by L. D. Davis
That made my eyebrows rise. “You’d thought about what?”
He hesitated.
“What?” I demanded, even though I knew. Of course I knew.
His voice was so soft, so sweet, and so sad. “I’ve thought about what it would be like to have a baby with you. Yeah, I believed you, but I also thought about the possibilities. What if you changed your mind? What if it just…happened?”
He sighed, laced his fingers with mine, and rested our hands on my lap.
“We never discussed birth control because it didn’t seem like we were going to be having sex anytime soon,” he continued. “But then the other day happened. I wondered if you were on anything, and thought that I shouldn’t have finished inside you. I would have never tried to sabotage any form of birth control, but after the other day, I started to secretly hope that whatever you were on failed, or that you weren’t on anything at all.”
I swallowed hard and tried to keep my voice from quavering when I talked. “Well. Now you know.”
He gazed at me for a minute. “You can’t get pregnant the usual way, but there are other ways. You can still have a baby if you really wanted one. I heard what you said, that you feel tainted and polluted. But would you feel that way with my baby inside you? With our baby?”
My eyes stung with impending tears as I stared back at Grant. Grant, who looked so hopeful.
“Yes,” I finally answered, my voice strained. “It’s not that you aren’t good enough, because you’re too good for me—you and your sperm.” I gave him a short-lived, sad smile. “But I would still feel the same, like my body isn’t a worthy vessel for a baby. And it’s not only that, Grant. I don’t want a baby. Maybe a long time ago I did, but I haven’t for a long time. I am terrified that I’ll do something to hurt it. What if I do get pregnant and slip up and start doing drugs before it’s born? What if I end up with postpartum depression and feel my only way out is to shoot junk into my veins? I’ve seen addicts have babies, and it’s rarely a good thing.”
I looked away from his fallen face to our interlaced hands. He hadn’t let me go yet, and it gave me some hope that he wouldn’t let me go entirely.
“All that aside,” I continued. “Having a baby is a gift and a privilege and responsibility I don’t want or deserve. I love Alex and Nat, and I would love a baby if we had one, but I don’t want one, Grant. I can’t give you that. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.” I swallowed hard again as I tried unsuccessfully to blink back my tears. “I hope you find someone who can give you everything you want.”
Before the first teardrop could slide down my cheek, he touched my face again. His touch was more gentle than before as he made me face him.
“I don’t want someone else. I want you. You are already everything I want.”
I tried to shake my head. “But you want a baby.”
“I didn’t say I wanted a baby. I said that I wondered about it and thought about it. Even though you don’t want one, you can’t tell me that you haven’t thought about it, or imagined what it would be like.”
He raised his eyebrows as if daring me to lie. I didn’t.
“Yes. I’ve thought about it.”
His thumb caressed my cheek. The touch was sweet and soft, like his voice. “Maybe I overreacted. That’s not the way I wanted to find out. Not wanting to have a child is an important thing to tell me, but more than that, I would have wanted to know why. I would have wanted to know that you feel that way about yourself.”
“So you could fix me?” I didn’t mean to sound bitter, but that’s the way it came out.
“No, baby. You don’t need me to fix you. Some of the most beautiful and amazing things in the world are broken.”
He smiled. It was a real smile, without the sadness that had been with him earlier.
“I want to be there for you, Mayson. Always. I don’t want to fix you, but I want to prove to you that you are not tainted. You are not polluted. Not for me, and not so you’ll want to have a baby. I want to prove it for you.”
“You have a very tough road ahead,” I whispered.
“I can handle it. I’ve got stamina.” He winked at me and I laughed.
“You sure do.”
I leaned over and kissed him briefly on the lips.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
He dragged a finger down my neck. It made me shiver even though it was beginning to feel warm in the car. “I don’t want you to be sorry. I want you to kiss me.”
He wiped away the last few stray tears. Then we met halfway, and he kissed me into a stupor. I could barely remember my own name as my lips tingled during the drive back to the house.
Mandy. Melissa. Mayson. Yes, Mayson.
I was Mayson. He was Grant. He was mine and I was his.
The kids ate first, as had been the norm during the vacation. It was dusk by the time the adults were seated around the table outside.
The last thing that I wanted was to add another rope of tension to the group, but it was there. Emmy, Donya, Tabitha, and I tried to carry on as if I hadn’t just dropped a bomb on them a couple hours earlier, but I knew by the covert looks their men gave us and each other that they knew that something had gone down. It didn’t help that Emmy’s eyes were still glossy with unshed tears and Tabitha’s were red-rimmed and swollen. Donya was made of harder stuff and had the ability to hide behind her many supermodel faces.
“Are you okay?” Grant whispered in my ear as he rubbed my back. He was the only guy who knew what had happened, having witnessed it firsthand.
I smiled though it was a sad smile. “I’m not sure.”
He kissed the side of my head. “Just say the word, and I’ll sweep you out of here if that’s what you want.”
“And you said you weren’t my hero,” I teased.
“I am Repo Man,” he said, grinning. “My cape and tights are at the cleaners right now.”
“I gotta see you in those tights.”
He put his lips to my ear and whispered, “I gotta see you out of this dress later.”
Warmth spread over me and I couldn’t stop the stupid, heated smile from forming on my face. When I looked up, I met Emmy’s eyes. She’d been watching us with a melancholy smile. I looked away from her and discovered that there were a lot of eyes glancing at us, most of them with amusement.
I used to complain about their public displays of affection. Luke and Emmy flirted shamelessly with each other all the time. They didn’t care who was watching or listening.
Leo may as well had dragged Tabitha around by her hair caveman style. With every look, every touch, every embrace, and every kiss, he possessed her, owned her. She loved it, seemed unable to get enough of it.
Donya and Emmet touched—a lot. It was as if they were afraid not to touch. They weren’t obscene like the other two couples; their touches were saccharine sweet. A brief touch on her wrist, her fingers swiping his hair off his forehead, a hand on her waist. They didn’t just stand or sit side by side, some part of them had to touch.
Now I was the PDA jerk. I didn’t pull away when Grant touched me or went to kiss me. I touched him and kissed him just as much. I sometimes forgot that there were other people around us. No matter how crazy it got in the house, there were times when it was only him and me, in a bubble, untouched and unseen by the rest of the world. Is that what it was like for my cousins? In those moments, no one else existed but their significant others?
Even Sam and Fred were often caught in an embrace, and when my uncle kissed his wife, it was with such sweetness and love that it made me feel like I was intruding to see it.
“So, do you want to shake on it, man?” Luke asked Grant.
I had been lost in my thoughts and was only vaguely aware that they were talking about fantasy football.
“Yeah, I’m in,” Grant answered.
All the men except for Fred stood up to shake on some agreement and beat their chests and display their manliness or whatever. Without thinking about it, I found
my eyes darting from man to man, or rather, from man package to man package. When I realized what I had been doing, I almost smacked myself in the head. I dared a glance around the table to see if I had been caught, but to my surprise, I caught each of the other women’s eyes darting around from package to package, too, even my dear old Aunt Sam.
It seemed that at once, we all realized what we had been doing as we glanced at each other with big eyes.
“Oh my god,” Tabitha whispered on my left.
“This is all your fault,” Emmy said, pointing at her mother, but she was trying not to laugh.
Suddenly, we were all trying not to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Leo asked when he sat back down.
The innocent question undid us. Together, as the men watched, we let ourselves laugh. The tension broke and dissipated.
After dinner, Emmy, Tabitha, Donya, and I left for a previously planned night on the beach, leaving Em’s parents and our men to watch over the kids. As we spread a large blanket out over the sand and broke out a bottle of champagne, we guffawed over what had happened at dinner.
“That Pesciano Pecker is impressive,” I said to Tabitha.
“I’m very proud of it,” she said loftily.
“You should be.” Emmy had murmured so low, I almost missed it.
Tabitha surely didn’t miss it. She gave Emmy a light, playful shove, making her laugh as she popped the cork on the bottle.
“The only one I didn’t look at was Emmet’s, because eww,” Emmy said, before tipping the champagne to her lips.
“I didn’t look at Emmet’s, either.” Tabitha shuddered. She accepted the bottle from Emmy.
I shrugged. “I totally looked.”
“That’s disgusting!” Emmy cried, laughing along with the other girls.
“He’s your cousin,” Donya pointed out, taking the bottle from Tabitha.
“Oh, you didn’t know that Emmet is totally incest worthy in Mayson’s eyes?” Tabitha asked.
“Ewww!” Emmy squealed.
“Emmet is a good-looking guy,” I said, pleading my case. “Incest is perfectly acceptable amongst cousins in some parts of the world.”
I took a long sip of the bubbly champagne.
“All right, I think we need to change the subject,” Tabitha said. “I’m so disturbed right now by Mayson’s familial fetish and knowing that Aunt Sam looked at my husband’s dick.”
More laughter. More dick jokes. More bubbly. It was turning out to be a great night.
Some time later, I don’t know how much, we got up to stretch our legs. We walked down to the water’s edge, dipped our toes in, and shrieked because it was so cold. We frolicked and splashed and laughed like we did when we were kids. Those summers so long ago were some of the ones that I did remember. Those days were the last bit of sunshine in my life before my days went dark with drugs and the turmoil I had brought onto myself.
I looked around at my cousins with a new appreciation. I loved them, flaws and all. I needed to forgive and forget about my bruised feelings because they had forgiven and forgotten so damn much for me.
“I know we’re all busy with life,” I said, grabbing their attention. “But we need to do this every year from now on, even if it’s not always at the same time of the year.”
Donya smiled. “I agree. I’ll make the time. I’ve made the mistake in the past of not making time for my family and friends. I won’t do that again. After Emmet and the kids, you guys come first.”
“I agree,” Tabitha said, smiling. “It’s a pain in the ass packing up all the kids to get up here, but it’s so worth it.”
“I have one condition,” Emmy said, her face serious. “Let’s not get into the habit of revealing our dark secrets when we’re here. I don’t want that to become our thing. We need to talk to each other. We need to confide in one another and support each other. I know as well as anyone that it is difficult to talk when something is wrong.” She looked at me as she softly confessed, “And sometimes it’s just as hard to listen.”
She took Tabitha’s and Donya’s hands into hers, and each of them took one of my hands. We stood in a tight circle, hands laced together, with the canopy of stars above us and the sea beside us.
“You just had to make it sappy,” I said, teasing.
“Do you think the guys are all standing in the back yard holding hands and making promises about their friendship?” Tabitha asked.
We broke out into laughter again, just imagining it. The seriousness had gone, but the love and newfound comradery with my cousins—my sisters—remained.
When we returned to the house, Luke was sitting outside on the dark porch with a sleeping Gracie in his arms.
“Hey, you,” Emmy said, leaning over to kiss him. “What are you two doing out here?”
“She was restless and I wanted to wait up to make sure you all got in safely. She finally fell asleep about a half hour ago.”
“I’ll take her up to bed.”
Luke transferred the baby into Emmy’s arms and she went inside, followed by Tabitha and Donya. They seemed anxious to get to their babies as well. Their boobs were probably leaking or something.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” Luke asked before I could follow the girls inside.
I hesitated. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to talk. While we had been friendly with each other since the argument, our chummy relationship hadn’t been the same.
I didn’t owe this man any explanations or apologies. He was my cousin’s husband, not mine. However, I knew that he was a good man, and it wasn’t just about what happened to Emmy that had him so bothered. It was also about me. Luke would give me anything and do anything for me, as he would for most people—even those he barely tolerated. Under his occasional harshness was a big and generous heart. He didn’t have to care about anyone outside of his wife and children, but he did. He cared about everyone in that house, including me.
Reluctantly, I went to sit down in the chair opposite him. He leaned forward and rested his arms on his knees.
“I got so hung up on Kyle Sterling’s name, that I completely overlooked everything else. My first concern should have been for you, your safety and wellbeing, and not the fact that you are friends with him. For that, I am sorry, Mayson. I am also sorry for making you feel like your life or your career is less important than any of ours. I have been thinking about it for the past few days, and I can honestly say that I have no idea what you actually do at Sterling Corporation. I don’t really know anything about your life or your trials and tribulations.”
He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment before continuing, his voice soft and remorseful.
“I can speak for myself, and I can speak for Emmy when I tell you that we should have been paying attention to you. If we had been paying attention, we would have known that something was off about you a couple years ago. We would have known something was wrong. I am really sorry that we weren’t there for you, Mayson.”
I was so taken aback by the apology that I silently stared at him for long moments before I found any words.
“I appreciate that,” I said quietly. “And for the record, I understand why you hate Kyle. I shouldn’t have brought him up. I can understand how that could be like salting an open wound.”
“Well, you should be able to talk about your work. You were right. I am unable to separate the man from the company and I need to work on that. I’m not going to lie and say that it doesn’t bother me that you’re friends with him after what he’s done, though. I’m having a tough time getting past that part. Maybe if he had done what he did to someone else, maybe if it hadn’t been the woman I love, then maybe I would feel differently. Maybe I could be forgiving. I know you think that the two of you are alike, and maybe that’s true, but I don’t see it, Mayson. I know you, at least, I know you well enough, and I don’t know him. I’ve seen your kindness and goodness in action. I haven’t seen his. I’ve only seen the aftermath of the things he’s done.”<
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“Well,” I said on a long sigh and gestured to myself. “I am a result of what he’s done. When I tested positive for opiates during a ‘random’ drug test at work, my employers gave me a choice: go to rehab for thirty days and substance abuse meetings after that, or lose my job. I knew I couldn’t fix myself. I had tried it many times before. I didn’t want to be addicted to drugs. So, I chose rehab, whether I got to keep my job or not.”
In choosing the rehab route, I had to make at least one person in my life aware of my circumstances, because I needed someone to take care of Dusky. The only person I’d trusted to not only care for my dog, but also not to judge me was Lily Sterling, but when I’d tried to reach her, she was dealing with a crisis at work. I didn’t want to put my dog into a kennel if I could have helped it, and I’d been working with a very limited timetable. I had to be on a plane early the following morning. Lily and Kyle had taken Dusky twice before when I’d gone to Chicago and Miami, so I was ninety-nine percent positive they’d take him again. However, I couldn’t wait for Lily to get back to me. I’d needed an answer immediately in case I had to find a different solution.
With much reluctance and dread, after I’d wrapped up some business in my office, I took the elevator to the twenty-first floor. A few minutes later, I stood in Kyle’s office.
It was only maybe the fourth time in my history with Sterling Corp that I had stepped foot into his office. Although he had been in my office many times to rave and rant, there had been one time Kyle had come to see me to ask for help.
It was more than five years ago, not too long after he and Lily began to get serious. I can still clearly see the vulnerability on Kyle’s face. I had been inwardly startled and shaken to see that hard-ass, arrogant man was capable of being vulnerable in any way. It was as if I had learned for the first time that the world was round and not flat, that space was infinite and you didn’t run into a wall at the end of it.
