Chapter 50
Fifty
“Reese?” Trish’s tone is as surprised as her wide eyes. She raises to a stand to reveal her suit dress and the fact her style hasn’t improved in the two months I’ve been gone. “I wasn’t expecting you for another month.”
My mouth makes a plastic smile as I smooth my skirt and step into her office. “You know how I like to be ahead of schedule.”
She laughs softly. “Sit down.”
I’ve been in Chicago just over week, the exact amount of time it took me to be able to get out of bed and will myself to do something other than sulk and ignore phone calls.
The movers brought my things back, and the only person from Fontain I’ve talked to is Banyan because he’s running the vineyard until I figure out what to do with it.
Desperate times call for desperate measures and all.
“How’s your mom?” Trish asks when I’ve settled across from her.
“Good. Her recovery went better than anyone could’ve hoped. She’s going back to work part time. Hopefully driving in the next month.”
“That’s wonderful.” Her eyes drop to my midsection. “And everything else?” She’s almost giddy. “Did you select a donor?”
“Yes,” I say matter-of-factly.
She sucks in a delighted breath and claps her hands. “Reese that’s—”
“But it turns out my body is unwilling to comply.” It’s the closest I’ve come to saying the truth out loud and relay it to Trish like I’m reporting EBITDA in a Qbr.
Just a fact, just numbers. Nothing personal, no emotions.
Fontain was a fucked-up fever dream and I’m going to treat it as such.
“Therefore, any more time on sabbatical is unnecessary.”
Her mouth opens, but she doesn’t say anything.
It’s fine because there’s nothing to say.
I don’t want her to tell me the options or how people have it worse.
I don’t want to hear a personal story or that it’s part of God’s plan and things happen for a reason.
The plan or reason don’t change what is or isn’t.
I just want to get back to work. Unless, of course, my inability to procreate will be used against me.
Which, at this point, fuck it. If she sends me away, I’ll be the woman in the woods with cats and canned goods, what do I care?
“If it suits you and your brothers, I’d like to come back to work early.
Matt can keep Fizz Co.” Once it occurred to me that every time I dealt with the account I’d think of what it took for me to get it and remind me of the worst heartache of my life, I realized how little I cared. “I have other accounts to work on.”
Sympathetic lines crease her face. “Okay.”
I stand and she follows suit. “If there’s nothing else, I’ll get back to it.”
“Sure,” she says, walking me to the door. “Are you okay, Reese?”
I look past her to the view of the city I once coveted then force yet another smile I don’t feel. “I’m fine.” I take a breath. “But you should know—” She looks at me. “If you ever send me on a sabbatical to thank me again or question who I do or don’t have in my life, I’ll quit.”
She opens her mouth but I walk out the door.
And then I get to work.
I work and I work.
All of Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday morning when Matt strolls into my office with a lollipop, I don’t even fantasize about weaponizing it.
“How’s Fizz Co?” I ask without looking away from my computer.
“A shitload of work,” he says with a chuckle. “How was vacation?”
I bought a business, lost the future I thought I’d have, and had my heart broken; calling it vacation is straight up blasphemy.
“Fine” is all I say.
I do not answer my sisters’ calls.
I do not answer my mom’s calls.
I block Gavin’s number.
On Friday afternoon, I’m at my desk, clicking mindlessly through emails when the familiar scaffold lifts into view. It’s Jake the window washer. He looks the same as he did last time I saw him. Same smile. Same harness and hard hat. Same low wage.
I step to the window as his squeegee drags methodically across it.
A clear pane of hot sand.
It’s cool out today, it must be freezing out there, but he doesn’t look bothered. His eyes meet mine and I wave; he waves back.
Without too much thought, I make two cups of coffee and grab my coat. I keep my head down as I pass the conference room—there’s some sort of office celebration happening behind the frosted glass that I do not want to get roped into—and go to the elevator that’s thankfully empty.
Even so, as the doors close, initial panic flutters.
Hot cups. Coffee. Elevator music. Mint gum. Buttons on the wall. I am not trapped.
At the top floor, I exit then climb the stairs to the roof where the door is wedged open with a brick. A blustery breeze blasts my face as soon as I step outside.
Jake is easy to find.
“Hi,” I say, gesturing with a cup of now lukewarm coffee. “Thought you might like this.”
He does a double take as he unbuckles his harness. “Thanks.”
“I’m Reese.”
He grins. “Jeremy.”
So close.
“You always hang out on the roof with coffee?” he asks, taking a cup from me.
I laugh a little. “I don’t know why I’m up here,” I admit. “Curious I guess. It’s a dangerous job.”
“Eh.” We walk to the roof’s edge and look out over the city. “Not so bad.”
“How long you been doing this?”
“Whole life,” he says around his first sip. “My old man did it too.”
“You have a son following suit?”
“Who knows.” He pulls out a phone and shows me a picture of a teenage boy. “He wants to be a video gamer.”
He gives me a look like whatever that means and I laugh, briefly thinking of Holden.
“You like what you do?”
“Hell yeah.” He stretches his arm out over the city like he owns it before cupping a hand to his ear.
“Hear that?” A medley of wind and traffic fill his pause.
“I’m serenaded every day and get a perspective most people don’t.
Makes the big things seem small.” He takes a quick sip of his coffee. “Even the fall ain’t so bad.”
I peer over the edge. Fifty stories in the air. “Looks like a pretty shitty fall,” I say.
He laughs around the rim of the cup. “This coffee’s shitty.”
Now I laugh. It kind of is.
“I’ll tell ya this,” he continues. “The difference between here and the ground reminds me that we only get one shot at life. Sometimes the windows are cracked or sometimes it rains—” He points a finger at me. “Now that’s shitty.”
Again, I laugh.
“Either way. I get to come up here and make the city shine. If the wind blows and the cable breaks—” He shrugs. “Probably ain’t the worst way to go.”
Jeremy takes his final sip of coffee then crushes the cup. “I gotta clean up,” he says, gesturing to buckets, squeegees, and ropes. “But I’m guessing you came up here for a reason.”
I’m up here because I miss Gavin. Because I can’t have a baby. Because I wonder how Addie’s doing. Because I make more money than this man and he’s happier than I can ever be.
“I guess I just wanted to see why you’re so happy.” My eyes skim the skyline of a city filled with people I don’t know.
“Easy,” he says. “I choose it.”
“My dad always said to choose excellence.”
“Same damn thing if you do it right,” he counters.
“I love my job, but the happy is mostly about everything else. The people. My wife deserves better, but she sticks around anyway.” He lets out a self-deprecating chuckle.
“Hell, maybe that’s all happiness really comes down to—choosing someone and letting them choose you back, even if you don’t deserve it.
Maybe that’s the real choice, you know? Can’t control much else. ”
As he coils a rope, I ruminate in the simplistic irony of his words.
Gavin chose me against my wishes, and he kept choosing me until I made the choice for him. He chose me when I berated him in Mom’s yard and through my antics with the donors—including assault. Maybe he would have chosen me if he knew that I was damaged goods, even if I think he deserves better.
Though, according to Jeremy, so does his wife, and he seems like a great man.
Ultimately, I was, like I always am, trying to minimize the fallout by controlling the situation. And while my goal was making things better for Gavin, it’s been hell on me. Days and days of my body being empty and missing his touch like a dying plant misses water.
I’m at the door when Jeremy calls my name.
“Life’s shitty,” he says. “But not always.”
He dumps a bucket of water down a drain and turns on a spigot. He’s a window washer who genuinely loves his life. I got a lot wrong about who I thought he was. “You a Bears fan, Jeremy?”
“Da Bears,” he says the way only someone from Chicago can. “Hell yeah. Ben Johnson’s takin’ ’em all the way this year. Mark my words.”
I smile to myself—I didn’t get everything wrong.
I take the stairwell down to the elevator, pushing the button and blowing out a breath as I check my phone; it’s four thirty in North Carolina.
Addie will be finishing play practice, and Nancy will be picking her up.
My sisters will be heading home or wrangling kids.
Mom will be doing God knows what. And Gavin . . . and Gavin.
For the first day all week, none of them have called.
At some point, I have to apologize to Rue. She’s having a baby, and I was a complete asshole. But since an apology also means an explanation, I can’t do it. Not yet. Not until every time I think of her having a baby I don’t think of Gavin and Addie and the life I won’t have.
Maybe I’ll never apologize.
The elevator arrives on the top floor, and the doors slide open as I drop my phone in my coat pocket.
This time it’s not empty, and I know who’s in there before I know who’s in there. Before I see the width of his shoulders or blue of his eyes or glass-carved scars dotting his hands, I know who it is.
Because there stands Gavin.
In a tux.