Page 91 of Heartache & Playdates
We walked into the kitchen, and I sat down at the island while she brought out a bowl of cherries and sat down to eat them. I remembered her eating a lot of fruit when she was pregnant with Hannah, too.
She popped one in her mouth and as she ate it whisper-asked, “So what’s going on with you and Miss Peyton aka Totga?”
“Nothing.” I wished I was lying, but it seemed like there truly was nothing going on. “When I went to tell her I’d found Lina, Trent was there.”
I knew that even though I kept trying to convince myself that it didn’t bother me, it obviously did. I’d brought it up to Nick and Alex and now Lizzy.
“The lawyer guy she’s been not exclusive with for ten years?”
“That’s the one.”
“She introduced me as a parent of one of her students.”
She cringed. “Ouch.”
Again, that seemed like it might be a sore spot for me.
“Well, maybe that’s because she wasn’t sure about what’s going on with you two either.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “I mean, you two obviously have history. But maybe she’s not sure where she stands with you now.”
No. That couldn’t be the case. She had to know that I loved her. That I’d always loved her.
“You haven’t told her, have you?”
“Told her what?” I responded even though I had a pretty good idea where she was going with this.
Lizzy, who knew me too well, tilted her head to the side, giving me a look that called me on my feigned ignorance. But I still didn’t respond.
“You haven’t told her that she’s The One, capital T capital O. She’s your lobster.” Lizzy lifted her hands and clamped her fingers together in what I could only assume was supposed to be lobster hands.
“She knows.” I wasn’t sure if I was trying to convince myself or Lizzy.
If it was Lizzy, it hadn’t worked. She crossed her arms in front of her. “How? How does she know? If you haven’t told her explicitly, how does she know? Is she a mind reader?”
“You wouldn’t understand.” It was a cop out response. I knew it and so did Lizzy, who immediately called me on it.
“I wouldn’t understand? Really?” She scrunched her nose. “Let me just take a wild guess. You think that your connection, yourbondis so strong, soevidentthat of course she knows how you feel without you having to say a word? Am I warm?”
Knowing it was a rhetorical question, I didn’t respond.
“Well, let’s just say, for fun, that your feelings aren’t as transparent as cellophane after all. Maybe you should have aconversationwith her and go ahead and say all the things that you are sure she knows.”
I stared at her knowing, in that moment, the reason I wouldn’t do that. Because if I did, and she rejected me, that would really be it. There’d be no hope. And, for better or worse, even when we hadn’t spoken in decades, I’d always had hope.
I haven’t been dealt the greatest hand in life, but I’ve always stepped up to the table and anted up. But losing hope wasn’t a hand I was willing to play.
38
PEYTON
My head was poundingas I rolled over in my bed. I still wasn’t used to being back in a twin and I nearly rolled off. My arm, leg, and hip went over the side. That woke me up. My heavy lids popped open as I tried to balance myself so as not to fall on the floor. Once I made it safely back on the mattress, I squinted at the bright rays of light shining through my window.
I wearily scanned the room and saw the shirt and pants I’d worn to the bar the night before were strewn out on the floor. I must have stripped on the way to bed. I glanced down and saw that I was wearing Maddox’s shirt. The one I’d ‘borrowed’ from him the morning I left for Germany. His Roger Rabbit shirt.
It was the shirt he was wearing the first day I met him when he sat next to me at the lunch table. I told him I liked the movie and he invited me to go and see an outdoor showing of it at Golden Gate Park a week later. That was our first date and first kiss.
When I was sneaking out of his room at the group home and I knew that I wasn’t going to see him again, I saw it laying on the floor and I took it.
In all the years I’d had it, I’d only allowed myself to wear it once. It was the night I came home from the hospital after I had Lina. Although, I didn’t know her name then. I did now.
