Page 59 of Wicked Games

He wraps his arms around me, and somehow knowing that I’m crying about more than not getting pregnant, he says, “You miss Hattie. I miss Theo too. Brooke said I was never home, and looking back, I didn’t want to admit how right she was. It wasn’t because I liked to spend my day at the office or preferred Violet to her, it’s because that’s what I was raised to do. Work. I was the first in my family to go to college, the first in my family to have a job that didn’t force me to bust my ass for ten hours a day. My dad’s a construction foreman, and even though I’ve given him and my mom enough money to live on for twenty lifetimes, he still works. Goes to a construction site every day, pounds a hammer, drills screws into whatever the hell. All through my childhood he’d get up at six, be out the door by seven, come home at six, and be in bed by seven. He didn’t play ball with me or teach me how to drive. He worked and provided for us and that’s where his commitment to his family started and stopped. I looked up to him and still do, but I took after him in ways that hurt my family, and when Brooke tried to tell me, I didn’t listen. Maybe my mom tried to tell my dad too. Now, when I think about Theo, I don’t only remember his giggles and smiles and wanting pancakes shaped like Mickey Mouse. I remember the birthday parties I was late to, the days when he was sick and I let Brooke and Marcy take care of it. I wasn’t who my family needed, and I’ll never be able to make that up to them. You miss your sister, miss Darren⁠—”

I lift my head and part my lips in denial, but he wipes the tears off my cheeks and says, “Even just a little because you had a lot of good years with him and would still be together if you would’ve had a couple of kids. You miss a life that you’ll never have not being able to get pregnant and I get it because I miss a life that I’ll never have again.”

I try to move off his lap, but he stops me and holds my face in his hands.

“I don’t want that life anymore, and you don’t either, or you would have accepted Darren’s apology and went back to him. There are other ways to have kids, and he would have offered you those choices now. We met when both of our hearts were broken, when our lives were broken, and it might feel like the timing’s bad, but it’s actually perfect. We can get through this, but you have to believe that I want it. You think your body’s betrayed you, but I never will.”

He lowers his head and I meet him halfway. His lips are soft, and he didn’t shave, his whiskers scratching my skin. I sigh against his mouth, this man who knows all my thoughts without me having to say a single word.

“Feel better?”

“Yeah, thanks. You always seem to know what to say, and I feel foolish because I should be saying those things to you too. I’m not the only one hurting.”

“You say those things to everyone else. You’ve built a career on relating to people, and I doubt you have much left at the end of the day. You’ve taken care of your readers and you’ve taken care of your husband, but in the fifteen years you were married, who took care of you? Darren, for a while, but how long have you been on your own? Five years? Seven? Ten? I’ll take care of you, if you trust me to. I taught Brooke not to trust me, and that’s on me. I’ll do better, if you give me the chance.”

“I want to take care of you too. It’s not fair if all I do is take, not with how things are.”

“You do more for me than you know, but if you think you’re not doing enough, walk with me to a little crafts fair, buy me a beer, and let me make messy love with you later.”

Nuzzling my nose against his cheek, I say, “That sounds perfect.”

“Good. I’ll wait for you downstairs.”

He rubs his lips over mine, nudges me off his lap, and steps into the hallway.

I’m a little crampy when I get out of bed, but they don’t hurt anymore. They used to symbolize failure, another month my body couldn’t give Darren what he wanted. Now they’re just part of being me, and I forget all about them when I meet Seth in the kitchen and he kisses me like one day I’m going to disappear.

He links our fingers as we walk down the quiet street. It’s not too different from the little suburb I moved to, my apartment complex in the middle of a neighborhood full of playgrounds and man-made ponds. Birds chirp and the sun shines, and I breathe in the clean air. It’s warm but has the potential to cool off, and I have my hoodie tied around my waist.

“Are you feeling okay after all that mowing?” he asks, glancing at me.

I doubt he’s really asking about the mowing. Or maybe he is. Obviously, he and Brooke didn’t have to mow their enormous lawn, having a yard maintenance crew all year round.

“I’m fine. I mowed our yard all the time and I’m used to it. Do you miss mowing? I assume you mowed your parents’ yard when you were growing up.”

“I mowed and shoveled snow because my dad wasn’t around to do it. The last thing he wanted after he got home was to work on things around the house. He taught me and then it was my responsibility, but I didn’t mind. Sometimes I do miss it,” he muses, thinking back, “but it’s the kind of thing that slips away and you don’t realize it’s gone.” He pauses. “You had the yard and the flower garden. The white picket fence. Dinner parties with your friends.”

There’s no question there, but I shrug and say, “Yeah. Not the two-point-five kids, but I guess you can say we had the typical academic life. Darren’s reputation was always just a little off, you know? Because of how we met and that I was so young. It never looks good, like JD Salinger’s relationship with Joyce Maynard. He was fifty-three and she was only eighteen. Our circumstances were a bit better—I was twenty and he was forty when we met in one of his classes—but he fought with the university. He wasn’t tenured back then and they wanted to fire him. They looked the other way when we got married and I graduated. He said I was worth it.” I huff a laugh.

“He must have thought so or he wouldn’t have done it,” he says, kicking a rock to the curb.

“Maybe. It’s one of those things you look back on and think it was romantic, but then you get the people who say he took advantage of me and turn it into something ugly. He loved me and wanted to support my writing, but there are times when I wonder what my life would have been like if I hadn’t taken one of his classes or if he hadn’t asked me out. Where I’d be. Everyone does that, I suppose.”

“Do you regret marrying him?”

“I don’t think so. Maybe if he would have been abusive or had a temper, but he was always careful and considerate, wanted to make sure I had a good time in bed. I wasn’t a virgin, but up until then I hadn’t slept with anyone who knew what to do. He took care of me that way, and I didn’t read anything nasty in it, like he could only get off because of how young I was. We’d lie in bed and talk, and I’d feel so grown up. He’d ask my opinion on social issues and a woman’s place in society and in the world. I was too naïve to understand he was asking me what I thought about myself after he just got done fucking me. It’s all so very literary, don’t you think?”

“You didn’t feel used?” he asks, tugging my hand and guiding us around a car parked in the street.

“No, but his teaching assistant might, if he told her what he told me when he called, and I hope to God he didn’t. I have no idea how difficult it is to miscarry, and I said he should stay and support her. He’ll do the right thing and maybe after some time goes by, they’ll try again. I know he loves her or he wouldn’t have left me, even if we were unhappy.”

Seth scoffs, unimpressed with my assessment of my ex-husband. “Why did he call you then?”

“Shock, maybe. A test, to see if I’d answer the phone. He tried to call me again, but I ignored it.”

“Block his number.”

I laugh. “Why?”