Home. Why did it feel like a knife in the heart when she said that? Home for her was with him. Home for her was wherever he was. Not where he was not. Not in Brooklyn.
But he didn’t tell her any of that.
“Okay,” he said instead, his voice quiet. “You sure you’re alright?”
“Yeah. I’ll call you later. I’m about to head out and grab some . . . stuff.”
Stuff.
“Okay. Later.”
He’d hurt her. It was stupid of him not to realize how much before now. And when he left this morning to go play basketball that had probably hurt her even more. Shit. Brendan went down to the bedroom and dressed quickly, heading back to the kitchen only to grab a Vitamin water out of the fridge and then locking up, headed for the garage.
The drive to Brooklyn was predictably nightmarish with traffic backed up on the bridge and assorted other delays. It took Brendan almost an hour to get to the townhouse in Park Slope, but at least there was some parking available.
Out of habit, he looked around for Tracy’s Land Rover, but they’d sold it last month when Tracy admitted that it was more of a hassle and expense for them to keep two cars, especially when they only ever rode in his. And there was no way Brendan would even consider selling his Aston Martin. Parking it on the street always made him a little nervous, and that was one other reason they tended to spend more time in Manhattan than here. But today he’d have to take his chances.
Tracy was out. The house was quiet when he entered. Even here, things felt different, felt wrong when she wasn’t around. He kicked off his tennis shoes, heading upstairs to the bedroom. Might as well get comfortable. Alone in the quiet house, his thoughts drifted to Janice and what happened at her apartment that afternoon, and then about Tracy and her likely reaction if she ever found out. Even on a good day, Tracy had to be . . . managed when it came to him being around other women. She had gotten much better about it, but still, it was always going to be a thing for her.
Last night between tears, she’d finally told him that she thought she’d probably gotten pregnant in New Orleans. And when she said that, it had all come back to him, and fallen perfectly into place.
The Essence Music Festival.
Brendan hadn’t even wanted to go, but the label was trying to push Kenyon Taylor, their new blues singer and a young pop star-in-training named Hania. Both were young and green, and unfortunately so were much of the staff. The Essence Music Festival was huge, so without the right contacts, getting into the right parties, meeting the right people would be impossible, so Brendan got roped into taking them.
With his reputation and friends in the industry, two unproven performers from an as-yet unproven new label, just might have a chance of being noticed. In passing a few days before the trip, he asked Tracy if she wanted to tag along, not really thinking she would want to, but she had.
For the first couple days he’d had no time for her at all, and Brendan had come back to their suite very late each evening, finding her almost asleep. He remembered that the minute he got into bed, she turned and curled into him. On the second night, exhausted as he was, he’d slid her underwear down and over her thighs, and gently eased himself inside her and it was as though her entire body melted into him, like she could never truly be at rest without this expression of his connection to her.
The following evening he’d taken her to a party where despite his best efforts, he’d been tied up making nice with people as Tracy drew further and further away. While he was cracking jokes with recording executives and their mistresses, he watched out of the corner of his eye when Tracy escaped out onto the balcony. Brendan could feel her disquiet even from across the room, and knew precisely the reason for it. Stunningly beautiful that night, she was wearing a gauzy yellow gown that picked up on the amazing amber-hue of her eyes; and so every single man in the room had at one time or another been staring at her. But she didn’t notice, or if she did, hadn’t cared.
She didn’t care if other men noticed her because she wanted him, and only him. That knowledge, every single time, awed him. She only wanted him. Every single day that he woke up with her, or watched her enter a room, or when she smiled at him across the table at dinner, he was struck anew by how beautiful she was. And yet, all she wanted was him. There was something sweet and fragile, and tender and desperate about it. It made him yearn to take care of her, and shield her from hurt; and Tracy had definitely had enough hurt.
He excused himself in the middle of a conversation and went out to her, not wanting her to be alone. From the moment he touched her, he knew he’d been correct about her mood—she was tense and becoming even more so. And with Tracy, the best, the most effective pacifier was sex. Always had been. That and the fact that he was horny as hell made Brendan do something reckless. He’d taken her, right there out on the balcony, secreted in a corner, on a rocking chair, both of them perspiring in the sultry New Orleans evening. He pressed his lips against the back of her neck as he drove into her, tasting her sweet, saltiness.
It gave Brendan a rush—being buried deep inside her, Tracy pushing, pressing back against him. When he climaxed, it was as though every cell in his body had been electrified. Brendan would have bet anything that that night was when he’d made her pregnant. And if it was, it seemed only right that in that moment of pure affirmation—when Tracy had trusted him so completely she let him make love to her in a public place, without regard for her possible humiliation if they were discovered—they had created a life.
Stretching out on the bed now, Brendan had to admit to himself that he wasn’t sorry. He wasn’t sorry they’d done it and he didn’t regret that they may have been careless, nor that she was pregnant. But being without regret was not the same thing as being without trepidation.
He turned on the television and idly changed channels, wondering whether it might not be more constructive to find something to do while in Brooklyn, other than wait around for Tracy to return. Finally, he got out of bed. Not too far away there was a coffeehouse that also had a bar in the back with a large mounted television. And they also served a pretty decent jerk chicken pizza.
Stomping Grounds was a medium-sized neighborhood joint where Brendan dropped in to watch a game or have a quick bite whenever he and Tracy stayed in Brooklyn. The front was a coffeehouse and bakery, but through a pair of arches in the rear was a pub-style bar, with about six tables and a couple booths from which you could watch the flat-screen mounted on the wall, playing whatever sport was in season.
As Brendan entered now, he spotted Russell right away. Russell was one of Tracy’s best friends. One of her only friends next to Riley. Tall, dark as night and good-looking, Brendan remembered being somewhat threatened when he first saw Russell and Tracy standing together at some event at Shawn’s. Tracy had been looking up at him, her head tilted back so she could make eye contact, her face open and adoring, with an expression usually only reserved for Brendan himself.
And then he met Russell and realized that the brother was as gay as the day is long. And that had tempered Brendan’s sense of being threatened. Somewhat. Russell was still someone who had the power to command Tracy’s attention when Brendan had come to believe and expect that all of Tracy’s attention was his due.
“Whassup, man?”
Brendan walked over to the table where Russell was sipping a cappuccino, and clapped him on the back. Russell looked up, surprised then stood to shake his hand, indicating the other seat at the table.
“Hey!” he said. “Didn’t know you were around this weekend.”
“Just got here. What’s going on?”
Russell looked at him evenly and Brendan knew immediately that he knew.
“With what?” Russell took a delicate sip of his coffee.
“Anything at all,” Brendan shrugged. “Life. What have you been up to?”
“Nothing much. Just got back from L.A. Fashion Week. It was horrid.”
Brendan laughed. “Well, it’s no Bryant Park.”
Russell fake-shuddered. “No. That it is not.”
“So what do you know, Russell?” Brendan asked, cutting to the chase.
Russell grinned and shook his head. “I’ll say this: I am, bar none, the worst gossip you will ever meet, Brendan. But definitely not this time and definitely not about my girl.”
“I can respect that,” Brendan nodded. He waved over a waitress and ordered himself a Sam Adams then turned to Russell again. “You see her today?”
“No, but I expect to,” Russell said. “Momentarily in fact.”
Brendan glanced at the entrance. “Oh, she’s meeting you here?”
Russell nodded. “She said she had to stop in at Carol’s Daughter first.”
“Well when she gets here, you know I might to have to steal her from you, right?”
“You already did. Two years ago,” Russell shrugged.
Brendan looked at him but Russell smiled reassuringly. “Lord knows, I’m not complaining. She’s a happy woman with you. And that was one thing my Tracy—bless her heart—never was before.”
The weight of it, of being the person who made Tracy ‘happy’ was not a small thing, but he wasn’t prepared to relinquish it anyone else either.
Brendan took a gulp of his beer and looked up toward the door just in time to see her enter.
Tracy had pulled her hair back into a loosely-fastened ponytail, and was wearing a body-hugging long sleeved white t-shirt with palazzo khakis and a wide brown belt. Slung over her shoulder was a slouchy, soft calfskin leather bag that she’d bought when she was in Paris a couple years back.
Sometimes when he saw that bag, Brendan’s stomach clenched with remembered anguish. Her trip to Paris had come at a time when he thought they might be done, and that it might be better if they were. But that was long ago, and he’d believed himself past that. But seeing Janice today and considering the fall-out of Tracy being pregnant made him wonder whether at the time he’d ever truly contemplated the end-game. The one that seemed to be every woman’s end-game: matrimony.
Tracy’s face transformed when she saw him sitting there with Russell. It brightened for a split second and then she reined it in, controlling her instinctive reaction, not wanting him to see it.
Yeah, he’d definitely hurt her last night. Still, Brendan stood as she approached and opened his arms to her. Tracy leaned into him and accepted the embrace, but she turned so that she was giving him the half-hug that you give to a distant cousin, or someone whose pelvis you want to avoid contact with.
“What’re you doing here?” she asked lightly, taking the seat Brendan had gotten up from.
“Came to get you,” he said, pulling another chair from a nearby table.
Russell looked at them both, his expression that of someone expecting a conflagration.
“I told you I’d be back tomorrow,” Tracy said.
She hung her bag on the side of her chair and reached for the menu. She still wouldn’t look him in the eye.
“I couldn’t wait that long,” Brendan said. “And you know I won’t be able to get to sleep without you.”
Tracy’s lower lip wobbled.
“Okay, y’all better stop,” Russell said using both hands to fan his eyes.
“Baby, I’m sorry,” Brendan said, looking directly at Tracy as though Russell hadn’t spoken, as though they were alone. “But when we’re fighting you always tell me what an idiot I am . . . so you had to know I was going to mess that whole reaction thing up,” he joked.
The smallest of smiles began at the corner of Tracy’s mouth, though there were tears brimming in her eyes. “You are an idiot,” she said quietly, without looking up from the menu.
“Yeah. But I love you,” Brendan said, still trying to meet her gaze. “You know that?”
Tracy’s nod was barely perceptible.
“Trace . . .” Brendan reached over and lightly tipped her chin up so she would look at him, and when she did he smiled. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she said quietly.
Brendan stroked the side of her face with the backs of two fingers then stood, emptying his beer bottle.
“Well, I’m going to leave you guys to your plans. Trace, we’ll stay here tonight? In Brooklyn?”
Tracy looked up at him and nodded, and already the change in her was apparent. Sometimes it felt like he had too much control over her moods. Brendan pushed back against the pressing weight of that awesome responsibility.
“Okay, so I’ll see you back at the house later,” he said. He kissed her one last time on the top of the head before he left and reached over to give Russell some pound.
Then Brendan walked out into the late afternoon, the reality of his situation settling inside him.
This was it. Tracy was pregnant. And he was going to have to marry her.
________
Doubt
“Do you not want to do this, or what?” Tracy demanded.
She looked up at him from over the top of her laptop and Brendan ran a hand over his head. The tiny niggling pain behind his eyes that had begun that morning was shaping up into a full-blown headache. Like a mezzo soprano clearing her throat, he could feel that it was going to be a headache that just sang all day long.
“No, Tracy, I don’t,” he said. “Picking place-settings is your department. We’ll go with whatever you want.”
“What I want is to have this done before we go to Charlotte, Brendan, and you’re not helping.”
“Who cares if we do it before we get to Charlotte?” he mumbled. “Do it when you get back . . .”
Tracy made an impatient noise and got up from the bed with the laptop, striding out of the room in a huff. “You have no idea how difficult this is! Weddings don’t just happen, Brendan! Someone has to plan them.”
In spite of his emerging headache and the fact that she was annoying the shit out of him, Brendan couldn’t help it that his eyes were drawn to her retreating ass in all its honey-toned perfection, barely-covered by thin white cotton panties.
Usually, Tracy only wore cotton underwear when she had her period, but there would be no more periods for the duration, so Brendan concluded she just hadn’t given a damn what she put on this morning, which made sense since the only thing she seemed to give a damn about these days was planning the wedding.
Within a week after she dropped the news on him about being pregnant, he’d gone out and bought her a ring. Riley had gone with him to Cartier on Fifth Avenue where together they’d chosen something that they knew would knock her socks off. The cost had literally given him a stomachache for the remainder of the day but the look on Tracy’s face told him he’d definitely been forgiven for his faux pas when reacting to the pregnancy news. And hell, what was all his financial success for, if not to spend it on the big moments in life like this one?
The proposal itself was in the most unconventional of ways, in the most unconventional of places. He was giving her head in the shower. Brendan had put the ring on his pinky before they got in and when he fell to his knees in front of her, knew that Tracy would put her hands on his head.
Just before she reached her moment, Brendan had grabbed her hand—the wrong one as it turned out, because who could concentrate on stuff like that when they were giving head—and slid the ring onto her index finger. Tracy’s moans had halted for a moment and then she’d screamed; Brendan still didn’t know whether it was the ring or his lingual expertise that had brought her to that pitch.
She’d been on cloud nine for about a half a day, and then she took a sharp turn into bridezilla territory and had remained there ever since. Brendan mostly just tried to steer clear of her altogether but occasionally she would track him down in the apartment and present him with some decision, like two pale fabrics that to his untrained eye looked practically identical and demand that he choose one. At moment like that he could practically hear the wheels in his brain grind to a halt, and then of course the one he picked was never the right one and she got frustra
ted with him.
Today Tracy was especially high-strung because the next morning they were flying to North Carolina to visit his parents. And there was no getting away from her either because when he’d suggested earlier that he might head over to Shawn’s to listen to some new music she’d given him a look that made it clear that if he wanted any peace in his life over the next several days, he should keep his ass at home. And so he did, even though his main purpose seemed to be offering opinions on things he knew nothing about.
Part of the reason he wanted to hang out with Shawn was that his friend was generally a man of few words, and Brendan needed the space and time to think. Over the past couple of weeks, Janice had been calling. At first it seemed harmless enough. She had once meant a great deal to him and that afternoon in her apartment had probably made her think he was . . . available in some way. Or shortly about to be.
Wanting to stave off that impression, a couple evenings ago, Brendan had, on an impulse, accepted her invitation to stop by a cocktail reception she was going to at the Gansevoort. The plan was to tell her right then about his engagement. But when Janice met him in the lobby, wearing a little white number that set off her complexion in a way that stole his breath, the folly of his plan had hit him—he’d accepted an invitation to a social event with a woman in order to tell her couldn’t socialize with her.
Upon seeing him, Janice had kissed him on the corner of his mouth and taken his hand, leading him into the party. Brendan hadn’t even had the opportunity to say a proper ‘hello’ to her before people began coming up to them, people he hadn’t seen in ages. Some of them he hadn’t seen since he and Janice were a couple. And then folks were hugging him, and kissing her and saying that it was just like old times seeing them together again.
Just being there, and not correcting that impression felt like a betrayal, but no one was having heart-to-hearts, Brendan kept telling himself, it was just a bunch of old friends standing around having overpriced drinks and remembering the days when they could only dream about being in places like the Gansevoort. Janice kept a hand on his shoulder and stuck close to his side and for a while Brendan almost got swept away with it all. Then a woman he didn’t know had joined a group he was talking and laughing with, and when she turned her head, her hair sent a wave of perfume wafting up to Brendan’s nostrils. It was the same scent Tracy used.
Maybe Never Page 5
