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But of course I didn’t say so to Ezra. He was intolerable when he knew he was right.
* * *
I didn’t get a chance to apologize, or even really talk to Stephanie, for the following two weeks. She had gone back to avoiding being alone with me, and every time I asked specifically if we could sit down and chat, she always had an excuse to get out of it. After being jilted more times than I wanted to count, I simply stopped trying. She was clearly determined to keep her distance and I feared I would only make her more upset by not respecting that distance. I figured things would get back to normal in due time, and until then, I had plenty of other things to worry about.
So, I set about not thinking about her, and for almost five minutes after I made that declaration to myself, I was successful.
But after that five minutes was up, I heard her laugh coming from the kitchen and my heart sank. Not being around her, not talking to her, or seeing her smile, was going to be a lot harder than I had hoped.
It might have even been impossible.
ChapterSeventeen
STEPHANIE
It took me exactly four weeks to completely move on from Matt and the pain that he caused me.
The first week, I was grappling with the anger, which I mostly dealt with by spending time with Will and writing. I got ten chapters finished in six days, and I sent them all to my mom for her to read through, something I’d never done before. She sent back notes, and working with her on making my book perfect was a very good distraction for a while. Soon, the anger began to dissipate and it was replaced with sadness. Even though he and I had never really started anything real, I knew I was going to miss the connection we had, as well as the life I had dreamed up for us. Imaginary as it was, it felt real to me, and I had to mourn the loss of it. To get through this, I spent a couple nights in a row going out on the town and having drinks alone at different bars. I also went to Lily and David’s house to meet their new baby, which was a fantastic mood booster.
Their baby was adorable, but what I enjoyed even more than playing with their little bundle of joy, was getting some time to talk with the adoring parents. Lily was practically glowing. Motherhood suited her. And David kept saying he was the happiest he’d ever been.
“But enough about me and the baby,” Lily said, later that afternoon when it was just us sitting together in the sun room. Her child was asleep and David had gone to make a work call. “Tell me how work has been for you! How’s Matt?”
“Work has been good,” I said. “Nothing to report really. Will is an easy kid to take care of, and Matt and I get along just fine.”
She smiled. “He came by earlier this week, to see the baby.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, and he was really sweet. I don’t know him very well, but I got the sense from what David told me after he left that Matt was showing more interest in David’s life than he ever had before. But either way, it was nice to talk to him, and he was so attentive to me and the baby.” She shrugged. “I don’t know, you can just tell he’s a good dad. And he’d make a good husband.”
I raised my eyebrows at her. “Why are you saying this to me?”
“I’m just making conversation.”
I hadn’t told Lily that anything had ever happened between Matt and me, so I was trying to figure out whether or not she knew something. She didn’t lead on that she did, but why else would she be talking about how Matt would make a good husband? Before I could ask a follow up question, however, the baby started to cry in the other room and Lily had to go. I told her I would drop by as soon as I could and left, wondering the whole drive home whether or not someone had told her my dirty little secret.
The week after that, all of the anger and most of the sadness I felt about what happened between me and Matt was gone, and all that was left was a feeling of disappointment. Thankfully, this passed eventually as well, and as of the last week, I’d been more or less content. I was keeping busy with my writing whenever I wasn’t taking care of Will, and my mom booked a trip to come visit me in San Francisco, so planning what she and I were going to do was also taking up much of my time. On a random Monday, about a month after Matt and I had our big fight, I woke up feeling totally over it, and I got ready to go for a run before Will got up.
I went to the bathroom to get dressed and saw a couple blood spots in my pajama pants when I took them off. “Huh,” I said, frowning. That was odd. I wasn’t due to start my period for another week, or so I thought. I looked at my calendar and counted the weeks from my last cycle.
But that only made me more confused, because when I started counting the weeks, I realized that I had actually missed mylastcycle. I had a period in late July, right on schedule, and then I should’ve had another one in August, right around the time Will started school, but I didn’t mark the day I started. Even though I hadalwaysmarked the day my cycles started and ended.
I wondered if it was possible I just forgot to mark it? But the more I thought back, the more I started to think that I didn’t actually get my period last month. Because I would’ve been on it when Matt and I last had sex… I think at least one of us would’ve noticed had that been the case.
So the only explanation was that I missed last month.
This was weird, but nothing to panic about. Clearly everything was back on track now, since I was getting my cycle at the right time. Still though, it vexed me. I’d never been irregular with my cycles. Not knowing what else to do, I called my friend Michelle. I remembered her telling me once that her cycle schedule was all over the place, so perhaps she would have some friendly advice for me.
“Hey,” she picked up. I was still standing in the bathroom, leaning my weight on the sink. “What’s up?”
“Is now a good time to talk?” I asked. “About… about your period.”
She laughed. “What a question! Yeah, sure, let’s talk about my period, you know I’m an open book.”
“Right, well, I was just wondering, have you ever missed an entire month?”
“Oh no, are you late?”
