Chapter 21 Victoria #2
“I know you are,” Victoria said. Their eyes met.
Between them transpired the natural question that followed: But is sorry enough?
Victoria drew in a ragged breath. “The first few weeks after I found out, I was consumed with anger. I just burned with rage. I was so mad at you for betraying me like this. For blowing up our lives. For not being the man I thought you were.”
“Trust me, I hate myself for that. For all of it.”
“But then I realized, as good—no, as necessary—as it felt to sit in that anger, to seethe and rage, it would only serve me for so long. Anger won’t rewrite the past. It isn’t going to help me decide what to do going forward.”
“I wish it were as simple as you decking me in the face and us getting on with it,” Ace said.
“I do too.”
A busboy delivered water glasses, and Ace and Victoria looked at each other silently until he went away as unobtrusively as he had come.
“I miss you so much,” Ace said, his voice hardly over a whisper.
“I do too. I miss what I thought we were.”
“Do you think we can ever get back to that? Would you be willing to try?” Ace asked, and he winced, as if it hurt to voice the question because he was so terrified of Victoria’s answer.
“I don’t think so,” Victoria said, and Ace’s face collapsed again. “What I mean is, we can’t go back. We can’t ever be that couple again, two people who never had a massive secret come between them. I don’t know about the rest, but I know that’s not possible.”
“Right,” Ace said, his voice assuming the laborious control of a jeweler placing a precious gem in an intricate setting. “But can we find a way forward?”
A waiter came over, and Victoria and Ace paused for her to order sliders and a side of truffle fries.
Despite the import of the conversation, Victoria’s stomach was growling and she couldn’t ignore its persistent complaints.
Ace shook his head at the waiter, like he couldn’t even contemplate food or drink given the gravity of what he was dealing with, and the waiter quickly went off.
Ace leaned forward intently, both of his hands resting on the table before them. “I can’t and won’t give you up easily, Victoria. If you tell me there’s no hope, and you absolutely don’t want anything to do with me ever again—”
“We’re having a child together,” Victoria interrupted to point out. “That’s not exactly an option. We’re tied to each other for life.”
“Of course,” Ace said. “But I’m talking about you and me.
If you can see no way forward for us, I guess I’ll be forced to accept that.
Maybe. Someday. But I’m not going down without a fight.
Real love isn’t watching the sunset in a hot-air balloon over Cappadocia and not being able to keep our hands off each other or stomping on a glass in front of two hundred people after saying our vows or skinny-dipping at that hotel in Big Sur at six in the morning. ”
“Those were great times, though,” Victoria said. “And I thought they were real.”
“They were real,” Ace said. “But that’s love in the beginning, when it’s easy. Anyone can look at one of the wonders of the world with a beautiful woman they’re falling head over heels for and think, ‘This is the good stuff. This is what life’s all about.’ ”
“So, what is it all about? If not that, what?”
“Everything that comes after. The stuff that’s usually shoved out of the frame.
The mess. Your woeful insufficiencies as a man, a husband, a father, and a human coming to light.
It’s hoping that I am more than the sum total of my worst mistakes and biggest regrets.
It’s praying that you can look into my eyes and still see the man you married.
” Ace looked beseechingly at Victoria. “I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t deserve you.
I let you down, profoundly. But I’m still all the good things too.
I’m still the person you said yes to. That person was real. We were real.”
Ace paused to catch his breath. Victoria couldn’t help holding hers.
“I beg you. Remember everything that was wonderful too. I know we’re stronger and greater than what could break us.
Please, fight with me because we’re worth fighting for.
I’ll do anything to win you back. I will spend every day trying to rebuild this, and to be worthy of you. ”
Ace’s eyes were endless pools of emotion.
Victoria hadn’t known what she wanted, she hadn’t known what she would decide, or what she was capable of, until that moment.
She slipped her hand across the table towards Ace’s, and for the first time in what felt like an eternity, she reached out for her husband.
Her fingertips grazed his skin. The sensation was deeply familiar instead of jarring; her hand fit neatly into its usual spot in Ace’s.
Perceiving her gesture as an auspicious overture, Ace squeezed Victoria’s hand like he would be unwilling to ever let it go.
“I don’t know how to do this,” Victoria said.
“I don’t know how to look at you and not think about the millions of tiny lies you told me over the course of our relationship, in service of the big one.
I don’t know how to rebuild something that feels like it’s irrevocably damaged, if not broken beyond repair.
But I hope it’s not. Because I do love you, Ace, despite it all, and hopefully always. So, I’m willing to try.”
Ace bent over the table in relief, his shoulders heaving, at the same time the waiter approached with Victoria’s sliders and fries. The waiter hesitated in deference to the weeping man, but Victoria ushered him over.
“He’s okay,” Victoria told the waiter, gesturing to the baby she was incubating.
“Just a little emotional about the fries.” The waiter smiled at her and asked if they needed anything else.
Victoria politely declined and thanked him for his help.
The smell from the trio of perfectly cooked sliders wafted up to her nose and Victoria couldn’t wait any longer.
She lifted one to her mouth. Ace raised his head.
“Sorry, I know this is a big moment, but I’m starving.”
Ace smiled at her. “I love you, Victoria Miller. I love you so much.”
Victoria bit into her burger and looked into her husband’s eyes, her husband who, it turned out, was already a father but would soon be a father again, thirty-some years separating the incidents marking his entry into fatherhood. And then something occurred to her.
“You’re a grandfather, by the way,” Victoria said. Ace looked at her quizzically, like he couldn’t comprehend the words she had spoken. “Liz had her baby. He came early, and it was pretty scary for a minute, but they’re both okay.”
“A grandson,” Ace said, awash with wonder and trepidation.
“They named him Charlie.”
“Charlie,” Ace echoed as Victoria polished off the first slider and moved on to the next. “I wonder if she’ll let me see him. I wonder if she’ll let me see her,” Ace said.
“Liz took me back,” Victoria said. “And I took you back—on a temporary basis pending parole, good behavior, couples counseling, the works—”
“Yes to all of it,” Ace said.
“So, there’s hope yet,” she said.
Victoria offered Ace a fry and he accepted it, then nibbled it cautiously like food might prove a shock to his system. “Can I take you home tonight?” Ace asked. “Are you ready?”
Victoria slowly nodded. “After I finish this,” she said, pointing to her plate and gathering another handful of fries.
“I would never dream of coming between a lady and her fries,” Ace said. “And I will never let anything come between us ever again. You have my word.”
Intensity radiated from Ace’s face and Victoria could tell he meant this with every ounce of sincerity.
Ace couldn’t promise that he wouldn’t hurt her again, or that they would never encounter another hardship, any more than he could promise to lasso the sun into submission so Victoria would never have to experience another cloudy day.
But her husband could—and he had—pledged his commitment to work not just on their relationship, but on himself.
To figure out why he had lied and concealed the truth for so long.
To tease out the reasons for his flaws. To atone.
To change. To set them all on a path to healing.
And Victoria thought that Ace was right—this vow he had made to her in the hotel bar was perhaps more meaningful than the earnest and poetic words he had spoken at their wedding in front of their tearful guests.
It was easy to fling promises into the wind in the beginning of a relationship when lust and infatuation hadn’t yet started their slow but inevitable decline.
When nothing had happened that would pose a threat or a danger to a relationship, when incompatibilities hadn’t yet been discovered, when secrets hadn’t been unearthed.
As Victoria settled into resolve, rejoicing in its familiarity rather than struggling with the unfamiliar contours of indecision as she had been these past weeks, Victoria felt a poke to her abdomen. She looked at Ace. “He’s moving around a lot right now. Do you want to feel him?”
Ace’s face lit up with a joy that almost hurt to look at because it was so pure and fragile; it was evident that Ace had feared he would never feel such a sensation again.
“Can I?” he asked, pointing to Victoria’s side of the table.
She nodded and Ace came around to sit beside her in the low, plush chair, which was large enough to comfortably house two people, or in this case three.
Ace put his hand on Victoria’s stomach, next to hers, and they both felt their son kick and turn within her body like he was completing a tumbling routine.
“I wonder if he’s saying he’s ready to come out and meet us,” Ace said.
“Are you?” Victoria asked. “Ready to meet him?”
“Yes,” Ace said. “I am.” He moved his hand so that it rested on top of Victoria’s. “I know we have a lot of work to do between us, and a long way to go, but I am.”
Victoria nodded and interlaced her fingers with her husband’s. They sat like that for a few more minutes and then Victoria said, “Let’s go home.”
And then, as Ace scanned the room for their waiter to ask for the check, Victoria’s water broke.
Contrary to popular notion, it wasn’t a sudden gush of liquid that soaked her chair.
There was no exaggerated splash requiring raincoats and wellies.
There was simply a slow but steady circle of liquid darkening Victoria’s dress, which was accompanied by a sudden, unholy cramping sensation that told Victoria that things were about to deviate far from the plan. Her eyes shot to Ace.
“I think my water just broke.”
“What?” Ace jumped up. “What do we do?”
“I’m pretty sure I’m having contractions too. We should get the check,” Victoria said.
“The check? We should get the car!” Ace extended his hand and helped hoist Victoria to her feet. “We’ll settle the bill later.”
Victoria thought about protesting, but ten minutes later, when the car was barreling down Sunset Boulevard and contractions were slicing through her body, she was glad she hadn’t.
She lay in the back seat, gritting her teeth through unimaginable pain, regretting that she had zoned out during Dawn’s lesson on breathing techniques.
She hadn’t thought she would need them. “How are you doing?” Ace asked, darting a nervous glance in the rearview mirror.
“NOT GOOD!” Victoria bellowed as another contraction ripped through her.
“Fuck! These seem really close together. How is it happening this fast?”
“I don’t know! This isn’t supposed to happen to first-time moms!”
“Can you tell how dilated you are?” Ace asked, running a yellow light.
“How? No, I can’t tell! I’m not a doctor.”
“Let me see,” Ace said, stopping at the next light. He turned and craned his neck while Victoria shifted her body and pulled up her dress so Ace could try to take a peek. “Oh God.” Ace’s face went white.
“What?” Victoria demanded, then screamed through another contraction.
“I see hair,” Ace said, turning back around and flooring the gas the instant the light turned green.
“Mine or the baby’s?” Victoria asked.
“Well, since you lasered off all of yours…”
“FUCK! I’m not having my baby on Sunset!”
“We are not having a car baby,” Ace said, speeding through a windy portion of the road. “I’m going to get us there in time. Just breathe. And maybe…try to hold him in.”
“HOLD HIM IN?”
“Sorry, sorry. That was stupid.”
Nevertheless, Victoria tried. Ace drove as recklessly as he could without risking an accident.
And by the time they pulled up with a screech in front of Cedars, Victoria and Ace were both screaming and the baby was crowning, but they had succeeded in seeing to it that their child would not be brought into the world in an automobile.