Chapter 23 Then
“Ted,” Alex says. He rests his hand on my bouncing knee. “What’s up?”
“I’m nervous.”
He glances my way briefly, brow furrowed, then back to the road. “Why?”
I huff out a breath, staring ahead. “I don’t know.”
“If it helps, I’m nervous, too.”
“You’re nervous?” I peer over at him, surprised. “You look completely chill.”
“Chef face,” he explains. “I’ve mastered looking chill on the outside while losing my shit on the inside.”
I wrap my hand around his, where it rests on my knee. “Want to tell me?” I ask.
“First big holiday after being divorced,” he says. “I only saw Mia for a couple hours this morning, and now I’m showing up at my parents’ place without her.”
He swallows thickly. I lean across the console and set my head on his shoulder. I don’t have words of comfort. I can’t imagine how awful it feels to spend the holiday away from your child.
“I miss her,” he says. “And it feels wrong, to be without her. All of this, first-time stuff, after divorce, it feels… weird.”
“Yeah.” I stare out the window. “It does.”
“There’s another feeling,” he says. “I don’t know exactly what it is.
I feel sad. And a little guilty because I’m also…
relieved? This sucks. But this time last year sucked, too.
I was miserable. Jen was miserable. We were still hiding that from everybody, putting on an everything’s fine!
performance, even though we both knew we were headed for divorce.
I felt so fucking lonely, carrying that inside me, no one else knowing. It was awful.”
My mind drifts to Ethan’s and my last Thanksgiving.
He flew to his parents’ home in D.C., and I stayed home because I was going to be working all day Friday and Saturday, in preparation for and then during Small Business Saturday at The Bookshop.
I FaceTimed my parents with Argos on my lap and wished them Happy Thanksgiving, and caught a peek at the spread of Thanksgiving classics filling the table, my extended family milling around in the background.
I didn’t want to be there, with a bunch of people I wasn’t close to, in a home that wasn’t the one I’d grown up in. But I didn’t want to be alone, either.
When I hung up, I curled myself around Argos and cried until Lauren called me from her sister’s in St. Louis, a little drunk and talking very fast as she explained I was her phone-a-friend for family trivia, and she had ten seconds to name the third sister in Little Women.
I smile, remembering her yelling, after I told her, “That’s it! I knew she was an anemic invalid played by Claire Danes, but I couldn’t remember her name for the life of me,” before she bellowed even louder, “IT’S BETH! How do you like that, Carl!”
Carl, Lauren’s brother-in-law, to whom, when he asked for Lauren’s blessing to marry Gina, Lauren said no one would ever be good enough for her baby sister. Carl, whom Lauren secretly adores, because in response, he told her she was right, but he wanted to spend the rest of his life trying to be.
I feel a pang of sadness—missing Lauren; wishing I had a family I felt like I belonged to; grieving, as silly as it sounds, the home I left Ethan, which I loved to decorate for the holidays. It isn’t mine to decorate anymore, and it never will be ever again.
And then, weaving through that sadness for what’s gone, what never was, the thinnest thread of hope—for a future that I will one day look back from, to a past that is this moment, the moments since the divorce, the moments ahead, and maybe then, that past will be something I remember with pride, contentment, maybe even happiness.
I thread my fingers through Alex’s and squeeze tight.
“Bittersweet,” I tell him. “That’s what that feeling is.”
He glances my way, then draws my hand up, pressed to his cheek. “Bittersweet,” he says. “Yeah. That’s it.”
“Um.” I stare, dumbfounded, at the banner stretched across the doorway leading to his parents’ kitchen.
HAPPY DAY, THALEX!
Alex stares at it, too, unblinking, as he mutters, “Jesus Christ.”
Before we can unpack the banner any further, a literal dozen people descend on us.
Alex makes introductions over the growing buzz of voices.
Lydia, his mom. Nick, his dad. Aunts, uncles, a handful of cousins whose names fly by me, his sisters, Sophia, Ariana (Ari), and Catalina (Lina), whose names I’m confident I’ll remember but not which faces they belong to.
I’m hugged, kissed on the cheek, spun around, hugged again, and oohed and aahed over. It is a lot.
Alex lets out a shrill whistle, startling everyone into taking a step back. “Let her breathe!”
His mom smacks his arm, muttering something in Italian under her breath that would make me nervous it was critical, if it weren’t for the warm, pleased smile playing on her mouth as she looks at me.
She’s short and curvy, with caramel-brown eyes and Alex’s dark, thick hair threaded with white piled up on her head.
Her apron has a picture of Mia in her little soccer uniform, tiny cleated foot propped on a soccer ball, then below it, Mia’s #1 Fan.
I want her to hug me again already.
“Welcome,” his dad says, clasping my hand in his.
He’s a smidge taller than me, a smidge shorter than Alex, his hair silver and styled short, parted neatly.
Alex has his deep-blue eyes but not much else.
He smiles, inspecting me. “Theadora,” he says, in a thick accent I can’t place. “Good Greek name. Like Alexander.”
I dart a glance at Alex, whose eyes widen. “Oh my god, Dad—”
“Enough with the Big Fat Greek Wedding shtick,” Alex’s mom says, taking my hand from his.
“I’m sorry,” Nick says, the faux Greek accent vanished. He winks. “Great to meet you, Thea. Welcome.”
I smile, remembering what I told Alex when he described his dad that first gelato night, what Alex told me. I was right, and he was, too. I like his dad already.
“You had me there for a second,” I tell Nick. “But I have watched that movie an inadvisable number of times, to the point that I have it memorized.”
“A fellow BFGW fan! I love her!” Nick yells, wrapping an arm around me. “What about Mamma Mia?”
“Obsessed,” I admit.
He slaps a hand over his heart. “I’m a goner.”
Gently, Lydia draws me out of Nick’s adoring clutches. “Come on, Thea,” she says. “Let’s get you a glass of wine.”
I follow Lydia into the kitchen, glancing over my shoulder at Alex, who seems to be bickering with his dad and one of the sisters, pointing to the banner.
“You’re not together, are you.” Lydia says. A statement. Not a question.
“Um, no?” I glance over my shoulder again, hoping I’m not messing something up. Alex would have told me if he wanted me to lie to his family about us being a couple.
“Ariana was positive you were. Apparently, you’re a prominent feature in Alex’s social media,” she explains.
My cheeks heat. After the petty bike race, Alex and I decided we’d start posting photos of each other on our feed.
Nothing overtly romantic, more of a statement.
The longer Jen and Ethan last, the more, it seems, we both want to prove we’re lasting, too, even as something different.
Something that, in my mind, is infinitely better.
Because it’s safe and solid. Because Ethan and Jen could break up tomorrow, hearts freshly shattered. But Alex and me? No such risk.
“We’re just friends,” I explain. “Our exes are together, and we sort of bonded over that at first. But now…” I shrug, smiling, nervous. “It’s a friendship of its own. A good one.”
Lydia smiles. “That sounds very healthy. I have no ill will toward Jen, because she’s the mother of my granddaughter, so please know I’m not judging her, but I have no idea how she could jump right from one relationship to another.
Heartbreak needs time to heal. And the people who hurt each other need time to figure out how that happened, what role they played.
That way, when they want another relationship, they don’t just do it all over again, repeating the same mistakes. ”
I blink, a little taken aback. And… maybe a little encouraged by it. Could that happen for me? After enough time has passed, might there be a day when I trust that I could pursue romance again without holding my breath, terrified for it to implode on me?
Lydia sets a glass in front of me, then points to the bottles lined up on the counter. “Red, white, or rosé?”
In the chilly months, I love red. But that bottle’s not open. “I like it all,” I tell her.
“But which would you love?” she asks, smiling up at me.
“Oh. Um.” I clear my throat.
“I’m going to open them all for dinner,” she says, leaning in. “So don’t you worry about asking for an unopened bottle.”
She reaches for the red, cuts across the seal, twists the corkscrew in, then yanks the cork out with a pop.
“How’d you know?” I ask.
“Your eyes,” she says. “They lingered.”
I make a mental note to be sure my eyes linger nowhere else tonight that Lydia might notice. Say, on her son, whom, despite the bushy fall beard he’s grown, I still very much want to kiss.
Lydia pours me a glass of red as she says, “I’ll get Ari to take down the banner.”
We both dart a glance toward the entryway, where Alex and the same sister—Ari?—and his dad are still going at it. Lydia peers back at me, then nods toward the counter, where a bowl of fishy-smelling mollusks sit. “Ever shucked oysters before?” she asks.
I shake my head. “Never eaten them, either. But I’m happy to try.”
“Excellent.” Lydia takes a sip of her wine. I take a sip, too. “While we shuck, you can tell me all about yourself. Your background. Your family. Your divorce. I want to hear it all!”
When she turns toward the oysters, I take the kind of sip I really need.
A deep, bracing gulp.
A game of Pit dominates the dining room table. It’s loud and hot. My cheeks are flushed, my hair sweat-frizzed and tugged up onto my head. Alex’s body’s has brushed mine with every movement of the game. Which means, it’s been constant.
Named the winner, Alex raises his hand in a magnanimous wave. We all boo and hiss. His sisters frisbee cards at him.
This, I think, is family.
I glance across the table at his mom as she stands and says, “Cake time!”
“Can I help?” I stand, too, but I’m yanked down by the belt loop of my jeans, bumping into Alex as I land in my chair. “What was that for?” I ask him.
Alex leans in, turning toward me, his shoulder like a shield that blocks the noise and attention of the table.
For a moment, it’s nothing but his face close to mine, his flushed cheeks, bright-blue eyes, the scent of his sweat mingling with the spicy clean that clings to his clothes.
He sets his hand on my back, threads it around my waist and draws me closer.
His mouth brushes my ear as he says, “Remember the banner?”
I pin my thighs together beneath the table as a sweet, hot ache crushes through me and settles right there. “Hard to forget the banner,” I say as steadily as I can.
Alex says, “It was for both of us.”
“I mean, I figured. It looked sort of like a ’ship name. Thalex.”
He groans. “I’m really sorry. Apparently, because I didn’t scream at my family that we weren’t dating, they assumed we were.”
“I don’t care, Alex. I actually think I’m kind of attached to it? Thalex. It sounds like something. Not sure what. It’ll come to me, though.”
Alex’s expression turns serious. “Ted, remember when you were gone for your birthday?”
I spent the week in Columbus while Dad had his angioplasty after the series of ministrokes my mom had decided she’d wait through a month of telephone tag to tell me about.
My birthday was the day of his surgery, and I didn’t expect anything, of course.
But Mom didn’t even say anything—not the day of, the day before, the day after, the whole time I was there.
I pulled out of my parents’ house and held off the tears until I’d made it to the highway. Then I sobbed off and on the whole three-hour drive home.
“Yes,” I tell Alex. “I remember.”
“We never celebrated your birthday.”
“You called me,” I remind him. “You and Mia left me a voicemail singing me ‘Happy Birthday.’ ”
I saved that voicemail. I’ll have it saved forever.
“But we never celebrated,” Alex says. “It’s my birthday tomorrow, and you’re getting to celebrate with me now, so it’s only fair.”
“What’s only fair?”
He eases back, revealing two cakes heaped with white icing, flickering with candles on the table in front of us.
“It’s only fair,” he says quietly, “that we get to celebrate you, too. Homemade birthday cake and everything.”
My throat is thick. “So… that was the ‘happy day’ part of the banner?”
Ari—pretty sure it’s Ari—pops her head in, on the other side of my shoulder, making me jump.
“I called in a favor,” she explains, “to whip up this banner real quick, with my buddy Knox, but we didn’t have great service over the call—his shop’s in a service dead zone, so I think maybe a few words cut out on him, plus I told him I was on a budget and he charges per letter, soooo…
this was supposed to say, Happy Birthday, Thea & Alex, and we ended up with HAPPY DAY, THALEX.
Wish I could take credit for the creative genius of ‘Thalex,’ but I can’t. ”
I smile up at Probably-Ari. “Thank you—that’s really sweet of you to include me.”
Alex playfully nudges Ari back, then grips my chair and draws me closer, until we’re shoulder to shoulder, staring down at our cakes.
Everyone starts to sing.
My eyes burn. My chest tightens. I don’t want to cry. But I think I’m going to.
“Say something funny,” I mutter to Alex out of the side of my mouth, all while smiling at his family.
“Thalex,” he whispers in my ear, curling his arm around me. “I figured out what it sounds like.”
“Mm-hmm,” I squeak.
His family are a bunch of yell-singers, horribly off pitch. It might be the best sound I’ve ever heard. “Happy Birthday, dear Thalex…”
Alex flips them all the double bird, making them cackle, his mom loudest of everyone, then says to me, soft in my ear, “It sounds like a prescription.”
I turn toward him. “Ooh, yes, that’s it!”
“For erectile dysfunction,” he whispers.
A laugh wheezes out of me. “That sparked my joy!”
“Good.” His gaze settles on my smile. “Because that laugh sparks my joy.”
I clutch his hand beneath the table and force myself to look away, to meet his family’s eyes, these people who hardly know me, so willing to show me love.
Alex threads our fingers together and squeezes. “Happy Day, Ted.”
I glance his way and squeeze back. “Happy Day, Alex.”
When I bend over my cake to blow out the candles, I catch a whiff of sweet-spiced pumpkin, rich-tart cream cheese. A fresh wave of tears threatens to spill. He remembered what I said about pumpkin. He told them. And they made this cake, for me.
I shut my eyes, draw in a breath, then blow out, in one long, grateful gust, every candle on my cake.