Until Now (20 page)

I squeezed my eyes shut, tuning her out. I couldn’t believe I was about to utter these words out loud. “Abby, I can’t. I’m seeing someone.”

She stopped talking and gaped at me. “What? Since when?”

“A few weeks.”

She straightened up, her gaze still locked on mine as if trying to decide if I was telling the truth or if I’d invented this “someone” out of thin air. “Wow. Okay. Why didn’t you tell me you had a new boyfriend?”

“Because I don’t,” I said firmly. “He’s just this guy I hang out with sometimes.” Hang out with a
lot
. And have the best sex of my life with. And cuddle up with on a lazy Sunday morning while his lovable, angelic-looking kid dozes beside us.

“Hmm,” Abby said in a way that made me think my face was far more transparent than I assumed. “And here I thought you were the anti-commitment type like me. I’ll let Cody know you’re off limits, then.”

Off limits. It sounded so…
unavailable.
Final. “Thanks,” I said just as Wade emerged from his office, his eyebrows bunched into a frown.

“What did I tell you ladies about socializing on my time?” he bellowed, making Abby jump and then scamper off to the gym area. Wade watched her go and then looked back at me, his ire fading somewhat. I smiled winningly at him. “Eyes on your work, Ms. Calvert,” he said, and I turned back to my emails, happy to oblige.

Sunday dinner was cancelled that evening as everyone recovered from the funeral the day before, but things returned to normal a week later. In a welcome distraction to their grief, Jane and Graham threw themselves into planning their thirty-fifth anniversary party, set to take place during the second weekend of August. Most of the conversation during dinner revolved around this party—location (backyard), food (barbecue), guest list (everyone, including the mail carrier).

“You can make it, can’t you, Robin dear?” Jane asked, squeezing my shoulder. She sat on my left this week, between Nicole’s girlfriend Mariah and me. “Make sure you don’t have to work that day.”

I nodded. The ninth of August was four weeks away—plenty of time to request a day or two off.

“I’ll bring her,” Ryan said on my other side. “She can be my plus one.”

Jane turned to beam at us. Her delight over our relationship was so flagrant, it almost made me uncomfortable. The way she looked at us made me think she was imagining
our
future wedding anniversaries.

“Sorry,” I said, gesturing behind me to Mason, who was sitting at the kids’ table with his cousin. “I already
have
a date.”

Jane’s smile grew even brighter. Every day this week, I’d dropped over in the morning to hang out with her and Mason for a couple of hours while Ryan worked. We’d go to the park, or to the mall, or to the lake for a swim. One time we’d visited Ryan at the bookstore, where Mason parked himself in the children’s section and systematically dumped an entire shelf of picture books onto the floor, making his father wince like he’d been struck with a sudden migraine. I wasn’t sure why I’d started coming over in the mornings; all I knew was that spending time with Mason kept me from spiraling into my own kind of grief.

Sometimes it worried me—even as I showed up, day after day—how integrated into this family I’d become. And how attached I’d let myself get. Because I knew, better than most people, how quickly it could all be taken away.

* * *

Now that I’d officially snagged myself a man, Taylor was quick to set up a double date with her and Michael. The next Saturday night, the four of us assembled at Milo’s Pub, where we sat around a wobbly, scratched table and ordered nachos. I tried not to think about the last time I’d been at Milo’s—with Abby, the night we went to Fusion together for the first time and met Damien and Cody. That group of friends seemed miles apart from this one.

“Dude,” I said, nudging Taylor as we walked back from the washroom together after ordering. “Our dates are
hot
.”

Taylor followed my gaze to our table a few feet away, where Ryan and Michael sat opposite each other, talking. Due to their similar personalities, they’d immediately clicked. And most of the women in the place were either discreetly or brazenly ogling them. And envying us.

“Hells yeah,” Taylor said, and we laughed.

Conversation flowed easily over the heaping platter of nachos in front of us. I sipped slowly on a glass of diet Coke, half-wishing it was beer. Then I remembered that alcohol took on an almost repulsive tinge around Ryan. This was my fault, not his…I just didn’t feel the urge to blunt my thinking when I was with him.

“How long have you guys been together?” Ryan asked after Michael mentioned that he used to go to Avery, a college six hours away, but transferred here after his second year because he and Taylor were so over the long-distance-relationship thing.

“It’ll be five years in October,” Taylor said, picking a jalapeno off her nacho.

“Thanks to me,” I said proudly. “I introduced them, then I convinced Taylor to say yes when he asked her to go to a movie marathon on Halloween. Remember?”

Taylor laughed. “I’d already said yes, and I didn’t exactly need a lot of convincing.”

“I thought she hated me,” Michael put in. “Until she jumped me in my car after I drove her home.”

She shoved his arm. “Shut up. I did not.”

“Yes, you did. I could barely fight you off.”

“So yeah,” I said, watching their tussle. “It’s partly my fault that they act like a bickering old married couple.”

That shut them up, but instead of glowering at me like they usually did when I accused them of acting married, they glanced at each other quickly and shared a small, private smile. I immediately became suspicious.

“Wait,” I said, my gaze bouncing between the two of them. “What did I miss? Are you…” I gasped and dropped a glob of cheese into my Coke. “Did you guys secretly get
married
?”

“No,” Taylor said, eyes wide. I let out a relieved breath. If they
had
run off and eloped, I would’ve killed them. I was in position to be maid of honor at their wedding. “But,” she went on, scrunching up her shoulders. “We might be sort of…engaged?”

I raised my eyebrows. How could someone be “sort of” engaged? I looked to Michael. “You proposed? Without asking for my opinion on a
ring
?”

“No,” he said. “I mean, not exactly.”

“We’ve been talking lately about when to get married,” Taylor said, seeing my confusion. “And we decided on next summer, after I graduate. It won’t be anything extravagant. Probably just a small, family-and-close-friends thing at the courthouse.”

Just like Chelsea and Ryan, I thought, glancing at him. He was leaning back in his chair, listening passively. I turned back to my friends. “Are you pregnant?” I asked before I could stop myself. Then I instantly regretted it when I felt Ryan stiffen beside me.

“No,” Taylor said, her gaze flicking to Ryan too. I’d told her all about his past. “We just want to get married.”

I thought about Chelsea and Ryan again, how they’d gotten married so young only to divorce two years later. And my mother and Alan, whose marriage had been doomed from day one. Even children hadn’t bound them, or motivated them to work harder. If anything, the added commitment had only made it worse.

“You’re not even twenty-one yet,” I reminded my best friend, who was nervously biting her bottom lip. “I thought you wanted to be a teacher?”

She shot me a look. “I’ll be twenty-one next month, and twenty-two by the time we’re actually married, and I’m still going to be a teacher. It’s not the nineteen-fifties, Robin. I don’t have to choose between marriage and a career.”

“You really think I’d be that kind of husband?” Michael asked, looking affronted.

I opened my mouth and then closed it again, unsure what to say next. My reaction had surprised even me. I knew they loved each other. I knew they were meant to be together forever. Their engagement—such as it was—should have thrilled me. But all I felt was apprehension. The odds were stacked against them. What if it failed, like so many other marriages? What if it wrecked everything good about them?

“Well, congratulations,” Ryan said a few awkward moments later, reaching over the congealing nacho plate to shake their hands. When I didn’t make a move to offer my own well-wishes, Taylor looked at me, her features etched with hurt.

“I thought you’d be happy,” she said. “You used to be such a romantic. Remember that? You always talked about us finding the perfect guys and being each other’s maid of honor at our weddings and having a houseful of kids who played together—”

“I was thirteen,” I said, taking a gulp of diet Coke even though the glob of cheese was still floating in there. “And
you
were the one who said that about the kids. Not me. You know I’ve never wanted kids.”

I didn’t realize what I’d said until it was already out, and by then it was too late. Flushing, I glanced over at Ryan again. He was staring intently at a long scratch on the table top, his shoulders squared and tense. Shit. I really needed to learn how to think before opening my big stupid mouth.

“I’m sorry,” I said, aiming the apology to the entire table. I stood and went over to hug my friends, murmuring my congratulations. “I
am
happy for you,” I added, sitting back down next to Ryan, who still hadn’t looked at me. “I was just…taken by surprise, I guess.”

Taylor nodded, trying to smile, while Michael joined Ryan in gazing at the scratchy table, his jaw twitching like it did when he was tense. Now I felt like a world-class bitch. Way to piss everyone off and ruin a perfectly nice evening.

We tried to recapture the easy conversation from before, but the vibe was different now. Almost stilted. Taylor and Michael made some excuse about being tired and headed home after we finished eating, leaving Ryan and I to walk back to his car in silence. He didn’t take my hand like he normally would have, or joke about the lack of graffiti and crackheads in this part of the city, or anything else to let me know that things were okay between us. I felt the heavy pull of dread. Finally, unable to stand one more second of silence, I blurted some inane comment about the warm weather.

“Hmm?” he said, looking at me like I’d yanked him out of a deep sleep. “Oh. Yeah, it’s humid.”

My muscles relaxed. He wasn’t angry; he was contemplative. Thinking about…what? Me? Our apparent lack of a future together? Puppies? What was on his mind?

“Home?” he asked once we were seated in his car. “Or back to my place?”

Since “home” happened to belong to the parents of the best friend I’d just wounded with my shitty attitude, I said, “Your place.”

We picked up a sleepy, pajama-clad Mason from Ryan’s parents’ house and continued on to Oakfield. By the time we reached the apartment, Mason was out cold.

“Welcome home,” Ryan said, gifting me with his almost-smile as we went inside. I smiled back at him, comforted to hear the reference to our little private joke. He’d taken a few evenings off this week so he could spend more time with Mason, and each night, after Bay Street Fitness closed and Mason was sound asleep in his bed, I’d headed straight to Oakfield and Ryan. On my third consecutive night of showing up at his door, he’d jokingly greeted me with the words
Welcome home
. It warmed me then, and it warmed me again, now.

“Be right back.” He adjusted Mason’s floppy body against his shoulder and carried him to bed. When he returned a few minutes later, I was sitting on the couch, listening to Tyrone gnaw on the bars of her cage.

“So,” I said when Ryan took his place next to me, his leg not quite touching mine. “Tonight sort of finished on a low note, huh?”
Because of me
.

“You could say that.” He turned away, brushing what looked like Goldfish crumbs off the couch cushion and into his palm. “I didn’t know you felt that way. About kids. You get along so well with Mason, I thought—”

“I
like
kids,” I said, watching him deposit the crumbs on the coffee table. “Especially Mason. He’s amazing. I just don’t want any of my own.”

He sat back against the couch, meeting my gaze. “Why not?”

“Because I’m terrified of being a bad mother.”

“You’d be a great mother,” he said without hesitation. “I’ve seen you with Mason and Isaac and Ellie. You’re a natural.”

His mother had told me the same thing. “That doesn’t mean I’d be a good mom. My mother wasn’t exactly a shining example, so I never learned how.”

“You learn as you go. You think I know what the hell I’m doing half the time?”

I shook my head, unconvinced. He didn’t know my mother. Didn’t know how worried I was about turning out like her.

“What about your brother and sister?” he went on. “You were willing to raise
them
, right?”

“Yeah, but that’s different. I felt like I had no choice in the matter because they didn’t
have
anyone else. No one who knew them and loved them like I do, anyway. Of course I wanted them to stay with me.”

I didn’t tell him that I’d never stopped wanting them with me, even though I was afraid of screwing them up somehow if I ever did get them back. But for them, I’d take the risk.

“Did Chelsea want more kids?” I asked, thinking of that big round belly, her skin glowing with health. As evidenced by Mason’s pictures, pregnancy agreed with her.

“Yeah,” he said, an expression I couldn’t decipher flickering across his face. “We wanted a couple more. In the future.”

My heart constricted as I imagined them creating another baby. A girl, maybe, blond like Ryan and petite like Chelsea. A perfect mixture of both of them. This phantom daughter was yet another way that Ryan’s ex-wife had bested me. Yet another thing I’d never give him.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, snapping me out of my fantasies. His fingers brushed aside my protective curtain of hair and then moved to my chin, tipping it up. “Tell me.”

I swallowed hard, resisting the urge to jerk away from his hand. Why was he being so nice to me after the way I’d behaved tonight, after the things I’d said? He deserved better. Taylor and Michael deserved better. Shame and disgust accumulated in my throat like a dam, blocking out everything else. I forced myself to look him in the eye.

“I had this policy,” I said softly, “against dating guys with kids.”

He dropped his hand from my chin and studied me, unblinking. “And you broke it.”