Felix lies.
“I’m the orchestrator of this.”
You orchestrated this whole thing.
“I’m the one who said things I shouldn’t have. Things you and I agreed should remain private. I just wasn’t sure...” He trails off.
He wasn’t positive.
“We were figuring it out...”
He still isn’t.
“But we’re here now.” The smile Felix offers has so much sadness in it that Ilena audibly gasps. “Another kick?” he says.
Ilena starts to shake her head, but then covers with a “Just one. Gone now.”
“She’s a soccer player. But maybe I can convince her to switch to tennis.”
“She. It really is a girl.”
“It is.” Felix grins. “I was secretly hoping. Is that okay to say?”
Ilena nods. “I think anything you feel is okay to say.” Except she can’t take her own advice. What she feels right now more than anything is the loss of Jonah. It’s not the same as Aubrey’s loss or Mallory’s loss, and yet the hole feels gaping, like she’s made of nothing but air. She looks at Felix, really looks. He’s so very present with her, and yet, there’s something, in the wrinkles beyond his eyes, in the overly polite tone and perfect words and this house that is his, that she occupies, but is not hers. And now she’s sure it was never supposed to be hers, any of it.
James had said something about bestie lips loosening after a couple of old-fashioneds and she’d assumed he meant Malloryas that’s her preferred drink, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was Felix saying he’d felt like he had no choice. “Be honest. Did you see your life playing out this way?”
“Ilena, please, just ignore him. James doesn’t know everything. He thinks he does, but there’s so much here. Happiness is something you can choose, and we did. Celebrate the best. Which is this baby. Which is our friendship.”
Friendship.That’s what they have. That’s who they are. Friends.
“Don’t you want more? Don’t you want...”That dark wavy hair, those strands of gray. The frustrated lines between his eyes when he’d caught her taking pregnancy test after pregnancy test. The look on his face when he’d asked for the divorce and she’d said yes: pain, but relief.“Love? Don’t you want love?”
Felix blinks, but not fast enough. She sees the tears he forces back as he says, “The more you pursue what you don’t have, the more it only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place.”
Ilena stills. Without intending to, Felix has just summed up the past year and a half of her life.
“You know you can talk to me,” Felix says.
He takes her hand in his, rests them both against her stomach, and he’s too good, too loyal. And she can’t ever forget the moment when she was the opposite.
She calls his name. He turns.
Her phone vibrates, and she reaches for it, letting Felix go.
It’s another voicemail from the same Cambridge number. The one belonging to the police officer that’s making Ilena’s rule-following heart palpitate. Also on her notifications screen is an email fromThe Shandy Shane Show. And a text, from her mom, her mom who demanded perfection and when she got it, demanded more. She can’t bring herself to click on any of them.
This baby is a girl, this baby will be a daughter, and Ilenawill love her unconditionally, the way her mother couldn’t love her. Ilena has always been terrified of impersonating her mother, and maybe this Ilena has been too. Her intentions may have been good, to give her baby the family she’d wished she’d had, but that doesn’t make them right.
“What is it?” Felix says. “Is something wrong?”
Can she simply say “Everything”? It’s her mom and the dad she shouldn’t have loved and Jonah and the life she thought they wanted eclipsing the life they had. And Mallory and Ethan and that night in the bar when they crossed paths but didn’t cross paths. And Grayson and the stock price and James despising her and Aubrey’s guilt and Ilena’s selfishness and Mallory’s selfishness and secrets kept and still being kept.
Ilena and Mallory both did things they aren’t proud of for reasons they’d justify to the ends of the universe. Only it’s turning out that the universe has no end and there’s no way to justify anything.
All she knows is that she needs Mallory now more than ever. Because if this baby becomes her baby, she’ll need Mallory to ensure she never turns into her mother.
36
