Chapter Twelve
Autumn
I'm working on the O'Keefe press brief for the first leg of the tour when my phone buzzes on the desk beside me.
I glance over, expecting another message from Anna, but I find Sam's name on the screen instead.
My attention leaves the brief so quickly and completely that I have to read the same line again before I give up pretending I'm still working. I pick up my phone.
I stare at the message for a few seconds. Seriously? That's what he's got.
After everything that happened between us, after I stood in his apartment and asked him if he wanted me, Sam has decided the safest way to reach out is to ask about work.
The disappointment hits first. I'm annoyed with myself for that almost immediately, because seeing his name made me expect something more before I'd even opened the message.
Maybe he'd ask to see me. Maybe he'd say he'd been thinking about what happened.
Maybe he'd finally have something to say that required more from him than four polite words.
Instead, he's asking about the tour.
I set my phone down, but I don't go back to the brief. A minute later I pick it up again and type:
I leave tomorrow.
I read it once.
Summer already told me she stopped by Vibes and made sure he knew I was leaving. He has the date. If he wants to see me before I go, he can ask me. I'm not going to keep handing him the beginning of a conversation and hoping he'll finish it.
I delete my message, then type a different reply.
Is that seriously all you have to say to me?
It's a fair question, and it's what I actually want to know.
I want to know whether the last few months are eating at him the way they're eating at me.
Whether he's sleeping badly. Whether he looks toward the door every time someone walks into Vibes.
Whether he's replayed that night in his apartment and found the words he couldn't give me while I was standing there.
I want all of that. I just don't want to have to ask him for it too.
I delete my message and put my phone back on the desk.
When I turn back to the brief, I've lost my place. I start the paragraph over, make it halfway through and realize I'm still thinking about Sam's text, so I move my phone to the other end of the desk and make myself keep working.
It lasts maybe five minutes.
The worst part is that I miss him. I can be furious about what he said to Bex and still remember the look he gives me when he catches me stealing something off his plate.
I can know walking out of his apartment was the right thing to do and still miss waking up in his bed.
I can hate that he called us casual and wonder whether he reached across the mattress last night before remembering I wasn't there.
Work usually helps because it's a distraction that doesn't care how I feel. Somebody gives me a problem, I find the part that's broken and deal with it. There is always a next call, another decision, some version of the story that can be made clearer.
There is no useful next step with Sam. I already went back after hearing him tell Bex we weren't serious. I gave him the chance to tell me something different when he knew I was listening. I asked what we were, told him what I wanted and asked if he wanted me.
Maybe I should've done it sooner, hindsight and all that.
I spent months making sure Sam knew I had my own life, then quietly made choices with him in the middle and never told him. That part is mine. I don't know yet what to do with the fact that it doesn't change what happened when I finally asked.
I pull the brief back up and find my place.
My phone stays quiet.
Lucia is already halfway out of the diner booth when she sees me the next afternoon.
Marisol catches her juice before Lucia's knee takes it with her, and I barely get my bag off my shoulder before two small arms lock around my waist.
"Hi to you too."
"Autumn, London is far." Lucia whines with her face pressed against me.
"So I've heard."
She pulls back. "Farther than the zoo."
"A lot farther."
Lucia looks at her mother as though this confirms a serious lapse in my judgment.
Marisol slides over to make room. "We've spent most of the afternoon establishing that the zoo is basically another country."
"You can't drive to London," Lucia tells me.
"That's true."
"You can drive to the zoo."
I look at Marisol. "I don't think I can recover from this."
"She's been preparing."
Lucia climbs into my lap, satisfied, and retrieves the blue crayon she'd abandoned on the table.
For a while it feels normal. Marisol tells me about a costume shipment that arrived with six left gloves and no right ones.
Lucia colors hard enough to emboss the table beneath the placemat.
I steal a piece of toast off Marisol's plate and get my hand slapped.
Then Lucia asks, without looking up, "Will you come to my birthday?"
My hand stops against her back.
Her birthday is far enough away that I could lie to both of us. Maybe the tour schedule will work. Maybe I'll be back in Chicago. Maybe I'll be close enough to make it happen.
"I really want to."
Her crayon stops. "You can come?"
"I don't know yet."
She turns in my lap. "No. You come."
"I'm going to try."
Her face crumples.
"My birthday."
My brain is already ahead of me, building alternatives. I can video call. I can send something from London. Once I know the tour schedule, maybe I can move things around.
I almost start offering all of it before I realize none of it is what she asked for.
Lucia wants me there, and I can't promise her that.
So I stop trying to make it better and hold her.
Marisol lets us sit there until the worst of it passes.
Eventually the pancakes arrive, and whipped cream does what neither of us can.
Lucia wipes her face and looks down at the placemat, then at me.
"Dog-cat."
I blink. "What?"
"You owe me."
Marisol slides a clean placemat across the table.
"This feels opportunistic."
"It probably is."
Lucia hands me the blue crayon. I draw something that looks less like a dog-cat and more like a problem for local authorities.
She studies it with wet eyelashes. "Oh, that is very bad."
"I just held you through an emotional crisis."
She takes the crayon from me. "Still bad."
Marisol laughs while Lucia adds ears the size of the animal's head.
"He already had ears."
"Bad ears."
"She's brutal."
"You'll survive."
When Lucia is satisfied, I fold the placemat and put it in my bag. Outside, she runs a few steps ahead while Marisol and I stand beside the car.
"How are you doing?" she asks.
Fine gets as far as the back of my throat.
"Pretty shitty."
Marisol nods. "Sounds about right. I'm here for you, you know."
"I'll be okay."
I glance at her.
"Different question."
That almost makes me smile.
She watches Lucia for a second. "You do light up when you talk about London."
"I'm terrified if I'm being honest. I'm excited, but this is next level."
"Sounds worth finding out."
I look over at Lucia, who is crouched near the curb studying something with the concentration of a crime-scene investigator.
"Yeah."
Marisol bumps her shoulder against mine, and that's all she gives me.
Lucia comes running back and grabs my hand. She cries again when I hug her goodbye, and this time I don't search for anything to make it stop.
Summer is in the kitchen making coffee when I come in. She hugs me before I get my coat all the way off, which is getting harder now that there is a baby between us.
I pull back and look down at her stomach.
"Jesus, babe."
Summer immediately covers it with both hands. "Watch yourself."
"You're beautiful, Summer, absolutely glowing."
"I am pregnant. That's generally the trajectory. I'm like a fucking glowing beacon."
"I saw you like a week ago."
"And yet the baby has continued growing without your supervision."
"Rude."
She laughs and reaches for my coat. I catch her wrist before she can take it.
"You're pregnant. Stop trying to wait on me."
"I am capable of hanging up a coat."
"Debatable."
She gives me a look and hangs it up anyway.
There's coffee waiting on the table and something warm under a towel that smells like cinnamon. Colt isn't here, which feels deliberate, but not in a way that bothers me. Summer knows when I need a room without an audience.
I sit down while she eases into the chair across from me with more effort than the last time I saw her.
"Okay, that's new."
"Shut up."
"Are you uncomfortable?"
"Constantly."
"Sleeping?"
"No."
"Eating?"
"Everything."
"Colt driving you insane?"
"He has downloaded three baby apps."
I stare at her.
"Three?"
"They disagree with each other, which means I now get nightly briefings."
"Of course you do."
"Last night the baby was either the size of a mango, a grapefruit or a small woodland animal. Colt found the lack of consensus upsetting."
I laugh into my coffee.
Summer settles one hand over the side of her stomach.
"Has she been moving a lot?"
"Constantly. Usually when I'm trying to sleep."
"Already difficult."
"Definitely Colt's child."
"Does he talk to her?"
Summer gives me a look.
"Oh my God. He does."
"Every night."
My heart does something annoying in my chest. "That's cute."
"Don't tell him I said that."
"I have no loyalty to you."
"Can I feel?"
Her face softens. "Of course."
I move around the table and crouch beside her chair. Summer takes my hand and presses it against the right side of her stomach.
Nothing. I wait.
"She's ignoring me."
"She doesn't perform on command."
"That's inconvenient. I'm leaving the country tomorrow."
Summer snorts, and then something bumps against my palm.
I look at her.
"Was that her?"
"No, Autumn. I swallowed a hamster."
"Fuck you."
Another movement rolls beneath my hand, smaller this time.
"Hi, baby."
My voice comes out softer than I expect. Summer doesn't say anything. I leave my hand there another few seconds before sitting down again.
"You're sending me everything."
"Everything?"
"Ultrasounds. Pictures. Updates."
"So when I have gas?"
"Don't be disgusting."
"You said everything."