Chapter 13 #2
“I would have never asked you to do the play if I’d known.
” His eyes are pleading for forgiveness when they don’t need to be.
I’ve managed to dodge Brian every day I’ve dropped Henry off at school.
I wasn’t naive enough to believe that would last forever.
I’m bound to run into him a time or two, and I need to get used to being around him without it being…
weird. After twelve years of living and sleeping in the same bed with someone, all to have it stop overnight, I don’t know any other adjective to describe it.
“I know.” I drop my head to stare at his carpet as I expel a puff of air from my nose. “It feels unfair that you know something so deeply personal about me.”
Besides the comment he made about Quinn’s mom and the fact that he’s living in his childhood home, all the personal things I know about him I’ve heard from the news.
When he turns and walks away, I realize why.
Rhett holds everything close to his chest. He’s a private man despite a very public profession.
It’s hard not to wonder if there are parts of himself he’s hiding.
And I thought we were opening up there for a minute, but now I’m afraid I crossed a line—offended him without intending to.
“I promised you a drink,” he says, and I relax. Some people use alcohol to open up. Maybe that’s what this is.
I follow him into the kitchen. He stops at a cabinet next to the fridge.
It’s the only one with a glass front displaying various bottles of liquor.
I drag out a barstool and sit on top of it while he pulls two copper mugs from the bottom shelf.
He adds a small scoop of crushed ice from the freezer, then holds up a bottle of vodka.
“This okay?” he asks.
“Sure.”
He twists off the top and pours a couple of ounces, then chases it with ginger beer.
“Where’d you learn how to do that?” I ask as he garnishes the mug with a lime wedge.
He smirks. “Humpin’ Hannah’s.”
I know the place—a popular downtown nightclub with live music. Been there a few times.
“Wasn’t always Rhett Dawson,” he reminds me.
I try to picture him as a bartender. It’s a fuzzy image barricaded by the even bolder and brighter one of him singing on a stage. Makes me realize how very little I know about Everett Dawson. The guy I want to know everything about.
He slides the glass across the countertop. It stops mere inches from my hand. I quirk a brow, impressed. Then I sample my drink. The tart of the lime and the sweet of the ginger mix. It tastes as good as it looks.
“Nice to know a mediocre singer has a fallback plan.”
He leans a forearm onto the countertop, fixing his eyes on me. It sends the hair on my arms standing at attention, and a tingling sensation skitters down my spine.
“What about you? Always wanted to be a nanny for a famous musician?” He lifts his glass to his tightly pressed lips. The look he’s giving me is a dangerous one.
I nod. “One with a big ego too.”
His chuckle is deep and throaty.
“I’ve always wanted to do something that makes me happy. I think being around kids does that,” I add. “Did you always live here? Before Nashville, I mean.”
He watches the pale amber liquid swirl in his glass with the rotation of his wrist. “The tabloids haven’t given that one away yet? Or do you only watch 73 Questions?” His expression is blank when he looks up again and waits for my answer.
“I meant here,” I say, stretching my arms out toward the walls of this home. I know he’s referencing the Vogue YouTube series I absolutely did watch before I met him. The fact that I had a maple fritter donut in my car that morning at drop-off was simply a coincidence from that video.
“No. I moved out right after high school.”
From the unsettled look on his face, I gather he’d rather not be back. “And you don’t like it here?”
“At my parents’ house? It’s not where I wanted to end up, no. How long have you lived here?”
“I moved right after high school too. It’s expensive living in California, and I’d never been to Idaho before, so…” I shrug. There wasn’t much more to the decision than that. I’m not the five-year plan type of gal.
“Did you meet him here too?”
I nod. “When I was nineteen.”
“Nice guy?”
I wouldn’t have married him if he wasn’t nice, I want to argue. But I know he’s just curious like I am about his life.
“Brian grew up in a strict family. A big one too.
There were bills to pay and mouths to feed and no excess for any kind of adventure.
Education was an expectation not an opportunity, and Brian did what his father had done because he felt obligated to.
When I met him, he was knee-deep in his senior year at Boise State—finishing out his last semester of student teaching.
I was the girl at his fraternity party ready to show him a good time.
“My life experience far exceeded his in the realm of fun. I’d moved states on my own, visited five different National Parks sleeping in the back of my Honda Civic, and had no intention of settling down.
I’d traveled with my parents, sky-dived, swum with sharks.
My life excited him at first. But then it became a push and pull of expectations I could never live up to after we got married.
He’d press for me to get a new job when the last one didn’t work out and then be disappointed when I’d find something in retail, working weekends rather than spending time at home with him on his days off. ”
I check his face to see if this is too much. He said Nice guy? and I gave him a monologue. Even though all along I know he was asking whether my ex was nice to me.
“Well, anyway… things change. It was for the best,” I finish.
Doesn’t matter why Brian ended things. They’re over.
“Sounds like you deserve better.”
“We were both at fault. I think Brian wanted to be a good husband as much as I wanted to be a good wife. I didn’t give him what he needed.
Some people aren’t the right fit.” We didn’t bring out the best in each other, no matter how much I hate admitting that.
Staying together isn’t as simple of a choice as I used to believe it was.
He acknowledges my answer with lingering eye contact before looking away and taking another long pull from his glass. “Quinn has a speech therapy evaluation in a week.”
I don’t have to guess if this confession has something to do with the teacher’s meeting he had the other day. Don’t have to ask him if he’s worried about it either. I can hear it in his voice.
“You said it was unfair for me to know something so personal about you. Well, there you go,” he adds in the wake of my silence.
His words drip with self-consciousness. An unease that’s not hard to miss.
Is that why he fought going? Because he’s embarrassed?
“You know the results aren’t a reflection of you as a parent, right?”
His silence is all the answer I need. He’s blaming himself.
“Says the woman who doesn’t have any children.”
I blanch, then burn inside. Of all the things he could have said, I didn’t expect an insult. What stings the most is that he’s right. I can’t pretend to understand what it must feel like to have a child who is struggling. To have a child at all.
I can brush off most things, but this is the one topic I get the most defensive about, and insecurity spills over into my response. “If it bothers you so much, then why did you hire me to help with Quinn?”
He straightens and holds up his palms. “Shit, Summer, I’m sorry.
It doesn’t bother me. I’m just tired of everyone knowing more about parenting than I do.
Why is this the hardest job I’ve ever had?
” His head collapses into his hands, his walls slipping and his vulnerability showing.
“I don’t know how to raise a kid. Up until tonight, she’s never even asked me to go in that box fort you made her.
Never kissed me good night. Never did any of the things she did to show her mom she loved her. ”
It’s clear what I originally said did nothing to make him feel any better. In fact, I think I might have made matters worse. Because now he sounds like he wants my opinion, and I’m in no position to be giving anyone life advice. I’ve told him as much. It’s my turn for another personal truth.
“Last spring I was on a hike by myself, contemplating what to do after my last job didn’t work out.
Brian seemed supportive enough when I told him the news that morning, but I was still visibly spiraling.
I almost stepped on this tabby cat’s tail when she came darting out of the sagebrush and batted at my shoelace.
She didn’t have a collar, so I brought her home with me, and when I walked in the door, Brian took one look at the kitten and said, ‘Really, Summer. You can barely take care of yourself.’”
I don’t mean to get emotional, but that’s exactly what surfaces while dredging up the memory of his words.
Everett circles the counter, stopping right in front of me.
“That’s why you pretended Henry was yours.” He doesn’t ask if it’s true. Just says it like the statement it is.
I hug my arms around my torso. I’d rather throw myself in traffic than say this out loud.
“Do you know what it’s like for a woman in her thirties who looks like a stay-at-home-mom but doesn’t have any children?
Everywhere I go it’s the first question I’m asked.
There must be something wrong with Summer if she hasn’t had a kid by now.
There couldn’t possibly be another reason for why someone would choose not to have one.
So, yes. When you made a comment about Henry being mine, I let you believe it. I didn’t want you thinking—”
He wraps his palms around my arms, stroking up and down in a soothing pattern. “The only thing I was thinking was a woman that confident must make an incredible mom.”
I shake my head and let the tears that have been pooling in my lash line free. “The old me was confident. Now I can’t even go over to the house I shared with him to get a cat he doesn’t even want back. I’m too afraid he’ll be home and remind me I don’t deserve her.”
Rhett’s hugging me by the time I let all of that out.
And I thought I’d stop there, but the warmth of his body seems to be pulling every last admission from me.
“I wouldn’t have dared bring a child into the world with a man who’d resent me about a cat.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want one.” My chest lurches against his with an embarrassing hiccup and I pull away, swiping at my eyes.
“I’m so sorry, this was about you. I’m clearly not the right person for advice on this subject. And you have enough going on. You don’t need to listen to me blubber on about my tragic past.”
“Summer.”
I take backward steps, catching my heel on the edge of the living room rug and pinwheeling my arms to keep from tipping backwards. “You know what—”
“Summer,” he tries to interrupt again.
I point at him. “Maybe you should ask that mother-in-law of yours. She seems bursting with feedback.”
He chuckles as my back connects with the front door. I bend down to slip on my tennis shoes.
“If she said anything offensive to you, I’m sorry. Caroline is insufferable when it comes to Quinn.”
“I think all Caroline wants is to be a part of Quinn’s day. And I mean, I get why. After spending time with her, I’m ready to take your ass to court for custody.”
A smile unfurls across his face as he watches me hop on one foot to get my left shoe over my heel.
“You’re good with her, ya know.”
I choose not to hear the better than me I have a feeling he’s implying. Secretly, I want him to say You’re good with me too, but I know he’s a stubborn man, and he’d never admit to needing anyone else.
“I should go,” I blurt, reaching for the door handle. The distance between us is helping me think more clearly, and I’m sure I’ve overstayed my welcome.
“Yeah, I guess I better get to bed too. There will be an alarm clock shaped like a toddler starting my day before I know it.”
I pull on the handle and a draft of cool night air filters through the opening.
“Thanks again for the clothes.”
“You’re welcome. Good night, Summer.”
“Good night.”
He turns around and I slip out the front door. The breeze is a shock to my system, and I realize there’s one more thing I never got the chance to say. I hadn’t closed the door yet, so I push it back open.
“Everett?”
He turns quickly. “Yeah?”
“You’re doing better than you think you are.”