The Night Before(21)

And I have not forgotten about the car or the woman in the bar or the holes in his story. I have not forgotten that we are not lovers on this perfect night that screams out for them.

I grow quiet.

“Are you all right?” he asks.

I nod and smile.

And then he does something miraculous. He reads my mind.

“We loved the beach, my wife and I,” he says.

Ex-wife, I think. But I don’t correct him. It’s a habit. That’s all it is.

Isn’t it?

“After it got so hard to have kids, we stopped going. Because all of a sudden there were kids everywhere at the beach. They were in the surf with their fathers who threw them in the air. They were building sand castles. They were chasing seagulls. I’m sure they had always been there, but after we couldn’t get pregnant, the nicer the beach day was, the harder it was to stomach what was missing for us on that beach.”

I’ve gathered myself once again. I am calmed by his story, which is just like mine. A beach without a child. A perfect night without lovers.

“I never got kids,” I say. “Until my nephew was born. And even then, it wasn’t until he started to know me that I could understand the power children wield.”

Jonathan looks at me now, a question causing his eyes to narrow. Only I can’t read his mind the way he’s read mine.

“I thought you hadn’t been back much?” he asks.

Again, with the questions about my past. What the fuck?

Still, I answer.

“I came home for holidays. Usually just a night or an afternoon. But my sister would bring Mason to the city. He knows me. He does.”

I stop then, because he doesn’t deserve to know more. How Mason learned to say Lala before Dada. Aunt Lala. I have a name he’s given just to me. And when he sees me, his face lights up with a million colors of delight. I know where he likes to be tickled and I know how hard to toss him on my bed, into the fluffy comforter. I know how long to chase him before his laughter will give him hiccups. And I know how soft his skin feels when I kiss his cheek.

So fuck you, Jonathan Fields. My nephew knows me.

“Does it make you think about it?” he asks then. I can feel him trying to pull me back.

“What? Having kids?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

I’ve been waiting for this question.

I shake my head. “It scares me even more,” I say.

“Scares you? Why?” he asks.

“Because they’re so easy to break. Rosie says this all the time. She says it scares her. So of course it scares me.”

Now he grows silent and I wonder if he’s picturing me picking up a child and breaking it in two. But that’s not what I mean.

“It’s a big responsibility to be a parent. To know what to say and what not to say. Kids are blank slates, and everything we draw on them stays forever.”

He gives me a curious huh like he’s never had this thought, like all the years he wanted a child he never thought what he would do with one after it arrived.

And I think he is normal and I am not. But then I am the one who can still read the things that were drawn on me as a child. Fists for hands. So hard to love. And the eyes that never looked down at me, no matter how long I held my desperate gaze.

Jonathan Fields has stopped walking. It’s my mood. He can feel it rolling in and out like the current we hear in the distance.

“Something’s been on your mind since we left the first bar. Hasn’t it?”

Goddamn, Jonathan Fields. You really are inside my head, aren’t you?

So much has been on my mind, but I know what he means from the words he’s chosen—since we left that first bar—so I say it.

“That woman—from the bar on Richmond Street. The one who called your name as we were leaving.”

He knew this was coming, so his answer leaves his mouth as smooth as silk.

“She was a woman I went out with a few weeks ago.”

My heart sinks. It begins to drown. Who runs away from a woman who calls your name? A woman you dated? An asshole, that’s who.

“Did you meet her on findlove?” I manage to ask. It’s hard to speak when your heart is drowning.

He nods. “We went out on three dates.”

“Three dates,” I say. It’s the magic number. The industry standard. Sex on the third date maintains some decorum but prevents the wasting of precious time if things aren’t good enough in that department.

I’ve done my research.

Now he looks away, embarrassed as well. “Yeah … three dates. She came back to my apartment. It was really weird. I feel bad saying that, saying anything about another woman. Don’t kiss and tell, right?”

I can’t answer. I need him to finish.

“I told her the next day I didn’t think it was a good fit.”

He looks at me then, with a strange kind of earnest. The kind that I usually feel spreading when I am desperate to be understood.

“I thought it was the right thing to do. Not lead her on. Let her find someone else. Shit—it’s not like there aren’t a ton of other men just like me on every dating site and app and…”

He sighs and leans his elbows on the metal rail that lines the boardwalk, keeping people from jumping in at moments like this one.