Chapter Twenty-Six
Mine
Sydney
After the twins are down, I find Archer at the kitchen island with two glasses of wine poured and an expression that tells me this isn’t a wine-and-unwind kind of conversation.
“So,” I say, sitting across from him. “What came up?”
He wraps both hands around his glass and doesn’t drink. “Bree called today.”
My stomach drops. “About the kids?”
“About us.”
I set my wine down. “How does she know about us?”
“Lily told her about the date. Logan babysitting, me in a fancy shirt, the whole thing.” He almost smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “She reported it like front-page news, apparently.”
“Of course she did.” I touch my fingers to my temples. “What did Bree say?”
He tells me everything—the custody arrangement, the lawyers, the concern about what happens to the twins if we don’t work out.
He repeats what Bree said about the kids losing their daily life again, and I watch his face while he says it.
I can see what it cost him to hear it and what it’s costing him to repeat it.
“She’s not wrong,” I say when he finishes.
“I know. She’s not.”
“The kids are attached to me, Archer. If we try this and it falls apart, I can’t just—I can’t just go back to being Auntie Syd who visits on holidays. That’s not how four-year-olds work.”
“I know.”
“So this is serious. Whatever we’re doing, it has to be serious. Because the stakes aren’t just us.”
“I know that, Syd. I’ve thought about it.”
“And?”
“And I’m sure.” He looks at me across the island, his eyes steady in a way that reminds me of him in the crease—locked in, reading the play, not flinching. “I’m not going to tell you it’s not scary, because it is. But I’m sure about you. I’ve been sure.”
I pick up my wine and take a long sip because I need something to do with my hands while my brain catches up with what he’s saying and what it means and the weight of it.
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay?”
“Okay, we’ll figure it out. Together. The custody stuff, the lawyers, whatever Bree needs.
” I set the glass down. “But I need you to understand something. I’m not going to be the reason your kids lose stability.
If at any point this isn’t working—if it’s hurting them—I’ll walk away. Even if I don’t want to.”
“It won’t come to that.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know that I’m not going to let it.”
We sit with that for a while, the wine between us, the house quiet around us.
“I’m glad you told me,” I say.
“I’ll always tell you.”
I almost smile. He almost smiles. And we sit at the island and drink our wine. It’s not the cozy, easy evening I was hoping for, but it’s honest, and honest is better than easy. We’re learning that.
I call Lauren the next morning from the Lexus, parked outside the senior center, ten minutes before class.
“Bree knows.”
“Knows what?”
“About me and Archer. She called him yesterday.”
“Oh my God.” I hear Lauren sit up, hear a coffee mug hit a table. “How?”
“Lily told her. Apparently, she marched into Bree’s house and announced that Daddy and Syd went on a date like she was delivering a press release.”
“Of course she did. That child has never kept a secret in her life.”
“She’s four, Lauren. She doesn’t know what a secret is.”
“So what did Bree say?”
“She wants to revisit the custody arrangement. Lawyers. The whole thing.”
Lauren is quiet, and I know this silence—it’s her absorbing the magnitude of this while deciding how blunt to be. “I mean, can you blame her?”
“No. That’s what makes it worse.”
“She’s been suspicious of you two for years, Syd. Years. And now it turns out she was right. Her ex-husband is dating the woman she spent her entire marriage worrying about. That’s, uh—that’s rough. For her.”
“I know.”
“She’s probably furious.”
“Archer said she was calm on the phone.”
“Calm is worse than furious. Calm means she’s already talked to a lawyer.
” Lauren takes a breath. “She’s going to want to punish you.
Both of you. Not because she’s evil—but because she’s hurt, and she’s been sitting on this hurt for six years, and she just got confirmation that every fear she ever had was justified. ”
I lean my forehead against the steering wheel. “I feel like the worst person alive.”
“You’re not the worst person alive. You fell in love with someone and waited over a decade to do anything about it. That’s not a crime.”
“Tell that to Bree’s lawyer.”
“I’m serious, Syd. You didn’t break up their marriage. They broke up their marriage. But Bree is never going to see it that way, and you need to be ready for that.”
“Ready for what?”
“For this to get ugly. Custody fights aren’t fun. And even if Bree is reasonable—which, from what you’ve told me, she mostly is—she’s going to use every tool she has because her kids are involved, and that’s what mothers do.”
I close my eyes. Outside the windshield, the community center sits in the morning light, brick and fluorescent.
“Can I ask you something?” Lauren says.
“Sure.”
“If you and Archer broke up tomorrow, would you stay in New York?”
I’m silent for a second, processing. The truth is, I have no idea. Would I? Or would I fly back to Minnesota, back to Lauren and my old life?
“I’ve been here for two months,” I say. “And everything I have—the house, the friends, the routine—it all runs through him. I drive his car. I use his Netflix login. I don’t even have my own mailing address. My whole life is—”
“His life.”
“Yeah.”
Lauren is quiet again, but this time it’s a different kind of quiet. “You know what I’m going to say.”
“That I need something that’s mine.”
“You need your own life, Syd. Not connected to him, not dependent on whether you two work out, not something that disappears if this falls apart.” She pauses.
“You’ve done this before, you know? You followed a musician to Austin.
You moved to New York for Archer. You build your life around other people and then wonder why it doesn’t feel like yours. ”
“That’s harsh.”
“It’s true.”
“I’ve gotta go.”
I hang up and sit in the parking lot, staring at the community center as I think about Lauren’s question until I’m three minutes late for class, which has never happened before. Dolores gives me a look when I walk in. I mouth “sorry,” hit play, and we start the routine.
After class, Pat catches me in the hallway. She’s got her reading glasses on a chain, a clipboard, and the expression of a woman who has something on her mind.
“Got a minute?”
I follow her into her office, which still has papers covering every surface but now also features a framed photo of Gerald and Dolores from the holiday party that I didn’t know existed.
“I’ll get to the point,” Pat says, sitting behind her desk.
“The city is expanding our senior programming budget next quarter. I’ve been authorized to hire a part-time activities coordinator.
Benefits, steady hours, room to build out the dance program however you want.
” She slides a paper across the desk. “I’d like to offer it to you. ”
I look at the paper. It’s a job description—Activities Coordinator, Greenwood Community Center. Twenty hours a week, health insurance, a salary that’s modest but real. Real enough to sign a lease. Real enough to stop depending on Archer’s Venmo.
“I can expand beyond hip-hop?” I ask.
“Whatever you want. Salsa, ballroom, line dancing. Gerald’s been asking about the tango.” She leans back. “You’ve tripled our attendance in two months, Sydney. The seniors love you. Dolores told me she’d quit if you left, and I believe her.”
I stare at the job description and my chest does something I wasn’t expecting. Not excitement, not relief—recognition. Like a part of me I’d been ignoring just woke up and said there you are.
“Can I think about it?” I ask.
“Take a week.”
I walk out of Pat’s office holding the paper and sit in the Lexus in the parking lot for the second time today, reading it again. Twenty hours. Benefits. Room to build something.
Mine. Not Archer’s. Not dependent on whether we work out or whether Bree’s lawyers redraw the custody agreement or whether I’m still living in his guest room—six months from now. A job with my name on it, in a city I chose, doing work I love.
Lauren’s question echoes in my head: If you and Archer broke up tomorrow, would you stay in New York?
I look at the job description one more time.
Yeah. I think I would.
I pull out my phone and call Lauren back.
“I got offered a job.”
“What?”
“At the senior center. As a part-time activities coordinator. Benefits, steady hours, I can build the whole dance program from scratch.”
“Syd.” Her voice breaks a little. “That’s amazing. Are you going to take it?”
I look at the community center through the windshield—the brick building with the fluorescent lights, the scuffed floors, and the room where twelve seniors show up twice a week to learn hip-hop from a woman who thought she’d lost her way.
“Yeah,” I say. “I think I might.”
“Good. Because that’s the answer, Syd. To the question I asked you this morning. If you take that job, you’re not borrowing his life anymore. You’re building your own. And then being with Archer is a choice, not a default.”
I sit in the car for another minute after we hang up. Then I drive home—to Archer’s house, which is starting to feel like mine too, but in a different way now. Not because I sleep there or because his kids call me Auntie Syd or because his sweatshirt is in my closet.
Because I’m choosing to be here. And starting tomorrow, I’ll have a reason to stay that has nothing to do with him.
That changes everything.