After I Do

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

  This is surreal. “And how is it going to work with this Natalie person?” I’m sticking to logistical questions, because I’m out of my league, emotionally.

  “Well, that’s part of what makes this complicated but possibly really fortuitous.”

  “OK,” I say.

  “Natalie lives in L.A., so . . . I’m moving home.”

  Whoa. My mom is going to have a grandchild to play with. My grandmother will have a great-grandchild. Charlie solved the problem. He took the pressure off of me. It’s not up to me anymore. That’s good, right? “Wow, this is a lot to take in!” I say.

  “I know. But here is the thing. She’s an amazing woman. And I really think she is someone I can try to make it work with. She’s smart, and she’s funny. We have a great time together.”

  “How did you two meet?

  “We met on an airplane,” he says. “And we . . . hooked up. And I didn’t think anything of it. So, you know, that part is a hard sell.”

  “An airplane?” I say, but I’m putting the pieces together faster than I can talk. My brother slept with a woman he met on the plane when he came home for my birthday. That’s what we’re talking about. “Ew, Charlie!” I say, laughing. “Was it, like, on the airplane?”

  “In an attempt to protect the dignity of myself and my child’s mother, I decline to answer.” So yes, it was.

  “Holy crap,” I say, marveling at just how sudden and insane this all is. “So you are moving in with someone named Natalie. And you two are having a baby.”

  “Yep. We’ve been talking every night after work, calling each other, e-mailing. I really like her. We get along very well. We have the same ideas so far about how we want to handle this.”

  “That’s great,” I say. “When is she due?”

  “End of June.”

  “Well, Charlie,” I say, “congratulations!” Admittedly, there is a part of me that feels leapfrogged, passed over, rendered irrelevant.

  Charlie sounds relieved. “Thank you. I’m pretty scared to tell Mom.”

  “No,” I say. I can feel myself shaking my head. “Don’t be. You sound happy. And Natalie sounds great. And this is, like, the best news Mom could hope for. You’re moving home, and she gets a grandchild. I’m telling you, she’s gonna be so happy.”

  “You think so? I feel like most moms probably don’t want to hear their sons say, ‘So I knocked up this girl.’”

  “Right, it will be a shock, for sure. But that’s also not what you’re saying. You have a plan. You feel good about it. If you feel good about it, she’s going to feel good about it. Have you told Rachel?”

  “No,” he says. “I just wanted to get your take on whether I should call now or do it in person at Christmas. I feel like Rachel can be a bit judgmental about these things. She’s kind of defensive about being single. It’s been so long since she even dated anyone, you know? I want to be sensitive to that.”

  “So you figured you’d call your almost-divorced sister,” I say, teasing him.

  He laughs. “Oh, come on, you and Ryan will be fine. You said so yourself. I’m not worried about you,” Charlie says. “If anything, I called you because you’re the one who always knows what to do.”

  In a time when I feel as if my whole life is in shambles, when I feel as if the last thing I know is what to do, it swells my heart to think that my little brother might look up to me. But if I tell him any of that, if I let on how much it means to me, I’ll lose it right here in the Farmers Market. So instead, I keep a lid on it. “I think your instincts are right to do it in person,” I say. “If you’re coming home for Christmas, maybe just give Mom the heads-up and tell her that you’re going to bring a friend or something? I’m assuming you’ll be staying with Natalie?”

  “Yeah,” Charlie says. “So I guess I should maybe let Mom know I won’t be staying with her, that I’ll be staying with someone else. That will trigger her suspicions that something is up, but I’ll just keep it under wraps until I see her. Better to tell her in person, you’re right.”

  “Yes, exactly,” I say. “And don’t worry. She really will be happy.”

  “Thank you,” Charlie says, and for the first time, I feel the usual edge to his voice is gone.

  “I’m so curious,” I say. “So you meet her, and you, you know, wherever you, you know. And how does she track you down? When she finds out she’s pregnant and she knows it’s yours, how does she find you all the way in Chicago?”

  “I gave her my number,” Charlie says, as if the answer is perfectly obvious.

  “You gave your number to a woman you barely know, who you had sex with once on an airplane?”

  “I always give my number to one-night stands,” Charlie says. “Condoms are only ninety-eight-percent effective.”

  And that, right there, is my little brother. He somehow manages to be just as thoughtful as he is cynical. And now he’s going to be someone’s dad.

  And I’m going to be someone’s aunt.

  “Hey, Charlie?” I say.

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re gonna be a great dad.”

  Charlie laughs. “You think so?”

  I don’t actually have any idea. I have no evidence whatsoever. I just choose to believe in him. And for a second, I understand why everyone thinks my marriage will be OK. They don’t have any evidence. They just choose to believe in me.

  Mila comes into the office the next morning with bloodshot eyes and a deep-seated frown.

  “Whoa, are you OK?” I ask her.

  “I’m fine,” she says, putting her keys down on her desk and taking her purse off her shoulder. It drops with a thud.

  “You’re sure you’re good?”

  She looks up at me. “Do you want to go grab coffee?” she asks. Ours isn’t the sort of office where people often just leave to go get coffee the minute they come in, but I doubt anyone will really notice.

  “Sure,” I say. “Let me get my wallet.”

  Mila puts her purse back on her shoulder as I run to my desk and grab my bag. We are quiet until we hit the elevator bank. I press the down button, the elevator dings, and luckily, there is no one on it.

  “I didn’t sleep last night,” she says, as the doors close.

  “At all?”

  “Nope. And I got about four hours the night before but only about two the night before that.” Her posture is that of a defeated woman. She’s got her arm propped on her hip, as if it’s supporting her.

  “Why?”

  We unexpectedly stop on the fourth floor. A woman in a black skirt suit steps in and presses the button for the second floor. It’s clear we were talking. It’s also clear that we are now not going to talk because she’s in here. It’s an uncomfortable fifteen-second flight for all of us. When the elevator finally stops again, the woman steps out, the doors slowly close, and in perfect synchronicity, our conversation continues.

  “Because Christina and I have been fighting all hours of the night lately,” she says.

  “Fighting about what?”

  Ding.

  We are on the first floor, making our way through the lobby, heading toward the coffee stand. Mila and I never come here, because we don’t like weak coffee and stale bagels. But sometimes you need to go get coffee more than you actually need coffee. And this is one of those times.

  “We fight about everything. You name it! The kids, who should feed the dog, if we should be looking for a bigger place, when the right time to buy a house is, whether or not we should have sex.”

  “Do you guys have sex a lot?” I ask. I think, on some level, I’m looking for empirical evidence that I am normal. That all couples have trouble with sex. Maybe they don’t have sex that often, either. “Is it sort of a problem with you two?”

  “No, we have plenty of sex,” she says. “That’s rarely the issue. It’s more like sh
ould we when the kids are awake?”

  So there goes that theory. The cheese stands alone.

  She steps up to the coffee stand. “Hazelnut latte, please,” Mila says to the man running the place.

  “Ma’am, I’m sorry, we are out of milk,” he says to her. He said he was sorry, but he doesn’t seem the slightest bit concerned.

  “You’re out of milk?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “So you just have black coffee?”

  “And sugar,” he adds.

  This is what happens when people will buy your coffee regardless of the quality. If your location is good enough, you don’t even have to have anything to sell.

  “OK,” she says. “Regular coffee, black. You want anything?” she asks, gesturing to me.

  I wave my hand to say no. The man hands Mila a cup of coffee and charges her two bucks.

  “So you guys are just fighting about a lot of stuff ?” I ask, getting us back on track. Mila sits down on a bench in the lobby, and I sit down next to her.

  “Yeah, and then, when we’re done fighting, one of the twins gets up, and I can’t go back to sleep.”

  “Jesus,” I say. “What do you think is going on?”

  “With the fighting?”

  “Yeah.”

  Mila looks despondent. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. We didn’t use to fight that often. A squabble here or there, you know? None of this scream-until-you-see-the-­sunrise crap.”

  “Has anything happened that might have put you two on edge?”

  She shrugs, sipping her coffee cautiously. “Raising kids is hard. Taking care of a family is hard. And I think sometimes it gets to one or the other of us. Right now, it’s getting to both of us at the same time. Which is not good.”

  Her purse beeps, and she fishes through it to find her cell phone. I’m assuming it’s a text from Christina, because her face grows furious.

  “I swear to God,” she says, shaking her head, “I’m going to kill her. I am going to kill her.”

  “What did she do?”

  She shows me the text message. It just says, “Can’t pick up Brendan and Jackson from day care. You do it?” It seems relatively harmless, and yet I know there is a context that turns that text into an infuriating betrayal. I can imagine when you add up the sleepless nights and the unkind words, the history, and the resentments, that simple text might be enough to break the camel’s back.

  “What are you gonna do?” I ask.

  Mila breathes in deeply, takes a sip of coffee, and stands up. “I’m going to get over it,” she says. “That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to drink about five of these,” she says, gesturing to the coffee, “to get me to five o’clock, then I’m gonna pick up my kids, I’m going to find a way to be nice to my partner, and I’m going to go to bed. That’s what I’m going to do.”

  I nod. “Sounds like a plan.”

  We head back toward the elevators, and as we do, I wonder why I couldn’t do that. Why couldn’t I find the answer in five cups of coffee and being nice when I got home? I don’t know. I don’t know that I’ll ever know. Maybe part of it is that I’m not Mila. Maybe part of it is that Ryan’s not Christina. Maybe part of it is that we don’t have kids. Maybe if we had kids, we would have fought through this all differently. I don’t know why Ryan and I are different. I just know that it’s OK that we are.

  Because I don’t want to go home tonight and work hard at being nice to somebody. I just don’t feel like it right now. I like that I get to go home and do whatever I want. I get to watch what I want on TV. I get to take a really long shower. I get to order Venezuelan food. Thumper and I will get into bed around midnight, and we will sleep soundly, a luxurious amount of room between us in our bed.

  And I think if you like your evening plans, you’re not allowed to regret what led you to them. I think that should be a rule.

  When Mila and I get into the elevator, she thanks me for listening. “I feel better. Much better. I just needed to vent, I think. How are you? Let’s talk about you.”

  I laugh. “Nothing much to report,” I say. “Things are fine.”

  “That’s good,” she says.

  It’s quiet, and I try to fill the silence. “You can do it,” I say. “You can set me up on that date.”

  I don’t know why I say it. I guess I’m trying to make her feel better.

  Mila pushes the stop button on the elevator, and it halts, forcing me to push off of the wall for balance.

  “Are you just doing this to make me feel better?” she asks me.

  “No,” I say. “I just . . . I think it’s time I had some fun.” I guess that’s true. I do think it might be kind of fun. Sort of.

  She smiles wide. “Oh, this is going to be great!”

  Mila hits the button again, and we start to ascend.

  “I’m proud of you,” she says.

  “You are?” I ask her, as the doors open and we start walking.

  “Yeah,” she says. “This is a big step for you.”

  It is? Ah. I guess it is. I think I should have thought about this more.

  A few hours later, she comes into my office with a smile on her face and more coffee in her hand. “Can you do Saturday night?”

  “This Saturday night?” I thought this was some far-off idea. I did not think we were talking Saturday night.

  “Yeah.”

  “Um . . .” I say. “Sure. Yeah. I guess I can do Saturday.”

  “I’ll give him your number,” Mila says, and then she comes over to my desk and takes over my computer. “Do you want to see a picture of him?”

  “Oh, yeah, totally,” I say, remembering that I’m supposed to be attracted to this person.

  She pulls up a photo.

  He’s handsome. Light brown hair, square jaw, glasses. In the photo, he’s planting a tree with some kids. He has on a T-shirt and jeans, with gardening gloves and a huge shovel in his hand.

  I look at the picture. I really consider it. I could kiss him, I think. You know, maybe. Maybe he is a person I could kiss.

  I spend my Saturday morning cuddled in bed with Thumper. We watch a lot of reality television, and then I read magazines until noon.

  I start to call Rachel to tell her that I’ve agreed to a blind date tonight, but as I dial her, my phone starts ringing at the same time. The dialing and ringing all at once knock me for a loop, and I manage to hang up on everyone after somehow leaving a voice mail of myself going, “Uh, what? Wait, Ah!” for Rachel.

  Just as I go to check my missed calls to see who called, it rings again, and I answer. “Hello?”

  “Lauren?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hi, it’s David.”

  I’m nervous. The good kind. I remember this kind. It doesn’t feel exactly like butterflies in your stomach. It’s more like hummingbirds in your chest. Either image, though, taken literally, is entirely frightening. “Oh, hey, David,” I say, “How are you?”

  His voice is friendly and calming. It’s a nice voice. “I’m good, you?”

  “Yeah, I’m good.”

  It’s quiet for a moment, and my mind races through options of things to say, but ultimately, I come up empty. Someone say something.

  “I was thinking maybe seven o’clock? There’s a great Greek place on Larchmont if you like Greek. I mean . . .” He starts to stumble. He sounds kind of nervous. “I mean, some people don’t like Greek. Which is fine.”

  This might be easier than I thought.

  “Greek sounds great. Were you thinking of Le Petit Greek?” When it comes to Greek food, I know what’s where.

  “Yes!” he says, excited. “Have you been there?”

  I used to make Ryan take me there when I wanted moussaka. I should have noticed he only ever ordered the steak. He doesn’t even really li
ke steak.

  “I have, yeah,” I say. “I love it. Great choice.”

  “OK, so seven o’clock,” David says. “You’ll know it’s me because I’ll be wearing a red rose on my lapel.”

  “Nice,” I say. I’m not sure if he’s joking, so I don’t want to laugh at him.

  “That was a joke,” he says. His tone is eager to clarify. “Maybe I should do something like that, though. I’ll wear a black shirt. Or . . . yeah, a black shirt.” He might be more nervous about it than I am.

  “Cool,” I say. “You have yourself a date.” I immediately find myself embarrassed for hitting the nail too closely on the head. It’s embarrassing, right? To call a date a date?

  “OK,” David says. “Looking forward to it.”

  I hang up and put the phone on the table. I look at Thumper, who is now sitting under the table at my feet. I have to duck underneath the table to see him, to really look him in the eye.

  “It’s not weird that he didn’t offer to pick me up, is it?” I ask Thumper. He cocks his head slightly. “It’s just, like, the way people do things, right?”

  I take his yawn as a yes.

  My phone rings again and startles me. Rachel.

  “What the hell did you leave on my voice mail?” she asks me, laughing.

  “I got confused.”

  “Clearly.”

  “I have a date tonight,” I tell her.

  “A date?” she says. “Like, with a man?”

  “No, it’s with a panda bear. I’m really excited.”

  “You think you’re ready for that? With a man, I mean? I understand you’re not actually dating a panda bear.”

  I sigh. “I don’t know. I mean, Ryan’s dating someone.”

  “If Ryan jumped off a cliff, would you?”

  Is it bad that there was a time in my life when I might have considered saying yes to that? I’m inclined to think it’s beautiful that I once believed in someone that much, that completely, and without reservation.