Stay Awhile

by Gia Riley

  Megan: I’m not sure that’s a good thing. You might want to run in the opposite direction.

  I’m only kidding, but Garrett must take me seriously because his next response is anything but playful.

  Garrett: Don’t even try to push me away. I’m not going anywhere.

  I must take too long to respond, because my phone lights up with his number again, only this time, it’s ringing, too. “Hey,” I whisper so I don’t risk waking Laney. “I was typing back to you.”

  “I wanted to hear your voice instead.”

  “Oh,” I tell him.

  “Are you okay?”

  “That’s a loaded question.”

  He sighs, and says, “Tell me the truth, Megs.”

  I sigh back because I can’t lie to him. Not even if I wanted to. “I hate that you keep seeing me cry and that you know how shitty my life is.”

  “For starters, nothing is your fault. You shouldn’t have to clean up Connor’s mistakes, and I hate that you have to. As far as me knowing about what’s going on, I can’t help you if I don’t know. So think of it that way if it bothers you.”

  “Hearing you say that makes me sound so weak—like my problems really aren’t all in my head.”

  “You’re not weak, Megan. It’s okay to lean on someone for help.”

  “But what if I fall?”

  “Then I’ll catch you.”

  I wasn’t expecting an answer when I said that, but the one he gave me I believe. I may not have much faith in the male gender right now, but without a shadow of a doubt, Garrett’s the one guy in my life I can trust. He’s probably the only guy I don’t have to worry about hurting me. And the fact he can fix my little girl, well that gives him so many bonus points; I’ll owe him for all of eternity.

  “Thank you,” I tell him, as I try not to cry. Again.

  Sensing my tears from the tone of my voice, he says, “I never should have left. Do you want me to come sit with you?”

  There’s no suggestion of anything inappropriate, just a friend supporting a friend, but it feels like it’s so much more than that. And if Laney were to wake up and see us together, she could get the wrong impression. So, as much as I would love the company, because sleeping hasn’t been on my side, I tell him the opposite of what I want. “I’m already in bed. I’d probably be asleep before you got here, but thank you, Garrett. Offering means a lot to me.”

  I expect him to argue with me, especially because he’s so quiet, but then he says, “I hate that you’re going through this alone.”

  “I have my sister—who’s been extra busy it seems,” I tell him jokingly, because other than the key, I have no idea how the rest of their conversation went. Or about any of the ones Vanessa has had with Grace. She has so much explaining to do.

  “You have me, too, Megs.”

  We’re both quiet, and all I can hear is the sound of his breathing. It’s enough right now, and I’m content with falling asleep with him in my ear.

  “Get some sleep,” he whispers.

  “Night, Garrett.”

  “Night, Megs.”

  His voice is so calm and sincere it warms my heart. Some might say I’m lucky that he was the surgeon to take Laney’s case. Others might say it’s fate that I’ve been reunited with a friend. But me, I’d say it’s an answered prayer. I finally have someone on my side I can trust.

  I end up sleeping well despite Laney waking up just as the sun is fighting the clouds. The early morning sky is a gloomy gray, and if I was outside, I’m almost positive I’d be able to smell snow in the air.

  “Mommy, I’m hungry,” she tells me for the third time.

  I turn toward her, wishing I could give her something to eat. “Once your surgery is over, you can have anything you want. How’s that sound?”

  “Even cake?”

  “Even cake. I’ll have Aunt Vanessa bring you a peanut butter cupcake from the bakery. Maybe they’ll even have the chocolate peppermint one with the crushed candy canes on top.”

  Her eyes light up at the mention of more junk food. “Two cupcakes!”

  On a normal day, I’d never let her have two cupcakes. Right now, I’m so scared I’d promise her all the sugar in the world if it made her smile and forget what’s about to happen.

  “Look Mommy! Another cape!” she says with a giggle as she watches Garrett run into the room. Only this time, it’s not his lab coat tied around his neck. He’s going for it in a red silk cape with a lightning bolt in the middle.

  “Where did you find that?” I ask him.

  He shrugs like it’s no big deal. “My mom likes to sew. I called in a favor yesterday morning.”

  “You’re going to make me better, Dr. Kristoff. I just know it now,” Laney says, in complete and total awe of Garrett. “My daddy can’t come here, but I’m glad you’ll be with me.”

  I look away from Laney, wishing she was old enough to know the truth about her father—not so she would hate him as much as I do, but so she could understand how wrong and reckless he’s been.

  She thinks the crash was an accident, and I’d never let her believe it was anything else. Sure, Connor probably didn’t plan on driving off the road, but considering nothing good ever comes from getting behind the wheel when you’re drunk, he had to realize it was a possibility.

  Garrett sees the struggle written all over my face. He moves closer to me, and I worry he’s going to try to touch me in front of Laney. Thankfully, he catches himself before he does. “Can I see you in the hallway for a minute?” he asks me as he drops his hand.

  I nod. “Sure. Laney I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Garrett eases back into his character, making my daughter giggle again as he whips his cape around. “Princess Laney, I’ll be waiting for you downstairs with my magic cape.”

  He pulls a piece of hot pink fabric out of his pocket and reaches for her favorite doll. Tying two tiny strings around the doll’s neck, he fastens a miniature cape. “Now we match. You’ll get yours after surgery.”

  “I will? This is so cool. Thank you, Garrett!” She turns toward me, holding her prized possession in the air. “Look Mommy, my doll has a cape!”

  I’d correct her for using Garrett’s first name while he’s working if I could get a sentence to form. What he’s done is far beyond calling in a favor. He’s a wonderful surgeon, but this isn’t something he does for every patient. The fact that he wants to make my daughter feel special, well that makes me feel special, too.

  As soon as we’re both in the hallway, I throw my arms around his neck, not caring who might see us or how unprofessional it is. I just hug the life out of him.

  He stumbles backward, laughing as he loses his balance. Once he leans against the wall for support, he says, “I take it you’re okay with the cape?”

  “I’m more than okay with it.” I squeeze him even tighter because when Laney woke up this morning, she was petrified about surgery. Right now, you wouldn’t know that same little girl was crying an hour ago. Not with the huge smile she has plastered on her face.

  When I finally let go of him, the sparkle in his eyes is still there even though I crossed the line. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that in public.”

  He reaches for me, not letting me put any distance between the two of us. “I don’t give a damn who sees us.”

  “You wouldn’t be saying that if they knew I was married.”

  He swallows, the reminder seemingly unwelcome in this conversation. He might not want to hear it, but regardless, it’s the truth. “I promise what they think of me doesn’t matter.”

  “What they think of you matters to me, Garrett. This town is small, and people talk. They’ve been talking for days. I want to keep your name out of the chatter for as long as I can.”

  He pushes my hair behind my shoulder and runs his finger over the diamond stud earring I got a as gift for my first wedding anniversary—back when I thought Connor spoiled me because he loved me so much.

  “Everyone’s going
to know you’re staying with me. There’s no way to hide that.”

  He’s right. There’s not. “True, but we don’t need to give them any reason to talk.”

  “You’re right,” he says as he takes a step backward, putting the usual distance between two people having a normal conversation. “But you have to know it’s not going to be easy. I’ve always wanted you, Megs. The timing was never right, and you already had what you were looking for, but that’s not the case anymore.”

  Everything he says complicates things ten times more than they are. I’d never want him to pretend he doesn’t have feelings for me. Not after I’ve seen them for myself, but history or no history, I have to do right by my daughter.

  “Just take care of Laney,” I tell him. “That’s all that matters right now.”

  As I walk past him, it’s so easy to get lost in his woodsy scent. It’s like a fire burning on a hot summer night after a rainstorm—the hot and damp colliding until they cancel each other out and ignite into a flame. It’s everything I see when I close my eyes.

  Megan

  “MEGAN, SHE’S FINE. GARRETT KNOWS what he’s doing,” Vanessa tells me for at least the tenth time since they wheeled Laney away from me.

  Despite trusting Garrett with my little girl, I still can’t sit still. I’ve already chewed my nails so low they’re about to bleed. When I had nothing else to bite off, I attacked the skin on the tip of my index finger. If I was sitting next to a vending machine, I’d have cleared it out by now.

  “What are you so worried about?” she asks me as she lays her hand on my knee to keep it from bouncing up and down.

  I see her hand, but I can’t feel her touch. I’m so nervous, my brain isn’t connecting with my body anymore.

  “The guy who sat next to me in homeroom was always early for class. He made sure his work was neat and he never missed an assignment. Garrett was a model student and then senior year came along and he shocked everyone by pulling off the biggest prank in school history.”

  “What’s your point?” she asks me.

  “The point is, he briefly lost his mind. For whatever reason he ditched the straight and narrow path he was on and risked throwing it all away for one stupid memory. What if he loses his mind again in the operating room?”

  Vanessa scoots her chair closer to mine—her hand silencing my nervous twitch. “You’re totally right. People do change, Megan. They have unpredictable moments when you least expect it. But he’s not the same guy he used to be, just like you’re not the same girl you once were. Regardless of bad decisions or impulsive choices, he’s educated, intelligent, and a man who cares about you. Those things have never changed and they never will.”

  She’s one poster and button away from a campaign. Though I do love her for seeing all the good in Garrett.

  “I once thought Connor was all those things, too. You see where that got me,” I tell her as regret seeps up my spine and slowly tries to strangle me.

  “I can’t argue with you on that. Connor is a douchebag.”

  I rest my head against the wall, wishing I could be with Laney. “Connor should be served the divorce papers soon, right?”

  She clears her throat and shifts in her chair. “I ran into a problem, but we can talk about it later. Now’s not really the time to worry about the divorce.”

  You can’t say that to me and then bail on the conversation. It doesn’t work that way, which is why I have no problem telling her, “Now’s fine, Vanessa. I need to know the truth—and it’ll keep my mind off the surgery for a little while.”

  Pleading with her eyes, she waits to see if I’ll drop it. When I don’t budge, she says, “You can’t file for divorce.”

  I panic for the simple fact that I’m already halfway to divorced in my head. If that can’t legally happen, I’ll lose my mind. There’s no way I can stay connected to Conner and carry around his last name after what he’s done.

  “Do I need to sign another paper? Or maybe make a formal statement? I’ll do whatever it takes, you know that.”

  “There aren’t any papers. Unless you’d like to sue him for fraud,” she says, as she shakes her head in disgust.

  “Fraud? I don’t understand.”

  She takes my hand again, exhaling as she bites her lip. When she raises her head and looks at me with a mixture of pity and regret, my heart nosedives to my toes.

  “Megan, there’s no easy way to say this, but you don’t need a divorce because you and Connor were never married. I can’t file because the marriage was never legal.”

  What does she mean we were never married? We exchanged handwritten vows just before Christmas. I wore a white lace dress that hugged my curves and dipped a little lower in the front than it should have. A fur shawl covered my shoulders and made me feel like a damn goddess. I spent a fortune on that thing.

  “You were my maid of honor, Vanessa. The wedding was as real as it gets.”

  “The wedding was real, but the marriage wasn’t, Megan. I’m so sorry.”

  I stand up, suddenly so hot I can’t stand it. My skin itches underneath my sweater. Clawing at the wool, I push the sleeves up as far as they’ll go before lifting my hair off the back of my neck. I fan the exposed skin, but it’s not enough to bring me any relief.

  When I turn back around, my sister’s pained expression speaks volumes. It makes no sense at all, but she’s completely serious.

  “What about the license? I signed it. The minister did, too. Could they have lost it at the courthouse or something?”

  She stands in front of me, resting her hands on my shoulders. “Take a deep breath. This is why I didn’t want to tell you in the middle of the waiting room. I wanted to wait until Laney was through surgery and we could sit down with a glass of wine and talk this through like two rational adults.”

  “Rational? I think I’m way beyond rational. How long have you known?”

  I pray she just found out because if she’s been hiding this from me, I’ll be even more devastated than I already am.

  “A couple days. It all happened pretty fast once the truth starting revealing itself. One lie led to the next and before I knew it, I had all the proof laid out in front of me, practically slapping me in the face.”

  A couple days I can live with. It’s better than the years Connor’s been screwing with my head. He may think he’s in the clear because he can walk away whenever he wants, but he’s not going to get away with this. I won’t let him.

  As I sit back down, I wrap my arms around myself. “I should be happy. I wanted him gone and out of our lives, but this makes no sense to me. Why would Connor do this?”

  “I wish I knew,” she whispers as she sits. “It makes things easier legally, but you’re still going to have to work out custody.”

  “Custody,” I repeat, half in shock. “He doesn’t get custody privileges. He lost those when he got drunk and put our daughter in the back seat of a car. There’s no way he can fight me, is there?”

  She shrugs but she’s pretty certain when she says, “If he can fake a wedding and hire an actor as a minister, he’s capable of anything. It’s all the more reason to take him down.”

  An actor? “Connor told me they were fraternity brothers.”

  This is all too much. I’ve never been married a single day of my life. All this time, the rings we wore as a symbol of our unity have meant absolutely nothing. “This is all my fault,” I mumble, trying my best to keep my tears at bay. The last thing I want to do is break down here.

  “I’m sorry, Megan. I’m so sorry he did this to you.”

  I cross my legs and curl into a ball in the leather armchair I’m nestled inside. When he proposed, it seemed like the next logical step in our relationship. We had already been together for years, and while most of our friends were navigating their way through school, determined to find their dream jobs, we were planning a wedding and talking about a life with kids.

  Never in a million years did I imagine a life in fast forward would be
our fatal flaw. Connor’s always been tied to me, just like he wanted. But by not taking time to find out who we were on our own, we failed each other.

  Up until I found that woman in my house, I thought all Connor needed was me. Since she threw a wrench into our future, I’m learning how wrong I was—how wrong I am.

  “I set myself up for this, didn’t I? Relationships from high school never last.”

  “No you didn’t, Megan. A real man doesn’t do this shit. A real man can commit to one woman for the rest of his life without excuses or lies. Yes, you were young, but that doesn’t mean your marriage was meant to fail.”

  My chest gets tighter as I think back to the night he proposed. I wasn’t even the one who wanted to get married. Connor insisted we do it on Christmas Eve since it was my favorite holiday, and when he brought it up, I couldn’t deny him. I loved him.

  “Connor, this is too much. We just bought a new house. There’s no way we can afford a ring like this,” I tell him, as I stare at the sparking, princess-cut rock on my ring finger.

  “Baby, don’t worry about dollar signs. This ring was meant for you. I had to buy it.”

  It’s just like all the ones I’ve pointed out to him when we browsed jewelry stores for fun. I’ve thought about this moment so many times, and now that the ring is on my finger, my dream is coming true. “You’re positive this is what you want? The house, the wedding, a family?”

  “Yes, Megan. I want it all with you. We’re getting married this month,” he says with so much excitement I’d agree to a wedding tonight if that’s what he wanted.

  “For Christmas?” I ask, trying not to get too excited. It’s my favorite time of the year and I’ve always wanted a winter wedding with snowflakes and Christmas trees, but it doesn’t give us much time to get the plans together. “Do you think we can plan an entire wedding in a couple weeks?”

  “You love Christmas, Megan. I’ll take care of the minister, the license, all of it. All you need to do is pick out a pretty dress and meet me at the end of the aisle.”