“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “I truly apologize. He’s your husband. He’s not mine. You have more right to be upset here than I do.”
She shrugged. “I let him go, Ansley. I pushed him away and brushed him aside. I wish I hadn’t, but I did.” She paused. “He never told me about you. Ever. Not once.”
That sent actual pain shooting to the spot around my heart, but I supposed I understood it. Talking about exes was kind of childish, and even more than that, it could have opened the door for too much to come out. I had wondered, briefly, if he had told her about us, about the children we had made together, about the role he never got to hold in their lives. I knew now that he hadn’t. That, at least, was a relief.
I stopped Lauren. “Look. I don’t know what you’re getting at—”
“You don’t,” she said. “You don’t understand. Because what I’m trying to tell you is that he never mentioned you. But he talked about you in his sleep all the time.”
“So?”
“So, I am lying beside this man in the home we share, studying my diamond, and he is muttering, ‘Don’t go, Ansley. I love you, Ansley.’?” She paused. “I swear to God, the way he would talk about you, the things he would say, I thought you were dead.”
I smiled ironically. “Just almost,” I said. “You never asked him who he was dreaming about?” I was impressed with her maturity.
She shrugged. “No. I mean, I was over there having my fair share of sex dreams about our hot plumber. We can’t control our subconscious mind. It didn’t seem relevant at the time.”
“So what are you doing in my living room, Lauren?” Part of me didn’t want to know, but part of me wanted to get this over with.
“I wanted to tell you myself that I am signing the papers.” She gave me a small smile. “I mean, I’m having Jack sign over that gorgeous house to me, andthenI’m signing the papers.”
I felt myself go pale. That was all I needed. Lauren strutting around in her bikini all day in the house next door.
“I’m kidding,” she said. “I took the house in Aspen instead.”
Great, I thought.I hate to be cold, and if I never look at a pair of skis again, that is fine with me.
“You’re making the right decision,” I said, and I didn’t only mean it because her decision gave me what I wanted. “I know I don’t know you from Adam’s house cat, but what I do know is that if you give up having children for a man, you will resent him for the rest of your life.”
I paused, swallowing the lump in my throat. His not wanting children had been the very reason I hadn’t married Jack to begin with. It had been the reason I had walked away.
“There is nothing in all the world that is better than the love of your children. However they come to you, whether you birth them or adopt them or whatever it may be, if that’s something you want, you shouldn’t give up on it.”
She cocked her head to the side. “Yeah.” She sighed. “I mean, I know you’re right. But it’s hard—I still love him. I went back out there and started dating this Calvin Klein model, and even though he was so beautiful, I missed Jack anyway. That’s really saying something.”
I laughed. Jack was a very handsome man, but I would venture to say he could no longer appear on a billboard. “Ah,” I said.
“He chose you, Ansley,” she said, her shoulders slumping the tiniest bit in defeat.
I put my hands up. “There is no logical reason why he would choose me.”
She stood up, rubbed her hands down the length of her dress, and said, “Logic never matters. You know that. Logic tells me to keep fighting, but my gut tells me I’ve lost.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I honestly am. I don’t want to break up a marriage. I don’t want to take your husband.”
She smiled at me sadly. “Oh, Ansley. You know as well as anyone that he was never really mine.”
I shrugged.
“OK, then. I’m off to meet someone with willing sperm.”
“Keep in touch,” I said, half meaning it, closing the door behind Lauren.
When I turned, I gasped. Jack was right behind me, on his knees. For a split second, I thought he was proposing, but I realized, one, he was on two knees, two, he had already proposed to me, and three, I had made him promise never to propose when my hair and makeup weren’t done. Which they now most definitely were not.
“Please don’t leave me, Ansley,” he said. “I swear I will die. I won’t survive. I didn’t tell you I wasn’t divorced yet because it didn’t matter. We had been separated for almost two years, and we weren’t divorced because she wouldn’t sign the damn papers. It wasn’t my lingering feelings for her or because we were trying to work it out. I promise you.”
I moved closer to him, and he hugged me around my thighs, which were, I might add, about twice the size and half the tone of Lauren’s. Still, I couldn’t help but run my fingers through his thick hair.
