Page 86 of When the Walls Come Down
“No, I just like sitting down here. I only had half a glass.” Though Shane Warren might have been the worst hangover of all.
He set the bottle on the small outdoor table and went inside to retrieve a no doubt twenty-dollar beer from the minibar. “What happened to your knee?” he asked, sinking down into my abandoned chair.
“Long story.”
He looked at his watch, then back to me. “It’s only eight, Mags. I got nothing but time.”
“Okay, it’s a long story I don’t want to tell. How about that?”
He quirked an eyebrow. “All right then. I see I got pissy Maggie tonight. I gotta be honest, I like her a hell of a lot better than sad Maggie or sleep-until-two Maggie.”
“Well, in her defense, sleep-until-two Maggie is a direct descendant of cry-until-four Maggie.”
“Yeah, listen-to-you-cry-until-four Heath wasn’t so great when he had to get up early for work this morning, either.”
I shot him a tight smile. “Sorry about that.”
He shrugged. “I hate seeing you like this. How about you talk to me and give me actual answers? Not just the shit I can gather from the bits and pieces you unleash on me any time the wind blows wrong.”
I crinkled my nose. “Sorry about that too.”
He leaned back in his chair and kicked his feet out in front of him, crossing them at the ankle. “Tell me how this Shane guy got one of the most headstrong, opinionated, brutally independent women I’ve ever met so knotted up you don’t seem to know what you want from one minute to the next.”
I looked up at my brother and smiled. “He bought me lilacs because I told him they reminded me of Mom. And Tic Tacs. He had my door fixed when I first moved in. And always makes sure I have a fresh drink at the bar. He worries about me. And kisses my shoulder. He talks to me through brick walls on a sixteenth-floor balcony that he’s terrified of just because it’s better than not talking to me at all. He walks me home every night. And he skims ranch off the top of my salad. He calls me Peach, and even though I claim to hate it, hearing him say it is the highlight of my day.” The longer I talked, the more the emotion built until it was like forcing words over gravel to get them out. “He barely knows me, but he gets me in ways no one ever has.” I paused for a moment to collect myself, but I’ll be damned if cry-until-four Maggie came out instead. “I think he’s my person, but I don’t think I’m his.”
Heath suddenly became unstuck, climbing down onto the floor beside me. It only compounded my guilt because he was going to totally fuck up the knees on that fancy suit. Throwing his arm around my shoulders, he dragged me into his side. “Jesus, babe. You do realize you aren’t the one who gets to make that call, right?”
“I’ve spent so much of my life focused on living a life with no regrets. But what if I’m the regret? What if he wakes up one day and realizes he gave up his entire life for a woman he barely knew? What if he’s Mom?”
Suddenly, Heath’s entire body deflated, and his head fell back against the wall. “Oh, thank fuck.”
“What?” I asked.
“This really is about Mom.” He chuckled and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “I swear I’ve given myself an ulcer the last two days. This is what I get for not listening to my wife.” He shook his head and then looked at me. “I thought you were working up the courage to tell me you were pregnant.”
I gave him a hard shove that did nothing to move him. “What the hell, Heath? I’m not pregnant.”
His laughs became louder. “You’ve been out here a month, Mags, and you’ve already got a guy tripping all over himself to move you in and make a family. There are exactly three reasons why a man does that.” He lifted three fingers and counted off. “He got a woman pregnant. He loves you. Or he’s crazy. Your guy seemed odd but not crazy. So, honestly, I was shooting fifty-fifty.”
My brother, ladies and gentlemen. My fucking brother. I was in the middle of some pretty serious existential despair and he was scared I was pregnant.
I gave him a swift elbow to the ribs, which only made him laugh louder. “You’re the crazy one.”
“Maybe. But I feel a fuckuvalot better knowing he just loves you and hasn’t made me an uncle again.”
I rolled my eyes. “What was Clare’s theory if it wasn’t that I was pregnant?”
He dug his phone out of his pocket and brought up his email. “She thought you were having a midlife crisis.” He lifted his phone into my view and pressed play on the little triangle on the screen before finishing with, “Mom’s midlife crisis.”
