“Would I…are you inviting me again?”
“My reasoning still stands,” he told me. “I don’t like you being somewhere alone, even if you have a crocodile. And more importantly, we have fun together. We can cook, hang out, and work on my short game. We like each other.”
I really did like him. I really, really did. “Well, then, I will let the management of my building know that I won’t be renewing my lease. If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure. I think it would be great.” He looked at me and nodded. “I don’t want to lose you either, Cate. This is a good decision.”
No, it wasn’t just good. It was perfect.
Chapter 15
He laced his fingers together and rested his chin on them. “Hm. I’m sensing some anger.”
“No. No, I’m not angry,” I answered.
Mr. Gowan released his two index fingers and tapped them against his lower lip. “I’m noticing animosity. I’m sure of it.”
“I don’t agree,” I said. My voice sounded slightly loud, though.
He tapped again. “I’m definitely picking up hostility.”
Well, he was right, maybe for the first time in his stupid life. I was feeling hostile and angry. There was a lot of animosity. In fact, I was ready to take one of his nice drapes and strangle him with it, but I had always been a person who did a good job of disguising my emotions. When I hadn’t been picked in PE classes, when my roommate freshman year had announced that she couldn’t stand to live with someone like me, when I had gotten over thirty rejections from the jobs I’d applied to as college graduation was approaching—no one would have beenable to see how much those things had hurt. I had hidden my feelings very, very well.
But apparently, my boss could see them now. “You wanted to talk to me,” I reminded him. He’d given up on calling “come” and he had walked to the door and asked me if I would join him. “Is there something specific you wanted to discuss?”
He looked away from the window and met my eyes and, just for a moment, I flashed back to our flight to Utah. He had stared dejectedly out of the airplane window when two of his friends had teased him about being a useless drunk in college and not having a real job, while the third had guzzled bourbon.
And I had jumped in and defended him. Despite my current hostility, his obvious misery was having the same effect on me: I felt pity. “Mr. Gowan, do you want to talk about something? Something small now, that will turn into a large, unavoidable issue in a few months?” I clarified.
There was definitely news to discuss. Victoria had opened up to us, her friends, again at lunch. “I’m going to keep the baby no matter if he wants to be in our lives or not,” she’d announced.
Taylor had looked horrified. “Are you sure? You have options!”
“No, I want to. Beau doesn’t have to be a part of anything.” He had still been refusing to talk about it, she’d explained, so she’d cut him off. It made working across the hall a little awkward but she didn’t care. “I’m just going to ignore him for the rest of my life.”
“Really?” Kiya had asked. “So, he won’t even know his child? What about support payments?” She’d sounded skeptical.
Victoria had shaken her head. “I told my parents and they’re going to help, and my brother is going to move in with me.”
“After he gets out of rehab?” Kiya had wondered next. “I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, but it could be a lot of stress on someone who’s already…oh my God. I’m sorry.” Because Vic had started to cry really hard, right there in the lunchroom. We hadn’t brought it up again after that, except to repeat that we were here for her.
Now, when I reminded him of Victoria and their baby, Mr. Gowan stared out of the window again but he dropped his hands. His chin dropped too as he hung his head lower. “You should call me Beau,” he said. “When you say ‘Mr. Gowan,’ it sounds like you’re talking about my father.”
“Ok,” I said, the word sharp. “If that’s all you wanted to tell me—”
“Victoria says that you two are friends. She told me that she had explained our situation to her work crowd. She told me before, when she was still talking to me.”
“If by ‘situation’ you mean her pregnancy, then yes. I’m aware of it,” I answered.
He rubbed his stomach, as if he was the one with the baby in there. “I’m still married,” he said. His voice sounded different, lower and a little shaky. “We’re definitely getting divorced but there are complications.”
Impregnating another woman was definitely a complication. “Ok,” I repeated. “I’m not sure what you want from me.”
“Could you talk to her? Because she blocked me and I don’t want to go across the hall and bother her. I don’t want to make her mad. Is that good in her condition? But she’ll listen to you,” he said.
Why was this my new role? It hadn’t worked very well for Channing after I’d relayed his message to Kiya. She had gone ahead and met with him, and he’d apologized. Then she had asked the same question that I had previously voiced: why was he sorry? And the answer was that he was sorry they weren’t together.
But neither of them had changed their minds about what they wanted from each other. She’d shaken his hand and said she cared about him so much, but they had different goals. Then she’d told him goodbye, for good. I had been impressed by her clarity and resolve, but when I’d told her so, she’d only cried harder.
