Round Thirty-Four
BILLY
I don’t text Maggie about tie colors anymore, and I don’t ask her opinion of my jeans, since I don’t actually give a fuck what anyone else thinks. The only reason I used to ask was so she would talk to me. So she would pay attention to me for a minute.
I don’t have her call me anymore, and when Jeremy stands in the yard screeching her name, I don’t go out to watch them together.
Missing her feels like my entire fucking body is on fire. But watching them together, knowing how perfect they look when he crawls onto her lap and snuggles in, hurts infinitely more.
He’s allowed to have a relationship with Magnolia Sava without me. Allowing them to love each other without my bullshit tainting something so beautiful is the least I could do.
“I think you’re making a mistake,” Ollie rumbles, his voice coming through my phone speakers. “I think you’re both acting on hurt feelings right now, and I’m telling you, that shit never ends well.”
“I think she already fucking told me she was done.” I work on my tie, knotting the material and grunting at its tight grip on my throat. “She doesn’t want me, Ol, and she deserves way better than the bullshit emotional torture my existence offers.”
“She does want you!” Rose exclaims. Because of course she’s part of this call, too. “I didn’t even know you two when you were kids, not like everyone else knew you, and I still know you’re meant to be together. Jesus, Billy. Stop letting your trauma run your life.”
“Ollie…”
“I won’t tell her to shut up,” he inserts. “She’s right, and we both know it. And even if she wasn’t, I’d rather hold on to her, wrong opinions and all, than win a dumb fuckin’ argument. It seems you haven’t quite learned that lesson yet.”
“I don’t have a choice, Oliver! She walked away from me. She’s literally got me dressing up for another woman right now, and in ten minutes, I’m supposed to climb into my car and head out to dinner with Luciana Reeves. You remember her, right?”
“Luciana?” he exhales. “Seriously?”
“What?” Rose comes closer to the phone. “Who is Luciana Reeves? Why is she important?”
“You remember that Giselle supermodel you were so worried I’d fall in love with?
” Ollie presses a comforting kiss to Rose’s lips.
I assume. Could be her ass, I suppose. “Luciana is Giselle in this situation. She was Ms. Teen County. Ms. State. Ms. Universe, maybe. I dunno. She’s a model, like… an actual model in magazines and shit.”
“Really?” Rose’s voice rises an octave. “So you think she’s beautiful, Doctor Douchebag?”
He barks out a laugh. “I’m not even playing this game! You asked, I answered.”
“She’s not just a Paris Fashion Week model either,” I cut in. “She’s a lingerie catalog model. The classy catalogs. Maggie’s setting me up to fail with this shit. She’s setting us up to completely fucking explode.”
“Why must her beauty dictate the success or failure of your relationship?” Rose snarls. “Are you saying that if she were ugly, you’d be less likely to blow shit up?”
“No! I’m saying Maggie already lit the fuse, because she’s done with this. She doesn’t want us. She doesn’t want me.”
“Just don’t go,” Ollie groans. “Tell her no. It’s really that simple. If she told me I had to dress up and hit the town with Giselle tonight, I would literally say no. I already know who I love.”
“Ollie—”
“So you say the same damn thing. Even if she doesn’t want you, even if she refuses to give you the time of day, you still say no. What part of all this is confusing to you?”
“She’s already dating someone else!” I drop my head back and pinch the bridge of my nose. “She’s had the same fucking guy in her home the last three nights, Oliver.”
“You don’t know if she’s dating—”
“She told me to my fucking face! She said she needed to focus on finding her match.”
“And you… what? You’re cool with it? You’ll sit inside your house and let her fall in love with someone else?”
“Oh, right! Like how you dressed Rose up, patted her ass, and sent her off to date that other prick?”
“That’s different,” Rose counters. “That was—”
“It wasn’t different! It’s literally a case of trying to minimize the fucking damage we inflict on these women we love. Rose needed to explore the Darcy thing, so you let it happen. Maggie needs to find a man who fucking deserves her, so—”
“You deserve her!” Ollie booms. “There’s no one on this planet who deserves her more.”
“There is, actually.” I pick up my phone and wander to my closed window, glancing into my yard to where Maggie and Jeremy sit together at the boundary garden.
He sprawls across her lap, and she strokes his hair.
He laughs, his mouth wide open and his chest bouncing with the movement, while she snickers and says whatever sweet, beautiful, selfless, intelligent things she says.
“Jeremy deserves her.” I swallow the aching truth before it chokes me.
“He deserves to have a relationship with her that isn’t dependent on my relationship with her.
One that won’t come and go, depending on how fucking far into my mouth I shove my foot.
One that doesn’t turn frosty when I try to force her to love me back, even knowing I can’t give her what she wants. ”
“What?” Ollie grunts. “What is it she wants so badly that you can’t give her?”
“Babies,” Rose sighs sadly. “She wants babies.”
“Jesus, Billy. You’re not fucking sterile! It’s not a matter of can’t. It’s a matter of won’t.”
“I won’t risk her life.” I run my free hand through my hair and tug just hard enough to make it sting. “I can’t lose her like I lost Aria.”
“So you think every woman is destined to die in childbirth, huh? Seriously? You’re more intelligent than that, dickhead.”
“Ollie—”
“I literally deliver babies for a living, Billy! In all my years at the hospital, I’ve only ever lost one. One! Are you expecting Fox to keel over when her baby is due?”
“No, I—”
“Because you probably should tell Chris. Ya know, so he can prepare for his impending loss. Alana’s probably gearing up for a third now that she’s all healed after Hazel. You don’t see the way she stares at Tommy while he’s holding her? It’s a cornucopia of hormones and come do me, Daddy.”
“You’re being a dick for the sake of being a dick.”
“Caroline just had her fourth. And guess what? I didn’t even kill her during delivery.”
“Stop it, Ollie. Jesus.”
“I can’t stop it, Wilbert! Because this is the same old shit, isn’t it?
For eight years, you’ve blamed me for Aria’s death.
We were like brothers before that, but then shit went bad, and for eight long fucking years, I sat with my guilt and pain, because I should’ve done better.
I should’ve done something different. I should’ve saved her. ”
“I don’t blame you for that.”
“But you did!”
“I was angry!” I bite back. “A man is allowed to be angry when his wife dies on what should’ve been the happiest day of our lives. He’s allowed to fear condemning another woman to the same fate.”
“But if you can forgive Ollie for the freak incident that took her life,” Rose murmurs.
“Then you can acknowledge it was no one’s fault.
And if you can admit that, then you know no one is condemned to anything.
It’s not seventeen-seventy-three anymore.
Women are less likely to die giving birth than they are to die on the drive to the hospital. ”
“Wait,” Ollie’s voice changes. “What are the statistics?”
“On average, twenty-one women per every one-hundred thousand die of complications during childbirth. That’s not even one percent. It’s zero-one-zero-zero-zero-two-one of a percent.”
“And car deaths?”
“In America, you have a one in one hundred chance of dying in a car accident.”
“Why are you so smart?” All gooey and sappy and shit, Ollie noisily kisses her. “My actual job is to deal with the carnage of both car accidents and childbirth, and I still didn’t know those numbers.”
“Great,” I growl. “So now we’re calling it carnage. And I get to freak out every time she gets in the car and heads to work, too. What a fantastic fucking day.”
“You’re being dramatic,” Ollie drawls. “If you’re cool with her driving, then you should be cool with her having a baby.
And if you loved her the way you say you love her, then you wouldn’t send her off and let some other motherfucker put a baby in her belly.
Either you’re terrified of her dying in childbirth, or you’re not.
To think yours is some kind of Superman super dangerous sperm is pure vanity. ”
“You’re being an asshole,” I growl. “Way to be sympathetic to your friend’s grief.”
“I was sympathetic! For eight fucking years! But you wanted nothing to do with me back then, so now this shit is on you. Go out and date your Giselle, let Maggie fall in love with some other second-rate poser, someone you know wouldn’t love her the way she deserves.
Let her risk someone else’s Superman super sperm, and then she can die.
You could probably even bury her near Aria.
They can chat in the afterlife and talk shit about how much of a pussy you are. ”
“Fuck you.”
“No. I don’t want you either,” he spits back.
“I wanna fuck my girl, and then I’m gonna head to work, because I’m already late and Dawes is gonna be pissed that I prioritized this dumbass conversation over his right to clock out.
” The sound of his phone clattering to the ground rattles through the line.
“Enjoy your Giselle, bitch. She won’t stack up. ”
“Don’t enjoy your Giselle.” Rose scrambles and picks up the phone again. “Don’t go on that date, Billy. Talk to Maggie. Use your freakin’ words and figure this out.”
I stare down at the pair cuddled together on a single camp chair.
My son carries two across the lawn every single day, too shy to admit from the outset he doesn’t intend to sit apart, but too impatient to stay away for more than a minute, anyway.