Royal Pain

by Megan Mulry

  He half-turned and threw the pregnancy test into the bathroom garbage can. The hollow sound of it hitting the metal bin resounded with a pathetic ping through the silent air. Max left the bathroom and crossed into the bedroom.

  Bronte tried to think: if she stayed in bed, she may have a better chance of luring him in there with her. If she got up and put on her robe and made coffee and debated every last ramification of her… her what? What he considered her momentary duplicity? What she considered her right to a day or two of solitary contemplation? It had been mere hours since she’d discovered the fact—was that so criminal? She tried to staunch the flow of that righteous indignation again.

  Max sat down on the opposite side of the bed. Bronte mistook his nearness as an olive branch and rolled toward him—wanting to smell him if nothing else—but he stiffened as she got close, and it made her feel like some sort of serpentine, biblical villainess.

  “Enough!” she barked as she threw off the sheets, stepped stark-naked out of bed, and slipped into her kimono robe. She spun to face him while she tied the belt overroughly around her waist.

  He winced.

  “What is your problem?”

  “Problem? Problem?!” He stood up but kept the bed between them. He wasn’t just irritated; he was livid. His handsome cheeks were gaunt and pale, his eyes furious. Or tormented.

  She wanted to reach out to him, to crawl across the bed and purr up against his length, to console him… but for what? For misunderstanding her? For judging her harshly? For being a bully? Bronte had misread so many signals, had questioned her judgment for so long, but in this, she absolutely would not budge. She had done nothing wrong. A few moments before, she had been lying in bed thinking how her place really was by his side, always, and how she would probably spend the day packing and surprise him with an unexpected visit to London.

  “You are making this into a big deal and it really isn’t—”

  “I know you don’t mean that.” His voice was ice.

  “Of course I don’t mean the baby’s not a big deal!” She was flabbergasted. “What is with you? Obviously the baby is a huge deal, but this”—she gestured impatiently between them—“this is just a misunderstanding.”

  Please let him see this. Please.

  He looked down at her left hand, looking for the ring. She followed his eyes, then waved her bare hand in his face. “Fuck you. This is so fucked up. I was cleaning the goddamn bathroom last night, with bleach, and didn’t think the fucking heirloom should be subjected to my mundane housework. What is this really about, Max?” She wanted to reach out and… what? Kiss him? More like beat the crap out of him. It would have been so much easier if they could have had some physical battle to strip away all the confusion and anger. His confusion about her supposed ambivalence, and her anger about his supposed need to control her.

  Instead, his look said it all: as far as he was concerned, she had become an unreliable witness. Nothing she said was going to ring true.

  “I don’t know, Bron. I feel like I am always the one who has to understand you, and maybe I need a little understanding right now.”

  “I just found out I am going to have a baby, and you need understanding?”

  “Yeah. You can turn it around like that if you want”—his voice had softened—“but it is our baby. You know I’m right… or at the very least I am entitled to my feelings or whatever lame psychobabble you want to slide in there. You promised—”

  “What did I promise?”

  “Everything. You promised everything.” He sounded more defeated than angry. “You said you would tell me right away, no matter what. You gave me your word that whatever happened, we would go through it together. No more of those emotional distances, those little compartments that you want to manage alone. That we were a unit, remember? But you are still, even now, trying to hold something back, some sliver of… independence or freedom or an escape plan…” His voice dwindled to nothing.

  She hated him so much in that moment.

  For being right.

  “You should probably just go.”

  “What?” He practically dove at her. In a flash, he had rounded the foot of the bed and stood before her.

  She tried to practice his brand of silent patience as conflict resolution, but her arms were crossed in defiance and she knew she looked like the warrior that crouched right beneath the surface of her calm.

  “You don’t get it at all, do you?” He started to reach out to touch her, then let his hand drop. “You think I want to control you or make demands on you or whatever, when that couldn’t be farther from the truth. I am devoted to you, Bronte. I committed myself to loving you, unconditionally.” He pointed at the disheveled mattress. “Right here in this bed, remember? I’m not giving up on you, but it’s your turn. You need to figure out why you’re still holding back. Something stopped you from calling me—right then—not a day or two later, but at that exact second when that blue cross appeared on that idiotic pee stick, and it was a moment that should have been a shared moment…” He was simply exhausted of words.

  She kept looking at the floor to avoid making eye contact.

  He reached out then and rested his hand over her womb. She was frozen. She had the fleeting, despicable thought that he was already paying more attention to the baby than he was to her.

  He spoke low and near her ear. “I would never want my wife or my child to be uncertain about the depth of my commitment and love. Why would you want me to feel that?” He kissed her at that tender spot on her neck and the hot tears began to trail down her cheeks. She stayed stock-still. He tucked a piece of her hair behind her ear, lingering there for a few moments, then turned toward the front door.

  “I guess I have to respect your wishes, right?” He had paused halfway across the living room and turned back to face her. “That’s the modern heroic ideal? You ask me to go and I go, because I honor your wishes. Because the truth is, I don’t feel modern or heroic or honorable. I feel barbaric. I feel like what I’d really like to do is strap you to that bed and never let you go. Never let you go until you believed, down to the last cell in your body, that we belong together. That you don’t ever have to carry these burdens alone. That I want to love you through it.”

  Bronte knew this was the part where she was supposed to run across the room and throw her arms around his neck (and her legs around his hips), but she remained utterly immobilized. Emotional paralysis, she thought idly, feeling as though she were looking at herself from about three feet above her own body.

  “Please don’t ask me to leave, Bron.”

  “I… I just have to have some time alone. I feel… you are making me feel crowded. I am suffocating.” But the words were almost meaningless to her own ears, as if she were losing her command of the entire English language right along with her grasp of their relationship. Did she secretly want him to hold her down until she too was convinced of the truth? Or was she too confused to recognize any truths? She felt so lost, about who she was and why he could even love her. His very presence confounded her. He filled up her apartment with his body and clouded her mind with his demands.

  “Please go,” she whispered.

  And he did. Because he was heroic. Because he did want to respect her.

  She fell back onto the bed and pulled the comforter up to her ears, trying to convince herself that if she kept her eyes shut long enough and tight enough, then Max would still be in London, safely tucked away in his wisteria-trellised mews house, waiting for her wake-up call (his afternoon call), sitting in his walled garden, drinking a coffee and rereading Trevanian.

  But he wasn’t.

  And she was alone.

  She lay there, staring blindly, just as she had stared out another window, in another city, frozen in place, for some unfathomable length of time.

  Then she just cried and cried, not even bothering to wipe away the tears and wet mess that covered her face and pillow. She cried for Max. She cried for herself. She cried for
the loss of her father. She cried for the very real possibility that she would be a terrible mother. A terrible wife. A terrible person.

  Chapter 18

  Max sat in the Virgin Atlantic first-class lounge at JFK, cell phone resting strategically on the bar, and proceeded to get slowly but surely tanked. On the Waterfront played across the muted plasma screen over the stocked bar, Marlon Brando silently mouthing off in the backseat of the car. Max raised his glass in a dismal salute and mumbled, “I coulda been somebody.”

  He welcomed how the alcohol slowed his powers of deductive reasoning and gave him a distance from his own feelings.

  Did I just walk out on Bronte? he asked himself.

  No. No, not at all, his relaxed, buzzed self placated.

  She wasn’t expecting him, didn’t want him there, needed time to think. All totally rational. He was respecting her fucking wishes. He was not going to stand around like a mooning idiot and be her piss boy, for chrissake. They were either in it together, or they were not.

  And if she did not see it that way, then there wasn’t really anything to build upon in the first place. Sure, it was happening fast; sure, he was eager—since when was that a crime? (Hearty slug of whiskey.)

  She had been driving this train for far too long and he wasn’t going to sit there and follow her around like a goddamned dog for the next fifty years. Like father, like son, he thought with dismay. What an ass. She can come running after me for a fucking change. (Rest of drink polished off.)

  Another drink ordered. New drink, new attitude, thought Max as the peat fire trailed down his throat. I’m Max Heyworth. I am somebody. I have people who love me. I can have any woman I want.

  And I want Bronte.

  Shut up, whoever said that. (Another swallow.) He reached for the paperback in his carry-on and tried to get his eyes to focus on the swimming letters. Maybe if I just concentrate on something else entirely, he hoped, rather than believed, I can get my mind off things for a few hours. He moved with an unstable wobble from his barstool to a more comfortable armchair and tried to read.

  Next thing he knew, there was a very tan, sexy, little hostess-of-a-thing tapping him gently on the shoulder and letting him know his flight was ready to board. They hadn’t been able to get him a seat on either the six-fifteen or the seven-thirty flight, so he’d been sitting, snoring probably, in the lounge for the past five hours.

  He stared at her without the slightest indication of understanding a word she was saying.

  “Mr. Heyworth?” she said, for what was clearly not the first time.

  “Yes?”

  “The ten-thirty flight is ready to board, sir. Please follow me.”

  “Of course… sorry… was I asleep?”

  “Yes, sir, but not to worry. When you arrive and depart on the same day, it can be a bit tiring—if you’re not used to it.” She smiled with what could only be described as a come-hither look.

  Lust and spite are a potent cocktail, Max thought momentarily. How easy would it be to fool around with this woman, take her out for a fun night in London, mindless sex, no muss, no fuss? No meeting the mother. No complicated negotiations. Just plain old how-it-used-to-be, fuck-around sex.

  “Uh… thank you for waking me…” He looked down at her very full bosom, which happened to be located behind her nametag. “Diana. Which gate?”

  “Oh, I am working that flight, so I’d be happy to escort you directly to the first-class boarding area. Right this way.”

  How convenient that she could lead the way and swing her ass all at the same time. He didn’t know if he was still drunk or starting to get a hangover. I am so fucked, thought Max, hearing the words in Bronte’s voice, inside his own head.

  So fucked.

  Diana the Dedicated Flight Attendant turned out to be a perfectly nice woman and not at all the shag-o-rific piece Max had briefly envisioned in his whiskey-soaked imagination. The bosom was undeniable, and she seemed quite happy to bend over to reveal it while pouring the copious amounts of water that Max requested. But that was about all.

  Max fell into a dead sleep for the better part of the flight, realizing, as he nodded off, that he hadn’t had a proper sleep in nearly two days. One more reason Bronte is a pain in the ass, he thought vaguely. But a few seconds later, he was falling into a happy stupor thinking incongruously about Bronte’s ass—and nothing to do with her being a pain in his.

  ***

  Bronte spent most of that rainy Saturday curled up on the couch. Did Max just walk out on her? Was it over? What the hell had just happened? She didn’t even know where to begin. In her view of things, she was just trying to be honest about her fears and how overwhelmed she was at the prospect of having a baby. And everything, she added to herself lamely.

  When she finally got off the couch at four o’clock that afternoon, she felt surprisingly refreshed. She stood in the shower for forty-five minutes, letting the near-boiling water scrape her body clean, and her conscience maybe, if she was lucky. She was starting to feel guilty about something, but she wasn’t sure what exactly.

  Not good.

  She put on a T-shirt and shorts and walked over to the Union Square market. A lot of the vendors had already gone home, but she found some gorgeous leeks, artisanal goat cheese, and organic pasta. She talked to a couple of neighbors she bumped into on the way home. She was going to cook herself a beautiful meal, relax, read, chill out. Be alone.

  Forever.

  Oh, shut up, she thought briskly. She was not going to wallow in self-pity when this was the very thing she had supposedly been craving. More time. More space. Get her shit together. Maybe finish reading her father’s book. One week was not a very long time in the grand scheme of things, and she was going to take her week to figure out what the hell she was doing with her life.

  She made what she thought was a mature decision to not speak with Max at all that week. It was all going to work out in the end; she just needed time to get her mind around the pace at which Max expected her to arrive at that end. He was giving her space.

  She cooked a delicious, healthy meal, read a few more chapters of her father’s manuscript, cleaned her baseboards, and was back in bed by midnight. Not tired. Not tired at all. The idea of going a whole week without talking or texting or emailing Max should have been easier—she had gone almost a full year after Chicago.

  Obviously the rules of engagement had been revised somewhat since then. At this rate, she wasn’t going to make it twenty-four hours, much less seven days. She wondered how it was possible that only a few weeks had passed since they’d reconnected. She was going to have to be the bigger person and pick up the phone. It was either that or battle insomnia for the next week, and she needed her sleep.

  Because she was tired.

  And pregnant!

  She rubbed her hand back and forth over her abdomen as she contemplated sleep. She kept thinking of all those idiotic clichés for pregnancy: bun in the oven, knocked up, broody, with child. Good God.

  With child? What the hell? That sounded like a side act in Las Vegas. The billboard would read, “Siegfried and Roy, with Child.” Bronte smiled to herself.

  Plain old pregnant was what she was.

  And she had no idea why she was pushing away the one person with whom she most wanted to share it. The one person who knew her, loved her, adored her. She started to doze as she finally let go, metaphorically unclenching her fingertips and finally falling away from the cliff onto which she had been clinging for the past few weeks.

  For most of her life.

  The too-tight grip on her independence that was really just a weak excuse for her unwillingness to let herself be loved unconditionally. Even the phrase “unconditional love” was oxymoronic to her. Every thought she’d ever had was conditional. Or maybe just conditioned. She’d have to get over that.

  In the meantime, she could just stay in charge of her own life and gradually own up to the fact that she was now part of a unit. A perfectly dreamy unit. She wo
uld call Max first thing in the morning to tell him what an ass she had been. How she wanted to get married as soon as possible. How she wanted to be with him. To wear his ring. All the time.

  ***

  By the time Max’s plane touched down at ten forty London time on Sunday morning, he knew he was an idiot. After half a bottle of scotch and three hours passed out in the lounge, you’d think he would have come to his senses. But no. Of course he needed an additional seven hours traveling in the wrong direction over the Atlantic to realize his place was in New York. Even if she was too pissed to let him stay with her, then at least he could stay in a nearby hotel, simply letting Bronte know he was willing to wait as long as it took for her to come to terms with the pregnancy, the marriage, their life together. All of it.

  Diana the flight attendant was his new best friend.

  “You are not going to fly back a third time, are you?” she asked.

  “I think I have to.” He tried to turn on his cell phone, then realized the battery must have died hours before.

  “Maybe you should go into town, you know, to freshen up a bit?”

  Charming, Max thought. I must look and smell like a beast. “Isn’t there a two o’clock flight I could get on? I can clean up in the lounge, right?”

  “I like your enthusiasm. Of course, there are full spa facilities in the lounge, but I don’t think you have a shot of getting on that flight. You are probably going to be sitting in this very seat again come five fifteen on the return flight to JFK after they clean and refuel this aircraft.”

  “Perfect. Serves me right, I suppose. I can’t be the first idiot who has done something this ridiculous.”

  Diana raised her eyebrows. “The first that I’ve ever come across. I’ve seen the there-and-back a couple of times…but a triple? I don’t know.”