I smiled. “No. It isn’t your table manners—although they are atrocious. It’s just that I dated this kid this summer—”
He put his hand up. “Wait. Kid?”
“Yeah. Kid. He’s twenty-six years old. Well, I guess twenty-seven now. It was supposed to be a summer fling, my fun rebound after Greg before I got back in the saddle for real again. Only…”
“Only it turned out to be more than a summer fling.”
I nodded. Then I said out loud what I wouldn’t let myself admit all this time. “If I’m honest with myself, I think I’m in love with him.”
“That’s great, Gray. Love is kind of the endgame, right?” Price wiped his mouth and smiled. “I mean, it sucks for me because I’m in love with you, but I’m a big boy.”
I rolled my eyes. “You are not in love with me.” I paused. “I haven’t told you the worst part yet.”
“What’s the worst part?”
“His job.”
He grinned again. “Ooooh. Let me guess. Bartender?”
I shook my head.
“Male stripper.”
I gave him a get serious look.
“Okay. I give up.”
“Tennis pro.”
I thought wine was going to fly right out of his nose.
“Oh no, Gray. That is the worst. Cougar divorcée sleeping with the twentysomething tennis pro.”
I held my head in mock shame. “I know.” Then I looked up at him and smiled. “It’s a cliché for a reason.” Then I brightened. “Wait! I have the perfect person for you to go out with.”
“Who?”
“My best friend. She’s the most gorgeous person I’ve ever seen in real life, she has never been married, she has no kids, she’s younger than I am.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Good Lord. I should hope she’s younger than you.” Price was well aware of my almost-thirty-five panic.
We both laughed. I almost decided to take it back. I mean, here was a man who was exactly everything I thought I wanted. And I was going to give him away? But this was my best friend. She was light and fun and free, he was light and fun and free, and they both thought the world subsisted on even numbers.
“Her name is Marcy,” I said.
“So why isn’t gorgeous, childless Marcy married?”
I shrugged. “She has always been pretty wild, but she’s ready to settle down now.”
He nodded. “What does she do?”
“She’s a therapist,” I whispered.
“No,” he said emphatically. “No, no, no.”
I laughed. “At least go out with her. She’s not like that. She doesn’t analyze you or anything.”
He sighed. “I knew I should have taken you to Nantucket. But I was afraid it was too far away, and you would say no.”
I laughed. “You’re so adorable.”
“But not as adorable as Andrew.”
I shrugged. Andrew was pretty damn adorable. “Well, on the bright side, I may be Gray, but, trust me, Marcy is way more Fifty Shades.”
Price took my hand across the table and squeezed it. “In all seriousness, I hope you find your happiness. I only hate that we couldn’t give this thing a real shot.”
“I just know that ten years from now, we’d be in Martha’s Vineyard with our beautiful blended family, and I’d be smiling and kissing you, but on the inside, I’d be thinking about him.”
He nodded. “Then I wish you well.”
We sat there for a second, and I was happy that the waiter came and broke our silence. This was the problem with breaking up with someone when you were on a trip together that wasn’t ending for another day. We ordered for each other, and he said, “Well, on the bright side, I do have one night to change your mind.”
I lifted my glass. “Here’s to that!”
The next morning, as Price opened the door of his Cirrus for me, I did a gut check. This was what I wanted, right? He was perfect husband material. But I had married husband material, and now I was divorced. If I ever got married again, I knew that being in love was entirely more important.
Price slid into the pilot’s seat of the tiny cockpit and leaned over, cupped my chin in his hand, and kissed me tenderly. I have to admit that, feeling his lips on mine, butterflies welled up in my stomach.
“I think you’re amazing,” he said. “But I know when to say good-bye. No one wants to be second choice.”
I shook my head. “It isn’t like that, Price. It’s just—”
“No,” he said, “I get it completely. I’m happy for you. I’m just sad for me.”
I was afraid that the flight home might be like the one I had taken not all that long ago with Greg. But it wasn’t. Price and I sat in companionable silence, and I realized that, even though I wanted to, I just didn’t feel that spark with him. We were two compatible people. We were great friends, and maybe this time around that’s what I should have been looking for. But I realized I still believed I deserved someone who looked at me with that fresh enthusiasm that could only come from new, young (or, in my case, young-ish) love; I still wanted to be with a man who could make me feel like I was ten thousand feet in the air.
As we pulled into my driveway a few hours later, I said, “Why don’t you come in for a drink?”
He hesitated, and I added, “I’m sure that Marcy is in there waiting to hear all about our weekend.”
Price put his hand on my back and led me up the stairs, and I wasn’t surprised at all to see Marcy, hair in a ponytail, tube socks up her ankles, legs stretched on my couch, reading a magazine.
She popped up when she heard the doorknob turn. “Oh, sorry,” she said. “I just came over to borrow this month’s Vogue.” She winked at me.
“Marcy, this is Price,” I said. “Price, Marcy.”
She gave him her most engaging smile.
“Marcy, I was telling Price all about you over dinner last night,” I said.
“Yeah,” he added. “And besides the whole therapist thing, you sound pretty great.” He grinned.
Marcy’s look turned to one of confusion as she glanced from Price to me. “Excuse us,” she said, pasting on a smile, and dragged me into the kitchen.
“Wait,” she whispered. “Are you giving him to me?”
I laughed. “He’s a man, not a scarf, Marcy. I can’t give him to you.”
She peeked through the doorway and whispered, “He is an Hermès scarf of a man.” She paused. “So what’s the no-go with you two?” Before I could answer, Marcy peeked around the corner at Price again. “Damn, he’s hot. What is it about him?”
“You can’t quite define it, right? Because he’s not all that classically handsome.”
“Exactly,” she said. “You’re nuts.”
“He’s perfect,” I said. “The perfect man, perfect husband material.”
She shrugged. “So again I ask, why…” She trailed off. “Oh. Andrew. This is about Andrew.” She did a little dance and said in a singsong whisper, “You love him, you want to have his babies, you want to eat whipped cream off of him when you’re an old lady!”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay. That’s enough. Why don’t you go out there and act charming to your new potential husband? Men like him don’t come around often.”
“Are you going to have babies with him?” she whispered.
I smiled.
“Oh my gosh, you are. I was right. You love him, and you’re going to marry him, and you’re going to have hot, tan, tennis-playing babies.” She put her hand in the air. “Up top, sister. I have a feeling this is going to be a very good year for both of us.”
I sat down on one of the barstools after I kissed Price’s cheek and told Marcy good-bye.
And I thought of Andrew. Part of me wanted to run to him right now, wanted to tell him I had changed my mind. But delayed gratification was the definition of adulthood, right? He was so cute. He was just a kid. He wasn’t that great on paper. But in my heart, Andrew was absolutely perfect.
diana: a perfect
day
As the warm air was starting to get chilly—and I was starting to get less nauseated—I couldn’t stop staring at my protruding belly.
“Hey, babe?” Frank called from downstairs. I was supposed to be eating breakfast with him.
“Yeah.”
“Do you want me to be here when your brother gets here?”
My brother. My Frank. What a perfect, perfect day. “Of course I do! He’ll love to see you.”
I heard footsteps up the stairs, and it wasn’t long before Frank was behind me, kissing my neck, his hands rubbing my bare belly. “Damn, pregnant looks good on you,” he said. “Are we going to tell him?”
I smiled and nodded. “Thirteen weeks, and all is well. I might not start telling random people yet, but I think it’s fine to tell him.” Frank knew how worried I was about this pregnancy. I knew the pregnancy was at higher risk for complications, that there was a higher chance that something could be wrong with the baby, that I was at a greater risk for a laundry list of problems and even death. But I couldn’t dwell on that. I had to move forward.
I had already told Phillip at our visit the week before, and he had smiled so big and even put his hand on my belly. Every time I thought of it, I burst into tears. He understood.
It was like Frank was inside my head when he said, “Do you want to see if we can find somewhere else for Phillip?”
“Where, like here?”
He shook his head and sat down on the end of our bed. “Babe, look. I don’t want to focus on this, but you are in the middle of a high-risk pregnancy. And you know how hard a change like that will be on Phillip, how much it will disrupt him.…”
I wanted to argue, but I knew more than anyone that he was right.
“Maybe we should start by trying to find a place where we can get him more personalized care,” Frank said.
I shook my head. “I don’t want to move him more than we need to. I want his next move to be permanent.”
I slid an empire-waist dress over my head. I couldn’t wait to look full-on pregnant.
“Okay, then. Yeah. You’re right. We’ll do everything we can from where he is now, and then when the time is right, we’ll move him in here with us.”
I smiled. “Really?”
He nodded. “Of course. He’s your brother.”
I kissed Frank right as the doorbell rang. “He’s here! He’s here!”
Throwing open the door, I hugged Charles so tight I hardly even noticed the woman standing right behind him on the front porch. I was getting ready to blurt out all about the baby, and I was kind of irritated that he had brought someone with him so I couldn’t. I pulled away and smiled at the woman. Her face seemed familiar. I was about to introduce myself when she said, “Diana.”
Her voice came rushing back, and I swear I lost my mind for a minute. “No!” I screamed. I slammed the front door and walked out the back.
“Diana,” Frank called. I heard the front door open, but it didn’t matter. I was getting the hell out of there. As I bolted out the back and down the steps into the detached garage, I realized I didn’t have any car keys. And surely they were in the house by now, so it wasn’t like I could go back. But Gray’s was only a couple miles away, so I started walking. I expected them to come after me, but they didn’t. I tried not to, but I couldn’t help but think about all those other times I’d been alone before—and worry that nothing much had changed.
CHAPTER 21
gray: the car crash
I hadn’t spoken to Andrew since the day I had told him it was over between us for the second time. And I knew that, before I confessed to him how I was feeling now, I had one more thing to do, something that terrified me to my core: I had to talk to his mother.
I could see her rear end pointing up toward the sky from her trunk before I saw her face. She looked shocked when she turned and my car was in the driveway. I waved, and she laughed.
“Hi, June,” I said, opening the door, figuring it was safe since Andrew’s car was nowhere to be found.
“Well, hi there, darling. What brings you here?”
I got out of the car and lifted my sunglasses so that we could see eye to eye. “I’m sorry I didn’t call. I just wanted to talk to you for a minute, but if this isn’t a good time I can—” I pointed back to the car.
“Don’t be silly.” She winked at me. “You can help me carry up my groceries.”
“I don’t want to put you in a weird spot,” I said, as we climbed the stairs to the front door.
She paused and fumbled for her keys in her purse. “Well, I asked you not to break his heart, darling, and, without a doubt, you did.”
I sighed, following her through the door. “I know. But I did it then to make it easier. I didn’t want to drag things out, prolong them, because I knew that, realistically, this wasn’t going to work out. I mean, he’s just a kid, and I’m not exactly who a parent would dream about their star of a son marrying.” I paused and added, “I didn’t want you to think that I was latching on to your son because I was desperate or something.”
She laughed heartily. Opening the fridge, she pulled out a bottle of white wine and retrieved a corkscrew from a drawer. “I think we’re probably going to need a little of this.” As she poured, she said, “I am not going to patronize you, Gray. I have…” She paused. “Concerns.”
She walked toward the back deck, and I followed her. She looked around as she sat down and said, “You’re a mother, so I feel that you understand where I am coming from and won’t take offense when I say that, no, you are not who I envisioned for my son.”
I knew that. Even still, it stung.
“Well, that’s not true,” she said. “Under different circumstances, you are precisely what I envisioned for my son.”
“But we aren’t under those circumstances,” I agreed. “I’ve been married, I have a child, and I am barreling toward my thirty-fifth birthday.”
She bit her lip. “We raised him to be a steadfast man. We raised him to follow his heart.”
I nodded. “That’s very, very clear.” I turned and looked out over the ocean.
“He has always been so focused. He has dated a lot, but whenever I asked him if it was serious he would say, ‘When I find her, I’ll know.’ ”
My heart was racing.
“When he told us all about you and Wagner, I asked him if he was sure it was worth it, knowing that, in the end, it might not work out, knowing that even if it did work out he would be taking on quite a lot.” She paused and looked out over the ocean, then back at me. “And he said, ‘Mom, I know.’ ”
I smiled and closed my eyes, shaking my head. “That is so sweet—but, June, we don’t have to get ahead of ourselves.”
“I think you know my boy is very strong-willed.”
“Oh, he is that,” I said, thinking of that first day I saw him at the tennis court. I shrugged. “He is special, June. He is so wonderful, and I wanted to talk to you, mom to mom. You want what’s best for your son, and I want what’s best for mine, so I respect that. I—”
She interrupted. “Are you asking for my son’s hand, dear?”
I laughed. “No. Not exactly. I just…” I paused. “I’ve been thinking about all the reasons that our relationship couldn’t work, all the reasons it was wrong. But being apart has made me realize that, right or not, I only want to be with Andrew.” My eyes filled with tears. “I tried to push it away, and I’ve tried to fight it, but if it’s okay with you, I’d like to at least give it a fair shot. And if it isn’t, no one understands better than I do.”
She smiled sympathetically. “I might not fully understand it, but I would never keep my son from true love.”
“Okay—” I started to say.
But June interrupted me again. “I have to ask you something. And it’s none of my business.” She paused, then waved her hand. “Oh, never mind.”
I laughed. “Well, you have to ask me now!”
She swallowed hard and whispered, “D
o you want more children?”
That was much easier than what I had been expecting. “I certainly want more if it works out that way.”
“Like I said, it’s none of my—”
We both turned to look as we heard a girl’s laughter, followed by a, “Mom!”
I could see the car crash before it happened, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I couldn’t be mad, because I had pushed him away.
But when he walked onto that deck holding the hand of a beautiful blond girl, who probably wasn’t a minute over twenty-one, it took my breath away.
“Hi,” I said brightly, taking a sip of my wine so that I would have something to do with my hands and mouth. I set down my glass, patted June’s hand, and turned to Andrew and said, “Just catching up with your mom, but I need to be going now.”
“Gray, I…” Andrew looked at me, and then the girl, whose hand he had abruptly dropped.
“Thanks, June. I always love seeing you.”
I bolted through the house and out the front door. I probably should have cried, but I laughed instead. Because the world was as it was supposed to be.
I decided that I wouldn’t cry. I would take some deep breaths instead. I drove slowly, calming myself, realizing that my life wasn’t over. He was a wonderful man, but there would be others. And if there weren’t? Well, then that would be fine too. The past was in the past, and I had to move on. I thought about stopping by Greg’s to see Wagner for a minute, but I decided that a glass of wine might be more appropriate right now. Hell, maybe even a cigarette.
Diana was leaning on the kitchen counter, cup of coffee—decaf, I’m sure—in hand when I tore through the back door. She handed me a cup too. I kissed her on the cheek.
“Gray, I…”
Her face was white. My first thought was the baby. This was Diana’s biggest fear. But nothing could have prepared me for what she said next.
diana: the ends of the earth
I’d always wished that I’d got to go to my momma’s funeral, that I could have thrown a handful of earth on her grave, and then I wouldn’t’ve had any lingering questions. But I guess there was a good reason I hadn’t gone: she hadn’t had a funeral.
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