I choke on the water I’m swallowing. “Yes, you sound very close to a wedding, what with the way you still use his last name when you refer to him.”
“You need to get Caleb out of your head, and the way to do that is to put another man there in his place. Hopefully one who also rocks your world in bed.”
“Stuart the physicist sounds unlikely to rock my world in bed.”
She shrugs in agreement, carefully pressing a napkin to her lips—she’s the only person I know who can perfectly keep lipstick on throughout a meal. “This is true. But Damien O’Connor would, right?”
“Yes, Molly. Your unborn son, my future sexual partner, will be amazing.”
She sighs. “You always have to take it too far.”
21
LUCIE
Caleb’s been coming to the beach almost every night. Maybe my first weeks at TSG were unusually hectic for him, but he seems to leave the office a bit earlier each day. Sometimes, he’s got a little project for Henry. At others, he plays the code game with Sophie—guessing ridiculous words for the letters she’s offered him.
G, he suggests, must stand for garrulous. R for residuals or recividism. She argues that he’s being unfair, but the very next night she’s using those new, big words on him.
She’s just run back to Henry, after attempting to use the word “homogenous” and botching it, when I turn and gently remind him not to be a dick at the upcoming staff meeting.
“A dick?” he repeats. “You fucking millennials want a meeting and your free coffee and you’re getting it, on my dime. How could anyone possibly think I was a dick?”
“Use of the term ‘fucking millennials', for starters,” I reply.
I spend Wednesday fretting, wandering through the auditorium and worrying that it will be too crowded with the tables for coffee and bagels inside rather than out. I oversee the setup of the sound system I rented, and have just closed the auditorium doors, determined not to worry anymore, when Kayleigh calls to say I’ve got a delivery.
I frown. I’m picking up the food tomorrow myself. I didn’t order anything else. “What is it?”
“You’ll probably figure it out when you get it off my fucking desk,” she replies, helpful as ever.
I head downstairs and my stomach drops from twenty feet away.
A bouquet of roses so huge it takes up half the reception desk sits there. Stuart and I have been texting and he seemed relatively normal, but sending two dozen roses to a woman you’ve never met is definitely not normal and I can’t imagine who else would have sent them.
I swallow as I reach for the card attached to the bouquet.
I miss you. Dinner tomorrow? I’ll get a sitter.
All my love,
Jeremy
He was always this way—the cycles of punishment and excess. He’d fail to come home for a weekend or strand me and the twins at a party somewhere, and then return a day or more later with a wide smile and a piece of jewelry, as if that’s all he had to do to make up for it.
And these flowers—they’re the jewelry. They’re sorry I stole your money and cheated and implied I’d take your kids from you flowers. I can’t believe he thinks they’d work.
“You don’t seem excited,” says Kayleigh. “Even if you don’t like the guy, flowers are flowers.”
Except these are so much more than flowers. These are a gift given with expectation and when that expectation is not met, he’s going to punish me for it.
I take them back to my office. I’d rather not see them, but it’s better than having everyone entering the reception area ask Kayleigh who they’re for.
My stomach is heavy with dread as I dial Jeremy’s number. He’s never hit me, but his words can carve up my brain and make me doubt everything. I simply don’t need it right now.
“Hey, babe,” he says, his voice warm and confident. “I guess you got the flowers.”
“I did. Thank you. But…”
“I was passing this flower shop and I saw the roses in the window and thought ‘Those would make Lucie happy,’” he says. “I know how much you love roses.”
I don’t love roses. I told him my favorite flower a hundred times—the same one in my wedding bouquet—and he never remembered once.
It didn’t surprise me. I’m just a story Jeremy tells—yesterday, I was the bitch wife not giving him enough time with his kids. Today, I’m the generic female who loves roses. Nothing he’s saying or doing is about me. Even his desire to win me back isn’t really about me. Jeremy only knows winning and losing, and this is a tactic. Tomorrow there will be a new one.