“I know that, and that’s part of my thinking. You need to get out and begin to have a life again.”
“I’m never going to have the lifestyle I had before, Justin. You know how bad that would be for me. I’ve found a great niche right here with you and Sammy. It’s very fulfilling.”
“Maybe you need to get ready to go back to school. I know you put that on hold for us and were worried about the stress it would bring you. I think you’re stronger now, you’ve been sober for several months. I know we’re like a little family here, but I’m sure you’d eventually like to have one of your own. You won’t have that if you stay isolated with us.”
“I’m not your family?” I replied, hurt and angry. I knew what he meant, but it still was a stab to the heart to be reminded we didn’t share any blood or commitments. “Since when?”
“Peaches, I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, contrite. “You must constantly be aware you didn’t bring all this responsibility on yourself, and you’re not obligated to us.” His face took on that slight downcast look he sometimes got, but never made any sense to me. “You’re still young and have a whole life open to you that you should be exploring.”
“I’m not missing anything. I’m completely committed to you guys. I’m happy here until you tell me I’m no longer needed or welcome. I’ll go back to school when Sammy is older, but for now, you guys are my priority.”
“You’re not making this easy on me. While everything I said are things I’m thinking about, I think I need to do the same. I’d like to go out with Griffin tomorrow if you’re okay to stay here with Sammy. I don’t want to always be sticking you with him if you want to make plans, too.”
“I never considered taking care of him as being stuck with him. If you need to start expanding your horizons, be my guest,” I said crankily. He wasn’t even going to tell me about his agreement with Griffin. Why hide it? It reminded me of how his relationship with Delia had started.
If Justin noticed my tone, he didn’t remark on it. He came over and gave me a kiss on the cheek.
“Thank you for all you do for us, Mimi. I’d never have gotten through the last seven months without you.”
I forced a smile and decided to press the issue a little.
“What are you guys going to do tomorrow night?” I asked, trying to seem innocent.
“Well, uh, Griffin wants me to meet some of his friends’ tomorrow night.”
Well if that wasn’t an understatement, I didn’t know what was. Why not just say that he was going on a blind date? I began to scrub the kitchen counter to help keep my composure. One of the habits I’d developed over the last year was to clean whenever I felt stress. I could take my feelings out on the countertops, appliances, and floor.
“Mimi, are you upset?” he asked. “If it bothers you, I won’t go.”
“No, not at all,” I replied through gritted teeth. “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of Sammy on my own. You needn’t worry about me or him.” I looked up at him with what I hoped appeared as a genuine smile.
He looked back at me with a strange expression. He seemed almost a little wistful. After a few seconds, he nodded his head firmly.
“Alright then. I’m supposed to meet him at his house at seven tomorrow night. Next week, I want you to do something for yourself. Maybe you could go out with one of the women from your mother’s group,” he suggested.
“I’ll think about it, Justin. Just focus on your date.”
He looked at me suspiciously then. I’d slipped and called it a date when I wasn’t supposed to know it was. I smiled at him guilelessly again, and his look was replaced with a tense smile.
The following night, while I had a Disney video playing for Sammy as he sat on the floor with Snowflake, Justin came out of his bedroom looking like a million bucks. He was dressed in a black suit, with a starched while dress shirt beneath it. On his feet were shiny loafers. I’d never seen him in anything quite like it.
“How do I look?” he asked, appearing somewhat uncomfortable.
“You look great,” I replied. “All this for a night out with Griffin? Are you going to a club?”
“Um, no,” he said slowly. He cleared his throat as he turned a pale shade of pink. “He’s actually setting me up with a friend of his girlfriend.”
I did my best to appear unaffected though I was half seething with jealousy, half dying inside. I nodded and nonchalantly said, “Oh, well that’s good, I guess. I hope you have a great time.”
“I thought I should try to meet people, you now. It’s not fair for me to rely on you so much.” He grabbed his wallet off the side table and stuffed it in his pants pocket.
I gave a hollow laugh. “Isn’t that quite a turnaround from years past? Trust me, Justin, it’s been good to give back after all you’ve done for me. Besides, it’s a real joy being part of your lives like this.”
He nodded swiftly, then leaned down to kiss Sammy’s forehead then mine.
“I don’t know what time I’ll be home. I’ll call if it’s going to be late.”
“Just relax and have a good time. If we need you, I’ll call you. Unless you hear from me, don’t worry about us.”
After he left, I felt empty inside. It was a good thing Sammy was entranced by the orange and white fish on the television screen. I don’t think there was much he could understand being as young as he was. I assumed he enjoyed the many colors of the movie. I tried to pull him into my arms, but he wriggled away like he always did. The boy definitely didn’t like to be cuddled.
Sammy was asleep before the movie ended. I scooped him up and took him with me to my bed where I lay with him in my arms. He couldn’t resist my snuggles then. I kissed the top of his head and lay there thinking about how my life would be without him and Justin in it every day. What if Justin got serious with someone? Would I be replaced? Surely, I’d have to take a step back from them. I didn’t like that idea at all.
I kept hammering at the feelings in my head, trying to sort them all out. Was it because I had grown to view myself as Sammy’s mother? I admitted to myself that was a large part of it. I couldn’t deny, however, my feelings for Justin had grown into something more. In the day-to-day bustle of life with a child, I’d never really taken the time to examine how much things had changed for me. It all seemed so natural. We fell in sync very easily when we began living together. If I hadn’t known myself as well as I did now, I’d be surprised I never noticed the change.
It wasn’t that I simply lusted over his body. I wanted him, no doubt, but I’d spent so much time stuffing that back, resisting it, it never surfaced in my mind unless I was treated to the vision of his bare flesh. Now, with him on the precipice of dating a woman, I felt the jealousy rising within me.
Had I lost my chance with him after all this time? Had his feelings for me changed after everything he’d gone through with me before Sammy arrived? I didn’t have the answers to these questions, and it drove me crazy. How could I find out? If he was ready to move onto another phase of his life, it would hardly be fair of me to jump in the way and start spilling my feelings for him. Unless he did still feel the same… I did a mental scream of frustration. Though I hadn’t consciously tried to live in denial, I had, and it was going to cost me, as usual.
When Justin came home around two a.m., I pretended to be asleep on the sofa. I felt his large hand gently shake my shoulder.
“Wake up, sleeping beauty,” he called softly.
“Hey,” I said sitting up and feigning drowsiness. “How did it go? It must have been good because I expected you to call repeatedly to check up on your boy.”
Justin eased onto the sofa next to me, leaning his head against the back of it.
“I think it went well. She was very sweet like Griffin told me. She wasn’t hard to look at either. I didn’t know it, but both Marina and Dara are fashion models.”
I swallowed my insecurity at the thought of her being an impossibly gorgeous and glamorous woman. I wasn’t f
rumpy by any means, but no one was pounding down my door to put me on the cover of a magazine.
“That... that’s really great, Justin,” I stuttered. “This will be good for you.”
He looked at me in the dim light of the only lamp I had lit in the house. I couldn’t read the expression on his face. He looked somewhere between thoughtful and sad. I figured he was feeling sorry for me because he knew he and Sammy had become my whole world, and he was drawing away from our dynamic. I stood and stretched, faking a yawn.
“We should both get to bed. You know how early that little boy will have us awake,” I said.
Justin looked at me a beat longer, then nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. You should sleep in tomorrow. I’m sure he had you up late.”
“Actually, he didn’t. He fell asleep before eight o’clock. So, you know what that means. He’ll be up at the crack of dawn.”
“Just my luck,” Justin groaned.
“Don’t worry,” I laughed. “You go ahead and sleep in. I fell asleep here on the sofa not long after him,” I said with my fingers crossed in my head. “You had a long night, you should rest.”
“Thanks, Peaches. You’re the best,” he replied as he stood up and kissed me on the forehead.
I went back to my room where I lay there tossing about. My days were numbered. I just knew it.
Chapter Five
Our lives went on normally, except for Justin spending more time away from home on the weekends. Apparently, he and Marina had hit it off, so they started dating on a regular basis. I wondered if he had told her I lived with them and if so, how that went over?
To try to keep busy and to begin distancing myself from the inevitable, I followed Justin’s advice and made friends with a woman from my mother’s group. I also began taking regular yoga classes at the studio where Theresa had taken me. I enjoyed how strong it made my body, how limber I was. I had easily gained back all the weight I’d lost, but the time in rehab I’d spent healing my body and my mind made me something of an exercise junkie. I had a new, healthier addiction. So, in addition to the classes, I joined a nearby gym and signed up for sessions with a trainer. Prior to that, I’d done all my exercises at home. My back was completely healed, and apart from some stiffness on cold mornings, I didn’t notice any residual effects.
While the new additions to my routine gave me some peace, I was still anxiously waiting for the other shoe to drop. I felt it was only a matter of time before Justin started bringing Marina around the house. Surely, she’d want to see his home and meet his child, eventually. I would only be in the way. One day, almost three months after he’d begun seeing her, he started a conversation with me over breakfast.
“Mimi, I think it’s time for me to introduce Marina to Sammy. What do you think?” he asked.
I was secretly pleased he asked for my opinion on the subject. I wasn’t so pleased I couldn’t tell him it was a terrible idea.
“You’ve been together for a while, so it only seems natural,” I said, swallowing my feelings. “How does she feel about it?”
“She’s eager to meet him, although she’s nervous. She’s worried about what it will mean if he doesn’t like her.”
“I suspect this also means the two of you are getting serious if you want her to meet your son.”
“I don’t know if it’s actually anything serious, but we do more than have sex.”
I had an immediate urge to stab Justin with my fork. Resisting the impulse, I sat there mildly and let him continue.
“I like her. I don’t want to rule out the possibility it could be something more, someday. Sammy’s so great, I definitely want to have at least one more child. Let’s face it, I’m not getting any younger.”
The idea of him having another child with someone else drove a spike through my heart. Sammy would have a stepmother which would probably mean I’d only see him occasionally. Justin? Justin would have a wife he loved and who loved him back. I gripped my fork tighter.
“Justin, I have to ask… Does she know I live here?”
“Yeah. I told her about a month in. When I realized we were going to keep seeing each other, I didn’t want to hide anything from her. I didn’t want her to get the wrong idea. It didn’t go over well, at first. She thought I was a player, trying to have his cake and eat it, too. I was able to convince her of the truth after I explained everything we’d been through together.”
“What does that mean, ‘everything we’ve been through together’?” I asked, steeling myself for what I already knew.
“I explained about Vance… Delia… your addiction… and Sammy.”
“Oh, so now she thinks I’m some basket case you’re taking care of,” I said, grabbing Sammy from his high chair, who immediately wanted to be put down, so he could crawl off to play with Snowflake.
“It’s not like that,” he replied.
“I know it’s not, and you know it’s not, but I can guarantee you she doesn’t. She wouldn’t be okay with this otherwise.”
“I never said she was okay with it. She doesn’t like it at all, especially since I haven’t let her further into my life. We argued about it last night, which is why I’m bringing it up to you today.”
“So, she gave you an ultimatum, then,” I deduced.
“Not in so many words, but the implication was there,” he confirmed.
I sighed and sat back down at the table. “Justin, you had no right to tell her about my addiction. I’m entitled to be anonymous, and I choose to only share that with people I know intimately. The people in my mothers’ group, my friends from yoga, they don’t even know. Yet, here you’ve gone and told a complete stranger my personal business. She could have any number of preconceived ideas about me now.”
“I’m sorry, Peaches. I didn’t think of it like that. I wanted her to understand there wasn’t anything between us.”
“So now there’s nothing between us?” I nearly shouted. I had to calm down. I should try to be happy for him though every ounce of my being kept screaming how wrong this was. I shook my head quickly and said, “Never mind. That was a long time ago.”
I got up and started to walk out of the kitchen, but Justin grabbed my elbow. “Mimi, go on. What are you getting at?”
“Don’t worry about it, Justin. I’m being selfish. I have it good here and I am feeling threatened,” I only half-confessed. “I’ll have to keep getting out on my own and finding new pursuits.”
He looked disappointed for a minute, then a strange look took over his face. Almost as if he were suddenly angry. As soon as the look was there, it was gone again, and he released my arm. “Alright, Peaches,” he said before walking out of the room to check on Sammy. I cleared the table and began loading the dishwasher. I didn’t want to meet this woman, but it looked like I was going to have to. If they were serious and I moved out, she’d never want to let me back around Justin if she thought there was even a hint of something between us. I’d have to be careful to keep my feelings under wraps, which wasn’t going to be easy as they were growing exponentially day by day.
I’d watch Justin with Sammy—how attentive and gentle he was with him—and it would melt my heart every time. I’d see him in the morning when he stumbled out to the kitchen for his coffee, wearing his lounge pants and nothing else, and my pulse would spike at the sight of his bare chest. I wanted to reach out and run my hands over his warm skin, to trail my fingers over the deep-V of his obliques.
He’d caught me staring once or twice and would always make a sexy joke out of it. I pretended he was being full of himself and tease him right back, but I wanted him so bad, I nearly drooled every time. I remembered his kisses, how consuming they were and wished he would do it again. I had finally allowed myself the fantasies I realized had been brewing at the back of my mind. I must confess, I indulged in them nightly now when I was alone in my room.
I sighed as I brought my thoughts back to the present. My time was long gone if I’d ever even had a chance after the way I’d fucke
d up my life the year before. Given his history with Elise, it was no wonder he wasn’t in love with me anymore. I had to be too risky for him to take seriously after all that.
I went to my room and put on my clothes for the yoga class I had scheduled every Monday and Wednesday morning. I didn’t want to leave, not knowing when or how he planned to introduce her to Sammy. I didn’t know if he was going to bring her by the house one day or if they’d meet somewhere neutral first. I’d get answers from Justin, later. I needed to go destress and get back into a good state of mind. Yoga would help me do the trick, and seeing as how it was Monday, I needed to start my week off right.
For the first time, yoga didn’t do much relax me, so I convinced myself some new shoes would perk me up. After browsing around the shoe stores in the mall for two hours, trying on every pair I thought I liked, it was never enough to buy them until I went into this one store and fell in love with a pair of boots. They cost four hundred dollars, but I didn’t care. I had to have them.
Once I got in the car, I immediately felt guilty. What was I doing trying to soothe myself with material things? I drove to my own house, thinking I would stash them there because I was so ashamed to have made such an extravagant purchase. While I was there, I thought I’d enjoy the solitude for a while and do a mental inventory of my feelings, and maybe if I were lucky, take a short nap. I didn’t get many of those these days.
After an hour of making zero progress exploring the dilemma I faced with my feelings for Justin versus his for Marina, I gave up and decided to try to nap. Just as I was drifting off, my doorbell rang. I got up from where I was reclined on the sofa and looked through the peephole on the door. I took a step back when I realized who it was. James stood on my stoop, holding a bag in his hand. I stood there deliberating whether I should call Justin when I heard James call through the door.
“Mimi, I know you’re in there. I saw your shadow pass over the peephole. I just want to talk. Please let me in.”
I decided I needed to handle this myself rather than leaning on Justin. I opened the door with a stern look on my face.
Just Perfection Page 5
