Here at Last (45 page)

"I wish we could move Chicago closer to New York," I smiled.

“I'm actually working on that," he said
kissing my shoulder
.

I tur
ned my head back to look at him
, but he was snuggled into my neck and I couldn't turn around far enough to see his face. He kissed the back of my neck. "We can talk about it tomorrow. Just get some sleep."

I closed my eyes and fell asleep in the arms of the man that I loved. I hadn't slept
that
well for twelve nights.





In the early morning, I got up to go to the bathroom. When I returned to bed, Nicholas sat propped up against a pillow and watched me as I climbed back in next to him. He reached out for me, and I straddled him and leaned forward to kiss him.
After we made love, h
e
lay down beside me and
reached over to hold my hand.

“Sophia," he said quietly.

I turned my head to look at him, and he hesitated
. "What is it?"
I asked.

He looked at me for a moment and was quiet before saying, "I want us to be together. As a family."

I felt a shiver run down my spine, and he reached out to rub my arm
. “How?” I asked.

“
When we were in
St. Barts
, I told you that I’d do whatever I could to make this relationship work. The distance between us makes it harder to stay connected. I think we need to be in the same place.”

“
Right. You’re right
,” I told him. “I hate being this far apart. I felt like
something
was being ripped out of me when
I left
.”

“
We all felt that
,”
he said.

“Sophia,
I'm pre
pared to leave Chicago and move
to New Jersey to be with you
p
rovided I can find a decent job.
I would have started looking, but I wanted to talk with you first.”
He hesitated.
“Of course, we won’t do anything you don’t want to do.”

I reached up and touched his face. I’m the one
who
had left, the one who had torn the fabric of our relationship, and Nicholas would do whatever he could to mend it and make it stronger
– even if it meant uprooting Hannah and him and leaving a tenured faculty position
.

“I want us to be together,” I told him. “All of us. But I don’t know how Hannah will feel about it.”

“If it’s okay with you, I thought
that we could come out in the f
all over Thanksgiving break. That would give Hannah a chance to visit the area and see what it’s like.”

“Do you think you could find a job you’d like?”

He shrugged. “It might be hard. Even if I f
ound something
right away, I wouldn’t feel right leaving the department without giving them
enough
notice to fill my position. It might take a little while to put all of the pieces in place. ”

It was a lot to take in.
My life had
change
d
drastically
over
the last few weeks, and going from being a single woman dating a single father to being a full-time stepmother would be an enormous
shift
for Hannah
and me
.

Nicholas brushed a piece of hair out of my face. “Just think about it.
There’s no rush.
You don’t need to decide now.”

I nodded.





We got out of bed
and dressed
for the day
and
were in the kitchen making breakfast before Hannah
w
oke up. She was excited to have me there, and we had a great time together. Nicholas made up a second batch of pancakes in the shapes of elephants,
dogs, and pigs
. He
u
s
ed
blueberries for the eyes, and Hannah proceed
ed
to make
polka
dots and stripes
using
blueberry
syrup
.

After lunch, w
e went shopping for Hannah
’s school supplies
before going to see
“
Happy Feet Two
”
at the movie theater
. She
wanted
a
large tub of
popcorn
, and Nicholas humored her.
When s
he
’d
had enough, she handed it to her father. She’d
barely
made a dent in it,
and we did what we could to eat more through the remainder of the movie.

On our way out of the theater
, Nicholas
turned on his cell phone and
found a
voicemail
message from Ly
dia. One of
her
kids
was sick, and
she wouldn't be able to take Hannah
for a sleepover tonight after all.
Nicholas
tried to call a couple of other babysitters, but it was Saturday night, and no one was available.

I shrugged. "It's fine
,” I told him quietly
.
“
It comes with the territory
."

Hannah
took the news well,
ex
cited that we would all be together for a second night. Of course, in her mind, she
wasn’t thinking of
Nicholas
’s
and
my
desire to be together. If she had known that we had wanted some one-on-one time together,
she would have felt
terribly
left out
. She
simply
wanted
the
two
of us there to play with her
.

We ate
at
the
Thai
Andaman Sea
restaurant in Morristown
before
heading home. By then, it was Hannah's bedtime.
While s
he was in her
room
putting her pajamas on
,
Nicholas
and I sat
together
on the sofa. His arm was around my shoulders, and
I closed my eyes and rested
my head against his chest
with
my legs
draped
across his lap.
Nicholas
laid
his head back, resting against the
cushion
behind him. A moment later, I felt him
lift
his head, and I opened my eyes.
Hannah was s
tanding
there
watching
us. He
reached
an
arm
out
to her and said,
“Come
over here,
Honey
.
”
She'd never seen
us s
itting
so
close and
resting against one another.
Moving my legs,
she climbed up on
to
our lap
s
tentatively
, and
we wrapped
our
arms around her
, each kissing
her on a cheek
.

Hannah
had lost her mother when she
was two-and-a-half
years old.
She didn't
remember
Rachel
so wouldn’t have wondered why her father was sitting with another woman. However, she might be wondering why her father was so close
to
any
woman. S
he hadn't seen
her
Nicholas
interact with me in such a tender way other than a quick kiss or hug
or briefly
holding hands
.
My intimacy with Nicholas
wa
s new to her, and it was
happening
in her home. She
was quiet
when she
climbed out
of
our laps
a moment
later
and
told us that she was going to bed.

“Do you want me to read to you?” Nicholas asked.

Hannah
simply shook her head and walked down the hall.

He looked
down at his
lap, close
d his eyes
,
and said, “
I
’d
better go see what that's all about."

I put my hand on his knee. "I think I know."

He nodded his head
and stood before walking down the hall. When
he reached the end of it,
he entered
Hannah
’s bedroom
and closed the door behind him
.

I glanced at my watch
.
I
t was 9
p.m
.
,
past Hannah’s
bedtime, and I knew tha
t she was tired. However, there was more to it
than
that
.
For most her young life, she’d had her father to her
self. When it
had been
just the two of them, she was the center of Nicholas
’
s life. Now
that
I was in her home, it was clear that her father loved me, too.
I wondered if there was a part of that little girl that was afraid of being displaced or replaced by me.
Of course, she didn't need to worry about that with me
, but s
he didn't know that.





Nicholas was in Hannah's room for a long time.
I went into the kitchen and unloaded the dishwasher
, putting away the
breakfast
dishes
. Then, I
turned off the lights and
walked down the hallway
in
to
Nicholas’s bathroom where
I
shower
ed
before going
to bed.

A
little
while later,
Nicholas quietly
walked
into his bedroom
and closed and locked
the door
behind him
. I
’d
left the light on in the bathroom for him
and had
turned off the
beside
lamp. Thinking that I was asleep, he went into the bathroom and close
d
the door quietly. A few minutes later
,
he got into bed
beside me.

"I'm awake," I said
softly
. "Are you okay?"

He wrapped his arms around me and
rested
his
face
in
my neck. I knew that he was tired, more emotionally
than
physically. "She's feeling insecure," he said.

"I know
.”

He
turned over and lay
on his back, and I could tell that
he was frustrated. "Do y
ou remember how easy it was in
St. Barts
?"

I smiled. "That's about the only easy time we've had
together
.
"

He
turned on
to
his side
to face me. "That's not true. It's always been easy between us."

"I mean
the timing
," I said. "First,
you
weren’t
ready. Then, I wasn't ready.
Now
, Hannah
’s not
ready
."

He chuckled. "Well, when you put it that way, I
see what
you mean."

I became more serious. "What did she say?"

He put
his hand
on my
cheek
and shook his head.

I reached up and held his hand in mine and brought it down in front of my
lips
, kissing it. "Nicholas, I need to know
what I’m
dealing with here. What did she say?"