Not My Match

by Madden-Mills, Ilsa

  “Sorry it took me so long to come. Just needed some time to regroup.” I haven’t regrouped worth a shit.

  Elena hugs me next. “Whiskey at my house after this, and we’ll talk, okay?”

  “She can’t drink anymore,” Myrtle says brightly, fluffing her hair in one of the mirrors. “Damn, I look good. I don’t think I need a touch-up after all.” She pauses as we all turn to look at her. “What? She might be pregnant.”

  Chaos ensues. Mama screeches, and Aunt Clara falls into a chair. Elena covers her mouth. I’m trying to explain that I’m not, amid the overlapping voices, but no one hears me.

  “A virgin . . . ,” comes from Mama as she stares at me with wide eyes. “Someone grab my smelling salts . . .”

  “You don’t use smelling salts,” Elena says, then “Oh my God, you’re gonna have the first grandchild. You little hussy . . .”

  “Nausea and late . . . ,” Myrtle says.

  “Hope it’s a girl with Devon’s eyes . . . ,” Aunt Clara says as she munches on a waffle fry.

  “Stop,” I shout, my hands fluttering. I glare at Myrtle. “I am not pregnant. Look what you did.”

  She shrugs, the shoulders of her muumuu shifting. “Maybe you are, maybe you aren’t, but doesn’t it make you think?”

  “About what?” I say.

  “The future,” she says, her kind eyes on me.

  “You’re pregnant?” Topher gasps, and I realize he must have come in halfway through the mayhem. “Can she call me Uncle Tophie? Please?”

  “Y’all need Jesus,” I drawl, my voice a testament to my southern roots. “There’s no pregnancy.”

  “Don’t bring the Lord into this.” Mama grabs her purse and heads to the door. “I’m going to the Piggly Wiggly and buying a test. Everybody just wait here. Elena, get that whiskey. I might need a nip.”

  “Say hi to Lance!” Aunt Clara calls to her back as she gets to the door.

  “Get the early-detection one, Mama!” Elena yells, and Mama says she will, and the door shuts.

  “You are not coming in here with me,” I say to Mama as she follows me into the small bathroom at the beauty shop twenty minutes later.

  She hands off the grocery bag and shows me all five tests. “Yes, I am. Now pee on all of them.”

  I take the bag, ease her out, and shut the door in her face. Holding the first pink box, I read the marketing tagline: Accurate up to six days before a missed period.

  That’s fast in detecting hCG in my urine. Despite my random information gathering over the years, I realize I know zilch about pregnancy tests. I sit down on the toilet lid as I unwrap the box and take out the stick and read the instructions. Remove the cap and reveal the absorbent section, pee midstream—oh, that’s nice—then place it on a flat surface and wait six minutes. If you’re pregnant, a line will appear under the control line. Seems easy.

  My hand trembles.

  And hope, feathery and sweet, blooms and takes flight in my heart, the vision of me with Devon’s baby making me tremble. Is it crazy that I want this? I can have a baby, finish school, be a sci-fi author by night, a teacher by day. More kids, I don’t care—give them all to me, running around our big house and the barn where I’d put my office, renovated with white paint, rustic crossbeams, and industrial lighting.

  What do you want most in the world?

  Devon. You. Always you.

  God, what a mistake I made.

  I’ve been clinging to CERN because it’s been part of me for so long, yet part of that desperation revolved around the mistakes I made with Elena and Preston, a lifeline to escape and start fresh, but now . . . dreams are meant to evolve. Goals readjust. I want family. I want love.

  Einstein said many great things, and his favorite quote hung in his office at Princeton: “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”

  Science is important to me—it’s the core of my personality—but love and happiness, those intangible, beautiful, hard-to-hold things, are what count the most, and physics is just icing on the cake. I can’t be me without him, knowing he’s in the world and I’m thousands of miles away. What good would I be at CERN, not caring, missing him with every breath I took?

  A knock makes me start. “You’ve been in there for half an hour!” Mama says. “Can’t you pee? Let me get a Sun Drop.”

  She shuffles off, and I hear talking from the shop. They’re probably out there planning a baby shower. I shake my head and stare at the magical pee thing. “Thank you, little stick,” I whisper. “I would have figured it out before I left, but you helped. Let’s hope Devon . . .” My voice cracks. What if he doesn’t let me back into his heart? Worse, what if I’m pregnant and he . . .

  Don’t go there.

  Might as well get this over with. I take care of business, using two sticks, one after the other, then setting them on the counter—and wait.

  I can’t breathe as I watch the minutes tick down on my phone. My fingers clutch the edge of the sink as I breathe, anticipation building and rising with each moment. I want this, I want this, I want this—and him.

  Six minutes later, I clean up the mess, throwing the package and instructions in the trash. Leaning my head against the door for a minute, I attempt to get my emotions under control, grappling with the torrent of feelings as I swipe at my face.

  Walking down the hall and out into the beauty shop, I watch my feet, my mind tumbling. I need another shower. One wasn’t enough. I need to put some makeup on, some decent clothes besides his shirt—which I haven’t taken off. I need to see him. Friday night rushes back at me: his anger, his disappointment, his I love you.

  “Why are you crying?” Mama asks, rushing over to me.

  From her perch in a stylist chair, Myrtle says, “Bun in the oven. Knew it.”

  The door opens, and he walks in.

  My whole life. Right there.

  His eyes are wide, and his face . . . “Baby, don’t cry,” he says in a deep husky voice.

  My body reacts, spinning toward him as he rushes to me, broad shoulders swaying as he stops in front of me, and I jump in his arms.

  “I called him,” Elena offers with a grimace as she waves at the rest of them and shoos them out the front door. They file out, not willingly, but they do.

  He’s here. Really here.

  My heart throbs, squeezing inside my rib cage. I press my face into his chest and exhale. His hands go to my scalp, massaging the skin, trailing his fingers through my hair. His lips brush my ear, and I tighten my arms around him. How did I fool myself for three days? I’d choose him every single time.

  “I’m not pregnant,” I say glumly.

  “Hmm, I see.” His voice is too calm, and I can’t meet his eyes as I let him go and slide down his body. He sways with me in a gentle motion.

  “I wanted to be,” I choke out, admitting the truth, trying to push the disappointment away. “I was already making a nursery in my head, with a mobile to foster brain development, toys for optimal tactile touch, painting butterflies on the wall.”

  “Ah, that sounds nice.” His voice is hoarse.

  I look up at him then, seeing details I missed before. He’s wearing his football pants and a white vented practice jersey, and his hair . . . I half smile. It’s a mess, sticking up in a million directions. His gaze is heavy on me, low, speculative, and hesitant. He looks haunted, his face thinner. Is that possible in just three days? My fingers run over his face, outlining the details.

  “How freaked out were you?”

  A long exhale comes from his chest. “Let’s just say there’s a state trooper who now has season passes.”

  “Were you scared?”

  His lashes flutter against his cheeks, emotion pulling at him, his throat working. “Not for me. I can handle a baby, but I don’t want anything to hold you back from what you want.”

  I gaze up at him, and our eyes cling. Oh, Devon.

  Tears clog my throat, and I push them away to say my word
s. “Dev, you are my dream. You are what I want most in the world. You and me and babies and a house in the country. CERN can’t compare. Maybe it will be in the future—they let people teach classes periodically—but Switzerland will always be here. You are now. You are mine, and I’m yours. That morning in the closet, you described what I want with you. Every detail of that life.” My eyes close as I replay his words. “Me and you and a life that’s worthy and good and precious. I want to be in all your universes.”

  Gathering strength, I tell him my Einstein quote, and he watches me, listening carefully, his beautiful green eyes all over my face, drinking me in. “I’d be nothing but a shadow of who I am if I left you,” I whisper.

  His hands tighten as he bends his head to mine. He kisses me with all the longing we’ve been denied for the past three days. “Are you sure, Giselle? I . . .” His voice hitches. “These days without you have desolated me, but I’m willing to be yours and let you go, and we can try and see how it works out . . .”

  I put my hand to his lips. “From the moment Susan mentioned CERN, I was sick. It just took a pregnancy test for me to figure it out. I love you so much, Devon.”

  A long heavy breath comes from him, and his eyes glimmer with hope, a soft shine there. He presses his forehead to mine. “I’m going to make you proud, baby; I’m going to make you happy, and you’re going to get everything you want, I swear.”

  He kisses me soft and slow. “So are we going to go out there and tell them you aren’t pregnant?”

  “You tell them while I dash to your car.”

  He groans. “Your mama knows for sure we’re having sex. I can’t even look at her. You do it.”

  “Okay. You tell them I’m not going to CERN, and I’ll tell them I’m not pregnant. They’ll be disappointed about the baby,” I say wistfully.

  “There’ll be other babies,” he murmurs after another drugging kiss, his voice soft and wondering, as if he’s amazed at the idea. “I love you, Giselle.”

  “I’m yours, Dev.”

  That rich red thread of fate wraps around us.

  We hold hands and walk to the door, a whole new future waiting for us.

  Epilogue

  DEVON

  A few years later

  I wake up and look over, and she isn’t there, causing a brief bite of disappointment, until I laugh up at the skylight above our bed. Knowing her, she’s either hiding to jump out at me, or she’s up and working.

  I shower in the bathroom of our house, the one we built out on the farm after we were married. I dunk my head under the water, thinking about that day, her in a white dress, an amethyst ring surrounded by diamonds on her finger, her nana’s pearls around her neck, her hand in mine as we said our vows in her mama’s church. It was a perfect spring day in April when she was halfway through her doctorate, and I was giddy to finally make us official.

  My dad was at my wedding, sober. A few months after he left Nashville, he came back, took one look at me and Giselle in my penthouse, and wept. I think . . . he saw my happiness, my contentedness, my deep love for a woman who adored me right back. He saw that I had something real, admiration mixed with devotion, respect, and commitment. He never had that. Eventually, a few months later, he let me pay for rehab, got straight, and moved back into his house. He’s his own man and makes his own way. He might slip, yeah, but we’ll deal with it together, me and Giselle and our family.

  I walk into our spacious closet, and when I see there’s no mask-wearing wife, I shake my head. “She’s slipping,” I murmur. After throwing on joggers and a hoodie, I pad down the hall and open the nursery door as quietly as I can, tiptoeing in on Gabriel Kennedy, our one-year-old son. His thumb is in his pouty mouth, and I tuck the covers around him, my heart swelling.

  After slipping out, I pad into the bright kitchen, my eyes searching for her. Not in the den that overlooks the rolling hills of Daisy. Nerves hit as I grab the pics from a drawer in the desk. I can’t wait to show her. After shoving my feet into sneakers, I head outside and jog the yards to her office, the barn we renovated as we built the house.

  When I slide open the doors, her tattoo winks at me from her skinny jeans as she reaches up to a shelf, organizing her books. Three bestsellers for my baby. I grin. Always knew she’d do it. The baby monitor sits next to her laptop, the sound of Gabriel’s soft snores reaching my ears. After easing up behind her, I kiss her neck, and she melts against me, sliding her arms up and tangling in my hair.

  “You left me,” I growl.

  “I had to get work done before the baby wakes up.” She laughs and turns around, her hair down and thick, the color silver and gold. It’s been a few different colors, but her original is my favorite.

  She kisses me, and I’m lost in her all over again, just like the first time.

  “I have a gift for you,” I say against her lips.

  “And it’s not even my birthday. Is it what’s in your pants?”

  “That’s free anytime you want it.” Anxiousness hits as I show her the pics in my hand, then spread them out on her desk.

  She gasps. “Devon, is that . . . a villa . . .” She stops, her finger moving to the next house. “And that one . . . where is this?”

  “That one’s an apartment in the Saint Jean neighborhood, nice enough at three million. Four thousand square feet and a pool with a view of the lake. The real estate person says the sunsets are spectacular.” I wrap my arms around her from behind. “The villa is my favorite, though, just under five mill, with a view of the Alps, six bedrooms, a renovated kitchen, and a garden—but you get to pick.”

  She blinks. “You want to buy a house in Geneva, Switzerland? For just under five million?” Her voice is incredulous. “I mean, you’ve joked about it, but . . .”

  Just testing you, baby. And your eyes lit up when I brought it up.

  “I have plenty of money, and so do you. I have the best life any man could ask for: a beautiful woman, a baby, and so much love that some days I wake up and have to look around and think . . . damn, is this really me?”

  “A villa?”

  “Come on, baby, this is a gift. I’m giving you a part-time home in Geneva. If you don’t like these, we’ll pick out more and fly over and make a decision.” I pause. “I’m giving you all your favorite universes.”

  “Devon . . . you . . . God . . . I love you,” she chokes out as she turns around.

  I kiss her. “You have your doctorate, and Susan has already checked with CERN—”

  “What! She hasn’t said a word to me!” She and Susan have become close friends. Giselle isn’t a full-time faculty member, preferring to teach one class a week until Gabriel is older. She goes to every home game, most of the away ones, a laptop bag over her arm so she can write, a baby in her arms. Elena is tagging right along with her, her two girls in tow.

  “Don’t blame her; this is on me, my idea. She and I have been talking about how to get you to CERN.”

  She gapes.

  “She said they’d be thrilled to have you come in, meet the researchers, and check out the place behind closed doors, hug the LHC, make out with it, lick it—that might sting, but whatever gets you hot.”

  She shakes her head at me.

  I pause, this part really making me nervous. I’m springing this on her, and she can always say no, and that will be cool, but I just want her to have fucking everything. “She mentioned there’s open interim teaching positions there, from January to May, for their winter term. It’s a temporary job, usually filled by students, and that’s where you rock, baby—all those kids adore you. It’s mostly the off-season for me, so Gabriel and I can come with you after the playoffs in January.” I arch my brow and let the words hang for a moment as her mouth opens and shuts.

  “What if I don’t get the job? What will we do with a house in Europe?”

  I shrug. “Vacation home for us—rent it out, make a ton of money. I can’t play football forever, and as long as you’re with me, any country works. We can settle th
ere someday or fly back and forth between homes. It’s a pretty place to write your next book.” I tangle my hands in her hair. “Where you go, I go.”

  She blinks, tears shining in her eyes.

  I kiss her softly. “Bring your mama and aunt. I’m sure the whole lot of them will want to come stay for a while. Jack and Elena and their girls, Topher and Quinn, Aiden, Myrtle and John, my dad—we’ll fill it up. We can hang around, check out the city, and if you don’t want the job—I know they’ll hire you in a snap—then we’ll do the regular tour, and I’ll sneak you into the room with your particle accelerator.”

  “You are crazy,” she breathes, and I smile at the stars in her eyes.

  “Nah, just in love with the smartest, most beautiful girl in the world.”

  She laughs. “I’m deliriously happy. I don’t need a villa”—her eyes linger on the pic—“or CERN.”

  “Baby, I’d give you the whole world if I could. What’s a house in Europe?”

  Several moments pass as we stare at each other, and I smile knowingly. “Level-five gaze. I know what that means,” I say and ease her shirt up and off her head. “Somebody wants my body.”

  Five minutes later, she’s undressed, I’m naked, and we’re rolling around in the room off to the side, a place with a big plush bed she had put in here for stolen moments like this. I’m staring down at her under me, her hands pinned above her head as I slide inside her and kiss her. She whispers that she’ll take the villa and that she’ll think about the job. I laugh and promise her that I’ll always be with her, no matter where she is, that she’ll always have my love, my soul, my everything.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Carroll, Sean. The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself. New York: Penguin Random House, 2017.

  Greene, Brian. The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR