She took a deep breath. “You mean more to me than I could possibly say, Arthur. You have always been my future, my everything. I’m sorry it took me so long to say this.”
He smiled, but with a confused crinkle in his brow. “So what are you trying to say?” Her heart beat even harder; she was sure he could hear it. This was it, this was the moment.
“Arthur, I—”
“Arthur?!” a voice cried out. They both whirled around. There, in a black dress and gaudy gold necklace, was Linda Kellerman.
“Linda, hi,” a flabbergasted Arthur said, accepting a stiff hug from a slightly wobbly Linda, who was holding a glass of white wine. “What are you doing here?”
“I sold Charlie and Tristan their first condo, right before the market went to shit. And I go way back with her parents. What are the odds, right?”
As much as Wren usually loved an awkward, unexpected interaction like this one, she really wished the lady would saunter away, or maybe fall over and roll the rest of the way down the slaloming ramps. She was ruining the moment.
Suddenly, Linda locked onto Wren. “Wren, I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to say it yet, but…congratulations.”
“Usually you say congratulationsaftersomeone has the baby. All I’ve done so far is have unprotected sex. But thank you.”
“No, I mean— Oh.” Linda went serious, turned to look at Arthur, looked back and forth between the two of them. “You haven’t told— Nothing. Nothing at all. You’ve just got yourself a good man here, that’s all. So congrats on that, congrats on the baby, congrats on the sex. All of it. I’ll let you two get back to it.”
Linda sauntered away, unaware or unbothered that she’d just laid a grenade in the middle of their conversation.
“So you were saying how I’m your future, your one true love, et cetera,” Arthur said, trying to play it casual.
“Arthur, why was she congratulating me?”
“Probably because of the baby. You’re obviously about to pop any day now. I don’t know why she couldn’t think to say that in the moment, and not make it weird, but I’m sure that’s what she meant.”
Wren wasn’t buying it. The weird panic in Linda’s eyes, the look back and forth between the two of them, the catching of her tongue. Wren was used to belly rubs andgoo-goo-ga-gas and people staring at her stomach, and this was not that.
“She said, ‘You haven’t told—’ What haven’t you told me?”
Arthur’s nervous smile faded. The fight drained out of him. His eyes went soft, pleading.
“Let’s not talk about it here. Can we go home?”
Did he do something behind her back with Linda? Did he buy afucking house? It was too insane to even consider. No, he wouldn’t do that.
But it was the only thing that made sense.
“Just tell me what you did,” she said.
After the truth came out, the fight spilled outside, where it was raining. Of course it was raining.
“But that was our money, not just yours!” Wren said. “You don’t get to decide that!”
“Wren, I’m sorry I lied to you, I really am. But I’ve been saving up since I was a kid. I can’t remember you ever putting anything into that account.”
“Not true!” It was mostly true. She’d contributed a certain amount of her pay over the years to their rent and expensesand usually blown the rest on whatever seemed fun. But she wasn’t going to concede the point. “I took under-the-couch coins to Coinstar many a time! And I always put that right into savings.”
OK, sometimes she bought herself a handful of Runts first. But still.
“You have to call it off,” she said. “You have to get out of it.”
The lights of the city and the harbor twinkled on the dark water close by.
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t?”
