was busy unfurling the blanket and smoothing it out on the grass, laughed loudly, her voice ringing pleasantly. “Oh gosh! I didn’t even think about that. Now I can’t stop thinking about you and Shaun vying for my attention over a picnic basket.”
“Me and my big mouth.”
“You have a lovely mouth.” She grinned and settled down on the blanket. “And don’t worry, I have many other good memories of picnics I’d rather focus on. Like Danny and I always used to have them in our backyard under the big willow tree.” She leaned on an outstretched arm and folded her legs on top of each other. “My dad didn’t have the heart to cut it down even though it blocked a ton of sun from the house. I swear my mother resented him for it. It was always cold. Even in summer.”
I joined Sophie on the blanket, unable to wipe the smile off my face. My cheeks ached from all the smiling I’d been doing over the weekend, and it had carried into today. Sam had even looked me up and down this morning and told me to get a grip, saying that I was glowing like a pregnant woman and that I was embarrassing myself.
“Just so you know,” I said, hoping to justify the motive behind choosing the evening picnic instead of sharing dinner at the table, “the real reason I thought about having a picnic is because it used to be a tradition for me.”
“Did you picnic all by yourself, Alex?” Sophie teased.
“Nope. With my mom. Every Sunday morning, no matter the weather. Rain or shine, we were at the park.”
Memories came rushing into my mind like flashes of lightning—just the two of us, Mom and me, sitting on a gray fleece blanket, eating cinnamon buns and drinking soda while the world ran in circles around us. For those two hours every Sunday, our lives felt perfectly normal, as if my mother wasn’t working herself to death to support us, as if my father wasn’t a selfish ass who had chosen the easy way out.
Sophie’s gaze was on my face, her eyes bright and her bottom lip caught behind her top incisor. She switched arms, leaning toward me instead. “You haven’t told me much about her. Or really anything about your family.”
“That’s not true. I told you that she liked camping.”
Sophie wrinkled her nose. “That’s like saying she liked eating apples.”
I laughed, then reached for the picnic basket, lifting up its lid and digging my hand blindly into the assortment of foods. My fingers touched the small tubs of pasta salad, a small jar of marinated olives, and a packet of something I suspected held two brownies but could also have been a pair of Nutella sandwiches—Sophie’s cravings were all over the place.
I had just pulled out a container of sliced cheese when Sophie’s hand reached out, her slender fingers encircling my wrist. “You don’t have to talk about her if you don’t want to,” she remarked, as if sensing I was purposefully steering clear of any more mention of my mother.
And to be honest, Sophie was right. The subject was touchy for no other reason than that my mother had died far too young, from a disease that would’ve been treatable if she had only stopped taking care of me and started taking care of herself.
“Just so you know,” she added, “I would love to know a bit more about our babies’ grandmother.”
Sophie had a point. To not speak about my mother would be an injustice to her memory.
Besides, we were getting to know each other, the deeper intricacies of each other’s lives, and parents fell into that mix.
“Alright then,” I said, fetching the crackers and giving a cheese-layered one to Sophie.
“Her name was Agnes but everyone I knew called her Aggie.”
“I like that name,” said Sophie, watching me with her head tilted to the side as if she was trying to read my thoughts.
If only she knew what I was thinking, it would be so much easier to explain how I felt about her. How even before she was pregnant, before we slept together, she had already made a huge impression on me. Everything about Sophie drove me crazy—her smile, the way she laughed so loudly and freely and shared so easily; the way she teased me like she was desperate to get a reaction out of me and then flashed that triumphant grin when she succeeded, or looked at me so trustingly, as if I could solve all her problems when she was upset.
Sophie chewed on the cracker and I continued. “My mother studied art but never got to make it a career. You won’t believe it, but I was an accident. A complete surprise.”
“Well, at least our babies can relate to that.”
“Should we tell them one day? Out of the blue, like my mother told me. A real shock to the system, to be honest. It felt like I was finding out a secret I wasn’t allowed to know.”
She laughed, not caring that her mouth was still full of crackers. I did too, enjoying the way our voices rang across the garden, imprinting on the trees the walls, and the decks. This perfect, blissful, no-worrying-about-Vicki moment would be remembered forever.
Once she had gathered herself, Sophie said, “How about we tell them when they’re teenagers and driving us mad?”
“Great idea,” I said, reaching for the two plastic wine glasses I’d packed in the basket. I poured us each a glass of grape juice and handed one to Sophie.
She took it and asked, “So is that why your mom didn’t pursue a career in art?”
I nodded. “My father was a medical rep for a pharmaceutical company at the time, and they agreed that she’d take some time off to stay at home with me. But when I was two, he decided that a toddler and a wife were too much responsibility.”
Sophie’s jaw slackened, surprise flickering briefly across her face, yet she didn’t say anything, only sipped her juice and let me continue.
“He was young at the time, but so was my mom. What he did was unforgivable . . . ” I let my words trail off as an uncomfortable heat crept up my head, like a warning bell urging me to steer the conversation away from the man who I had never really known.
And that was exactly what I did.
“My mom ended up working as a night nurse at an old age home and never got around to doing what she’d always wanted to do. She even had this list of all the places she wanted to visit before she died. A country in each continent. It was stuck up on our fridge with an Eiffel Tower magnet.”
“Is that why you traveled that year after your residency?”
“Yes,” I replied, the edges of my lips quirking up. Speaking about my mom like this with Sophie felt good, as if I needed to share, as if I had held onto the pain for so long that the words began to rip through the seams.
Vicki had always listened half-heartedly—even in the beginning—as if she had something far better to do with her time. After a while, I stopped sharing. With Sophie, it felt different. Her eyes sparkled with curiosity. She watched me with that slight drop in her jaw as if she was hanging onto every word.
“I did it for her, because she never got the chance to go anywhere. She never even left the
State of California.”
“What happened to her?”
“When I was a senior in high school, she got very sick, but she never let it show . . . not until it got so bad she couldn’t hide it anymore. By the time she went to the doctor and got the help she needed, it was too late to do anything about it. She was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer. It had spread to her liver and lungs . . . ”
Sophie’s eyes glinted with what I could only assume was sympathy. It was easy to recognize—the faint pucker of her forehead, the slight drop of her shoulders, the unconscious fidgeting with something. I saw it all the time in the hospital.
People got sick. They died. It was the natural progression of things.
Though it never made it any easier.
Except, the way Sophie reached forward, interlacing her fingers with mine, felt different.
A tangible sort of comfort I hadn’t experienced before.
I scooted closer to her and settled so that she wasn’t reaching out awkwardly. “She died a few weeks after my high school graduation. It was like she did everything she could to just push out until then.”
Sophie’s grip tightened. “I’m so sorry, Alex.”
“Don’t be. It happened a long time ago.” I tried to give a chuckle to show her that I was perfectly fine, all healed up, with nothing more to grieve, but it only came out as a strained brittle laugh.
“Still,” she said. “I’m sorry that she isn’t here today, that she can’t meet her grandbabies.”
“Me too.”
Silence filled the space between us for a while, long enough for the distant hum of traffic and the rustle of leaves above our heads to become noticeable.
I broke my hand free from Sophie’s to reach for that glass of juice—wine would’ve been a better choice—, but Sophie grabbed my wrist and pulled me closer to her.
I shifted toward her and she smoothed her hand up my shoulder to my neck. It took barely two moves to lay her down gently on the blanket, her head resting on the cushion I had managed to slide in beneath her.
She ran her hands down my shoulders to my back and tried to pull me on top of her, but I resisted. Not because I was worried about hurting her, placing pressure on her nearly six-month bump, but because there was something on my mind that needed to be said, that took precedence over any physical touch.
“Sophie,” I breathed. “There’s something I want to tell you.”
But she didn’t let me speak, she only ran her hands up along my neck, wove her fingers into my hair, and then pulled me to her. Our mouths met. Hers soft and sweet, mine suddenly eager and responsive despite the thoughts lingering in my mind.
The kiss deepened, tongues and teeth and hands skating over skin sending a fire within me. I could pick her up and carry her to the bedroom in a matter of seconds. But I didn’t. If I didn’t voice these feelings now, I was sure I never would.
I broke the kiss and pulled back slightly, just enough to keep a gap between us that Sophie couldn’t easily close, not until I’d said what I wanted to say. Breathing in, I locked our eyes and found her hand, interlacing our fingers.
“I think I might be falling in love with you.”
Sophie’s body suddenly stiffened beneath mine. I could feel it like I could feel the wind on my back, except the wind was pleasurable, and whatever reservations had tensed her body were most certainly not. She sucked in a breath, looked at me with an unrecognizable expression on her face, and before I knew it, she was wriggling out from under me.
“Are you being serious right now, Alex?” she asked once she had pushed herself up on her feet.
“Yes,” I said plainly.
“And you’re not just saying that because you have to, because it will be easier for us to be together when the babies arrive?”
“Of course not,” I said, rising up on my knees. “Why would you even think that?”
She crossed her arms tightly over her chest and glanced down at the grass. Above her, the sun was setting, the sky turning to twilight. The deck lamp flickered to life and cast a soft halo of light around Sophie. She looked like an angel. An angry angel.
“ Because , Alex. It’s too soon for you to be in love with me. It . . . It just feels too convenient , don’t you think? What if I never got pregnant? What then? Do you really think we would’ve given each other a chance after that seminar? Met up, chatted, and fell in love?”
“Yes.”
“You’re wrong,” she huffed. “And I know that because I had no intention of seeing you again, Alex. Whatever happened back then was just a mistake. Nothing more. So, this”—Sophie threw her hands up in the air, and I assumed she was referring to us—“can’t be anything more, alright? Because it was never going to be anything if it hadn’t been for these babies.”
Feeling the ache of a heartbreaking all over again, I stood up and walked toward her.
But Sophie stepped back, continuing until her ankle hit the deck step. “I have to go.” She spun on the spot and raced into the house, the door slamming shut a few brief moments later.