Chapter 30 Now
I take a shower in our bedroom’s en suite bathroom, hoping to scrub away the sadness clinging to me. It doesn’t work. I knew it wouldn’t.
Stretched out on the bed, I try to read a book, watching the clock creep into the early hours of the morning, my mind racing, too distracted to focus on the story as I think through what I was going to do tonight, questioning it, revising it. Everything’s been turned upside down.
In a handful of hours, this morning, Mia’s going to wake up and wonder where Ethan is, and even though she never struck me as particularly attached to him, I know it’s going to impact her, that she’s going to ask about the “special ’casion” and wearing her pretty white dress.
I have no idea what Jen’s going to tell her, how that’s all going to play out. It makes my heart pinch with worry.
Outside my door, somewhere in the house, I catch the murmur of voices, Alex’s deep pitch, Jen’s soft and higher.
And then Alex walks in, carefully easing the door shut behind him.
I set the book aside and sit up, spinning on the bed to face him.
He looks at me, and he seems so tired, so weary. I open my arms.
Alex crosses the room, crawls across the bed, and falls onto me, pressing me down, smooshing me beneath him. I wrap him in a hard hug, rubbing his back, kissing his temple, comforting him, the way he’s comforted me so many times.
“Cuddle talk?” he asks hoarsely.
I nod.
“Jen’s going to tell Mia in the morning—well, later this morning—that she and Ethan aren’t boyfriend-girlfriend anymore, and Ethan didn’t say goodbye because he’s hurting, not because he didn’t want to say goodbye to her. I’m going to take point with Mia tomorrow, give Jen some to herself.”
I sigh heavily. “That’s a good way to put it. And a good plan. Jen’s a good mom.” I kiss his temple again. “You’re a good dad.”
He sighs, too. “Trying to be.”
“You are.”
Alex wedges his arms beneath me, squeezing me tight. “Before dinner, when we came in from the beach, you said you wanted to talk tonight?”
I swallow nervously. “I did. I still do. But we don’t have to now. It’s so late, and you have to be exhausted. I think… I think we’ve got a lot going on. It can wait.”
Alex stiffens in my arms. Slowly, he pulls away, sits up, staring down at me. “What?”
I sit up, too, confused by his response. “What do you mean, what?”
“Why do you… Why did what happened tonight make you think we don’t have to talk about what you wanted to talk about?” he asks. “Why does it have to wait?”
I search his eyes, trying to figure out what’s upsetting him, where I went wrong. “Ethan blew everything up tonight, and now it feels weird and sad, and I just thought… maybe taking a beat, letting that settle, would be… helpful?”
“Helpful for whom?” Alex demands.
“All of us? Jen? Mia? Your ex-wife is hurting, and your daughter is going to be hurt when she wakes up, and she’s going to pick up on her mom hurting, and that’s a lot to handle. So I just thought it could wait—”
“Ted.” He rakes both hands through his hair and tugs at the ends. “I don’t want it to wait. I’ve waited a long time.”
I stare at him, hearing what he’s saying, understanding that he knew what this conversation was going to be. My heart tumbles in my chest, warmed that he wanted to talk about this as much as I did. And it falters when I realize how angry he is that I’ve tried to defer it.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “I wasn’t trying to… make you wait longer.”
“But you weren’t interested in not making me wait any longer, either.”
“That’s not true.” I reach for his hand, but he pulls away.
His eyes search mine. “Is this what it’s going to be, Ted? You always waiting for the other shoe to drop, groping for any excuse, any theoretical obstacle to put between us, to avoid what you said—” His voice cracks. He stares down at the bed. “What you said you wanted.”
“No, Alex, I just… I just didn’t want to talk about all this when it’s so precious and new and… well, when it’s something I’ve waited for, too, with Ethan’s douchery and Jen’s sadness and that impact on Mia hanging over us.”
Alex stands from the bed and starts to pace the room. “That’s nice. Good to know that’s what you wanted.” He rounds on me. “But what about what I want. Does that matter?”
“Of course it does.” I feel unsteady, shaky, as I look up at him.
“You just told me you don’t want to do this, though.”
“Not now,” I admit. “But I can, if you want—”
“It’s not what you want, though,” he mutters, scrubbing at his face. “You want to wait, until everything’s just right, until it’s storybook perfect.”
“That’s not fair—”
“You know what’s not fair, Ted?” He steps closer, pain flashing in his eyes.
“Waiting. And waiting. And waiting for the woman you love to think you’re worth it.
To choose you, even when it means sticking her neck out.
To show you that she loves you even more than she fears what she’d be risking.
And when, finally, you think it’s going to happen, for her to decide, now isn’t the time.
Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week. Who knows? ”
“Alex, I’m sorry.” Tears fill my eyes. “You are worth it to me—”
“Yeah, well.” He grabs a pillow from the bed and storms toward the door. “You have one hell of a way of showing it. I’ll be sleeping in the douche den. See if that fancy fucking pullout mattress is everything Ethan cracked it up to be.”
When he pulls the door shut between us, he does so quietly, carefully. It still hits me like he slammed it, harsh and final.
I lie there for hours, warring with myself. Do I chase him down, follow him, push him to talk it out?
But then what? I tell Alex that I love him, that I want us to be more than friends, that I want every part of life with him, when he’s angry, wounded, when we’re both exhausted and spent and in a just few hours this morning, we’ll be pressed in by even more very valid hurts, Jen’s and Mia’s.
Slowly, I sink lower in the bed, curled into a ball, listening to ocean roar. I tell myself that tomorrow, I can fix this. That tomorrow, it can be better.
I’ll make sure of it.
When I wake up to the first stretch of sun on the horizon and wander out into the house, Alex is nowhere that I can see. Maybe he’s still sleeping in the douche den. But it doesn’t feel like he’s here.
My stomach is an anxious knot as I set up the coffee, whisk batter for pancakes, and set out a pan to make eggs. I’m not a great cook, but I’ve learned enough to be a decent one. Decent is going to have to be good enough.
Jen and Mia come out of their room at the same time, Mia looking adorably sleepy, her hair sticking out every which way, her rainbow nightgown fluttering as she stumbles into me and gives me a drowsy hug.
“Morning, Mia.”
She yawns. “Morning, Thea.”
I glance up at Jen and smile encouragingly. “Morning, Jen.”
“Morning, Thea,” she says softly, sliding onto a stool at the breakfast bar.
“Coffee?” I ask.
Jen nods, looking exhausted, her hair in a messy high pony, her mascara smudged beneath her eyes. “With—”
“Cream,” I tell her.
Jen smiles faintly. “Yes, thanks.”
I serve Mia and myself blueberry pancakes and scrambled eggs. Jen sticks with coffee.
Mia’s licking syrup from her plate when she stops, leaning to peer out the deck’s sliding door. “Is that Daddy out there?”
Jen peers out, and I do, too.
“No,” she and I both say.
“Is it Ethan?” she asks.
Jen tucks Mia’s hair behind her ear. “No. Remember, I told you he’s gone away, because that’s how he handled being upset. And he’s not going to come back, because of that.”
“Sounds like he had a tantrum,” Mia mutters, rolling her eyes.
Jen snorts into her coffee. I try to hide my laugh with a cough.
“I’m okay with it,” Mia says. “He wasn’t my favorite. I mean, he did buy me nice stuff, but I like heart stuff better.” She smiles at us. “You give me nice heart stuff. So does Daddy.”
Jen and I both stare at her, both of us blinking away tears.
“You give us nice heart stuff, too, sweetie,” Jen tells her.
I smile, showing Mia I agree.
Mia smiles wider. “So. Where’s Dad? Did he have a tantrum, too?”
Jen gives me a wary look, gauging what I’m going to say. I’m not sure how to handle this. I don’t know where he is, what to tell her.
Jen leans in and tells Mia, “Daddy texted me earlier, said he’s going to a really nice grocery store outside of town, to buy the ingredients to make all our favorite foods tonight. He’ll be back in a few hours.”
She says that last part to me, and I feel like she knows. That even if he didn’t tell her directly, Jen inferred. That he’s angry, that he needs time.
There’s a lump in my throat, and the anxious knot in my stomach has doubled in size, but I still manage a smile for Mia. “You know what that means?” I ask her.
“What?” she says, glancing back and forth between Jen and me.
“Girls’ morning!” I tell her. “I can hang out with you, if Mommy needs some time to relax, or I can give you and Mommy some time together. Whatever anyone needs.”
Mia tips her head. “I think I need to wear my pretty special-’casion white dress.” She frowns. “When is the special ’casion?”
Jen suddenly looks as startled as I did a moment ago, when Mia asked where Alex was, when I had no idea what to say. She glances over to me, wide-eyed, panicked. Help! her expression says.
I’m still not quick on my feet, but a memory from a book I’ve read, a bittersweet moment, comes to mind. “Your special occasion,” I tell Mia, “is today.”
Mia squeals. “What is it?”
Jen looks just as curious.
“You and Mommy,” I tell her, “are going to take showers, and do your hair, and make yourselves feel like your fanciest, happiest selves; then you’re going to put on your pretty white dresses, come down to the beach, and I’m going to take lots of pictures of you.”
Mia smiles. The girl loves having her photo taken. She loves dressing up. It’s the home-run solution I’d desperately hoped it would be. “Yayyyy!!!”
Mia’s sliding off the stool, sprinting to her room. “Mommy!” she yells. “Hurry up!”
Jen looks over at me and smiles tiredly, gratefully, I think. “That was… a really good save.”
“Same to you,” I tell her.
For a moment, she just looks at me, then, slowly, she stands and reaches for me, clasping my hand. “You and Alex… you’ll figure it out.”
I bite my lip as I fight tears. “I hope so.”
“I know so,” she says, squeezing, then letting go.
“I’ll get us ready, you’ll take our photos, then Mia and I are going to spend the day all around Bethany, eating ice cream for lunch and buying crap we don’t need, and hell, I think we’ll get a manicure, while we’re at it. So you two can have the place, okay?”
I smile faintly. “You don’t need to do that. Who knows if we’ll even need it.”
Jen huffs a laugh. “Oh, Thea, you silly woman. You absolutely will. He’s gone for you.”
I watch her cross the living room, then stop just outside the door, turning around to face me. “When I told you, that night at The Bookshop, that I was glad you’re in Mia’s life?”
“Yes?” I say quietly.
“That wasn’t entirely true. Or… it wasn’t the whole truth.” She smiles softly as she says, “I meant to tell you I’m not just glad you’re in Mia’s life. I’m glad you’re in Alex’s life, in my life. And… I hope you will be, for a very long time.”
Jen slips past the door, shutting it quietly.
Leaving me alone in the kitchen, with a sink full of dishes I’m grateful to have to do. While I cry and feel and face it all—what I want, what I’m scared of, what I sense knitting back together inside me, healing what I never even knew was hurt.