Finding Joy (The Joy Series)

by Jenni Moen

  As soon as we got near the boathouse, confusion took over her face. I kept hold of her hand, pulling her along behind me as I looked for Jake

  “You’re all set up,” he said after we found him. He led us to a little rowboat tied to the end of the pier. “There are life jackets in it. Take it as long as you need,” he said, directing a sly smirk over Allie’s head.

  “We’re getting in that?” she asked after he was out of earshot. Her head swung back and forth between me and the boat, her expression oscillating between fear and disdain.

  “Looks pretty sound to me,” I said, stepping inside. The little boat rocked under my feet. As soon as it was steady, I reached for her hand and coaxed her off the pier.

  “I’m not sure about this,” she said, settling on the bench. “Do you know how cold this water is?”

  I laughed. “I have no intention of finding out.”

  I rowed us away from the boathouse and the few people milling around the docks. Allie pulled her coat tighter around her and took in her surroundings.

  It was a beautiful fall day, and a perfect day for boating in Central park. Probably one of the last before winter really set in. Yet she still looked unsure. I headed for a group of trees that jutted out over the water, keeping us parallel to the shore in case Allie freaked out and jumped ship.

  “No self-respecting New Yorker would do this, you know. We look like tourists,” she said, laughing.

  “I’ve always felt like a tourist here.”

  “Really?” she asked. “I thought you loved the city.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “But the winters are too long. I like New York from June through September. The rest of the time, I’m not sure.”

  “Spoken like a true Texan,” she said. “Do you want to go back?” She looked worried. Aside from a few scattered holidays when she would fly in and fly out again as fast as she could, Allie liked to keep as much distance as possible between her and the city where we had both grown up.

  “Nah,” I said. “I never planned on going back. Except to visit. We can visit.” I winked at her, knowing that the upcoming trip had her as on edge as it did me. She didn’t need to know how nervous I was, though.

  I laid the oars down in the bottom of the boat and leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees to get a little closer to her. I was ready for business.

  “You’re probably wondering why I brought you out here.”

  “Maybe.” She looked at me suspiciously, and I wondered what was going through her head.

  “Oh!” she said, on a sharp breath. She looked as if a light had just gone on. “Is this … you’re not ….” Her voice trailed off. Eyes as big as saucers, she looked at me worriedly.

  It suddenly hit me.

  Oh shit.

  Until this very second, it hadn’t occurred to me what this might look like to her. This was the shit little girls dreamed of, right? Prince Charming in a boat. A romantic fall proposal for a fairytale spring wedding. But I was not Prince Charming, and this wasn’t a proposal.

  FML.

  “Uhhh, no. Sorry,” I said awkwardly. “Allie, I …” I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but I wasn’t ready for what she was thinking. I wasn’t too far off, but we’d only been together for six months. We still had too many issues to work out.

  It wasn’t that I doubted us. We would get there. I wasn’t Burke, and I wouldn’t avoid commitment forever. But today certainly wasn’t the day.

  Allie’s warm laugh pulled me from my thoughts. “Oh, God. I was scared for a second.”

  “You were?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I thought ….” She looked embarrassed now.

  “Yeah, I didn’t think about what this probably looked like to you when I planned this little adventure. I’m sorry if you’re disappointed.” I grabbed her hands and held them in mine.

  She looked at them, unsure of what to say.

  “Hey,” I said, my voice quiet but sure. “We’ll get there. You’re my whole world, and you know I love you. But you know as well as I do that we have some issues to work through.”

  Relief flooded her face. “Yes. Like figuring out where we should live? Like telling your parents about us?” she asked.

  “That and a few other things.” I rubbed my thumb across the palm of her hand. Her hands were so soft. Mine were hard and calloused from the gym. But hers … they were so small and soft. Maybe that was why I always needed to touch them.

  “Like what?” she asked.

  “Well, I brought you out here so that you could tell me.”

  “That’s pretty cryptic,” she said, laughing uneasily.

  “I’ve been waiting. I’ve tried to be patient. I wanted you to come to me when you were ready, but I can’t just sit and wait for you to figure out what you want. I’m worried about where your head is.”

  A trained bluffer, Allie just looked back at me with her blank attorney mask firmly in place. A succession of rapid blinks was her only tell. She was ruffled.

  “Rock the boat, Allie.”

  “Rock the boat?”

  I sighed. She could be incredibly frustrating. “I brought you out here so you can’t get away. I know you’ve been holding back on me. Whatever it is, we should be dealing with it together.”

  Her gaze never faltered. It bored into mine … almost as if she was searching for something in me that would give her the courage to speak. The mask she’d been wearing slipped as a succession of emotions flashed across her face. Uncertainty. Worry. And, finally, resolve.

  She looked away, studying something in the distance, and then sighed. “There is something,” she said quietly. “I’ve been struggling with how to talk to you about it for a while, but I decided last night that it’s not something we need to talk about at all.”

  “Allie, look at me,” I said.

  I waited for her to comply. Finally, when I had her undivided attention, I spoke again. “You shouldn’t be afraid of talking to me about anything. Are we going to agree about everything? No. Are we going to fight occasionally? Hell, yes, we are. But that’s the way it’s supposed to be. That’s the way I want it. I don’t want a doormat of a woman who tries to be what she thinks I want her to be. I fell in love with you because you’re strong and brave and willing to fight for what you want.”

  She looked down at our still joined hands and gave them a light squeeze. Then the words I’d been waiting months to hear erupted from her as if she had no control over them. “Lizzie wants us to adopt the baby.” There was no mistaking the relief on her face. Just uttering the words out loud had instantly removed the weight that had bearing down on her. She looked visibly lighter.

  “She does,” I said. A statement rather than a question.

  “You say that like you already knew it.”

  “I knew it was something you two have discussed.” I couldn’t ask her to be honest with me if I wasn’t going to be honest in return.

  “She talked to you?” she asked irritably.

  “No, Lizzie hasn’t said a word to me about it. I overheard the two of you talking in the hospital.”

  She stiffened abruptly and fidgeted on the plank seat. “I’ve wrestled with this for months. I’ve deliberated about whether I should bring it up and how to do it. And you’ve known all along and not said a word?”

  “You didn’t have to wrestle with it for months, Allie. You should have just talked to me about it.” I could tell she was angry and hurt, but it wasn’t clear yet which emotion was going to win the day.

  She looked around like she wanted to get up and move. This was exactly why I had brought her out here. Sure, the rowboat metaphor was cute and all, but the real reason I’d placed her in the middle of a lake when I forced her hand was because she was a runner. I knew from experience that when things got hard Allie would take off. Here, we were surrounded by cold water. There was nowhere for her to go.

  Suddenly, something clicked for her, and she put all the pieces of that day together. “You left,” she b
reathed. “You left me there because Burke needed a ride. He didn’t really need a ride, did he? You left the hospital because you heard us talking about the baby.”

  Her accusations were true. It hadn’t been my finest hour. I wasn’t proud of my actions that day. I fought the desire to look away. I wasn’t going to be cowardly about this.

  “Yes. You texted me to come back, but when I got to the door I overheard Lizzie telling you that we would make great parents. I panicked.”

  “So you just left me there,” she said.

  “Come on, Allie … I needed time to absorb it. You’d been gone for a month. I’d been pining away like a fool. Waiting every night by myself at that awful bar. Just when I’d given up, you finally seemed to be coming to your senses. Then Lizzie threw that curve ball, and I didn’t know how to deal with it.”

  “So you just left me there,” she said again, pulling her hands out of my grip and wringing them in front of her.

  “I wish now that I handled it differently.” It had been a jackass move.

  “And then you let me stew for months over it. You could have started this conversation a million times, and you didn’t. Keeping it from you has nearly killed me.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have,” I said evenly.

  Her clear blue eyes narrowed on me. “Maybe you shouldn’t have. Take me home,” she spat out hotly.

  A lump rose in my throat. This conversation had taken a turn I hadn’t expected. But it suddenly occurred to me that she wasn’t wrong. I had heard them talking, and I knew it had been weighing on her. So why hadn’t I talked to her about it? Because it was her issue to deal with? Because my mind had already been made up?

  “No.”

  “No?” she seethed. “I mean it, Adam, take me home. I need out of this boat.”

  “It’s just rocking, Allie,” I said. More with the cute metaphor. “Don’t tip us over.”

  She gave me a long, hard look before she visibly crumbled. “I’m not tipping us over,” she said quietly. She buried her face in her hands, and her shoulders sagged and began to shudder.

  Shit. I hated when she cried. It always seemed to be my fault.

  “Hey,” I said, scooting forward on my seat and wrapping my arms around her. I buried my face in her hair that smelled of the expensive minty shampoo she used. “You’re right. I should have told you that I overheard you guys. I’m sorry. It wasn’t fair of me. I guess we’ve both been holding back. I thought I should let you figure out what you wanted first. But we should have been figuring this out together.”

  “What now?” she asked quietly. “You’ve made it pretty clear that you don’t want kids.”

  “I don’t,” I said. I knew those were tough words for her to hear, but there wasn’t any way to wrap this up with a pretty bow.

  I’d been clear about it from the beginning … not just with Allie, but with every girl I had ever dated. It was non-negotiable, and I had made a habit of putting it out there early in the relationship even when I saw it going nowhere. I didn’t want any girl investing time and energy in me if having kids was important to her. And having kids was important to most women and probably most men if they were honest with themselves. As it should be.

  But I wasn’t one of them. It was important to me not to have them, and it was a deal-breaker.

  I could provide a whole laundry list of reasons why.

  I didn’t want to pass along my mother’s history of mental illness.

  I didn’t want anyone depending on me like that ever again.

  They’re loud and obnoxious, and require constant care.

  I’m a selfish bastard.

  These were the reasons that I usually gave when asked.

  The real reason, the one that I hadn’t shared before now, was that I couldn’t live through it again if something terrible happened.

  Children were supposed to outlive their parents. It was the natural order of things. But that wasn’t always the case. Sometimes tragedy strikes. I’d witnessed tragedy and been a front row spectator. Though Joy had been my sister, there had been long periods of time when I’d been the only parent either of us had. Our family had never been the same after she had died and never would be.

  I hadn’t been the same either. I’d failed her. I hadn’t protected her. I hadn’t been there for her when she needed me.

  These were the words that I’d never shared with anybody. But I shared them with Allie. In a rowboat in the middle of Central Park, I poured my heart out to her like I had never done before.

  Tears streamed down her face as I talked about Joy. I hated putting her through this, but it was our reality. I couldn’t talk about my feelings about Lizzie’s baby without talking about Joy.

  When I was done, we sat in silence for a few long moments. “See, I was right not to rock the boat,” she finally said.

  “No, you weren’t, Allie. It will never be wrong to tell me the truth about how you feel. If we’re not communicating, we’re dying. But let’s be honest here. You haven’t really done much rocking, have you? You’ve told me what Lizzie wants. And I’ve told you how I feel about it, but you’ve yet to tell me how you feel about it.” I traced circles on the palm of her hand with my thumb. “Do you want the baby?”

  She looked away again, presumably gathering courage to speak. “I thought I did. But then I decided that I don’t. I don’t know, Adam. I don’t know how I feel about it. I don’t want to let Lizzie down. I don’t want to let you down. I can’t separate my feelings about the two of you long enough to figure out what I want. I never thought I would get the chance to be a mom, and now a baby is practically being thrown in my lap. What if I don’t take her and I regret it for the rest of my life?”

  I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want to feel it. But, after everything I had just told her, her words incited something in me that I didn’t like.

  Anger.

  I guess I hoped her answer would be different after everything I’d told her. But hadn’t I just told her that I didn’t want her to be a doormat … that I wanted her to fight for what she wanted?

  I meant it when I said it, but now I just wanted her to put me first. To put us first.

  I am a selfish bastard after all.

  CHAPTER 14

  Alexis

  The ultimatum was coming. I could feel it hanging in the air between us. He was going to make me choose. And though I had just admitted that I didn’t know whether or not I even wanted Lizzie’s baby, I knew what my decision would be. I’d pick him.

  In a heartbeat.

  I’d made the decision last night in the car. It’s not that I believed that I couldn’t live without him. I could. But I didn’t want to.

  Living and being alive were two entirely different things. I had only been alive before he had come into my life. Now I was living. It wasn’t always easy, but I didn’t want to do any of it without him. The easy stuff. The hard stuff. I wanted him by my side for all of it. I certainly didn’t want to raise a baby without him.

  “Well, you don’t have to decide today,” he said, surprising me.

  “That wasn’t the point of this,” he said, gesturing to the lake around us. “I just wanted you to be honest with me. And I want you to know that you’re not alone. We’ll figure it out together.”

  He was saying all the right things but something felt off. He didn’t seem himself at all.

  Adam

  “Do you see the irony in this at all?” she asked. A genuine smile spread across her face.

  I shrugged, not sure where she was headed with this.

  “Earlier, when I thought that you were about to propose and we both freaked out, you said that you weren’t there yet. That we’d only been together six months. We agreed that we’re not ready for marriage, but now we’re talking about babies.”

  “That is sort of funny. We kind of do everything backwards, don’t we?”

  “Well … there’s definitely nothing conventional about us,” she said. A breeze blew over us, and Al
lie shivered.

  I picked up the oars from the bottom of the boat. “Are you ready to head home? You look cold.”

  “Are we through talking?” she asked.

  “For now. Let’s take some time to think this through, okay? But, Allie, you need to decide what you want. Not what I want. Not what Lizzie wants. What you want. And talk to me about it. Don’t make me wonder about what you’re thinking.”

  “I want you, Adam. I don’t need to think about that.”

  I laid the oars across my lap. This conversation wasn’t over. “I can’t ask you to give up that baby, Allie. If it’s what you want, I don’t want to be the reason you don’t do it. You’ll end up resenting me later. You have to decide what’s right for you, and then we’ll figure out the rest.”

  I sounded like someone else I knew. Someone who had recently given me similar advice.

  Big mistake, man. You’ve got to go for your dreams. You give them up, and you’ll end up hating her. Do the interview. Don’t accept second best. It’s only six months. She’s not going anywhere.

  “I don’t want you hating me,” I said, echoing Burke.

  “I have thought about it,” she said. “I’ve given it a lot of thought actually. And I don’t know if I even have it in me to be a good mother. I think I’m too selfish.”

  “You can’t really believe that,” I said. “You’re great with Lizzie. You’ve given her everything you possibly can in your position.”

  “I work too much.”

  “So don’t,” I said, shrugging. “Life’s about priorities. Work has always been your priority because you haven’t had anything else to focus on.”

  What the hell was I doing? Was I actually going to sit here and talk her into doing it? What the fuck? I needed to shut up or I was going to be looking down the barrel at some hard decisions myself.

  “Look, I …. agggghh.” This conversation was so damn frustrating. I rolled my shoulders and unclenched my teeth, trying to get a grip on whatever this was that I was feeling. “Just know this. I don’t doubt you for a second. I know you can do it. You’ll be a great mom if that’s what you want to do.”