Chapter 14
POPPING A DIFFERENT CHERRY
LIAM
My home is a museum of restraint, a gallery of right angles and sharp edges, empty of anything I can’t justify on a spreadsheet.
There’s a plush sofa, books arranged by discipline and size, and a dining table made from reclaimed timber, so heavy I had to bribe three grad students to haul it in.
I’m standing by the window, hands in my pockets, watching the reflection of myself pacing in the glass.
I’m waiting for her.
Nothing matters to me but her.
On the counter, there’s a shallow bowl of Marcona almonds that Simone adores, and an artful pile of gluten-free crackers so as not to disturb her sensitive digestive system.
The kind of thing you’re supposed to offer a guest, even when she’s already spent the night here numerous times, even when you’ve memorized the way she arranges her shoes in the entryway, or the way she likes to drink orange juice with a straw even though she’s technically an adult.
It’s her influence, this urge to present some vision of “home.” After a decade of a dying marriage, and years spent ricocheting from office to classroom to bar, I had stopped bothering.
But now I care. Simone makes me care. I want her to see this place and imagine it as her own, to believe she could stay and never leave, that it would all be as easy as walking through the door and putting her bag down.
I swipe a few crumbs from the island with the side of my hand and stare at the clock.
Fourteen minutes until she said she’d get here.
My stomach is tight as a drumhead, and I try to tell myself it’s anticipation, not the old, stupid anxiety that’s been waking me up at three AM for as long as I can remember.
The truth is, I’m not worried about her. I’m worried about me.
Every day with Simone is a gift, which is the kind of phrase I used to mock before I became the guy who says it and means it.
She’s light. Unedited. A walking contradiction, part brain and part animal, and I never know which one I’m going to get.
When she laughs, I forget what decade it is.
When she cries, which has happened exactly twice, I want to set the world on fire.
I should be happy, and I am, but there’s a streak of dread under the surface that I can’t seem to sand out.
Something’s going to ruin this, and that something is me.
My phone pings, and I glance down at the screen:
On my way. Traffic is terrible. Also I forgot the wine at home, so don’t judge me.
There’s a photo attached: her in the car, mouth in a cartoon pout, seatbelt cutting across the pale slope of her neck. I smile and type back:
Wine is overrated. I want you sober.
She replies in three seconds:
Lol are you gonna drug me instead?
I type: Already in the food.
A heart emoji, then nothing. I pocket the phone and exhale. The fear is still there, but it’s quieter now, drowned out by the knowledge that she’s real and she’s coming.
I walk around the table, aligning the chairs like a maniac. I fill a glass with filtered water, set it by her usual seat. The sun is nearly gone, and the only light in the room is from the lamp above the kitchen island, a golden oval that softens the sharpness of everything it touches.
I lean against the counter and try not to think about the past, which of course means that’s all I think about.
The narrative everyone knows: I was married once, to Sandra, a woman so competent she made CEOs look like high schoolers.
We lasted almost eight years, but the truth is we were both gone by year four, our bodies just haunting the same rooms until one of us had the decency to pack a bag.
The divorce was clean, mutual, like the splitting of a cell.
She moved out, taking our retirement accounts with her; I got the house, my books, and a recurring Tuesday night custody of the dog, which died three months after the papers were signed.
After that, I spent a while drifting. There were women, yes.
It’s the privilege of a certain kind of man—in my thirties, tenure, a gym rat with a sculpted bod, and a brain to boot.
I could have played the tragic, brooding professor bit forever.
But the women were a rotation, a blur, and I liked it that way.
Until Lyra and Natalie.
I still have dreams about that night, if you can call them dreams and not just some exquisitely drawn-out panic attack with better lighting.
I was thirty two, they were both twenty-five, graduate students getting their MFAs, each brilliant in a way that should have terrified me.
We met at a conference, shared a bottle of bad hotel bar bourbon, and ended up in my suite before midnight.
It was fun, at first—giddy, chaotic, everyone pretending they knew what they were doing.
But the problem with alcohol is that you lose your inhibitions.
I didn’t even think because I was so fucking drunk that night.
So yeah, it was a depraved threesome with two beautiful, nubile women at a poetry conference.
Doesn’t this shit always happen? Doesn’t everyone go crazy when away from home?
But there were consequences because we didn’t use protection and both of them got pregnant from that fateful sexual encounter.
What was supposed to be nothing became two women, two pregnancies, and one disastrous night as the common denominator.
Lyra told me first. She was matter-of-fact about it, even laughed.
“It’s kind of poetic, don’t you think? Two girls, one poet, and now we’ve both got our own sequel.
” But she wasn’t keeping it, and she didn’t want anything from me.
She even offered to pay for her own abortion, which made me feel like an even bigger fraud.
Natalie was different. She sent an email—no subject line, just three lines of text, clinical and cold.
She was keeping it at first, but her parents intervened.
There were meetings, lawyers, threats. I never heard from her again, except for a single envelope with the bill for the procedure and a request to “never speak to me again.”
The rumors at Century College are a blood sport, and it took exactly six days for the story to make its rounds.
Only the details got scrambled—first it was a faculty member and an undergrad, then two undergrads, then a wild party at my house with “unknown substances” and a rumor about twins.
The real story is that I’m an idiot, and everyone in my department knows it.
But tenure is a hell of a shield, and after a year the whispering faded, replaced by newer, messier gossip.
The only trace is the way my colleagues look at me, the pause before my name comes up in committee meetings.
The way nobody ever asks if I want to guest-lecture at grad student retreats anymore.
I don’t think anyone knows for sure what happened.
I think at this point, they’re really just rumors, and I don’t plan on confirming anything.
I never told Simone any of this. She’s heard the rumors, I’m sure.
But she’s not like the others; she’s never once asked about my past, or about the department politics, or about why I keep a bottle of scotch in my bottom desk drawer.
She lives forward, not backward. That’s what I love about her, and what makes me want to claw my skin off when I realize I’m lying to her by omission.
But the thing that keeps me up most is this: I’m terrified of accidentally knocking up a woman again.
After what happened, the thought makes me sick to my stomach, and I’ve religiously used protection for the most part.
So the day Simone told me about her fibroids, I felt a relief so deep it made me want to puke.
I should feel guilty about that, and I do.
But mostly, I just feel safe. Like I’ve been granted a pass by some cosmic referee, and I’m not about to argue with the ruling.
The headlights cut across the window, and I jump like a thief.
Simone is out of the car in an instant, backpack slung over one shoulder, hair up in a loose bun that makes her look less like a college student and more like a starlet caught at the grocery store.
She’s wearing jeans, boots, and a black t-shirt that fits her so perfectly it should be illegal.
I open the door before she can knock.
She grins, steps inside, and shakes out her hair. “You look like you’ve been waiting at the window for hours,” she says, blue eyes soft.
I can’t help but smile. “Maybe I was.”
She kicks off her shoes and drops the backpack on the floor. “So, what’s the plan?” she asks, scanning the table. “Are we having a party, or is this just a very delicious snack?”
I gesture to the spread. “A little of both. I figured we could cook together. Or I could burn something while you pretend to be impressed.”
She opens her mouth, then closes it. For a second she just looks at me, and I realize I’m holding my breath.
She steps in, takes my face in both hands, and kisses me. It’s not a hello, it’s an “I missed you.” There’s nothing performative about it. When she lets go, she brushes a thumb over my jaw.
“You taste like you need a drink,” she says.
“Maybe I do.”
She pads into the kitchen, snags a cracker, and hops onto the counter, legs swinging. “You okay?” she asks, not in the way people usually do, but like she actually wants to know.
I think about telling her everything. About Lyra and Natalie, about the rumors, about the way I wake up every night feeling guilty about my omission. I think about telling her that I’m terrified of what she’ll think, of how much she matters, how badly I want her to stay. But I don’t.
Instead, I say, “I’m great, now that you’re here.”
She beams, and the room is suddenly too small for all the things I want to say.
I turn away, open the fridge, and start pulling out the ingredients for dinner.
“You want to help?” I ask.