“I don’t think you’re crazy,” I say. “I trust you.”
“That’s a first,” she says. Her hand is still resting there on her belly. I see it growing, floating out in front of her like an inflatable balloon.
“Well,” I say. “Then it’s about time.”
Chapter Sixteen
Bella says she doesn’t want to tell anyone. Not this weekend, not until she’s back in the city with Aaron. Let’s just enjoy the beach, she says. And we do.
We bring coolers, chairs, and blankets to the beach and stay there, swimming and eating salty chips and dripping watermelon, drinking beers and lemonade until the sun slips into the horizon.
Ariel and Morgan go for a walk in between swim sessions. I see them down the beach, clad in matching board shorts, holding hands. David and Aaron toss a Frisbee for a little while. Bella and I lounge under an umbrella. It’s idyllic, and I have a flash of years forward—all of us here, together, and her baby, toddling by the shore.
“Want to go for a walk?” I ask David when he comes back. He plops down on the blanket next to me. His shirt is wet at the chest, and his sunglasses hang down by his nose. I take them off and see that the skin around his eyes is sunburned—rimmed. We love it out here, but neither of us was made for the sun.
“I was hoping for a nap,” he says. He kisses my cheek. His face is sweaty, and I feel the moisture on my skin. I hand him the sunblock.
“I’ll go.”
I look up to see Aaron dripping over me, a beach towel flung over his right shoulder.
“Oh.” I look to my side, to where Bella is fast asleep on a beach blanket, her mouth slightly ajar, her foot dangling softly in the sand like a limp puppet.
I look to David. “Problem solved,” he says.
“Okay,” I say to Aaron.
I stand up and brush myself off. I’m wearing board shorts, a bikini top, and a wide-brimmed hat I got at a resort in Turks and Caicos on a trip with David’s family three years ago. I tighten the string.
“East or west?” he asks me.
“I actually think it’s north or south.”
He’s not wearing sunglasses and he squints at me, his face scrunching against the sun.
“Left,” I say.
The Amagansett beach is wide and long, one of the many reasons I love it so much. You can walk for miles uninterrupted, and many stretches are nearly deserted, even in the summer months.
We start walking. Aaron loops his towel around his neck and pulls with each hand at the edges. Neither one of us speaks for a minute. I’m struck, not by the silence but by the crash of the ocean—the sense of peace I feel in nature, I feel here. I don’t think I realize, living in New York, how much light and noise pollution affect my day-to-day life. I tell him this now.
“It’s true,” he says. “I really miss Colorado.”
“Is that where you’re from?”
He shakes his head. “It’s where I lived after college. I just moved to New York like ten months ago.”
“Really?”
He laughs. “Am I that jaded already?”
I shake my head. “No, I’m just surprised whenever someone has spent a good portion of their adult life somewhere else. Weird, I know.”
“Not weird,” he says. “I get it. New York kind of makes you feel like it’s the only place in existence.”
I kick up a shell. “That’s because it is. Says its insanely biased inhabitants.”
Aaron threads his fingers together and stretches upward. I keep my eyes on the sand.
“David’s great,” he says. “It’s been nice to spend some time with him this weekend.”
I look down at my left hand. The ring catches the summer light in sudden, brilliant bursts. I should have taken it off today. I could lose it in the water.
“Yeah,” I say. “He’s great.”
“I’m jealous of your relationship with Bella. I don’t have that many friends from high school I’m still that close with.”
“We’ve been friends since we were seven years old,” I say. “I barely have a childhood memory she’s not a part of.”
“You’re protective of her,” he says. It’s not a question.
“Yes. She’s my family.”
“I’m glad someone is looking out for her. You know, besides me.” He tries for a smile.
“I know you are,” I say. “It wasn’t you. She’s just dated people who didn’t really put her first. She falls in love quickly.”
“I don’t,” he says. He clears his throat. The moment stretches out to the horizon. “I mean, I haven’t, in the past.”
I know what he’s saying—what he’s hesitant to say now, even to me. He’s in love with her. My best friend. I look over at him, and his eyes are fixed out on the ocean.
“Do you surf?” he asks me.
“Really?”
He turns back to me. He wears a sheepish expression. “I thought I might be embarrassing you with this bleeding heart.”
“You weren’t,” I say. “I think I brought it up.” I walk a few paces down to the water’s edge. Aaron joins me. “No,” I say. “I don’t surf.” There are no surfers out there right now, but it’s late. The real ones are usually gone by 9 a.m. “Do you?”
“No, but I always wanted to. I didn’t grow up around the ocean. I was sixteen before I went to the beach for the first time.”
“Really? Where are you from?”
“Wisconsin,” he says. “My parents weren’t big travelers, but when we went on vacation it was always to the lake. We rented this house on Lake Michigan every summer. We’d stay there for a week and just live on the water.”
“Sounds nice,” I say.
“I’m trying to convince Bella to go with me in the fall. It’s still one of my favorite places.”
“She’s not much of a lake girl,” I say.
“I think she’d like it.”
He clears his throat. “Hey,” he says. “Thanks for earlier. I don’t really ever talk about my mom.”
I look down at my feet. “It’s okay,” I say. “I get it.”
The water comes up to greet us.
Aaron jumps back. “Shit, that’s cold,” he says.
“It’s not that bad; it’s August. You don’t even want to know what it feels like in May.”
He hops around for another moment and then stops, staring at me. All at once, he kicks up the retreating water. It lands on me in a cascade, the icy droplets dotting my body like chicken pox.
“Not cool,” I say.
I splash him back, and he holds up his towel in defense. But then we’re running farther into the ocean, gathering more and more water in our attacks until we’re both soaking wet, his towel nothing more than a dripping deadweight.
I duck my head under the water and let the shock of cold cool my head. I don’t bother taking off my hat. When I come back up, Aaron is a foot from me. He stares at me so intently I have the instinct to look behind me but don’t.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he says. “I just…” He shrugs. “I like you.”
Instantly, I’m not in the Atlantic anymore; we’re not here on this beach but instead in that apartment, in that bed. His hands, devoid of the sopping towel, are on me. His mouth on my neck, his body moving slowly, deliberately over mine—asking, kneading, pressing. The pulse of the blood in my veins pumping to a rhythm of yes.
I close my eyes. Stop. Stop. Stop.
“Race you back,” I say.
I kick up some water and take off. I know I’m faster than him—I’m faster than most people, and he’s weighed down by ten pounds of towel. I’ll beat him in a flash. When I get back to the blanket, Bella is awake. She rolls over, sleepily, shielding her eyes from the sun.
“Where did you go?” she asks.
I’m breathing too hard to answer.
Chapter Seventeen
September is busy season at work. If everyone agrees to take a collective breath at the end of August, then September is
a full-on sprint. I come back from the beach to a pile of documents and don’t look up from them until Friday. Bella calls me on Wednesday, gasping with laughter.
“I told him!” she says. She squeals, and I hear Aaron there next to her. I imagine his arms around her, around her chest, careful with her, with this life now between them.
“And?”
“Dannie says ‘and,’ ” Bella says.
I hear static, and then Aaron is on the line. “Dannie. Hey.”
“Hi,” I say. “Congratulations.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“Are you happy?”
He pauses. I feel my stomach tighten. But then, when I hear him speak, it’s the purest, most obvious resonance of joy. It fills up the phone. “You know,” he says. “I really, really am.”
On Saturday, Bella and I pick up coffees at Le Pain Quotidien on Broadway because she wants to go shopping. I expect we’ll hit up the stores on lower Fifth, maybe pop into Anthropologie, J.Crew, or Zara. But instead I find myself, Americano in hand, standing outside of Jacadi, the French baby store on Broadway.
“We have to go in,” she says. “Everything is too adorable.” I follow her.
There are rows of tiny onesies with matching cotton hats, knit sweaters, tiny overalls. It is a shrunken department store—full of petite Mary Janes and patent-leather loafers, all in minute, pocketable sizes. Bella is wearing a pink silk slip dress with an oversize white cotton sweater tied at the waist. Her hair is wild. She is glowing. She looks beautiful, radiant. Like a goddess.
It’s not that I don’t want kids, but I’ve just never felt particularly drawn to motherhood. Babies don’t make me coo and weaken, and I’ve never experienced any sort of biological clock about my reproductive window. I think David would be a good father, and that we’ll probably go ahead and have kids one day, but when I think about that future picture, us with a child, I often come up blank.
“When is your doctor’s appointment?” I ask her.
Bella holds up a little yellow-and-white-polka-dot jumper. “Do you think this is gender neutral?”
I shrug.
“The baby will be here in the spring, so we’ll need some long-sleeved stuff.” She hands me the jumper and pulls two off-white cable-knit sweaters from the table in different sizes.
“How is Aaron?” I ask.
She smiles dreamily. “He’s great; he’s excited. I mean it’s sudden, of course, but he seems really happy. We’re not twenty-five anymore.”
“Right,” I say. “Are you guys going to get married?”
Bella rolls her eyes and hands me a pair of socks with tiny anchors on them. “Don’t be so obvious,” she says.
“You’re having a baby; it’s a legitimate question.”
She turns to me. Her whole body focused now. “We haven’t even discussed it. This seems like enough for now.”
“So when’s the doctor?” I ask, switching gears. “I want to see that sonogram pic.”
Bella smiles. “Next week. They said not to rush coming in. When it’s this early, there isn’t much to do anyway.”
“But shop,” I say. My arms are full of small items now. I shuffle toward the register counter.
“I think it’s a girl,” Bella says.
I have an image of her, sitting in a rocking chair, holding an infant wrapped in a soft pink blanket.
“A girl would be great,” I say.
She pulls me in and tucks me to her side. “Now you have to get started, too,” she says.
I imagine being pregnant. Shopping in this store for my own tiny creation. It makes me want a cocktail.
* * *
On Sunday, I go over to her apartment. I ring the bell twice. When the door finally opens Aaron is there, or at least his head is. He pulls the door back, and I’m met with at least a dozen packages—boxes and baskets and all sorts of gifts—littering the entryway.
“Did you guys rob a department store?” I ask.
Aaron shrugs. “She’s excited,” he says. “So she’s shopping?” I watch his face closely, looking for signs of judgment or hesitation, but I find none, only a little amusement. He’s dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt, no socks. I wonder if he’s moved some stuff in yet. If he will. They’ll have to live together, won’t they?
He kicks a box to the side and the door swings open. I enter and close it behind me. “Congratulations,” I say.
“Oh, yeah, thanks.” He’s stacking a garment bag on top of an Amazon delivery. He stops. He stands, tucks his hands into his pockets. “I know it’s pretty soon.”
“Bella has always been impatient,” I say. “So it doesn’t totally surprise me.”
He laughs, but it seems more for my benefit. “I just want you to know I really am happy. She’s the best thing that has ever happened to me.”
He looks right at me when he says it, the same way he did at the beach. I blink away.
“Good,” I say. “I’m glad.”
Just then Bella’s voice floats in from the other room. “Dannie? Are you here?”
Aaron smiles and steps to the side, holding his arm out for me to pass.
I follow the sound of her voice down the hallway, past the kitchen and her bedroom and into the guest room. The bed has been pushed to the side, the dresser placed in the center of the room, and Bella, in overalls and a head scarf, is painting white marshmallow clouds on the walls.
“Bells,” I say. “What’s going on?”
She looks at me. “Baby’s room,” she says. “What do you think?”
She stands back, putting her hands on her hips and surveying her work.
“I think you’re ahead of the curve for the first time in your life,” I say. “And it’s freaking me out. Isn’t the nursery usually a month-seven project?”
She laughs, her back to me. “It’s fun,” she says. “I haven’t really painted in a long time.”
“I know.” I go to stand next to her and lob an arm over her shoulder. She leans into me. The clouds are off-white and the sky a pale salmon color with shades of baby blue and lavender. It’s a masterpiece.
“You really want this,” I say, but it’s not really to her. It’s to the wall. To whatever beyond has brought forth this reality. For a moment, I don’t remember the future I once saw. I am overcome by the one that is solidly, undeniably present here.
Chapter Eighteen
David and I are supposed to meet with the wedding planner next Saturday morning. It’s now mid-September, and I’ve been told, in no uncertain terms, that if I do not choose flowers now I will be using dead leaves as centerpieces.
The week is crazy at work—we get hit with a ton of due diligence on two time-sensitive cases Monday, and I barely make it home except to sleep all week. I take out my phone as I walk to the elevators the following Friday night to tell David we may need to push the meeting—I’m desperate for some sleep—when I see I have four missed calls from an unknown number.
Scam calls have been rampant lately, but they’re usually marked. I check my voicemail on my way downstairs, hanging up and retrying when I get down to the lobby. I’m just passing through the glass doors when I hear the message.
“Dannie, it’s Aaron. We went to the doctor today and— Can you call me? I think you need to come down here.”
My heart plummets to my feet as I hit call back immediately with shaking hands. Something is wrong. Something is wrong with the baby. Bella had her doctor’s appointment today. They were going to hear the heartbeat for the first time. I should have protected her. I should have stopped her from buying all those clothes, making all those plans. It was too soon.
“Dannie?” Aaron’s voice is hoarse through the phone.
“Hey. Hi. Sorry. I was… Where is she?”
“Here,” he says. “Dannie, it’s not good.”
“Is something wrong with the baby?”
Aaron pauses. When his voice comes through, it breaks at the onset. “There’s no baby.”
* * *
I toss my heels into my bag, pull on my slides, and get on the subway down to Tribeca. I always wondered how people who had just been delivered tragic news and had to fly on airplanes did it. Every plane must carry someone who is going to their dying mother’s bedside, their friend’s car accident, the sight of their burned home. Those minutes on the subway are the longest of my life.
Aaron answers the door. He’s wearing jeans and a button-down, half untucked. He looks stunned, his eyes red-rimmed. My heart sinks again. It’s through the floorboards, now.
“Where is she?” I ask him.
He doesn’t answer, just points. I follow his finger into the bedroom, to where Bella is crouched in the fetal position in bed, dwarfed by pillows, a hoodie up and sweatpants on. I snap my shoes off and go to her, getting right in around her.
“Bells,” I say. “Hey. I’m here.” I drop my lips down and kiss the top of her sweatshirt-covered head. She doesn’t move. I look at Aaron by the door. He stands there, his hands hanging helplessly at his sides.
“Bells,” I try again. I rub a hand down her back. “Come on. Sit up.”
She shifts. She looks up at me. She looks confused, frightened. She looks the way she did on my trundle bed decades ago when she’d wake up from a bad dream.
“Did he tell you?” she asks me.
I nod. “He said you lost the baby,” I say. I feel sick at the words. I think about her, just last week, painting, preparing. “Bells, I’m so sorry. I—”
She sits up. She puts a hand over her mouth. I think she might be sick.
“No,” she says. “I was wrong. I wasn’t pregnant.”
I search her face. I look to Aaron, who is still in the doorway. “What are you talking about?”
“Dannie,” she says. She looks straight at me. Her eyes are wet, wide. I see something in them I’ve only ever seen once before, a long time ago at a door in Philadelphia. “They think I have ovarian cancer.”
Chapter Nineteen
She says a lot of things then. About how ovarian cancer, in very rare cases, can cause a false positive. About how the symptoms sometimes mimic pregnancy. Missed period, bloated abdomen, nausea, low energy. But all I hear is a humming, a buzz in my ears that gets louder and louder the more she talks until it’s impossible to hear her. Her mouth is opening and all that’s coming out are a thousand bees, zinging and stinging their way to my face until my eyes are swollen shut.
In Five Years Page 10