Chapter Two
I pressed my apartment’s intercom, holding it just long enough to hear my best friend Marin shout, “It’s me! I’m in the lobby with a super-cranky Ethan, Sophia doing the potty dance, and a very fragile bottle of our favorite rosé. So please, El, let us in!”
Hitting the buzzer, I moved to the front door and pulled it open wide.
Seconds later, the elevator chimed, and Sophia came barreling past me, not even pausing to say hello before making a beeline straight for the bathroom.
Ethan followed right behind her, arms pumping, launching himself onto the couch like it was the finish line of an Olympic sprint.
“You okay in there, Soph?” I called in the direction of the bathroom.
There was a flush, followed by the sound of the sink running. Finally, the door creaked open and Sophia toddled out, cheeks pink with relief. “Sorry, Auntie El. I shouldn’t have drank that whole thing. Um, do you have any juice?”
“Yeah, juice!” Ethan called from the couch.
“No juice. You both just had big sugary drinks. Water,” Marin said firmly.
“How about water with a side of cupcake?” I offered with a wink.
Marin sighed. “One cupcake . . . to share.”
“Deal.” I looked at the kids, who instantly lit up. As their unofficial fairy godmother, I kinda loved that feeling. “And then maybe later you can give me a hand with Pickles. I got her a new ball to play in for when I need to freshen up her cage. Think you can help her test it out?”
“Yeahhhh!” they both squealed.
Ethan pulled a wrapper out from his pocket. “Can guinea pigs eat Fruit Roll-Ups?”
“Um . . . I don’t think that’d be the best idea. But I appreciate you wanting to share your snack with her.”
“Can we go say hello?” Sophia asked, already moving in the direction of Pickles’s habitat tucked in the corner of the living room.
“Of course you can! She’ll be so excited to see you. She’s been asking about you all morning!” I replied to the backs of their heads.
Ethan burst out laughing. “Auntie El, guinea pigs can’t talk!”
“You’re so right! What was I thinking?” I joked back as I wandered into the kitchen to grab the cupcake I’d promised them.
From the living room where she was supervising with Pickles, Marin called out, “Hey, I actually managed to catch your whole show today.”
Balancing two sippy cups and a plate in my hands, I came out and set them down on the table. “Yeah? And what’d you think?”
She paused, then said, “It was . . . informative.”
“‘Informative’?”
“All those stats about Valentine’s Day and marriage and divorce rates. Scary, but informative.”
“I used the stats to help prove my point, but you know the show’s really more about the stories behind the numbers. All the women who have fallen prey to the trap of Valentine’s Day.”
“Women like me, you mean,” Marin said with a raised brow.
“No! Of course not. You and Tyler aren’t the rule. You’re the exception. The happy, disgustingly well-adjusted exception.”
Marin snorted. “Please. We argue about who left the sponge in the sink on a daily basis.”
“No, I refuse to believe that any couple who made such perfect specimens”—I glanced over at the kids, who had made their way back to the table and were now licking frosting off the same cupcake—“could possibly fight about sponges.”
She threw her head back and laughed. “Hardly perfect, but so damn cute it’s hard not to see past their meltdowns and messes.
Especially when they’re tired. Which, speaking of, for all our benefit, I should put Ethan down for a short nap.
He woke up at the crack of dawn and is moments away from going full Terminator. Can I put him in your room for a bit?”
“Of course, but let me do it. I’ll hang with him until he falls asleep.”
“You sure?”
“Please, it would be my pleasure.” I made my way over to the TV and flipped it on with the remote. “You and Soph just go on snackin’ and enjoy Moana for the hundredth time.”
“Thousandth,” Marin snarked as she tossed a handful of Chex Mix into her mouth.
“C’mon, dude, let’s go rest in my room for a little while.” I reached for Ethan’s hand and pulled him off the couch.
“But I’m not tired,” he whined, while his saggy posture told a completely different story. He rubbed his eye with a fist and yawned as if on cue.
“I know, but I am, and I was hoping you’d come keep me company while I take a short snooze. Would you mind?”
“I guess,” he shrugged, and trudged beside me up the hall. “But don’t play with Pickles without me, okay?”
“We would never,” I promised. After I pulled the curtains closed, the room darkened, and I turned down the covers, lifted Ethan in my arms, and tossed him playfully into the mountain of throw pillows, his giggle like a wind chime as he plopped into the plush bedding.
“Auntie El, it’s too dark in here.”
“Not to worry, bud, I can put this on.” I tapped my tableside lamp once, and it illuminated a light on its softest setting. “Better?”
“Yeah,” he said through another yawn.
“Great.” I pulled the blanket up and tucked it around his sides. “You snug?”
“As a bug in a rug,” he said, repeating the line I’d taught him.
“Perfect. Okay, sweet dreams, little dude.”
“I told you, I’m not sleepy.”
“Yeah, I know. Let’s just enjoy the quiet for a little while, and then we’ll see how we feel,” I hedged as I rubbed his back in circles.
“Ugh, fine,” he said, but I could already feel his body relaxing under the weight of the thick coverlet. Turning his head toward the nightstand, the temporary quiet was broken with, “I like that picture of you.”
“Huh? What picture?”
“That one. Under the lamp. Where is that?”
Craning my neck, I glanced at the picture in the frame, a five by seven of me on my study exchange in France during my sophomore year of college.
I’d ended up staying for a few weeks after the program had ended, traveling around Paris and eating my body weight in croissants and fondue.
Matty, my boyfriend and, really, best friend back then, had wanted to come for a visit, but with a pretty important internship he couldn’t take a vacation from, it hadn’t been possible.
We survived on emails and texts and made it out on the other side, like I knew we would.
I’d been convinced that if that time apart hadn’t ended us, nothing would.
Turns out, I’d been very, very wrong about that.
“That’s me in France at the Eiffel Tower, one of the most magical places in the whole wide world. I’ve only ever been to Paris that one time, but I’ve been dying to go back ever since. You wanna come with me, bud?”
“Only if I can take my mom. She’d miss me too much, I think,” he said.
My cheek twinged with a smile that crept across my face in the dark. “I’m sure she would.”
I thought of my own mother. How she’d get so wrapped up in her new boyfriends and relationships that she wouldn’t have even noticed if I wasn’t home some nights, let alone have missed me.
And my father, who’d abandoned us both to start an entirely new family.
What must it be like, I wondered, to grow up with two parents who loved you so fiercely and made you the center of their world so much that you never had to question your place in it?
Silence fell between us, and I was almost convinced he’d fallen asleep until his little voice squeaked, “Did you live there by yourself?”
“In Paris? Yeah, I sure did. Just me and a fridge full of cheese!” I joked. “Pure paradise.”
“Oh,” he said and fell quiet again. I rolled my head to the side to look at him, and as I did, he placed his pudgy hand on my cheek, and I melted under its warmth. He sighed. “Auntie El, I want you to meet someone, because I don’t want you to be alone.”
The comment caught me so off guard I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. Just shy of five years old, I was taken aback by his compassion and intuitiveness, seeming so wise beyond his years. “Awww, Ethan, I’m okay on my own. But why do you say that?”
“Well, if there’s ever a fire, someone has to run in to get you out.”
“A fire? What? Where did that come from?”
“Yeah, like in The Greatest Showman,” he announced, pronouncing Showman like show-man.
“Ohhh.” I laughed. “Well, you don’t have to worry about me, sweetheart.
I have a brand-new up-to-code fire extinguisher right under my sink and a cutting-edge fire-blanket thingy Gigi Sonja proudly bought me from QVC.
Now, get some sleep. If Mommy hears us chatting away in here, she’s gonna have a cow! ”
“Have a cow?!” Ethan barked out a laugh like the expression was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.
“Yes, a total cow!” I pressed, his giggle infectious. “So let’s close our eyes, alright?”
“Okay, Auntie El. Love you,” he said, rolling his head to the other side and burrowing deeper under the covers.
Love you.
The words made my chest tighten. It had been some time since I’d heard them directed at me. Yet here they were, and for a moment I was envious of Marin, who probably heard them unconditionally all day long, as natural to her as breathing.
It only took a matter of minutes, but when his snores soon became heavier and steady, I slunk out of the side of the bed and tiptoed out the door back to the living room, where Sophia was also passed out on the couch.
“He’s finally asleep? Did he grill you with a million questions?” Marin asked, and followed me into the kitchen so we wouldn’t disturb Sophia. “It’s his new thing.”
“Only a half million,” I teased and picked through the Chex Mix for a few of the pumpernickel chips.
“He did mention—and I quote—that he wants me to find someone because he doesn’t want me to be alone.
Apparently, he’s afraid that if there’s a house fire, Hugh Jackman or Zac Efron won’t be available to run in to save me. ”