“Anarrangement,” I spit the word out like it’s poison. “She wants to talk about an arrangement, like Emma is a timeshare on the Cape. Like she can just waltz back in after eight months of radio silence and demand—what? Alternate weekends? Spring break? She didn’t call. She didn’t write. She didn’t even check to see if Emma still remembers what her mother’s face looks like.”
I’m pacing now, the kitchen floorboards groaning under the weight of my kinetic energy. I can hear myself spiraling, my voice rising an octave, but I can’t find the brake pedal.
“She doesn’t get to do this! You don’t get to opt out of parenthood when it gets hard and then opt back in when you’ve had a nice long nap. That’s not how the world works. That’s not—”
Annie moves into my space, a calming presence that breaks the circuit of my panic. She wraps her arms around my waist, tucking her head under my chin, anchoring me. I collapse into her, burying my nose in her hair.
“What do I do?” I ask into the crown of her head.
She’s quiet for a second, then shrugs against me. “I don’t know if there’s a right or wrong answer here, Leo. You just have to go with your gut. With what you feel is right for Emma.”
“And if my gut says to ignore the message and pretend she doesn’t exist?”
“Then you do that.”
“But?”
She pulls back just enough to look up at me, her expression a complicated tapestry of empathy and fear. “But maybe…maybe hearing her out isn’t the worst thing. Just to know what you’re up against.”
She looks away then, her gaze dropping to my collarbone, and the sight of it kills me. I know what she’s doing. She’s being the “big” person, the objective observer, while her own heart is likely being squeezed in a vice.
It feels like ancient history now—Rebecca and me, the ring, the half-baked wedding plans, that illusion of forever. How did I ever buy into it? How did I ever think we could build a life together when someone like Annie exists in the world?
Annie is every good and impossible thing that I thought the world had stopped making. She’s peonies in late spring, smelling of honey and rain, spilling over their vases with too much color, too much life. She’s the smell of old books and the shimmering brightness of a winter sun. She’s the warmth of a coffee cup against your palms first thing in the morning. She is the universe, actually, ablaze; she’s grit and glitter and the mercy of a second chance.
“I don’t want to go,” I say firmly.
“I know.”
“But I probably have to.”
“Probably.”
I pull her back in, resting my chin on her head, her heartbeat syncing with mine in the quiet. “This is a fucking mess.”
“It is.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For this. For her showing up now. For—”
“Leo.” She pulls back and looks at me. “You don’t have to apologize for having a past. We all have one.”
“Yours didn’t leave you a voicemail.”
“Not yet, anyway.”
I laugh despite myself. “You think Daniel’s going to call?”
“God, I hope not.”
We stand there in the dim light, the clock on the wall ticking toward a future that suddenly looks very different than it did an hour ago.
“I should go,” Annie says softly. “And give you some room to breathe.”
“I don’t need room. I need you.”
