by Phoebe Fox
Her tangle of blond hair fell forward, obscuring her face as she stared down at the floor. A dark round spot appeared on the terra-cotta tile in the entryway—and then another one—and then I realized my best friend was crying.
I all but dropped the coffees and bakery bag to the concrete walkway and took her in my arms. “Sash…” I said helplessly. “Sash…What is it? What’s wrong?”
She was clutching onto me like a life raft, and now she was sobbing—I could feel her body heave, but she still made no sound, and that was the most awful part of all. Histrionics from my dramatic best friend I could handle—I was used to it. This silent, racking grief felt too deep for me to know how to reach.
I led her inside and onto her red velvet sofa and held her for a long time, saying nothing, just gripping her tight and stroking her shoulder, her back, her hair, the pit in my stomach yawing wider.
Finally she grew still and her breathing evened out, and I relaxed my hold on her enough to pull away and look her in the face. Or try. Her head was still bent down, her dull gaze on the carpet.
“Tell me, Sash,” I said, bracing myself for the worst. “We’ll get through it—whatever it is. I swear to you.”
Usually even in tears Sasha was gorgeous, but now she looked…like normal sloppy-crying humans. I reached up to wipe her face, but she didn’t even seem to register my touch.
“I’m pregnant,” she said dully.
Her words knocked the air out of me—for a second I literally couldn’t find the breath to speak.
“What?” I finally wheezed out.
“Yeah.”
“You…and Stu?”
Sasha’s brow crinkled. “Yes, me and Stu—jeez, Brook. Who else?”
“No, that’s not what I…” I scooted closer and put my hand on her leg. “When are you going to tell him? Do you need me to be there?”
Sasha looked at me as if I’d grown a second head. “I already told Stu, Brook. I tell him everything.”
I goggled at her. She told him everything? Sasha, who kept so many threads of what she wanted a man to know running at the same time, I suspected she had to use a spreadsheet?
“You do?”
She gave a one-shouldered shrug and looked away. “He’s my best friend. Next to you.” If I’d ever had one second of doubt about the two of them, Sasha had just casually blown it away like the fluff of a mimosa bloom.
“Sash…I know my brother—he might seem like a total goofball, but there’s no way he’ll bail on you. He’s crazy about you. I promise he’ll be on board with this,” I reassured her. He’d better.
“I know he is. He’s already talking about buying a house, getting married, and I—”
“Stu wants to get married?!” I didn’t realize I had screamed the words until I heard the ringing echo in the room.
“Take a breath, crazy,” Sasha said flatly, eyeballing me.
I obeyed, but I couldn’t get my mind around it—my brother, jumping on board the good ship Commitment of his own free will? I never thought I’d see it.
“But then…” I began slowly, puzzling through the facts as I spoke, “what’s the matter? Isn’t all of this what you want?” I finished, meeting Sasha’s gaze in bewilderment.
Sasha sighed and her eyes filled up. “I don’t know. I don’t know, Brook.”
I’d always expected that when the day came that commitment-craving Sasha shared news like this with me, it would be an all-out bacchanalia of celebration, Girls Gone Wild but with a ring and babies instead of a fling and boobies. I’d never foreseen this reaction.
I took a long, deep breath in and schooled my face into a neutral expression.
“Okay. All right. Let’s talk it out. What part are you unsure of?”
Sasha looked at me incredulously. “It’s scaring the shit out of me.”
“Oh, Sash, of course it is,” I said, relief crashing over me. “It’s terrifying.” Fear I understood. Fear I could deal with. “Stay here—I’ll be right back,” I said. “Let me get the rolls and coffee I left outside and we can sit and talk.”
My words prompted a fresh torrent of sobbing, and I stopped midway to the front door, at a loss.
“Sash?”
“Coffee,” she wailed. “Oh, God, coffee!”
I stared at her for a moment, trying to figure it out, and then: “Because coffee?” I asked hesitantly.
Sasha nodded, still crying, and I nodded too. Coffee, because a pregnant woman couldn’t have caffeine. And because Sasha sucked down coffee like an SUV sucked gas.
“How about some juice?” I asked carefully.
Juice was okay, apparently, because Sasha gave a tearful nod, and I went into the kitchen instead—I didn’t want to risk even carrying the coffee cups past her to toss them out—and poured us both some OJ. When I came back her face was dry, if still pinched. I handed her one of the glasses and she took a long gulp, draining nearly half.
“Thanks,” she gasped when she finished, setting the glass on the cocktail table. I sat beside her and waited.
“Okay,” she started, gripping her thighs with the palms of her hands as if bracing herself. “First off, I…” She stopped, took a deep breath. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about…all of this. I didn’t mean to keep it from you,” she went on, not looking at me. “It was just…” I saw her eyes fill again, and she blinked. “I needed to think about it without the filter of you.”
I must have blanched, because her gaze shot to me. “I don’t mean that the way it sounded, Brook.” Tears slipped past her lashes again—we were like a Nicholas Sparks movie—and she reached for my hand. “You were the only person I wanted to talk it out with,” she said sadly. “And I couldn’t—because it was your brother.”
I wanted to argue, but I couldn’t. Things were a little different with us now. They had to be, because whereas once Sasha and I were each other’s number one confidante and ally, now her deepest loyalties were to Stu. And she was right—this wasn’t a situation I could be completely objective about, I was realizing as I fought not to try to convince her to be happy about it.
And after all…wasn’t that the same reason I hadn’t called her about Michael? So I could think it through without the filter of her?
“It’s okay,” I said. “I get it.”
“We don’t have to talk about this if you…if it’s too hard to hear.”
I thought about all the times my best friend had listened to me working something out ad nauseam, serving as a nonjudgmental, supportive sounding board. “Of course we do. Tell me what you need.”
“I don’t know. Why aren’t I happy about this?” She shot me an apologetic look with the words, but I just squeezed her fingers. “I need…I need to figure out what I’m feeling.”
“Okay,” I said, turning to face her fully. “Then let’s talk it out. Do you love Stu?”
“Yes.”
Her immediate, emphatic answer lifted a weight off my chest, but I determinedly kept digging. “I mean more than like a brother? Like, does he still seem the right ‘fit’ for you, everything else aside?”
“Of course he does.”
“All right.” I nodded, breathing a little bit easier. “It always seemed to me that that was what you wanted—someone who loves you completely, who you love. Someone who wants you more than anything.”
“It was…It is.” She frowned. “But buying a house, getting married—that all sounds like someone else’s life to me. I don’t know if I can handle that.”
“Of course you can,” I said automatically.
But Sasha went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “And adding a kid to all that…” She looked down at her lap, her face bunching. “Maybe I’m just not maternal,” she said in a trembling voice, and at her words her tears spilled over again, dotting her ratty sweatpants.
My heart tore at her miserable expression, and my brain rebelled against the notion. Sasha would make an awesome mom—she brimmed with genuine, unrestrained emotion she lavished on the people she loved. She was crazy enough to be playful and fun, but at her core she knew about responsibility and discipline. Frankly I always thought she’d be a far better mom than I would—I was afraid I’d wind up too much the product of my own mother, setting the bar for a child impossibly high and never letting her feel she was meeting it.
I took hold of Sasha’s limp hands. “I don’t know if any new mom magically feels maternal, Sash. How can anyone think they’re ready for something so huge? Even for people who were trying to get pregnant, I have to think that once it actually happens, all that responsibility can be awfully scary.”
She looked up, meeting my eyes, and the dark sadness in hers was terrible to see. “I don’t know if I’m ready for this, Brook,” she whispered.
There was nothing much to say to that. We sat, silent, simply looking at each other, for a long, heartbreaking moment.
Finally she blinked, and looked away. “I’m so messed up. I should want this. I so want to want this.”
Her words kindled a spark of hope in my chest, but I held it at bay. The worst thing a therapist could do was to push someone in the direction she thought they should go.
“I used to see this sometimes in my old practice,” I said gently. “When people finally get everything they ever wanted, a lot of times it scares them to death and they run away from it.”
She bit the inside of her lips—a habit she’d had since we were kids whenever she was unsure. “Do you think that’s what this is?”
I shrugged. “Maybe. Do you?”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re therapizing me.”
“Sorry.”
“Help me, Brook,” she said quietly. “I don’t want to screw this up by not knowing what the hell I’m doing. What I want. You have to fix this—that’s what you do. Help me be ready for all of it. Please.”
I took in another deep breath and nodded, meeting her eyes with an encouraging smile. “I will, Sash. We’re going to make everything okay.”
She practically hurled herself into my arms, gripping me with a strength that nearly whooshed the breath out of me.
But as I gently rubbed her back, staring unseeing over her shoulder, I had no idea how I was going to live up to that promise.
eleven
By the next morning I still had no plan of attack for Sasha, but I was too frazzled to keep working on it—I was due for the Sunday-morning get-together with Ben that had become our new routine, and my stomach was fluttering.
When we’d started trying to rebuild some kind of friendship from the ashes of our torched relationship, we’d begun slowly, on neutral ground. The first time I’d met him and Jake at Dog Beach was a Sunday a little over a month ago, and I’d been sizzling with a nauseating mix of emotions then too: excitement at seeing him again after so long; apprehension over how he’d act, what we’d say, whether things would be awkward and painful; and a breathless giddiness.
That day I’d brought a ball, thinking not only to throw it for Jake to chase, but to occupy my attention and distract myself from the nerves that were shuddering through me.
But Jake, it turned out, was not a “fetch” kind of dog. He’d been happy enough to see the red rubber ball when I brought it out of my bag, and mouth it, lick it, and otherwise demonstrate a certain affection for it. But as soon I hurled the ball down the beach, Jake looked mournfully after it, then back at me with a wounded expression like, We were having such a nice time…why’d you throw that toy away? I kept trying, with equal lack of success, until I realized that Jake was just as happy to wander and sniff and wrestle with the other dogs—and I was just as happy to sit and slowly, ever so gradually, make conversation with Ben.
Today, as I pulled on shorts and brushed on more makeup than was strictly necessary for Dog Beach, my pinballing emotions had a lot to do with Sasha—I was still digesting the news, still struggling with her deep-seated doubts and what it might mean for her and my brother, my family. I was desperate to talk it out with someone, and Ben had always been a wonderful listener.
But of course I couldn’t talk about this with him—with anyone. Sasha had sworn me to secrecy. And the weight of keeping such an enormous secret pressed almost as heavily on me as Sasha’s ambivalence.
But my stomach also churned about Ben. Was I really sensing a door opening lately, or was that just wishful thinking on my part? And if I was…what about Perfect Pamela?
So I’d once again brought something to occupy my hands and my attention—a silly Beanie Baby frog I’d bought on a whim at a checkout counter—and Jake’s circuits lit right up at the sight of it.
“Nice of you to bring him a toy,” Ben said as I dropped my bag to the sand beside his things.
He wore cargo shorts, his legs below them tanned and peppered with dark hair, white sand already coating the sides of his feet and ankles. I swallowed and dragged my eyes up to his face.
“I figured he might like this better than the ball.” I leaned over to show Jake the frog.
As he had with the ball, the dog made sweet love to it with his mouth—until I tossed it a few feet away. Jake barely needed to move to go get it—three steps in that direction would have yielded the jackpot—yet he simply stared at the castaway toy with a sad sense of acceptance. Very well. We have discarded the frog.
I tried a few more times, with similar results. Finally, resigned, I walked over to pick up the toy from the sand, angling a look back at Ben, who’d been watching with a sly grin. “I guess fetch is simply not in the cards,” I said, and tossed him the animal.
At which point Jake went wild, tearing over to Ben, panting and slavering like a feral creature, doing his bunny-hop thing and barking madly.
I blinked. “Well. Maybe he only wants to play with you,” I said, trying not to take it personally. “Throw it for him.”
Ben obliged, tossing the stuffed animal ten feet or so across the sand.
At which point Jake sank into a pose of dejected ennui.
“What the hell, dog?” Ben asked him, and a laugh bubbled out of me, some of my tension beginning to unwind. “Go get it.”
Jake let out a pained sigh.
We spent far too long trying to encourage, cajole, and coerce the dog to go pick up the frog he’d wanted so desperately mere minutes ago, but Jake was inconsolable at its loss. Finally Ben went to retrieve it—“Well, it was a sweet thought, anyway—thanks,” he said—and tossed it over to me.
And Jake again went nuts.
Finally Ben and I figured out that any dispensation of the frog was a grave disappointment to Jake—but the act of throwing the toy between us made him delirious with happiness. And thus ensued a game of Pickle with Jake in the middle, joyfully hopping between us as we threw the Beanie Baby back and forth, but never once trying to actually intercept it.
“Weird dog you have there,” I said after ten minutes of this, with no sign of Jake’s interest flagging.
Ben tossed the toy to me, Jake following it like a comet’s tail. “He’s his own man. You gotta like that.”
I tossed it back, and Jake went sailing after it, screeching to a halt at Ben’s feet. I grinned. “Like father, like son?”
Ben’s answering smile warmed me more than the bright sun heating the top of my head and my shoulders and the sand under my bare feet. “You oughta know.”
His answer—even with dozens of people milling around with their dogs, twenty feet of open air between us—felt shockingly intimate, and pleasure jolted through me as I lobbed the stuffed toy back.
Ben made a show of letting the Beanie Baby plop into his cupped hand. “You throw like a girl,” he teased as he arced it back in an exaggerated parabola, Jake
scrambling over in my direction.
I plucked it from the air. “I am a girl. And I thought this was about taunting your dog, not proving our pitching skills.” I drilled the beanbag frog straight at him, and watched him hustle to get his hands up to catch it.
“Nice!” he said admiringly.
“I didn’t grow up with a brother for nothing.”
We were grinning across the sand at each other, Jake looking between us, confusedly trying to figure out who was holding his beloved frog as we bantered back and forth.
This was what I’d missed so badly since Ben and I had broken up last year. This easy rapport, the sense of playfulness and fun that had always been such a part of our relationship. The feeling that I was authentically myself with Ben in a way I’d never really been with anyone else, not even Michael—who I’d managed to avoid thinking about, amid everything else.
Being with Ben had always felt oddly familiar, as though we’d known each other for years—even from our first ill-advised date, when I’d intended merely to use him to try to make Kendall jealous and instead found myself utterly absorbed by our conversation, drawn to him in a way I thought I couldn’t be when I’d been wallowing in a morass of heartbreak and mild insanity. There was never any pretense between us, no games, just a genuine connection, a feeling that he knew me and I knew him, and we both liked the person we saw.
Unless I was totally misreading the situation—and let’s remember I’m a licensed professional in the area of the human psyche—I thought he might be cracking open a door again between us.
The same way Michael was.
I knew exactly where Michael’s head was—he’d told me. If I wanted to give the two of us another chance, I knew that avenue was wide-open.
But Ben changed the equation. I’d let him go because I wasn’t sure what I wanted. In the seven months since, I’d figured it out—and I knew now. If it was being offered to me, I wasn’t willing to let go of it again.
It might not have been fair to Michael to make my decision with him contingent on Ben. But then again, Michael hadn’t exactly played fair with me in the past.
