Chapter 22

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

MARY

Pulling out the ornaments from our other life affected me in a way I hadn’t expected. Instead of remembering sweet moments—Aidan’s first Christmas, the way he used to call Santa Santer, and his fierce loyalty to Donner, his favorite reindeer—I found myself remembering the way Glenn had always delegated the buying and wrapping of Christmas gifts to me, including mine from him, since I was more “into that.” He’d missed Aidan’s actual birth, for goodness’ sake, because he took a work call in the delivery room and slipped away for “five minutes.”

We’d never really been a family, the three of us—it had always been Aidan and me, with Glenn off living his life. He might be having second thoughts about the way things went down, but his actions over the last six years suggest a theme. I can practically hear my mother telling me, When someone tells you who they are, believe them.

I still haven’t answered Glenn’s text from the other night, the one he sent a suspiciously short time after Ruth and Tom would have arrived back in Charlotte.

Nor have I responded to the follow-up message he sent last night, asking to speak with me. We can even make an appointment. I know you love making appointments.

The thing is, even though I don’t want Aidan to feel abandoned, he was abandoned. Until I’m positive that Glenn is sincere, I’m not going to let him slip in and pretend he didn’t wake up one day and decide he didn’t want to be a father. Because, frankly, Aidan is not going to stop being autistic. He is smart, and beautiful, and utterly himself, and he will always be different. I love him for him. Can Glenn?

I’m pretty sure I know the answer, but do I really want to stand in the way of Aidan having any kind of relationship with his father?

I have no answer.

All I know is that Glenn would have walked away from decorating the tree, or maybe paid someone to do it. But Jace…

Jace could have so easily put on that star himself. It would have taken him ten seconds, maybe less. But instead, he saw another opportunity to give joy to my son, and he lifted him up. Then he looked at me, smirking a little, and straightened the star. Now, lying in bed, feeling a strange thrumming in my chest, that’s all I can think of. Jace giving me that look.

He gave me plenty of other looks tonight, ones that filled my body with heat and remembered pleasure, but that’s the one that stuck.

The strange ache it left in me is the reason why I finally sneak into the kitchen and pull the pink vibrator out from under the Woody towel, jumping and tossing the thing in the air when the HVAC system rumbles behind me. The vibrator falls onto the cutting board, as if it were a cucumber waiting to be diced for a salad. Face burning, I stuff it back into the towel and then tuck the towel under my arm. As I head down the hall, I listen for sounds of Aidan stirring, but there’s nothing.

After washing the vibrator three times, I bring it back into my room, feeling a little less sure about the whole thing. My pajamas. That has to be it. I feel ridiculous using this thing in my old panties and plaid Christmas pajamas, so I put on the black bra and panties that Aidan waved in front of Jace.

When I finally turn the vibrator on, jolting a little from the sound and the sensation —good grief, why don’t women use them all the time? Why don’t underwear companies build them into panties?—I imagine Jace’s hands on me, the warmth and weight of them, the confidence with which he wields his beautiful body. And I imagine straddling him the way he insinuated last weekend, one leg on either side, his hands cupping my breasts and touching me just above the place where our bodies meet as I ride him.

It feels good—no, it feels great—but afterward, there’s still a sense of emptiness. Of loss. Because I only imagined him. Because he wasn’t actually here. Because logic and sense aside, I wanted him to be.

“Was I unclear?” Nicole asks with a deep, beleaguered sigh, as if she’s a disappointed parent. “Did I stutter in my delivery?”

“What do you mean? You wanted me to use the…” I look around, even though Aidan went to sleep an hour and a half ago, and it’s unlikely a burglar has broken into the house and hidden behind the Christmas tree without making a sound. “…vibrator,” I whisper, “and I did! I’ve been using it all week.” My face heats. I didn’t mean to admit to that. That first time was all I’d planned to tell her about. She’s been busy for the last week and a half, doing things undisclosed, so this is our first in-person get-together since the night of the margaritas.

Since your night with Jace.

She’s texted a lot, of course, and dispensed two additional challenges. The first was to order something I didn’t need just because I wanted it. (I argued that I hadn’t needed the vibrator, and she kept sending the eggplant emoji until I agreed to do the new challenge. So I bought a tube of expensive red lipstick to replace mine, which I realized was at least five years old.) The second challenge was to refuse the next time someone asked me to do something I didn’t want to do. (This turned out to be Hilde, who asked me to take a look at the raised rash on her leg. I was quite happy to say no and refer her to a dermatologist recommended by Maisie.)

And then there’s Jace. We’ve been spending quite a bit of time together, he and Aidan and me. Last week, the day after our tree-decorating extravaganza, Aidan and I came home to find a package waiting on our doorstep—not a vibrator this time, but an ankylosaurus model ordered by Jace. Aidan insisted on FaceTiming him (really, it didn’t take much persuading), and he answered at a job site. A suspiciously familiar voice in the background suggested it was Cal’s job site, and it was a house, which told me (a) Molly’s totally getting a house for Christmas, and (b) shit, I can’t tell her. I asked Jace for confirmation, but he refused to destroy the surprise.

Seeing him like that, working on a gift for my sister, even if he wasn’t the one giving it, his white shirt dotted with sweat that made it cling to his muscles and show the curving lines of his tattoos…it stirred something in me.

I took the vibrator out again that night.

Then he came over on Thursday to build the model, and he insisted that we order pizza so I could spend time with them instead of being stuck in the kitchen. Once again, Aidan ate every bite on his plate. Afterward, we made hot chocolate, and Aidan serenaded us with a song he’d written about an ankylosaurus’s first Christmas. Then he insisted that he wanted Jace to read him a bedtime story, and to my shock, Jace did just that. Afterward, when Aidan was asleep, Jace and I sat talking in the living room, with the tree lit up like a beacon and a fire roaring in the fireplace. And suddenly, it was midnight. Saying goodbye to him that night, I had the urge to lift onto my tiptoes and kiss him, to ask him to stay. From the way he was looking at me, he would have.

But I let him leave and then returned to my room with the pink vibrator.

On Saturday, I helped Anette at the dance studio, and the experience filled me with such giddiness, such gratitude, I went out and bought two small Christmas trees. Aidan and I brought them over to Jace’s apartment building, one for him and one for Roger, along with an assortment of colored bulbs. After helping Jace decorate his tree, we went over to Roger’s and strung popcorn for his tree, because that’s how he and his wife had always done it, and Mrs. Rosa came by with enough cake to feed an army. Aidan didn’t have a single meltdown, until I tried to get him into the car to go home.

We saw Jace on Sunday too, because Dottie texted me that a local clay shop was having a special dinosaur night. I told Jace that Aidan had asked me to invite him, but in truth, I was the one who wanted him there. Midway through the activity, Aidan got upset because he got paint on his nose, so Jace immediately dotted his own nose with blue paint. Using the wipes I carry everywhere, I wiped off both of their noses, and a weird feeling came over me as I touched Jace’s face, a stirring of something that was more than the desire I feel every single second he’s around.

And then he came over yesterday, because it was Tuesday, and it was beginning to feel a lot like our night. He and Aidan and I watched The Muppet Christmas Carol , which Jace said was his favorite Christmas movie, and made gingerbread cookies shaped like dinosaurs. I put some together for Roger and Mrs. Rosa, even though, let’s be honest, (a) she’s a better baker than I am, and (b) she probably doesn’t need two dozen misshapen dinosaur cookies.

Needless to say, I used the vibrator then too, after Jace left at eleven thirty-two. (Yes, I looked at the clock. I’d wanted him to stay longer, but he’d gotten up early for work and was yawning, and I had court in the morning.)

It’s Wednesday now, which means tomorrow is another of our nights. The plan is to help Aidan make gifts for Molly and Cal, Maisie and Jack, Tom and Ruth, and even Dottie. (He still talks about the day she babysat him. Possibly because she told him she thought he might have been an ankylosaurus in a different life.) Inspired by clay night, he’s decided he’s making everyone dinosaur ornaments for their trees. Baby Mabel gets a dinosaur stuffed animal he picked out at a toy shop the other day. Jace said he’s going to make ornaments for Roger and Mrs. Rosa too.

I’m hoping he’ll stay late again. I found a recipe online for thumbprint cookies. There’s a good chance he’ll like them, because he mentioned they were always his favorite Christmas treat.

I feel Nicole staring lasers into the side of my face. She’s been here for about a half hour, and I’ve filled her in on everything from the last week and a half, most of which she seemed to find boring (a) due to its lack of sex and (b) because she seems to find most things boring.

“You should be proud of me.”

“Yeah, you deserve a real pat on the back for downgrading to a vibrator,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I only wanted you to use the vibrator because I figured it would take us at least a few months to work up to a man. But a sexy-ass man was delivered into your lap—gift wrapped! Hell, there was probably a bow around his cock—and you’re using a vibrator? I told you not to apologize for what you want, yet here you are making excuses for why you can’t have the best sex of your life with a man you’ve apparently been seeing almost every night . God, I hope Tina isn’t this stupid.”

“You’re not supposed to compare your children,” I say, which is about as close to sarcasm as I’ve ever come, but what can I say? Nicole pushes me to it. Still, I can’t pretend that her words don’t poke something slumbering inside me.

“Supposed to…? That’s your whole problem,” she says, getting out a flask from her bag and dumping something into her hot chocolate. She lifts the flask, silently offering me some, and I consider it for a moment before shrugging my agreement. Her boyfriend is her ride, and I’m going nowhere. So why not? Her lips tip up a little in approval, and my drink gets the same treatment. “You care too much about what you think you’re supposed to do. There are no rules, Mary. Only the ones we set for ourselves.”

“Obviously, there are rules,” I sputter. “If there weren’t, I’d be out of a job. There would be anarchy.”

She shrugs. “There could be worse things.”

“I like my job, and I’d prefer to teeter on the edge of anarchy than take a bath in it, thank you very much. Besides, you know why I can’t sleep with Jace.”

Another sigh, this one probably directed toward Aidan. “Can’t your kid get attached to some other guy? He’s got, like, two uncles in a ten-mile radius. A super-hot buddy is wasted on him. Find him a dude with a janked-up face.”

I feel like arguing, but then again, this is Nicole. There’s no point. Something tells me she wouldn’t understand the way it felt to watch Jace lift Aidan to put that star on our tree.

Fingers snap in front of my face, and I jolt. “You’re mooning over the buddy again,” Nicole says. “It’s not healthy.”

“Don’t you moon over Damien?”

She nearly spits out a mouthful of spiked hot chocolate. “Maybe,” she says with a smile, “but then I hop on his dick. So at least something good comes of it.”

“You’re trying to shock me.”

“I don’t need to try.”

I take a sip of my drink too, feeling the warm kick of the whiskey down to my toes. “Is this a ploy to get me drunk again because of what happened after the last time we went out?”

“You mean how you immediately got busy with Jace? No, but it’s not a half-bad idea. Or at least it wouldn’t be if your kid weren’t home.”

I look at her, shocked. She didn’t strike me as the kind of person who’d care about innocent ears and eyes.

She must be able to read my expression because she shrugs. “You’re a good mom. You don’t seem like the kind of mother who’d pull a peekaboo surprise with a new boyfriend in the house without any kind of warning.”

For some reason, her answer puts tears in my eyes, and because I suspect Nicole would leave if she saw them, possibly setting something on fire on her way out, I take a hearty sip of the cocoa instead.

“Thank you,” I manage in a mostly flat voice.

“So the detective you hired for Jace hasn’t found anything yet?” she asks, as if she’s ready to move on from talking about emotions.

“No. But he will.” I feel it in my bones. He couldn’t start working on Jace’s case immediately, so he’s only gotten in a couple of hours so far, but he said he feels it too—the kind of hunch you get after working around crooked people for years. Dottie Hendrickson would probably have a word for it, and possibly even a crystal to use in such circumstances. Maybe I’ll eventually be brave enough to go back to Tea of Fortune and ask her.

“Keep me updated. If he doesn’t, I will.” She doesn’t have any PI experience I’m aware of, and yet I don’t doubt her. I really don’t. If anything, she’s probably willing to cross lines that Dennis would only toe.

Again, I’m touched despite myself. Nicole really doesn’t have to do that for me—or for Jace—and yet here she is, offering.

“Speaking of which, what are we going to do about Glenn?”

I snort and take a sip of the hot chocolate. “Molly already offered to bring over a shovel and a shotgun. And Maisie tried to get me to adopt a guard dog. Then again, she’s been pushing different animals on me ever since she started the animal shelter. I think she’s just low on adoptions for the month.”

Nicole’s already shaking her head. “The best way to deal with a man like that is to fuck with his life. Just give me the word, Mary. I’ll have him buried under more dirt than Molly could hope to dig. Her arms are twigs, anyway.”

Somehow, I don’t think she’s exaggerating. The temptation is there, snaking through me. I could make him stay away. I could make him leave us alone. But I can’t do that yet. Not until I know his true intentions. And I’m hoping not to hear from him again until after Christmas.

It took me a few days to decide how to respond to Glenn. Ultimately, I decided on an email. Less of a chance for him to gaslight me, twisting things around to make himself look like the victim.

Yes, we can talk. After Christmas. If you sincerely want to be a part of Aidan’s life, I won’t stand in your way. I WANT him to have a relationship with his father. But he’s just getting settled into his new home. This is not about punishing you or taking him away from you at the holidays. You’ve never liked the holidays, and seeing you right now would dysregulate him. You wanted to schedule a conversation, so if it suits you, we can talk on December 26 th . Nine a.m.

-Mary

It’s up to me, whether I let him see Aidan again. He signed away his rights, after all, willingly.

To my shock and no small amount of disgust, he responded with: Your terms, Mary. ;-)

I’m not sure what threw me more, the acquiescence or the winky face. I don’t trust either.

I’m terrified he’s going to hurt my son again. That he’ll blow in like a storm and then flit out, leaving me to put the pieces together. But I also don’t want Aidan to learn someday that his father asked to see him and I turned him down.

“You have no idea how tempting that is,” I admit to Nicole, “but I have to talk to him first. If he really wants to be there for Aidan, I guess I’ll have to deal with him visiting or getting Aidan for visits.”

“We’ll see,” she says.

I’m not sure what that means—it sounds an awful lot like Nicole plans to go rogue—but I decide not to pry. “Moving on. Would you like to see my room?”

“Are you propositioning me?”

“No,” I bark out, blushing, “I wanted to show you the painting I told you about.”

“I know,” she says with a grin. “What can I say? You’re fun to shock.”

We bring our hot chocolates with us, something that’s firmly against my own house rules, and I lead her through the door, feeling proud of what I’ve accomplished in a short time. The bedroom feels like my sanctuary now, like it’s somewhere I want to be.

And your memories of Jace have nothing to do with that, surely.

I tell my internal voice to shut the heck up and glance at Nicole.

“So?”

“Yeah,” she says, thoughtful, “I can see why you want to glam the place up. The only thing worth keeping is the painting. That’s rad.”

“Hey! I already glammed it up. Didn’t you see the new duvet cover? And the lamp! You can’t tell me you don’t like the lamp.”

That’s when I catch her smile. “It’s very you .”

It doesn’t sound like a compliment, and it’s probably not supposed to, but I find myself smiling back. “Thank you.”

Her smile widens. “You didn’t apologize for yourself. Good one. I think you’re ready for your next challenge.”

I feel a weird tingling on my skin, and it takes me only half a second to realize I’m hoping she challenges me to sleep with Jace again. Or text him. Or do anything that puts me into closer contact with him.

She doesn’t disappoint. “Come to my wedding this weekend. And bring him .”

I’m so overwhelmed with shock, I almost drop my cocoa, because (a) I can’t picture her getting married, even though I’ve concluded from her stories that Damien is just as crazy as she is, (b) my type A side is horrified by the thought of inviting guests to a wedding at the last minute, (c) she’s not wearing a ring, as far as I can tell, and (d) I can’t do this. I can’t just up and invite Jace to a wedding, of all things. We’re just friends, right? Besides, he doesn’t know Nicole, and she’s terrifying, and…

“Stop coming up with excuses in your head. I’m going to take it personally,” she says. “And quit eyeing my ring finger. We’re not doing that. We’re getting tattoos instead.”

“I mean, I’ll go, of course,” I say. “If you’re sure you can add us at the last minute. Will Molly and Cal be there too?”

“No,” she says bluntly. “We decided not to invite anyone. My mom would get weird and try to stuff me into a white dress. Literally. That woman doesn’t know the meaning of the word no.” She’s not the only one. “And Damien’s parents are shitty. Our friends would just make a big deal of it.”

Does that mean she doesn’t consider me a friend, or that she trusts me not to make a big deal of it?

“But…?”

She rolls her eyes. “We need witnesses, obviously. Witness One. Witness Two. Done.”

I’m still reeling from the revelation that we’ll be the only guests. Are they getting married at city hall? A ghost-riddled dungeon? A tattoo parlor? With Nicole, anything seems possible. “Can I tell Molly?”

One eyebrow lifts. “Will you hold off if I tell you to?”

I don’t really want to—it seems wrong, kind of, since Molly and Cal knew Nicole before I did. Still, knowing her as they do, they’d probably expect this kind of thing, and I don’t want to break her trust.

I nod.

“Excellent,” she says with a sharp-toothed smile. “I’ll consider this your RSVP.” She turns to go—is she seriously leaving?—and I’m left trailing after her, gawking, still careful to hold my hot chocolate so it doesn’t splash.

Hers is already finished, and she sets the empty cup on the dining room table before gathering her things.

“Don’t you need to text Damien to pick you up?”

“He’s already out there.”

She says it with such complete certainty, I have to ask, “How do you know? If he pulled up, it must have been while we were in the bedroom, because I don’t see any lights out front.”

“I’m wearing vibrating panties, and he has the remote. He just turned them on for a second to let me know he’s here.”

There’s so much to unpack from that statement, not least of all that vibrating panties do exist—good call, manufacturers— that I don’t know where to start. She takes pity on me and pats my shoulder.

“Just in case you get chatty, I’ll send you the address for the wedding a half hour before the ceremony on Saturday. We’re starting at seven.”

This throws my mind into a tizzy. We’re not going to know until a half hour before? What if we’re late? What if we get lost? What if we find out it’s somewhere we can’t possibly go?

The smirk on her face tells me it’s intentional, that this is part of my challenge—to learn how to corral the what-ifs that swamp my brain.

“Well, congratulations,” I say as she slings her bag over her shoulder. “Do you have a registry?”

She laughs at me on her way out the door.

I finish my hot chocolate on the couch, staring at the Christmas tree. My eyes linger on that star, then skip down to a bronze roadrunner, an ornament I bought in New Mexico on a “family trip” that turned into me and Aidan sightseeing, most of which he did not enjoy, while Glenn hung out at the pool or took work calls in our hotel room. Then there’s the ornament with the family picture I took with my parents and Maisie and Molly, huge smiles on our faces. Back then, we didn’t know there was a storm at our door, but I suppose you never do until it’s blowing it down. There’s something remarkably personal about a Christmas tree, I realize. Each of the ornaments has significance, each is a blip along the timeline of a person’s life, and my life might have started out slow and safe, but it’s taken a turn that I’m starting to like. A lot.

There’s a powerful longing to text Jace—no, to call him—but I’m not ready for that yet. I haven’t yet processed what I want to say. So instead, I find my laptop and return to my spot on the couch. I spend several minutes Christmas shopping online, finding some last-minute gifts, including some Tea of Fortune merch for the gift exchange at work.

I stow my laptop and head to my bedroom, washing up and tucking in beneath the emerald duvet. It’s nearly ten, so maybe it’s too late to call Jace—actually, it’s certainly too late to call—but I find myself pulling up his number anyway.

He’ll be home now, and I imagine him in his apartment, wearing…

When he slept over at my house, he wore nothing at all. Does he usually sleep that way? Will he be answering his phone naked? The thought sends pleasure skittering across my skin, and I’d be lying if I said I haven’t had similar thoughts every single night since our time together. Before I can second-guess or maybe third-guess myself, I’m dialing his number.

It only takes one ring for him to answer.

“Mary? Is everything okay?”

There’s concern in his voice, and it cascades warmth through me. This man cares about us. That’s not just what I want to believe. It’s true.

“We’re fine. Totally fine. I’m sorry for calling so late, I just…” Suddenly my throat is tight, but I squeeze out, “I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Oh,” he says, his tone turning warm and honeyed. “Oh.”

“Is that okay?”

“It’s more than okay.”

I can tell he means it—he’s actually happy to hear from me, even this late on a Wednesday night—and I find myself telling him about Nicole and the Bad Luck Club and her challenges. For some reason, it hasn’t come up before, or maybe I was too embarrassed to tell him, but he listens in a way that emboldens me, only commenting or making sounds of assent when a response is appropriate.

“Let me guess,” he says, his voice suddenly throaty. “Buying that vibrator was one of your challenges?”

“It was,” I admit. “And it wasn’t easy. Do you know how many vibrators there are on Amazon alone? It’s like there’s this whole shadow world out there I had no idea existed.”

He laughs, a deep rumble in his chest, and I can practically feel the echoes of it in my body. In my toes, for goodness’ sake. “Have you used it yet, Mary? I’ve wondered.”

Oh goodness.

I pause for a moment, practically feeling the presence of the vibrator in my nightstand drawer, and then say, “Yes. Several times.”

I’m proud that my voice doesn’t waver, because it feels like every part of me is blowing in the wind. Or at least the parts that aren’t suddenly on fire.

“Were you thinking of me when you did?”

From the way he says it, I can tell that he’s not sure he should be asking me. He can’t help himself, just like I couldn’t stop myself from making this call.

“I was,” I admit. “The first time, I put on those black panties and the matching bra. I saw the way you were looking at them the other day.”

His groan reverberates through the line. “I regret asking.”

Feeling an unexpected surge of feminine power, I say, “No, you don’t.”

“No. I don’t.”

There’s a pause over the line, and I wonder if maybe he’s stroking himself. If maybe that beautiful, sculpture-worthy dick of his is hard because of me, and he’s naked in bed, just waiting for me to come over and climb on top of him, and I’m so turned on that I know I’ll be pulling the vibrator out after this call. He does this to me. Am I really willing to give that up? To give up the chance to be happy in that way?

I don’t know. There are still so many unknowns.

“Jace,” I say, breaking the silence.

“Yes,” he says, his voice slightly strained.

“I need time. I mean, assuming that you’re still…”

“Oh, I’m still interested. I’ll always be interested.”

I feel like I’m dancing in a spotlight. I feel like a Christmas song someone is humming. I feel like that star on top of the tree.

“I was hoping you’d say that. Because I have a very strange invitation to issue.”