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Chapter 16
Matthew
The Parkinson’s Benefit Gala evening was an annual event held at the Plaza Hotel. It was one of the highlights of the social calendar, for my mother, at least. She was on the steering committee and helped plan the night. I usually tried to get out of going to the thing, but tonight, I had a plan. I was going to tell my mother about Lauren’s pregnancy at the dinner, when she was surrounded by people and wouldn’t be able to cause a scene.
Or so I hoped.
It had been four weeks since Lauren had told me about the baby. We had decided, for the time being, not to tell anyone the news until we were certain everything with the pregnancy was going well. She would continue coming to work every day and I started checking in on her daily, to see how she was doing. The messages were brief, to the point and often, she simply sent a thumbs up. Then, over the first weekend, I asked if she wanted to go to breakfast. I picked her up and we went to a café near their apartment, nothing fancy. We talked a bit about the future. Lauren said she wanted to keep working but would take maternity leave. I said I’d pay for a nanny once she came back to work. After breakfast, we went for a stroll around the shops, looking at baby clothes and strollers and seeing what was out there.
The doctor had told us the first twelve weeks were the most critical in the pregnancy, when miscarriages were common. Lauren said she didn’t want to buy anything until we were sure. The whole pregnancy thing was still very new for both of us.
But it wasn’t all that was new.
It was different with us. Between us. A kind of shyness or caution. It was like we didn’t know how to act. We’d been together years ago and then we were exes. But what were we now? Friends? We were breaking new ground when it came to our relationship, and it was confusing for both of us. One evening, after a Chinese dinner, I took her back to her apartment and when I came up, there was a moment when I wanted to kiss her but wasn’t sure if it was a good idea. In the end, I leaned forward and kissed her briefly, holding her lips for a moment before pulling away.
“That was very chaste!” she’d said with a laugh and any tension between us melted away. As I drove home, I got the feeling that she might be open to us getting back together again. I found the idea didn’t sit badly with me either.
I walked through our house at home, trying to imagine bringing a baby here. There were so many empty rooms here, spare bedrooms that nobody ever used. As long as I could remember, the house had been dark and silent, the kind of place that seemed to be filled with ghosts and memories.
We went for a drive the previous weekend, having lunch in a small town outside the city, talking and joking about work and people we knew at the office. Afterwards, we walked a bit and looked at the trees and the fall colors that were beginning to light up the landscape. I suggested we spend the night at a local hotel and when she hesitated, I told her we would get two rooms, of course. She agreed and I found a charming inn surrounded by big oak trees. There was a dining room where the owner offered us a hearty stew and Lauren permitted herself one glass of wine before we went to the sitting room where a roaring log fire invited us to linger before going to bed. I asked how she was feeling, and I could see Lauren pausing to answer. Her face was glowing in the soft light of the fire, and I thought that the pregnancy was agreeing with her. She had not gained much weight yet, mostly because she wasn’t eating that much due to the nausea.
“I’ve been wondering,” she said. “About us.”
“Yes?”
I didn’t know what to say.
“What is this?” she motioned to me and her. “I mean, what’s going on? Something is going on, right?”
“I don’t know,” I said truthfully.
“Do you take all your employees to New England for the weekend?” she asked with a half-smile. But her eyes were serious.
“Only the special ones,” I said.
She bit her lip, and I could see she needed more of an answer.
“I think something is going on,” I said slowly. “But I’m not sure what it is. How would you feel about it if something was happening?”
“You dumped me once before, Matthew,” she said, after a while. “You accused me of cheating on you, then you told me you didn’t trust me. I like you, all right. It may be the hormones, or whatever. And we’re having a baby together, it seems. But your track record isn’t great. When it comes to relationship material, I’m not sure this is a good idea.”
It wasn’t easy to hear. But I knew these were things that had to be said. Communicating about emotions was not a strong suit for me. I didn’t like hearing her talking about me this way, but I couldn’t deny that she was being honest. We weren’t kids anymore, fooling around in college. There was a baby coming and we needed to be sure.
“You’re right,” I said. “But I want us to try again, and I will try to do better.”
She looked into my eyes, her blue eyes drawing me to her, I wanted to plunge into them and take my chances.”
“We can take it slowly, see what happens, how it feels. What do you think?”
She bit her lip, unsure.
“I don’t know.”
I kissed her quickly, before she could say anything else. Her face was warm from the fire and her mouth responded to me, her lips opening and inviting, and I gently traced the outline of her lips with my tongue, before taking her face in my hands, my desire building. She kissed me back and our kiss grew more passionate, deeper.
She pulled back and blinked. “Woah!”
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly, not wanting to scare her off. “I am getting ahead of myself, I think. I know I was a prick, Lauren, when I broke things off with you. Then, again, when you started at Egal. But I’ve never stopped caring about you. Since you started working at the company, you were constantly in my thoughts. I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
