Maybe Never

by Nia Forrester

  What do you mean it wouldn’t make any difference?” Brendan asked, still lost.

  “It wouldn’t make any difference, Brendan,” Tracy said firmly, looking him right in the eye, “because no matter what you did—whether you stayed or you left—I knew I would still love you for the rest of my life. And if I had a baby, if I ever were to have a baby, I wanted it to be yours.”

  Those words, and the matter-of-fact way she said them were like an anvil to the chest. Riley’s words came back to him: you’re it for her . . . she’s yours now.

  “Tracy . . .”

  “No,” she held up a hand. “I know you don’t feel the same way. I’ve known that since forever, Brendan. Why do you think I get so . . . desperate? Not because I think you’d cheat on me. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t, not physically.”

  “What do you mean, not physically?”

  “Like I said, you’re not that kind of guy. You’re the guy who’ll generally do the right thing. But it wouldn’t stop you from maybe meeting and falling for some quiet, easy-to-be-with, sweet-tempered woman. Someone you’re not always managing, someone you don’t have to apologize for.”

  “Trace . . .” Brendan came around the sofa and put his hands on her shoulders. “That would never . . .”

  “I think you’ve been holding out for that,” Tracy said, and she couldn’t look out for him. “And I’m just here until it happens.”

  “How can you say that? We’re getting married . . .”

  “Well, are we?” Tracy asked. Her voice was trembling. “So far it feels like some kind of fantasy that I’ve been living out on my own. Like an imaginary wedding where the groom may or may not materialize.”

  He still couldn’t think of a single thing to say to her that was coherent because he knew that from where she sat, it had look exactly as she described. He hadn’t been there. And he’d even told her that he didn’t give a shit about the wedding . . .

  “But this baby is real, and I’m so . . . ecstatic about her. More than I even thought I would be. I love her already . . . and I’m sorry if you feel trapped. But you’re not, Brendan. I just . . . I want you to know that.”

  “I don’t feel like I’m . . .”

  “You used that word, not me. And I’m always chasing after you, aren’t I?” Tracy said. “Like right on your heels, trying to make you love me the way I love you. And I know how that must feel. How stifling . . .”

  “No! It doesn’t . . .”

  Tracy sighed and shook her head. “All those little things I kept trying to force you to do, picking flowers when I knew you didn’t care, like writing your own vows . . .” she broke off and laughed, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. I was forcing it . . .”

  “I asked you to marry me, Tracy. This was my idea . . .”

  She shook her head. “No. You didn’t ask me to marry you, Brendan. And no, I don’t think it was your idea. Not really.”

  And then she did the one thing he would never have imagined she would do. Tracy slid the engagement ring off her finger and put in the palm of her right hand, extending it to him.

  “No,” he shook his head and backed away from her, almost as though she was coming at him with a weapon. “I’m not taking that. We’re getting married in three weeks . . .”

  “Why? Because you feel you have to? Because it would look terrible and people would talk?” Tracy looked at the floor. “I don’t blame you for this, Brendan. Do you understand? None of this is your fault . . .”

  “I don’t care about fault!”

  “Well I do. I have to take responsibility for the part I played in all this. I mean, for the last couple years, I got to wake up and know that the man I was looking at is the love of my life. And I felt lucky for that.

  “But now, with the baby coming and everything . . . I had to finally face that if I was waiting for you to look at me the same way, that might happen . . . I don’t know, maybe never?”

  When he still wouldn’t take the ring, Tracy placed it on the coffee table.

  “I do love you, Brendan. So much. And more than anything in the world, I would love to be your wife. But I need you to understand, you’re free. You’re free to go.”

  ________

  Reckoning

  “So she hasn’t called to cancel?”

  “No, Mr. Cole, we haven’t heard from Ms. Emerson. As far as we know, you’re still booked. And, I’m afraid that having missed the grace period, even if you were to cancel today, your deposit . . .”

  “No, no worries about the deposit,” Brendan said quickly. “That’s fine. You have good day.”

  “Mr. Cole,” the woman on the other end said. “So I’m not exactly clear. Will the wedding be taking place next week, or . . ?”

  “You know as much as I do,” Brendan admitted. “I’ll be in touch, soon. Thank you.”

  He hung up and leaned back in his chair. The sick feeling in the pit of his stomach still hadn’t gone away. Nor would it; he was pretty sure of that now. Not until he knew where she was. He’d called her job and been told she was out on leave for her wedding forgetting that Tracy had told him that, that she would take a couple weeks before and after the wedding. So he called the townhouse, then had gone over there to look for her, and had even called her mother’s house on the off-chance she’d flown to Atlanta. But Tracy wasn’t in any of those places.

  And then every evening when he got back to the apartment, he walked through each room as though she might be in one of them, sitting there, maybe with those damned wedding magazines that had so gotten on his nerves the last few weeks. But of course, the apartment was the last place Tracy would be. For her to say he was Mr. Perfection was laughable. He was far from perfect. He’d fucked up with her and kept fucking up. He let her walk away—time and time again, he let her walk away . . .

  How she could even use words like ‘desperate’ and ‘needy’ to describe herself he would never understand. Tracy was neither of those things. She was strong. The strongest woman he knew. Strong enough to be scared but still lay herself bare and admit to him that if she had a weakness he was it.

  She just looked him dead in the eye and said it: you are the love of my life. Even if you don’t feel the same way, you are the love of my life.

  Could he have been as brave, if the tables were turned, if she’d been the one acting out and running around with an ex-boyfriend?

  Brendan already knew the answer to that.

  The last time he was faced with someone else being in Tracy’s life, he ran. He took his heart in his hands and held it close and ran like hell, not wanting to contemplate what it would feel like if she trampled it beneath her feet. He’d chosen the pre-emptive strike then and took off, and she was the one who came back to him to open up, to explain, to try to build a bridge that got them to the other side . . .

  And even then he’d been scared. Their whole relationship he’d been scared. Tracy was right. She wasn’t what he’d had in mind for himself. He did think he wanted to be with some quiet, sweet-tempered woman; someone like his mother, who was like a gentle breeze in comparison to his father’s tempestuous, emotional and expressive nature. His parents’ relationship had always been what he considered ideal and balanced, and he was looking to replicate it in his own life. But then came Tracy Emerson, who rocked his belief in all that. She rocked him.

  When she walked into a room, he was immediately aware of her. She commanded and kept the attention of every molecule in his body. There was a certain feverishness, a sense of being wired and over-stimulated when she was around—there were nothing casual about his feelings for her.

  Brendan reached over and pressed the buzzer that summoned his administrative assistant into his office, leaning back and waiting for her to enter. Brett walked in, smiling—Tracy was right; she was always smiling at him, even when there was nothing to smile about—and carrying a notepad at the ready, prepared for whatever his instructions might be.

  “Brett,” he said. “Take a seat.”

 
; Brett sat on one of the chairs opposite his desk and opened her notepad.

  “Brett, I’m going to transfer you,” he said, cutting to the chase.

  Her face fell, and the notepad lowered to her lap. “Mr. Cole . . .”

  “When you first started here, you were very candid with me that you wanted to be in a place where new talent was developed and learn how it’s done. This hasn’t been the best office for you to get that exposure. So I’ve arranged for you to work for one of our scouts in . . .”

  “Well, I know I said that when I was hired, Mr. Cole. But I’ve really enjoyed working for you and I’ve been learning so mu . . .”

  “Brett, let’s level with each other. There’s been a few . . . let’s just call them ‘negative interactions’ between you and my fiancée . . .”

  “Yes, but Mr. Cole . . .”

  “And I’ve gotten the impression that you don’t care for her too much.”

  “No, that’s not . . .”

  Brendan held up a hand. “It’s okay. She’s not an easy person to get to know, and it’s a process that’s definitely not for the feint of heart. But she is my fiancée. So I’m sure you understand that I can’t have anyone in my inner circle who isn’t committed to that process.”

  “I am . . . I can be . . . I. . .” Brett’s shoulders drooped and she let out a defeated sigh, realizing that her efforts would be futile.

  “I hope you know there’s no hard feelings,” Brendan said, offering her a smile. “I think you’re going to love your new department and your new boss. And the work is right up your alley. More so than anything I was able to offer you.”

  “Well, thank you,” Brett said sounding uncertain. She wasn’t smiling anymore.

  “That’s all,” Brendan nodded at her. “You’ll start over there tomorrow.”

  Brett’s eyes widened slightly. She was obviously surprised by how efficient he’d been about getting rid of her. Well, that made one of them. He was surprised he’d been so inefficient about it.

  Tracy had revisited the issue of her discomfort with Brett many, many times. And what the hell did he care who his administrative assistant was anyway? Brett was a nice kid, but he just needed someone who would keep the trains running and this new guy he was having moved from Accounting was sure to do that.

  Hearing the buzzing sound of his cellphone, Brendan couldn’t decide whether to dive for the damn thing or avoid it. Janice had been calling repeatedly even though he’d been pretty clear with her about what was going on. That day when Tracy had run into them had, ironically, been the day he finally came clean, admitting to Janice that he had no business talking to her on the phone, dropping in on events she was at, or even having that lunch.

  I’m engaged to be married, Janice, he told her baldly. In less than a month I’m going to be someone’s husband. And even if that weren’t the case, this is precisely the kind of thing that would make her head explode if she knew about it.

  I take it this is the same woman you were reluctant to close the deal with just a couple months ago? Janice had smiled, taking a sip of her wine. I hope I didn’t goad you into doing something you shouldn’t do, Brendan.

  And that pissed him off a little. Not a little. A lot. For her to think that she had that much influence—any influence—over his life now. And then it all came back to him. Everyone had those moments, when they reconnected with an ex- and thought for a minute that they couldn’t for the life of them remember why they’d let this person go. Well, when Janice made that little comment, he remembered.

  Janice was vain.

  Always had been. Not the kind of vain where it masked low self-esteem, but earnestly and honestly in love with herself. Everything was, first and foremost, about Janice.

  Brendan wished he could say now, with the benefit of hindsight that that was one of the reasons he’d let her go to Paris without him so many years ago. But it really wasn’t. He’d been young and liked having a beautiful girlfriend on his arm. And if she was sometimes a little self-involved to the point of being difficult to stand, that was fine—he just distanced himself for a couple of days. And if he’d had a mind to go with her to Paris, he would have used the same strategy there as he had in New York.

  But the truth was, while he was into Janice, he wasn’t that into Janice. So letting her go to Paris had stung for a while, but not forever. And if he thought about her over the years, it was probably because she had been the one relationship he’d ever had that had not ended on his terms. Brendan thought about her occasionally because she was the one who got away, never considering for a moment that all things considered, it was probably better that she had.

  So looking at her across the table during that lunch, the smug smile on her face, he was annoyed. Annoyed with her for thinking that she was so . . . consequential that she could show up after a decade and still be so powerful as to influence him to change the entire course of his life. But he was annoyed with himself as well, because in sitting in that restaurant, spending all this time with her on the phone, entertaining her walks down memory lane, he almost had allowed her to make him alter the course of his life.

  Instead of being with Tracy—or having her with him in the apartment, or even in the Brooklyn townhouse, but home, both of them together—he was sitting here with this vapid woman who was alone probably because no one could ever love her as much as she loved herself. And from that moment, it became about ending the meal and getting on with his life. But Janice insisted on coming back to his office, to “see where you do that thing you do.” And like a fucking idiot, he’d let her come.

  Thankfully, it wasn’t Janice on the other end of the line when he picked up his phone now, but Shawn. Brendan hadn’t been over to the condo since Riley put his ass out that night, and wasn’t planning on going over anytime soon either. The way things stood now between him and Tracy, he was damn sure he wouldn’t be welcome.

  “My wife is going to kill me,” Shawn began without first saying hello. “But if I was you, I’d want to know . . .”

  Brendan sat upright, knowing what was coming. “Where is she?”

  “She’s at our house in Jersey. Been staying there since . . .”

  “Shawn all this time she was at your motherfucking house and you didn’t tell me?!”

  “B, I didn’t know she was there. Riley didn’t tell me shit. Of course I would’ve told you!” Shawn said. “Anyway, the only reason I know now is that she had little emergency last night . . .”

  “What?”

  “Don’t flip out on me, she’s okay, but . . .”

  “The baby . . .”Brendan said.

  He was suddenly breathless, thinking about the last time he saw Tracy, and how the only moments when she’d looked happy that night was when she talked about the baby . . . feeling her move, and about being ‘ecstatic’ that she was pregnant.

  Ecstatic.

  That she could even say that when his reaction—and behavior since—had been too cool to even describe as ‘happy’. . .

  “I don’t know about that,” Shawn said apologetically. “I just know Riley said Tracy is fine and she headed out there to be with her. All I know is there was some bleeding or something and . . .”

  Even without being intimately familiar with all the nuances of the female reproductive system, Brendan was pretty certain that bleeding during a pregnancy could mean only bad things.

  Fuck. If she miscarried . . .

  “I have to go,” he said.

  He hung up before he heard Shawn’s reply and grabbed all his stuff, racing out of the office without bothering to tell Brett where he was going.

  ________

  The drive that should have taken an hour and a half seemed to go on forever. Every turn, every car ahead of him traveling at less than seventy-five miles an hour, every minor traffic delay seemed to be the work of fate, taunting him, telling him that he was going to be too late. That this time—the time when it might matter more than ever—he would be too late. Either because Tra
cy would not want him there, or their baby would be dead, or she would have left to go someplace else entirely where he could not find her . . .

  But finally, Brendan was pulling up at the guard-post and punching in the security code that Shawn and Riley only shared with a very select few people. Still, there was no way to approach the house unannounced because when the code was entered, a chime inside the main house notified the occupants that the gates had been opened.

  Pulling up near the front door, Brendan was surprised not to see one or the other or Shawn and Riley’s cars. Maybe she had come and gone with Tracy already? His heart was pounding in his chest, and he contemplated the drive back to the city, unsure that he would be able to stand it if he had to make his way back, without knowing she was okay.

  The front door was also keyless, so Brendan entered that code as well, and pushed it open, heading immediately up the stairs and toward the guest suite where he and Tracy stayed whenever they spent the night. It was unoccupied, but not empty. She had been staying there, because her bag was on the ottoman near the fireplace, and jeans had been tossed on the bed.

  But where was she?

  Brendan made way down the hall, tearing through room after room. Fucking huge house. . . Finally, he took the stairs again, going down two at a time. Pausing in the foyer, he considered where to look next. It was still warm enough, so maybe . . .

  Tracy was reclining on a lounger under the loggia, wearing a sweatshirt and baggy sweatpants, thick white socks on her feet. Her face was impassive as she looked out onto the back lawn and her hair had been pulled back, loosely like an afterthought at her nape. On her lap, facedown was a book she seemed to have been trying to get through for months now. Brendan watched her for a moment, wondering how she had managed not to hear him come in. But the loggia was at the far end of the house, overlooking the pool and gardens, a quiet place perfect for reflection. Or recuperation.