The Five Stages of Falling in Love (10 page)

Chapter Ten

Emma picked up on the third ring, “Hello, sister dearest.”

“Are you ready?”

I heard her muffled sigh on the other end of the phone. “This is not my first date, Liz. I’m ready.”

I had convinced Emma to give Ben a chance when she helped take the kids trick-or-treating a couple weeks ago. We’d canvased the neighborhood with Blake as the Hulk, Abby as Michael Phelps’s little sister, Lucy as a princess and
Jace
as a pirate. Emma had filled in for Grady. After we put the kids to bed, we’d spent the night crying together over buckets of Halloween candy while scary movies played in the background.

It hadn’t been one of my finer moments.

But after we stopped by Ben’s house and he passed out full-size Twix bars to all of the kids, Emma had finally agreed to text him about getting together. They had flirted in the doorway while I stared at the candy bars thinking what a bachelor move. Who passes out fifteen grams of sugar to a two year old?
Single men in their thirties.
That’s who.

 
The Twix bars never made it to the morning. They were part of my Grady therapy. Somewhere around midnight, I retracted my negative feelings for Ben’s naïve generosity.
And then enacted them again after I got on the scale the next morning.

“I know, I’m just nervous,” I confessed.

“
You’re
nervous?”

I chuckled at her incredulous tone.
“For you!
I just want this to go well.”

She laughed with me. “What if Ben’s a total weirdo? Like he has a collection of doll heads or he brings his mom to dinner? You’ll have to come rescue me at the restaurant. Then you’ll have to move away from him.”

Even the mention of moving out of this house hurt my chest. “He won’t bring his mother to dinner. We’ve sort of seen him on a date before, remember?”

“No defense for the dolls’ heads?”

“Well, I’ve never actually been in his house. There’s no way for me to know for sure.”

“Liz!”

“I’m just kidding,
Em
. He’s so nice. You’re going to have a great time.”

“He’ll at least be nice to look at.” I nodded my head, even though she couldn’t see me. That was true. “What are your exciting plans for the night?” she asked and sounded genuinely interested.

“On a Friday night?
What else is there to do besides pop a bag of popcorn for each of us and cuddle up on the couch?”

“
Oooh
, what’s on the queue?”

“
Sword in the Stone
.
It’s one of the few movies all of the kids can agree on.”

“I love that movie,” Emma sighed. “I kind of wish I was hanging out with you guys tonight.”

“What? No way! You’re going to have so much fun.”

“You’re being pretty pushy about this date.”

I bristled a little at her comment. “I am not.”

“You are.”

“I just want you to be happy.”

“I am happy. I don’t need a man for that.”

“You know what I meant. Why are you fighting this? He’s a good guy! You said it yourself, single and stable.” Emma and I used to argue, before Grady died.
Just about little stuff, small tiffs or snotty remarks.
Nothing long-lasting.
We were sisters; we usually found something to disagree about. But we hadn’t had a single disagreement since Grady had gotten really sick over a year ago. I knew my sister had been walking on eggshells around me and that our relationship wasn’t so evolved that we would never fight again. But tonight, her irritation with me only made me more irritated with her.

“I just think, if this doesn’t end well, it’s going to be awkward for you. I’m trying to protect you,” she insisted.

“I don’t need you to protect me, Emma.” I took a breath and closed my eyes, trying to dispel my frustration. “Listen, if you don’t want to go out with Ben, then
don’t
. But don’t let your worry for me bother you. Ben and I are barely friends, so there isn’t much to worry about between us. And if things don’t work out between the two of you, there are other options besides keying his car and taking a baseball bat to his windshield.”

She laughed again, sounding infinitely more relaxed.
“Yeah?
Like what?”

“Like being grownups, for instance.
Like acting maturely.”

She sighed for effect, “You just have all the answers, don’t you.”

“I’m older,” I reminded her.
“And infinitely wiser.”

“Sure you are. Okay, he’s here. I’ll call you after!”

“Have fun!”

“Love you.”

“Love you too.”

I clicked off with Emma and turned back to pouring the popcorn into bags. I opened a box of Capri Suns, bought especially for family movie night and set them on the tray. A memory hit me so hard that my knees nearly buckled. I grabbed the counter for support and dropped my head.

I stood in this same place, doing this same task. Grady’s arms wrapped around my middle and he pulled me back against his hard chest. His face nuzzled in the crook of my neck and he inhaled my skin.

“Friday nights used to be date nights,” I reminded him. The kids had been overwhelming that week.
Jace
was just a baby and not sleeping through the night. Abby and Lucy were into everything and constantly fighting over toys. Blake hadn’t wanted to hug me that morning when I dropped him off at school. My world felt tough and exhausting, it was easy to dream about the early years with Grady- how simple they’d been.

“That’s true,” he whispered against my skin. “Now they’re family nights.”

“I need a break, Grady. I’m exhausted.”

“I’m here to help, Babe. Tonight will be easy.”

I yawned in defiance. He squeezed me tighter and pressed a hot kiss against my skin.
“If you say so.”

“We’ll spend some time with the kids, put them to bed together and then I’ll spend the rest of the night helping you relax.” His gruff words vibrated over my skin and sent tingles spiraling low in my belly. I loved how he did this to me, how his voice could put me at ease and he could soften my perspective. “We’ll watch something later, just the two of us. You pick it out. I’ll rub your feet.”

“
Mmm
,” I moaned when his kisses trailed up my neck to taste my earlobe. “You’ve wooed me.”

His chuckle brushed his five o’clock shadow over my ear. “That’s usually the goal.”

I spun around in his arms and let him continue to woo me. We kissed long and desperately until Blake wandered in the kitchen looking for us.

“
Ew
!” he groaned. “That’s gross!”

Grady pulled back from me and looked at his oldest son, “Take notes, Blake. This will come in handy someday.”

I swatted his chest but laughed, unable to find my frustration from earlier. Grady wiped it clean and filled in all of my flaws with the best parts of him.

“Mom, can I have one?”

I looked up to see Blake reaching for a bowl of popcorn. The jolt from the memory of Grady and the reality of an older Blake in front of me felt like a physical shock. My chest seized in agony and my stomach flipped with heartsick nausea.

“Please?” I reminded Blake with a broken voice.

“Please,” he whispered back. Instead of grabbing the bowl of popcorn, he walked around the island and wrapped his arms around me. I kissed the top of his head and inhaled his little boy smell.

He was growing up so fast. He was taller than ever and his body had started to fill out with muscle. He wasn’t my baby anymore. While that made some part of me cry out with protest, most of me was just so proud of the young man he was becoming.

“Family movie night is hard for me too, Mom,” he sniffled into my shirt.

I blanched with new grief. I had never stopped to think about how family movie night might hurt my children. I had wanted to keep their routine and help maintain Grady’s memory. I had waded through my own heartache and forced myself to endure a night that I dreaded all week long.

And why?

So we could all be sad together?

That just didn’t seem worth it.

I pulled back so I could look Blake in the eyes. He blinked rapidly and tried to avoid my gaze. My heart shattered into a million pieces.

“Let’s do something different then.”

“What?” He finally looked up at me and the sadness started to chip away. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know
,
it just seems like if this movie night thing is making all of us sad, we should try something different, something that might make us happy.”

“Mom, are you coming?” Abby bounced into the kitchen with Lucy on her heels.
Jace
toddled in after them and hugged me too. His little arms wrapped around my leg and he looked up at me, babbling about juicy.

“I don’t know
,
Abs. Blake and I were just talking about changing up the Friday night line up.”

She tilted her head, “What does that mean?”

“What if instead of watching a movie tonight, we played games instead.”

“Like Candy Land?” Abby asked.

“Not Candy Land!” Blake whined.

I smiled at him again. “How about we play a couple games? You can both pick one.”

“And me too!” Lucy demanded.

“Sure,
Luce
.
You too.”

“Me! Me! Me!”
Jace
joined in.

I moved the kids to the kitchen table and set them up with popcorn and juice. I ran down to the basement and pulled out some games that had sat on a shelf for too long.

An hour and a half later, we had laughed our way through Candy Land, Chutes and Ladders, UNO and Old Maid.

The night hadn’t been easy.
Jace
had been a handful and destroyed more than one of our attempts at playing. Abby had plenty of
attitude
to throw around and wasn’t always satisfied with the outcome of the game. Okay, honestly, she was a terrible loser. I would have to work with her on that.

The night tried my patience and made me question if getting out all of these games was really better than just cuddling on the couch during a movie. Movies were so much easier, but infinitely more painful.

By the time I had them tucked
in,
I’d decided that I would make this our new tradition. I had been waffling up until bedtime. I was exhausted from the evening, but so were the kids. They went to bed happily. They brushed their teeth calmly and jumped into bed, ready to end the day.

I knew their better behavior was more than their level of exhaustion. They felt fulfilled for the first time in a long time. I wouldn’t always be able to fill the role of both parents, but tonight I’d given them the attention they needed and the focus they craved. I hadn’t punished them for their unruly behavior by taking away the games; I’d worked to refocus their energy on some friendly competition instead. And they needed that.

The sharp burn of humiliation seared over my skin. I couldn’t believe it had taken me this long to realize how hard our movie night tradition was for them. I’d been too busy wallowing in my own grief to notice theirs. What a selfish mom I could be.

I walked back downstairs in my pajamas, wanting to clean up the games and the kitchen and then collapse face first in bed. And I knew I looked as tired as I felt.

The holidays were coming up. We’d somehow waded through the first few months of school and now had Thanksgiving to look forward to next week.

I looked down at scattered UNO cards and knew I had to do something like this for us during the upcoming holidays. We would not survive Thanksgiving and Christmas if we had to relive every tradition Grady had helped us build.

Last year at this time, Grady had been admitted to the hospital. We’d spent our holiday season piled onto his narrow bed, promising each other that he would get better and be with us next year. Those memories cut like a knife, digging into my sternum and flaying me open. I couldn’t even think about those final days without an overflow of tears and instant heartache.

We still had hope then. We still believed the treatment would work and that we would get Grady back as he used to be. We trusted that the children would have their father home with them again, that I would have my husband back.

Maybe it was because that hope now felt like an awful betrayal or maybe because I still desperately longed for that hope again, but those weeks, when we still believed he could get better, made me furious.

My hands shook as I pulled the piles of scattered cards to me and tried to straighten them. Wet tears plopped onto my hands and the table as the well of grief and frustration bubbled over. My chest hurt, my bones hurt… my soul hurt.

How could he leave me? How could he let me believe he would pull through? How could I have thought that there was enough hope and prayer and determination in the world to make my husband better again?

I was impotent then and just as helpless now.

I sunk down into a chair before my legs gave out and I collapsed to the ground. I dropped the cards back onto the table and buried my face in my hands. A strangled hiccup of a sob exploded from my chest and I gave in to the agony.

I poured myself onto the games as if they were an offering for healing my soul. I let myself bleed out onto that table and embraced the anger that now tainted every thought and emotion. I shook from the rage that seemed to boil up inside of me and threaten to take over.

I had never felt so utterly alone before.
So abandoned.

The rational side of my brain argued that Grady didn’t abandon me, that he would never have done that. He had fought as hard as he could to survive his illness. Unfortunately, my emotions weren’t ruled by logic and understanding. They could only feel. They could only project what my heart felt.

And right now I was more pissed off than I had ever been.

I didn’t know if this anger would ever deplete. It consumed me. I sat there, still and unmoving, while it burned away at my insides and spilled acid eating at my soul, inch by slow inch.