I parked in Sloan’s driveway and used the key under the flowerpot to let myself in, like I did every day since the funeral two weeks ago. I kept saying I had to get a key made, but I never had the time. Between trying to run Doglet Nation while taking care of what was left of my best friend, my days were full.
I had begun to consider moving back in with Sloan. I didn’t see her ever not needing me here. Her mom tapped in sometimes. She did what she could. But she had a sixty-hour-a-week job, and Sloan’s dad lived two hours away. I was the last line of defense.
The house smelled like decaying flowers. I set Stuntman down and brought groceries to the kitchen and unbagged it all. Then I started tossing bouquets. She’d be able to start her own flower shop with all the empty vases.
Sloan’s bedroom door was closed. I let her sleep. Getting her out of bed before noon was twice the struggle—I’d given it up. I used the earlier hours to do chores.
This was my life now. The second half of both our lives had begun. The before was over, and now we lived in the after. I came over every morning as soon as I woke up. Stayed until midnight. And I lived side by side with my velociraptor. We coexisted, taking care of Sloan.
I didn’t try to clean up anything that was Brandon’s. I didn’t touch his dirty clothes. I didn’t toss the beer bottle that sat in the garage. The only
spark of life I’d seen from her since the funeral was when she’d lost her fucking mind on me because I’d removed and washed the almost two- month-old glass of water from Brandon’s side of the bed.
At noon, I knocked on her bedroom door. When I didn’t get an answer, I let myself in. She lay bundled in her blue comforter. I opened the blinds and then the window, hoping the fresh air would do her some good. I drew her a bath and sat on the edge of the bed to get her up.
“Sloan? Come on. Up. Let’s go.” She groaned.
I peeled the blankets back, uncovering her. I took in her fetal position, her colorful tattooed arm tucked against her body.
I’d take her out today. Make her go to the park or for a short walk.
Maybe I could get her to sit outside on the front porch.
Something.
“Sloan. Get up.” I wedged myself under her arm and hoisted her into a sitting position. With some effort I got her into the bathtub.
While she soaked, I stripped the bed and put it all in the washing machine. I washed her sheets daily, compliments of my OCD. If she was going to be in her bed for twelve hours a day, at least the sheets could be fresh. My endeavor was to keep her and everything around her clean and comforting.
As I put detergent in the machine, my cell phone pinged. I didn’t even have to look to know who it was. Josh texted me every day. I looked at the message.
Josh: Just say okay.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and tucked my phone back into my pocket.
He kept a running correspondence with me. It was totally one-sided. Sometimes he said he loved me and missed me. He sent me emails that read like letters, with where he was or what he was doing, like he didn’t want me to forget him—as if I could. And every day, one message was always the same.
Just say okay.
Last week he’d gone home to South Dakota for a few days, and I wondered if he was planning to move back. He had no reason to stay now. He hated his job, Brandon was gone, and I never responded to him. I hadn’t seen him or spoken to him since the funeral.
I washed Sloan’s hair while she hugged her knees to her chest. Then I got her out of the tub, towel dried her hair and brushed it into a braid on the sofa.
We’d watch a movie later. I’d choose it carefully like I did every day.
Couldn’t be a love story. Nothing sad.
I put the sheets in the dryer. Then I went to make lunch, badly, and when I came back out, she was on the sofa watching the music video. The fucking music video. Again.
It was the only thing that seemed to interest her. A viral video of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” A cover. She was obsessed with it.
I guess I should be happy that something interested her.
I set the food down on the coffee table. “Hey, are you sure you don’t want to help me with lunch next time? You’re a lot better at it than I am. I didn’t know how much vodka to put in the rice.”
She smiled a little, but it was mechanical. I went back in for the drinks.
When I came out, she was watching the video again.
“How many times have you seen that?” I asked, sitting down next to her. She shrugged tiredly. “I like it.” Her voice was raspy.
I leaned in and watched the video with her. A Claymation thing of a shipwreck. A big freighter in a storm being tossed in the waves until it went down.
I watched it through to the end. Then she replayed it. “Why do you like this so much?” I shook my head.
She stared at the screen for a moment. “Because I feel like those men. Like a storm came and sank something strong, and now I’m lost at sea. Drowning.”
I didn’t reply.
“I like his voice,” she added.
“Why don’t we buy some of his music?” Hopefully it’s not all fucking
depressing. “Let’s see if he’s got an album,” I said, taking her phone. I was starting to scroll through Amazon Music when a message pinged and a text popped up on her screen.
Josh:
 |
“Uh…Josh just texted you.” I looked up at her. I didn’t know they talked. “He gave you a thumbs-up?”
She looked at me listlessly. “Kristen, why haven’t you talked to him?”
The question surprised me. My best friend hadn’t been my best friend in a long time. We didn’t talk about me or what I was going through.
We didn’t really talk about anything.
I went back to scrolling through the artist’s album on her phone so I wouldn’t have to look at her. “What’s there to say?”
She laughed. It actually startled me it was so sudden, and I stared at her in surprise.
“Go home, Kristen.”
I blinked at her. “What?”
She took her phone from my hands. “Go home. Talk to him. Be with him. Be happy.”
I furrowed my brow. “Nothing has changed, Sloan.”
She stared at me with red-rimmed eyes. “You don’t think you’re worth it.”
I shifted uncomfortably. “What are you talking about?”
“Your mom. All your life she made you feel like you were never good enough. And so you don’t think you’re good enough for Josh either. But you are.”
I shook my head. “No. That’s not it, Sloan.” “Yeah. It is.”
“Sloan, he doesn’t know what’s best for him. He’s just thinking about right now.”
“No. You’re the one who doesn’t know what’s best for you. She ruined you. She spent your whole childhood setting a bar she knew you’d never reach, and now you think you have to be perfect to be good enough for anyone.”
We stared at each other. Then Sloan’s chest started to rise and fall in the rapid way that told me a breakdown was coming. I instinctively pulled tissues from a box on the end table just as her eyes started to tear up.
“Kristen? Brandon’s accident is my fault.”
I was used to this. She lost focus a lot. This time I was glad for the change of subject. “No, Sloan, it wasn’t.” I took the plate from her lap and put it on the coffee table and gathered up her hands. “None of this was your fault.”
She bit her lip, the tears falling down her cheeks. “It is. I should have never let him ride that bike. I should have insisted.”
I shook my head, scooting closer to her. “No. He was a grown man, Sloan. He was a paramedic. He went on those accident calls—he knew the risks. Don’t you dare put this on yourself.”
Her chin quivered. “How can I not? Shouldn’t I have protected him from himself? I loved him. It was my job.”
“No, it wasn’t. People make their own decisions, Sloan. He lived the life he wanted to live. He was a twenty-nine-year-old man. He was capable of making choices.”
She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. “So you can decide for Josh, but I shouldn’t have decided for Brandon?”
I saw the trap, but it was too late.
She shook her head, blinking through tears. “You have no clue, do you? You think he’s settling? For Josh, not being with you is settling. Don’t you get that?”
“Sloan,” I said gently. “You don’t und—”
“Don’t I?” she snapped. “Do you think if Brandon wouldn’t have been able to have kids after his accident that I would have been settling to stay with him? I would have taken him any way I could have him. Disabled. In a wheelchair, without his fucking arms and legs. This thing that you’re obsessed with doesn’t matter. He loves you. He wants you.” She breathed hard. “Don’t be like me. Don’t live the rest of your life without the man you love. Go home, Kristen.”
“Sloan—”
“Go home! Get out of my house!”
Her shout shocked me into action and I stood.
“Go home.” Her eyes went hard. “And don’t you ever come over here
without Josh again.”
She picked up Stuntman and shoved him into my arms. Then she corralled me out of the house onto the front porch. She took the house key from the planter and slammed the door in my face.
The shock had me standing there staring at her door for a full minute.
She kicked me out.
She went off on me, and the crazy bitch kicked me out.
I hovered a hand over the door and knocked. “Sloan, open up.” The chain raked across the door and the bolt locked.
“Sloan! Come on!” I pressed the doorbell in quick succession. Nothing.
Un-fucking-believable.
Well this was just perfect. Who was going to make her bed? She couldn’t even wash the dishes. The ones from lunch would probably just get moldy in the living room. And what about dinner? She would starve to death without me. She was being completely unreasonable.
Stuntman looked up at me like he didn’t know what just happened.
Neither did I.
I walked out to the car and dropped into the driver’s seat, crossing my arms.
Maybe the back door is unlocked.
Sloan and I had never had a fight before.
I let out a long breath. I got it. I understood her feelings—I did. My best friend was living her nightmare. She was in her own personal hell, and the man I loved was alive and here, and I wouldn’t have him. Of course I could see how that hurt her, how trivial my reasons looked in the face of what she was enduring. It made me feel like shit that she thought I was being petty.
But it didn’t change a thing.
Josh wanted to make a blind, emotional, knee-jerk decision that would alter the rest of his life, and I couldn’t be a part of that. I just couldn’t. Sloan could be pissed at me all she wanted. I was doing the right thing, and sometimes doing the right thing was unpopular, but that didn’t make it wrong. Sometimes you had to be cruel to be kind, and I wasn’t going to be bullied into changing my mind.
I drove home, Sloan’s words pinging painfully around my mind like a ricocheting bullet. They didn’t change anything. But they hurt.
When I got home, I dropped my car keys onto the table in the kitchen and looked around my immaculate house, feeling lost.
What did I do now? I’d always had Sloan. What if she was really serious about this and she wouldn’t see me anymore?
I realized suddenly that I needed her almost as much as she needed me. Taking care of her helped me to stick to my guns with Josh, because even though she was a mess, a mess was something to clean up. And now, without the distraction, the emptiness was overwhelming.
I sat down at the kitchen table and pulled a stack of napkins in front of me and started to straighten them, lining up the corners and chewing on my lip, thinking about my next move.
Okay, maybe what she said about Mom was true. God knows I could spend the rest of my life in therapy working through the shit the Ice Queen put me through. Maybe Mom did fuck me up and I had some self-worth issues. But the cold, hard truth was that I came with too much baggage, and I wasn’t worth the sacrifice Josh would have to make to be with me. I could never give as much as I would take from him. That wasn’t lack of self- esteem. That was just a simple fact.
Maybe Sloan would agree to a deal. I’d talk to someone about some of my issues if she would agree to go to grief counseling. It wasn’t me giving in to Josh like she wanted, but Sloan knew how much I hated therapists, and she’d always wanted me to see someone. I was debating how to pitch this to her when I glanced into the living room and saw it—a single purple carnation on my coffee table.
I looked around the kitchen like I might suddenly find someone in my house. But Stuntman was calm, plopped under my chair. I went in to investigate and saw that the flower sat on top of a binder with the words “just say okay” written on the outside in Josh’s writing.
He’d been here?
My heart began to pound. I looked again around the living room like I might see him, but it was just the binder.
I sat on the sofa, my hands on my knees, staring at the binder for what felt like ages before I drew the courage to pull the book into my lap. I tucked my hair behind my ear and licked my lips, took a breath, and opened it up.
The front page read “SoCal Fertility Specialists.”
My breath stilled in my lungs. What?
He’d had a consultation with Dr. Mason Montgomery from SoCal Fertility. A certified subspecialist in reproductive endocrinology and infertility with the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology. He’d talked to them about in vitro and surrogacy, and he’d had fertility testing done.
I put a shaky hand to my mouth, and tears began to blur my eyes.
I pored over his test results. Josh was a breeding machine. Strong swimmers and an impressive sperm count. He’d circled this and put a winking smiley face next to it and I snorted.
He’d outlined the clinic’s high success rates—higher than the national average—and he had gotten signed personal testimonials from previous patients, women like me who used a surrogate. Letter after letter of encouragement, addressed to me.
The next page was a complete breakdown on the cost of in vitro and information on Josh’s health insurance and what it covered. His insurance was good. It covered the first round of IVF at 100 percent.
He even had a small business plan. He proposed selling doghouses that he would build. The extra income would raise enough money for the second round of in vitro in about three months.
The next section was filled with printouts from the Department of International Adoptions. Notes scrawled in Josh’s handwriting said Brazil just opened up. He broke down the process, timeline, and costs right down to travel expenses and court fees.
I flipped past a sleeve full of brochures to a page on getting licensed for foster care. He’d already gone through the background check, and he enclosed a form for me, along with a series of available dates for foster care orientation classes and in-home inspections.
Was this what he’d been doing? This must have taken him weeks. My chin quivered.
Somehow, seeing it all down on paper, knowing we’d be in it together, it didn’t feel so hopeless. It felt like something that we could do. Something that might actually work.
Something possible.
The last page had an envelope taped to it. I pried it open with trembling hands, my throat getting tight.
I know what the journey will look like, Kristen. I’m ready to take this on. I love you and I can’t wait to tell you the best part…Just say okay.
I dropped the letter and put my face into my hands and sobbed like I’d never sobbed in my life.
He’d done all this for me. Josh looked infertility dead in the eye, and his choice was still me.
He never gave up.
All this time, no matter how hard I rejected him or how difficult I made it, he never walked away from me. He just changed strategies. And I knew if this one didn’t work he’d try another. And another. And another.
He’d never stop trying until I gave in.
And Sloan—she knew. She knew this was here, waiting for me. That’s why she’d made me leave. They’d conspired to do this.
In her grief, when she needed me the most, when she couldn’t even feed or wash herself, she was willing to give me up in the hopes of forcing my hand because she wanted this for me. She wanted me to be happy.
Because that’s how much she loves me. She loves me as much as Josh does.
They thought I was worth it.
I still didn’t believe it. I might never truly believe it. But they did.
Something inside of me broke in that moment. I gave up. I no longer had the strength to stay away from him. I just couldn’t do it anymore—there wasn’t any reason to. His eyes were open.
Stuntman pressed against my side, looking up at me. I wiped my eyes with the top of my shirt. “I’m gonna bring your daddy home.”
His tongue stuck out of the front of his mouth, and he looked like he was smiling. I picked up my phone and sent Josh a text for the first time in weeks.
Kristen: Okay.
I waited, looking at my phone with my heart in my throat. The doorbell rang.
I laughed, leaping off the sofa, tears pouring down my cheeks. Of course he was waiting for me. That’s all Josh ever did.
He’d never have to do it again.
I threw open the door. He stood on the porch beaming with his dimples and his messy cowlick hair. I dove into his arms, and his cedar scent crashed into me, the familiar shape of his body wrapped around mine, instantly making me whole. He laughed with relief and lifted me off the ground, holding me so hard I couldn’t catch my breath. “Okay,” I whispered. “Okay.”
Josh is mine.
The happiness was almost too much. And then just as deeply, as it settled in that my struggle had all been in vain, I felt the loss of the last few months without him. The weeks we could have been taking care of each other, carrying one another through this tragedy. “Josh, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for hurting you.” I clutched him, crying. “Thank you for never giving up.”
“Shhhhhhhh.” He squeezed me. “I would have fought for you for a lifetime. I’m just glad you didn’t make me wait that long.” He smiled with his forehead to mine, his eyes closed. “Are you ready for the best part?”
I sniffled. “Did you steal a baby?”
He laughed, running a knuckle down my cheek, his brown eyes creasing at the corners. “No. But it’s almost as good.” He held my gaze. “I already have a surrogate lined up.”
I jerked back. “No. Sloan is not in any place emotionally or mentally to do this. I don’t know if she’ll ever be in a place—”
“It’s not Sloan.” He gave me a smile. “It’s my sisters.” I blinked. “What?”
He grinned at me. “I went home to have a family meeting. I met with all six of my sisters and their husbands. I told them I was head over heels in love with a very practical woman who wouldn’t have me unless I figured this out.”
A laughing sob choked from my lips, and I put a hand over my mouth. “All six of them volunteered. They even argued about who gets to go
first. It’s no fun unless they get to argue.”
I snorted, rivers spilling over my cheeks.
He pulled me in, thumbing tears off my face. “Kristen, I need you to know that if none of these options were available to us, I would still want
you. I want you no matter what. I want you first before I want anything else.” His face was earnest and steady. “I have no chance of happiness if I can’t have you. None.”
I buried my face into his neck, and he held me to him.
“It’s hard for me, Josh. It’s hard to feel like I’m enough,” I whispered. “Well, I’ll just have to spend the rest of our lives working on that, won’t
I? Which brings me to the next thing. Look at me.”
He tipped up my chin. “I think we should get married.” His eyes moved back and forth between mine. “Today.”
