by Megyn Ward
The grin he’s giving me winks out.
“Jack’s outside.” He says it, quick and decisive, like he’s cauterizing a wound. “He’s waiting for you.” He instinctively blading his body away from me when he says it. Dropping his leg back just enough to absorb my weight when I launch myself at him in an effort to rip his head off his shoulders, even though I haven’t gotten physical with anyone in months. Because he knows that if anything is going to send me into a tailspin, it’s this.
Jack.
My father.
Waiting to ambush me.
Today, of all fucking days.
Con is still talking so I force myself to listen. Pay attention to what he’s telling me.
“…in the parking lot. As far as I can tell, he’s sober. He—”
“Why is he here?” It comes out hard, like an accusation. I can feel the life I’ve spent the last several months building, brick by fucking brick, start to shift and shake. Threaten to come down to bury me alive. “Did you bring him here?”
“No.” Even though we both know it’s exactly the kind of shit he’d pull, Con looks at me like I’m still certifiable. “You realize how much time, not to mention money, I’ve given up for this shit?” he says, like I need a reminder of what’s at stake if I fuck up today. “I’ve got just as much invested in today as you do—so no, I didn’t bring Jack here. Fuck no I didn’t.”
“Then why is he here?” Even as I ask it, I’m mentally running through all the reasons my father would want to talk to me. Looking for money. A place to stay. Someone to give a shit.
If that’s what he’s looking for, he came looking in the wrong fucking place.
“Fuck if I know.” Con reaches up to scrub a rough hand over the back of his neck. “He was here when I rolled up this morning.” Dropping his hand, he gives me a rare, helpless shrug. “I figured he was here for Hen but—”
“Henley?” I don’t know why I feel betrayed but I do. While I haven’t quite worked through all the shit I carry around when it comes to her, my sister and I are on a solid foundation these days. I can feel that foundation start to crumble. “She still talks to him?”
“Not that I know of.” That means no, because Conner knows everything there is to know about Henley. Good, bad and downright ugly, they don’t keep secrets from each other. “Anyway, I told him Hen isn’t here and he said he wasn’t here for her—he was here to see you.”
“No.” I shake my head. A part of re-building myself has been recognizing and acknowledging the things I can’t do. Not what I don’t want to do. Not the things I’m afraid of, but the things I’m not ready for. The things that will stall my progress if I try to tackle them too soon. When too much really is too much. My useless drunk of a father waiting to ambush me in the parking lot is the goddamned definition of too much. “Maybe next week or fuck, even tomorrow—but not today.” I keep shaking my head, my hands clenching themselves into fists. My jaw clenched so tight I can practically hear my teeth crack. “I can’t—”
“So go out the front,” he tells me like he has it all worked out. “I’ll go out back and run interference. Keep him busy until you’re gone.”
“Go out front and what?” I laugh at him because it’s a stupid idea. “Catch a bus? There’s no time for that—”
“You know what,” he says, giving me a grim smile that tightens the back of my neck, right before it shoots down the length of my spine to settle in my groin with a familiar throb that has me looking down to make sure I didn’t just pop a tent in my pants.
Because the solution he’s presenting like it’s the only one I have has a name.
Grace.
“Yes, you can,” he tells me before I puss out and say it out loud because he knows what he’s suggesting in on my list of cant’s. “And even if you can’t, you don’t have much of a choice.”
“Fuck.” I can feel my chest getting tight and I lift a hand to rub it over my sternum, trying to loosen it up. Because Grace isn’t so much of a can’t as she is a shouldn’t. I shouldn’t be around her. Shouldn’t bother her. She made it clear that she wasn’t interested in taking on my two tons of fucked-up bullshit five months ago and I’ve done everything I can to respect her decision. To give her room to breathe.
To be fair to her.
“I haven’t talked to her in months, Con.” I shake my head, trying to force myself to think clearly, remember all the reasons that why what he’s suggesting is a bad fucking idea. Because the truth is, even though I know I shouldn’t bother Grace, I want to. “I can’t just show up on her doorstep and ask—what about Tess? Maybe she can—”
“Tess has a list of bridesmaid shit to do as long as her arm—she’s not available, and yes, you can,” he says it again like he’s cauterizing another wound, hitting me quick and hard with the truth. “And before you ask, I have shit to do too—I’ve got to go tell Jack to fuck off and then I have background checks to run on the new batch of resident applications—and that’s before the six legal aid appointments I have scheduled for today.” Tossing his towel over his shoulder Con gives me a shrug. “It’s real simple, Ry—either deal with your father or deal with Grace. If I were you, I’d take option B because she’s going to the same place you are and she leaves in twenty minutes.”
Twenty-one
Grace
Fridays are usually my day.
The one day of the week that I get to have a little breathing room. With Patrick gone into work and Cari either holed up in her studio or sleeping off an all-night painting session, Friday is the day I get to drop Molly off at school and then come back home and be alone. Hear myself think for ninety glorious minutes. Get ready for my 10AM class without a four-year-old underfoot. Leave on time so I don’t have to worry about hitting traffic or that I’ll be late because Molly tried to fill the side pocket of her school backpack with chocolate milk because she gets thirsty and the juice box I pack in her lunchbox is gross.
Hell, sometimes I even have enough time to hit my favorite coffee cart on campus for a latte and vanilla bean scones before class starts.
There will be no lattes or scones in my immediate future.
Not today.
“Molly Grace Faraday,” I yell at the top of my lungs so my voice will carry from the laundry room and down the hall to her room. “I am leaving this house in sixty-seconds, and if you’re not ready to leave I’m going to—”
My threat is cut off by a quick, hard knock on the door that’s less than a foot away from my face. Thinking it must be Tess or Declan or maybe even Conner, because it has to be one of them if whoever it is got all the way up here without being buzzed in from the street, I lean over and yank the door open without looking through the peephole. “I’m serious, Molly,” I keep shouting. I let the door go and a hand reaches out to catch it. A very masculine, very large hand—so, not Tess. “Sixty-seconds and I’m—” Because whoever it is hasn’t crossed the threshold or at the very least said hey, I cast a fast, impatient glance over my shoulder and do my best to keep the frustration that’s coursing through me out of my tone. “We’re running late, so whatever you’re here for, I won’t be much—”
It’s Ryan.
Holy shit.
He looks good. That’s my first thought. In dark wash jeans, a light-weight, cashmere sweater under a black pea coat and boots, he looks so fucking good, I want to cry.
Better than good.
With his dark, wind tousled hair and close-clipped beard, he looks like he just stepped off the pages of an LL Bean catalog. His hair is longer than I remember. Long enough to run my fingers through. Long enough to grip and pull while he—
A warm flush settles in my belly, stirring up a flurry of butterflies, before it sinks, thick and heavy like warm honey, to settle itself in the juncture of my thighs.
“Ryan.” It sounds stupid coming out of my mouth, like I don’t actually believe what I’m seeing. Like it’s some sort of a trick.
“Hey, Grace.” He gives me a quick, nervous s
mile that tells me that whatever his reason for being here is, he doesn’t want to be.
Which tells me everything I need to know, really. That even after five months of self-imposed exile, Ryan still doesn’t want to want me. And what do you know, I really am stupid because knowing that has done absolutely nothing to dampen the furnace blast of lust I feel when I hear him say my name.
Because five months post-Ryan, I still haven’t learned a damn thing.
Not when it comes to him.
Closing ranks, I cross my arms over my chest and take a step away from the door. “Are you here on a wedding assignment?” It’s Patrick and Cari’s wedding weekend. The two of them left early this morning for Declan’s house on the Cape to pre-honeymoon before the big day, leaving the last minute details to the rest of us. Last I heard, Con and Henley were taking care of the center and Declan was running between jobsites of the construction company he and Patrick co-own while Tess was bouncing from crisis to crisis, putting out wedding fires, wherever they happened to sprout up.
Even I’m not immune—after class, I have a list of last-minute maid-of-honor duties to attend to.
Like pick my parents up from the airport.
“No,” Ryan answers my question while he scrubs his hands on the legs of his jeans and gives me an apprehensive smile because I’m angry and he knows it, even if he doesn’t know why. “Actually I was hoping I could ask you for a… incoming.” The last word is whispered under his breath, seconds before I hear the kind of ear-piercing shriek that has surely lured many a sailor to their deaths.
“Ryazan!”
His name is instantly followed by the slap scuffle of Molly’s sneakers as she sprints down the hall, making a beeline, straight for him. Like the laundry room doorway is a launchpad, she hits it with the balls of her feet and catapults herself straight at him and I feel my arms drop away from my chest, ready to try to catch them both because I’m sure Ryan’s bad leg is going to buckle under the force of Hurricane Molly and the impact will send the two of them tumbling down the stairs.
But that’s not what happens.
Instead of buckling, his leg holds and even though there is a lightning-fast tightening around his mouth when she hits, he absorbs her weight like it’s nothing. “Hey, kid.” He catches her mid-flight and settles her onto his hip without incident.
“Is it Wednesday?” she asks, looking at me for confirmation. When I look just as confused as she does, she refocuses her attention on Ryan. “Is it—”
“It’s Friday,” he cuts her off, an ugly red flush creeping up his neck from beneath the collar of his sweater. “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”
I feel my hackles rise at his innocent question and I open my mouth to make my excuses but Molly beats me to it. “Yeah, but Mom was up all night helping Aunt Cari pack for her bunnymoon—”
“Honeymoon,” he corrects her with a slight twitch of his lips.
“Honeymoon?” She looks at him and frowns. “Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure.” The twitch of his mouth pulls into a full-blown smile. The kind of smile I’ve never seen from him. Ever. “At least that’s what I hear. I’ve never actually been on one.”
“I’m not sure I believe you,” she informs him with a shrug. “But anyway, Mom slept through her alarm this morning and I didn’t want to wake her.” She leans into him and tilts her head, her mouth twisted in a look of pure exasperation. “You know how she gets when you wake her up—what are you doing here?”
He makes an affirmative sounding noise in the back of his throat before looking right at me. “I’m here to talk to your mom,” he says, answering her question. He clears his throat and winces like someone is dragging their nails across a chalkboard. “I know you have class today and I was hoping I could catch a ride with you.”
“You need a ride?” I say it like I don’t know what it means. “To Bay State?”
“Yeah…” He gives Molly a wink before dropping her on her feet. “Just a ride there, I can find my own way home.”
Questions.
So many questions.
Like why does he need a ride to my school?
And why can’t he drive himself? He has a car of his own now. He doesn’t need a chauffeur anymore and even if he did, why would he ask me, of all people?
And why did Molly think it was Wednesday when she saw him?
Instead of asking, I put them aside for later and reach for my coat to shrug it on. “Come on, Mol.” Coat on, I heft my backpack off its hook and sling its strap over my shoulder. “Get your coat on, we needs to go so Ryan and I won’t be late.”
Twenty-two
Ryan
I expected silence. Prepared for wariness and sidelong glances. Readied for hostility and maybe even anger because even though Grace is the one who broke things off between us, I’m the one who disappeared.
Stopped going to the Gilroy’s for Sunday dinner. Avoid dropping by the bar when I know she has a shift. Hole up in my apartment when someone mentions that she’s going to drop by the center. I tell myself that I do it for her. That I want to make it easy for her. That I’m trying to do what she asked me to do—be fair to her.
But it’s a lie and I know it. Knew it the second I set eyes on her this morning that my disappearing act had nothing to do with what’s best for her and everything to do with my own lack of self-control.
Because even though she made it clear that it was over, I can look at her now and know, without a doubt, that I wouldn’t have let her walk away from me if I’d stuck around. I would’ve kept pulling her under. Kept dragging her back in and pushing her away until she finally hated me for it.
I know it because sitting here in the front seat of her car, all I can think about is how much I want her. What it felt like to come this morning with her name in mouth. Wonder what it would feel like to do it for real.
And that pretty much makes me the biggest asshole that’s ever lived.
So yeah, I was prepared for the silent treatment. What I wasn’t prepared for was for her to start hammering me with questions the second she settled back into the driver’s seat after walking Molly to the front office her school for a late pass.
“Why did my kid think today was Wednesday?” She’s turned around completely, her entire body facing mine, arm draped over the steering wheel, jaw set at that dangerous angle that makes my cock twitch.
“I don’t know.” I offer her an answer, even though we both know it’s bullshit. “Because she’s four?”
Smelling a lie, she tilts her head just a bit as her eyes narrow slightly. “I only ask because Wednesday is the day Mary picks her up from school and keeps her for me while I work my shift at the bar, so it’s the only day of the week that I can’t 100% account for her whereabouts—and that girl knows her days of the week, backward and forward.”
“Does she?” I know she does. “Then, I don’t know.” I look out the window. “We should probably get going. We’re going to be late.”
For a second, I think she’s going to tell me to fuck off. To get the fuck out of her car and leave me standing on the sidewalk outside Molly’s school. Instead, she turns calmly in her seat and starts the car. Hands at ten and two, she pulls away from the curb, shooting into traffic like she’s been driving in Boston all her life. Just when I start to let myself relax into thinking the rest of the trip will be made in silence, she speaks again.
“She stopped talking about you a few months ago.” Thankfully, she doesn’t look at me when she says it. If she did, she’d have the perverse satisfaction of watching the color drain from my face. “Before then, you were all she would talk about. When were you going to come see her. Why you weren’t going to Con and Henley’s for dinner anymore. Every time we’d pass by Benny’s she’d beg me to go in and check to see if you were there—and then, just like that—” she lift a hand off the steering wheel and snaps her fingers. “She stopped. I thought she finally forgot about you, moved on—but I was wrong, wasn’t I?”
/> Shit. “Grace—”
“Don’t.” She drops her hand back to the steering wheel and wraps her fingers around it like she’s trying to kill it. “Don’t Grace me right now. Don’t you fucking dare say my name.”
“Alright.” Even though she has every right to be suspicious and angry, I can feel my own blood start to heat at her tone. “What do you want me to call you then? Al? Fred? No, you don’t like either of those? How ‘bout Jimmy? Does Jimmy work for you?”
“Fuck you, Ryan.”
“Right back attchya, Jimmy.”
I have the satisfaction of watching her jaw loosen and her mouth drop open just a bit before she catches it and snaps it shut.
Neither of us say another word until Grace pulls into her designated spot in the student parking lot and kills the engine.
“She’s my kid, Ryan. Mine,” She pushes the last of it through clenched teeth, glare aimed out the windshield. “I’m the one who takes care of her. Feeds her. Makes sure she—”
“Of course Molly’s yours.” I say it louder than I mean to, my tone sharper than I want it to be. Probably because hearing the truth spoken out loud stings more than it has a right to. Because even though Molly isn’t mine. I want her to be. Wish that she was. Love her like she is. “No one ever said she wasn’t.”
“Yeah?” Now she turns toward me again. “Then why do I feel like the two of you are keeping things from me?”
Because we are.
Not intentionally.
That’s not how it started out anyway.
“I teach arts and crafts,” I tell her. “At the center—on Wednesdays. Mary started bringing her to the center over the summer and—”
“You run arts and crafts at the community center. You.” She says it like I just told her my lifelong dream is to live my life as a domesticated house cat.
“It was Henley’s gig until we started getting an influx of residency applications and she had to start—” I catch myself before I really start to ramble by taking a deep breath, but instead of letting it out slowly like I’m supposed to, I let it out all at once on a frustrated push. “Yes. Me. Mary brings Molly to the center every Wednesday after school and we paint flower pots or build—”