I glance at the time glowing off the microwave. “It’s almost nine,” I comment. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” she answers. “We’re putting onMean Girls.”
“Mean Girls?”
“Lauren’s mom is showing us some old-school movies. We just finished watchingThe Notebook.”
“And those movies are considered ‘old school?’” I ask rhetorically, unable to hide the criticism in my voice.
“Mom! I gotta go!”
“All right. Text me when you’re on your way home.”
“Okay. Bye!”
I smirk, hanging up and staring at my phone screen. Moments like this are where I’d tell Leo our fourteen-year-old daughter thinks the movies I watched as a teen are now considered “old school.” Or that Sadie’s out late with her friends and we have the house to ourselves for a few more hours. And suddenly, I can’t remember the last time I had a conversation like that with Leo.
We hadn’t been Leo and Christine in so long. And I don’t have the heart to mourn us. Not when there are so many things to be angry about. How Leo and I both used work as a buffer to fill the cold, empty space between us. How our attention veered more toward Sadie even though she’d long outgrown the stage of her life where we needed to baby her to death. How I’d even ignored the way he’d spend more time on his phone or on drawn out “work calls,” most likely scheming a quickie with his mistress.
How did I end up here?
Instead of contemplating and reexamining my marriage, I trudge into my en suite to shower. Maybe running my body under scalding hot water might melt some of the tension off me. And quite possibly even the nagging questions making me wonder what I could’ve done differently with my past.
* * *
I tossed and turned all night. Every time I closed my eyes, I kept seeing Everett.
Everett sitting in the driver’s seat of his BMW with the windows rolled down and the breeze blowing through his hair.
Everett running across the hard cement of our driveway as he and Josh did practice runs on weekends.
Everett chasing me across the sandy beach in nothing but his board shorts and sun kissed skin, laughing at me whenever I splashed water in his face.
He’s back. I tried to erase all thoughts of him from my mind last night but as soon as my head hit my pillow, I failed miserably. And now, it feels as if the last twenty years was this long stretched out chunk of time that didn’t even really happen. Sadie, my marriage, everything feels like it happened in some hazy alternative universe and suddenly, I’m sixteen again. I’m waiting for the boy next door to come over and flirt with me under the guise of hanging out with my older brother.
I’m thinking all of this, all the moments that could have been if Everett stayed, when I pull into my parents’ neighborhood with a box of fresh donuts nestled into the cushioned seat behind me and Sadie sitting next to me in the passenger seat.
“Mom,” Sadie calls for my attention with her head bowed down to her phone. “Lauren’s asking what time we’re going to pick her up?”
“We should be done by one, so about one thirty?”
She silently nods, and I peer at the back seat where my canvas tote bag filled with my bathing suit, a beach towel, and the latest edition ofBetter Homes and Gardenspokes out the top.
“Are you girls still okay with Mission Bay? Or did you want to go to a different beach?”
She shakes her head. “It’s fine.” She swipes her finger along the touchpad on my dash to change the music before adding, “Lauren said her mom can pick her up around six.”
“Okay.”
“Would it be okay if I spent the night at her house?”
“You’re going over again?”
She nods, looking up to face me. “We’re watchingCluelessandShe’s All Thattonight.”
I smirk. “You know, when I try to get you to watch those movies with me, you always say no.”
She pouts and her already round eyes turn into giant saucers. “I promise I’ll watch one with you before I leave for camp.”
