Rachel wasn’t having any success putting her words together to answer, so she hugged her knees tighter and let Gillian’s touch soothe down her breathing.
Across from them, Natalie peered at Rachel through a cage of fingers over her face. “I did it again. Oh, crap. I’m sorry, Rachel. I always try to make his crap make sense. I treat him like he has the right to anything he wants, no matter what.”
She shrugged. Gillian’s palm shifted over her shoulder blade. She was still not used to being touched by hands so much larger than Hannah’s. Not that she would trade her girl’s cling-strong grasp for any amount of adult contact, from her friends or from Theo or from anyone. Good for Natalie and for Serena that they’d found men to spend forever with; good for Gillian that she filled her spare time with anyone who attracted her. She had Hannah, which made even dealing with Sergei and Depy for the rest of her life tolerable. “You’re not the only one, Natalie. Don’t kick at your heart over it. You were carefully taught, and I was caught up in a gaslighting net so secure it will take me years to remember that Gillian is right.”
“Or you could BCC me on every email exchange with Sergei and Depy,” Gill said. She knocked the water bottle against the back of Rachel’s hand, so she accepted it and took a swig.
“That wouldn’t annoy either one of you,” Serena said, snorting in derision again.
“Judgmental much? You want me to leave?” Gill asked, a little too eagerly.
“Try it. I was going to model two dresses then take you all out for tacos, but if I have to, I’ll make Rach and Natalie hold you down while we take pictures of me in every single gown on that rack.” Serena nodded at the sales associate, who was floating their way with a champagne-ivory gown draped in her arms.
Rachel scooted over, bumping her hip into Gill’s. Together they made room for Natalie to sit on the sofa with them as Serena pulled the changing room curtain closed. Despite the bride-to-be’s threats, Gillian and Natalie were the bulwarks on either side of her, keeping her grounded in the moment and fortifying her for the next—the final—email to Depy and Sergei about her refusal to change anything.
Chapter Twenty-Six
It bordered on obnoxious, the cheerful mood he’d slipped into over the weekend. Rachel in that bikini ... Rachel out of that bikini. Everything after, and then the pivot to settling Andres in at his place. Sweaty soccer gear everywhere and a constant stack of dishes that didn’t add up, given his son’s small size. He’d woken up smiling five mornings in a row, and maybe he should examine if that meant something about the rest of his life. But he refused. The everyday joy felt too precious to ruin with scrutiny.
Or even by Sergei rapping on the frame of their office door.
“You’ll stop by tonight, yeah?”
Most upbeat Sergei had been with him since he dropped the news about dating Rachel. Maybe his happiness was contagious. “Tonight? You’re not on the schedule, are you?”
“No, I put Marti on duty like you’re always suggesting. But we’re having a name day dinner for my Hannah Iliana. Six o’clock.” Serg tipped his head towards the back tables, where there was enough room to shove tables together for groups and still navigate to serve everyone.
He glanced at his phone, like that mattered. “Got to pick up Andres from camp by five.” And they’d planned to kayak before dinner, if his son wasn’t too wiped out. And if the afternoon’s rain hadn’t brewed up a bayou full of bugs.
Sergei leaned down to kiss Depy, who’d barreled her way into the employees-only area with a couple of bags that looked to be full of nothing but pink glitter. “Hey, Mom. I’m telling Theo to bring his son tonight. Nice to have more kids around for it.”
Ah, of course. It wasn’t a child’s name day party if the only guests were her father and grandmother. He could imagine the lengths his uncles would go to in Sergei’s place, searching for anyone under ten to fill out the ranks.
Well, fine. The guy wanted to look like super-dad? Let him earn his faux-heroic pose. “Nice of you to have the party. Building tradition for Hannah and all.”
“Her real day’s tomorrow, but I do what I can.” The false modesty in his words intertwined with the false aggrieved tone.
Theo ignored all he knew about their custody schedule and played along. “Andres and I will be happy to stop in. Can’t think of the last time we went to someone’s name day outside the family. You want the truth? I take pride in being a parent who meets his obligations, child support and all the driving up to Fort Worth. It’s important, you know? Couldn’t call myself a real man if I didn’t care about it all. But I’m glad you’re reminding me about the intangible influences I have on my son. Culture, guidance, shared experiences. I’m going to think a lot about it over the next few weeks with him.”
Sergei narrowed his eyes all shifty while he talked about responsibility, but he also puffed out at the compliment. Theo clapped the other man on the shoulder, raised a hand to farewell Depy, and headed out. If he wasn’t mistaken, he’d couched his barb in terms Sergei could relate to. If it did Rachel and Hannah any good at all, he’d count it as a win.
They’d hung an actual banner. At least it read ‘congratulations’ instead of anything custom, but the table was overloaded with bling. A neon pink tablecloth over the normally bare wood, party hats with metallic foil fringe, a cake covered in giant frosting flowers.
It was clear her daughter would be too keyed up to go to sleep well that night.
She couldn’t even exchange wry looks with Theo, because he was off picking up his son from soccer camp. So she waded right into the fray, letting Hannah’s short steps lead the way. Depy swept her up, full of kisses and repeats of ‘Hronia Polla!’ and carrying her around the whole table to show her the various decorations. Her ex, of course, was nowhere in sight. Well, whatever. Rachel set the diaper bag on the table between the cake and a small—thank goodness—pile of presents. Maybe they’d take everything back to Sergei’s and she wouldn’t be the one checking for choking hazards or finding space to store yet another ugly outfit.
Hannah and Depy, absorbed in each other, didn’t glance her way. Fine. She was learning to make drop-off smoother, and if that meant walking away to relish her hours of running childfree errands, so be it.
When she returned, the party was still in full swing. Hannah’s frosting-smeared fingers gripped a stuffed slice of pizza with pepperoni eyes. She waved it at a boy who animated a plush hamburger in her direction. Its eyes were pickles, which struck Rachel as a bad idea for anyone who didn’t like soggy buns. Before she got over there, Sergei drew her aside.
“Your receipt.”
“Sor—” She cut herself off. No apologizing to the rotten ex. “What?”
He handed her a piece of paper. “Your precious arrears. It’ll take a few days to show up through the system, so I printed a confirmation.”
She didn’t—couldn’t—say anything. Kept reading and rereading the details, in case her eyes were lying to her about the contents.
“You can tell the ombudsman to back off now, and all your other bulldogs, too. No need to keep begging people to fight your battles for you, Rachel. You’ve got what you wanted. And look at you. Can’t even say thank you.”
Bulldogs? She couldn’t figure out his nonsense, but one thing was clear as the sky after a spring rain: he’d paid something like seven months worth of back child support, in one click of a button. Astounding. Also, he was speaking like an ass to her again, which tracked, in her experience, to his guilty conscience. Maybe Depy found out about the arrears? Would Theo have told her? Would Theo have spoken to him? Because really, who was Sergei more likely to call a bulldog, his boss or his mom?
And if Theo interfered in her business ... if he stuck his nose in, and the result was Sergei sneering at her.... Ugh. At least directing her anger at her ex made sense. She wasn’t letting him speak to her that way, not when she’s have to turn around and tell the gals about it and explain why she wasn’t capable in the moment of hear
ing their virtual cheerleading of her retorts. So she looked straight into his smug-ass face and said, “Thank you? No. I’m not thanking you for saving yourself some months of interest on a debt you made a game of incurring over the whole course of Hannah’s life. Say goodbye to her if you intend to; your time tonight is over.”
She pivoted away. No giving the moldering pillowcase stuffed with fresh maggots a chance to respond. He sputtered some nonsense but she walked off, because damn it, she could. Her life, her choices. Her right to confine interactions with Sergei to a narrow, child-focused space. Her right to insist on her lawful, court-decreed arrangements. Her right to banish his snide voice when it tried to weasel through her mind.
And Theo. The apparent bulldog in this story. Sitting there, crouched on the ground with the kids, giving her such a smile. Such a look as he helped Hannah play with his son—of course the hamburger-wielding one was Andres, she could see that now they were side by side. Never mind any opinions she ever had about introducing their children to each other, never mind running this encounter past her first, never mind his attending a damn party with Sergei and Depy and everyone else the Matsoukas drummed up to turn this into a whole thing. Like Hannah had the first clue about name days.
Not to give Sergei any wriggle room, but maybe bulldog wasn’t the worst name to call Theo. Leaping in anywhere he wanted, stubborn enough to stick his nose in her business and in her life and in her daughter’s life, like he’d never once heard her request to slow down.
“Hey there, Rach.”
She reached down for Hannah, who dropped the frosting-spackled plush pizza and started babbling about cars and pink hats.
Theo, intent as always on his own thing, stood up and lifted his son. “This is my Andres. Andres, here’s Hannah’s mom, Rachel. I wanted you to meet her.”
And she might be irate, but it wasn’t the child’s fault. Rachel held out a fist for him to bump. “Hi, there. I hear you’re a good midfielder. Are you liking soccer camp so far?”
He nodded but wasn’t about to talk, it seemed. Fine with her. Nothing against the child, but she needed to get far away from everything to do with Elixir, and fast. She located the diaper bag, checked Hannah didn’t need a potty run before they left, and tried to give a general wave to encompass everyone. Her luck wasn’t quite that favorable, though. Depy swooped in for too many of her musty kisses, and by the time Rachel disentangled them, Theo and Andres were lying in wait on the path to the door.
“Night, y’all,” she tried. All friendly and everything.
It didn’t quite work. “Walk you out?”
She squeezed closed her eyes for the merest sliver of a breath, then nodded. “Great.”
Andres still carried the hamburger, so she thanked a luck-filled star for one item she wouldn’t find stuffed into Hannah’s bag some day.
“Sergei asked us to stop in.”
“I guessed.”
“Course. Just—okay, not now.” He glanced at the kids. “I’ll owe you an explanation and apology, when we’re clear. How was your evening?”
“Good, fine. Checked a lot off my list.” She opened the car door. He stepped back to give her room to help Hannah to her car seat. His own car was across the lot, but he didn’t move towards it, even when she finished with the buckling and emerged to open her own door.
“So, we’re off home.” The dark didn’t hide that open brightness of his expression.
She sighed. “Okay. See you later. Nice meeting you, Andres.”
Theo tilted his head. Leaned in a moment, but backed off when she didn’t meet him for a kiss. Glanced down at his son. “I’ll call you later?”
She shrugged, because really? She needed out of Elixir and he could obviously sense it. So why couldn’t he let her leave? “She’ll be wound up from the party. I’ll end up putting her in bed with me and we’ll fall asleep over story time.”
His frown brought out furrows in his forehead. Such a bulldog. But at last he backed up a couple of steps.
Was she giving in to his manipulative puppy eyes, or was her fondness for him nibbling away at her pissy mood? Either way, she caught his forearm under her palm. “If I don’t conk out with her, I’ll text you, okay?”
He ducked forward for a quick kiss. Waving his and Andres’s joined hands, he said goodnight and the two of them took off across the parking lot. As she backed out, she caught a glimpse of Sergei in the bar’s doorway, arms crossed over his chest, watching her like the creep he was. Hurling all the rest of her ire his way, she tuned in to the song Hannah was chanting and imagined coloring in the rest of her flower garden next time they got out the art supplies. Thanks to the festive explosion inside Elixir, she decided to ban pink from every single leaf or petal on the page.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
‘Happy name day to Hannah. May she be healthy and bring happiness to your life!’
He backed out of the text screen before sending. Rachel never called after the party, which he admitted made sense. After he got Andres home and cleaned up, he copied her plans and drifted off to sleep while reading with him. The queen bed in his son’s room had been a good investment. He’d picked it so he could have his parents stay with him when they came to Houston, but patted his earlier self on his well-aligned back for the choice. He could start awake at midnight and stagger to his own bed without the aches he used to get from falling asleep on the floor during stories, back when Andres was in a toddler bed.
The tossing and turning he did after flopping across his mattress, he didn’t have anyone to thank for. He drifted in and out of sleep wondering if Rachel was irritated with him, and if so, was it for introducing the kids or something more, and also what to do about it.
Thirty-six years old and his emotional life tumbled him into a whirlpool like he was sixteen. At one point overnight he calculated the number of days since he and Rachel met. He hoped the number-work would lull him back to sleep. Instead the total—sixty—spun him into soul-searching about the intensity of his feelings. It wasn’t just that he’d dated women before for a couple of months without the same sense of connection and belonging. He’d fallen deep before. He’d fallen fast before. He’d built what he thought was permanence and security before.
Combining all of that smashed everything into one big ball of jaw-tightening, stomach-lurching confusion.
Because he was all in. Had been since ... when? Since she let him in on the close-held secret of her address? Since kayaking and popsicles? Since being confronted in a rain-damp parking lot by a fury wearing three pairs of cheap sunglasses?
Whenever it was, it stuck claws into him, and that was fine. They weren’t sharp claws. They anchored him in a place he was happy to be. But it wasn’t the same for Rachel. Either she wasn’t hooked, or it made her feel pierced in uncomfortable ways, or she resented claws in general.
Which left him sure of himself, very unsure of her, and without tons of options for bridging that divide. But he did wish wonderful things for Hannah, so before heading to wake Andres, he sent the name day text, and assurance that he hadn’t said anything to either child about their relationship. She might appreciate it, or she might be irate, but he couldn’t spend another night tossing and mulling over her silence.
She had tons of crap on her mind. It was her refrain, her excuse, for too many days on end. So much crap, she justified not making time for in depth texting or calls or dragging Hannah to spend some awkward hours trying to entertain her and Andres together while she and Theo acted like things weren’t strained between them.
Besides, it was too hot for the zoo. And his next suggestion, the Children’s Museum, was extra crowded on summer weekends. And the water park meant a whole rigmarole with swim diapers and Hannah’s newfound love of running to the toilet every thirty-five minutes in hopes of praise and rewards. So it made sense to put Theo off. More sense than his argument that it was the only full weekend they both had custody and were in town at the same time.
If they were going t
o be in some kind of long-term relationship—and in her mind that was still an ‘if’ no matter his current hold over her—they could force the kids to make friends later. Their Christmas custody arrangements aligned. If they managed to last another five months they could all decorate cookies and visit Santa together.
One more unnecessary weight on her mind was the gut-twist yanking her headlong towards the image of hanging stocking with Hannah and Theo and Andres. Of taking over the vast expanse of his kitchen island with spices and flour and sprinkles and racks of her grandmother’s pfeffernüsse cookies. Of everyone snuggling up with hot cider and holiday movies.
Far as she knew, they didn’t even celebrate with Santa. And if Andres was going to spoil Hannah’s Christmas fun by shattering her childhood illusions, there wasn’t a future for any of them anyway.
She snorted, the picture of elegance walking down the hospital corridors. Classy, on top of being full of dismal fantasies about the future. Catastrophic thinking. Turning every potential good into a disaster. A fine way to protect herself. And a grim way to proceed with a relationship.
Her gut tugged at her more, so she texted Theo suggesting they get coffee later in the week, after she sent Hannah for the two weeks with Sergei. All those nights alone groaned and stretched ahead of her. She sent a second text saying she’d be happy to join him and Andres for dinner some night, if he wanted to invite her over.
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