He gave another shrug. “If there was something I really loved to do, something that was important to me, I’d want my girlfriend to do it with me.”
“Well, you’d need an actual girlfriend to find out.”
Sebastian’s face went stony, and Abby felt concurrently ashamed and relieved. Ashamed of herself for being mean, which, as someone who’d absorbed a fair share of the world’s unkindness, she tried never, ever to be. Ashamed that she’d hurt him; ashamed that she’d felt that impulse in the first place, that she’d wanted to hurt him. And, also, she was relieved. This connection she’d felt between them, the bond of memory and intimacy—how easy he was to talk to and how it had felt to be naked, skin to skin with him—now she knew, for sure, that it had all been in her head. Or, if it had been real, it was over. If there had been a thread stretching between them, she’d snipped it. Now she could stop her stupid, pointless yearning. She could stop hoping that Sebastian was actually attracted to her, to Abby Stern, the person, and not as a novelty, or a body to warm his bed. Men like Sebastian did not fall for girls like her. Maybe in romance novels or rom-coms they did. But not in the real world.
Besides, she had Mark.
“All set here?” asked the waitress, with the check in a leather envelope in one hand. “You need anything else?”
“We’re all set,” Abby said. “Everything was delicious.” She held out her hand for the check and made herself smile.
Kayla
Day Seven: Syracuse to Seneca Falls Sixty-one miles
It was a secret, something she’d never told her husband, something she’d barely admitted to herself, but when Kayla had gotten pregnant for the second time, she’d secretly, quietly, hoped that the baby would be a girl.
They had had Andy by then, and she and Dale had decided that the second child would be their last. Buying a nice house in a good school district, taking the occasional, reasonable vacation, and eventually sending their children off to college, from which they’d graduate with no more than the average amount of debt, would be tough but feasible on their combined salaries. Three kids would tip the scales from possible to impossible. She’d cried, quietly, in private, when she’d learned that she was having another boy, and she’d ignored her friends and her own sister when they’d tried to soothe her, telling her what a challenge daughters could be.
When Ezra had arrived, most of Kayla’s regret evaporated. Unlike his brother, who’d had colic and had barely slept for the first weeks of his life, Ezra had been a calm, sweet-natured baby, who slept through the night at eight weeks and was happy in his car seat, happy in his stroller, happy just about anywhere. As the years went on, Kayla had seen for herself what had happened when her nieces and her friends’ daughters became teenagers, when the moms were dealing with cutting and depression and disordered eating, friend drama and boy drama, birth control discussions and pregnancy scares.
With every year that had passed, she’d gotten happier about being a boy mom, and proud of the relationships she had with Andy and Ezra. Thank God I have sons and not daughters, she’d think, smugly—arrogantly—when she’d hear one of her friends’ horror stories. She’d taken care to establish open lines of communication with her sons early on, mindful of her own parents’ failings. When she’d asked her mother where babies came from, her mom had said, “From mommies’ tummies” and then hurried out of the room. The next day, Kayla had found a book on her bed, one that had explained the basics in clinical language that had, somehow, left her with more questions than answers. When she’d gotten her period, her mother had told her that there were supplies in the bathroom, underneath the sink, without a word on how to use them, or any questions about how she was feeling. Kayla had been left to glean the rest of her sex education from friends and her biology classes.
Kayla didn’t want her sons growing up ignorant or ashamed. She’d used the correct terms for their body parts, even when they were hard for her to say, and she’d bought them better books when they were ready. As her boys got older, Kayla talked to them, not just about pregnancy and disease but also about consent and pleasure. Andy and Ezra knew, Kayla hoped, how to treat women with respect, to be mindful of their boundaries and, eventually, solicitous of their enjoyment. Best of all, her boys knew they could come to her with anything. She had promised them that she’d listen and not judge, no matter what, and she’d never had cause to regret that promise… until that morning, when Andy knocked on her door.