"Singing. Composing. Anything to do with music really."
"There's not much in the way of music in Stars Landing," I said, leaning back against the wall.
She smiled slightly, shrugging a shoulder. "Maybe not. But it seems like a nice town. Safe. Close-knit..."
"It is," I agreed.
"Where better to raise a baby?"
I couldn't argue with her there. "You're not leaving behind any family in California?"
"I don't have any family," she said, moving over toward the balcony and conjuring up the image of Cordy there, the memory like a knife somewhere deep in my stomach. "I was raised up in the foster system. I'm pretty determined to... do right by this kid. I want it to know more love and stability than I had."
"You're going to be a good mom, Myra."
"You don't know that," she laughed, making her delicate face light up, "but thanks for saying it anyway." She watched me for a second, her head tilted like she was trying to figure something out. "God I hope it's a girl."
"What? Why?" Parents weren't supposed to think like that, were they?
"Because if it's a boy, this poor town is going to have another you running around in eighteen years."
"More like fifteen," I smiled, thinking about my reputation even then. "Besides, the town is already screwed. Eric O'reilly just got his girl pregnant. He and I used to fight over women..."
"You know," she said, pursing her lips slightly, "if you have a girl... and this Eric has a son..."
"I'd kill him first," I laughed. "So when do you find out?"
She shrugged a shoulder. "A couple more weeks."
"Good," I nodded, feeling awkward. "Then we can get the... ah... what do you call a baby's room?"
"A nursery," she supplied, looking amused.
"Right... then we can paint the nursery and get furniture and all that stuff."
"Do you know of any place around here hiring?" she asked, looking out the window.
"You don't need to work..."
"Look," she said, turning to me with her disarming green eyes. "I know you don't really know me... but I am not looking for someone to take care of me. I make my own way in life."
"I respect that, but you're pregnant and there is no reason..."
"Women in third world countries give birth in the picking fields then go back to work, Dane. I think I can handle bagging groceries or answering phones until I pop." She looked back out at the street, then back at me worriedly. "There is a place for me to... deliver here, right?"
"There's a hospital twenty minutes out of town."
"Thank god. What about a... OBGYN?" she asked, her tone suggesting she knew she was asking for too much.
"Well you're in luck. We actually just got a doctor in town. Before a few months ago, you would have had to fight the pregnant dogs and cats for a chance to see the vet."
"You can't be serious."
"Oh, I am. Ever been stitched up when you're bombed off you ass on top of a exam table with cages of angry looking dogs with their balls chopped off looking at you?"
"Can't say I have," she smiled.
"I can. It's an experience."
She looked at my for a minute. "I think we can make this work, Dane."
I felt my head nodding. We could. We could force a life out of this situation. She could get work. I would push the memory of Cordy down. "Yeah," I agreed.
"You look like you need a drink," she observed with a wry smile.
"Yeah, I think I need to get completely tanked actually."
"I don't blame you," she nodded. "If I could have, I would have. Go on. I'll be fine. I was thinking about taking a walk around, checking out the stores. Seeing if anyone needs any extra help."
"Okay," I nodded. Thank god. I needed to drown in a bottle of whiskey. "Take the bed. I'll find somewhere to crash for the next few days and get some furniture for the living room as soon as possible. We can figure out the details..."
"When you've had time to process things," she supplied.
"Alright. Yeah... um..." How was I supposed to leave? We weren't exactly together. So did I kiss her cheek? Did I hug her? Did I just...
"Go," she laughed.
"Mind reader," I said, turning and leaving.
She was right. It would work. It wouldn't be perfect. She wouldn't ever be Cordy. But it would work.
I made my way to the mechanic's shop, kicking the shoe of Eric who was buried underneath a car. He rolled out slowly.
"I need a drinking buddy."
"Now? It's barely..."
"I knocked someone up."
His face twisted slightly. "That designer? Was that why she was out in the woods crying?"
She was out in the woods crying? "No," I said and he looked up at me for a second before jumping up, grabbing a rag and wiping his hands, already starting to walk out of the garage.
"Fuck," he said as I fell into step beside him.
"Yeah."
"What are you going to do?"
"I told her she could stay with me and we would raise it."
"One big unhappy family?" Eric asked, opening the door to the bar. "You're in love with the designer."
"Yup," I agreed, ducking behind the bar and grabbing a bottle of whiskey and two rocks glasses.
"You dumped her, didn't you?"
"Yup," I said, saluting him with my glass before throwing it back.
He reached for the bottle, pouring another round for me. "Damn."
"Mmmhmm," I said, considering my glass for a long minute. "You found her in the woods this morning?"
"Yeah me and Lena were going to..."
"Fuck in the woods," I supplied. They had been happened upon several times doing it in the woods since they got together.
"Yeah, and I saw someone laying on the ground next to the river. So we went over. Lena pushed me out of the way. She knows her, you know."
"I didn't. But they worked for the same place, so it makes sense."
"Yeah. So I got shooed but I listened in for a while. She was crying in her sleep. And she had been there since the afternoon before."
"Yeah she came to see me. And saw me with Myra and..."
"Ah, I see," he said, taking his first round and pouring me my third. "She fucking loves you man."
"I know." God how I knew.
"Seriously?" another voice broke in, coming to take a seat next to us. James. "Only you could get yourself into this kind of mess."
"How the hell do you know already?"
"Cordelia told Dev who told Em who told me."
"Gotta love small towns," Eric said, getting up to grab a glass for James.
I swirled around the amber liquid in my glass. "Dev seems like the unlikeliest of confidants for her to talk to."
James shrugged. "He's surprisingly mature for his age. He brought her up some food and coffee and pep talked her."
"Pep talk?" She didn't need a pep talk. She needed a friend. She needed to go back to the city and live her life. She needed to not fall in love with shitheads like me.
"Yeah I don't know. Something about how small town gossip works and how to handle it."
"I guess that's good advice if she's staying."
"Oh, she's staying," James said confidently.
Great. That was just great. I guess a part of me had been hoping she would just leave. For her own sanity. For mine. It was the smartest move. She wouldn't have to watch as I built a life with Myra. I wouldn't have to keep seeing everything I was losing.
"It's not forever," Eric said, breaking through my depressive line of thought. "Even if she stays until the inn is done, she will be going eventually. A year, tops. You can handle it until then."
"I don't understand why you have to handle it," James said, shaking his head. "Why can't you still be with Cordelia? Be a dad to this kid, be supportive of its mother... but still be with Cordy?"
"Because I owe it to the kid to at least try to give it a
family," I said, trying to make myself believe it to my marrow. Because it still felt like just an idea, an option. One of many.
"Besides, she was always going to leave me anyway."
"You don't know..." James objected.
"There's nothing for her here," I cut in. "We don't exactly have a pressing need for a interior designer. She works for your brother. She travels all the time. She has a life and clients and..."
"And she's miserable," James objected. "I've known her for years and she has been busy and successful, but she's been unhappy. Painfully unhappy. And then she met you and she was just... beaming. She would have stayed," he insisted. "She might have left. Gone back to the city for a few weeks, but she would have quickly realized what she was missing out on and she would have come back to you. You took that option away from her."
"I have to think about this kid," I insisted, my stomach feeling like someone was twisting it in their hands.
It still didn't feel like a real thing, the baby. It felt like a vague idea. Like a problem you create in your mind. I didn't know when it was going to feel more real. When Myra really popped? When we knew the sex? Not until after it was born? Maybe things would change then. Maybe seeing it, holding it, taking care of it would wipe away all of this bad. All of the pain. All of the lost opportunities its existence was bringing about.
Maybe in five months time, everything would be okay.
"She's better off without me anyway," I told James, making myself believe it. I had barely known her a month and most of what I had done was hurt her. What kind of love is that?
"Keep trying to make yourself believe that," James said, shaking his head.
"Whose side are you on?" Eric asked, smirking.
"I'm friends with them both. I just... I don't know. This sucks."
"So what's up with baby mama?" Eric asked.
"Myra," I corrected. "She's out looking for a job. She wants to take care of herself."
"Does she know about the designer?" Eric asked.
"No," I said, taking another round, "and I would prefer it stays that way. I don't want her to feel guilty. This wasn't her fault."
Eric considered me over his glass. "Fuck man, when did you become a good guy?"
"I don't know," I laughed, "around the same time Lena chopped off your nuts and started wearing them as earrings," I suggested.
"I'm gonna tell her you said that," he warned.
I made a groaning sound. If there's one woman in town, aside from Emily, you didn't want to mess with, it was Lena Edwards.
"Yeah especially now," he said, smiling. "With all the hormones... she's really unpredictable. Last night she slapped me for eating the last of the pasta and then cried for half an hour."
"So there's that to look forward to," I said, thinking about Myra. I was going to have to put up with the mood swings of a woman I barely knew. "Maybe Lena and Myra can get to know each other and be crazy together."
"I don't know," Eric said. "She might be loyal to Cordelia through this. You should have seen her with her in the woods."
"You don't think the town is going to turn against Myra, do you?" James asked.
"I don't know," I said, feeling the numbness start to settle in. A few more rounds and nothing was going to bother me.
"Eh," Eric said, taking a swig. "I think if they see him stepping up and doing the right thing, they'll embrace her. I mean no one really even knows Cordelia."
"Yeah," I agreed. And I knew that pretty soon, she would just be a memory. If that. Most people would just forget she ever existed. Even James and Lena, Emily and Dev. Eventually, time would blur her memory around the edges.
Except for me. I would spend my lifetime trying to forget the sound of her voice, how she sprawled across the bed when she slept, how she said my name, the curve of her hip, the way her hair half fell over her eye.
I had the feeling that no matter how I learned to enjoy my new life, how much I liked being a father, how much I came to care about Myra... I would always be living with a ghost. I would always be living with her there somewhere in the background. I would go to my grave with her between my birth and death lines, forever my "what if", forever a failed chance to get a taste of genuine happiness and love.
But I was just going to have to find a way to live with that.
"I'm gonna need somewhere to crash tonight," I said, feeling my words getting heavy on my tongue.
"You have a room at the inn and your own apartment," Eric said, shaking his head. Thinking, I assumed, that I was already trashed.
"I let Myra have the bed. And... Cordy... I can't..."
"You can stay at Lena's place," Eric said, shrugging. "She spends most of her time at my place anyway. She won't even know you're there."
"You might want to slow down there," James suggested as I poured myself another round, each new serving being a heavier pour than the one before.
"I am losing the love of my fucking life," I grumbled.
"Right," James said, sharing a look with Eric. They both had the loves of their lives, two former manwhores in blissfully committed relationships. I could practically see them thinking about what it would be like to lose their women. They both nodded, pouring themselves another round.
"We are going to need another bottle," Eric sighed, preparing his liver for the damage he knew we were going to do.
"Life was a lot easier before I met that fucking woman," I said as I tipped back the last of the bottle.
But I knew I wouldn't trade anything for the short period of time I got to spend with her.
It was going to have to be enough to hold me over for the rest of my life.
Twenty
Cordelia
I got up early. Well, no, that wasn't exactly true seeing as I didn't really do much sleeping to begin with. I cried. I iced my eyes. Cried some more. More ice. I tossed and turned, having vivid sex dreams about Dane that made me wake up frustrated and shattered. I bathed, did my hair and makeup, slipped into a pair of black slacks and a black and white striped sweater. I watched my reflection, forcing myself to think of Dane and the strawberry blond and the baby. I did it over and over until I stopped wincing. Until my eyes didn't tear up. Until I didn't so much as lift a brow. Because the only way to seem unaffected was to practice faking it. Because I was never going to stop being affected by it.
I made my way downstairs for breakfast, the dining room buzzing as usual. And I swear there was a noticeable hush when I walked in. My feet faltered for the barest of seconds before I saw Dev nod at me from across the room where he was talking to someone sitting at a table. I
squared my shoulders and walked over to an empty table.
I could do this. It wouldn't last forever. It would just be a couple days. A week or two at most. They would move on to some other gossip soon enough. There would probably be more looks of sympathy when they baby actually came, but I was hoping I would be gone by then. If Emily didn't fight me tooth and nail on every plan, we could be done in another month or so. But I also knew that there was no way Emily was going to somehow change her personality just because I was going through a breakup.
"Hey," James said, dropping down across from me.
He looked awful. Downright awful with red eyes, and dark circles, and pale skin with a hint of green that could only mean one thing: a hangover. "You look like hell," I said, smiling a little.
"Oh, the flattery," he said, reaching for the coffee the waiter handed him like a lifeline.
"Holy hangover, Batman," I smiled, putting sugar into my coffee.
"It's not my fault," he grumbled, drinking his black. "Fucking O'reilly."
"I'm sure Eric didn't force it down your throat."
"Then you don't know Eric very well," he said, squinting against the sound of plates dropping into the sink in the kitchen. "Been drinking for a long, long time. I made it through a bunch of Maude's lethal concoctions... never, never had a hangover before. One night out with th
e guys..." he groaned, rubbing his temple.
"What were you drinking about?" I wondered, knowing how happy he seemed with Em. And Eric seemed like he only had eyes for Lena. He looked up guiltily and the truth settled heavy as rocks in my belly. "Oh," I said, putting my fake smile into place.
"I'm sorry, Cordy. We were just..."
"No," I said, holding up a hand, smiling wider. "Don't. You're his friend. You should be there for him."
"But I'm your..."
"But I'm fine," I said, shaking my head slightly.
He eyed me for a long minute through his squinted eyes. "You actually look like you mean it."
"Because I do," I said, shrugging. "Did everyone really expect me to be a puddle of pain on the floor? I barely knew him."
"Really? Because it seemed like..."
"It was a nice little fling," I said with what I hoped was a wistful smile. "We had a lot of fun. But it was just a couple weeks. Hardly anything to mourn over."
"Oh," he said, considering his coffee. "Okay. Good."
If I could trick James, I was sure I could fool at least the average towns person. The only person who really knew the full truth was Devon. And he was going to keep my secrets. Emily might be harder to convince, but she wouldn't press it either.
Everything was going to be okay.
For the next few days, I threw myself into work. Which was stupidly stereotypical, so cliché it made me sick. A woman scorned who threw herself into work. Unique story. But it was mine. And it was true. I poured over catalogs. I scoured the nearby antique stores and yard sales. I made sure I was a visible presence, looking busy and absorbed and, most importantly, completely and utterly fine.
I let myself cry at night, finding it too hard not to. If I didn't get it out before I went to sleep, I woke up crying. And then had to spend an hour getting the puffiness out of my eyelids.
On my side, my tattoo was starting to reach the itchy stage of healing, a constant and annoying reminder of how much I really did love him. Enough to brand myself forever. Enough that I still didn't regret it.
Then I was at the next Friday. A week without him. A week of not seeing him. There was a knock on my door. I felt my heart leap into my throat but quickly pushed the sensation away, mad that a part of me was still obviously holding out hope that he was going to come back to me. Silly,
The Stars Landing Deviant Page 16