Social Lives (25 page)

It was the dead middle of her cycle, which Nick had memorized, and this was precisely why he was in there, waiting. She had managed to avoid him for the seven days since her period ended. Her parents, the house, headaches, and tiffs with Nanna that she invented in order to explain the bad moods. What did she have left, besides the truth?

She brushed her teeth, flossed, and gargled. She tweezed the stray eyebrow hairs that were growing in around the edges. Then came the moisturizer, one for her body, another for her face. She brushed her hair.

Walking slowly, she turned out the light and headed for her closet. He was lying still beneath the covers. Was he sleeping? There'd been a lot of wine, then an after-dinner scotch with her father in the man cave. She took out her thick flannel pajamas and buttoned them all the way up. She hung the wet towel on the rack. Then she tiptoed to the bed.

As she pulled back the covers on her side and slipped beneath them, she heard him sigh and roll over, reaching for her. “Great dinner,” he said again, wrapping his arms around her. “You are amazing.”

Shit
, she thought.
Flattery.
It was the gold standard of marital foreplay, but it also meant there was no escape. He started kissing her neck, moving
his body closer to hers, pressing against her. Under any other circumstances, she would have found all of this a turn-on. His tongue on the outside of her ear, strong hands reaching under the tightly buttoned shirt. But tonight she was just afraid. She wanted the sex,
Christ
did she miss the sex. It was the rest of it that had her wanting to run like hell from this bed, this house—this entire life, if she were honest with herself. Biology was cruel.

“I know you're tired, babe, but if we miss the next few days, we're done for another month.”

He was feeling her lack of enthusiasm, being considerate.
Damn him.
Couldn't he just be an insensitive prick once in a while? The guilt was digging in even deeper. How could she not want to have this baby? It wasn't as though she was choosing between motherhood and some dangerous, exciting assignment overseas. Motherhood had already chosen her once, and it was a lifetime gig. Annie deserved a sibling. Nick deserved the family she had promised him when they made the plans and flew to Las Vegas without really knowing each other at all. Years had passed. She should have been used to this life by now, the life she'd accepted on impulse, but which had turned out pretty damn good for a twenty-seven-year-old. Couldn't the rest of it just be noise? Noise that she could turn down?

Sara kissed him back. “I'm not tired. Just a little drunk.” She laughed in a naughty way as she peeled off the flannel pajamas.

“Really?” Nick pulled away until she was done, until she was naked with him beneath the covers. “
How
drunk?” he asked playfully.

Sara ripped the covers from the bed and climbed on top of him. “Pretty damn drunk.”

Nick was laughing as she held him down, kissing him hard, first on his mouth, then his neck. She moved down his body, licking his inner thigh, making him moan.

“Sar—you know I'm sucker for this, but—”

“Shhh . . .” She interrupted him and kept going, turning her own body around, wrapping her legs around his face. He resisted for about a second. They hadn't done this for years, with the pregnancy, the birth, the breast-feeding, and then the mere presence of their child in the room next door—it had felt far too deviant.

“Sar . . . ,” he said again, in between the moans. “Sar . . .”

But she was not listening to his protests.

“Sar . . . oh,
fuck
!”

It wasn't long before she felt his body give in, felt his release, then faked her own. She was far too disgusted with herself to feel any pleasure tonight. She rolled over, kissed his stomach, and headed for the bathroom. When she returned with a towel, the bliss had all but vanished, leaving behind an expression that captured his utter bewilderment.

“What?” she asked innocently. But he didn't answer. Instead, he disappeared to the bathroom himself. Sara found her pajamas tangled up in the covers that lay on the floor. She pulled them on with hands that were shaking. What kind of evil had taken her over? How could she do this to the man who had given her everything and asked for nothing in return but the very thing she had promised to want as well?

She straightened out the bed and got under the covers on her side, the place she had come to dread. If she could take back the last ten minutes . . .

“Why don't you just say it?” Nick was standing in the doorway now, his face flushed.

“Nick . . .”

“Just say it. I mean, Christ. What are you doing?”

She had no answer. She hardly understood it herself.

“Just say it!”

“Say what?”

He walked to the bed, fighting to shed his anger as he sat down beside where she lay. He reached out his hand and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Just say you don't want to have another baby.”

He looked at her then, but she could not meet his eyes. Instead, she held her hands over her face, shaking her head. She should have known this would catch up to her. She was too young, still a child in so many ways, and he was a grown man. A grown man who loved her but would never understand.

“Please,” he said as he watched her cry. “I need to know why.”

She lifted her hands and managed to look at him. “I don't know,” she said. It was the truth.

But Nick was confused. And why shouldn't he be? She had been pretending for over a year, safe behind the birth control pills he would never know about.

“Is it me?” he asked, steadying himself for the answer.

“No—I love you. You know that.”

He smiled, but it was sad. “I know you love me. That's not what I meant.”

Sara tried to deflect the question. “It's me. . . .”

“Am I not a good enough father to Annie? Do you think I would love her less?” Nick choked on the words as they left his mouth, and Sara reached for him, taking him in her arms.

“No! God, no! Don't ever think that. Not ever. You are the perfect father. It's me. I swear to you. It's
me
.”

Nick held on to her, and she could feel him fighting against the realization of the truth as it began to take hold. Their master plan, the one they had forged in spite of convention and their own doubt, had seemed to be working. Their love had lasted, weathering the storm of a quickie marriage, Annie's birth, and the drastic change for Sara. And he had allowed himself to believe it would keep on working, that they were both looking forward to the next step, the second baby that would be the cement around their life together.

But he had not taken in the weight of the change for Sara. How could he possibly, having passed through those youthful years on his own terms, and without obligation? For him, they were frivolous in hindsight. If he could turn back the clock, he would, gladly, and spend his time being more productive. He could have shaved ten years off his retirement clock. She was lucky in his mind, to have jump-started the part of life that was substantive. Meaningful.

Still, for Sara, those years would always be things that were taken from her. And she ached for them, for her ten-speeder that was now a minivan, her radical, chain-smoking friends who had been replaced with older, jaded women whom she never would have chosen for her peers. Another baby felt to her like the last nail in the coffin that held her youth.

Nick pulled away and sat against the headboard. “So what now? What do we do now?”

Sara wiped her eyes one last time. “I don't know.”

“Well . . . let's start from the beginning. You don't want another baby. What about the rest of it?”

“What do you mean?”

“The rest of it—the house, the town, staying home with Annie. Staying with me.”

She looked at him, shocked by his honesty. It was what they were both thinking, what she had been thinking for months. Still, it took more courage than she had to say it out loud. And it deserved an honest answer.

She reached over and took his hand, holding on to it tightly. Then she swallowed hard. “I don't know,” she said. “I just don't know.”

 

 

 

 

 

C
AITLIN
B
ARLOW LAY ON
her bed, her stomach feeling like it might burst. But what had she actually eaten? With her headphones blaring the latest Pink single into her ears, she thought about everything that had gone into her mouth. One piece of turkey. Some green beans. A forkful of mashed potatoes. She'd piled the plate high with other things—sweet potato mash, stuffing smothered with gravy and that sickening-sweet cranberry jelly her mother insisted on making every year because it was a family recipe and God forbid they didn't honor the dead by consuming things that should never have been created in the first place. She hadn't touched any of that. Still, what she had eaten was more than what she had come to consume in one sitting lately, and her stomach was simply no longer used to the feeling of fullness.

It was torture, these five days. Thanksgiving was for families, which meant she would be stuck in this house for the duration. Secluded from her friends and, worse, subjected to her perfect brother and worried parents, she really had no idea how she would get through it. Maybe the way she had been. One hour at a time.

The meal had been the worst of it, though it had been perfect as always. It was one of the things her mother seemed to have down, the annual recreation of family traditions. Every year, the oval table in their formal dining
room was decorated with linens, china, silver and crystal, antique figurines and miniature pumpkins, candles burning softly in their silver holders. Then there was the food. From the kitchen came the distinctive smell of roasted turkey with rosemary stuffing, and from the dining room the sweet odor of wine that filled the glasses. Somehow, in the midst of her mother's charity work and manicures, shopping and constant prodding, she had managed to create a lasting tradition. And in spite of everything Caitlin had ever carried with her into that room, the anger and fear and overall unhappiness, it was impossible not to be overwhelmed by the assault on her senses and the feelings that were provoked—good feelings about family, tradition, a sense of belonging to something even if that something was corrupt to its core.

This was the conflict that stirred inside her as she waited for the feeling of food to disappear from her body. The need to belong somewhere, and the sole outlet for this need a family she couldn't understand, and that didn't understand her. Even the comfort of the babies, having known them since their birth and watched their every monument of growth, was muted now as she saw the easy affection they elicited from the others simply by being young. That would change soon enough, the moment their misbehavior—which was now a source of endearment—became an embarrassment. And if not, then later when the expectations began to creep into their carefree lives.

It had started already for the twins. With the third grade came homework and after-school sports. Hockey and squash would begin this winter, baseball and golf in the spring. Summer would be spent on the swim team with tennis clinics thrown in around the four-hour practices and meets. And fall, which was winding down, had been nonstop travel soccer. They had their own nannies this year just to shuttle them around. If Cait bothered to look hard enough, she was sure she would see it in their eyes—the slow mourning of their youth as their time was gobbled up in the name of personal development and growth.

The thought of it made her want to scream. A few years felt like a death sentence. Day after day, working and working. School, homework, squash. Then stuffing herself down this well so she could exist within her family. If she told them the truth, that she hated every minute of her life, what then? Impossible. It was so much easier to be the reluctant teenstranger, bitter and angry, but always doing what she was told.

Lying in her bed, she wrapped her arms around herself and held on as
she turned her thoughts from this hypocrisy to the reinvented version of Caitlin Barlow that lived in the world of Kyle Conrad.

There was a loud banging on her door, which she felt more than heard with the iPod still blaring. She gathered herself back from the place that had just begun to make her smile as she lay in her bed with her full stomach. They came in before she could get up.

“What's up?” It was her older brother, Brett, and his buddy Reed, who was a habitual presence at their house. His parents were divorced and living in the far corners of the world. The Barlows had all but adopted him.

Cait removed the earphones. “Nothing.”

Brett walked to her desk and pulled out the chair. He turned it around and sat in it backwards, his legs spread-eagle, arms draped over its back.