by Kate Rorick
Because as much as she hated to admit it, she had seen her mother these past few weeks. No matter how much she tried to ignore her, and stay in her own, angsty headspace, she could still see Sophia out of her peripheral vision. Worried. Waiting. Wanting.
And just yesterday, red-nosed from crying.
That had almost made Maisey stay home that morning. Instead, coward that she was, she ran out the door even earlier, to avoid seeing any more evidence of her parent’s pain.
She parked on the street, trotted up the steps, and unlocked the door to their apartment. She would just pop these on the kitchen table in the bright Fiestaware vase she’d given her mother as a Christmas gift when she was six. That way, the flowers could be credited to both of them—her and Sebastian.
That lanky idiot was lucky she was there to cover for him.
But the moment she walked into the kitchen, she was assaulted by the realization that said lanky idiot didn’t require her to cover for him.
Because he was there.
And he was basically licking her mother.
“Oh—oh, Maisey!” her mom said in between giggles. “Sebastian—stop that!” She gently pushed Sebastian on the chest and got him to retract his tongue from her ear. “What are you doing home?”
“I . . . I had a free period and I needed to grab something I forgot. For class,” she finished lamely. “What are you doing home?”
“Well, I was on my way to work when I opened the door, and found this magnificent gentleman on our doorstep,” her mother cooed into Sebastian’s adoring ( . . . gak . . . ) face.
“I drove all night from our gig in Phoenix. I wasn’t going to let this little lady spend V-Day without her baby daddy. So I told her to call in sick.”
Considering her mother was not in work clothes and wearing her flowered satin bathrobe—and Sebastian was wearing her blue polka-dotted one—Maisey did not like to guess what had happened in the interim between her mother leaving for work and Maisey walking in the door.
But something else irked Maisey more. “You told her? To compromise her job?” The last time her mother had ever taken sick days was when Maisey had mono in eighth grade. That game of spin the bottle had taken down half the class.
“They don’t need me today anyway.” Sophia sighed. “There are no department meetings, and it’s just the principals filming, and Vanessa won’t let me touch her with a ten-foot pole.”
“Nessa’s just been bitchy because her movie got completely shut out for Oscar noms, so she doesn’t get to go to the awards,” Sebastian said. “I’ll talk to her, baby, don’t you worry.”
“Oh, Sebastian,” her mother sniffled. The tears were welling again. No doubt a great deal of emotions and hormones and endorphins were rushing through her body, making her horribly sentimental and girly.
That was the only excuse for the sappy look she had on her face. And the fact that she would ever, ever let this guy intervene in her work.
“I have no doubt my mom can handle it, Sebastian,” Maisey said, hard.
“Maisey’s right, babe,” Sophia said, looking between her absolutely correct daughter and her overstepping boyfriend. “Although I appreciate it. Just like I appreciate your Valentine’s Day present.”
“What present?” Maisey asked, kicking herself for letting her curiosity get the better of her, because now she was subject to Sebastian taking off the robe (gak!) and exposing his shoulder.
Where there was a fresh, shiny tattoo, with the name Sophia in elaborate script.
“What do you think, Maisey?” he asked. “Got it last week. Couldn’t stop thinking about your mom when we were in San Antonio, so I decided to give my thoughts some permanence.”
San Antonio. If memory served, that was where the groupie pic from that article was taken. Her mom didn’t think she knew about it, but she wasn’t the only one with web notifications.
“Cool,” Maisey said through clenched teeth.
Then her mom’s gaze fell to the flowers in Maisey’s hand.
“Where did you get the flowers, honey?” Then her eyes lit up. “Are they from a boy?”
Technically, yes. But . . . “Um, no. They are from work. Extras. Here. Put them in a vase, would you?”
She handed them lamely to her mom.
“Thank you, honey!” she said, burying her nose in them, then took in their half-formed arrangement. “They’re . . . er . . . gorgeous.”
“Need to work on your flower arranging skills,” Sebastian said. “If you want to keep your job, kid.”
“Sebastian!” her mother said in mock outrage. “Maisey can do anything she sets her mind to.”
“Right. Totally. Except flower arranging. And she works at a flower shop.”
As her mother swatted Sebastian playfully, and he wrapped himself around her again like the octopus he was, Maisey cleared her throat.
“ANYWAY.” Her mom glanced her way, but Sebastian’s tongue was aiming for the right ear again. “I’m just gonna grab that thing from my room.”
“Okay, hon. You want anything? I made waffles . . . well I made them a while ago but they can be nuked.”
“Nope, I’m good,” Maisey said, stalking away to her room before she vomited.
“Yeah, we sort of forgot about the waffles, didn’t we?” she heard Sebastian purr, and her mother’s corresponding giggle.
Once safely in her room, Maisey pushed her back against the door in relief. The walls of their apartment were just getting more and more stifling. Then, her eyes fell to her little desk.
And the pile of college applications sitting on top.
Before she could change her mind, she grabbed them all, and stuffed them into her bag.
Time to get this done, she decided.
Every single rationalization she had for avoiding it had fled as she watched her mother only have eyes for Sebastian. And Maisey would be damned if she stuck around to watch out of fear or spite or whatever it was that had her acting like such a coward.
No. She was going to get the hell out of there.
Chapter 16
THE AMOUNT OF CRAP LYNDI HAD TO PUT UP with at work the week of Valentine’s Day should have earned her a six-day, seven-night all-inclusive spa vacation with cabana boys who could double for Ryan Reynolds feeding her plate after plate of eggs Benedict.
Instead, she’d gotten to deal with delayed orders of flowers, last-minute reorganizing to accommodate extra orders, a minor website crash, and taking on customer service duties the day after the Big V, which meant she mostly dealt with first and/or sole time customers completely flummoxed by the return policy, when their declarations of love didn’t go how they had hoped.
On the one hand, this was invigorating—she handled everything with grace and aplomb, and in a timely fashion. She didn’t back down with their wholesalers. She held her ground with the arrangers. She got in and got her hands dirty, showing everyone what she was capable of doing, even if her stomach was starting to poke out a bit and her boobs leaking ever so slightly. (Seriously, how did that happen? There wasn’t going to be a baby for another four and a half months, but by God, there would be milk ready for it.)
On the other, it also allowed Lyndi—or forced her, depending on your perspective—to ignore Marcus for the time being.
And what he had done.
He had not done anything as banal as forgetting Valentine’s Day—indeed, with Lyndi stressing about rose orders, he could hardly forget. In fact, they had promised each other no gifts—Lyndi was thoroughly hearted-out, and Marcus had been so busy putting the finishing touches on a new article that he’d only had time to rub Lyndi’s feet twice a day instead of the usual five.
And then, Valentine’s Day arrived.
And Lyndi finally got to read the article Marcus had been working on.
So did the rest of the world.
TELLING MY EX-BOYFRIEND I GOT MY ROOMMATE PREGNANT
It had been a small article, intended for the listicle website’s cynical, millennial-fo
cused Valentine’s Day coverage. It was buried among a dozen other articles by the website’s usual late-twentysomething contributors, most about the hazards of modern dating, the perils of swiping left or right, and the bewilderment of parents who had helicoptered their children’s entire lives, but somehow could not helicopter them into long-term satisfying relationships.
Needless to say, Marcus’s article had stood out.
And stood out far enough to end up on the phones of her co-workers, as they loaded bouquets into cars and onto bikes.
Exactly what she needed to be dealing with on such a crazy day.
When she took the phone from Judy and she saw the title of the article, it was like she couldn’t remember how to read. She knew she was looking at letters, and words, but they didn’t translate in her brain. For the first time that day, she didn’t know what to do.
Luckily it only lasted a few seconds. Then she handed the phone back to Judy and said, “If you ladies have so much time on your hands these deliveries should already be loaded.”
She’d said it in her best Paula-inspired Boss voice, her best Nathalie-teacher voice. And it worked. Everyone went back to loading up the deliveries. And if they shot Lyndi the occasional hooded look, well, that’s what the boss got, right? No point in making a big deal out of it. It would blow over. Much like everything else on the internet, Marcus’s article would be forgotten and replaced with the next thing . . . likely a timely article written by another millennial about how St. Patrick’s Day is really about community and green artisanal beer and not about that month’s excuse to drink yourself stupid.
(That was an unkind thought, Lyndi said. But she was a little disappointed that she was going to have to sit out her friends’ green beer meet-up this year. Not that she’d gotten the invite yet.)
Yes, she was convinced the article would be forgotten. So when she got home that night, she let Marcus rub her feet, and tell her excitedly about how the article had been received. About how it had gotten more clicks than any other Valentine’s Day article they posted that day. And about how he’d gotten such positive feedback on his writing.
“An agent even called me! A literary agent!” he’d said, unable to hide his grin. She let him clink his glass of sparkling apple cider up against hers, as he leaned in for a kiss.
And she knew what type of kiss it was.
Usually, she was reciprocal, if not actively initiating sex. For real, since she’d gotten pregnant (and past the constant-nausea stage) her main pregnancy symptom was unending randiness. A circumstance which Marcus was bemusedly more than happy to take advantage of.
But at that moment, she really couldn’t celebrate with him.
“Sorry, babe,” she’d said, gently pushing him back. “I’m exhausted from today.”
She knew they’d get their groove back, just as she knew Telling My Ex-Boyfriend I Got My Roommate Pregnant would disappear into the ether, before anyone in her family or friends circle could find it. No one read Marcus’s listicle website—or at least, they didn’t admit to it.
Then, it got picked up for the New York Times’ Modern Romance column.
And suddenly, everyone had read it.
“Lyndi!” her sister exclaimed when she called. “I just read Marcus’s article. It’s, um . . . very honest. I didn’t know he’d been in such a long-term relationship.”
“Oh, honey!” This from her mom. “I’m just so proud of that boy of yours—the New York Times! I’ve told all my friends . . . although you think they would have fixed that typo in the title! It’s the New York Times, after all.”
Lyndi did not have to guess what her mother thought the typo was.
But hey, at least it got her friends—or at least Elizabeth—to reach out to her via text.
* * *
OMG just read Marcus’s article in NYT! So brave!
* * *
* * *
You must be so proud!
* * *
Yup. Proud. That was totally what she was.
It was only at this point that she could bring herself to read the article.
There was nothing in it that wasn’t true. It detailed a lunch Marcus had had with Frankie, his ex-boyfriend. A lunch she’d even known about. Marcus and Frankie had been together all through college, and for a little while after. When Marcus made the move to LA, Frankie made the move to the East Coast. They’d decided to split, but still remained close friends.
When Frankie was coming through town, Marcus had been so excited. Lyndi had been, too—she’d wanted to meet Frankie ever since she learned about his existence. But Marcus had suggested, with a glance at Lyndi’s slightly expanded waistline, that he go and see Frankie on his own. Their relationship was pretty complicated, after all. Which Lyndi accepted.
Sure, she might be curious about the man who had loved Marcus before she did. And that curiosity might have led her to do a couple of Google searches in the past, but she wasn’t jealous. There was no reason to be. She knew that now she and the baby were the center of Marcus’s life.
At least, that’s what she’d thought, until she read the article.
Of course, she couldn’t say this to Marcus. Because Marcus was riding an unanticipated career high.
“I can’t believe it,” he said, as he threw shirts onto their bed, trying to figure out which ones were fashionable enough for his purposes. “I thought they were going to read the book proposal and laugh their heads off. And not in a good way.”
Marcus had indeed talked to that literary agent. And that literary agent had convinced him to put together a book proposal based on his two memoir-ish articles about his life. A twenty-something writing his memoirs was laughable, as Marcus himself said, but this literary agent seemed adamant that he had a voice that needed to be heard.
So, he took a week off of listicle writing, and pounded out a ten-page document outlining the basic shape of the book, as well as a sample first chapter. That, along with his two articles, was submitted to the agent. Who apparently submitted it immediately to a few publishers. And now, the agent was flying him to New York to meet with the publishers individually, to “see if they clicked,” as the agent put it.
“I’m just sad that I’m going to have to miss the baby shower,” Marcus said. He was planning on being in New York for a week. Unfortunately, it was the week that her mom had planned—down to the last pink napkin—to have her baby shower.
Invitations had gone out formally in January. Like, real invitations. On paper. Lyndi hadn’t gotten a paper invitation to a party . . . ever, that she could remember. Even her one friend who got married right out of college had sent the invites via Instagram to the masses. And held the event in a bar.
The baby shower—rather, the joint baby shower with Nathalie—would be held in a bar, too. The Ora Café, to cater to Lyndi’s vegan-esque pregnancy tastes. While glad that they wouldn’t have to trek all the way up to Santa Barbara again, she was a little worried that none of her friends would have the easy excuse of the party being too far away, so they would have to come up with something even more lame to avoid her.
And since Marcus would be in New York, Lyndi was 100 percent certain she would be standing at her baby shower alone.
“I know, it sucks,” she said, picking out her favorite red shirt of his, folding it, and putting it in his suitcase. “But you have a really good reason. Not even Kathy could argue against it.”
Marcus grinned. “But she tried.”
“She did,” Lyndi agreed. Now that she was building her own family, it felt like her mom saw her differently—and she was starting to get some of the frustration Nathalie was always complaining about. “But I’m so jealous you’re getting a week in New York! If I was going I would spend the entire week just walking around Brooklyn.”
“Sounds like something you wouldn’t want to do in winter.”
“Ugh, I always forget it isn’t seventy-five degrees and perfect everywhere.”
“I wish you could come with me,�
� Marcus said, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her on the nose. She let herself slide into his embrace. Time had passed, and she was feeling a little bit more sentimental. Maybe not back into their groove, per se, but well on their way.
“Me, too. But can’t miss the shower—not to mention work.” Ever since Valentine’s Day, they had kept a surprising amount of their new customers, which meant more work, which meant Paula needed her more than ever. “But I was thinking . . . I could come over the next weekend? We could change your tickets, you could stay another couple days. I did glance at flights, and they’re pretty reasonable this time of year.”
“That’s an idea,” Marcus said. “I’ll ask Frankie.”
Lyndi froze. “Frankie?”
“Yeah—ask if he’s willing to put up with the two of us for a day or two.”
“You’re . . . you’re staying with Frankie?”
“Of course. The agent is covering my tickets, but I couldn’t let her put me up in a hotel, especially when Frankie’s couch is right there.”
And with those words, something in Lyndi—something that usually kept her quiet, and kept the peace—broke. The pain that had been fomenting inside of her ever since she read that article a week ago spilled out.
“Are you serious? You’re staying with Frankie?”
“Well, yeah,” Marcus said, finally looking up at her distraught tone. “He’s basically my best friend.”
“The best friend you used to sleep with.” The spite dripped from her words in ways she didn’t mean it to.
But it certainly got his attention.
“Yes. Are you telling me you’re not friends with any of your exes?”
“Not best friends. Not ‘stay on their couch’ friends. Not write an entire article about having lunch with said friend.”
“Okay,” Marcus said, closing his suitcase with a forceful thud. “Let’s do it.”
