by Eli Lang
“Do you want kids?” he asked, and I went from giddy and floating to feet on the ground in a single second.
“I don’t know.” I looked down at the counter, ran my finger over a line in the granite. “I never really thought about it, you know?” I glanced up, and he nodded. I supposed that was almost answer enough. I was over thirty. If I’d wanted kids, the urge probably should have popped up by now, shouldn’t it have?
“Yeah, I get that.”
“I always thought of . . . Eric was younger than me by a lot, and our dad was gone, and I always . . . My mom used to tell me I had to be a role model for him. That I had to be responsible. That’s how I thought of him. As my responsibility.”
Nick smiled. “That’s what having a kid is like. Like someone gave you one hell of a responsibility.”
I swallowed, my throat suddenly too dry, and nodded. “I don’t think I was very good at it, though.”
Nick shrugged, like he was trying to make the question lighter, disperse it. He turned back to the pancakes, but although he mostly had his back to me, I could feel his attention on me, as if he were still watching me. “I kind of think that nobody’s very good at it,” he said over his shoulder. “It’s like it’s all . . .” He waved the spatula through the air. “All trial and error. I screwed up so much. Especially at first. It’s like this constant panic while you try to figure everything out.” He flipped a pancake over, and flipped another two onto a plate. “Every day I’m worried I’m messing something up. But eventually you realize you can’t figure everything out.”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. He let the last two pancakes cook for a second more, then scooped them onto another plate, turned around, and set both plates down on the counter, one in front of me. He slid onto a stool and picked up the syrup, and poured it over his pancakes in a long drizzle. I copied him when he passed me the bottle.
“I just keep telling myself that he comes first.” He glanced over at his son, moved Josh’s plate a half inch so Josh could reach more easily. “And if I do that, then I’m doing okay.”
I nodded again, and stuffed a bite of pancake into my mouth so I wouldn’t have to say anything. I didn’t know what to say. He was right, and I hadn’t truly expected anything different.
I looked over at Josh, who was now drawing patterns in his maple syrup with his finger. Had I ever put Eric first? Had I ever sacrificed any piece of my own happiness for his? I’d always tried to do my best for him—I’d always stuck up for him, talked to him, been there for him when we were growing up. But then I’d gotten the job with the band, and it had been the only thing in my life that had ever felt completely right, had ever felt like it was the perfect space for me. Like I fit, like I belonged. It wasn’t what I’d imagined I’d be doing, but I was good at it, and I liked it a lot, and I’d left home in a second to go with Escaping Indigo. I hadn’t asked Eric what he thought, if that would be okay. I hadn’t asked him if he needed me around, if I should stay. I hadn’t considered it at all. Because I’d wanted to go, so I’d left, and I’d left him behind. It was as simple as that.
I watched Josh play, without a single care in the world, and I watched Nick watch him. I didn’t think Nick was wrong to go be a musician, to go on tour. It wasn’t the same as it had been for me and Eric. Nick would always be there for Josh. There wasn’t any doubt of that in my mind. He might be on the road, but he’d always come home to him. He’d always be there for him if he needed him.
I hadn’t been there for Eric. I hadn’t only gotten a new job, I’d gotten a whole new life. New friends, a new place in the world that was solely mine, a place where I could be myself without ever having to say a word, and I’d wanted to keep it that way. I’d wanted to protect it, keep it safe and secret. Protect it from what, I didn’t know. The outside world, maybe. The past. Everything in my life that I hadn’t chosen for myself. But in doing that, I’d shut Eric out. We’d gone down our separate paths, in a lot of ways. I’d made my choices. And he’d made his.
Nick wasn’t ever going to shut Josh out. He was going to take on that responsibility because, whether he’d chosen it or not, it was what he wanted now. It was obvious that there wasn’t any other option he’d take now. It was good that way. It was the best thing.
I told myself that just because Nick was doing it right, didn’t mean I’d done it wrong. But I couldn’t keep the thought out of my head.
We finished breakfast, and Nick dropped me off at the studio.
“I’m going to run him to his mother’s,” he said, before I got out of the car. “And then I’ll meet you back here, okay?”
I nodded, and this time it was me who leaned over for a quick kiss. He tasted sweet from the maple syrup and pancakes we’d eaten earlier.
I turned around so I could see Josh. “Bye, kiddo. I liked hanging out with you.”
He beamed up at me. He wasn’t shy at all, not really. He was so . . . trusting. I could still feel the weight of him in my arms, from when I’d carried him to the car from the park the day before. I could smell the sleepy, little-kid warmth of his skin. I didn’t know when I’d see him again. I didn’t know if I would see him again. Maybe this thing with Nick would fizzle out like last time. Maybe we’d realize it couldn’t work. Yesterday, I would have been fine, not knowing if I’d ever lay eyes on Josh again. But now, it did something to my heart. I knew, at least a little, that I was transposing Eric on Josh. It wasn’t fair or right. And I knew Josh probably wouldn’t notice if I never came around again, but I couldn’t help wondering.
Josh waved at me, and I waved back, and that hot, bright sweet spot I’d been carrying around in my chest all morning squeezed down on itself, contracting and imploding, until all it felt like was hurt and worry. I opened the car door and practically leaped out, calling a goodbye over my shoulder. I walked up the driveway to the door we’d been using to get in and out of the studio, and I didn’t look back to watch Nick drive away.
The upper rooms of the house were quiet when I let myself in and climbed the stairs. Both bands were down in the studio already. I was half-glad for the space and silence, and half-wishing there was someone around to talk to.
I walked around the kitchen, but I’d already eaten, so it wasn’t like I could kill time there. I stopped and stared at the two mostly empty coffee mugs on the island. Micah’s and Bellamy’s, probably. They seemed to have claimed those seats.
Micah had put his life back together without Eric. He hadn’t filled in any of the holes Eric had left—he’d made space for other people, other choices, other things. I knew it hadn’t been easy for him. I’d been there with him, trying to help him through the roughest spots as best I could. Got him a job, got him a way out of the home and city that were all tangled up in his memories of Eric. Encouraged him to be with Bellamy. I hadn’t meant to step in where I didn’t belong. I just . . . I liked the guy. And I’d wanted to make up for not being there when I should have been, for not helping him support my brother.
I knew I was being ridiculous. That the day and night I’d spent with Nicky and Josh had nothing at all to do with Eric. I needed to move on, keep that in the past, and make the present its own thing. But it was like I was . . . adrift. Like the past and present were all tangled: Eric and Nick and Josh, responsibilities, being there for someone.
I couldn’t quite figure out what I was feeling. I was pretty sure I was . . . happy. Really happy, like this amazingly good thing had happened to me—because it had—and I couldn’t quite contain all the awesomeness of it. But stepping back into the house and the normal daily routine I’d been getting used to made things seem slightly out of place. As if reality had shifted a half an inch to the left. Around me, the house was quiet, except for the very faint strains of music coming up the stairs, and I could almost imagine that I was invisible and separate. As if two sides of my life—the side before I’d met Nicky, before I’d slept with him again, and the side after, with everything that meant and everything that came with it�
�were crashing together. And they weren’t quite clicking correctly in my mind.
I wandered toward my bedroom, down the hallway with all the musicians’ photos on the walls. All that history. All those songs, soaked into the walls and the floorboards of this place. Other sounds, too, probably: laughter and fights and shouting. Discussions, compromises. Whispered words of love, probably, to people in the same room, to people on a telephone line. This place could tell stories.
I flopped down on my bed. Tuck’s was neatly made, and I remembered that his girlfriend Lissa had been on her way up. She must have gotten here yesterday. It was probably better that I’d stayed with Nick. Maybe I’d sleep on the couch tonight. Not that we weren’t used to pretty close quarters when we were on tour, but if I could give them space, we’d all be happier.
I closed my eyes and tried to breathe deeply, take a second to myself while I had it, to reconcile the day and night I’d had with all the days to come. I couldn’t figure out why things felt so out of place in this moment. Maybe I was just confused. It would be fine.
Footsteps on the stairs cut off my train of thought. For a second, the music from down in the studio got louder as the hallway door opened. Then it clicked shut again, the music cutting off. I turned my head, but I didn’t bother to get up. Nobody knew I was here, and now that someone was here to talk to, I wasn’t sure if I wanted the company.
It turned out I didn’t have a choice. Ava came down the hallway, a muffin on a napkin in one hand. She was obviously headed for her own room, but ours was right at the corner of the hall, so she couldn’t help seeing my feet dangling off the edge of the bed. She paused, then stepped into the room.
“When did you get back?”
I shrugged. “Fifteen minutes ago, maybe.”
She took a bite of her muffin and chewed while she contemplated me. “Did you have fun?”
I nodded against the pillow. “Yeah.”
“That sounds honest as fuck.” She took another step into the room.
“No, I did, I just . . . Why are you up here?”
She paused, tensing up, her shoulders rising defensively. Then she slumped and walked the rest of the way into the room so she could sit cross-legged on the end of the bed. She swiveled to face me and offered me half the muffin. I shook my head.
“Lissa’s here.” She picked at the muffin, breaking off a chunk and stuffing it in her mouth. “If I don’t have to watch her and Tuck being all lovey on each other, better for me.”
I’d suspected, for a while, that Ava might have a thing for Tuck. She hid it really well, though, so I’d always wondered if it was all in my head. But there had been something . . . a certain way she looked at him, a longing in her. She’d never admitted it though. Definitely not like this. But I wasn’t surprised.
“Cara?” I asked, not sure exactly what I was going for.
She smiled. “I love Cara. And I don’t want anyone but her. I know Tuck and I aren’t ever going to . . . We’re never going to have that. And I’m happy for him that he has Lissa. But . . . sometimes it still hurts.” She waved her hand around. Muffin crumbs scattered, and she stopped abruptly and started picking them off the bedspread and dropping them into her napkin. “It’s like I’m staring at a possibility I can see but I can’t ever touch. I don’t really want it anymore. But it still hurts.”
I nodded. “That makes sense.”
She cocked her head to the side and smiled again. “Cara’s flying in this afternoon. She took a week off.” She got this flushed glow to her when she talked about her girlfriend. Like just the thought of her lit Ava up from inside. I wanted to tell her she didn’t have that glow when she talked about Tuck, but I knew the way she felt about him, the relationship they had, was older and different. And I understood, in a way, seeing your future diverge from what you imagined it would be, or what you wanted. The loss of that, even when you were happy with what you had.
“Tell me about Nicky?” she asked, nudging the side of my leg with her knee. It was a pretty bald attempt to change the subject. I wanted to humor her. I didn’t know what to say about Nick and our night, though, about Josh and all the time the three of us had spent together.
“He’s . . . such a dad.” It was the first thing that tumbled out of my mouth.
She laughed. “Right? It was weird to see. He was always wild. He still is. But he went into, like, parent mode.”
“Do you like kids? Is that something . . .?”
She shrugged and ate some more of the muffin. “I never really wanted any?” She didn’t sound convinced. “I mean, it was what I was supposed to want, you know. Being a girl. It’s like it’s my job. If you tell someone you don’t want kids, they jump down your throat about how you’ll change your mind eventually, how everyone really does deep down. ‘Give it time.’” She waved her hand—the hand without the muffin, this time—like she was flicking that all away. “It’s bullshit. But . . .” She looked down at her lap. “I think Cara would be a great mom. And sometimes I think I’d like to see that.” She raised her eyes up to mine, and a smile flickered across her mouth. “Being in love is weird. It makes your brain mush.”
“Yeah.” I stared down at my own hands. God, the things I’d done with them yesterday. I’d held Josh. I’d helped him spoon up dinner onto his plastic little kid utensils. I’d held drumsticks, made music for the first time ever, really, and I’d liked it. And then, later, I’d touched Nicky. I’d held his face in my palms, skated my fingers over every part of him. I’d been inside him.
“Hey,” Ava said, softly, but with concern in her voice. I looked up and found her staring at me, her smile gone, her eyebrows pinched together. “You okay?”
I nodded quickly. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I . . . I had a really good time yesterday. With Nick, and Josh. And then, uh, I had a really good time last night. It was . . .” God, if I said good again one more time. But I couldn’t think of another way to describe how it had been. How right it had felt. How much I’d wanted it, and been so happy it had happened, even while it scared me. “But then this morning, all I can think about is all the ways this is going to go wrong. I mean, he’s got a kid. I can’t . . . I don’t know . . .” I hadn’t actually realized that was what I’d been worrying about, until I’d said it out loud. All those jagged edges of my thoughts suddenly made way more sense.
“Sounds like you ran out of endorphins.” She touched my knee—a light pat, but a reassuring one. “It happens—it’s normal, after sex, for your brain to go into overdrive. Or crash. Sex opens you up in a lot of ways.” Fuck, she was blunt. I was blushing all over the place, but she was completely calm. She wasn’t exactly meeting my eyes anymore, though. “As for him having a kid . . . That’s a lot to take on, man. I don’t mean it’s a reason not to be with somebody. But it’s probably good that you’re thinking about it. Kids are so fragile. I mean, it seems like they are. I’d be afraid to fuck it up.”
I hadn’t told her what I was thinking about Eric, but her thoughts were an eerie echo of everything that had run through my mind this morning. What if I did fuck it up? What if I was diving into this headfirst, and by the time I realized I was in too deep, it was too painful to get out?
Ava was watching me, an uneasy expression on her face. “Why do I feel like I just said the completely wrong thing?”
“You didn’t.” I sat up and stole a bite of her muffin. “It was what I needed to hear.” She didn’t look convinced, and I sighed. “I just keep thinking . . . about Eric.”
Her face did something between a frown and a pout and some vaguely guilty, uncomfortable expression. “Like, missing him?”
I wobbled my head back and forth, not a nod and not quite a shake. “Yeah. I always miss him. But . . .” I drew my hands back into my lap and squeezed my fingers together. “I’ve had a long time to . . . not get used to it.” I would never, ever get used to it or over it. My life would never be the same. I would always, always be missing him. “I’ve had time to start moving on,” I finis
hed, softly. “I can’t forever be . . . I need to move on. Micah moved on. Even my mom is still . . . going, seeing her friends, doing her job. I need to, too.”
“So what are you thinking about him, then?” She kept her focus on her muffin, her fingers picking little bits off, as if she didn’t want to spook me by meeting my eyes. Didn’t want to put too much pressure on me.
“I think it’s . . . this place, and the recording, and Nick. And Josh,” I admitted. “I keep trying to measure how Nick takes care of Josh with how I took care of Eric.” I didn’t say anything about how I was measuring it against how I took care of the band. How they had needed me and now all of them had someone else to do that. Ava was trying to be kind, and it wasn’t anything she needed to feel bad about.
She cocked her head to the side, and now she did look up at me. “What do you mean?”
I took a deep breath. “I mean, I should have been there for him, and I wasn’t. I mean I should have tried harder to take care of him.”
Pure pity crossed her face, but she smoothed over her features admirably quickly. “Quinn. Eric was an adult. He didn’t need you to take care of him.”
“Everyone needs someone to take care of them,” I argued.
She nodded slowly. “Okay. Good point. But I mean, you weren’t actually responsible for him.” She shook her head. “No, that sounds wrong, and it’s not what I mean at all.” She tilted her head back and stared at the ceiling, before dropping her gaze back to me. “He was his own person. Everyone needs to figure out their own stuff. If he’d needed your help, if he’d realized that he did, he would have asked you.”
It was almost exactly what Micah had been saying to me all along. But coming from Ava, it was somehow different. Hit me differently. I always brushed off what Micah was saying when he said stuff like that, because I always figured he was trying to absolve me or something. That he was trying to take away my guilt. I’d never quite convinced myself that maybe he actually believed what he was saying—that Eric hadn’t needed me in the way I’d thought he had.