8. Rae
8
RAE
Now
A fter my post-dinner paternity confession, Aaron sleeps on the couch in his office. I spend the night curled up on my side of the bed, texting Dee about the fight and the run-in that inspired it. When she finished spamming my phone with voice notes that were nothing but her laughing manically at Riley being the one to put my business on front street, she pressed me for answers about Hunter, asking me questions that forced me to lay in the bed I share with Aaron and think about Hunter more than I have in years.
Okay, that’s not true.
There hasn’t been a single day since I left New Haven that I haven’t thought about him. I mean, it’s kind of impossible not to when I’m raising a little girl that’s grumpy like he is in the morning and stubborn as a fucking mule, just like him. But outside of that, I’ve passed hours wondering how he is, if he’s clean, if he’s alone, if he’s alive , torturing myself when I knew there was no safe way for me to find out the answer to any of those things. And now that I know, I wish I didn’t because knowing has turned my life upside down.
I wake up the next morning on a mission to try and turn things right side up again. In my mind, that means putting on the sexiest, slinkiest nightie I own, tousling my curls into an intentionally effortless mess, and sneaking down the stairs to Aaron’s office to make up with him so he doesn’t go to work mad at me. To avoid going by Marcy’s room and possibly waking her up, I take the back stairwell that leads to the kitchen, stopping short on the second to last step when the scent of coffee alerts me to the fact that someone is already up.
Aaron prefers espresso to a traditional brew, so the moment I hear the coffee maker going, I know it’s Marcy waiting for me. Part of me wants to turn around and go back to my room, but I make myself move forward because I refuse to cower and hide in a house I help pay for. When I hit the last step, Marcy comes into view. She’s standing at the island, fully dressed in a pair of khakis, a button-up with horizontal, pink lines running up and down the starched white fabric, and a white sweater tied around her neck. She looks like she’s about to go play a round of golf at the country club, which is funny considering that it’s six in the morning and the sun has barely risen. I would ask her what she’s doing up so early, but I already know because everything, from the set of her shoulders to the half smirk she gives me before she takes a sip of her coffee, suggests that she’s been lying in wait for me.
“Aaron has already left for work,” she tells me, her voice laced with faux innocence while her eyes dance with spiteful glee. “He seemed upset. I think he slept in his office last night.”
Although it’s disappointing to hear that Aaron has left without saying goodbye to me or wishing Riley good luck on her first day at a new school, I don’t let any of that show on my face. I can’t give Marcy the satisfaction of having upset me the way she suspects I’ve upset her son.
“I think he had an early meeting,” I offer, making my way over to the refrigerator to pull out the ingredients for the pancakes Riley requested I make for breakfast. If I time it right, they’ll be done by the time she wakes up.
“A meeting?” She tilts her head to the side, studying my every move while also somehow managing to keep track of any changes to my expression. “Before six in the morning?”
I shrug. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but you’d be surprised by how many breakfast meetings I’ve watched Aaron spend the night prepping for before he was promoted to VP of Business Development.”
Technically, it’s not a lie. It’s more of an exaggeration, meaning over the course of our entire relationship, I’ve only ever heard of Aaron having one breakfast meeting. And when that happened, he swore he’d never agree to have another one once he got promoted. Lucky for me, Marcy doesn’t know any of that.
She rounds the island and takes a seat across from me with her coffee still in hand. I sigh internally, wishing she would go on with whatever plans she has for the day so I can have some time to figure out my next steps with Aaron. We never fight. Like ever. That’s one of my favorite things about him, about us . We’re steady. Everything about our life, from the restaurant we go to on date night to the day we have sex, is predictable. There are no surprises or variations, just smooth sailing on still waters.
No bumps.
No waves.
Just us.
I don’t want that to change just because New Haven has thrown us curve balls in the form of my ex…and his mother.
“It’s just that—” Marcy starts, pausing to take a sip of her coffee. “I could have sworn I heard you two arguing last night when I was upstairs with Riley.”
“Nope,” I say, slamming the buttermilk down a little harder than necessary. “Speaking of Riley, do you think you could go see if she’s up?”
She glances up at the ceiling and then back at me. “I don’t hear her, but I’m certain she’ll get up when her alarm goes off.”
Unable to think of a single response that doesn’t involve me screaming, ‘that’s not what I asked you,’ I focus all of my attention and frustration on assembling the batter while Marcy watches in silent judgment she doesn’t voice until I’m moving the last pancake in the batch from the pan to Riley’s plate.
“I never made Aaron pancakes for breakfast on a school day.” She shakes her head to really emphasize her point. “All that sugar so early in the morning isn’t good for kids.”
Placing the plate in the microwave so the pancakes stay warm, I decide it’s best to keep my response short. “Well, it’s what she wanted for her first day breakfast.”
“It’s not good to give a child everything she wants, Rae. Pancakes for breakfast on a weekday. Special dinners when she doesn’t like what’s been prepared.” Once again, her head goes from side to side, signaling her disapproval. “Keep it up, and you’ll ruin her.”
I wipe my hands on a dish towel and turn to face her, gifting her with my most insincere smile. “Well, I guess it’s a good thing she’s mine to ruin.”
“That’s a terrible way to look at things, dear. It takes a village to raise a child, and Aaron and I are your village. We have been since you and Riley came into our lives, which means Riley is just as much ours as she is yours.”
My brows pull together, forming a line so tight it makes my head hurt. But the pain from the headache is nothing compared to the fire burning inside my chest, ignited by all of my maternal instincts coming online at the same time.
“Let’s be clear about something, Marcy. I appreciate everything you and Aaron have done for Riley, but at the end of the day, she is my daughter. Mine. Which means I will always be in charge of making decisions for and about her. If I want to make her pancakes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I will do exactly that, and I won’t so much as pause to ask what anyone else thinks about that choice.”
“Pancakes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?” Riley asks excitedly as she bounds into the kitchen with her school uniform already on. She looks at me with bugged-out eyes as she takes a sit next to Marcy. “For real, Mommy?”
Contrary to what Marcy might believe, I’m not actually fool enough to feed a nine-year-old pancakes three times a day, so I shake my head at Riley and force a laugh. “No, Nugget, I was just being hyperbolic.”
“Hyperbolic,” Riley repeats the word several times while I retrieve her plate from the microwave. By the time it’s in front of her, along with a fork, knife, syrup, and a cup of milk, she’s decided that she likes the way it feels on her tongue, and I hear her singing it to herself in between bites of her food.
“I’m going to get dressed,” I say to no one in particular. “Riley, when you’re done eating, put your dishes in the sink, and then come upstairs so we can wash your face and do your hair.”
I don’t bother waiting around for her response because I know she’ll listen. Riley is a good kid, and I rarely have to repeat myself when I set clear expectations with her. For that reason, and so many more, I take offense to Marcy acting like taking my daughter’s preferences into consideration is going to turn her into some entitled monster.
So many adults seem to forget that kids are people with their own thoughts and opinions and desires. As a parent, it’s my job to give Riley space to express all of those things, and when her requests are reasonable, age-appropriate, and within the realm of possibility, I do my best to give her the things she asks for, so she knows that I care enough to go out of my way for her.
“Do you think the other kids in my class will know what hyperbolic means?” she asks as we pull up to Hartwick Academy, the best private school in New Haven. I glance at her through the rearview mirror and find that she’s twiddling her thumbs.
“I’m not sure, Nugs. If they don’t, I’m sure you’ll do a great job of introducing them to it.”
She nods, glancing out the window to take in the stately, white brick walls covered in vines of ivy. There are students pouring into the building from every direction in groups of varying sizes. My heart lurches as four girls around Riley’s age pass by the car, talking and laughing with matching Coach satchels bouncing on their hips. They look like they’ve known each other forever, and their familiarity seems to drive home how new and unfamiliar everything will be for Riley. The school. The teachers. The kids. The social scene. My baby won’t know anything or anyone, and the thought makes me want to press the gas and take her far away from it all.
“Are you going to stop the car, Mommy?”
Her question draws my attention to the fact that I’ve been subconsciously accelerating instead of hitting the brake. The crossing guard gives me a strange look and holds up her stop sign, which only makes me more embarrassed. I lift my hand and mouth ‘sorry’ but she just shakes her head and turns the other way. After placing the car in park, I turn in my seat to check in with Riley before one of the teachers in charge of drop off opens the door and spirits her away.
“How you feeling, kid?”
“A little nervous,” she confesses. “I don’t know anybody.”
“Yet. You don’t know anybody yet, but by the end of the day, I’m sure you’ll have at least one new friend.”
Hope pulls her brows up into two high arches. “You think so?”
I nod, and even though I’m not certain, I say, “I know so.”
To my surprise, and great relief, drop off goes well. Riley was retrieved from the car by Mrs. Marten, the school’s headmistress, who we met when we first toured the school, and a little girl named Scarlett, who volunteered to be Riley’s welcome buddy for the week. The moment she got out of the car, they started talking, bonding over their shared love of the rainbow stickers Riley had plastered all over the binder she was clutching in her arms.
Mrs. Marten and I watched the girls make a run for the entrance and shared a smile that made me feel comfortable leaving Riley to go and sort things out with Aaron.
His office is in the heart of the financial district, which is really just fancy terminology for a city block downtown that’s heavily occupied by banks and venture capital firms that were drawn to New Haven because of its reasonable real estate prices and proximity to Atlanta. According to Aaron, it also doesn’t hurt that it’s the home of the Adlers—a family of Black billionaires that have a hand in everything from real estate to shipping. When I was a kid, I grew up hearing that name a lot, seeing it plastered on hospital wings and football stadiums for my high school. It never occurred to me that there were actual people behind the name, but Aaron’s recent obsession with getting a meeting with the family’s oldest son, Sebastian, has changed that.
That’s probably why it doesn’t surprise me to hear it gliding off of his tongue when his secretary, Eden, lets me into his office. She wasn’t happy when I showed up out of the blue, insisting on seeing him, and she was even less enthused when I refused to accept her offers to have him call me when he had an opening in his schedule. All of that shows in her voice when she announces my arrival.
“Mr. Scott, your girlfriend is here to see you.”
I brush past her, hating the way the cloying notes of her perfume get stuck in my throat, hating, even more, how she manages to make girlfriend sound like a slur. As if it’s some kind of moral failure to not be someone’s wife. I could have been Aaron’s wife three times over by now if I wanted to, but I don’t want to, not yet.
Maybe not ever , the voice in my head says, tacking the unwelcome addition onto the end of my thought. I don’t know where it came from, and I don’t have time to explore it because Aaron is sending daggers through me with his eyes.
I turn to Eden, needing to get her out of her before we start bickering in front of her. “Next time, refer to me by my name, or don’t refer to me at all.” With a flick of my wrist, I send the door flying toward the jamb and take sick satisfaction in being able to see the shocked expression that takes over her face before it closes.
When I turn to Aaron, annoyance is written all over his features, and he’s no longer on the phone. He stands and strides over to me, robbing me of the chance to get comfortable in his space.
“What are you doing here, Rae?”
I slide my hands into my pockets, feeling self-conscious all of a sudden. “I came to see you. You left before we had a chance to talk, and you didn’t even see Riley before her first day of school.”
If I’m being honest, I think that bothers me more than anything. Aaron has been a part of Riley’s life for as long as she can remember, and, father or not, he has a responsibility to support her through hard transitions like the one she’s going through today. That shouldn’t change just because he’s mad at me.
“I’m sorry I missed it,” he says, running a hand over his head. I search his face for any signs of remorse and come up empty. “I’ll make it up to her.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Aaron sighs. “You can’t just show up to my job like this, Rae.”
“And you can’t just leave the house without saying anything to me. I get that you’re mad, okay? But you have to understand?—”
“No,” he says, cutting me off. “I don’t have to understand anything. I’ve been understanding for seven years, and you’ve lied to my face every single day.”
“I’ve already apologized for that, Aaron.”
“And I’m just supposed to be over it? Would you have even told me if Riley hadn’t brought up that you ran into him?”
“No.” My instant answer sends his brows reaching for his hairline. “I had no intention of talking about Hunter with anyone, not even Riley, ever. He is my past; you are my future.”
The declaration lacks conviction, and Aaron susses out the hollowness immediately. I guess it’s easy to do when it’s coming from a woman who’s turned down your proposal three different times.
“I’m just having a really hard time believing that.”
I close the space between us, relieved when he doesn’t step back. “How can I fix it?”
“You already know the answer to that question.”
Of course.
Of course, the one thing he needs is the one thing I’m not comfortable giving. I consider denying him once more. What Aaron is asking for is private. It’s Hunter’s and mine. It doesn’t belong to him; it barely belongs to us, and it frustrates me that Aaron wants to own this part of me as well, that the things I’ve given up for him already aren’t enough.
Pushing out a long, steadying breath, I prepare myself to give again because I know that if I don’t, nothing will get better. And I need things to get better. I move over to the couch in the corner of Aaron’s office and pat the cushion beside me, silently asking Aaron to come over. My stomach is in knots, but I breathe through the discomfort, telling myself I’ll feel better once it’s all out in the open, even though I know I won’t.
“The night I met Hunter Drake, he was planning on killing himself…”