The carriage jerks to a stop, and Billie breaks eye contact with me to look around.
“Are we going shopping?”
Peppermint has come to a stop outside of a crowded department store. A steady stream of shoppers pushes through a revolving door, their faces alternating between blissful and murderous. I help Billie down and she wobbles awkwardly on her boot as she waits for me to speak to Phil.
“We have thirty minutes,” I say, grabbing her hand.
“Okay. What are we shopping for?”
“Each other,” I tell her. “Twenty-dollar limit.”
She stops dead, forcing me to backtrack or get run over by the determined pedestrians.
“Where do you think this is? Target? You can’t buy a shoelace in Barneys for twenty dollars,” she says.
“Fifty,” I counter. “And we have thirty minutes to choose wisely.”
We fist bump and separate once we’re inside. Billie hobbles right toward the elevators, and I take a left through the makeup and perfume. I have no idea what I’m looking for and I already bought Billie a Christmas present. Slightly buzzed from the beer and hot buttered rum in Phil’s flask, I wander aimlessly, hoping something catches my eye before Phil and Peppermint get a ticket for loitering. I spot something in the home department I think she’d like. It’s a hundred and twenty dollars, but I grab it anyway and carry it to a register. The button Billie gave me sits at the bottom of my coat pocket. My fingers brush it as I search for my phone. I think about asking Billie about it, but there’s something about that night when she handed it to me that feels sacred. If I ask and she tells me, the spell will be broken. I don’t even know what the fuck that means, but it feels true. Billie is already waiting in the carriage with a broad smile on her face, when I emerge. I hop in and she automatically snuggles closer to me, hungry for warmth.
“Well…?” she says. “Do we do this now or later?”
She’s bouncing in her seat, a little sparking livewire. I kiss her nose because we’re that close and her eyes crease in a smile.
“Stop being cute,” she says. She rolls her eyes, but it doesn’t matter because they’re dancing with a light I haven’t seen in a while.
“Okay,” I say. “You first.”
She grabs a bag from her feet just as Peppermint lurches forward and proffers it at me with an alcohol-induced enthusiasm. We bump heads and then laugh as we rub the sore spots.
As I dig around the tissue paper, my mind once again goes to the button. Billie is watching me anxiously. My fingers brush against something hard at the bottom of the bag. She chews on her lip, her face somewhere between excitement and nervousness. When I pull my hand out I’m not exactly sure what I’m looking at.
“What is it?” I turn it over in my hand. It looks like a very bright, very knobby doll made entirely of ... wait for it ... buttons. Buttons of every color and size make up its face, limbs, and torso. I stare into its black button eyes, confused.
“It’s a button baby,” she says sweetly.
“A button baby?” I repeat.
She nods, taking it from me. “The idea is that if you need a button—say if you lost one on your coat—you’d find a replacement on this guy. Also, you know all those extra buttons that come with shirts and pants and whatnot?”
I nod. She turns over the button baby and shows me a zipper. “You put them in here for when you need them.”
“Hmmmm.” I reach into my pocket, deciding it’s the right time to bring up the white button she gave me the night of the Rhubarb Christmas party. I hold it out to her and her face lights up. She carefully takes it from my palm and deposits it inside of the button baby, zipping it closed to keep the button safe.
“Sooo ... about that button…”
“You don’t remember, do you?”
I can see the disappointment on her face and it makes me feel like crap. I almost suggest that she has the wrong person, the real owner of the button memory can’t possibly be me.
“I—I don’t.”
Her laugh fills my ears. “Well ... maybe you will someday. And then my Christmas present won’t seem stupid.”
“Why can’t you just tell me?”
Billie shakes her head, a coy smile teasing her lips. “Not today. You’ll remember one day.”
I frown at her.
“Now me.” She holds out her hand, wiggling her fingers.
I pull my less confusing gift from between my feet and hold the bag out to her. “I’m afraid my gift has no deep, forgotten meaning.”
“Oh, hush…”
She reaches into the bag just as Peppermint guides us over a pothole and whatever she’s holding drops from her fingers before she can see it. She swears colorfully before plunging her hand inside again, and when it emerges, much to my relief she starts to laugh. I can’t help but join her. Just past the makeup I’d found a jewelry station where using tiny letters you could build your own bracelet to say anything you wanted. I’d chosen a silver bracelet for Billie and then spelled out the words: Fuck Wendy.
“My God, Satcher. What did you have against Wendy anyway?”
“She wasn’t you,” I say. “She was a modified version.”
“True that.” Billie sighs, slipping the bracelet over her wrist. “Well, I’m back. Full force.”
I don’t have time to respond; we’ve arrived at the next pub.
“Shall we?” I hop down from the carriage and hold out my hand.
Phil gives us a little more time for dinner since all we’ve had sloshing around in our stomachs for four hours is alcohol.
“Eat!” he calls as we walk toward the restaurant. “Or you will drown from the inside out.”
Billie is sleepy-eyed when we slide into the tiny corner table. She tucks her hair behind her ears then rests her hands flat on the table while she waits for me to shrug out of my coat and sit. She’s beautiful—a little windblown, the tip of her nose kissed pink. There is a deep recess in my heart, a place I keep shut up, that aches whenever I look at Billie. For that reason I look away, at anything but her.
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
She glances up from her menu, eyebrows raised.
“I suppose so,” she says, setting it down. “Will it make me cry?”
“Oh God,” I say. “Please don’t. I don’t do well with crying women.”
“I highly doubt that, Satcher. With the trail of broken hearts you leave, I bet you’re good at comfort.”
I grin. She’s right, of course.
We pause to give our orders to the server. Once he’s gone, Billie turns to me. “Shoot,” she says.
“Why did you tell your parents you were the one who left Woods?”
Her lips disappear as she folds them in and looks away.
“How do you know about that?”
“The hospital ... your mother…”
“Ah,” she says. “Did you tell her the truth?”
I shake my head.
“Thanks.” Her voice is soft, and my heart feels her sadness in such a way that I’m compelled to touch her, as if I can soak some of it up.
“They’d have blamed me. No matter what—” she says quickly when she sees the expression on my face. “If Woods cheated on me it would mean I was failing him in some way. I guess I didn’t want to hear it, you know?”
“Understandable.”
She fidgets with the strap of her bag, one side of her mouth screwed into her cheek.
“Does it make you think of me differently?”
“No. Of course not. God, I’ve told my mom the reason I’m not married is because I have a small dick and no one will have me,” I tell her.
“Ah well, what a lie that is,” she sings, and her eyes dance with mischief.
“She knows that. She changed my diapers for three years.”
We’re laughing when the server delivers our drinks. High on penis jokes at my expense. I love it. I love that she doesn’t censor herself for anyone, and I love that she teases me merc
ilessly. When you date as many women as I have, you learn that everyone has a construct they want to portray. Personalities become like outfits: carefully curated, a smokescreen for the brokenness inside. It’s hard to tell what’s underneath the layers everyone is wearing. Billie is the first woman I’ve met who comes at you naked. She admits when she’s wrong, isn’t afraid of telling you the terrible truth about what she’s done, and doesn’t have a secret agenda. She is what she is and that’s exactly what I fell in love with.
“Sláinte,” I say, raising my glass.
“Sláinte,” she says, meeting my eyes.
We click glasses.
Chapter Thirty-Four
We spend the next day in my apartment lying on the couch, recovering from our exuberant drinking efforts from the day before. Billie chooses the movies, and to my surprise, she picks entirely non-romantic storylines instead of the holiday films I thought she’d go for. We spread cream cheese on crackers and sip at our huge tumblers of water, reminding each other to hydrate. For lack of a better word, I find the afternoon sweet in its simplicity—easy. But that’s the way it’s always been with Billie. At one point, I find myself lying with my head in her lap. Casually, Billie plays with my hair as Liam Neeson issues his famous “I’ll find you” into the phone. My eyes drift closed and I wake up to the credits as Billie lifts her arms over her head in a stretch. Between movies, we take turns complaining about how sick we feel, and around six, Billie offers to make breakfast for dinner. It’s snowing outside when I join her in the kitchen, the lights from the Christmas tree casting lazy reflections on the window.
“This is kind of fun, you know.” She cracks the last egg into the bowl and tosses the shells. “Like a sleepover…”
I grin over the top of her head and hand her the bowl of onions she asked me to dice. “Does that mean I get to share the bed with you tonight?”
Her laugh is halfhearted.
“My mother told me she still feels like she’s having a sleepover with my dad after thirty-six years,” I tell her.
My parents largely grossed their children out for much of our adolescence. As adults, we’ve learned to appreciate their love fest, but we all still look away when they make out like two teenagers.
“That’s sweet,” she says, avoiding my eyes. “My parents don’t talk to each other unless it’s to comment on the weather.”
“That’s depressing.” I pop a cherry tomato in my mouth as I try not to let on how closely I’m watching her reactions.
“Yeah. I wanted the opposite of their marriage. And look at me now. Marriageless. An old divorcée with no prospects.”
I snigger. “Oh, please. You’d have plenty of prospects if you were ready.”
She pretends not to hear me as she searches through the silverware drawer. I listen to the clatter of metal and frown.
“Spatula?” I dig it out of a different drawer and hand it to her.
Our fingers brush and she pulls her hand away like I’ve shocked her.
“Were you truly happy with Woods?” I think about her blog post. I’d read it on my parents’ couch—three times, four—wondering if it was the idea of love she’d been in love with rather than Woods.
“I don’t know. I was ignorant, I guess. So in a way ... yeah. He fulfilled my idea of marriage and I enjoyed that.”
“And the person you are now, the woman you’ve become—would she be happy in a marriage with Woods?”
I’m surprised when she laughs.
“No,” she says. “This person is much more complicated.”
“Then why do you still want to be with him?”
Her hands still. She sets everything down and turns around to face me, leaning her back against the counter as she dries her hands on a dish towel.
“Because we made a commitment. We were supposed to fight through it. I was willing.”
“Then why did you leave? Why didn’t you stay and fight?”
Her lips move, but the words stay trapped in her throat.
She withdraws completely after that, her smile disappearing from her face. I should ask why, but I’m partially amused by the way she keeps glancing at me when she thinks I’m not looking. After we eat, she’s frowning down at her empty plate when I finally ask what’s bothering her.
“I have to tell you something,” she says. “I don’t know if I should. But I’m in a tough position and I’ve honestly lost sight of who I’m betraying at this point.”
I lean back in my seat having already pushed my plate away.
“Jules?”
She nods slowly.
“Okay…” I crack my knuckles, surveying the kitchen.
Billie’s tongue is locked in her promise to Jules. I’ll have to guess if I want to find out.
“I need to know where to start,” I say.
She turns her head to look at the counter and I follow her eyes. The present Jules wrapped and left at my house sits next to the knife block. It wasn’t there before so I assume Billie put it where I could see it.
“Do you want me to open it?”
She shrugs casually, though her eyes are wild.
“Billie…?”
She shrugs again, her eyes blinking slowly like she’s trying to convey the importance of Jules’ gift.
“Okay. All right. I’m going to open it. It’s my fault, not yours…”
I retrieve the package, hoping its placement by the knife block isn’t an omen, and turn it over in my hand. Billie stares at it like she’s afraid.
“You’re freaking me out, Billie.”
“I’m freaking out,” she says. “Bad.”
I stare from her to the package in my hand in confusion.
“Give me a clue,” I say.
Without a word, she stands up and walks into the kitchen. I watch as she gets two shot glasses from the cabinet and then retrieves a bottle of tequila from my bar.
“That’s sipping tequila,” I tell her. “Very expensive.”
“Good, then it’ll go down smooth and work fast.”
I don’t argue as she pours us each a shot and slides mine across the counter. I pick it up, never removing my eyes from her face.
“What would Jules give you that she’d want you both to open together?”
“I have no clue.”
She bites her lip and holds up her shot glass, motioning for me to do the same. Our heads tilt back at the same time.
“If you were a happy couple who planned on being together for the rest of your lives…” Her voice breaks.
I watch as she chews on the inside of her cheek, clearly at odds with her loyalty. Her eyebrows are arched over her eyes and she seems to be urging me toward the answer by raising them higher.
I suddenly feel cold all over. “Billie ... no ... are you…? Is she…?”
She doesn’t answer me. My hands shake as I unwrap the box, the tequila curdling in my stomach like sour milk. Underneath the cheerful wrapping of bows and candy canes is a simple white cardboard box. I lift the lid, my hands shaking.
“Fuck.” I drop everything on the counter.
“I’m assuming you know what that is,” Billie says dryly.
I rub a hand across my face. “You’ve known about this and you didn’t say anything? Goddammit, Billie.”
“She asked me not to.”
I bend down to retrieve the slender white stick lying between my feet. Before flipping it over, I turn to Billie who is looking at everything except me.
“Is this a positive pregnancy test?”
She nods. I breathe through my nose trying to calm myself. In my often scandalous years of being a bachelor I’ve never once had a pregnancy scare. I turn the foreign white stick over in my hand and stare down at the single word in the tiny rectangular box: PREGNANT. Everything freezes when I see that word. How many days has she been gone? I count in my mind. I ended our relationship what—three ... four days ago?
I turn to Billie. “Is she still pregnant?”
“I don’t know. I’v
e texted her, but she hasn’t answered me. I think she’s angry with me too?”
I run a hand through my hair wishing I’d insisted on seeing what was in that box sooner. But how could I have known? Jules and I have never spoken about children. She brought marriage up on several occasions, and though I hadn’t engaged with the idea, I’d not discouraged it either. It must have been nerve-racking for her to put that test in a box and wrap it without knowing what my reaction would be. In a blur, I search for my phone. I need to call Jules. Billie is pacing back and forth across the kitchen, eyeing the liquor cabinet.
I point at her and say, “No.” Firmly.
“Why not?” she fusses. “This is stressful.”
“You drink too much. And if I have to do this sober, so do you.”
She throws her hands up in the air. “Who said you had to be sober?”
I find my phone under a pile of our discarded blankets in the living room and dial Jules’ number. I sit on the couch waiting for her to pick up; Billie leans on the doorway looking like she’s about to throw up. Jules’ voice is sleepy when she answers.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey back.”
I scratch the back of my head wondering why I didn’t think some words through before I made this call.
“So, I opened the present you left…”
There’s silence on the other end of the line.
“Are you still—”
“Yes,” she says quickly.
I breathe a sigh of relief, massaging my forehead where I’m starting to feel the prickle of a headache.
“Are you okay?”
I can hear her breathing on the other end of the line, slow methodical breaths pressing back tears.
“I’m okay,” she says finally.
“Have you told anyone?”
“No. Why would I? Look, you broke up with me. I get it. You don’t want to be with me, and I don’t expect anything from you. I’ll deal with it.”
“I don’t want you to have an abortion—I mean, unless you want to have one.” I wait for her to say something. “I’ll support you through whatever you decide,” I finish.
I feel like an ass. Here she is trying to have Christmas with her family, and not only did she find out she was pregnant, but I broke up with her before she could even tell me.
F*ck Marriage Page 21