“This is hard, Mags. This is harder than I thought.” His voice was thick, as if he was wrestling with something.
I could feel a wave of pain throbbing under my lashes, bubbling, waiting.
“Do you—do you not want to do this anymore?” I asked, my voice small.
“It’s not that. I don’t not want to do this—I just—I can’t only see you twice a year and talk to you when the timing—when we feel rushed, and it sucks for both of us. That’s—that’s not a relationship. That’s not fair to either of us. I don’t know what to do,” he said.
I swallowed the tears, my hands trembling.
“Yes, you do, you just don’t want to do it. So I’ll—I’ll do it for you,” I cracked.
I pictured him pacing outside his dorm at USC, the gorgeous cream fountains and green palm trees in view, his olive skin bathing in the sun, his face filled with sadness. I wanted to hold him, I needed him to hold me, and I knew, the way you just know, that we wouldn’t be holding each other anytime soon, or maybe ever again. And with that brutal thought, my chest caved in, and a special kind of loneliness filled all the spaces he had ever touched. My hands, my arms, my knees, my neck, my heart, my soul—I was consumed by a heavy, dark cloud.
On the other end of the line, so was he.
“Mags,” he said quietly, his voice breaking, his tears audible even through mine. “I don’t want to do this,” he cried.
I tugged myself into the fetal position, holding the phone to my cheek as I buckled, the cries guttural. I’d felt rejection and sadness when my father broke his promises—but his lack of fathering never felt like something that I was losing, like a loss that was permanent. His just felt like a temporary disappointment. This pain was splintering.
Losing Asher Reyes was losing a part of me I would never get back. This was heartache creating a hole inside me that no one else could fill.
No one else but him.
56
THIRTY-NINE
I WENT THROUGH FOUR ROUNDS of IUI to get her. Two years ago, I was sitting in my gynecologist’s office going over the overwhelming process of IVF when she stepped out of her office to grab my new lab results from a nurse. She smiled wide.
“Well, this is my second-favorite part of the job. Change in plans. You’re pregnant, Maggie.”
The other favorite part of her job was delivering a healthy baby, and she did just that nine months later. Willa Vine wrapped her tiny hand around my finger, and for the first time in thirty-seven years, it felt like there was no ache inside me. It felt like this was exactly how my life was supposed to be. I felt full.
I showed up to every moment a moment too late Cold soaked limbs searching for a wave to ride Time turned her back on me till you arrived My body on a white-hot shore
So that’s what all this fighting was for
The beat of your heart outside my chest
Your wide eyes blink back mine
Time was on my side this whole damn time
Now, two years later, I was cleaning chocolate off Willa’s round cheeks outside a bakery in SoHo when I felt a tap on my shoulder. After the movie came out, after “Up North” won an Oscar for Best Original Song, after my first album went platinum, I was used to these taps. I made a point to greet every fan with a big smile—because who the fuck did I think I was to even consider doing the opposite?
I turned around, and I couldn’t breathe.
There he was.
Asher Reyes stood in front of me, his thick dark hair swooped to the side, his jawline strong, his amber eyes soft and on mine. A wide smile hit his lips as he took me in.
The fullness left my chest. I remembered, instantly, how much I ached for him. He peered down at Willa in her stroller.
“Well, who do we have here?” he asked, his voice lighting up my daughter’s big green eyes.
Willa stuck her chocolate tongue out at him. Asher laughed, and he sweetly stuck his tongue back at her, before turning to me and shaking his head, in total awe.
“Hi, Mags,” he whispered, his voice soft.
He reached forward and with his thumb, he wiped falling tears from my eyes. I didn’t even know I was crying.
I buried my face into the curve of his neck, and he held me without a question, for a full minute. I felt his chest beat against mine, and by the time I pulled back, there were tears in his eyes, too.
We walked through the city for hours. It was, once again, like no time had passed. Asher strolled beside me as I pushed the stroller through the park until Willa faded into her nap. We hadn’t seen each other since the Oscars three years ago. I was pregnant then, and when he saw me and my belly on the red carpet, he looked away quickly, tears forming in his eyes. I could tell that night was impossible for him, even as he won Best Director—the entire night in that ballroom, his eyes kept finding mine. That night was impossible for me, too. I cried in my hotel room, clutching my Oscar in one hand, with my other hand on my growing belly—feeling both like I had it all and I had lost everything.
“That was…that night broke my heart all over again,” he said, looking at me as we passed over the bridge, autumn leaves crunching below our feet.
“Me, too,” I whispered.
“I wanted to reach out and touch you. Hold you. And there you were, growing this very beautiful…There you were carrying the reason that I wasn’t touching you.”
He paused, smiling down at Willa. I peeled my eyes off him, afraid that if I studied the way Asher was looking at my daughter, I might crumple right in the middle of Central Park.
We kept walking as the sun plummeted around us, our shoulders brushing against each other, our steps getting heavier and heavier, our walk slowing, neither of us wanting it to end, until we were back to where we started, outside the coffee shop with Willa sound asleep in the stroller—drool running down her tiny dimpled chin.
Asher turned to look at me as I searched my purse for my apartment key.
“You know, running into you, here, it wasn’t by accident,” he said.
I looked up. “What do you mean?”
He grinned at me.
“A week ago, I was meeting with a director over there”—he pointed to a brick office building across the street—“and then I saw you walk out of the coffee shop pushing a stroller. I stood there, just…” He tapped his heart, implying that it had lived outside his body. “By the time I remembered how to move my legs, you had disappeared through the crowd. Vanished. Like a magic trick.”
I pointed to the limestone apartment building above us, adjacent to the coffee shop.
“I live here.”
“I know. I asked my PR rep to find out where you lived. And then, I showed up around the same time every day, skulking about the coffee shop, just hoping you’d show up.”
I shook my head at him, in awe.
“You could have just called…” I said with a little smile, my heart soaring.
Asher reached down and took my fingers in his, taking a step forward. He put his hand on my cheek, my eyes closing and my body melting into his touch.
“It was my turn to show up,” he whispered.
I slowly opened my lashes, staring into his kind brown eyes as they scanned my entire face.
“Asher, we want different things,” I said, my voice trembling as I looked down at Willa’s sleeping smile.