Page 46 of Heartache & Playdates
“We’re going to go see if my friend is home.”
“Your old friend?”
“Yep.”
On the short drive I made a quick detour to a florist and grabbed a bundle of tulips. Peyton didn’t like flowers, but if memory served, Nonna loved tulips, they reminded her of Italy. I didn’t want to show up with a bouquet for Nonna and empty-handed for Peyton. Luckily, I had a box of Sadie’s Special cupcakes from Alex’s fiancée already that I’d got this morning for the intern meetings. I found that a cupcake eases people’s nerves. But today there would be no cupcakes at the meeting. The interns would just have to deal with their nerves without any sugary treat to take the edge off.
I pulled onto the street that I hadn’t driven down since returning from college and parked. The house was in the middle of the street which was on a hill and had a decent incline. I got out and grabbed the flowers and box of cupcakes.
“Alright, Peanut. Best behavior mode activated. Beep boop.” I pressed an imaginary button on her forehead as I made the robotic sound. It’s something that I’d started doing when she was around three and would melt down in stores. I had told Alex about the tantrums and he said that kids were so much harder than computers because there was no button you could program to predict behavior.
So, as a joke I did it the next time we went to the store. And to my surprise, it worked. Obviously one successful breakdown-free outing was not enough data to come to any conclusions, so I tested the theory again, and got the same results.
To this day, whenever I pushed the center of her forehead and said the four magic words, Hannah was on her best behavior. I knew that its days of efficacy were numbered, but I planned on using the parental hack until its inevitable expiration date.
Hannah hooked her finger through the belt loop on the side of my pants as we walked up the hill. Whenever my hands were full, she had to be holding onto me for safety.
When I started up the steps to the modest, duplex with gray siding, a black shaker roof, and yellow front door my palms began to sweat. Just like seeing Peyton again at the reunion, this was both familiar and brand new.
With each step I took, I felt like Tom Hanks character at the end ofBigwhere he walks down the street and, spoiler alert, shrinks as he morphs back into a thirteen-year-old. I felt like that was happening now. It was stronger than a sense of déjà vu.
“Daddy, are you okay?” Hannah, who was very in tune to people’s—especially my—energy asked as we reached the top of the steps and walked onto the porch.
“Yeah, I’m good, b-a-n-a-n-a-s.” I spelled her nickname out like they did in the Gwen Stefani song to try and show her that I was fine.
She grinned, but I could see in her much-too-wise-for-a-six-year-old eyes she wasn’t buying my attempt at masking what I was feeling.
I knocked on the door and held my breath. It couldn’t be a coincidence that I’d seen her. That she was in the city, and I’d seen her. It had to mean something.
I knew my life wasn’t a rom-com, but this sort of felt like one. I just hoped it had a happy ending.
18
PEYTON
Why had seeingMaddox with another woman affected me so much? It was the question I’d been asking myself for the past two hours that I’d been walking around aimlessly.
Seeing him had felt like a punch in the gut, which made zero sense.
I pulled out my phone and looked at the text he’d sent me the day after the reunion.
It’s Maddox. Hope you made it home safe.
I’d read and reread that text a thousand times. I tried to decipher what it meant. Was it his way of saying goodbye?
I obviously had issues with those, so I had no clue if that was the case.
If I were being a hundred percent honest, I thought, for sure, he’d text me again. Maybe not the next day, but the next week, the next month.
But he hadn’t. Which made me think this text was his version of closure.
He’d obviously moved on. Not that I had any right to be upset about that. The past six months, Trent and I were talking about marriage. We were talking about a future.
I’d been the one who told Maddox that it could only be one night. I’d been the one who’d snuck out of the hotel room ninja style and hopped on the first plane back to JFK. I’d been the one who hadn’t responded to the text.
This was on me. Yes, I had my reasons. If Maddox knew the whole truth, forgiving me for ‘ghosting’ him would be at the bottom of the list of things I needed forgiveness for.
If he knew the whole truth, he’d hate me. And as much as it might kill me to live in the same town with him and see him around with other people, which I honestly thought was not going to happen, the thought of Maddox hating me was a thousand times worse.
