“Yeah,” he answered dryly.“Me, too. You know, you could have told me, Nic.”
“I know,” she said sadly.“I know it now, and I knew it back then. But I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with you looking at me… like you’re looking at me.” She turned as the carousel music stopped, watching her son climb down and then bending to catch him as he ran back to her.“That was fun, right?”
“Yeah!”
“Wanna do it again?” She was already digging in her purse again, and she folded another quarter into the boy’s palm.“Go on, one more time,” she said, and then he was gone.“I just couldn’tdo it, Michael. I’m glad you were able to move on.”
“Obviously you moved on pretty easily. And pretty quickly,” he said, not caring when he felt Renee stiffen at his side.“Your son is what, three?”
“He’s five,” Nicolette said quietly.“But I did say he was adopted– he’s my sister’s son. She, um– she died two years ago, and–“
“You took him in,” Michael said nodding.
“Yeah. I look after him, take care of him. Remind him of what she was like. Show him pictures.”
“Sounds like the kind of thing you would do. I’m sorry about your sister though, Nic. I am.”
She smiled sadly, watching the little boy. He had given the seahorse to another child this time, and had chosen a peacock instead.“Yeah. Well. Maybe I should have had more faith, you know?”
Ignoring the question, Michael gestured to the round belly standing so obviously between them.“And this one?” he asked.
She dropped her eyes and adjusted her purse strap more solidly on her shoulder.“Well,” she said quietly.“This one’s… I don’t know.”
Michael stepped back in shock; she looked up with shame in her eyes, and sadness, and Michael wanted nothing more than to reach out pull her close; he wanted to reassure her, to take care of her. To rescue her, maybe. Still the irony left a bitter taste in his mouth– she had left him because she thought she couldn’t have children,because she hadn’t been willing to share her grief with him. And she had ended up as an apparentlysingle mother, solely responsible not only for her own situation, but those of her children. He pitied her circumstances, his heart twisting at the sadness in her eyes. But she had left him, and there was no going back. He would never trust her again, and he felt now that she had never trusted him at all; so he did the next best thing, he touched her arm softly in encouragement and offered her a smile.“You look alright though,” he said.“Strong, healthy. Are you doing okay, Nic?”
She nodded, her mouth twisting bitterly.“Yeah, Michael,” she said.“I’m good. As good as I’m going to get, anyway. Look, I have to go. We have an appointment after lunch, so…” She looked to Renee again, holding out her hand.“I’m sorry to have interrupted your time together.”
Renee tipped her head, taking Nicolette’s hand.“Not at all,” she said.“I’m Renee.”
The women looked each other over, silently exchanging looks that Michael didn’t understand. Renee relaxed at his side though, nodding slowly, and once Nicolette had gone to collect her son from the carousel, she took his hand again.“Are you okay?”
“I’m good,” he said.
She squeezed his fingers, and leaned her head against his shoulder as they fell into step together.“You aren’t.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“I will be.” Michael sighed.“I won’t say that wasn’t weird though, because it was. I’m sorry.”
“For what? It’s the mall, Michael. I can’t fault you for not knowing in advance that she’d be here, or that she’d be–“
“Pregnant,” he sighed.“God, Renee. She’s pregnant.” Hisheart was pounding so hard it hurt, and his stomach still hadn’t released the grip of anxiety. Nicolette. He hadn’t seen her since their last court date, and she had been beautiful. She had been beautiful today too, just as beautiful and glowingly pregnant as he had always imagined she would be. Except that it wasn’t his, it wasn’t his child in her belly, and he wasn’t the man she would raise her family with. Pregnant. What if infertility had been a lie? He shook his head, discarding that thought even as a new one popped up to disturb him. She wasn’t the type to lie– but she wasn’t the type to have random sex either. How could she be pregnant and not know who the father was? Or did she just not want to say? “I don’t even have words right now,” he said.
The rest of the afternoon went by in a haze that left Michael exhausted. Renee tried to distract him, and he did try to be responsive, but eventually she stopped trying so hard.
After the third pink shirt that Michael said was fine with him if she liked it, Renee shook her head in frustration.“Really, Michael?” she asked, planting her hands on her hips.“Pink? You hate pink; I only suggested it to see if you’d notice. You’re not wearing a pink shirt to Xander’s bachelor party.” Pulling the shirt Michael had been slipping back onto its hanger from his hands, she thrust a khaki colored plaid with green stripes into his grip.“Here, this is more like what you’d choose if you were paying attention,” she teased.
She wasn’t in as teasing a mood after they went through the same cycle in an effort to choose his shirt and tie for the engagement party, but shopping for her dress for Harmony’s combination bachelorette and twenty-first birthday party seemed to lift both their spirits. Michael was amused, watching Renee twist and twirl through the outer dressing room in each new selection, speculating on possible choices for shoes, bags, and accessories.
“I think you might have done better with this with your sister,” Michael said at one point, having pulled her close to drop a kiss on her lips.“If you wear this dress, no one is going to notice even if you go barefooted.”
Giggling, Renee had tipped her head and glanced over her shoulder to see herself from the rear view in the mirror behind her.“I can guess why,” she had replied.“It’s pretty short. That’s a lot of thigh.”
“Believe me, I noticed,” Michael had answered.
She went more conservative in her choice of a semi-formal gown for the engagement party, but was no less beautiful. Michael kept his mind on Renee, helped her choose her dress, and said all the right things throughout the day, but truth was, none of it mattered right then. He knew it would later, so he did it, but there was a pit in his stomach that attested to his inner turmoil.
He had spent three years getting over his divorce, getting over the pain of Nicolette’s leaving. Three years of his life spent mostly at the bottom of a bottle, with intermittent visits to strange and sometimes random women’s beds. Three years trying to cover the wound, three years trying to heal. And in less than three seconds, Nicolette had sent him back to the beginning, back to the courtroom, back to the day he’d come home to find her gone. Back to the frantic exchange of texts because she wouldn’t answer his calls. In less than three seconds, she had ripped away his hard-won progress, opened the festering wound. And walked away again.
Michael sighed with relief as he and Renee entered the restaurant they’d chosen for dinner. Renee had three classes to teach at her yoga studio, and she had plans to go home– alone– for the first time in their two weeks together. It would be the first night they’d spent apart in the last two weeks, the first sexless evening, and the next morning would be the first one Michael would wake up to without Renee wrapped in his arms. But he was glad; he needed the time to think, to get his thoughts together. Time to begin healing– again.
In fact, Michael might have chosen to go without dinner entirely if not for Renee; he didn’t care about food just then, or sodas, or dessert. What he wanted was a good stiff drink. Or twelve. But he sat through dinner and made appropriate small talk, hardly noticing how the spark slowly faded from Renee’s eyes. By the end of dinner, she was somewhat reserved; he finally noticed when they pulled up together at Michael’s house and Renee stepped out of the truck to unlock her car. Michael got out too, moving the seat forward to pull Renee's shopping bags out for her. But when he moved to kiss he
r goodnight before she left, she turned her cheek. He kissed the upturned cheek anyway, filled with guilt for allowing his mood to ruin their time together.
“Kind of a weird day today, huh?” she asked quietly, bringing her hand up to rest against his chest. Michael nodded, tipping his head curiously, and she went on.“Look, I’m sure your mind is a mess right now, Michael, and I’m trying not to pry. But if you wanna talk… then I wanna listen. I amstill your friend, you know?”
"I know,” he answered, bringing his hands up to cup her face.She had asked a few times throughout the afternoon if he wanted to talk, and he had said each time that he was alright. She knew it wasn’t true though, and he could feel the wedge his secrecy had placed between them. "I know you’re here to listen, and willing to hear me out, and that means more to me than I can tell you." He watched as her mouth twisted wryly, tracing the curve of her pouting bottom lip with the tip of one thumb. "It does. It's just weird to try to explain to you how she has me so messed up right now, because you do it too, in a totally different way. This ... whatever we're calling it ... it means something to me, Renee, and I am scared to death of messing it up.I don’t want to lose this, too."
"Then don't," Renee answered. "But Michael ... this won't be what it should be if we can't be honest about things. Don't feel like just because we're having sex that we can't still talk like friends. Even about Nicolette."
"I know." Michael dipped his head and rested his forehead against hers. “I just need to get my head straight.”
She waited quietly for a moment, sighed, and stepped away. "I have to go. My classes are soon and I still need to get home and change." She did reach up once more to kiss his cheek, but then she settled into her car and was gone.
Alone, Michael locked his truck, gathered his own shopping bags, and headed through the dusk to the house. He needed a drink. The house was quiet as he walked in, the same as always, but this time Michael was grateful for the sense of peace. The day had been loud in every possible way, with his thoughts screaming for release and the rest of the world just going on as usual. The mall had been filled with the chatter of young children, their parents, couples talking quietly as they shopped, and people chatting on their cell phones as they traveled from store to store, and even the restaurant he and Renee had chosen for dinner had been filled with the din of constant chatter. Michael’s blood was singing nervously in his veins, his muscles were strung tight as bowstrings along the lines of his body, and his head was pounding.
Goosebumps broke out over him as he made his way through the house, breathing deeply to take in the peace of the silence, and his hand sent little jolts of calm up through his arm as it clenched around the bottle he pulled from the kitchen cabinet.“Jesus, Nicolette,” he rasped, twisting the cap from the bottle.“Why’d you have to be pregnant?” His heart wrenched in his chest at the thought of her swollen belly.
Michael closed eyes that stung with sudden tears, bringing the bottle to his lips, and headed upstairs to his room, where he opened the balcony doors and stepped out into the deepening twilight. He had probably spent almost as much time on that small balcony as he had spent in the entire house; he had built it with his father and his brothers, designed it himself with a wife in mind before the final papers for the house had even been finished. He knew without looking that there was a bent nail head sticking out of the bottom of the railing on the far side, remembered vividly how funny it had been to watch Evan struggle to hit the narrow angle with an overlarge hammer. He had spent evenings sitting out here, or standing against the rail as he was now, looking out over the field as he wondered about the wife that would someday spend those moments with him.
And he had been filled with satisfaction when Nicolette had begun to spend those evenings beside him, sometimes sharing drinks, sometimes making love under the stars. He had proposed to her on their balcony, had rejoiced as she accepted. He had grieved there too, sinking to his knees with tears coursing down his face after she left. Such a small space, he thought, glancing around the little balcony in wonder. It was barely ten feet square, and yet so many of his memories rested there.
The jingle of his phone in his pocket drew his attention, and he bent to settle the bottle of rum between his feet before fishing his phone from his pocket.“Yeah?”
“Well, that’s no way to greet your mother, Michael. Really.”
Smiling at the playful tone behind the words, Michael tucked the phone between his ear and his shoulder and bent to retrieve his rum.“Hey, Mom. How’reyou feeling?”
“Like my son has a girlfriend and didn’t bother to call and tell me,” she teased.“Why is the mother always the last to know?”
“Oh, lay off. You seemed like you knew before I did. You were questioning meabout it weeks ago, remember?”
Eva laughed, the sound somehow making Michael ashamed of the bottle he had been bringing to his mouth. He lowered it, spinning to look around for the lid; once the bottle was capped, he headed through his room and down the stairs, still listening to the smooth, rich voice of his mother on the line.
Chapter Forty
“Is it awkward?” she asked.“It was pretty awkward when your dad and I did it.”
“Ew, mom.”
“No! That is not what I meant and you know it, Michael Aaron!”
She said the words sternly, but she was laughing and Michael laughed too, slipping the rum bottle behind the cabinet door. He turned away, heading back into the living room and dropping onto the couch.“I know, Mom,” he said, still laughing,“I was teasing. I hadn’t realized it was like that with you and Dad.”
“Oh,” she scoffed.“You knew your dad and I were friends.”
“I did– but I also knew for a long time that you weren’t.”
“Well that’s fine, then, don’t tell me,” Eva said.“I’m just sitting here, stuck on this couch most of the day, wearing this stupid walking boot, wrist still in an ugly splint. And it’s uncomfortable, and I don’t like it. And my son has shut me out of his life, won’t tell me anything, won’t–“
“I’m not nottelling you,” Michael laughed.“Butyou’re right;I’m not telling you everything either. So alright, is it weird to change the dynamic like that? Sure it is. I don’t want to ruin the friendship, Mom. If she decides–“ he swallowed against a sudden lump in his throat, and went on. “If she decides that she thinks we’re better off as friends, then I at least want the friendship to still be there, you know?If that ends up being all she wants from me.”
Eva made an agreeable noise on the other end of the line, and cleared her throat.“Well, every woman really wants to marry a man that’s her best friend, Michael. Her best friend andher boyfriend. And it is possible to be both.”
“Is it? It didn’t seem so possible tonight. I think she was mad at me.”
“Mad? She called me a little while ago to check in, on her way to work– she seemed a little down, but she said she was alright.”
“Well, she would,” Michael said, grinning. He pressed himself back, enjoying the way the couch cushions surrounded him, and propped the heels of his feet on the coffee table in front of the couch.“You’re my mom. She’s not gonna talk shit about me to my mom.”
“Language, Michael.”
“Sorry,” he answered, chastised.
“So she’s mad, then. What for?”
“I have no idea. She was fine all morning. But I was– Mom, we were at the mall, and we ran into Nicolette.”
“What?!”
He laughed, listening to her sputtering.“Right, that’s exactly how I felt about it. And with Renee right there, too.”
Eva quieted, finally making a small humming noise.“And how was that? Is that what she’s upset over? Because that’s not very like her to–“
“No,” Michael cut in.“No, it’s not that, it’s me. I was kind of… surprised to see her, I guess. I think I didn’t do a very good job pretending to shake it off.”
“Well, Renee is your best friend Michael,”
Eva answered dryly.“She’s been your best friend since almost the moment you met her. She knows you can’t just shake that off. You told her about what happened with Nic, right? About when she left?”
“I did. She knows.”
Eva sighed.“Well, then she knows you aren’t fine, you dunce. Did you lie and tell her you were? Please tell me you didn’t start things out with a lie.”
More Than Friends (Kingsley #4) Page 19