I snatched it away, set it on the end table, and sat down beside him. “Why don’t you call her?” I softened my voice in the hope maybe he would finally listen. I’d tried everything from bribery to badgering and he stood tough.
He stared off into the distance, probably imagining her perfect nose or her bright shiny teeth. “She made her choice, Dani. Life without me was better than life with me.” The despair rolled off of him in waves, and he reached for the whiskey to take another drink. “I hurt her and I have to live with it.”
I took his face in my palm. “Keats, you are broken without her, and if you don’t figure out how to fix all of this, it’ll kill you.” Or maybe he would end up inadvertently killing himself, but in any case, he would be equally dead. He was really the only friend I had, and even though I hated Jocelyn, I hated what being without her had done to him more.
“You can’t die from a broken heart, Dani.” He poked his finger in the air in a Ben-Franklin-discovered-electricity motion as if the news were some big deal I should take note of. “I’d already be gone.”
I gave him a shove, sending him face first into the sofa cushion, then helped him sit upright. “I hate to break it to you, golden boy, but you’re pretty much already gone.” I laid a hand on his chest and he covered it with his own. “I know it hurts. Trust me, I’m aware, but you haven’t really lived in a while.”
He opened his mouth and blew out a scoff. “I live.”
No, he didn’t. He drank until he couldn’t stand, then passed out.
“I go to work every day.” He swayed one direction, then the other before catching his balance and saving the bottle from tipping over.
I took it again and set it out of his reach.
“And I come home and drink because I miss her so much, but you drink too. Why do you get to throw stones when you’re no better than I am?” He closed his eyes and blew out a potent breath. “I don’t want to fight with you.”
Being his second choice didn’t bother me. If I couldn’t have Simon, it didn’t matter to me who I spent my time with, but I cared about his happiness and it had been quite a while since he’d smiled. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard a real laugh out of him. Though the thought made me mentally wretch, she made him happy. Only her.
“Fight with me, Keaton. Do something that means you’re still in there, and you aren’t just some pathetic shell slogging through life on a bottle of whiskey.”
“It’s kind of mean to kick a guy while he’s down.”
In spite of myself, I smiled. A little part of the boy I’d known still lurked around in there. Little pieces of wit showed up every third or fourth moon phase, but it wasn’t enough.
“Again, what about you? Are you saying you’re not broken? Losing Simon didn’t wreck you just a little?”
It wrecked me a lot, and it irritated me that, as drunk as Keaton stayed most of the time, he could tell. He couldn’t have heard me crying. I only did it at night when his alcohol soaked dreams brought her back to him and he called out her name as he slept.
Maybe makeup didn’t hide the sadness well enough. I shrugged and leaned my head against his shoulder. “I’m surviving. You’re not.”
“No, Dani. You’re wrong. We’re both surviving it, thanks to you. I’d be lost without you. You saved me.” He kissed my hair and offered me a drink of his whiskey.
I choked back a new, more bitter round of guilt. I’d caused this whole mess. I was no better, maybe even worse, than all those people back home said. Slut. Harlot. Words I hadn’t thought of since I got to Arizona rang through my head. I put my hands over my ears to block them out, but they were inside me now, a part of me. To top off the fuel in my self-loathing tank, I’d gone and gotten myself pregnant with no clue exactly who fathered the baby. I put the wreck in homewrecker.
The heat of shame rolled its way up my neck to my cheeks. He ran a hand under my hair, cupping my neck, and the human contact sent a different kind of warmth skittering along my skin. I turned to him, imagined the half-lidded eyes stemmed from desire, and pressed my lips against his, coaxing his mouth open with my tongue, deepening the kiss until his response overcame both of us and we fell backward on the couch.
He pulled away and threw his arm over his eyes while I rested my head on his chest. “Sorry, Dani. I don’t know what came over me.”
I wasn’t Jocelyn and he wasn’t Simon, but we were all either of us had. My thoughts overtook my mouth. “I’m pregnant.”
“Huh?” He sat up, the abruptness of his motion pushing me onto the floor. In his defense, he’d probably been drinking most of the day.
I leaned against the couch, and my head fell against his knee. “I know. Shocking, right?”
“A baby?”
More guilt eked its way to the surface. I wanted to be the good version of myself--the one hidden behind my excuses and immaturity, the one who frowned when I blamed everyone else for the problems I created. She was the person my baby deserved, the person we all deserved. To be that person, I had to tell him the truth and pray he remembered it the next day. “I didn’t mean to, Keaton.” Maybe the truth would set us free in a way our life choices hadn’t. “The baby isn’t--”
“I’m gonna be a daddy.” Nothing wide-eyed crossed over his face. No disbelief or shouted curse words condemning me for my sluttiness. Instead, he smiled, beautiful, real, for me.
I stayed still, mentally berating my whoredom and deception when he lowered his body next to mine and kissed me so softly I almost melted into the carpet. “I always wanted a baby.”
“But Keats, you can’t…” He had to know this baby belonged to someone else. We’d never done more in his bed than sleep. He had to know, right? I always wanted a baby.
The evil Danielle, who hid behind lies, protecting herself with a shield of apathy, would just go with it and let him believe the baby belonged to him. He thought we’d had sex. The girl I wanted to be would certainly stand up, push him away and tell the truth, no matter the consequences. In the absence of a well-needed eenie-meenie-miney-moe moment, I didn’t make a conscious decision. I sat there and waited for a decision to be made.
“A baby, Dani. We’re gonna have a baby.”
The sheer awe in his voice, the wonder in his wide-eyed gaze… I went with it. “You really wanna do this?” And just like that, the guilt ebbed and I concentrated on the soul peeking through his normal droopy-eyed drunkenness. If he wasn’t going to go home and restore his marriage, no harm could come from keeping quiet, right? A lot of relationships and two parent-households were based on less than what we had--friendship, kindness, mutual respect. I reasoned my deception away, locked the shame down and ignored the nagging voice in my head yelling at me to tell him the truth. I promised myself I would if he ever decided to go home and get her back.
He lifted me onto his lap and pressed his lips against mine. When he pulled away, his smile hovered inches from my mouth. “We’re going to have a baby, Dani.”
I pulled away and swallowed any trace of regret. Maybe I could be the better me in a different way. We’d fallen so far from where we’d once been as people. To be good at parenting, we had to work our way around to the basics…sober basics. “We have to get straightened out then, Keats. I don’t wanna bring a baby home to us being all messed up all the time. It’s not fair to the kid.”
He spent the next thirty-three days in rehab, then came home sober and cleaned up. It was a good thing he’d gone away, too, because between the hormones, the lack of alcohol, and thoughts of Simon, I snapped at the refrigerator for running, the TV for playing the wrong shows, and my boss for saying, “Good morning.”
Chapter 6
When Keaton returned, he came back the way I remembered him best--the old Keaton, the happy-go-lucky prankster who always smiled and did his best to make sure everyone else did too. He called Simon more often, trying to wheedle information out of his best friend about Jocelyn when he thought I couldn’t hear,
but I heard everything.
Even though he missed her, he did most of the right things to pretend he was happy with me. He kissed me--those chaste kind of kisses that worked equally well for an aging grandmother or a new born baby, the kind without emotion or feeling. Every so often, he held me, and more than once went so far as to talk to my stomach while he lay in my lap as I read. But she was always there, between us, to the point of making me resent her, him, and the fact the baby couldn’t be his.
I only had to catch the smallest glimpse of him to see him regretting his decision to stay with me, but most of the time, Keaton saw me as a person with feelings and a heart. It had been a while since anyone I cared about looked at me with anything other than contempt. He still wouldn’t sleep with me. Instead, he used an exorbitant amount of words to reinforce my worth. I deserved more than casual sex. He said it often enough I considered stitching it on a pillow.
Kieran made his way into the world on a ninety-nine degree day while Keaton was at work. After about a hundred calls to his voice mail, one to the ranch where he worked, and a few prayers to a God I had all but given up on, I finally got a hold of him as they wheeled me into delivery. He arrived in time to see Kieran take his first breaths, but just barely.
As soon as I looked at my boy, saw his whiskey-colored eyes, the perfect shape of his face, I knew who he belonged to, but more than that…I fell in love for real. I wanted redemption, to be saved from the person I’d been so my baby boy would be proud of me. More than simply wanting redemption, I needed it.
* * * *
A couple of months after Kieran turned a year old, we left Arizona and moved north--way north--to freezing cold Canada. Keaton took a job at a hunting lodge, and I began making and selling children’s clothes on the Internet. Soon, I raked in cash by the handfuls and Keaton took on less hunts at work to give me time to sew and fill orders. During any number of conversations about my boy, I opened my mouth to tell him the truth. Every time, I chickened out. We had a good life together.
I told myself he chose not to go back to her, and I ignored the hurt inching its way into his every gaze. Pretending I didn’t see him staring off into the distance at nothing wasn’t easy, but I did it well. For three years, I didn’t tell him the truth, rather I tried to convince him to go home. Even though it pained me to say the words, I couldn’t watch the boy who’d been so full of life and fun disappear into the man who ached for someone who had left him because of me.
The afternoon before we left for home, he walked in without his usual fake smile. I sat folding Kieran’s laundry on the couch and glanced up when he plopped down next to me and took my hand in his. With his thumb, he rubbed small circles in my palm while Kieran tossed toys out of the box we kept in the corner.
“The laundry isn’t going to fold itself, Keats.” I tried to pull away, but he held on.
His quiet moments were limited to his sleeping hours, but he didn’t utter a word as he stared at our intertwined fingers. He’d finally decided. Though I’d talked until I had no words left to convince him to beg for her forgiveness, the reality of not being enough to hang on to him hurt. I’d given our relationship everything I had, and even though I’d pushed for it, all this time he hadn’t gone home, and it gave me hope. Someday he would come around. Nope. I braced myself and waited. This was going to hurt.
He took a quick breath and blew it out. “Dani, I’m leaving. The resort has a job opening and Simon said they want me to run it again.”
The part of me content to cling to a man for my baby’s sake crumbled. He planned to walk away from Kieran? My heart ached for my baby’s loss. It only took a glimpse of his face to know he’d made his decision, and it made him happy. His smile said it all.
Well, if I had to lose him as a friend, and I would have to lose him because Joss would never let him see me again, at least I would know he’d gotten what he needed. I nodded and continued folding the clothes as though my stomach hadn’t started flipping and flopping like a fish in a net.
“You could go home, too, you know.”
“There’s nothing for me there.” Canada didn’t have a lot to offer, either, but at least I wasn’t a slut internationally. Well, once I crossed the border, no one called me anything like it, anyway.
“Simon’s there.” He squeezed my hand.
“And he moved on.” I pulled away. “Don’t worry, Keaton. I know you need to go. It’s okay.” The words cracked as a vision of Simon invaded my thoughts. Going home would do more than cause a waver to my voice. It would shatter me in places that had only begun healing.
“What do you want to do about Kieran?”
My pulse dropped a notch. He had at least considered my boy.
I should have told him--just said the words--but I sat still, uncertain how to tell him he couldn’t be the father to my child. “Keaton--”
“Please, Dani, come home with me. I know things are tough there, believe me, but don’t you want to let Kieran meet your folks? And mine?” He followed me to the kitchen and stood behind me as I looked out the kitchen window. “If you show them the Dani you showed to me, all that mess before will be forgotten.”
I spun around, the old me present and accounted for, begging for her moment in the light. “If that me is so damned great, why didn’t I turn your head?” I didn’t wait for an answer but shoved past him to stand in the middle of the floor. “I couldn’t even make you forget her for a single minute. Seriously. How many nights in a row did you get drunk because that me didn’t measure up? I. Wasn’t. Enough.” I stabbed my sternum with a pointed finger as I spoke. “I don’t need to go home and watch Simon with Kelly and let him make me feel like crap too. Kieran and I can have a really good life here. I don’t need anybody else to love me. Not you. Not Simon. Not anyone.”
His voice did nothing to mask his confusion. “I thought you didn’t want me to love you? You said just sex and friendship.”
Yep. Even I thought my behavior fell into the slightly bi-polar category. Of course, our deal had included sex, and he hadn’t given any of that up.
I couldn’t stand there and pick a fight with him. He had to do this. I couldn’t blame him for trying to be better, mend himself in ways I hadn’t been able. “I didn’t. I mean, I don’t.” I sighed. “I’m sorry. The thought of going back there makes me crazy.” Just thinking of Simon with Kelly actually caused my stomach to ache.
“I know. But you aren’t a runner. It’s time to go home and face whatever”--he grinned--“or whoever you’re running from.” He leaned against the counter, his smug smile aimed at me. “Do you remember when we went out in high school?”
I rolled my eyes and nodded.
“I didn’t break up with you because you’d done anything wrong. I let you go because I knew you two belonged together. You did then and you do now.”
“Whatever. You broke up with me because you had a thing for Jocelyn. And I don’t care what you say about me and Simon.” I turned to face him, whatever I’d been pretending to see out the window as forgotten as my life before Simon. “I’m not going home, and even if I decided I wanted to be in Storybook Lake, it wouldn’t be to try my luck with him again. We didn’t work out, and that’s the way it is. Unlike you, my friend, I don’t live in the past or rely on it to make my future a happy one.”
He shook his head and smiled his I’ll-convince-you-one-way-or-another smile. “When Simon walked into a room, you were all over me like icing on cupcakes.” He wrapped an arm around me, and I rolled my eyes at his bakery reference. She owned the bakery in town. “But when he wasn’t around, we could have parked an airplane in the space between us. I see your face when I talk to him on the phone.”
“It’s lust. I haven’t exactly been getting any since I got here.”
He let that pass. “It doesn’t have a thing to do with your lack of sex, and you know it. You are all Simon, all the time. Don’t let him get away again.”
“He has someone else.” Tha
t was not the most fun thing I’d ever had to say. “He moved on. And so have I.”
Keaton chuckled. Chuckled! “He might be dating someone else, but I guarantee if you go back, you’ll end up with Simon.” He put a hand on each of my cheeks to stop my headshaking. “Come on, Dani. You both deserve to be happy.” His lips brushed the top of my scalp, and he rested his cheek against my hair. “Together.”
“No.” I didn’t deserve to be happy. I’d lied my ass off for the last three years, and I stumbled through every single day with my deception staring me in the face. No. Happiness was more than I could ever hope for, more than karma or God would ever allow me.
The next day, we sat together on a flight to Storybook Lake.
Chapter 7
Coming home was a far different experience than I expected. I hadn’t told them about Kieran, just strolled up the porch steps with him. Their surprise quickly morphed into a crazy kind of joy I’d never really seen out of either of them. Then the shopping began, and without much warning or expectation of repayment, Kieran and I had more stuff than would fit in my bedroom. Toys, books, clothes… If they sold it in town, or one nearby, Kieran and I received it as a gift.
My mom cleaned out her upstairs office to decorate a bedroom for Kieran. A dinosaur mural decorated one wall, and she’d ordered a bed designed to look like a rock cave. The carpet mimicked a stone path in the center of a grassy knoll. It took all of one minute for Kieran to fall in love with his new room and his new family.
For me, the fact they’d taken us in meant more than I could ever find a way to show. I tried to help out, to prove I’d reformed and changed my wicked ways, but my mean girl peeked out every once in a while. When she did, I hopped in the car for whatever reason I could formulate to make an escape. That was how I ran into Simon. Literally.
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