by L. D. Davis
“Hey, Casey,” I said, as I opened the door for her.
“Hi.” She smiled as she came inside. “Oh my god what are you cooking?”
“Spaghetti and meatballs,” I said as I led the way into the kitchen. “You want to stay for dinner?”
“Oh, that’s tempting.” She lifted a lid and peeked into the pot of meatballs. “But we’re going to my brother-in-law’s for dinner.”
“I’ll put some in a container. You can eat it for your midnight snack.” I smiled as I reached for a container.
“Yeah, you know how much we love those,” she said, rubbing her round belly.
After Emmet and Casey had split up, she started spending time with her single neighbor, a widower and father of two. Only months after Emmet and I married, Casey married Tyrone. I really liked Tyrone. He was a good father to his children and to Owen. He worked hard in construction, and he doted on Casey, something she had been missing in her last marriage.
I know it’s strange to an outsider, but Casey, Tyrone, and his kids became an extension of our family. Casey and Emmet were friends before they got pregnant and got married, and now their friendship is renewed. It wasn’t unusual for their family to end up in our back yard or Emmy’s for a barbecue or party, and last year they even flew to Louisiana for the big Thanksgiving celebration. Now Casey and Tyrone are expecting their first child together, and both Emmet and I are happy for them, Emmet especially. He was glad that she was able to find someone who truly wanted and loved her.
Casey and Owen left and a few minutes after that Emmet, EJ and Rosa came home. As he helped me get dinner on the table, I knew that he had something on his mind. Besides the fact that I could feel his pensive state, there were telltale signs. He was quiet and distracted. Rosa had to ask him the same question three times. I wasn’t worried, because I knew he would tell me what was on his mind when he was ready, and I was very right about that.
After the kids were in bed that night, we settled down on the couch in the living room to catch up on our weekly shows that were on DVR. It was our Saturday night ritual. I made popcorn with too much movie theater style butter and Emmet dumped a handful of Reese’s Pieces into the bowl. We drank root beer floats or milkshakes, or whatever either of us felt like making. Emmet had the remote in his hand, but didn’t turn the television on. He looked over at me and I knew he was ready to talk.
I put the bowl of popcorn on the floor and turned my body towards his. “What’s on your mind?” I asked, running my fingers through his hair.
“Emmy told me about Fashion Week,” he said, getting right to the point.
I sighed. “What about it?”
“Why aren’t you going to do it? I thought you would love to show your label on the same runways you used to walk.”
I shook my head and shrugged a shoulder as I tried to find the right words. “Doing the weeks as a model and doing the weeks as a designer are entirely different. There is an enormous amount of prep work, months and months ahead. I’m already busy, and doing even just one show can consume a tremendous amount of my time.”
“So, you don’t want to do the extra work?” he asked.
“I don’t mind the work,” I said with another shrug. “I just…I don’t want to be responsible for driving a wedge between us again because of my job.”
Emmet took my hand, and smoothed my hair back off of my face. “Do you want to do it, Donya?” he asked softly.
I looked down at our hands. There was no hiding how I felt, because he would know anyway.
“I do, but it’s not necessary.”
His fingers lifted my chin until I was looking into his eyes. “I want you to do it.”
My eyes widened. “What? No,” I shook my head and waved a hand. “You don’t really mean that. Really, baby, you don’t have to say that just to try to appease me. I don’t need to go.”
“Donya, most of the girls you used to work with have melted away into obscurity. They didn’t have staying power. If you wanted to, you could probably still get booked for shows now, because you’re that good. You not only survived the industry, but you evolved within the industry. While other ‘older’ models are selling furniture with their name or doing infomercials on late night television, you have Vogue and Elle and other publications paying close attention to what you’ll be hanging in your boutiques next. I want you to do this. If I have to take more time off of work to accommodate you, I’ll do it. You are the most talented person I know and if you want to do this, I want you to do it, too.”
“Emmet,” I sighed. “You wanted me to model a long time ago, and then you regretted it. I don’t want to relive our past. I promised you that I would be selfless, and if that means not doing Fashion Week, I’m okay with that.”
Emmet gave me a look of frustration and without a word he got off of the couch and walked out of the room. I watched him go up the stairs and wondered what the hell he was doing. Less than a minute later, he jogged down the stairs and came back into the family room carrying our unity knot. He stood in front of me and held it out to me, but I didn’t immediately take it. I looked up at him in confusion.
“This knot was once two ropes entwined into one. The two separate ropes represented our past lives, and despite our connection, our lives were still separate. Together you and I entwined those two ropes into one rope, thus entwining our two separate lives into one life that we share in the present. Together again, we tied that one rope into a knot. This knot represents our future. Together if we each pull on end of the rope, the knot strengthens. Pull your end of the damn rope, Donya.”
I looked at the rope again and then reached out and pulled my end.
“You are going to go to Fashion Week and you are going to kick some fashion ass, and whether I am there with you or here at home, I will be pulling on my end and you will be pulling on yours. The ends may fray or burn or break, but the knot will remain strong. We will remain strong.”
He dropped to his knees before me and gently took the rope from my hands and laid it on the floor beside him.
“You will never have to question whether or not I am pulling on my end, Donya,” he said softly. He put his hand over my heart. “You’ll feel me right there with you.”
I kissed my husband, my other half, the soul on the other end of the line that has always been there. The movie and junk food were forgotten.
Epilogue
I am walking down the runway with an armful of flowers as spectators cheer and applaud in a standing ovation. I feel an elation I have never felt before while in the spotlight. I blow a kiss to Emmet and wave to Emmy and other family and friends who have come to see my first appearance in New York’s Fashion Week. As I walk back to the line of models that are clapping, I gesture to them, not wanting the audience to dismiss their hard work. I turn and do a curtsy and blow more kisses and wave once more before heading backstage.
There is a chorus of congratulations, innumerable hugs, handshakes, and photographs. I thank all of the models for their work, but don’t delay them because many of them have other shows to get to. There are two in particular I really liked working with and I have my assistant speak to them about a campaign, but I won’t make any final decisions on them without discussing it with Felix first.
Felix is still my best friend after Emmy. He is still gorgeous, a little cocky, and a lot of flirty. I don’t know how is wife Ginny puts up with him, especially since their little boys are beginning to follow in their father’s footsteps. I love him, though, enormous ego and all, and I often think about how different my life would be if we never met all of those years ago during a photo shoot. I am thankful for his friendship and for always looking out for me. He approaches me now and embraces me, lifts me off of the floor and swings me around in a circle.
“Put her down before you hurt her,” Ginny demands and smacks his arm. She is seven months pregnant and glowing. I think some of the glow is definitely from her pregnancy, but I think Felix is responsible, too. She tries to be toug
h about his antics, but there is always a trace of an amused and adoring smile under her serious tone.
Owen and Rosa squeeze through the crowd of admirers to hug me. Owen looks more and more like his father every day, right down to the hair that falls into his eyes. Rosa looks a lot like me, and she is a spoiled rotten daddy’s girl. She has Emmet in her pocket and they both know it.
I look around for the nanny and spot her across the room, sitting on a chair with EJ sleeping in her arms. His dark blonde curls peek out from beneath a knitted blanket.
As I am talking with Felix and a few other people, Emmy approaches. I turn to her and accept her fierce embrace. She releases me, we hold hands and I admire the new bracelet on her wrist that Emmet bought for her. He couldn't find the same one he had bought for her so many years ago, but the new one was close. Emmy had cried for a good two hours after Emmet gave it to her.
“It was perfect,” she says of the show, and smiles warmly.
Emmy is the organizational genie of Emmya. She was just helping out before, but I hired her on permanently after I decided to do Fashion Week. She makes sure that all administrative aspects of the business run smoothly. She catches problems before they can occur, but if they at first escape our notice, she handles it and conquers it like a beast.
I kind of stole her from Kessler, Keane & Grayne, and Associates. It was Emmy that had put the law firm on the path of success soon after she moved to Chicago. Luke gives me a hard time at every opportunity he gets about taking away his administrative diva, and I love to rub it in his face.
“I’m not a fashion expert,” Luke says to me now, slinking an arm around his wife’s waist. “But I think you’re very talented.”
“I’m glad you think so. Now maybe you will stop crying about me taking Emmy from you,” I tease.
“Don’t count on it,” he grins. He puts a hand over his wife’s baby bump and kisses the side of her head. Emmy, like Ginny, is also seven months pregnant. She is also glowing, and I know that Luke has just as much to do with her healthy glow as her pregnancy.
I look over Luke’s shoulder and smile at Sam and Fred as they make their way over to us. Sam hugs me so hard that I find it difficult to breathe.
“It was wonderful,” she says, wiping at her eyes. “And your hair looks…well, it isn’t bad.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I say, rolling my eyes before turning to Fred.
He holds me for a long time, and tells me how proud he is of me. I don’t know why, but when Fred tells me he is proud of me, it carries a heavier weight than it does when it is coming from Sam or even Emmy.
“Thank you for always being there for me,” I whisper to him.
“I love you, Kiddo,” he says and kisses my cheek tenderly.
“Grampy, what about me?” Rosa asks, poking her lip out as Fred releases me.
He moves to pick her up, but a warning glare from Sam and me stops him. He shouldn’t be picking up five-year-olds if he expects to keep his heart in decent shape. Instead, he settles for kneeling down and embracing her.
“I love you, too, Mini Kiddo,” he says.
“Don’t kiss me,” Owen says, holding up a hand.
I laugh and then listen to Sam as she sends regards from the rest of the family. They couldn’t all make the trip to New York, though she and Fred brought three of the teenage granddaughters with them. I hug my nieces and I tell them I have every intention of upholding my promise of taking them shopping tomorrow.
I am vaguely aware of Helene snapping pictures of me. She is no longer a freelance photographer, but works for Emmya. I don’t like to keep her and Marcus away from home for long periods, but every few months or as needed, she and her husband travel to whatever location I need them in—usually the Chicago headquarters—and we work, and dine, and enjoy each other’s company. I’ll never forget her kindness the day I met her when my heart was aching over Emmet.
I feel that familiar tug in my chest and know without looking that my sweetheart has walked into the room, but I look anyway. I always will look. I meet his eyes through the chaos and hold his gaze as he moves purposely towards me. He’s carrying a groggy looking EJ in his arms.
“It was perfect,” Emmet says and kisses me sweetly on the lips.
I admit my trepidation was great after Emmet convinced me to do Fashion Week. Every night that I had to work late I went home full of anxiety as I worried about Emmet’s reaction. I had a difficult time focusing whenever I had to go away for a day or two for business, because I couldn’t help thinking that the distance and time away from home was eventually going to be too much for our marriage and family, but Emmet’s reaction was always the same. He missed me, he hated being without me, but he always spoke encouragingly. He always gave me his full support, and eventually my nervousness faded.
“I couldn’t have done this without you,” I say to him.
“You can thank me later, Mrs. Grayne,” he says in a whisper that sends tingling sensations throughout my body.
“Oh, I plan to, Mr. Grayne,” I answer with a wink. I put my arms out for EJ, but Emmet sets him down on his feet instead. He ignores me entirely and runs to his big brother, his hero. Owen ruffles his little brother’s hair affectionately. I smile at the brothers, but I give Emmet a look.
He shrugs and says, “He’s getting too big for us to be carrying him around anyway.”
I don’t point out that he was just carrying him and that he still picks Rosa up from time to time, and she’s three years older than EJ.
I know his motivation for setting EJ free, and as much as I want to scold him for it, I can’t. He is taking care of me, as he always does.
Emmet takes my hand and we rejoin our family and friends.
*~*~*
After the show, we all went out to dinner. Afterward, Emmet and I set the nanny free for the night and then we piled into our bed with the kids in our suite to watch movies. Rosa and Emmet Junior fell asleep halfway into the second movie and Owen went to bed when it ended.
“It’s been a long day,” I say quietly around a yawn.
“Are you feeling okay?” Emmet asks as he reaches over the two sleeping little bodies to push my hair off of my forehead.
“Just tired.”
“I want you to relax tomorrow, okay?”
“I promised the girls I’d take them shopping.”
“Let Mom do it,” he says, giving me a firm look. “I want you off of your feet for the day.”
I am too tired to argue. “I’ll make it up to them another time.”
Emmet smiles with satisfaction. He reaches for me and rests his hand on my belly. Apparently, pregnancy is contagious and I caught it from my friends, because I am four months pregnant.
“Is this everything you hoped it would be?” I ask him after a few minutes.
“What?”
“Our life, our family, all of it,” I say.
“It is more than I could have ever hoped for,” Emmet says with a fascinated gleam in his green eyes. “I knew we would make each other happy, but I never imagined that we could be this happy. I never imagined that our life would be this perfect.”
“It’s not perfect all of the time,” I say, thinking about some of the arguments we’ve had over the years, and some of the unexpected speed bumps.
The biggest one we had was when the ink was still wet on our marriage license…
Jerry had called me out of the blue only weeks after Emmet and I married. He was in town for a doubleheader and got permission from his coach to take off for the morning to meet me for breakfast if I was willing. I refused the breakfast, especially since Emmet was in federal court and I couldn’t discuss it with him first. I did agree to meet him at the Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park. I didn’t need the media sniffing out this very public meeting, but I refused to be alone with him.
“You look really good, princess,” Jerry said when he found me at the fountain.
“Don’t call me that,” I had snapped at him. I s
tood before him with my arms crossed and all of my defenses up. “What do you want, Jerry? What do you have to say that you couldn’t say over the phone?”
He sighed and hung his head for a moment. He then pushed his sunglasses back on his head so I could see his eyes, but I kept my sunglasses in place. “I’m sorry, Donya. I’m sorry for what I did to you and Rosa, especially on that last night.”
“It’s been months, Jerry,” I said angrily. “Months! You never even checked to make sure your daughter was okay. We left and you didn’t care, so why do you care now?”
“I’ve always cared,” he said with another sigh.
“If you’re just going to stand there and spew bullshit than this is a waste of my time,” I said and began to turn away.
“I want a second chance with Rosa,” he said quickly before I could take more than a couple of steps.
I froze for a moment and then spun around to face him. I was astounded that he had the nerve to even say that. To me!
“I’ve been in therapy,” he said softly and looked away, embarrassed. “I don’t have a reasonable explanation for my behavior right now, but I do know that I’ve missed out on a lot and I want to get to know my daughter.”
I shook my head, both in disbelief and to deny him. “No. No way, Jerry. I don’t care how much therapy you’ve had. I have no reason to believe that you won’t physically and emotionally hurt her. You’ve done enough of that.”
“But I’m her father,” he argued quietly.
“No, Jerry,” I said. “You are a sperm donor. I just married her father. A matter of fact…” I opened my purse and produced a manila envelope and passed it to him. “Consider yourself served. My lawyer was going to do this before your game tonight.”
“What is this?” he asked, eyeing the envelope skeptically.
“I want you to sever your parental rights,” I said. I actually felt a little bad for handing him the paperwork right after he just asked to see Rosa. “Look, Jerry,” I sighed. “I really appreciate your apology, but for once in Rosa’s life be fair to her. Let her go. Emmet loves her like his own and he’s the only real father she’s had in her life. If you love her at all, you will sign those papers and let her go.”