Mia Like Crazy

by Cordoba, Nina

  “I think so,” I answered. “Is that why you put on those clothes today?”

  “Yeah. It just came to me as I was standing there this morning, looking at my black suit collection. I thought, ‘That can be my very first thing.’”

  “You look fabulous!”

  Apparently, Drew still didn’t know how to take a compliment. He ignored it and continued. “And on the way to Mason’s office, I remembered that night, when you ended up at the bar.”

  I covered my face and groaned.

  “I knew you wanted me to say something…do something to keep you from having to walk out the door. I knew all I had to do was take you in my arms and you wouldn’t go, but I let you leave, knowing every man who looked at you was going to want you, and they would actually do something about it.” It was obvious Drew still hadn’t forgiven himself, and the memory was difficult for him to relive.

  “But at the time, I couldn’t see how it would end any other way. In my mind, I would never have what it took to keep you. I was a loser. Things couldn’t get better between us because life had always been the same for me.” He turned off the car motor. “Come on.”

  He got out and came around to my side, opened the door, and helped me out of the car. Since it was a chilly January day, we were the only people in sight. We walked over to the bench and sat down together. Drew turned toward me, his facial expression holding a particular combination of earnestness and determination I’d never seen on him before. He took my hands in his and I felt his thumb moving back and forth on my wedding rings.

  “Mia…” He said my name clearly and firmly, then closed his eyes. Whatever he was about to say was obviously very important to him. I got the feeling he wanted to get it just right. I held my breath as he opened his eyes and began speaking.

  “We’ve known each other for a while now, and I know we have an unmistakable connection, and a deep love for each other.” This reminded me of his marriage proposal. “I still can’t imagine that a more beautiful, brilliant or unusual woman exists on this planet, and if she did, I wouldn’t want her because she wouldn’t be you.”

  Nice adlib.

  He smiled at me and I was as dazzled as the first time I saw it.

  “I can’t guarantee I’ll always do or say the right thing because I’m not usually sure what the right thing is. But I—finally—know who I am and what kind of person I want to be, and if you left now, that person would miss you more than he’d miss his own heart.”

  His words were beautiful and the sentiment behind them was heartfelt. This was the Drew I’d always sensed was there, the one I had only caught glimpses of before. In my mind’s eye, I could see the sensitive little boy who wanted to draw and play the guitar and have a dog.

  I couldn’t imagine the monster who had denied him those things.

  I made the decision right then that I wasn’t going to deny him anything. I was going to honor my wedding vows, for better or for worse. I was never going to walk out on him again, even if he tried to drive me to it in his times of self-doubt. And, for his birthday, I was going to get him a guitar…and a dog.

  He was silent now. I knew he’d exposed his soul to me and this time he’d done all he could do to keep me in his life.

  It was my turn to come clean. “Drew, there’s something I need to tell you.”

  He looked nervous. “You haven’t fallen in love with someone else, have you?”

  Was he joking? He didn’t seem to be. “When would I possibly have had time to do that?” I asked. “We’ve been together every day for the last six months!”

  “Well, you spent time at the hair salon and the nail place, and I didn’t go with you into those dress shops.”

  “In that case, it would be an even bigger revelation, because I’d also be announcing that I was a lesbian.”

  “Oh, yeah.” He relaxed. “I guess mostly women work at those places. So, what do you want to tell me?”

  I dug my teeth into my lower lip and took a deep breath. My heart beat so hard I thought it would explode. “I had a special reason to try to have your case reopened.” My voice shook as I spoke. “One you’re not aware of.”

  Drew raised his eyebrows and pushed them together in a puzzled expression. Just as I thought, he didn’t have a clue. Even after everything he’d said, I hesitated to drop this bombshell on him. “It’s because…well…I’m pregnant.”

  As expected, he was stunned. He looked away from me and stared out toward the pond as if he was trying to make sense of what I’d said.

  I tried to make myself breathe, since I was afraid not doing so could be bad for the baby.

  He turned back toward me. “Pregnant? Like with our baby?” he asked. I nodded and Drew looked away, again, a dazed expression on his face.

  After a good thirty seconds of torturous silence, he, once more, turned toward me and said with child-like wonder, “Do you think all those kids in my dream were ours?”

  Laughter bubbled out of me so unexpectedly I nearly fell off the bench. He put an arm out to catch me and pulled me up into a standing embrace. He gave me a kiss on the nose. “No wonder you were so heavy!”

  I couldn’t help laughing at him again, even if it was the wrong thing to say to a pregnant woman. “Just wait,” I said, “You haven’t seen anything yet.”

  “We’d better go. It’s way too cold out here for a baby.” As we turned to go, he kept a protective arm around me.

  “Oh, the baby’s fine. It’s me who’s freezing to death,” I said as he opened my door.

  After we were in the car, with the heater turned on, the smile he’d been wearing faded. “Mia?”

  “Yes, Drew?”

  “You are coming home with me, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, didn’t I say that?” I asked casually.

  As we drove toward the apartment, the car was silent for several minutes. I didn’t push for conversation, figuring Drew needed the time to absorb the life-altering news I’d just given him.

  “Mia?” He finally said. “Is it normal to feel a little scared when you find out you’re going to have a baby?”

  “I think so. What are you afraid of?”

  “I’m afraid something will happen to you, and that I don’t know how to be a dad, and the kid won’t like me—”

  “I think that’s all completely normal. When I realized I might be pregnant, I almost had a nervous breakdown.”

  “But you didn’t talk to me about it,” he said sadly.

  I reached over and placed my hand on his thigh, so grateful he no longer tensed at my touch. “I guess I was so stressed out, I assumed you’d be worse. I was wrong. I’ll talk to you about everything from now on. If we get upset, we’ll just work through it together—no leaving.”

  He stopped at a red light and covered my hand with his. “I want to talk about something now.”

  “What it is it?”

  “When the kids come—”

  “Kids?” I asked, surprised at his use of the plural form of the word.

  “Can we do everything—you know, eat dinner together, read bedtime stories, like real people?” The light turned green. He released my hand and accelerated.

  “I think so. Why not?” I shrugged, still not completely confident I knew how to create a normal life for my child.

  “I want to be a good dad, but I’m not sure I know how, and you’re really good at making plans. Could you make one now?”

  “Now?” I asked, surprised.

  “Yeah. I could really use one.”

  “Okay, we still have over seven months,” I calculated. “We’re going to watch reruns of all those family shows like Leave it to Beaver and The Brady Bunch, and we’ll go to the book store and get a stack of books on babies and children so we have something to read to each other when the shows aren’t on… And when the baby comes, we’ll just throw it all out the window and do what feels right, like I did when I married you. How’s that?”

  He smiled broadly. “I like it,” he said. “You kn
ow, I was kind of hoping you got pregnant on purpose…to make sure we stayed together after the six months were over.”

  Under any other circumstances, I would have been appalled at the statement. “I’ve been hoping I didn’t do that.”

  “Why not?” He was still clueless, despite his epiphanies.

  “Trapping a man in a marriage by getting pregnant is pretty reprehensible.”

  “What guy wouldn’t want to get trapped by you?” he asked with complete sincerity.

  “That’s the sweetest, weirdest thing anyone’s ever said to me. Anyway, I didn’t want to think I’d do it, because I don’t believe in it. However, I never believed in love at first sight, but from the first time I met you, I didn’t want to leave, even when you threw me out.”

  Drew seemed thoughtful again as he turned into the apartment parking garage. “I’m not sure if I was in love with you the first time I saw you,” he said. “But I was so aware of you… I noticed the way you smelled, the way your mouth moved, the way the light reflected off your hair…” His face held a wistful expression. “Then, when I was trying to scare you, we were so close, and you looked up at me without any fear at all. Your lips were open just a little bit and I wanted to be in there so bad, but I was afraid if I touched you, I would lose control of myself.”

  He had pulled into his spot in the parking garage. He put the car in park, turned to me, slipped one hand behind my head and placed his other palm on the side of my face. He drew me toward him and pressed his lips to mine, plunging his tongue into my mouth in a searing, lust-filled kiss.

  “That’s what I wanted to do,” he said afterward.

  I was glad I’d been sitting down for that one.

  “Anyway, I knew I was in love with you the next day, when you came back after reading the articles, but the third day, when you didn’t show up at nine sharp, I thought I was gonna die. So I swiped you from your hotel.”

  “Hoping, if you nursed me back to health and kept feeding me, I’d stick around.”

  “You can’t argue with success.”

  ~

  As we walked into the apartment, the phone rang. It was Meridith. “I just heard what happened with Mason,” she said. “Are you two okay?”

  “We’re better than okay, Meri,” I said. “We’re really good.”

  “Mia’s good,” Drew tried to yell into the phone. “I’m great!”

  Meridith sounded concerned. “He hasn’t gone off the deep end has he?”

  “No, actually—”

  “Can you come over here?” Meridith interrupted. “There’s something I need to tell the both of you, right away.”

  “Um…okay.” Then to Drew I said, “We need to go to your sister’s.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Drew and I stood in front of Meridith’s door, acting like a couple of teenagers returning from a date. As he dipped me backward and playfully tried to fasten his lips onto my neck—to disprove my claim that his D-shaped New Year’s Eve hickey was a fluke—I squealed and tried to swat him away.

  I noticed Meridith standing at the door watching us, an odd expression on her face.

  “Drew…your sister!”

  He removed his lips from my neck and looked at Meridith. “It’s okay. We’re married. It’s all perfectly legal.”

  “I’m sorry if I kept you waiting,” Meridith said with the same bewildered expression on her face. “I didn’t hear the doorbell.”

  “That’s probably because we forgot to ring it.” Drew smiled broadly as we all walked into the living room.

  “I must say, you two don’t act like people who just lost ninety million dollars,” Meridith said. “Have you been drinking?”

  “Certainly not!” I said. “It’s just that we found something much more important than we lost.”

  “May I ask what?” Meridith’s curiosity was obviously peaked.

  Drew jumped in before I could answer. “Well, I found myself, then we found each other—oh, and then I found a baby in Mia’s tummy.” He pointed proudly at my abdomen.

  “Congratulations!” Meridith exclaimed as though she didn’t already know. “I can’t wait to be an aunt. Would you like some coffee?” She turned and headed for the kitchen without waiting for an answer.

  “This must be serious if Meridith wants to talk about it in the kitchen,” Drew murmured.

  I worried our happiness might be short-lived as I tried to remember if Meridith and I had ever talked about anything unimportant in her kitchen.

  As we sat down at the table, he couldn’t seem to control his pessimistic thoughts. “Meri, are you okay? You’re not dying or anything—”

  “Oh, no. It’s nothing like that!” Meridith assured him. “It’s actually good news. It turns out, if your marriage was not acceptable to Mr. Mason,” she uttered his name with uncharacteristic hostility, “…then, the money reverts to me. Since it is, rightfully, your inheritance, I’m giving it back to you.”

  It was bizarre to me, the way Meridith spoke so matter-of-factly about multi-million dollar fortunes. She sounded as if she was telling her brother she would be returning the marbles she’d won from him in a game.

  Since we were speechless, Meridith continued, “I know it’s more complicated than that. Mia, you can get together with the lawyers and accountants, and figure out the best way to do everything, for tax purposes and all, but, what I’m saying is, you’ll have your inheritance, Drew.”

  I had become very close to Drew’s sister over the previous six months and, although Meridith was delivering great news, I got the distinct feeling she was still hiding something. I scanned through all the possibilities and came up with a question.

  “Meri? How long have you known about this?”

  Bingo. Meridith looked as guilty as the criminals in those trials I’d observed in college.

  “About what?” she stalled.

  I looked at Drew, who couldn’t seem to fathom that his sister would be hiding anything.

  “How long have you known if he didn’t get the money, you could just give it to him yourself?”

  “I guess I’ve known for a while…” When Drew and I both raised our eyebrows, she rushed through the rest of the story like an auctioneer. “Well, my father’s lawyer didn’t think Drew should have the money at all, so when he realized I was planning a wedding for you, he called me and suggested I might not want to be so helpful because if this didn’t work out for Drew, the other ninety million would be mine.” She finally took a breath, held it and flinched like she was waiting for her execution.

  “You knew about this since before we got married?” I was flabbergasted. “Why wouldn’t you have told Drew…and me?”

  “Because, then, you two wouldn’t have had any good reason to get married. You hardly knew each other, and, Mia, you would have felt the only reasonable thing to do was to back out,” Meridith replied defensively. “I figured Drew would try to keep you on as his lawyer, but with his hang-ups, it would have been years before anything happened between you two—if you weren’t living in the same house, as a couple.”

  At first, I was shocked to learn Meridith was capable of such deception, but then I remembered how, time and time again, she’d been able to hatch instant plots whenever I needed help with a Drew problem.

  But I had never imagined sweet Meri was doing the same thing behind my back. It irked me to realize just how gullible I was.

  “So you orchestrated this entire relationship, under false pretenses?” I paraphrased. “Did you work some magic to make sure I got pregnant too?”

  “Oh, no. You two took care of that all by yourselves,” Meridith answered with a satisfied smirk.

  Drew turned to me. “And I thought she was so sweet and innocent.” He looked at Meridith. “You’re the best diabolical-criminal-mastermind sister a guy could have!”

  He got up and walked around to where Meridith was sitting, leaned down, hugged her from behind, and gave her a loud smack on the cheek.

  Tears sprang
into Meridith’s eyes. “That’s the first time you’ve ever done that,” she said, holding her hand to her cheek.

  “That’s the first time you’ve deserved it so much,” he replied.

  Meridith laughed.

  I was still fuming. I prided myself on having been completely in charge of my life since I was a child. My independent nature didn’t allow for this kind of blatant, personal interference.

  “Aren’t you just a little appalled that your sister has been manipulating us—fraudulently—for the past six months?”

  “Well, counselor,” Drew said playfully. “In the past six months, I’ve gone from being a pathetic loner to a real person, who got to marry the woman he loves, had some absolutely incredible sex—” I whacked him on the arm for that, but he ignored me and continued. “And now, I have my own little baby that I put in there myself.” He pointed proudly at my stomach again. “Plus, I’m a multi-millionaire—where’s the down side?”

  I couldn’t help but chuckle at his antics, in spite of myself.

  Meridith was speaking quickly again. “And since you’re both in a good mood now, um, I told the Russells—the neighbors who are selling the house that backs up to this property—you might be interested in buying.” She put her hands up in front of her face, palms out, as though she thought I might want to shoot her.

  I rolled my eyes. “I think we have enough people here for our first meeting of ‘Control Freaks Anonymous,’” I sighed. “I don’t see how any of these kids have a chance with the three of us in charge.”

  “Now, is it really so terrible to grow up with a perfectly clean house, perfectly carved pumpkins, and a perfectly planned schedule?” Meridith asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess we’ll find out when they write their books about us.”

  “Well, we don’t have time to talk about it now,” Drew interrupted. “We’ve got to go.”

  “Why? Does the cleaning lady come here today?” I asked sarcastically.

  He was already dragging me toward the door. “We’ll see you in about a week, Meri,” he yelled.