Triple Love Score

by Brandi Megan Granett

  Miranda navigated the car to the exit, paid for the parking, and stopped at the intersection with no idea which way to go—to her apartment and her laptop or to her parents’ house where Lynn would be tomorrow morning.

  It was strange being in her parents’ house without them home. Lynn had told Scott on the phone that Avery and Stanton decided to come out to ski, too. “Only they don’t ski,” Lynn protested. “They just sit in the lodge and watch other people ski.”

  They dropped their bags in the foyer and immediately headed for the kitchen. Despite their French pastry bender, after the long flight, Miranda’s stomach growled.

  “Where’re the take-out menus?” Scott asked. “I know Avery must have a stash that would rival a college student’s.”

  Miranda pointed to the small desk in the kitchen. “Just get me something. Anything. I need a shower. And then a drink. And then some food.”

  The warm water felt good on her back and shoulders. As she stood there, she tried not to think about being alone with Scott. But the idea of it was too much. Sleeping in the same bed for four nights. Pretending to be married. The kiss. She heard the doorbell ring downstairs. But she didn’t want to move from under the shower or stop replaying the last week in her mind.

  A knock on the bathroom door startled her.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Scott cracked open the door. “I thought you could use this.” His disembodied arm held a glass of white wine. The glass fogged immediately in the heat of the shower. “Wow, you like it hot,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said resisting the temptation to say something like, I think you’re hot or some other come-on. Every ounce of her body wanted to open the shower curtain and take the wine glass. Or maybe pull him into the shower with her.

  “I’ll just leave this here,” he said. “Food’s here. I’ll put it out while you dry off.”

  The wine glass clicked on the marble of the vanity, and the door softly thudded back into place. Miranda stood there, hand poised to draw back the curtain, until the hot water finally gave way to cold.

  The wine, cold and white, which she swallowed all too quickly, did little to relieve her feelings of what she would have liked to have happen in the shower. A jersey wrap dress in a blue color that Avery always told her highlighted her eyes hung in the closet. Avery would leave hand-me-downs there, and every few months Miranda would open her girlhood closet and find new treasures to take back north. She fingered the soft fabric, considering the dress. It would be low cut on her. But it wouldn’t be her. Instead, she pulled open a drawer and pulled out sweatpants with the University of Connecticut logo peeling on the front and a flannel shirt from a high school boyfriend. The wine only made her more aware of her hunger.

  Downstairs, she found Scott in much the same outfit, only his sweatpants were from Yale. “I see you got the dress code memo,” he said, reaching over to turn on the giant television in Stanton’s study. Lynn’s nature video, polar bears this time, filled the screen. “Do you mind if we watch something else?” he asked. “She makes me watch this all the time. And I get it, circle of life and all that, but I am so tired of watching all the animals struggle. I really don’t know what she sees in it.” He handed Miranda a takeaway container of fried rice and some chopsticks. “Plates seemed like too much. We were just in Turkey, right?”

  “Yup, Turkey. And Paris.”

  “And you were my wife.” He didn’t look up from the television as he said it. He was flipping past the sports channels, finally settling on an NHL replay.

  “Yup, I was,” she said. The power play clock started, and the players on the ice fired up in frenetic patterns, hammering the goalie with shots. The goalie blocked one with his chest, caught one in his glove, and sent one back to the middle of the ice with a kick off his skate.

  “I meant it all, Miranda. Please don’t think being home changes that.”

  “It doesn’t?”

  “No, it doesn’t. I am going to be more direct. I love you. I thought too much time had passed, that it was just part of being kids together. And then at Thanksgiving, it all came back. I couldn’t stop looking at you. And then you got that text at Christmas, and I just about lost my mind. The idea of you and that guy, a guy who would send a wonderful, smart girl like you dick pictures, I couldn’t stand it. When Danielle called, I knew I had to go with you. Miranda, I love you. I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it; there’s too much between us to risk wrecking it on just a throw-away relationship.”

  “You don’t have to do this. This isn’t some fairy tale. You have your own life with Lynn and your school. We’re not on vacation anymore.”

  Miranda didn’t move her gaze from the television. The power play finished, and the other team, now whole, attacked the forwards with vicious blocks and thrown elbows. She couldn’t trust herself to say what she needed to, or rather wanted to.

  “There’s a Montessori school affiliated with your university. I checked. And I still am a lawyer remember. They don’t take it away just because you screw up the rest of your life. I can work in other places besides New Jersey. And Lynn needs you just as much as I do.”

  “You didn’t screw up.”

  “Okay, maybe that’s not the right word for it, but my life certainly isn’t going the way I had planned.”

  “What did you plan exactly?”

  “Well, not this. I thought at 29 I’d be married and maybe be close to making partner in a firm, maybe even Stanton’s firm. I’m not unhappy with my life. Lynn is amazing, and I love every minute with her. I just didn’t expect this. I didn’t plan this life. I teach elementary school, Randa. Me with beeswax crayons and circle time.”

  Miranda tried to hide a laugh. She imagined him at the head of his classroom goofing around to make some point about American History or multiplication.

  “No, go ahead. Laugh. It is funny. You can only imagine what my friends from law school say. I don’t even bother to hang out with them anymore. My parents often offered to take Lynn for the weekend, so I could go catch up with my friends, but it wasn’t worth it. You are the only person who knew me before who didn’t laugh and who talked to Lynn like a human being and not some alien.”

  “But Lynn is awesome to talk to. She’s just so open to everything. And excited. Really, really excited.”

  “They just can’t get their heads around being a parent. They just don’t see it. But you do. I know you do. Miranda, I want you to do this with me. Lynn needs a mom. I want a wife.”

  Miranda set down her Chinese food. “But she has a mom.”

  “Barely. Cassadee calls once a year, three, four weeks after her birthday. Likes the pictures I post of her on Facebook and then asks for money. That’s not a mother.”

  “Scott, do you just want a relationship with me because of this?”

  “How could you even ask that?” He reached out and grabbed her hand interlacing his fingers with her own. “Don’t you remember what this felt like? Since as long as I could remember, holding your hand is the only thing that felt like love to me. I don’t know when it started, but I have yet to feel this with anyone but you. Maybe your dad was right to shut me down at the time, but I swear to you, Miranda, this isn’t about Lynn. This has been going on between us forever.”

  “Avery once told me that our moms planned our wedding the minute the doctor announced it’s a girl.”

  “I know; my mom told me that they even had their dresses planned. They would wear something matching, my mom in baby blue and your mom in pink. They wanted people to ask them why, so they could tell the story of how they knew we were just meant to be. They tried to keep it a secret from us, but after Aunt Louise died, my mom wanted me to know. But she made me promise not to tell you unless it came true.”

  “How do you know it’s coming true?” Miranda asked.

  “It is, isn’t it? Don’t you feel it?”

  “Scott, we aren’t even dating. One trip in six years does not a courtship make.”

  “Ma
ybe this will.” He slipped off the couch and knelt before her. From the front pocket of his pants, he pulled out a ring. A single emerald cut diamond the size of a pinky fingernail, winked up at Miranda. She knew this ring well. It was her mother’s.

  “How?” she asked.

  “I asked Avery before we left for Turkey. I carried it with me the whole trip, but I kept thinking I wanted to wait until we were home, together as a family to ask. But I can’t hold out anymore. Miranda, will you marry me?”

  The trip, the wine, the food, the ring. A lifetime of imagining this moment. She felt herself swell from it all, threatening to burst, if she didn’t say it. So she said it. “Yes.” And then she said it again and again and again.

  “Do you love me?” he asked.

  “I always have,” she said.

  He slipped the ring on her finger and then reached up and held her chin in his hands. He brought his lips to hers with the lightest touch, so close that their breath moved between them in a soft whisper. The hair on the back of her neck stood up, and goose bumps ran down her arm. She pushed harder against him, letting her body sink to the floor. They knelt there in a tangled embrace, exploring each other’s bodies with hands, and lips, and tongues. She could have kissed him all night, but then he stopped and leaned back.

  “I might kick myself for this tomorrow, Randa, but we should stop. Wait.”

  “Wait?” she asked. “Wait to get married? Of course. We don’t have to rush that. This is more than enough for right now.”

  “No, not the getting married part. I want to wait until we get married to make love.”

  Miranda chuckled. “It’s not like I’m a virgin. And I’m pretty sure you’re not, based on how Cassadee made you think Lynn was biologically yours. I’m almost thirty; I don’t really care what my father says. And plus, they aren’t even home to worry about it.”

  “Don’t make a joke; this is important to me.”

  “Okay,” Miranda said, using every ounce of air from her lungs to get the sound out.

  “Don’t take it that way. It’s not like that. I just want better for us. I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I want this to be right,” Scott said.

  “It is right. Is this some sort of cold feet, Scott? Did you not expect me to say yes?”

  “I want this to be more than physical,” he said.

  “More than physical? We’ve known each other our entire lives, and we’ve only kissed what—maybe once before today?”

  “Exactly. I don’t need to make love to you to know that I want to, or to know that I am going to want to for the rest of my life, Randa. You and I don’t get a lot of firsts as a couple. I already have a kid. We’ve already had a lifetime of holidays and vacations. We lost your mom. We even lost each other. But this one thing, this waiting, it’s the one thing we can do in the right order. May I have this gift?” He picked up her hand. The engagement ring glittered despite the circumstance.

  A gift, she thought. She wondered if she would ever feel on steady footing with this man in the room. She bowed her head against his chest. A calm washed over her. A golden feeling of light and love so much deeper than a sexual charge. As much as she wanted to press herself even more against him, to feel his body all over hers, inside her, she wanted that feeling more.

  “Yes,” she said, “yes, to all of it.”

  C H A P T E R

  WHEN SHE FINALLY WOKE UP, it took Miranda a minute to remember. The trip home, the wine, their conversation. The engagement ring on her finger. She pulled herself out of his embrace. In the dim light, she could still make out the glimmer of the familiar diamond. She remembered her mother giving it to her father before the last time she went into the hospital. The three of them stood in the foyer of their old house.

  “Take this, Stanton,” she said. She slipped a necklace from her neck and let the chain puddle around the ring in his palm.

  “Lou, please,” he said. Miranda heard her father’s voice break.

  “I don’t want to be buried with it. You know that. Miranda knows that. Let’s not discuss it.”

  “Lou, you aren’t dying,” he said.

  “For a smart man,” she said. She reached up with her thin, bony hand and stroked his face, now damp with tears. “Miranda, please go wait in the car.”

  The door closed behind her, and Miranda heard her father let out a wail. It was the last time she heard him cry. When they came back from the hospital that night without her mother, the ring remained on the hall table. It stayed there until her dad sold the house and moved to this new house with Avery. Miranda chose not to say anything about the ring; she knew Avery would have put the ring somewhere safe, and at the time, Miranda was in no rush to see it again. Now on her hand, it meant something else.

  “Hey,” Scott murmured. He leaned up and snuggled his face into her hair. “It’s a beautiful ring, Randa. I’m glad you’re wearing it.”

  “It is beautiful. My mother loved it.”

  He picked up her hands and folded them into his. “I love you. It’s more intense than I thought it would be to say it out loud.”

  “It’s more than I thought it would be hearing it. Scott, I love you, too. But I have a very important question; does Lynn know about this?”

  Scott held up his phone. “Already texted her.” On the screen was a picture of her hand, engagement ring glinting, resting on Scott’s chest. “I woke up a bit ago and couldn’t resist. I figured she’d tell all the parents, too.”

  “Well played,” Miranda said, kissing him deeply on the lips.

  “We’re home,” Lynn shouted, racing into the den where Miranda and Scott sat having coffee. “I made them leave early.”

  Avery and Stanton stumbled into the door, dragging a few bags each. “Very early,” Stanton said. “While I want to shower you with congratulations or whatever it is that might be appropriate for this situation, I first would like a shower and a nap.”

  “I second the wisdom of my husband,” Avery said, blowing them both kisses, as she mounted the stairs. “Bunny said it was too early. She’ll call when they get back to New York. And she said to tell you, Randa, welcome to the family, but that it sounds funny because you’ve always been family.”

  Lynn ran up to Miranda and grabbed her hand. “You said yes!”

  “I did, I said yes.”

  “This is big,” Lynn said.

  “Very big,” Scott said. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Lynn?”

  “Pancakes!!!” she shouted.

  “I can see I made a very wise decision saying yes to your proposal, especially if it will be celebrated with pancakes. Is this common?”

  Scott stood and extended a hand to Miranda, pulling her into a tight embrace with one swift motion. “My dear—all good things are celebrated with pancakes. Come let us show you how.”

  Before the batter was even mixed, Lynn started with the questions. “Will we have a wedding? Do I get to be a flower girl?”

  Miranda stopped shoveling the coffee into the filter and looked up at Scott. He stopped cracking the eggs and looked back at her. “Yes,” they said together.

  “Do we get a cake and dancing?”

  “Yes,” they said again. Scott stopped cracking the eggs and moved behind Miranda at the counter; he wrapped his arms around her, squeezing her even more tightly than before. “I love you,” he said. “This makes it even better than before. Better than I imagined.”

  “Wait,” Lynn said. “Look at me. I need a picture.”

  They both turned to look where Lynn finally stopped spinning. She held her Dad’s cell phone, camera pointed at them. They beamed at her, hugging tighter together.

  “We need to announce this on Facebook,” she said. “Nothing is real until it’s Facebook real.”

  “What kind of school do you send her to?” Miranda asked.

  “It’s not school,” Lynn answered for herself. “Miss Kendra told me.”

  “Miss Kendra?” Miranda leaned back from Scott’s embrace and turned her head
to the side. “And who is Miss Kendra?”

  “My babysitter. She’s sixteen, and she comes when Daddy goes to basketball.” Lynn didn’t look up. She was deftly maneuvering through screens on her dad’s phone. “There,” she said. “Miranda, you need to accept Daddy’s engagement request online.”

  “Okay, I will.”

  “Now?” Lynn asked.

  Miranda held up her phone. “Out of juice.”

  “You’ll do it later. Promise?”

  “Of course. It has to be Facebook real.”

  Lynn raced the length of the kitchen and wrapped herself around Miranda’s legs. Scott wrapped himself around them both.

  “Family hug!” Lynn shouted.

  The questions didn’t stop. Over Jenga, Miranda was drilled on possible wedding colors and whether or not Lynn could wear high heels. Finally as dusk began to settle, she hit the biggest question. “Where are we going to live?”

  Scott took a heavy sip of his coffee, then another. Miranda froze, her hand hovering over the Jenga tower.

  Then Lynn saved them. “It’s doesn’t matter, though, right? As long as we’re together.”

  “Together. Yes. But tonight, I need to go back to New York.”

  “And we have to go back to New Jersey, pumpkin. We all have school in the morning.”

  Then Miranda remembered the emails about her classes being cancelled and the request to call the president’s office. She felt this fairy tale slipping away from her. “Can you guys finish the game without me? I need to ask Avery if I can use her computer for a second.”