25. Elizabeth
Twenty-Five
Elizabeth
I’m sorry about this evening. I pace around my house, cleaning and doing laundry and trying not to call Kellen.
I can’t stand that I’ve caused a rift between him and his daughter.
I got so swept up in the fairytale of this amazing man helping my kid, helping me.
God, what must his daughter have thought, coming upon us cozied up in her father’s dining room. Eating their grief trigger, apparently.
“Instant family,” I heard her yell from the deck. Is that what is happening here? Jesus, after the shit with Todd did I just want to…play pretend with Kellen? Everything with him just feels so right. Maybe that’s just in comparison to how drastically, shamefully bad things were with Todd?
Kellen doesn’t immediately respond to my text and I fight the urge to run back over there and check in. But I also feel like I have ants living in my skin, so I call Lisa to see if she has any guidance.
“I was on my own for a heartbeat, Lisa. What am I even doing?”
“First of all, you’re having tons of orgasms, is what it sounded like when we last talked.
” I hear her moving through her house, picking up food packages and other crinkling plastics.
Lisa doesn’t have time to sit and chat on the phone.
She wraps our conversations into the things that need to be done.
It’s what I relate to most about her. Both of our lives have been so intense. We’re always one small domino away from the entire set crashing down. The difference is that Lisa has Ashish to rely on.
“Second, you’ve been on your own for a long ass time, babe. You’ve just been fending on your own under the pull of a gaslighting philanderer.”
“Hm,” I huff out. I had not considered this angle before, not until I started getting a whiff of what things could feel like when I get a chance to refill my own batteries. “I didn’t move here to jump into a serious relationship, though,” I sputter back as the anxiety kicks back into high gear.
“You haven’t even had a sleepover yet. Keep waiting on that, by the way, until you’ve used that cream a bunch and gotten your cave walls nice and sturdy before anyone goes spelunking.”
“Spelunking!” Where she comes up with this stuff I’ll never know. I never have the energy to spout out anything witty.
“Anyway, listen.” I hear Lisa open the trash can and cram in the crinkly plastics. “I don’t think you’re moving too fast. I think his daughter maybe needs to do some work around the idea of her father dating again.”
I don’t know if Lisa is entirely right, or if Orla had fair points. “We do live across the street from each other,” I say, quietly. “If things go belly up, it could get very awkward. I really should have thought more about this. Jake is invested now.”
I think about the last time Kellen and I parted ways. Nothing was dramatic. Nothing was heart rending. We both…moved. Not just moved on, but literally moved. It’s easy to not be awkward around someone when you don’t see them for 30 years.
I’m about to open up this line of discussion when I hear a knock at my front door.
Kellen, I think. Who else would knock on the door in the evening like this?
“Maybe it’s the paper boy,” Lisa says, and I realize I’ve said that last bit out loud.
“Just kidding. It’s obviously him. Go talk to him.
Call me tomorrow. Remember the cave grease. ”
“Ugh, Lisa, it’s not grease.”
“Bye!”
I pad to the front door in my slipper and walking boot. Sure enough, Kellen stands illuminated by the porch light whose bulb he helped change the other day. He’s right, the warm glow makes everyone look friendlier.
“Hey,” he says when I open the door.
I pull it all the way open and tilt my head toward the living room. “Come inside.”
Kellen shakes his head. “I just came over to invite you on a bike ride,” he says, grinning.
I haven’t ridden a bike since well before I was pregnant with Jake. “I don’t know if I remember how,” I admit, slumping a bit against the door frame.
“Isn’t there a saying about that,” he jokes. He reaches out a hand and rubs mine with his thumb. “I was thinking about it, because I really want to go for a long walk with you, or a hike, but we’ve both got bum feet. But we could ride on the bike path, I think.”
The podiatrist had mentioned cycling as a good opportunity for me to get some cardio without putting too much strain on my stress fracture.
Even said I could take the boot off for something like that.
I just hadn’t given it any thought because I don’t have a bike.
Seeming to anticipate this argument, Kellen hooks a thumb over his shoulder and points at the garage.
“I’ve still got Orla’s bike in there. And Callum owes me some favors, so I thought I’d ask him to give mine and hers a tune up. What do you say?”
From the pocket of my sweater, I hear Lisa’s voice blurt out, “Yes. She says yes. I’ll hang with Jake. He can come sleep over with Dhruv!”
“Oh my god.” I frantically reach in my sweater and my hands shake as I pull out the phone I evidently didn’t hang up properly when I walked to the door. Kellen laughs as I stab at the red icon to end the call. “That was my friend Lisa.”
“I gathered,” he says. He puts his hands in his jeans pocket and grins, and the dim warm light seems to transform him into a teenager again rather than the silver haired, mature man he’s grown into. “So what do you say?”
“I just…isn’t it bad form for me to borrow Orla’s bike? After what happened this evening?”
Kellen shakes his head. “If Orla wanted her bike, she’d have it in the storage unit in her apartment building. And she wasn’t upset about you this evening, Elizabeth. You have to know that. I think there are some grief emotions coming up for her that she didn’t anticipate.”
I nod, and bite my lip, uncertain. “She’s not entirely wrong about things being intense, though,” I say, my voice trailing off.
Kellen nods right back at me. “I can handle intense, Beth. So what do you say to a bike ride with me?”
I wish he’d kiss me, but know he won’t tonight. And that’s not what he asked, anyway. “I guess it’s a date,” I tell him.
He pumps his fist in triumph. “Yes,” he says.
“I was hoping you’d say that.” Laughing, he kisses my knuckles and I feel the familiar tingle, the sense of flying and falling at once.
“Talk to you soon,” he says, and he heads down the steps, favoring his hurt foot as he walks home.
And even in the semidarkness, the warm glow of that bulb he recommended shows off his lean, muscular frame.
Yes, I think. I can savor this nice thing in my life. For once, I can enjoy something without having to worry about the fallout. I’m going to ride that damn bicycle, I decide, and I’m going to ride Kellen Brady, too.