Maybe Never

by Nia Forrester

  “No wonder I don’t come here more often,” Tracy said dryly.

  “Don’t get defensive . . .”

  “How can I not get defensive? You’re telling me your staff hates me and that it’s justified.”

  “That’s not what I said.” Brendan shook his head, his voice calm.

  “And I guess you think you’re helping matters with that ‘Boss-Lady’ crap, like I run you or something?”

  Brendan grinned at her. “You do run me. But only because I let you. Because I love you. And because the kind of shit that keeps you up at night rolls right off my back.”

  How was it he always knew what to say? Just when she’d worked up a good, solid annoyance with him, he could extinguish it like the weak flame on a half-burnt match. But she wasn’t going to let him do it this time; not when she had a perfect right to be angry.

  “Well, I don’t have an appetite anymore,” Tracy said, looking away from him, because when she looked at him, she couldn’t possibly maintain her righteous indignation. “Call Brett back in here. Get your disgusting Philly cheesesteak, and clog your arteries for all I care. I’m going back to my office, where people don’t think I’m a bitch-on-wheels.”

  Brendan leaned back in his chair arms folded behind his head, with the exhausted expression of a man watching a show he’d seen many times before. He heaved a deep sigh and waited. And when he said nothing to indicate he was inclined to stop her from leaving, Tracy stood and grabbed her purse.

  “Thanks Tracy,” he said affably. “It’s always great when you stop by. See you at home later.”

  “Don’t count on it!” she snapped before flouncing out of his office. As she passed Brett’s desk, she made sure to shoot her a withering look.

  ________

  By the time Brendan finally got home at nine that evening, Tracy had begun to believe that he was much more annoyed than she’d recognized, and had opted to spend the night away from her, in the townhouse in Brooklyn. The sound of his keys in the front door and then being dropped on the table in the foyer made her heave a sigh of relief. When she’d stormed out of his office that afternoon, she was so irritated herself, she hadn’t given as much thought as she should have to his mood. What had gotten to her more than anything was that she hadn’t gotten a chance to tell him about the baby, and had allowed her temper to get the best of her.

  As she walked away from Brendan’s office, she could hear Dr. Greer’s voice in her head, telling her she needed to learn to ‘identify your triggers, Tracy.’ She’d identified them ages ago; it was the handling of them that was difficult. Seeing Dr. Greer for a while, hashing through a bunch of old crap from her childhood, trying to mend fences with her family, had been helpful but every once in a while, those ‘triggers’ got the best of her like they had today.

  She was in bed when Brendan came in, stretching and circling his neck. Tracy was almost always in bed when he got home. Such was the nature of his work, but even for him, coming in after eight p.m. was late.

  He yawned. “Hey,” he said.

  Tracy didn’t respond.

  “Are we still beefin’?” he asked, pausing before going into the closet. “Because if we are, I’ll save myself the energy trying to get you to talk to me.”

  “Brendan, we’re not beefin’. I just didn’t like what you had to say today, that’s all.”

  “Well like it or not, Tracy, what I said was true. Every word of it. I don’t like having to apologize for you, or overcompensate with niceness because you’ve been terse with someone when you didn’t have to be, or just downright rude.”

  Pinpricks of tears had already begun at the backs of her eyes. It was one thing when they were in the middle of a heated argument—in those she could more than hold her own—but when he very calmly and matter-of-factly told her the ways in which she let him down, it reduced her to tears every single time. No one else in the world could make her cry as easily.

  Seeing the look on her face, knowing she was close to tears usually broke him down too. It was at about that point that he would come to her and soften his tone, but tonight Brendan simply sighed and walked into his closet where Tracy could hear him removing his clothes.

  “Please don’t start with the crying,” he said, exasperated. “I’m not telling you anything you shouldn’t know, Tracy. This is shit you learned in the first grade—do unto others . . . you know the rest don’t you?”

  If she didn’t know him so well, she would have missed the significance of his tone. This wasn’t Brendan annoyed, this was Brendan mad. He rarely if ever raised his voice to her. When he was very angry, he didn’t get hot, he instead became very, very cold. Tracy could only guess at what happened after she left his office. He’d probably apologized to Brett. And knowing women as she did, Tracy had no doubt Brett milked it for all it was worth, and perhaps even squeezed out a few tears of her own.

  I don’t know why she doesn’t like me, Mr. Cole. Every time she comes in, I’m always very polite to her . . .

  And Brendan probably felt like crap, and had all but patted the girl on the back, or even hugged her.

  And was it true? Was he always apologizing for her?

  He came out of the closet barefoot, wearing only lounging pajamas, hanging low on his hips. Tracy quickly wiped away the tears that threatened to stream down her face.

  “Is there anything to eat?”

  “Chicken cacciatore,” she said, her voice croaking. “I left you a. . .”

  “You have to treat people with respect, Tracy. Even if you don’t believe they deserve it. Or don’t rise to the level of meriting your . . .”

  “Is that what you think of me?” she said, her head snapping up. “That I think some people are beneath me?”

  Brendan said nothing.

  “Brendan, that isn’t . . .”

  “That’s what it looks like. That’s what you act like. And I don’t get it. People look at you, and . . . you’re . . . beautiful, Tracy. They want to like you, and they want you to like them. And you . . .”

  “While that sounds great, Brendan,” she said, feeling a sudden surge of self-protectiveness, “that’s not the way it works. In reality, people look at me and they don’t want to like me. Especially not the women you work with.”

  “Why?” he asked dryly. “Because they’re all trying to sleep with me? You really need to get over that bullshit and stop using it as an excuse to . . .”

  “An excuse? Because I just want to treat people like crap, is that it?”

  “Oh, so you do acknowledge that you treat them like crap,” he said.

  “No, I . . .”

  “Honestly, Tracy, I haven’t the foggiest fucking idea why you feel the need to be such a . . .”

  He broke off and said nothing. Tracy stared at him, the tears beginning anew.

  “Say it,” she prompted.

  Brendan turned to leave the room.

  “A bitch,” she finished for him. “That’s what you were about to say, right? Why do I feel the need to be such a bitch?”

  Brendan turned to look at her again, this time he looked tired, defeated. “Bottom line is you don’t always treat people well, Tracy. And that’s something I value. Treating people well even when you don’t have to, even when there’s nothing in it for you.”

  “Well then I guess that means I’m not an appropriate partner for you!” she snapped. “Not someone you would want to meet your family! Not someone you want to marry or . . .”

  Brendan’s eyes squinted in confusion, and Tracy knew that the sudden sharp turn their conversation had taken perplexed him. It perplexed her as well in some ways, because she hadn’t realized until just that moment how much it bothered her. The fact that he hadn’t proposed or even implied that he might in the two years they’d been together was one thing, but beyond that, he had never—not even once—suggested that he take her to meet his parents in North Carolina, even though he’d met most of her family.

  She lived with him, celebrated holidays with
him . . . and she had never once even spoken to either of his parents on the phone. And now here she was, like a million other stupid and misguided women in relationships before her—pregnant with no hint of a permanent commitment on the horizon. What she had was the illusion of a commitment, not a real one.

  “What the hell are you talking about now?” Brendan said, looking up at the ceiling.

  Tracy got off the bed and headed toward the bathroom, grabbing her purse as she went and sliding some toiletries into it. Brushing past him, she went to the closet and pulled on her jeans. All the while, Brendan watched her with that exasperated look he always got when she flew off the handle and he had no clue why.

  Just as she was grabbing an overnight bag from the shelf in the closet (which was wholly for dramatic effect, since she had ample of both clothing and toiletries at the townhouse in Brooklyn), Brendan grabbed her from behind about the waist with both arms, pulling her back into a bear hug. Tracy struggled for a moment and then settled into the embrace, going limp in his arms and bursting into noisy tears.

  Brendan held her like that, waiting through her cry, saying nothing, both of them in the closet, the overnight bag at their feet. Finally, Tracy let Brendan turn her around and pull her against his chest, as her tears and heaves subsided. He sighed and threaded his fingers through her loose hair, his large hand holding the back of her head, pressing her closer against him.

  “What’s really going on?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she mumbled into his chest. She couldn’t tell him now. This was happy news—at least for her—and they were definitely not having a happy moment.

  “You came to my office for a reason . . .”

  “I didn’t say I came for a reason . . .”

  “You didn’t need to say it. I know you.”

  Tracy considered that for a moment. He did know her. Perhaps even more than anyone else. Riley was her best friend, but there was a nakedness that she had with Brendan—literal and figurative—that she had never had with another living soul.

  “I have . . . something to tell you,” she admitted, her voice so quiet, even she almost couldn’t hear it.

  Brendan pulled back a little and tipped her chin so she was looking at him, waiting for her to speak.

  “I’m pregnant,” she said.

  And for the first time since she’d known him, Tracy saw Brendan rendered absolutely speechless.

  ________

  Mistake

  Basketball downtown. Back by two.

  Brendan propped the hastily scribbled note against the bottle of green tea body lotion on the dresser and glanced one last time at Tracy’s sleeping form. The lotion was always the first thing she reached for when she got out of the shower. Brendan loved watching her apply it, sitting naked on the bed, her long legs extended. She would raise one, and then the other, carefully massaging the creamy liquid into her skin. More than once he’d not allowed her to get to the second leg, finding irresistible the sight of his woman, performing the most womanly of rituals.

  On the bed now, she slept on, breathing quiet, even breaths. Peaceful. He liked watching her sleep because she was very seldom at peace. For someone who had always prided himself on maintaining equilibrium of mood, it was the damnedest thing that he’d gone and fallen for a woman whose nature was pure tumult.

  In their time together, Brendan had come to realize that Tracy was at constant war internally, passionately throwing herself into the business of figuring out who she was supposed to be—in her work, in her relationship with her mother, with her friends and with him. It didn’t matter how much he tried to reassure her, Tracy still couldn’t seem to just . . . be. The phrase ‘tortured soul’ hadn’t meant anything to him until he truly got to know this woman, lying here, quieted for the moment, but only because even she was no match for something as forceful as the biological imperative to simply get some sleep.

  Her hair was loose and long, some of it resting across her cheek, some spread on the pillow next to her head, and a few strands obscuring her nose and lips. Brendan resisted the urge to smooth it away from her face because he knew that if he touched her, she would likely awaken. One thing about Tracy that he had come to learn—maybe the most surprising thing—was how fiercely she loved. And she loved him. He knew that as surely as he had ever known anything. He touched her, and it was like she came alive beneath his hand. That was an overwhelming amount of power to have over anyone, a sometimes terrifying power. And after the news she’d shared with him last night, he sensed she would wake up immediately if he touched her now, and he wasn’t ready to talk. Not yet.

  As he left the apartment, grabbing his sports bag from the closet, Brendan thought about his reaction the previous evening. He’d definitely fucked that up. Women probably dreamed of that moment, when they shared with a man that he was about to be a father. After being fed a steady diet of bullshit by television, they wanted to be swept up into a spinning hug, kissed all over their faces, or have their abdomens lovingly caressed. Brendan had done none of those things.

  Instead, he froze. He just stood there like stone until Tracy pulled away and looked up at him, saying his name. Finally, he spoke.

  How? he’d asked.

  How. And that had done it.

  Tracy started crying again and looked at him with betrayal in her eyes. The usual way, Brendan, she said. And then for good measure: As a matter of fact, I seem to remember that you were there, and a very active participant.

  What he really wanted to know—but in the moment was too inarticulate to say—was how, if she was on the Pill, she’d managed to get pregnant. But that was moot. Besides, Brendan had an idea.

  For the past seven months or so, Tracy had been careless about contraception. She always took her Pill out and left it next to the sink to take with her vitamin supplement just before she brushed her teeth, and there had been several mornings when Brendan had gone into the bathroom after her to find the little white pill sitting there next to the honey-colored liquid capsule. If he’d gently reminded her, then she’d take them both, but sometimes he didn’t bother, thinking it likely she would get around to it, or sometimes just not even caring whether she did.

  The new carelessness was something he’d noticed only because Tracy tended to be meticulous by nature, running their two shared households with such efficiency that Brendan often felt superfluous. But in a good way.

  As Shawn commented one weekend when he stopped by and watched Tracy moving about, picking up after him: You don’t have to do shit around here, do you?

  And Brendan had laughed and shook his head because it was true. Tracy made everything easy for him. Something Shawn probably missed because with a two-year old and a baby at home, Riley had lost much of her appetite for letting Shawn slide on his household responsibilities.

  Tracy ‘forgetting’ to take her Pill was more likely a symptom of something larger; something Brendan had been way too busy to even examine, let alone confront her about. And here was the result: she was pregnant. But it wasn’t as though she’d done anything on the sly—he knew she wasn’t always taking it, and he’d done nothing to mitigate the situation, that was for damn sure, still jumping her every chance he got.

  Instead of taking his car downtown, Brendan took the train, wanting to expend a little energy on the walk to the subway, and to breathe some of that crisp fall air before it became clogged with the exhaust and refuse of more than a million Manhattanites. The streets were just beginning to come alive in earnest, and he had to dodge a couple screeching cabs just to get across to the train station.

  The subway still stunk this early, though there was a layer of the suspiciously-fluorescent green disinfectant all over the platform. He rarely took the train anywhere anymore. Tracy refused to, so whenever they went out, he drove, no matter how inconvenient it was. It was easy to indulge her, because in just about everything, she indulged him as well. In that at least, they had balance.

  Chris was already on the court when he got the
re, practicing three-point shots, wearing gray sweats and a white shirt that still managed to look expensive, casual as they were. Try as he might to look hard, Chris Scaife still oozed money. The kind of money that would make the average man lazy, because what else could there possibly be to work for? But not Chris; he pursued his next million like someone being chased by the hounds of Hell, never stopping, not even slowing down. But no one could keep up that pace forever, not even the indomitable Chris Scaife, and Brendan sometimes wondered when the other shoe would drop.

  “You should’ve waited for me to get here,” Brendan said, clapping him on the back. “You being an old man and all, I don’t want you to wear yourself out before we get our game on.”

  Chris was thirty-seven. The eldest in their circle, but still dominating in the young man’s game of star-making.

  “Fuck you,” he responded calmly. Then he tossed Brendan the ball, so aggressively, and so quickly that he had to drop his sports bag to avoid getting hit in the face. That was how Chris did everything, like his opponent was literally trying to kill him, so he had to kill them first.

  Brendan smiled at his friend, grabbing the basketball firmly with both hands. “Let’s play,” he said.

  By the time they were done, both of them sweating buckets, it was still only just past ten a.m. Brendan’s note to Tracy said he wouldn’t be home until two. He intended to hold fast to that, because all he’d thought about while shooting hoops with Chris was not getting a black eye from a ball in the face. He still needed time to think.

  “Let’s go get something to eat over at that shitty diner you like to go to,” Chris said.

  “Every place that ain’t five-star is shitty to you,” Brendan said laughing. “You been rich too long.”

  “Being rich is something you can’t be for too long,” Chris said. “Maybe not long enough, but never too long.”

  Brendan shook his head. “Whatever, man. Let’s go.”

  As they walked, Brendan considered asking Chris’ advice. But while Chris might know about getting women pregnant, asking him about actual ‘relationships’ would be the equivalent of asking a hog to look at a wristwatch and tell you the time.