“No, I mean…Chris is here,” she whispered, her lips barely moving.
My stomach dropped. I twisted to look over my shoulder and sure enough, there he was. Chris LaMont. Tyler’s old roommate, and my ex-boyfriend.
“Come on. He never comes to things like this, and today he decides to show up?” I hissed to Natalie under my breath.
“I thought you saw him. Sorry. Let’s leave.” She took a big gulp of her wine and rose from her chair.
“No, we can’t leave. He’ll know I left because of him. Besides, I don’t want to.” I forced a deep breath into my chest.I can handle this.
I knew Chris would be invited to this party, but the anxiety tearing through my stomach told me I hadn’t believed he’d show up. I frowned at my little plate of oysters with their perfect dollops of hot sauce, and my stomach lurched again.Dammit.I hated myself for letting his presence make me lose my appetite.I don’t know why I even care after five whole years.
But our breakup took a toll on me, which Natalie knew.
I looked up at her. Sympathy covered her face. She glanced down at her watch and said, “We’ll stay until they do the cake, and then slip out and go back to your apartment. Sound good?”
“Yes, perfect.” Gratitude for my loyal best friend settled my stomach, if only slightly.
“How’s work going?” Tyler asked, placing an overflowing plate of food in front of the empty chair next to Natalie.
“It’s going well! Nothing terribly exciting to report,” Nataliesaid. I knew she wasn’t lying about things going well like I so often did.
“What about you, Val? Has it been nuts as usual? I heard the private equity business is going off.” This was how ‘BigLaw’ lawyers spoke to each other.“How are you?”was replaced with“How’s work going?”Since, for us, they were the same thing. The litmus test for our sanity was how many hours we billed last week.
“I’m…surviving,” I responded to Tyler, forcing a closed-lip smile.
“Hang in there. Hopefully it slows down soon.”
I nodded, even though I didn’t think it would. “How’s the break going? You find a dads’ softball league out here in the ‘burbs yet?” Tyler had left his law firm job a few months ago to stay home with Mina for a bit.
“Not yet, but that’s a great idea. I’d love to crush some other dads on the softball field. Maybe I can find a spring league.”
“I’m sure whoever’s team you end up on will be very grateful,” I said.
Tyler shrugged. During law school we’d learned he was a great softball player, but he was humble.
“And then you have coaching all of Mina’s sports to look forward to,” Natalie added, looking over into the playroom at the gaggle of babies. I followed her gaze to where Mina was banging a toy pot on the counter of a toddler-sized kitchen.
“I’m counting down the days. Can’t wait to get her on the golf course, the tennis court, the tee ball field.” Tyler looked over at his daughter. “You guys, I’m obsessed. She’s the coolest little kid. I would be so happy being a stay-at-home dad.” His eyes gleamed with pride and love. Happiness and envy warred inside me.
What was it like to love someone so much that nothing else compared or mattered? It must feel great. My younger self assumed I would know what that felt like by this time in my life—thirty-one years old. But that hadn’t been my path. Not since Chris let me walk out the door and never called me again.
I bit the inside of my cheek and refocused on our conversation,all the while attempting to put a lid on the void yawning open inside of me. “I don’t doubt it,” I said. “I knew since the moment I met you—this guy has major dad vibes.”
Tyler laughed, a full-bellied guffaw that traveled into the next room where a few of the adults looked up. “I’m not sure how I feel about that, Val!”
Natalie and I broke out laughing, too. “It’s true!” I defended.
“Yeah, we both agree, we even talked about it at the time, after our first grad school softball game,” Natalie said, wiping away a tear of laughter with her manicured fingertips.
Tyler shook his head and took another big bite of his burger, eyes still alight. He swallowed before adding, “Unfortunately, I’ll need to start looking for an in-house job for the fall. We just took on quite the mortgage.”
“You’ll find something with a better balance,” Natalie assured him.
He clinked his beer can against her wine glass.
I walked into the kitchen a few minutes later to grab us some waters from the cooler, but Chris stood right next to it, talking to a girl I didn’t recognize.Probably a new girlfriend. He was never one to suffer long relationship gaps. I spun around before he could look up, my stomach flipping over, and slinked back into the dining room.
“Can you actually grab the waters?” I whispered to Natalie.
