June, this year #3
“Millie, I need to talk to you about the meeting with the Gellermans last week,” he says, his tone surprisingly serious.
Oh crap, right. The meeting I was supposed to report back to Stephen about, which took place last Friday, just before I arrived.
I’ve been avoiding the topic, as I have no idea what happened at that meeting.
Fortunately, I haven’t had to explain until this moment, as we were so busy with other accounts all week.
I’d been hoping Stephen would forget to follow up entirely.
“I had a pretty surprising email from Mike Gellerman late yesterday,” Stephen continues.
“He asked if you were feeling better this week, and whether we could reschedule. So, while I was out just now, I called him to ask what he was talking about. He said that about ten minutes into last Friday’s meeting, when Bunny was explaining about the new lot parcels, you just got up without a word, walked out of their boardroom, and never came back.
Without saying that something had come up, or that you had to leave, or anything.
And you didn’t answer when they called your cell.
” He shakes his head and picks up his coffee, his eggs getting cold in front of him.
“What in the world happened, Mill? And why didn’t you tell me? ”
My stomach drops. Yep, that about tracks. This world’s version of me, in a fugue state, compelled to get to Lake Bluff on a Friday afternoon for no apparent reason.
Not exactly something I can explain to Stephen.
“Right, I was going to tell you about that — I totally forgot to mention it,” I lie, flustered.
“Uh, yeah, I sat down with them but I was . . . suddenly feeling really ill. I had to get up real quick and find the bathroom — I couldn’t even talk without risking vomiting across the boardroom table.
I was, uh, really sick. Then I was too embarrassed to return, I just got in the car and drove away.
” I shake my head, feigning remorse. “I feel awful about it. I should’ve emailed this week to apologize to them, and told you about it, but we were so busy, I totally forgot.
But I’ll apologize. I’ll send them some wine, or something. ”
Stephen sighs, heavily. “Well, okay. Don’t send wine, though — remember Bunny is a recovering alcoholic?
” His expression softens. “I’m sorry you were feeling so bad, though.
Were you really sick in their bathroom? I wonder if it was a sketchy sandwich from that new café we tried that day.
” He reaches to pick up his fork, but then stops, his hand hovering mid-air.
“Wait. Do you think . . . ?” He looks at me expectantly. “Could you be . . . pregnant?”
Shit, I didn’t think this lie through.
“Oh, no, I don’t think so,” I reply hurriedly. “I’d know. Probably the sandwich.”
He nods, disappointed, and finally digs into his slightly congealed eggs. “I figured that sandwich shop wasn’t great. I’m sorry.”
God, I can’t stand lying to this man, and now he’s the one apologizing to me. “No, I’m sorry. It was still very unprofessional of me, and I should have told the Gellermans before I left.”
“They’ll be fine — they were just worried about you,” he replies, giving me a forgiving smile, which gradually slips as his brow creases. “But then . . . how come you were late home that night, if you left the meeting so early? I had assumed they had kept you late.”
Jeez, this guy doesn’t miss a thing.
“Oh, right. Yeah, I, uh, was still feeling ill while driving, so I pulled over and spent a while sitting in a park, until I felt better. It took some time for the nausea to pass. And it was such a warm afternoon, I just chilled there for a while. I’d turned my phone off for the meeting, so I guess I never heard Mike’s calls. ”
Ugh. These lies upon lies are making me feel genuinely nauseated. I push my plate away, my breakfast only half eaten.
Stephen nods, sympathetically, and then surprises me by chuckling. “I’m surprised you were so energetic when you got in that evening, after that experience.”
Yeah, my story really isn’t adding up. I’d all but ripped his clothes off when I got to the apartment for the first time.
“Me, too,” I reply, laughing to cover up the moment. “I guess you just do it for me, no matter what. You always did.”
He finishes a mouthful of food with a slight head shake.
“Oh, I don’t know about that. You gotta admit it took a while at Northwestern, after you joined the Astrophysics Society, before you liked me in a romantic way.
You were too obsessed with that sleazy theater professor for anyone else to get a look in your freshman year. ”
I grimace. That sounds about right. And it’s useful information — so, Stephen and I got together in my second year, after an affair with Rufus that sounds like it ended earlier than in my version. And before Stephen would’ve met Eve, his wife in my reality.
I met him first, as I’ve wished so many times that I had. But it’s not feeling like I thought it would.
I tilt my head at him. “Yeah, but I saw sense in the end, didn’t I?”
Stephen gets up to clear our plates. “Thank goodness you did. Okay, I’m taking a shower.”
I clean up the kitchen while Stephen showers, my stomach tumbling with discomfort. And, if I’m honest, disappointment. In this life, and in myself, for lying so much to Stephen, and for not being able to enjoy being with him as much as I should.
The truth is, in the week that’s passed, my attraction to Stephen has taken something of a nosedive.
Sure, I’ve had a massive crush on him all the years we’ve been working together in my regular life, at Magnolia — but the truth is, he wasn’t available to me in that life.
It’s very easy to romanticize the idea of a relationship you tell yourself you want, but know will never happen.
It’s a whole different ballgame to actually live the banal day-to-day of life with that person.
Be careful what you wish for, I guess.
Stephen emerges with a puff of steam from the bathroom behind the wall of kitchen cabinets, where I’m stacking dishes into the dishwasher.
He’s dressed in nothing but a blue towel around his waist, his chest pale but flushed red in patches from the hot water, his hair wet. And his face a strange, sickly white.
He holds something up.
“Do you want to tell me what the hell this is?” His voice is dark and low, his normally blue eyes stormy.
In his hand, the packet of contraceptive pills I found last weekend, and have been taking daily ever since.
Shit.
“Stephen,” I reply, my stomach churning. “I wanted to talk to you about this.”
He throws them down onto the counter. “What the fuck, Millie? You’re taking the pill and not telling me?
I think we’re trying for a baby, while you’re deliberately perverting the natural course of our bodies, not to mention God’s will, to prevent it from happening? What possible excuse can you have?”
He’s furious. I’ve never seen him like this, nor ever heard him curse before — not even when he lost it once at Magnolia, after a client pulled their account and he had to scrap months of work.
I hold my hands up, then reach for him. “Stephen, I’m sor—”
“No,” he interjects, backing away. His towel is about to drop, and he grabs onto it. “I don’t want to hear some . . . some bull right now, Millie. I honestly can’t even look at you.” He shakes his head, his brow deeply furrowed. “I need to think for a second, okay?”
“Okay, I totally get it,” I reply hurriedly, holding up my hands in defense once more. “We can talk later. I’ll go out for a walk, give you some space. We’ll talk later, okay?”
He says nothing in reply, just gives me a single nod, and turns to march into the bedroom, slamming the door behind him.
My pulse racing, I grab my phone from the table and my purse from the foyer, and slip on my sandals. I pick up the keys from the console, and quietly let myself out of the door.
Where to go? I still don’t know Aurora very well. But I had spotted a café a few blocks away, when I was out grocery shopping earlier this week, and it looked okay.
I find the café on my phone’s map, and walk the three blocks to it.
Inside, it’s buzzing with friends and couples having Saturday morning brunch, and seems like a fun community space.
Probably the nicest place I’ve seen since I arrived in this town.
I order a double-shot latte and a blueberry scone, with lots of gluten to spite Stephen, and take it to a small metal table in the sunshine outside.
This is not good.
This is not how my new, perfect life with Stephen was supposed to go.
The two of us at opposite ends of the religious spectrum, disagreeing over whether to have children, me lying to him about using contraception, us working together on small-fry accounts in a mediocre business park.
Living in Aurora, which has nowhere near the buzz or culture of Chicago, which I’ve been craving all week.
Maybe the Millie in this life is okay with a quieter life, and has grown into it, having been with Stephen since university.
But I’m not that girl. I’m a different Millie now, and I don’t think I can change myself enough to fit into this world.
Not even for a much-longed-for relationship with Stephen.
Oh, God.
I know what that means.
I knew finding this life had been too easy.