I stood up, grabbed my bag, and headed for the office to call home sick. I needed to talk to David and see my son, and anything that got in the way of that just seemed like a complete waste of my life.
* * *
“Are you sure you’re okay, Ara?” Brett asked, pulling up in David’s driveway.
“I’m fine.”
“Yeah, you seem fine, but I’m worried, kitten.”
“Why?”
“You don’t really know these people—”
“I’m not here to see them. I’m here for my son.”
“Still. I just feel like I should stay—”
“I need to do this alone.”
“But why? Do I suffocate you? Hover?”
“No—”
“Then let me stay.”
“Why? What are you so worried about?”
“So many things I can’t even begin to say.”
“Like?”
“You’re not ready for this,” he said. “It’s too soon. I’m worried about how you’ll cope—”
“Look.” I turned in my seat. “Last night was a shock, but I had time to process while I was tossing and turning in my bed”—we both laughed—“and yeah, I’m scared. I have no idea what a mom is or does, but I’m… I don’t know if it makes sense because I barely know Harry, but I just feel like he’s…”
“Yours?” he suggested.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “Now that I know, I can’t turn my back on that—”
“But it’s not Harry I’m worried about.”
“What then?”
He stared forward, his jaw fixing in place.
I followed his gaze to the top of the porch steps as Mike and his chubby blonde wife gathered there, waiting for their uninvited, unannounced guest to get out of the car. Brett stuck his hand out the window then and waved, and I quickly folded the visor down to tidy myself up.
“You look beautiful, Ara,” he said, “they’ll love you.”
“I don’t care what they think,” I said. “It’s my son I want to impress!”
Brett laughed, leaning over to kiss my cheek. “Take care, okay?”
“I will.”
“And if you need me… if…”
“Stop worrying.” I touched his wrist, sliding my hand down to give his a quick squeeze. “I’ll be fine.”
He nodded, placing both hands back on the steering wheel. I ignored the fact that his knuckles went white as I clambered out and shut the door, and then as I waved goodbye, I realized with a sudden smack of dread that Harry would still be at school—like I should be.
“Hey,” David said casually, coming down the sloped path with a huge smile and a bounce in his step.
“Hi. I uh…” I showed my teeth in a sheepish grin. “I came to see Harry but—”
“He’s at school,” he said.
“I just realized that.” I watched Brett disappear down the street.
“You don’t have to go, though,” he insisted. “You can stay.”
I looked up at Mike and his portly little wife. “Am I welcome if I’m not here to see Harry?”
David laughed, as did Mike. “Of course you are, sweetheart.”
A part of me didn’t feel welcome, though, and the fact that Mike and that woman stood there blocking the door, like sentries to my former life, just made my feet drag as David led me up to the house. When we reached the top of the steps, my eyes did a sweep across the woman. She had shiny blonde hair and was about as short as me, so the extra weight she was carrying made her look even shorter and kind of like an Oompa Loompa. She was human, which surprised me, and as I got within the radius of her aura, I realized she wasn’t fat; she was very obviously carrying a child. I could feel the life radiating off her in subtle little pulses and smooth, rolling waves. She didn’t smell all that different, not to my untrained nose, but there was definitely something there—something like what I’d felt when I found that broken egg, except this was much more powerful and had a very human feel to it.
“Hi,” I said to her.
“Hi.” She smiled as if she wasn’t sure at first that she should. “I’m Emily.”
“Ara,” I offered. “Nice to meet you.”
And then she cried. Her face just cracked, and she covered her mouth, turning in to Mike’s shoulder to sob.
I looked at David. “Was it something I said?”
“She’s a crier,” he said with a laugh.
“I’m sorry.” Emily waved her hands in front of her eyes to dry them, then quickly reached out and hugged me tightly. “We knew each other before,” she explained. “We were best friends in high school.”
“Really?” I actually hugged her back. “Well, it’s nice to meet you. Again.”
She laughed, drawing away, her face filling with color.
“And congratulations, by the way.” I playfully backhanded Mike, the sport, the conqueror.
“On what?” he said.
I nodded to Emily’s belly. “The baby.”
His face dropped and a pair of wide eyes landed on Emily.
She rolled her head down to look at her stomach, slowly meeting my eyes again. “What?” she said.
“Yeah, what?” Mike turned his whole body to face her.
“Five… months?” I said, wincing apologetically. They obviously didn’t know.
“That can’t be right. I’m still getting my period.” She looked at him then at me. “Are you sure?”
“I…” I looked to David for guidance, and when he smiled and nodded to say it was okay, I shrugged apologetically. “Sorry. I thought you knew.” It’s completely obvious. How could they not?
The very sudden and loud burst of excitement that blast out of them both startled me. I jumped back as she flew into his arms and he picked her up, spinning around on the spot like some cheesy romance film couple. I couldn’t believe people really did stuff like that.
“I’m not fat, Mike!” Emily announced, as though this was ultimately great news.
David and I exchanged grins and he leaned in to say, “You used to do that to people all the time.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. You could see life before it became obvious to those carrying it.”
“But vampires and Lilithians can hear heartbeats—even fetuses. How come no one picked it up?”
He took me by the elbow and guided me in past the crying, kissing couple. “It’s easy to miss when it’s someone you’re close to, and Mike and Em haven’t slept in the same room for months.”
“Why?” I asked, glancing back at them as David closed the door.
“They’ve been at odds since I took off on my yacht.”
“Why?”
He looked guilty. “Emily didn’t agree with a few things Mike did, or said. I don’t know.”
“Did or said?” I scrunched my nose up. “What did he say to you?”
“Not to me.” He touched my arm, leading me away from the front door. “It doesn’t matter. Looks like this news will bring them back together again.”
I glanced back at the door. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them whispering and kissing and apologizing. “How long have they been trying for a baby?”
“Twenty years on and off—give or take.”
My eyes went wide.
“Yeah.” He grinned. “So I guess that comes as pretty good news.”
“I’ll say.”
He started walking down the short corridor. “And I just decided it’s time for me to move out.”
I laughed. “Probably a good idea.”
“What is?” He stopped and spun around with a frown on his face.
“Moving out.”
“What about it?”
“You just said it was time for you to move out.”
His eyes widened and his mouth turned up into a surprised smile. “You heard that?”
“Did you not mean for me to hear it?”
David just laughed, shaking his head. “It just never occurred to me that you could
.”
“Hear you?”
“Hear my…” He tapped his head and then stopped, looking at me with more consideration. “Never mind.”
“Never mind what?”
“If you don’t already know, it’s probably best if I leave it that way.”
“Don’t already know what?”
“Forget it. Come on.”
I followed him to the lounge room, feeling an odd sense of being home as the warm daylight wrapped around me, making everything look bright and white. Except David. That tan I noticed last night looked even darker against his cream shirt today, giving me a new appreciation for his appearance. Being that he was technically a lot older than any of the other guys I hung out with, it stood to reason that he dressed like a forty-year-old man. A sexy forty-year-old man. He wore his sleeves rolled up to just below the elbow, the buttons undone, with a lighter grey shirt underneath. His longer hair had been sun-bleached in places, and he still hadn’t shaved off the scruff on his face, so he just looked so… sexy.
He stood by the speaker and plugged in his phone, and while he wasn’t looking, I took a moment to just look at him; my ‘husband’, my friend. He was gorgeous. I had to give Ara a pat on the back for this one. That hot shirt combo with his light denim jeans and caramel boots suited him a hell of a lot more than his schoolboy look. He was less rock-and-roll and more man. My body didn’t quite know what to do with itself. I even had to admit that if he’d looked like this when we first met, things would have been very different. Now, he was all mine if I wanted him, but I just didn’t. Not after how deeply he broke my heart when he left. And took my son.
My eyes moved across to the mantle above the fireplace then, swishing around the room so quickly that I almost missed it, but when I saw my face—my past face—looking out at me from a photo-frame, I suddenly understood why David had rushed up so quickly to hide it that night I was here.
“Oh my God!” I said, moving over to pick it up. “Is this Harry?”
He looked fondly over my shoulder at the image of me holding a toddler in my lap, smiling. “Yeah. He was eighteen months old.”
“Wow.” I ran my fingers over it, connecting to this son I never knew I had. I didn’t feel sad that I couldn’t remember any of this, but instead just felt kind of glad to know about him now. Enough time had been wasted, but I knew in my heart that, as a mother before, I wouldn’t have wasted a second of it. I couldn’t remember loving him, but I knew that I had. And I knew that he did at least remember that love, which was all we needed really.
“What are you thinking?” David asked, studying my face.
“I have no past to go on,” I said, and he pouted. “But I really don’t want to mess up the future because of that.”
“What are you saying?”
“Will Harry forgive me—for what I said?”
“He already has.” He smiled.
“What if I mess up again—do something wrong?” I put the picture back. “I don’t know how to be a mother and—”
“Don’t sweat it, pretty girl,” he said, taking me by the hand and leading me to the twin sofa. “Harry has a lot more forgiveness in his heart for you, no matter what. And I’ll be here beside you the whole way, okay? I’ll tell you if you do something wrong.”
“Will you hate me for it?” My throat went tight, seeing his face again—the way he looked at me that night we fought.
His eyes softened and he bowed his head, keeping hold of my fingertips. “I can’t hate you, Ara. No matter what. I can be angry with you, not like you very much sometimes, but I will always love you.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but he beat me to it.
“And I mean that as a friend.” He smiled warmly. “We don’t need to rush anything. You don’t need to promise me your love, but my heart is always open to you if you ever change your mind, okay?”
“Okay,” I whispered, nodding.
He brushed my hair back off my shoulder, running his hand down the side of my face after. “Love like ours doesn’t easily go away.”
“But you loved her,” I said. “I’m not her.”
“You are,” he insisted. “If you can stand to be her for Harry’s sake, then why not for me?”
He had a point. I didn’t like it. I stood up and moved away from him, taking a stroll about the room, touching things and looking at pictures before finally feeling calm enough to look at him again, but when I did, I found a broken man leaning over with his head in his hands.
“David?” I said softly.
“I can’t promise not to try.” His deep voice was very quiet and very fragile. “I will always try to win you over.”
“Then maybe you need to stop trying to win your wife back, and work on getting to know me.”
As his eyes met mine, I could tell I hit a chord—got through to him on some deeper level.
He stood up, walking toward me. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right.”
“But?”
“No buts.” He held both hands up in surrender. “Okay, maybe there is a but.”
I laughed. “Which is?”
“But it will be hard for me to remember that, so can we…” He stopped in front of me and went to take my hand but obviously thought better of it. “Can I have some extra lives?”
“Extra lives?”
“Yeah, like in a video game. I need some pre-approved forgiveness from you, because I will forget sometimes that you’re… that you don’t want to be her—”
“It’s not that I don’t want to be her, David. It’s that I’m not her.”
“Right.” He nodded, but only to brush me off. “So just forgive me, okay? When I forget that we’re not together.”
It made me furious that he refused to acknowledge that I was my own person—not his Ara—but for the sake of Harry, I didn’t want to fight with him all the time, so I nodded. “You can have three extra lives a day, how’s that sound?”
“Perfect.” He laughed once, a short breathy laugh where his teeth showed. I couldn’t remember this man from my past, but I knew instantly that that was my favorite smile both in this life and the one before.
I looked away from him then and let my eyes explore the little courtyard outside the glass doors. This family sat out there often. The conversational circle of chairs and the spade on the terracotta tiles, with freshly-dirty gloves beside it, was evidence of that. I wanted to sit out there in the warm golden sun then, but I wanted to sit out there without all my problems.
“Can I ask you something?” David said, cocking his head and flashing a cheeky grin when I looked back at him.
“Shoot.”
“The closet?”
My cheeks got so hot I could almost see the red glow reflect in his eyes. David laughed, and I kind of wanted to kiss the cute dimple in his cheek.
“Did you feel bad about that after?” he asked.
“No, why?”
“You never mentioned it again—”
“You never mentioned it,” I said, leaning in to my disbelief. “You avoided making eye contact. You sat four seats away from me at the movies the next night! I thought you regretted it.”
“No way, Ara. I’ve been dreaming about it ever since.”
“Really?” I leaned back, folding my arms, trying not to show that it mattered to me.
“Haven’t you?” he asked delicately.
My arms loosened a little. I didn’t want to admit it, but I nodded anyway.
“So…” He braved a step closer and hesitantly put his hand on my waist. “Can we do it again some time, maybe a friends-with-benefits kind of thing?”
“And what if you start wanting more from me?”
“You can punch me in the face and not speak to me for four months,” he said, and I laughed. “But we were married once, and I miss yo—I miss her in that way. And after we did that… now I miss you in that way,” he said sweetly, wrapping his voice around me and luring me in. “I think I could cope better with us only being friends if we
occasionally got to be close like that.”
My breath hitched in my throat, stuck down by nerves and this growing desire. I wanted him like a friend, and I wanted him like a lover, but I wasn’t ready for sex yet. Wasn’t ready for him to be my first. I’d done some research lately, and I knew that your first would always hold a special place in your heart. He would already, because of the closet and because he was once my husband, but this was my new life, and I wasn’t planning to keep him as a part of it for eternity. Not even as a “special memory”.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” I said.
David let go of my waist and stepped back, nodding.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be.”
“But I am, because I do care about you… I just… I don’t want to lose my virginity to you.”
“You’re still a virgin?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I thought… Cal…”
“David, when you left, I was miserable. I blew Cal off the next day—”
“Blew him off?” He paled. “As in…”
“I told him I’d never be with him.”
“Really?” He looked way too relieved about that.
“Yeah,” I said softly, nodding. “I’m not ready to love anyone, okay? It’s not just you.”
“You can make it feel that way sometimes.”
Although I was the one standing here looking at him, taking him in, it felt more like I was seeing him through the eyes of his wife. I felt sorry for him. And I agreed with him. “It isn’t intentional. You’re just more sensitive to it because you love me.”
“She’s here! She knows who she is?” someone gasped from somewhere in the house. My immortal ears only picked it up because I thought for a moment that I recognized the voice—an older woman—but I couldn’t place it.
“Who is that?” I tuned my ear to it.
“Who is who?” David checked around him, as though there was an invisible person in here, his gaze shooting to the glass doors as it burst open and hit the wall, making the pictures there shake. A thin Lilithian woman who was made up to look fifty or so stood there staring at me, her straight blonde hair falling plainly around narrow shoulders, a pair of wrinkled eyes pooling with tears above a hard-set mouth. This woman had been through a lot, but despite her pleated-front pants and cardigan giving her a meek appearance, I could tell she was the sort of woman that could kick ass when the need arose.
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