Page 46 of The Girl He Loves
There’s immense intimacy in telling someone your deepest secrets, your gravest concerns, letting someone see the real you, letting them play with the skeletons in your closet. Being completely transparent brings you closer, in a way that nothing else does. That Saturday afternoon in the smoothie shop is what happened between Joel and I. And that brought us so much closer than a quick fuck in the back of a car or an alley could have.
I can’t help but think… we’re in deep trouble now.
When I get home,there are flowers waiting for me in the kitchen. Simple white tulips. I smile at the sight of them. I get busy preparing dinner — tonight is Breakfast for Dinner; eggs, toast and bacon. In other words, I’m mailing it in. After dinner, I’ll play a little catch up with work. Hopefully I’ll be able to spend some time with the boys. Although if I didn’t, I’m sure they wouldn’t even notice. Fortnite and YouTube are much more interesting than Mom these days.
Brian walks in to the kitchen and greets me with a warm smile. He kisses me on the forehead. “How was your day?”
A pang of guilt hits me hard, like a knife through the stomach. I deserve every drop of the pain. “It was good… busy,” I say. “Thank you for the tulips. What’s the occasion?”
He smiles down at me. “No occasion. You just seem stressed lately.”
An unexpected laugh escapes me. “Me… stressed? Really?” I say, sarcasm lacing my words.
He inches closer to me — the length of his tall lean body is pressed against the back of my own as I’m standing over the stove. “I mean… more than usual.” He kisses my shoulder. “Has something been bothering you?”
“I’m surprised you noticed,” I say. I really am because we’re so busy, always running around in different directions — such things could easily be missed, but then again, Brian has never been one to miss much.
I want to talk to him. I really do. But a twisted sick part of me likes this, likes the mystery of it all. I don’t want to stop seeing Joel, I don’t want to stop this obsession I have with the three of them. I don’t want to know the truth. I don’t want it confirmed, because then I’ll know for sure that Brian cheated on me years ago. With a goddess, no less.
And if I were to crack the both of us wide open, I certainly wouldn’t do it over fried eggs in the kitchen.
“I’m okay,” I reassure him. “I’ve just been swamped with work.”
“Well, maybe you could ease up a little,” he suggests. “Drop a client or two if you need to, Mischa. We’ll be fine,” he insists. “Our finances are great. I worry about you…” his words trail off, and I just want to climb into the cupboard under the sink and hide. I feel ashamed. Here he is worrying about me while I’m gallivanting with another man. Sure, Joel and I haven’t done anything physical, but we’ve shared so much emotionally and that’s almost as bad. And what happened years ago between Brian and Renee is no excuse.
And it’s not even what makes me so upset. What makes me angry is the fact that he’s hidden such a monumental secret from me all these years. Does he not have faith in me, does he not love me enough to share this? A married couple should share everything. There should be no secrets…
Yet, I’ve have my own secrets, haven’t I? Anthony… and now, Joel. I’m not blameless either.
“Dinner’s almost ready. Could you set the table?” I ask. “And use the—”
He smiles. “I know, I know… use the yellow plates. Because when we have breakfast for dinner, we must eat on yellow plates like we do on weekend mornings.”
I glare at him but I’m stifling a smile. “Are you making fun of me again?”
He laughs. “Don’t I always? You love it.”
I smile. I do. I definitely do.
23
It’s about eight o’clock and the kitchen is all cleaned up. I sit motionless at the table and stare at the white tulips Brian’s given me. They take me back. He used to get me white tulips often early in our relationship. I received them for both the boys’ births, and occasionally after when I wasn’t feeling well, and Brian wanted to cheer me up.
Trevor took his sweet time to come. I was in labor for over thirty hours. This was somewhat common for a first baby, I was told. At first, I refused the drugs offered to me, I wanted to do it naturally. But when the pain became unbearable, I finally surrendered. Once the drugs settled in my body, I was quite comfortable. I couldn’t move from the waist down and urinated through a catheter. Brian was by my side the whole time, entertaining me with his silly stories, singing songs to me and the baby and strumming the guitar. He brought me ice and magazines from the convenience store on the first level of the hospital.
When I was finally dilated ten cm and it was time to push, Brian held my hand. “You can do this,” he whispered in my ear. An old episode ofFriendswas playing on the small TV hooked up to the ceiling. For some reason, I didn’t focus on Brian, I just focused on Rachel and Ross and the gang. They were an alternate reality, and I needed to be anywhere but where I was at the time. It was the episode where Marcel, the monkey, poops in Monica’s shoe, and even though I’d never been more terrified, I smiled at their shenanigans.
Trevor scared us for a second. He didn’t cry at first, and the nurses whisked him away, frantic. Brian and I both turned our heads to see what was going on, scared shitless. A second later, we heard his cry and everything was fine. When the delivery nurse handed him to me, he seemed so alert. He was the most beautiful little soul in the world. He was motionless in my arms, but his eyes were shifty, as if he was wondering where the heck he was, and what had happened to his dark comfy womb.
He was everything a mother could ask for; sweet, adorable and healthy. He wasn’t a wailer, but he was fussy at the breast. He just refused to latch on, and my breasts were so achy, a leaky mess. “He doesn’t like the breast,” I remember telling Brian, full of concern.
“Well, that’s not my son,” Brian joked, making light of the situation.
“It’s not fucking funny, Brian,” I scoffed at him. “If he doesn’t eat, he dies.” Brian froze, shocked by my reaction, and I fell into sobs.
In my defense, I was chock-full of hormones and exhausted. A nurse standing by came to my side. She was a tiny woman, four foot ten tops. She had the sweet face of an angel. “We can help,” she offered. “Give him the bottle as we work on getting him on the breast. This happens all the time,” she reassured me. “We have a lactation specialist… she’s very good.”
Trevor and I ended up staying an extra day at the hospital so we could get help breastfeeding. Once he finally took the breast, we were released and the staff congratulated us once more and wished us luck. I remember not wanting to leave, feeling so empty and tired and helpless. How was I going to do this without their help?
