7. Cece
CECE
I wake up in his bed at three in the morning and my body knows what it did before my brain does. That's not the scary part.
The scary part is the thought that arrives about four seconds later. It’s the one I was not expecting at three a.m. in a stranger's cabin with his arm heavy around my waist and my cheek on his chest… I’m falling in love.
It’s immediately followed by an even scarier one… But I won’t because that is crazy and this is probably what people call a rebound.
Look at this gorgeous man asleep next to me.
There’s no way this is new for him. This is dating.
I can’t fall in love. I have a two year old child.
I’m running from a barely done divorce. Ryan is an incredibly kind and sexy man.
Also great in bed. All true. But also, this is just a rebound and I’ve got to keep it together.
I sit up when the voice in my head gets too loud. The movement is too fast.
Ryan makes a sound in his sleep and his arm reaches for me automatically. I slide out from under it before he wakes up. I stand in the middle of his bedroom in the dark in his T-shirt.
This can’t be a thing I do. I mean, what kind of mom leaves her kid overnight just to have sex? Stop it. Breathe.
But I can't breathe.
I walk to the kitchen on bare feet and get a glass of water.
I stand at his counter in the dark and try to do the thing the therapist taught me before I stopped being able to afford her.
I find the five things I can touch, but my eyes won't focus on anything except the fact that this kitchen is not set up for a toddler.
It's truly not.
The counters are clean. The corners are sharp.
There is a single bowl on the kitchen island with car keys in it and a pair of sunglasses and that is it.
No cabinet latches. No outlet covers. No rubber things on the corners of the coffee table that I can see through the doorway.
The coffee table itself is glass. Glass.
Ryan has no idea… And how could he?
He doesn't know what it's like to have a two-year-old.
He doesn't know about the cracker crumbs that live in every crevice of a car seat forever.
He doesn't know about the sticky handprints on every surface below three feet tall.
He doesn't know that Birdie went through a phase where she ate exclusively beige foods for six weeks and cried if you gave her anything green.
Greg used to look at Birdie in the car seat like she was a problem he had agreed to solve. I saw it. I pretended I didn't see it for two years. She was a good baby and he was still resentful about her because she needed things and his time belonged to him.
I don’t want to be the woman who hands Birdie to a man and watches his face do that. I do not want Birdie to ever, in her entire life, be looked at like that again. Which is why it’s okay that this is just a rebound. Right.
My hand is flat on his counter. I can feel every nerve in my palm.
I try to picture Birdie in this kitchen.
Birdie in this living room. Birdie on that glass coffee table.
Birdie knocking the bowl with the car keys off the island because Birdie knocks everything off of everything…
That is her whole thing right now. She is in the Newton's law phase of toddlerhood where every object is a demonstration of gravity.
I picture her here. I picture him flinching. My chest tightens.
I’ve doubted my read on men for so long at this point.
I was only a year into my marriage the first time I caught him texting another woman.
But I stayed for six years and gave him chance after chance to show up for me.
In the end I had to admit to myself that I was wrong about him and I kept being wrong because love got in the way of the read.
I am not going to be wrong again.
Not at Birdie's expense.
I hear him move in the other room.
I put the water glass down and pull up a rideshare app on my phone.
Someone will be up and I know what I have to do.
I creep back into the bedroom without a sound.
I find my jeans folded over the chair where he put them last night with the deliberate care of a man who was taking inventory of what I'd need in the morning.
He sits up. The sheet pools at his waist. Even in the dim light from the hallway he is mouthwatering and I make myself look away from the lines of muscle rippling across his chest. He’s looking at me with sleepy, pleased eyes that are going to change expression in about twenty seconds and I cannot watch that happen.
"Hey. What are you doing up? Come back to bed."
It takes everything in me not to crawl right back into bed with him. But it’s now or never, so I hold strong. "No, I can’t, sorry. I have to go."
“Is everything okay? Did Evelyn call about Birdie or—”
"No, no one called. But Birdie's going to be up soon. I told her I'd be back."
"It's three a.m.” There isn’t any tiredness left in his voice.
"I know what time it is."
Something shifts in his face. He’s not stupid. He’s watching me put the jeans on and clock the distance to the door. He’s catching up in real time to the fact that something is off.
"Cece this is crazy. But if you really want to get back to her, I’ll get dressed.”
“No, I’ve called an Uber. It’s only four minutes away.” Ugh, I’m a jackass, my stomach sours. “But thank you for everything. This was great.”
It was great. The words sit between us in the dark like a bomb.
He looks at me for a long, steady second.
“Hell no you won’t. I said I'll drive you. Come on then.”
He doesn't press. He doesn't ask what happened.
Instead he pulls on a pair of jeans and drives me to Evelyn's in his truck with the heat on low and the radio off.
The silence between us is not the silence from earlier.
It is the silence of a man who is being careful not to make something worse by naming it.
I sit in the passenger seat with my hands in my lap.
I don’t look at him until he parks in front of Evelyn's cabin.
"Cece, whatever you're telling yourself right now," he says. "Whatever story you're writing in your head about what tonight was. I want you to know I am not in that story. Okay? I don't know what happened in the last two hours but I know what I felt between us and I know you did too."
"Ryan, I do know that this is a rebound. A really sweet, kind, sexy rebound. But still, I don’t expect—"
"Stop, it’s okay. Go see your girl." His jaw is tight. He is looking straight ahead through the windshield. He puts his hand on mine on the console, just for one second, and then he takes it back and puts it on the wheel.
“Thanks for a fun night.” I get out. I walk to Evelyn's door. I do not look back because if I look back I will get back in that truck and I will not be able to trust myself on the other side of it.
I hear his engine for a long time after I close the door.
I stand in Evelyn's entryway in a shirt that smells like Ryan, my own jeans and a pair of shoes I don't remember putting on. Then I slide down the wall and sit on the floor. I press both hands over my face and don’t make a single sound.
Birdie is asleep ten feet away in the guest room and she does not deserve a mother who falls apart at three in the morning over a man.
But I am falling apart.