by Lauren Layne
“A good reason. I don’t have any reason. I kept meaning to tell you, but the time never seemed right, the words never came out, and … I don’t know why. I realize that’s not an excuse.”
“No, it’s really not,” I agree. “Honestly, dude, I have to ask, where has she even been? Have you kept her locked in a cellar somewhere? Did she just escape? Is that why she showed up this morning looking ready to throw down?”
He rubs a hand over his face. “It’s a bit complicated.”
“You don’t say.”
His hands drop, and he looks a little lost. “Shit. Shit.”
I smile, because it’s about as close to Colin losing control as I’ve seen. And God help me, even though I’m mad, which I have every right to be, and a little hurt, which I probably don’t have a right to be, I feel myself caving.
“You’re really engaged to her?” I ask softly.
He hesitates, his blue silver eyes flicking away from me and then back. “Yes.”
I get a weird sinking sensation in my stomach, but his answer tells me everything I need to know: that this isn’t about me.
“Colin,” I say gently. “You’re married to me for fake. If you’re going to marry her for real, I’m really not the one you should be groveling to right now.”
I’m giving him full permission to exit this conversation to go make things right with Rebecca, and I expect to see relief on his face, and honestly, wouldn’t mind a little gratitude. A kissing of feet at my benevolence wouldn’t be out of place.
He doesn’t move.
Instead he stands there, looking at me with a conflicted expression. Then he frowns, as though irritated with himself for feeling conflicted. Actually, scratch that. Knowing him, he’s probably irritated with me, even though I spelled out his next move for him.
Maybe I wasn’t clear enough. I lift my arm and point to the door. “Go. Rebecca just endured watching another woman open her fiancée’s front door wearing pajamas, and don’t think she didn’t notice that you were only wearing briefs when you came dashing to the front door. If you still want to have a fiancée at the end of this day, get out there.”
This time he nods slowly in agreement and steps backward toward the door, his eyes on me the whole time. He hesitates, and his next words are almost shy. “I never meant to … hurt you.”
I give him a bright smile. “You didn’t.” Lie. “Now go, man, for the love of God.”
He nods again and turns away.
“Oh, Colin?” I call, unable to resist.
He gives me a look over his shoulder, and I smile even wider. “Briefs, huh? That’s adorable.”
He slams the guest room door.
CHAPTER 18
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5
A minute later, I’m almost regretting my decision to send Colin after his woman.
It’s not that I’m eavesdropping. It’s just with the way Rebecca is yelling, it’s literally impossible not to hear her entire side of the conversation, even with my door shut.
“Well, what the hell am I supposed to think?” she shouts. “I come over here to see if you want to grab breakfast, and both of you are in your underwear? And then instead of reassuring me, you chase after her.”
My mouth drops open. Underwear! These are pajamas, thank you very much. Little ones, admittedly, but trust me, had I opened the door in my actual underwear, she probably wouldn’t have stuck around long enough to yell at him.
I hope she wraps up her tantrum soon though. My coffee’s out there.
I pace the tiny confines of my bedroom and try to force myself to process everything without the benefit of my usual caffeine amounts.
Colin’s engaged.
He’s been engaged.
This.
Entire.
Time.
I’m not holding the actual engagement against him. We’re not actually married in the way that counts.
But it, um, would have been nice to know. Preferably before I started having sexy thoughts about him. Before I let myself have the crazy thought that maybe, just maybe my brother might have been right about his theory of Colin and me being good for each other …
“What’d you do, fuck her in a bed of flower petals?” Rebecca shrieks, her voice closer now, clearly having seen the flowers on Colin’s bed.
I wince. Yeeeeah. That whole situation probably doesn’t look good for Colin. Good luck explaining that one, husband.
I stand still for a moment hoping to overhear Colin’s response, but his voice is merely a low murmur through the closed door, and I can’t make out any actual words.
I pick up my cell phone and tap the corner against my bottom lip, debating my next move. I could—probably should—simply wait for Colin to give me the full story, but at the rate Rebecca’s going at him, that could take a while, and I want answers now.
I deserve answers, damn it. I don’t expect the man to tell me every detail of his life, but we’re in this whole married mess together. Something as massive as his second wife waiting in the wings is sort of a crucial detail.
I decide to send a quick text message to Meghan, because of all my friends, she’s the most plugged into the downtown social scene, and, thanks to our wine-fueled reunion, she knows that things between Colin and me are tricky. Plus, she has a toddler. The chances of her being awake early on a Saturday are better than my still-single friends.
My message is brief and to the point. Do you know anything about Colin hanging out with a Rebecca?
Meghan replies immediately, bless her. Tall? Red hair? Pretty in a scary, vaguely plastic way?
That’s her.
Rebecca Hale. Lawyer at the same firm as Colin. Officially, they’re colleagues.
My stomach feels icky as I reply. And unofficially?
Rumors. Nothing substantiated, but they do seem to show up at a lot of the same events and leave at the same time.
The nausea increases. I know I can’t judge him. I have no grounds to be mad. I don’t get to play the betrayed wife card, because I’m not his wife. Not in the way that matters. And as I’ve said, I’ve had plenty of flirtations of my own over the years.
But this isn’t a flirtation. The woman introduced herself as his fiancée. He proposed to her. To her. She’s not even nice. To be fair, I don’t really know her—maybe she’s a doll deep down, but I can at least attest that she makes a horrendous first impression.
How is it that he can’t stand me, but he loves her?
Does he love her? He must, if he proposed, but … God does that ever make me feel queasy.
I take a deep breath and try to think about it the way he would—all rationally and robot-like. I suppose, if my emotional chip was damaged like his, he and Rebecca make sense. It’s probably nice for Colin to find someone who shares his affliction for having something stuck up his ass.
My phone buzzes again with a message from Meghan. Why do you ask?
Oh, no reason. She’s just in his bedroom.
Long story, I text back. Drinks this week?
She texts back. Definitely. I’m here if you need to talk.
I send a thank you text back, knowing that Meghan’s probably got it in her head that Colin’s cheating and I suppose technically he is. Non-technically, I have no reason to be upset, no reason to be jealous, and yet, well, here I am stomping around my room like an actual wife.
I hear Colin’s bedroom door click closed, the angry murmur of voices telling me they’re still having it out and that the kitchen is finally fair game.
Coffee. Maybe some coffee will help rid me of the weird feeling in my stomach.
I open the door softly and creep down the hallway. I look around the kitchen for my mug then realize that I left it on Colin’s nightstand following our strange hug. I wince, realizing what that will look like to Rebecca.
I feel sorry for him. Almost.
I get a fresh mug, and half a cup later, I’m starting to feel mostly normal.
I hear Colin’s bedroom door open and fre
eze, debating for a crazy instant to dive under the table and make myself scarce, until I remember that I live here too, and that I’m just as much a victim in this whole mess as they are.
Rebecca doesn’t glance my way as she strides into the room and toward the front door, every rigid line of her body and pinched mouth indicating that their fight is far from over. Colin follows, dressed now in sweats and a white T-shirt, his posture just as tense as Rebecca’s.
Only after she jerks open the front door does she glare at me over his shoulder. She doesn’t say anything, but the expression conveys plenty: die.
“It was nice meeting you,” I call. “We should grab coffee sometime. Compare notes.”
Her eyes narrow, and Colin gives me an I’m going to kill you look over his shoulder.
I give him a wide smile.
He murmurs something that sounds like a promise to call her later and steps forward to kiss Rebecca’s cheek. She doesn’t say a word to him or to me before she disappears.
Colin slowly closes the front door, his shoulders sagging forward slightly. Prior to Rebecca knocking on our front door this morning, I’d have acted on instinct and gone to him. Touched a hand to his back to comfort, even a hug.
Now, I don’t move. He is not mine to hug. Or touch. Not that he ever was, but everything is entirely different now. Without a word, he goes to his bedroom, and I frown in confusion. What? Oh, hell no. There is no way we aren’t going to talk about this. I let him off the hook so he could talk to Rebecca first, not so he could avoid me completely.
But before I can charge after him and demand answers, he reappears, coffee mug in one hand and his blue bathrobe in the other.
Colin sets his coffee mug on the counter and comes toward me, robe in hand, and drops the heavy fabric onto my shoulders, shoving my hands through the armholes as though I’m a child. He knots it at my waist with impatient efficiency and then steps back. “From now on, wear that damn robe around the apartment.”
Oh. Right. Because that’ll fix everything.
But when he retreats to his room and closes the door, I don’t go after him after all. A big part of me still wants answers, obviously.
But a smaller, less logical part of me isn’t ready to hear them.
CHAPTER 19
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6
A t ten o’clock the following morning, I do the unthinkable.
“Charlotte?” My mother’s surprise is palpable as she opens the front door and sees me standing on her front porch. “Dinner’s not until five … p.m.,” she adds, as though thinking I got confused and am in fact five hours late for a really early breakfast meeting. Though, if I had shown up at five a.m., I wouldn’t be surprised if my mom had opened the door looking exactly as she does now, dressed in a summery yellow blouse, navy skirt, and navy pumps, armed and ready to face the day.
“I know,” I say, adjusting my purse strap on my shoulder and trying not to feel self-conscious for standing on the front porch of my own home. Well, former home. “Can I come in?”
“I—” She looks nonplussed. “I was just about to go to church.”
Right. I’d forgotten that it’s Sunday. One of the side effects of working remotely and setting my own hours without a physical office or in-person meetings to attend is that I’ve tended to lose track of which day is which since moving to New York. The fact that my personal life is, shall we say, complicated, hasn’t helped matters.
To my knowledge, my mother hasn’t missed Sunday service aside from one nasty bout of stomach flu when I was eleven, and I don’t expect her to miss it now.
“Sorry,” I say automatically. “I’d forgotten. I can just come back for dinner, and—”
“Would you like to come with me?”
The question catches me off guard, and I think, based on her slightly stunned expression, it catches her off guard as well. But there’s something else beneath her surprise. A little flicker of hope mingled with steel, as though she’s fully braced for me to reject her.
“Sure,” I say slowly. “I’d like that.”
Her smile is quick, but it’s so happy and genuine that my eyes feel suspiciously prickly all of a sudden.
“I’ll just grab my wrap. Would you like to borrow one or—” Her gaze lingers pointedly on my bare shoulders.
The old me would have pointed out that it’s already eighty degrees and humid, and that my sundress, while sleeveless, is hardly inappropriate, and no, I don’t want a wrap.
New me merely smiles. “Sure, thank you.”
I step inside and wait for her to return from upstairs with two wraps in hand. I’m relieved to see that the one she hands me, while not exactly my style, is a light cashmere and the lavender color works well with the green of my dress.
“Where’s Dad today?” I ask.
“One of his fishing trips with your Uncle Steve,” she says, picking up her purse from the table in the foyer.
“Does he still bring home that enormous cooler of fish that leaked all over the floor?” I ask as we step out into the sunshine.
“Not,” she says in a crisp tone, with a knowing smile, “anymore.”
I smile back, remembering the rare occasions when I heard my parents argue, remembering how often it had to do with, as my mother had phrased it, ‘those infernal fish.’
As we’ve established, my dad is not the outdoorsy type, or at least he wasn’t prior to his herb garden stage, but my Uncle Steve is sort of the black sheep of his family and moved to North Carolina to embrace all things remote and nature. He flat out refuses to come into the goddamn city, which means that when my dad wants to see his brother, he flies to North Carolina and comes home with the aforementioned cooler.
Or at least he did. I’m not the least bit surprised that my mom put the kibosh on that routine, nor am I surprised my dad let her. He doesn’t even really like fish.
“You know,” I muse as we walk down the quiet sidewalk, “it just occurred to me that Uncle Steve’s sort of my spirit animal.”
Mom makes a huffing noise. “How do you suppose that?”
“He flew the coop,” I point out. “Just like I did.”
“There’s a difference between the swampy bayous of North Carolina and San Francisco.”
I open my mouth to point out that geographically speaking, swampy bayous isn’t the right way to describe North Carolina, but since I’m pretty sure she just came the closest she ever has to complimenting my adopted hometown, I let it slide.
Also …
I frown a little, as I realize that the mention of San Francisco doesn’t cause the usual knee-jerk reaction to remind her—and myself—that it’s home.
Nor does thinking about California cause even a flicker of homesickness. That can’t be right. San Francisco is my life. It’s where my work is, my friends, my home …
And yet, even though I’ve only been in New York for three weeks, I have the most unnerving feeling that I never left. And the ten years I spent in San Francisco are strangely fuzzy somehow. I try to shake off the feeling, making a mental note to call some of my girlfriends when I get home. I just need a reminder of my life there, that’s all.
As we walk up the steps of St. Thomas and step inside the church, I’m relieved, if not exactly surprised, to see that of all the things in my life, this changed the least in my time away from New York. Everything is exactly as I remember, even the smells.
Though I wouldn’t exactly volunteer this fact to Mom, once I moved to California and weekly Mass was no longer mandatory as decreed by my mother, I sort of let myself lapse into a Christmas and Easter kind of gal … if that.
Sitting in the familiar church though, instead of the old restless feeling I remember from past Sundays, I find the quiet and the rituals soothing, and by the time we step back out into the sunshine a little over an hour later, I confess I seem to breathe just a little easier than I have since Rebecca knocked on my door yesterday morning.
As a teenager, I was always anxious to get on with my day,
impatient with my mother’s ritual of lingering outside the church steps following the service to mingle with her friends. Today though, I follow her lead, greeting familiar faces, and even enduring a couple of honest-to-goodness cheek pinches from a few of the older ladies.
“Well,” Mom says in a satisfied tone, as the group slowly begins to dissipate. “Shall we?”
“Shall we…”
“Talk, dear. We may have been apart for some time, but you’re still my daughter, and I still know when there’s something on your mind.”
“What gave me away? Maybe the fact that I showed up on your doorstep unannounced for the first time ever?”
She ignores my gentle sarcasm and begins walking in the opposite direction of home.
“Where are we going?” I ask, falling into step beside her.
“Brunch. There’s a place just around the corner that serves the most perfect mimosas. They fresh squeeze the orange juice by hand. And they’re bottomless. That means you can have as many as you want.”
“Mom!” I give her a teasing, scandalized look. “Where was this part of the Sunday routine when I was growing up?”
She gives me a look I can only describe as saucy. “Maybe had you stuck around past your twenty-first birthday, you’d have been introduced to this part.”
“Touché,” I mutter, holding open the restaurant door for her.
The hostess asks if we want to sit inside or out. I say out, just as she says in. Rough start.
We sit inside.
The second the server arrives with a water pitcher, my mom orders bottomless mimosas for both of us, and in any other circumstance I may have been annoyed at the old, familiar habit of her deciding what I want without asking, but in this case, I’m all too happy to follow her lead. The second I turn down bottomless mimosas is the second you should just put me out to pasture.
The mimosa, as promised, is pretty darn perfect, but as delicious as that first sip is, it unfortunately doesn’t do much to diffuse the slight awkwardness we’ve managed to avoid up until now.
And by slight awkwardness, what I actually mean is the elephant in the room. I’ve mentioned that despite the strain of the past ten years, Mom and I haven’t had anything to do with each other. While we didn’t exactly break the ice at my brother’s wedding, we at least cracked it, and there have been birthday and Christmas phone calls that were cordial, if not exactly warm.