8. Some things dont get to happen
Chapter 8
Some things don't get to happen
She wanted to let the call go, but single moms always have to answer. “Hello?”
“Hi, Mom!” The darling face that shouted into the screen was the most wonderful, entertaining, adorable child ever, and she deserved a mother who was one hundred thousand percent excited to take her calls, because this big grin with the missing tooth and the sparkling eyes wasn’t going to last forever. Even if this particular mother had needed enough time to get downstairs and have one little conversation, ten more minutes. Apparently, some things don’t get to happen.
It didn’t matter. Whatever Megan had wanted for herself one minute ago, what she needed, what made up her world, could be summed up in the smile there on the phone. Eight years of her baby girl. “Hi, Callie bug.”
Clearly, grandparents had special privileges, because her daughter’s wet hair had been combed into two fresh ponytails above her ears in a style she’d never allow Megan to do. Or maybe they were willing to bribe and barter at a higher return than Megan would.
“Everything okay there?”
“We went to a park Grandma called Skinny Butt! I got all the way to the top of the climbing rock wall so many times, and there was a stagecoach, but you know, it wasn’t real, because there weren’t any horses. And it was plastic, and that wasn’t invented until waaaay after stagecoaches, of course.”
So Skinner Butte Park’s pioneer playground had been a hit. “Sounds like you’re having a lot of fun.”
She saw Nico reach the van parked at the curb and open the rear doors. If he was merely putting the box away, he’d come back to the house, and she could intercept him and tell him she wanted to keep it.
“The slides were like normal for a park and they burned my legs from the sun, but then I went in the—” She paused, whether for dramatic emphasis or merely for oxygen, Megan didn’t know. “Su-pray feee-tures.” Callie drew each syllable out separately like Megan’s father did when he wanted to gently mock something. “As if they were some special features! As if!” Her daughter’s mouth opened wide as she pealed with laughter. “And I got all wet and my legs weren’t hot anymore.”
With Callie’s chatter still front and center, she wasn’t sure if she actually heard or merely imagined the thud of the van’s doors closing, but she rocked on the balls of her feet from the need to get down there and make sure Nico didn’t leave before she could…what, exactly?
“Mom! Look at me!” Her daughter knew Megan’s attention was elsewhere. On the screen, Callie brought the phone close enough to her face that her chin was cut out of the frame while she continued listing the flavors of ice cream they had recently consumed.
Her eyes flitted again to the outside scene, where Nico turned toward the house. He looked like he was waiting for a signal. She wouldn’t let herself think that this was farewell. She raised her hand from the window, but with Callie rambling, she wasn’t sure how to let Nico know he should stay, not go.
The beauty of a cell phone was that she could go downstairs and outside while Callie rambled. She didn’t have to leave this to the vagaries of Nico’s understanding of a window wave.
Before she could back away from the window, he walked around the side of the van and reached for the driver’s door. Let him be locking up the van, not getting in. Not leaving.
Her feet felt frozen to the floor. It would be weird to take off running while she was on the phone with Callie, but she could. She could go right now. Run downstairs.
He opened the door. Shit.
She turned and crossed the room in a few strides.
“And Grandma told me we should get a puppy.”
“What?” She stumbled into the doorjamb. How had the conversation with her daughter gone so off the rails? What the hell had she missed? “Is Grandma there now?”
She might still make it downstairs before he left. If he saw her on the porch, he’d know she wanted him to stay. He’d know. Please let Nico be filling out a form, playing a word game on his phone, anything to take his time before starting that van.
“You’re interrupting me, Mom.”
“Yes, I am. And I am unrepentant about it because you are using Grandma’s phone, so I can ask to talk to her.” Her free hand skimmed the railing as she hustled down the stairs. It would be easier to disconnect from her mother than her daughter, because she had decades of experience ignoring that guilt.
“What’s unpentent mean?”
“Un- re -pentent. It means sorry-not-sorry.”
She reached the hall.
“Now please give the phone back to Grandma.”
She pursed her lips in an exaggerated fishy face and then grinned at the girl on the screen. “I love you, Callista LaSorda.” Her daughter rolled her eyes, and then Megan saw jumbled images of a floor or ceiling and blobs of fingers as the phone transferred to Megan’s mother. Apparently, they’d entered the phase where endearments would chase the eight-year-old away, a development to be mourned later.
Nico had locked the front door behind him, which felt very final.
“Megan?” her mother said.
Outside, nothing lined the curb. The van had left. The porch was similarly bare, without the little table and chairs for drinks with neighbors.
“Yeah, um, sounds like it was a nice day.” The yard looked the same, well-tended garden beds filled with the leathery foliage of dozens of hellebores, chartreuse fountains of hosta leaves, and the burgundy splashes of heucheras.
“Callie kept us so busy. Did you get done over there at the house?”
“Yeah.” She hated heucheras and their stupid ruffled edges. And hostas were unbearably predictable. Within a week, they’d be ragged from slugs, while those white clusters of flowers on tall stems would become faded brown stalks. The wooden railing under her fingers was a splinter-risk and this yard was uninspired. Tidy and dull beyond belief. Her parents were better off without the work of the damn garden anyway. “Still a few things to arrange in my car.” By herself.
She didn’t know how they signed off, but it seemed like her phone had returned to her butt pocket, so she must have said goodbye.
Nico was gone. No matter how long she stood here, that wouldn’t change.
Answering her responsibilities had a cost. It always had a cost. She turned toward the house, part of her recognizing that she shouldn’t have expected or even hoped for more because that wasn’t how life went. Life was a slog of getting up and doing it again, and that didn’t mean moms like her doing a hot guy twice in one day. It meant day care pickup and family dinner and fucking laundry, that’s what doing it again meant.
Back inside. Fine. Might as well check the shelves in the garage to see if all three boxes of magazines were gone too or just the one she’d watched him put in the van.
As soon as she flicked on the garage lights, it was easy to see that two boxes remained in the nearly empty room. Coming closer, she noticed that the corner of a third sticky note protruded from under one of the cartons, which must have left the final box unlabeled and thus destined for donation. It was stupid to be upset about old magazines, a stupid waste of time and energy to care about them. The remaining boxes gave her a decade of trashy reading, so she didn’t need the third box at all. If she was going to feel stupid this afternoon, better the cause was a box than a guy. She was too old to get upset over stupid men who gave up too easily or couldn’t understand that answering the phone wasn’t a rejection.
There was a text from Aleesha that she’d overlooked.
Aleesha
Update on fine movers?
They left.
She had no idea how to express disappointment or shrugging or fatalism or whatever the emotions were that roiled through her via gif or emoji, so she changed the subject.
How did the march go?
Aleesha
Lots to tell. Wine tomorrow night?
She sent a photo of the Seattle skyline from the side of Lake Union, a bit of dock sticking out in the foreground.
Aleesha
We just finished kayaking.
I thought you hate boats? And WE? Who is WE???
Aleesha
Just hate that loud nasty diesel guzzling dick substitute.
Aleesha’s ex, also a lawyer, had bought a powerboat with the contingency fees from a settlement that Aleesha swore he’d deliberately delayed finalizing until after the divorce so that he didn’t have to declare it on his income for their community property division. Shithead.
Aleesha
Kayaks are quiet.
Only a crazy woman would describe a summer weekend on Lake Union, with its bikini-clad paddleboarders, party boats, and float plane runway, as quiet. Something—or better, someone—had possessed her friend.
Still haven’t answered the question, counselor. Who is this WE?
Aleesha
Met a guy at the rally. He's from Cali, here for one day. I'm showing him around.
Aleesha
Have to go.
Nooooo! Tell me more!
Megan sent an emoji face she thought was happy/confused but was as likely to be laughing out loud, then one that looked like a coat, followed by, naturally, an eggplant.
You may be off the water, but don’t forget to use a life jacket.
Aleesha
Thanks, next door mom.
Aleesha’s daughter, the same age as Callie, was with her dad for a week, so at least one of them might have fun tonight.
Megan left the small pile of things that remained to be crammed into her car sitting in the garage and went to the kitchen. Bare cupboards, doors opened to confirm the emptiness, faced her. Without contents, the white cabinets looked old and a bit dingy. She supposed a fresh coat of paint would recreate a bright and inviting kitchen, but nothing would bring back the table where she’d done homework or the metal bread box that she’d opened every morning when she’d packed her lunch. Even her mother’s cork bulletin board, which had displayed first Megan’s and then Callie’s school pictures, was gone, the only sign of it a darker rectangle against the sun-faded wall. A household’s heart had ceased to beat.
She felt tired. So very tired.
The knock on the front door ricocheted around the bare wood box the entryway had become and carried through the empty house all the way to the kitchen. As she turned, the front door creaked. Her heart thudded with awareness that she was completely alone. Whoever was coming had a key.
“Megan?”
Nico. He’d returned. Her body seemed to recognize that she had nothing to fear before her brain, because she found herself leaning toward the door, anticipating his entry.
“Megan?” His voice was nearer.
“In the kitchen.”
Within seconds, he was in the room, another brown paper bag in his hand. “Went out to drop off the library donations before they closed.”
“Oh, good. Thanks.” That meant no retrieving the third magazine box before she headed home, since the library was closed on Sunday.
In the silence, Nico crossed to the sink and turned on the tap. Water drummed in the stainless steel basin, loud enough that she was sure he couldn’t hear the thudding in her chest.
She set her phone on the counter to stop herself from staring at the dark screen. She could give up that twenty-first century version of a shield and focus on Nico, since he’d presumably come back precisely to be with her.
“I’m…” One deep breath, and she went for it, trying to pitch her voice between casual and interested. A chunk of her brain knew she shouldn’t worry about how she sounded because, duh, a few hours ago, he’d been extremely involved in her vagina, but still. “I’m glad you came back.”
“Is, ah, anyone else going to be at the house tonight?”
“No.” She shook her head. Her mother had made the all-clear extremely clear. “Just me.” Under the flowing water, his hands entwined and spread the squirt of soap. To avoid making the imaginative leap from the pearly sheen of liquid to thinking of Nico’s hand on his own cock, she focused on the bottle. Odd it had been left behind, but she guessed it made sense that the painters who would shortly take over needed to be able to wash their hands.
He took his time rinsing, until the foam was long gone. One part of her recognized that she was staring at him, and that she shouldn’t, because the situation risked careening past awkward, but at this angle, she could watch his hands rub together. Fingers twisting in the opposite palm. She couldn’t dispel the image of a man fisting his own cock, or, heaven help her, fingers twisting in her . Her feet felt glued to the floor, her legs stone pillars.
Then he cupped water in one hand and bent over the sink to drink. If she didn’t have a young child, she’d gladly hang a framed view of Nico’s ass in that soft denim on her wall. When he turned, she saw that drips had made dark spots on his shirt. One spread across the “X” in sexy , another over the “R” in chert .
“Sorry.” He wiped the back of his wrist across his chin. His tongue gathered moisture off his wet lips before he continued. “We packed the glasses.”
A polite woman would look elsewhere, but etiquette reminders weren’t part of the slogan on the fabric he bunched to dry his hands, and definitely weren’t written on the skin revealed above his waistband. She wanted to follow the trail of dark curls arrowing from his navel, follow it behind the beckoning silver button and zipper, to see if he resembled a sun-kissed demigod everywhere, or if the trail led to a paler region.
More for something to say than curiosity, she glanced at the brown paper bag he’d set on the counter and asked, “What did you get?”
“Drinks.” First he unloaded two waters, then a growler-sized bottle from a popular downtown brewery. In profile, it was easy to watch the rise and fall of his chest. “I didn’t know which you’d prefer, so I brought both.” He hesitated with his hand still concealed in the bag. “And these.” The final item he produced was a purple-and-gold box that made her heart stop.
Condoms.
“If you still want to.” Instead of looking at her, he kept his gaze on the counter.
Thudding began again, from her ears to her chest and then lower. Could be her heartbeat. Could be wild dance moves about to break free. “I do.”
After hearing her own voice, strong with assertion, her head cleared and she felt satisfaction similar to when she left the grocery store with everything she wanted, but without spending an extra hundred dollars.
“About what happened this afternoon…”
Shit. They were going there. She kept her voice gentle in the pause. “It’s okay, truly. I said that and I meant it.”
“I want to explain. I have to.” His words winged after each other, seemingly unplanned. “My therapist says I have survivor’s guilt.”
“Oh.” With a smidge of her own good-girl guilt, she realized that she didn’t want to listen to a description of how he felt responsible for some undoubtedly very sad event that would likely cast a pall over the evening. She just…didn’t. Damn, she was shallow. “Whatever happened, you don’t have to talk—”
“It’s been”—he waved a hand between them, indicating their bodies—“two years.” He took a breath. “Actually, more, I guess.”
All right. Two plus years. Even if she’d been wrong to assume he wanted to burden her with a long story, she hadn’t expected to hear that this spectacularly sexy man had gone far longer than she had without having sex. She moved closer, drawn by the need to touch his shoulder.
“Mostly, I’ve dealt with it, I go out with friends again, and stuff, but this is—well, the last thing. I mean, obviously not the last last thing, but mostly. I guess. Or not.” They were less than an arm’s length apart when he turned to fully face her. The way his lips had tightened and the outside corners of his eyes looked drawn down made him look older. “So yeah, if I drift off or get lost in my head, talk to me, okay?” He looked so alone. “Keep me tethered. Keep me with you. Talk.”
This beautiful, sad man kept surprising her. “I can do that.”