When You Make It Home (17 page)

Chapter Thirteen

M
y life changed considerably after the weekend I began sleeping with Theo, and Ellie was put on bed rest. Those events pulled me in two directions, accelerating the pace of my life in ways that were at times fantastic but also bewildering.

Theo encouraged me to buy a sofa, chairs, and tables for the living room. The bookshelves were finished; a wall the entire length of the condo housed my library. Row after beautiful row of books lined up. When I bought a television, he bought a gaming system, and Cortez came over more often. Whenever I was around, the guys would talk about the baby. They argued over whom I should name it after if I had a boy.

“She’s naming it after me,” Cortez said. “Right, Meg?”

“Hmmm… Cortez Michaels. I like that.”

“She’s not naming it after you.” Theo came up behind me, putting his hands on my belly. “It’s a girl.” He was sure of it.

Theo went with me to my twenty-week ultrasound. He couldn’t wait to find out the gender, but the baby kept it hidden during the ultrasound. The technician told us she’d look again at my twenty-four-week checkup. Somehow, not knowing the sex of the baby made it easier for me to remain distant from the radical changes my life was about to take. I had no doubt I wanted the baby, but the thought of becoming a parent was so big, I couldn’t manage to grasp it. Secretly, I wondered if my motherly instincts were ever going to kick in.

Sleep was bracketed by intimate moments with Theo naked in my bed. To my delight, acquiring time with him had become effortless, and I never had to beg for his touch again. Our relationship, although undefined, was the most passionate connection I’d ever had with anyone.

But no matter how hard I held onto that happiness, I was always aware of the cracks in our alliance.

One thing that seemed to cheer Theo up was shopping for the babies. A few days a week, he’d pick me up for lunch, and we’d go to all the baby shops and furniture stores. Theo followed me around with paint chips. He had big plans for painting the baby’s room. I learned he had once aspired to be an artist. He saw colors differently from me—where I saw yellow, he saw butter cream, cadmium, daffodil, or gold. While we shopped, I would pick out things for Ellie, and Theo would pick out things for me, but he’d always make me look away. The room was a gift in progress, he told me, and I couldn’t see it until he was finished.

The arrangement was fine with me. The nursery frightened me. For once, I found it easier to give up the control than to hold on tight, but that only added to my guilt. Shouldn’t a mother be able to plan her baby’s nursery? I wanted to create a magical place, but no matter how hard I tried to envision it, I came up with nothing. So I welcomed Theo’s enthusiasm.

Because of his boundless energy and his growing strength, I wanted to assume he was healing, but pain dogged him. With the added time we spent together, I noticed he relied more on pills than I’d originally thought. On his bad days, his eyes would be glassy and feverish, his words slurred. On his worst days, he would be sullen, haunted, and withdrawn. He was given a starter prosthetic to train with, but it only brought him frustration.

Theo took his leg in for adjustments, but when he tried to master it, pain raged with each step. His doctor and prosthetist informed him it shouldn’t be that way, but after multiple refittings, he stopped going back. Preferring his crutches, he abandoned the prosthetic leg in his closet. His rehab was a subject he wouldn’t talk to me about. I tried to find my way in, but Theo shut me out.

Cortez, who had a whole array of arms to wear, but most often used his hook, assured me that what Theo was going through would eventually pass.

“When will it get easier for him?” I asked one afternoon when he’d stopped by while Theo was out.

“No amputation is the same,” Cortez said. “The doctors can’t even answer that. Phantom pain is a bitch that screams so loud you can’t think about anything else. Theo’s trying to control it on his own, and that doesn’t usually turn out good.”

“So what do we do?”

“Wait,” he said frowning. “There’s nothing else we can do.”

But waiting for Theo to get worse or to ask for help was not a plan I could follow.

“Hey, I have an idea,” I said one rainy afternoon when we were lounging on the sofa, watching old Seinfeld episodes, each eating Ben and Jerry’s out of the pint.

Theo looked as if he couldn’t wait to hear what I had to say. “What’s your idea?” He spooned a bite of his Cake Batter ice cream into my mouth and then helped himself to a scoop of my Cherry Garcia.

“Since you go to my doctor appointments, I could go with you to your physical therapy.”

His face became unreadable, but he stiffened. “Nope.”

“Why not? I want to.”

“I’m done with physical therapy. I know what I need to do.” He turned up the volume on an argument between Jerry and Newman. “Don’t worry about it. Here comes the good part.” He pointed at the TV.

So I ate my ice cream and watched Seinfeld and worried about Theo. He kept me at arm’s length, never talking about the future, never talking about the present, and in the small stretches of stillness, his eyes illustrated the truth that he was not really there with me. I held on to that truth, telling myself that knowledge could be armor for the heart. But no matter how dark Theo was within, his touch was always tender. His body language whispered of the connection we had in a way his silence withheld. I couldn’t reconcile my desires with our reality, so instead, I put on a happy face, determined to enjoy what was in front of me.

Chapter Fourteen

I
stood elbow-deep in flour and sugar when Bradley walked into Café Stay. I’d convinced myself that baking would be a fun respite, but it wasn’t as relaxing as observing Ellie do her magic in the kitchen. I wanted back with the pretty books.

He wore a suit and a blue tie that brought out his eyes. Bradley looked as if he had stepped out of a Hugo Boss ad. “Lord have mercy, it’s true!” His arms spread wide, his mouth open, eyes bright as if I had performed the most amazing magic trick. His gaze went from my face to my belly and back again. “Wow! It is good to see you!” And then before I could recover from the unexpected arrival of my formerly declared life mate, now ex, he wrestled me into a hug. I felt myself naturally redistribute, as if my body had muscle memory of being next to Bradley, and I settled into him in a familiar way, like coming home.

He sniffed my hair. “I’ve missed you. I got back this week, and a little birdie came by and told me about this.” Bradley gestured at my belly, as though he couldn’t come up with the words to describe my condition. “I had to come see for myself.”

I pulled back, conscious of Theo sitting beyond the kitchen doorway. I glanced over Bradley’s shoulder and saw Theo sketching in his notebook. He seemed absorbed in what he was doing, but the tightness in his jaw and the calculated impassiveness of his face gave a hint that he was aware of my company.

“Yes, it’s true. I’m having a baby.” I wasn’t prepared to have the pregnancy conversation with Bradley. “How was your trip? You’ve been gone forever.” I went back to spooning cookie dough onto a sheet.

“It’s all good. You exaggerate. I came back to put the house on the market, tie up loose ends. They want me in China full-time, but I miss you.” He stayed close to me, but he carefully avoided getting too close to the table. Couldn’t risk getting flour on his fancy suit.

“Bradley, that’s great about China. That’s what you wanted.” The timer went off, and I welcomed the chance to move away from him. Grabbing the oven mitts, I called over my shoulder, “I’m happy for you.”

He stepped close to me again. “Meg…” He waited until I looked him in the eye, then pointed at my belly and then at his chest, “That’s not—” He looked almost hopeful.

“No, no.” I shook my head for emphasis.

Bradley’s face dropped. “You’re sure?”

“Yes, without a doubt.” I held my breath, waiting for him to ask for more details, but he didn’t.

“Have dinner with me tonight, Meg. We can catch up.”

“I don’t know. There’s not much else to say.” I looked to Theo, but the reality was, we weren’t even dating. We hung out, ran errands together, watched TV and ate together, plus we were smack in the middle of a mind-blowing sex routine with each other, but to say we had formed any real union was premature.

“Come on, one last dinner. I wish I’d come back for you before now. I get it. I wrecked everything we had. I’m sorry. Give me one last dinner, a final farewell.”

Against my better judgment, I gave in. “Okay, one dinner.” Maybe Theo would tell me not to go. Or perhaps the dinner would be the nudge he needed to realize he was madly in love with me. Sometimes a push was good. A girl could hope.

Bradley embraced me again, planting a warm wet kiss on my cheek. I suppressed a shudder and nodded as he told me he’d pick me up at my place at seven. I watched him go out the door and caught Theo sizing him up.

Theo shut his notebook, stuffed it in his backpack, and shuffled back into the kitchen.

I snatched a cookie from the cooling rack and took a bite, not sure how to juggle between dealing with a man from my past and the man here and now. “These aren’t too bad,” I said with false cheer. “Want one?”

Theo stared at me.

“That’s Bradley.” I sighed, throwing my cookie in the trash. “We’re having dinner tonight.”

“Have fun,” Theo mumbled, turning away. “I’ll be at The Tavern.”

“Wait…”

He gave me an impatient glance over his shoulder.

“It’s for closure. The dinner doesn’t mean anything.” I went to him and looped my arms around his neck, lifting up on my tiptoes to give him a kiss.

At first his lips were still against mine, but when I traced his mouth with my tongue, his resistance crumbled, and he kissed me back hard. His arms came around me, and he held me tight. He ended the kiss first, tucking my head under his chin, still holding on. “You don’t owe me any explanations,” Theo whispered.

When I’d first left Bradley, I was gripped with a guilty fear, worried I might have quit too soon. He was sweet and comfortable, but a void stretched between us. I could ignore it when he came home every night, but when he traveled, everything missing became larger. Whoever said absence makes the heart grow fonder was delusional. When your man is gone all the time, sure, you miss him at first. Until you realize you hardly notice he’s gone, except when he calls to tell you all the fun he’s having in a new place. You laugh and say nice things, but you look around at the sameness that surrounds you. Over time, you begin to wonder why you’re waiting while he’s out there living. And then one day you realize being alone is better than waiting on someone to remember you’re there.

Our breakup took place over the phone only because he was staying in China for another month, and I couldn’t put my life on hold any longer. Bradley asked me to wait until he got back. But being abandoned in the four-bedroom house we had built depressed me. I grew up with parents always gone, always at work. Bradley pleaded with me to join him in China. He promised I’d be happy there, but if he really knew me, how could he ask me to leave my brother and my bookstore? Bradley loved his job, and I couldn’t ask him to leave. And I couldn’t deny the changes in him after he left for China. We couldn’t connect over the distance. And then, of course, I’d wondered about the girl who’d answered his phone.

I perched on the steps out front, waiting for his arrival. I didn’t want to bring him into the condo. We had too much of a past there. Plus, although I hadn’t seen Theo since I’d told him my dinner plans, I still didn’t want to invite Bradley in and risk Theo showing up. No point in dealing with that awkwardness.

Bradley pulled up fifteen minutes late and waved when he saw me. I lowered myself onto the passenger seat and thought about Theo making his way around the car to open my door. Bradley wasn’t rude—he was a modern guy who spent his days around computers and computer parts, engineers and programmers, drinking large amounts of coffee under fluorescent lights. Conversations with him usually involved him looking at his Blackberry instead of looking me in the eye.

“I can’t get over how much you’ve changed,” Bradley said while I pulled the seatbelt under my bulge. He gripped my belly with one hand, like he was checking on the ripeness of a melon. I smacked him away in a faux-friendly, “don’t touch me” kind of way.

“Tell me about China.” With that request, Bradley was happy to talk about himself, and while he rambled on, I listened to his soothing baritone and marveled at how the past six months seemed to slip away. Riding next to Bradley in his Beemer was so ordinary that the fact that I hadn’t done it in so long was the only thing that seemed off.