When You Make It Home (19 page)

“What’s the big deal? It’s nothing more than costume jewelry.” I shrugged, flipping through a baby magazine. “I’m creating the illusion of a woman following a traditional path.” That sounded like good reasoning to me, but Ellie, with her mouth full of lettuce, rolled her eyes. “Besides, I’m not keeping it forever. I’m going to hock it. Bradley doesn’t care.”

“What does Theo think?” Ellie, being Ellie, brought it back to the real issue.

“That’s the million-dollar question. What does Theo think?” I sighed. “Initially, he was pissed. But when I explained why I had it on, he understood.”

Ellie set her empty salad bowl on the bedside table and sifted through the pile of pregnancy and baby magazines. She shot me a skeptical look. “He understood why you’re trying to look married?”

“No, originally I was wearing the ring so I wouldn’t lose it, and he seemed to get that. Today at work, I realized people were less in my business, so I’m thinking I’ll keep the ring on for a while.”

Ellie gave me a skeptical look. “I don’t know. That sounds sketchy, Meg.” She propped her expectant-mom mag on her baby bulge, mirroring me. The belly shelf—another pregnancy perk to add to the list.

“Whatever. It’s a façade.” With the ring, I had stumbled onto an invisibility cloak and could disappear from everyone’s radar. Who could resist that?

“Theo cares for you,” Ellie said. I knew he spent a lot of time with Ellie since she landed on bed rest. “I’d hate to see you hurt him.”

“
Please
, I’m with him almost every day. We laugh, we have fun together, but he’s going to leave me. I can sense it. Once he’s done helping me, he’ll move on.” It occurred to me that I wasn’t doing a good enough job looking out for myself. The pain hit me all over when I thought about Theo going away. I knew better than to let myself get too close, but I had done it anyway. “Honestly, if the ring bothers him, I’ll take it off.”

“Hey, check this out.” Ellie leaned toward me, and I realized she was ready to reroute the conversation. “This was printed in the UK and the title of the article is: ‘What Kind of Mum Will You Be?’” Ellie giggled. “What kind of mum will you be?” She repeated, embellishing the words with an English accent.

The question frightened me. My mother had thrown in the towel before we’d hit two. Then Nina came along and treated Steve and me like her favorite emerald earrings, something she carefully put aside until the right occasion when she needed to impress someone. But when she could get away with it, she wore her dissatisfaction at being a stepmother like a medal she had earned along the way. I wanted to do better than the women who came before me.

I should have gotten a dog to practice with, or at least a fish. I needed mom training. Was I genetically predestined to fail as a mother? What if I created another human being that was going to go through life knowing she was not whole, because how could she be if her mother couldn’t love her? Crap. Wasn’t it a little late in the game for me to fall apart in complete panic over a simple question, with a British twist?

By the time I returned home later that night, my condo was dark. Theo and Cortez had cleared out, leaving no evidence they had spent the day working. The closed door to the nursery loomed in front of a room full of secrets and surprises. I wondered what was going on in there. But I promised Theo I would wait.

I went to bed alone and unsettled, missing Theo by my side. I wanted to get back to the place where we connected, but I also considered mirroring his withdrawal and putting up walls to protect myself before he pulled out on me. Self-preservation. I sensed his departure coming; I could feel it in my heart and in my bones. My thoughts kept me awake for so long that I was convinced I wouldn’t sleep at all, but after enough tossing and turning, I gave in to a fitful slumber. The rattling of pills in a bottle pulled me back to the surface. I listened to the sounds that were all too familiar: pills in bottle, a pause as he popped pills into his mouth, swish of water, gulp, pill bottle being tossed into bag, bag zipped shut. Then he landed clumsily onto my bed, wrestled himself out of his clothes, and worked his way under the covers until he found me. His hands moved across my body and I rolled into the warmth of Theo.

“Mmmm… I thought about you all night,” he whispered, his breath hot on my neck.

“Me too.” I was flooded with relief, which washed away when I smelled alcohol seconds before he kissed me, and then I tasted it on his lips.

He pulled back and brushed his thumb across my cheek. “I worry about you.”

I laughed. “You worry about me? I worry about you.”

“But you shouldn’t.” He flopped onto his back next to me. I could barely see the outline of his profile. He sighed, sounding impatient. “You should worry about yourself. You see everything all wrong.” His words slurred.

“What does that mean?” I asked, my chest tightening.

“Well for one, you don’t see that I’m messed up.”

“Oh, on the contrary, anyone can see that you’re a train wreck waiting to happen.” I slipped my hand under his shirt. “Have no illusions about that.” The truth was, I wanted to fix Theo, but if I couldn’t, if there was nothing that would make him well again, I still wanted him. If he was going to be in pain and medicated for the rest of his life, I still wanted him. But I couldn’t humor myself with the idea that he might stay with me. If there was one thing my life had taught me, it was that people leave no matter how much you want to hold onto them. Or maybe there was something about me that wasn’t worth sticking around for.

“Well, that should be a warning sign.” He sighed. “The baby is going to be here soon. I shouldn’t be wasting your time. You don’t need my problems.” He took my hand and moved it from his waist to his chest. His heartbeat thumped against my palm.

“Stop talking that way.” My voice broke. “I want you here.” I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, my breasts and belly pressing against him as I clung to him. “Theo, have you thought at all about going back to physical therapy? There has to be a way to help you get better.”

“Sshhh…” He took my hand and pressed kisses along the inside of my wrist; his other hand stroked my thigh. “I’m not done with my list.”

“I don’t care for your list. I’m serious.” I turned his face to mine, trying to get him to focus, but he closed his eyes. “Listen to me. You’ve only been getting worse since you stopped going. Maybe we can find you someone new to see. I’ll do whatever it takes, whatever you want.”

“Then listen to me.” He took a deep breath. “You need to hear this. You still got that damn ring on?”

“I don’t want to get into it again about that.” I removed the ring and reached across Theo to put it on the bedside table. He gripped my hips, holding onto me.

“Do
not
put that back on your finger.” He laced his fingers through my hair, making me look him in the eyes. “I want you… I
need
you to be mine,” he said.

I leaned my forehead against his. “I’ll never put it on again,” I promised. “I’m sorry, Theo.”

He kissed me then. Sliding his hand up my thigh and reaching under my nightshirt, he tugged at my panties. I wanted him to keep talking. I longed for his words. I would have held my breath for a promise. Any promise of a life with Theo. Instead, I helped him remove my underwear. He eased inside me with a deep sigh and I let go of my thoughts and responded to his touch. Our bodies moved together. After we cried out to each other, he curled around me and said, “I love you, Meg.” He covered my mouth with his palm. “Sshhh… Don’t speak.” He whispered into my hair, kissing me below my ear. “Just know I love you.” He held me tight against him, his eyes shut, and he murmured, “I love you.”

I watched as he fell asleep, his chest rising and falling. I traced his scars, kissed his fingertips, and worried. I worried that he’d leave me soon. I worried that he would never truly be better, and I worried that with each pill he swallowed, I was losing a little more of him. The pills were taking his pain, and they were taking him with it.

And when I woke the next morning, he was gone.

Chapter Sixteen

“H
ow do you know if you’re in love?”

Steve was lying next to Ellie, and I was sitting cross-legged at the foot of her bed. Sunday mornings were one of the few times that Steve and I spent together that wasn’t at work. He usually hosted brunch at his house, but with Ellie’s required bed rest, we’d taken our routine to brunch in bed. The looks on their faces suggested I had informed them I had dynamite strapped to my chest.

“You can’t trust your feelings when you’re pregnant,” Steve said, and he failed to pull away before Ellie smacked him on the shoulder. “Ouch. Why’d you hit me?”

“What do you know about pregnancy? Or feelings for that matter?” she asked. “You’ve managed to stay emotionally removed from every woman you have ever gotten involved with.” Then to me she said, “What makes you think you’re in love?”

I opened my mouth and then shut it, unsure how much of the night before I should share. Steve cut me off.

“See, that’s just it: If you have to think about it, it’s not love.”

Ellie looked at him with skepticism. “When have you ever been in love?”

“Besides with you… never.”

Ellie groaned. “Well, loving me doesn’t count!”

Steve shook his head, looking more serious than usual. “I’ll tell you exactly why it does count. Every time I think I love someone, I talk myself out of it.”

“Well, that’s romantic,” Ellie said. “No wonder you can’t keep a lady.”

“Wait—indulge me for a moment here. I know I’m not in love with a girl if I can talk myself out of it. When I was in love with you, Ellie, no matter what I did, the feelings were still there. I couldn’t escape it.”

Ellie put a hand on Steve’s shoulder. “Don’t do this. You’re breaking my heart.”

Steve took her hand. His eyes danced with humor. “Give me your heart, Ellie, and I promise you’ll never regret it.” He tried to kiss Ellie’s hand, but she pulled back, squealing. He told her, “We can be gone before Jake gets back. I’ll raise your child as my own.”

“My husband will hunt you down and kill you. Quit with the flirting! Knock it off so Meg can tell us what’s going on.”

While they went through their routine, I thought about what Steve had said, and I decided he was onto something. “So how did you get over Ellie?”

He shrugged and crossed his arms behind his head. “When I accepted that my feelings for her would never be reciprocated, I moved on.”

Ellie giggled. “You mean you moved on to the next girl.”

“Whatever works, my friends, this man will do. There are many women in this world, and I don’t want to sleep alone.”

“So who is she?” I still didn’t know anything about his mysterious special someone. “Are you in love again?”

“Tell us about your new lady,” Ellie said.

“Like I said, I’m not big on falling in love, and you two don’t need to know who’s been sleeping in my bed.”

The little one did a somersault on my bladder, and I got up to pee, although fifteen minutes hadn’t even passed since the last time I relieved myself. As I shut the bathroom door, Steve called out: “So, Meg, are you and Theo taking it to the next level?”

“Nope,” I said sharply and slapped the door shut, stunned by how quickly I knew the answer. Even though I’d craved Theo’s declaration of love ever since the first night we were intimate, I couldn’t acknowledge what had happened the night before unless he told me he loved me again. While sober. Maybe I was being unfair, but I couldn’t hold onto words spoken by a man hopped up on alcohol and pills.

When I came out of the bathroom, Steve was standing. “Hug me,” he said. “I’m going to the store for a bit. I better not see you in today.”

As he left, Ellie called out to him, “Hey, Steve…”

“Yes, dear?”

“I will always, always love you!”

“Yeah, yeah, like a brother, I know. Moving on.” He blew her a kiss and left.

Ellie motioned me to the bed. “Spill it, Meg. What’s going on with Theo?”

I pulled back the covers to climb in, rearranging the pillows to support my belly and lower back. “Last night he said he loved me.” Ellie gave me a wide grin, showing all her teeth. I snuggled under the blanket, dragging it up to my chin. “But he was drunk, and on pain medicine… and we’d had sex. It was late.”

“How did he act this morning?”

“I didn’t see him. He was gone before I got up. He disappears a lot, actually.”

“Well, don’t decide anything yet. Wait and see what he says later. If he loves you it won’t matter what time it is, or what’s going on with his body, or around him. If it’s love, then it’s in spite of everything else. That’s how you know it’s love. You feel the way you feel despite the circumstances.”

“Is that how you knew what you and Jake had was real?”

“Yes. My love was louder than anything else in my life. I loved him when I brushed my teeth, I loved him when I was sitting in traffic, I loved him while I paid my bills, ate lunch, and went grocery shopping. Before every breath I took, my mind pulsated with the thought:
I love Jake.
And when he told me he loved me, my whole life fell in place.” Ellie spread her arms wide, her eyes shining with the memory. “Everything lined up for me with a divine perfection, like the planets in our solar system.”