Until Now

by Rebecca Phillips

  “Hope I didn’t make too many crumbs,” I called after him as I opened my car door. He had his back to me, but I could tell by the slight quiver in his shoulders that he was trying not to laugh.

  On second thought, maybe I would come back next Sunday.

  Chapter 7

  The tentative plans Taylor and I had made to go out for dinner on the weekend never materialized, so we met at her apartment on Wednesday evening and ordered take-out Chinese food instead. I headed there straight from work, thankful that I didn’t have to endure another lonely evening at home.

  “So you, like, just met some stranger and ended up going to her house for dinner?” Taylor popped a piece of General Tso’s spicy chicken in her mouth and gave me an incredulous look.

  “Yeah,” I said. Her reaction to hearing about the events of last weekend was typical Taylor—horror, awe, and a grudging respect for my audacity. “Weird, right?”

  “For you? Not really. You’ve always been the spontaneous type.” She leaned back on the couch, plate of food resting on her thigh. “Tell me more about the son. The one you met at the bookstore.”

  I poked my chopsticks into a mound of rice. “What do you want to know?”

  She cocked an eyebrow at me, her non-verbal way of saying What do you think I want to know?

  “His name is Ryan. He’s divorced with a kid, and therefore undateable. So wipe that look off your face.”

  Ever since I’d cleaned up my act, she’d been after me to find a Nice Guy, one I could commit myself to and bring along on double dates with her and her boyfriend. But niceness (and hotness) aside, I’d established a few dating policies for myself over the past three years. There were certain types of guys I’d vowed to steer clear of: bad boys, bad boys who drank/did drugs, and guys with messy entanglements that could possibly bring unneeded drama into my life.

  An ex-wife and a child definitely fell under “entanglements.”

  “That is a lot of baggage,” Taylor said, reading my mind. Then she grinned at me over the rim of her water glass. “Is he hot? He is, isn’t he? I could tell by your face when you said his name. He’s a hot dad. He’s a DILF.”

  Ignoring her, I shoved a bite of spring roll in my mouth and glanced around the small apartment, which was an interesting combination of messy and neat. Taylor, I knew, was the slob in this relationship, and her boyfriend Michael’s slightly-obsessive tidying was usually in vain. I wondered, as I often did, how they cohabitated so peacefully. The most time I’d ever spend in constant contact with a guy was twenty-four hours, and that had been more than enough for me. I didn’t like sharing a bed.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” Taylor said, thankfully dropping the Ryan interrogation. “I talked to my dad about your, uh, housing situation the other day.”

  I met her gaze again, intrigued. My housing, or impending lack thereof, was definitely becoming a “situation.” A real estate agent showed up at the house the day before to take pictures and hammer a For Sale sign into the front lawn. Today, the house had officially gone on the market, and Alan had mentioned nonchalantly as we passed in the hallway this morning that there was interest in the listing already. Which meant that in a few weeks’ time, I could be homeless.

  “And what did your dad say?” I asked, even though I already suspected. Taylor’s father and stepmom were the type of people who pulled over on the highway to help change someone’s tire at eleven o’clock at night in a rain storm. Selfless to a fault.

  “My old room is just sitting there, empty,” she said carefully. She knew how I felt about being a burden. “If you need somewhere to stay for a few days or weeks or whatever, Dad and Lynn would love to have you.”

  I tried to picture it: me in Taylor’s old room, a place we’d spent countless weekends hanging out and talking about boys and getting ready for dates and parties. I’d always adored Taylor’s father, Steven, even after I’d found out he’d cheated on Taylor’s mother, divorced her, and moved in with his girlfriend, Lynn, who he’d ended up marrying. He was funny and loving and had this warm, teasing way about him. He and Lynn cared about me, so of course they would offer me a room in their house.

  But could I stay there indefinitely? Eat their food? Share a bathroom with Taylor’s teenage sister? It would be weird, living on that street again. When Taylor and I first met, Mom and I had lived just a few houses down from her dad’s house in an ancient, crappy bungalow that had seen better decades. We’d stayed there for a record-breaking six years before moving to the upscale Redwood Hills subdivision with Alan. I wasn’t exactly nostalgic for the dump.

  “If I decided to stay there,” I said, setting my empty plate on the coffee table, “I’d have to pay them something. Like rent.”

  “Of course.” She nodded quickly. “You guys can discuss that. I mean, if you decide to stay there.”

  “We’ll see what happens.”

  Michael entered the apartment then, halting the discussion for the time being. After neatly hanging his jacket in the closet near the door, he made his way into the tiny living room and flopped on the couch between us.

  “Hi,” he said to Taylor, putting his arm around her and kissing her cheek.

  “I’m also here,” I said, waving, and he dutifully leaned over to drop a peck on my cheek too.

  “How was dinner with your father?” Taylor asked. She’d told me earlier that Michael’s dad had “scheduled” a dinner with him so they could “discuss” Michael’s “future.” She’d used air quotes and everything.

  “The usual,” Michael replied, scrubbing a hand over his angular jaw. “I’m a disappointment, I’m throwing my life away, he’s not going to pay for next year’s tuition, et cetera. Hey, is that sweet and sour pork?”

  Taylor looked at him with big eyes. “He’s not going to pay your tuition?”

  “Don’t worry, my mom will change his mind. And if she doesn’t, I’ll have the money from my job to put toward it.”

  “Congrats on that, by the way,” I put in. He’d landed a paid summer internship at some museum downtown that I’d never been to even though I’d lived here all my life.

  “Yeah, but our paychecks are kind of necessary for things like rent and utilities. And eating,” Taylor said, flustered. Ah, young love.

  “God,” I said, reclining back on the couch. “You guys act like you’re married already.”

  They both turned to glower at me. I accused them of acting like an old married couple—which they took as an insult—almost every time we hung out. But it was true. They were comfortable and settled and even finished each other’s sentences sometimes. Soon, they’d probably start to look alike.

  “I can relate to the unreasonable money-wielding asshole thing,” I said, getting back to the subject at hand so they’d stop glaring at me. “Alan probably won’t pay for my tuition next year either. I’m going to have to start selling my organs on the black market.” I didn’t know for sure that Alan was cutting me off, but I assumed that once he was done with Mom, he’d be done with all of us. I wasn’t his daughter; he had no responsibility to me. As for how I was going to pay next year’s tuition if he didn’t, I hadn’t thought that far ahead yet.

  “Damn,” Michael said, digging into what was left of the Chinese food. “My father and your stepfather should hang out and go golfing together or something.”

  I laughed, imagining this, while Taylor gazed adoringly at him like he was the best thing since toaster pastries. Which I suppose he was. Michael was the ultimate Nice Guy, despite the fact that he’d grown up with a dickhead father and was raised primarily in snooty Redwood Hills. That was where I’d met him, actually, at a party in one of the neighborhood’s many unsupervised McMansions. I was barely sixteen at the time, and neck-deep in my binge-drinking, pot-smoking, boy-crazy phase. The night I met Michael, I was even more messed up than usual, mainly because the boy I was with, some sleazebag whose name I couldn’t recall, kept plying me with berry-flavored wine coolers. The sleazebag was guiding me down the hallw
ay on the top floor of the house, searching for an empty bedroom, when this tall, dark-haired guy stopped in front of us, blocking our way.

  “You okay?” he’d asked me, his blue-gray eyes flicking between me and Sleazebag, who I didn’t think he knew personally.

  “Get the fuck out of my way, man,” Sleazebag had snapped at him.

  “I think…” I’d said, wondering why the hallway was spinning. The back of my throat tingled as the sugary coolers inched their way back up. “…I’m going to throw up.”

  Luckily, I’d been right next to an empty bathroom. When I came back out, pale and sweaty, Sleazebag had disappeared but the dark-haired boy was still there, leaning against the wall. He walked me back downstairs and left me with two of my girlfriends, and the creepy guy who would’ve done God-knows-what to me in that bedroom never came near me again. And the dark-haired guy and I became friends. Just friends. He was undeniably good-looking in a clean-cut, preppy kind of way, but he was the exact opposite of my type. I fell for bad boys, smokers, potheads, and assholes who used me and never called back.

  Michael was none of those things. He was sweet and polite and respectful—too good for someone like me. But I knew he’d be a perfect match for my nice, quiet, pretty friend Taylor, who I also felt I didn’t deserve. So I saved him for her, like a present. She was dating someone else at that point, some douche who’d ended up cheating on her, but that didn’t stop me from talking her up to Michael every chance I got. And when they finally did meet, and hit it off, I felt an overwhelming sense of accomplishment. I’d done something right. Changed two lives for the better. Repaid them both for the many kindnesses they’d shown me. They’d been inseparable ever since, aside from one incident during Michael’s first year of college when they broke up for a few months and dated other people. But I never doubted they’d find their way back to each other again. The two of them were meant to be.

  This was even more apparent now, four and half years later, as I sat in the cute apartment they shared and watched them nuzzle each other on the couch like they didn’t have an audience. Okay, so they could also be a bit stomach-turning.

  “I’m gonna take off now so you two can grope each other in private,” I said, making a move to stand up.

  “Uh, no you’re not.” Taylor leaned across Michael’s lap to yank me back down. “You’re staying to watch TV with us. I’ll even let you pick the show.”

  “Great,” Michael muttered. He knew I liked trashy reality TV and documentary-type series about serial killers and wife-murderers.

  Smiling, I settled back against the couch cushions and held out my hand for the remote. Avoiding home by hanging out with Taylor made me feel like I was fourteen years old again. Her dad’s house had always been a refuge for me, a place I could escape to when the constant silence at my own house got to be too much. Mom was never around, never cared about how I was doing in school or where I was going or who my friends were, but it wasn’t like that at Taylor’s house. There, people noticed and asked questions and cared.

  “Hey,” I said to Taylor during a commercial break. “Let your dad and Lynn know that I’ll probably take them up on their offer. And tell them thanks.”

  She nodded without even looking at me, like it was obvious from the moment she mentioned it that I would end up saying yes.

  * * *

  I stayed at Taylor and Michael’s place until almost eleven, thinking that was more than enough time for Alan to get home and disappear into his bedroom for the night. But when I walked into the house at eleven-fifteen, I found him in the kitchen, sitting at the breakfast bar with his iPad and a bottle of Red Stripe.

  I always made it a point to avoid interaction with my stepfather whenever possible, so I quickly changed my mind about the glass of water I’d come in here for and spun around to leave. Just as I was about to cross the threshold into the hallway, his voice stopped me cold.

  “She called.”

  I turned back around. “Mom? She called?” When he nodded, my first reaction was relief. She wasn’t dead in a ditch, at least. My second reaction was anger, because she’d been gone for almost two weeks hadn’t sent so much as a goddamn postcard asking about her children. “Where is she?”

  Alan shrugged and picked up his beer. “The call display said ‘unavailable’ so she was probably using one of those disposable cell phones. She wouldn’t say where she was.”

  “What did she say?” I asked through gritted teeth. One of these times, I was going to crack a molar while talking to this man.

  “That she needed a break.” His mouth twisted on the last two words. “Must be nice, huh? Running away whenever life gets tough.”

  “A break from what? You? The kids? What does that even mean?”

  “It means,” he said, closing his iPad case and sliding off the stool, “she’s not coming back anytime soon. She wants her freedom. Wants to pretend she’s single and childless so she can relive her youth or whatever. Like I said, who knows what goes on in that crazy bitch’s head.”

  I almost laughed. Relive her youth? She’d been doing that for as long as I could remember. She’d had me when she was nineteen and way too immature to be a mother, and she’d never changed. She’d never grown up and acted the way a mom should.

  “What about Drake and Lila?” I asked, stepping forward and facing him head-on. I wanted him to look me in the eye when he answered this question.

  “What about them?” He grabbed his beer and took another swig. The smell of it reminded me of sweaty skin and thumping bass and empty bedrooms in parent-free houses. My past. “I’m divorcing Lori and getting full custody of the kids. She left them, remember? If she thinks she can just waltz back in here and get them back without any repercussions, she’s got another thing coming.”

  The same wave of fury that tore through me the day he told me his parents were coming tore through me again, but this time, I didn’t have a phone in my hand to squeeze. This time, I wanted to crush his windpipe instead. “The twins are not bargaining chips,” I yelled at him. “You don’t use them as pawns to get revenge. And why the fuck do you want full custody of them, anyway? You’re never even home.”

  “That’s why they’re staying with my parents,” he replied, unruffled by my shouting. “They’re perfectly happy there.”

  “Are they?” Had he even called his parents to check on them? I had, on numerous occasions, even though I knew they didn’t want me to. I’d received the same answer each time: They’re fine. But since they wouldn’t let me actually speak to the kids, I had my doubts.

  “I plan to go and see them whenever I can,” Alan said. “Spend weekends there.”

  “Oh.” I threw up my hands, like How big of you, to make time in your busy schedule to visit your own children. “So am I invited to come along on these visits, or am I banned on account of being a crazy bitch like my mother?”

  Alan laughed. Laughed. Like I wasn’t standing right in front of him, angry tears in my eyes, so desperate to visit my brother and sister that I’d willingly spend four hours in a car with him and stay in his judgmental parents’ house just to see their round little faces again. Just to make sure they didn’t forget me.

  “Never mind,” I said, and then I swung open the fridge door and snatched up what was left of the Red Stripe. “I already know the answer.”

  Incensed, I took the half-empty six-pack in one hand and a bottle opener in the other, and carried both upstairs to my bedroom. Once again, I felt like a young teenager, hiding in my room with stolen alcohol because I didn’t feel up to dealing with life.

  Fuck it, I thought, cracking open the first bottle. My two biggest reasons for behaving like a decent, honorable human being were no longer around to motivate me.

  Chapter 8

  I managed to last three more days in the Redwood Hills house before calling Taylor’s father and stepmother to ask if they’d mind if I moved in sooner rather than later. No problem. I spent Friday and Saturday nights packing up my room, then loa
ded up my Nissan on Sunday morning, my day off.

  The Brogans lived in an established area of the city in a seventy-year-old, two-storey house, renovated inside to look more modern. Taylor’s old bedroom was on the top floor, next to her fifteen-year-old sister Emma’s room. Emma was only there on weekends; during the week, she lived with their mom in Oakfield, a town located a few miles outside the city. Across the hall, there was a bathroom and two more bedrooms, both of which were empty. Taylor’s stepsister, Leanne, had moved to Switzerland a couple of weeks ago after her college graduation, and Jamie, her fourteen-year-old stepbrother, had relocated last year to the bedroom in the finished basement.

  “Thank you so much for letting me stay here,” I told Taylor’s father for the millionth time as he helped me carry my junk up the stairs.

  “Don’t mention it, sweetheart,” he said, placing my biggest suitcase next to the bedroom closet. “You know you’re like a daughter to us.”

  I smiled. I had spent a lot of time here over the years, eating meals at their table and spending entire weekends with Taylor, my sleeping bag spread out on her bedroom rug. We’d grown apart for a few months when I was seventeen and in perpetual self-destruct mode, but I always knew she’d be there if I needed her. Her family, too.

  “You won’t even know I’m here,” I said, glancing around the room. It didn’t look much like Taylor’s anymore. They’d turned it into a guest room after she moved in with Michael, complete with throw pillows on the double bed and neutral prints adorning the walls.

  “Well, that’s too bad,” Steven said, scratching his beard. He was the quintessential college professor—facial hair, sweaters, charmingly flakey. “We want to know you’re here. It’ll be a pleasure having a young woman living with us again.”

  “What about Emma?”

  “She’s a teenager. There is nothing pleasant about those.”