by JA Huss
Her face scrunches up. Like she’s not sure what to make of that outburst. “Then why did you ask for a test? Why walk out angry? Why, Quin?”
“I didn’t need the DNA test, Bric did. And the reason I didn’t show up wasn’t because I can’t handle the truth. I stayed home because I couldn’t…” I sigh. This is harder than I thought it would be.
“Couldn’t what?” she asks.
“I didn’t want to see Bric’s face when he found out she was mine, OK? I couldn’t do it. I don’t want to hurt him, but he forced me. He was fucking everything up, Rochelle. Can’t you see that? He never loved you.”
“So you say,” she says.
“No, I know. Bric likes to pretend he’s invested, Rochelle. And this time his little fantasy got out of hand. Those lies?” I shake my head. “I wasn’t mad at you for that. I knew you’d never do that if he didn’t fill your mind up with his stupid bullshit. He manipulated you. Just like he manipulates everyone. It was all him. And I know I’m the easy-going one here, I get it. But I have to draw a line somewhere. So I did. Those lies were it for me as far as Bric is concerned. I asked for that test to bring him back to reality. He walked out, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” she says softly. “He did.”
“I knew he would. And even though I feel bad because I know somewhere, deep inside him, he feels bad tonight too, I also know it won’t last. He will be right back to the way he was by tomorrow. He’s gonna go to the Club, fuck a girl, get drunk, and pretend all this never happened. You just watch.”
“So you hate him now?” she asks.
“Hate him?” I laugh. “I didn’t go through all that bullshit because I hate him. I love him, for fuck’s sake. But he’s got to learn that people are real. They’re not objects. They’re not things to manipulate. I didn’t do this to hurt him. I did it to help him.”
We think about this for a little bit. She comes over to me and sits in my lap. “Well, I guess we’ve got him all taken care of. What about us? Where are we now?”
I shrug. “I dunno.”
“You don’t know?” She scoffs at me. “Either we patch it up, Quin, or we go our separate ways. And I’m not talking about leaving town with Adley, so don’t say ‘Let’s patch it up’ because you’re afraid I’ll take her away. I won’t.”
I don’t think she’d do that. Not now that she knows I’m Adley’s father.
“I’m just afraid, Rochelle.”
“Of what?”
“Not being enough for you.”
“You’re kidding, right?” She laughs and squeezes me. Puts her face in my neck and inhales. Like she’s missed my scent this past week.
I let my arms fall around her. It feels so right. But is it really?
“I don’t even know why you’d say that,” she whispers. “You’re the only one I’ve ever wanted.”
It takes me almost a minute to articulate the doubts inside my head. All the fear and uncertainty. “My mom is crazy, right?” I say. It’s as good a place to start as any, I guess.
“I love your mother. She’s called me every day since that tea party fiasco.”
“She’s so cool. She’s fun, and happy, and just… she loves everyone, you know?”
“Totally. And I think everyone loves her too.”
“But my dad never made her happy, Rochelle. He never could. When I was a kid she was so much crazier, but in the very best way. She likes costumes. She decked our house out for Halloween. Dressed up like a witch.” I laugh, just picturing it. “She was Mrs. Claus on Christmas Eve. At Easter, she wore bunny ears. It was just… part of her. But my dad used to tell her she looked ridiculous. Shame her, almost. So she stopped. I was about six, maybe. And she just stopped. And then I forgot all about that crazy stuff until he died and she started doing it again.
“I realized then he never made her happy. He worked too much. That’s why I took our days off work when we were together last year. He put the family first, and that’s great. He went to work every day. He mowed the lawn every weekend in the summer. He coached baseball. But while he was busy putting the family first, somewhere along the way he decided to put her last. Everything came before my mother. The house, the job, the lawn, the neighbors, the kid. Some people might say”—I laugh—“some people did say that my mother was the selfish one. That she never appreciated him. It could be true, I guess. But I lived in that house. I saw how it went down. He ruined her, not the other way around.
“And yeah, she was sad when he was gone, but she was much happier as time went on. Now, she’s almost like she used to be. And I think my dad just never had it in him to be what she needed.”
“Are you afraid you’re too much like your dad and I’m too much like your mom?”
I nod. “Yeah. I’m just me. Just boring Quin.”
“Boring?” She leans back and looks me in the face. “Are you kidding me? Mr. Eagle-Scout. Mr. I-Help-Old-Ladies. Mr. I-Take-Casseroles-As-Payment. I don’t think you understand how much I want a family like yours. How much I want and all your so-called boringness.”
“I don’t know how that could be. I really don’t,” I say. “I like sharing women with Bric and Smith because there was never any pressure to be perfect at everything. Smith compensated for me in ways… well, I’m not sure how. But he did. I know he did.”
Rochelle laughs, shaking her head at me.
“And Bric was the same way. He was good at things I wasn’t. He was someone you could enjoy who was totally different than me. I liked the us, Rochelle, because I thought it was the only way I’d ever keep a woman like you satisfied. I come from a perfect family and even my dad couldn’t do it right. And when you stayed, I mean, good fucking God, when I realized you were staying—that things were working, you know?—I just couldn’t picture me being enough for you. I couldn’t picture you being satisfied with just me.
“How can I compete with weird Smith? How can I compete with Bric’s dominance? Isn’t it better to let them do what they do best? And me do what I do best? It worked for a while. I just finally gave in and decided you’d never want me all by myself. You’d say you did, but you’d be wrong. Just like my mom. And one day I’d wake up and tell you to stop wearing those ridiculous clothes. One day I’d wake up and realize I’d ruined you.”
“No,” she says, pressing her face into my beating heart.
“It could happen,” I say. “It might take you a lifetime to realize it. Like my mom. You could wake up one day and realize you’re happier with me dead than you ever were with me alive.”
Chapter Thirty-Four - Rochelle
“Well, I was not expecting that.” I am stunned by his admission. This whole time he wanted to share me to make sure I stayed. And I wanted to share myself to make sure he stayed. “We are so stupid,” I say.
He laughs. His body rumbles from beneath me. “If I had known that Smith bowed out of the game, I’d have said something. I would’ve told you I loved you. I would’ve figured all this out much sooner. But he didn’t tell us. I didn’t know, Rochelle. I had no idea he stopped playing.”
“He stopped playing because he figured me out, Quin.”
“What do you mean?” Quin asks.
I take a deep breath and try to gather my thoughts. I’ve thought about this so much over the past several years, but thinking about it and putting it into words are two very different things. I told Lucinda, but it was messy and emotional. It took weeks for her to work out what my problem was. Why I was doing the things that made me hate myself.
I don’t have weeks to set this right with Quin. I have this one chance to make him see me the way I want to be seen. One chance to explain myself and not have him see me the way that Helen woman does.
“When I was six my mother picked me up from school one day. She never usually picked me up. I rode the bus to a babysitter’s house after school. My parents both worked. And then one of them would pick me up at dinner time and take me home. We never ate dinner together. It was me and my mom and my brother,
who was several years older, so he didn’t need a babysitter. Or it was me and my brother and my dad. But we were almost never together as a family.
“So this day she picked me up and she said, ‘We’re going to my friend’s house for dinner. He’s got a little girl your age too. You can play with her.’ I was like, ‘OK. Cool. I like playing.’ But she took me to her boyfriend’s house.”
“What?” Quin says.
“Yeah,” I say, a little lost in thought as I remember that day. “They disappeared into the bedroom. Told us girls to play dolls. I can even remember those dolls. Though I don’t remember the girl’s name. I never saw her again. The next time my mother announced she was taking me to another friend’s house, there was no other child to play with while they had sex.”
“What the fuck?” Quin asks. “Your mother was… like a prostitute?”
“No.” I sigh. “I think if she was doing it for money it might make it better. She did it… well, she did it because she felt she had to.”
“What did your father say?”
“As you know, my father has mistresses too. Helen, apparently, was one of them. I don’t remember her coming over, but he brought so many women over to our house when my mom wasn’t there. That was before my mother started taking me to meet her boyfriends. She did it out of revenge, I think. She knew he took me and my brother places with his mistresses. And I think she was jealous of that. She had every right to be, of course. But she didn’t have every right to use me a pawn in her game of marriage.”
“That’s fucked up. I’m sorry that happened to you, Rochelle.”
“Do you know what the really fucked-up part about it is?” I ask. But it’s rhetorical, and Quin makes no move to answer. He’s just listening. “Did you know that children who know their parents are cheaters are twice as likely to cheat in their relationships too?”
“I know you didn’t cheat, Rochelle.”
“Well, you’re more certain of me than I am. I didn’t cheat,” I say, looking down at him. “I never cheated on you guys. And do you know why that is?”
Quin nods. “Because you had all three of us. That’s why you played the game, isn’t it? Because you thought you’d never be faithful.”
I nod. “I have cheated on many boyfriends. All of them, in fact. Every single time I’d find a guy I liked, we’d date and I’d fuck it all up by finding a new one. And all it would take to make that switch legitimate was one conversation. Two words. It’s over. That’s it. But I never did that. I just kept hurting them. Over and over and over. And I never understood it until Lucinda explained it to me. That the children of cheaters are twice as likely to cheat too. They see it as… normal. Something people do.”
I look down at Quin. I love him so much. I never wanted him to know this about me.
“It’s not normal,” I tell him. “I don’t want to be that person. I don’t want my children to grow up seeing me in that way. So I left home. I left them all behind and on that last day, I told them why. I left my brother too. He was already repeating their mistakes. Girls used to come to our house crying. Begging him to come back to them. It was drama, Quin. My whole life was drama. My brother learned to cheat from my father. Those girlfriends who came over to cry and beg him to take them back were just like the girlfriends who came to our house as kids. Some of my father’s mistresses got pregnant and had babies. They all sued for child support. So the whole town got to hear about my cheating father. He even divorced my mother to marry one just so he wouldn’t have more support taken out of his paycheck. That’s when I left home. I couldn’t take it anymore. I hated it. So I left them all behind. But my brother and I were close growing up. And one day he found me, even though I never wanted to be found.”
“That was the man you were fighting with the day before you left?” he asks.
“Yes. Smith saw me fighting with my brother. He told me my parents had changed. They were back together and would I like to come home for Christmas. I think he was truly surprised when I said no. I was pregnant and emotional. And Chella and I had been planning on her taking my place in the game for months. So I just called her up, met her at Lucinda’s, and we set it up last minute. I’m sorry I left. It was a cowardly move. But life overwhelmed me at that point. I didn’t want to be reminded of who I was. What I was. And I didn’t know if the baby was a boy or a girl, but either way, if I let my brother take me back to that life, it would become a cycle. Something that couldn’t be broken.”
“So you left.”
I nod. “I’m very sorry I hurt you. I loved you, I just thought you weren’t interested in me that way and it was better to make a clean break. Start all over again. Stop playing those childish games. Stop pretending that you and Bric were my cure and face up to the reality that if I wanted to change who I was, I had to leave you behind.”
He’s silent.
“Please don’t hate me,” I say.
He doesn’t say anything for a long time. I’m pretty sure that this is over now. He will decide I’m not worth the risk.
But then he says, “You are way too interesting, Rochelle Bastille.”
I don’t know if that’s good or bad. So I say nothing.
“We make our own future. If you’ve taught me anything, that’s it. I don’t have to be like my father. I don’t have to disappoint you. In fact I’ve tried very hard this past week to think of ways to be different. I’m not sure I’m so good at it yet. You might need to teach me the art of intrigue. I am way too boring for a girl like you, but I’m not gonna let you go out of fear. Fuck that. You’re not getting away that easy because I think I just fell in love with you all over again.”
“Are you serious? You’re not gonna throw me out? Take me to court and tell a judge I’m a horrible example of a mother?”
“No,” he says, tilting my head up with a finger on my chin. “No way. You are the best thing that ever happened to me. I’m taking notes, Bastille. Pages and pages of notes. Ever since you walked into my life and agreed to be one-third mine, I’ve been thinking up ways to be worthy. And yeah, it took me a while, so I’m sorry for that. But I think I got the hang of it now.”
“What are you talking about?”
Quin stands up, taking me with him. He carries me across the room and stops in front of the door. “I’m talking about this.”
He flicks the lights on and the spare bedroom transforms into a baby’s nursery.
“What?” I say, stunned. “This is… This is…”
“All your stuff from the secret room up in the attic apartment. Our stuff, right? Your Christmas tree. Your record player. Your stupid vintage suitcases. I want Adley to know how fucking great you are. How original and perfect you are. I want her to be able to appreciate you. My father never gave me that. He never let me appreciate my mother for who she is. But I appreciate her now. I’m not gonna make that mistake with you and Adley.”
I hug him hard for a few moments. He is perfect. Way too perfect for me, but just the right amount of perfect for Adley.
“I have a lot to live up to,” I tell Quin.
“No,” he says, taking my hand. “You be you. That’s all I need.”
I kiss him. I place both hands on his strong shoulders and kiss him. “And you be you,” I whisper into his mouth. “We’ll be us.”
“I like the sound of that,” he whispers back. “Now tell me what you think of this room. I need feedback.”
I laugh and then turn around to take it all in.
The crib is something I would’ve picked it out. White. With a giant mobile hanging over it. Little bees and butterflies bob and dip their way around an off-kilter circle. The bedding is yellow and white. And one whole wall is painted with chalk paint. There are giant hand-drawn dandelions on that wall. There’s even those little fluff things blowing in a make-believe breeze.
“Look up,” he says.
I know what’s there before I look, but seeing my drawings on the ceiling—my handwritten I’ll Fly Away song—it stuns me.
“What have you done?” I whisper, barely daring to breathe as I slide down his body and stand there, hand on my heart in disbelief.
“I really hated that nursery for Adley Bric decorated. I was only pretending to like it so you’d be happy. So I made a new one at my house. I went to every antique store in Denver. And I pried the sheetrock off the secret-room ceiling and took it to a local artist to replicate. He drew the flowers too. I was gonna lie and say that was me, but I’m way too boring for that. You’d never buy it.”
Boring. I laugh. “No, Quin Foster. You’re the farthest thing from boring that ever existed. You might be way too exciting for me.”
“I knew Adley would live here eventually. I didn’t know how long that would take, so I’m glad it came sooner rather than later.” He shrugs. Like this is just what boring, normal men do for their crazy girlfriends.
He turns me so he can see my face. “I love you, Rochelle Bastille. I’m done sharing you with the world. You’re mine and you’re gonna marry me. You’re gonna have to settle for boring, so I’m really sorry about that. But I’ll try my best to make you happy.”
I kiss him, whispering, “I love boring. Your brand of boring is exactly what I need.”
Chapter Thirty-Five - Quin
Once upon a time, I was unhappy.
I just didn’t realize it.
I had no idea how much I was missing out on until Rochelle and Adley came back.
But they’re not why I’m happy now. Other people can’t make us happy. Only we can make ourselves happy. Rochelle and I faced our fears, just like Smith and Chella did last year, and our lives are so much better because of it.
The door buzzes.
Rochelle and I ignore it. We know who it is. I’m setting the table. This is the first time I’ve ever used this table and I can’t think of a better time to break it in than for Christmas dinner with the people I love. Rochelle is busy with the food. Chella is bringing dessert, so she didn’t have to bake.
