“She was barely awake when Chad carried her out of there. I think it’s safe to say she had a fantastic time.” Evan steps behind me and unzips my dress once we get into the bedroom. It’s odd how quickly he’s become such an integral part of my day and night. All of the nerves I felt the other week about us moving too fast have seemingly evaporated into thin air.
Evan packed a bag before the ball and left it in the limo. He’s pulling a pair of sweats and a t-shirt out of there as I change into some pajamas. Curling into bed next to him, I feel comfortable—and nowhere near as afraid as I did just a week ago.
He’s clicking through the channels, catching the tail end of some late-night talk show. “Do you want kids?” The remote slips out of his hand as the words tumble carelessly out of my mouth.
His face transforms from calm and relaxed, to tense and nervous in a heartbeat. “Um,” choking on his words, he mutes the television and awkward silence falls around us.
Fumbling for some kid of recovery, I slide up against the headboard and look over at him. “What I meant was you were so great with the kids tonight. Do you ever wish you had had your own?” He’s got the world’s greatest poker face on, so I can’t tell which question bothered him the most—the one where I asked him if he wants kids, assumingly with me, the woman he’s only recently started dating, or the one where I ask him if he’s felt incomplete because he didn’t have his own children.
His body feels tense next to me, reluctance to answer either of my questions vibrating loudly between us. “Do I want kids?” he repeats my question, sitting up next to me. The inch that he moves away from me does not go unnoticed. “I never really thought about it.” He carefully considers his words. “I mean, yeah, when I was younger I guess so, but then the situation with Brody happened and I drowned myself in studying to be promoted. I kept myself busy doing things for everyone else—for Brody, for Joe when Sara was sick—so that I didn’t have to think about what I wasn’t doing for myself. Then 9/11 happened.”
He runs his hands through his hair and across his face, puffing out a frustrated breath. “The thought of Drew’s kids having to grow up without him because of something I did made me give up on the whole idea of a family. I didn’t deserve it.”
His last words hurt my heart. How on Earth could he think he doesn’t deserve something as wonderful as a family? The fact that he’s remained single for the majority of his life is a testament to his self-sacrifice, though. “Hey,” I cup his cheek, pulling his face toward mine. “I don’t like making you feel like this.” I smooth out the lines crinkled in sadness at the corners of his eyes. “You did deserve it and you still do. If it’s something you want, that is.” Those words don’t help to ease his frustration—me and my stupid mouth. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I promise. I was just—curious I guess; that’s all.”
“Do you want more kids?” he asks with a touch of uncertainty, twisting to face me.
Completely caught off-guard, I don’t know what the best answer is here to salvage this conversation. I’ve honestly never given the idea of more kids any thought. It was just something that wasn’t meant to be. Now that Melanie is basically an adult, the idea of starting all over again—especially when I’ve already devoted the majority of my adult life to raising a child on my own—isn’t really one that I want to entertain. But, on the other hand, how can I even begin to be so selfish when Evan has done nothing but sacrifice his own happiness. Trying my best to dodge the bullet that I feel like either answer will bring, I lamely say, “I never thought about it.” The tone of my words, calculated and cool, essentially puts an end to the conversation.
When he yawns and doesn’t say anything more, I wonder if I said the wrong thing. What if he does want kids? Would I be willing to do that at my age? Why the hell am I even thinking about this? We haven’t even defined what we are yet? Even though I feel like I could love him, I don’t know if I do right now—and I’m thinking about babies?
In stagnant silence, we pull the covers up and fall asleep, uneasily, without making love or even holding each other, for that matter. For the first time since I’ve slept next to Evan, sleep completely eludes me.
Chapter Seventeen
March 30, 2013
“You think you’ll be able to keep up?” I poke Joe in his somewhat-slimmed-down stomach. Stepping out of my truck, I inhale the not-so-sweet stench of garbage that fills the air here on Randall’s Island, where the FDNY training headquarters is located.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine, you wise-ass,” he retorts, but I see a look of nervousness fill his eyes. It’s his first half-marathon, and although Joe’s been training with me for the last two months, I have my doubts he’ll be able to pull through. Thirteen-point-one miles is no joke, even for serious runners.
Today is the day of the Ring in the Spring half-marathon, hosted by the FDNY in conjunction with the Paralympics Committee—a race meant to raise the awareness of the capabilities of paraplegics and amputees. A project that, since 9/11, Brody Callahan has spearheaded with more passion and commitment than I have seen in anyone.
I catch sight of him over at the registration table and he waves us over. “Come on. There’s someone I want you to meet.” Joe slings his bag over his shoulder and we make our way over to Brody.
“Hey, old man.” Brody claps my back and stands proudly before us. He got a prosthetic about a year or so after his accident. At first, we would “run” races together—starting with me wheeling him all the way to the last few years when he’s been capable of running more than I am, and at a faster pace too, something that he’s never going to let me live down.
“Hey, kid. Good to see you. This is my brother Joe.”
“Joe, nice to finally meet you. Evan’s talked about you a ton over the years.” Brody and Joe shake hands, but Joe looks more than a little surprised to find out that I’ve spoken about him to my “work family,” as he calls them. He’s my brother, of course my firefighter brothers would know about him.
“So, you ready to get your ass handed to you today?” Brody mockingly punches my arm as his wife, his obviously pregnant wife, walks up to us.
“Hey, Kara.” Her platinum blonde hair is pulled into a ponytail, which their three-year-old daughter, Lola, twists nervously in her fingers. “Hey, little Lola.” She hides behind Kara, but I catch the faintest glimpse of a smile.
“I didn’t know you guys had another on the way.” I glance down at Kara’s basketball-shaped belly and reach out to shake Brody’s hand.
“Yeah, a boy actually.” Brody moves next to Kara as Lola leaps into his arms. Kara snakes an arm around Brody’s waist and a contented look settles across both of their faces. “He should be here in late May.” Brody’s hand falls to Kara’s stomach, stroking it lovingly as he kisses her cheek. Lola looks on, laughing and making kissy noises.
The scene before me makes me replay the conversation—or argument, depending on how you look at it—I had with Lucy. It also makes me miss her fiercely. As Brody pulls Joe over to the registration table, Kara takes Lola inside to use the bathroom. I’m stuck there, by myself, reflecting on my own stupidity.
Do I want kids, as in now at fifty-two years old? Hell no!
But when she went on to tell me that I deserve a family of my own, with such a loving and hopeful look in her eyes, my gut churned with nervousness thinking that she might still want a family. At nearly a decade younger than me, she’s in a much better place than I am where that’s concerned. So, who am I to deny her that? She deserves more than I can give her and I’d be a selfish piece of shit to keep her all to myself when she wants much more than just me.
It’s that conflict that’s kept me away from her for the last two weeks − for the most part, anyway, because of course I’m too weak to stay away entirely. She’s noticed it too, but I think she’s too afraid to say anything about it, too afraid it may push me away entirely.
To say that I’m a fucked-up mess over all of this is an understatement. I’m also
an asshole for blocking her out, but I don’t know what to do. I didn’t even invite her to the race. Childishly, I’ve blocked her out so I don’t even know how she’s feeling.
Luckily, my nerves over the start of the race get the better of me, and I push thoughts of Lucy and our current non-relationship to the back of my mind. In the years I’ve been running this race with Brody, I’ve never been anything short of amazed at the other runners. Most are war veterans—though they are missing a limb, or in some cases more than one; they are nothing short of inspirational. It’s always emotional running alongside true American heroes, Brody being one himself. After his amputation, he studied with me and we were both promoted through the ranks, him higher than me, of course. He’s spent the last eighteen years of his career training other firefighters and doing more than one person’s fair share of community service, giving back to the war heroes who have sacrificed more than everything for their country.
About an hour in, at the eight-mile mark, Brody jogs up next to Joe and I, looking carefree and not at all out of breath. Joe and I, on the other hand, are sucking wind, in desperate need to slow down. “Still got you beat, don’t I?” Brody smiles and laughs as he pulls in front of us. Waving goodbye from about five people ahead, Brody pumps his arms in the air, signaling his victory over me, the old man.
“How you holding up, Joe?” If the pale green color of his face is any indication, Joe is most certainly not doing well.
“I’m okay,” he wheezes. “But don’t make me talk.”
We jog past a water table and I grab two cups from the volunteer handing out cups. I slow down to a brisk walk, which matches Joe’s jog and hand him a cup. “Here, don’t kill yourself. As long as we finish, we’re good.” Clumsily, he takes the water from me and swallows it back in one huge gulp.
After a few minutes of walking, Joe’s breathing returns to normal, somewhat. “I guess a half-marathon was overshooting it a bit, huh?” I joke as we fall in step together.
“Like you said, as long as I finish, I’m good with that.” He looks around, taking in the gorgeous spring day. People fly past us—some on wheels, some on bionic legs, all with massive strength. “This is pretty amazing, brother.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s my favorite event of the year.”
“You mean it tops princess celebrations?” Playful sarcasm intertwines itself with the sense of real appreciation he has for what I took part in a few weeks ago. But, he must notice me tense as soon as he mutters the words because he soon follows his jib with, “Everything okay with you and Lucy?”
“We’re fine,” I dismiss, my words bearing the heaviness of lead.
“Like fuck you are. Spill it,” he demands.
Going for shock and awe, I blurt out, “She wants kids.”
He stops dead in his tracks. “Really? Isn’t her daughter Katie’s age?” It almost sounds like he’s calling her old, without doing so, of course.
“Yeah, so.”
“Nothing. It’s just that having done it once before, and essentially on my own, since Sara was so sick most of the time, I just don’t think it’s something that I would willingly sign up for at this age.”
“I thought that’s how she would feel too, but when she asked me if I wanted kids, I was dumbfounded.”
“Do you? Want kids, I mean? What did you tell her when she asked?”
“I said I never had any because I didn’t deserve a family. She told me that I do and she looked crushed when I said that. I asked her what she thought about having more kids and she said she’d never thought about it. So I assumed . . .”
“Wait a second,” Joe laughs, stopping dead in his tracks once more. “You assumed?” he scoffs through his increasing laughter. “I guess that’s something I know better than you. You can never, ever, even if your life depends on it, assume to know what a woman is feeling. If you want to know what she thinks, you have to ask her point blank. And if you’re still not sure what she means, ask her again. Play dumb, if you have to. Ask for her feelings in their simplest terms, because when you love a woman, the last thing you want to do is go and screw things up over something as ridiculous as an assumption.”
“I never said I love her.”
Joe smacks me upside the head, a sign of brotherly love. “You don’t have to, you dipshit. It’s plastered all over that ugly mug of yours. A word to the wise, you might want to clue her in on how you feel, too. I bet it’ll help out with all this assuming shit you got going on.”
Energized by his words of wisdom, Joe begins to jog next to me. Within a minute, he’s a few paces ahead. Catching up to him, I think back over that night with Lucy, over my feelings for her. We did leave things quite unsettled and then let it sit there, festering between us like a sore. I’ve seen her less in these last two weeks than I have since I met her; they’ve also been the two most miserable weeks of my life. It’s not the first time that I let my cowardice, my feelings of not deserving happiness, get in the way of something I want.
And that’s the raw reality of it—I want Lucy. I want to share my life with her. I want her more than I’ve wanted anything.
The realization that I do love her comes quick on the heels of the previous one. Maybe it’s because I’ve never really been in love before that makes it so difficult for me to recognize those feelings now. Or, like Joe said, maybe it is just because I’m a dipshit.
With renewed determination, I run past Joe and on to the finish line. Catching a glimpse of Brody being congratulated in the arms of his wife and daughter makes me realize how much I need to have Lucy in my life.
But first things first—I have to ask her what she wants and not assume what she means.
Joe and I drive back home the next morning, choosing to spend the rest of the race-day and night with Brody and his family. I’m pretty sure Joe knows I need some space to think because he doesn’t say much during the few hours it takes us to get back home. I drop Joe off and hold back my laughter as I watch him limp out of the truck and up the stairs of his porch.
By the time I get home, it’s well into the evening, and even though it’s early enough to call her, I use the excuse that Lucy is probably going to bed early because she has work tomorrow.
Spineless, chicken-shit is what I am.
But really, I’m just afraid that we’ll want two different things.
And then there’s the real crux of the issue: is this love?
Turning that idea over and over again in my mind, I get nowhere. Joe’s right—again. If I want to know what she wants, what she feels, I’m going to have to suck it up, act like a man, and just ask her.
Just not tonight.
After a quick meal and a hot shower, I flop into my bed instantly recognizing the cold emptiness in the space beside me where Lucy should be. In this moment of stark realization, it’s no longer fear that fills my thoughts over how easily Lucy and I have come together, over how quickly things have progressed. No, what fills my thoughts, and aches in my chest, is a painful, vacant feeling. Memories from no more than a few weeks ago flash through my brain, as I recall just how unemotional and desolate my life was before Lucy.
It was beige.
But, with her in my life, I have someone to hold, to protect, to laugh with and to love.
With her in my life, I have vivid colors to which I had been blind for so long.
Realizing I love her and growing enough balls to tell her are apparently two different things. After tossing and turning all night Sunday, I slept well past my normal wake up of six on Monday. Having just run a half-marathon over the weekend, I was more than fine with taking a day off. But without that motivation to get out of bed, I officially had nothing to do for the day. Getting things in order for Chloe’s dance helped keep me busy, but in the weeks following it, in the time that I’d managed to screw things up with Lucy, I hadn’t been able to find anything else to keep me busy.
As the hours of the day whittle away, I get more and more anxious thinking about calling Lucy. We ha
ven’t talked since before the race—haven’t seen each other in more days than I want to count, so I can only imagine that she’s waiting for me to call her. The proverbial ball is in my court, at least according to the relationship rules I’ve gathered over the years.
But then again, Lucy defies all of those rules. The phone rings and an image of the two of us from the ball flashes on the home screen. I wonder if her ears are ringing as I sit here and thinking about nothing but her smiling face.
“Hi.” My voice sounds pathetic.
“Hey, I wasn’t sure if you were back yet. I hadn’t heard from you.” Her words sound wobbly and unsure, because of me—the asshat.
“Yeah, I got in last night. Sorry I didn’t call. I was beat.” It’s not entirely a lie, an omission of truth is more like it. And, I was beat, emotionally exhausted just thinking about everything going on with us.
A mumbled, “Oh” falls dejectedly from her lips. Travelling through the telephone line, it smacks me in the face. Hearing her upset, and completely at a loss for words, is not something I’m happy about and it’s something that’s entirely in my power to change.
“We need to talk, Lucy. There’s so much I want to say, but I don’t want to do it over the phone.” Huffing out a pent up breath of frustration over my own stupidity, I soften my tone, not wanting to imply that “we need to talk” for the wrong reasons. A bit more carefully, I add, “When can I see you?”
“I have plans with Linda tonight, and then there’s a PR event with Chloe’s family on Tuesday.” She sounds wounded, like she’s expecting me to see her to break things off. But there’s also a pissed-off air to her voice that makes me feel the weight of my mistake.
“Wednesday then?” Yes, I fully admit to there being more than a little begging loaded into that question, but I need to see her. I need to fix this.
“I’m not sure. Melanie is coming home Friday and I have a lot to do−”
“Lucy, I’m sorry for everything. Please let me see you so that I can explain. Please say that Wednesday works for you. Please stop making excuses and let me try and fix this.”
The Love Series Complete Box Set Page 103
