Social Lives (46 page)

 

Cbow: TF?

Totallyfkd: Here. What happened? Did you make it home?

Cbow: Yeah, but it's all fucked up. My mom put a fucking tracker in my phone. She sent someone to get me.

 

Pause.

 

Totallyfkd: Shit! How do you know?

Cbow: She knew where I'd be. And then her friend told me.

Totallyfkd: God.

Cbow: I know.

Totallyfkd: Does she know you were at DH's house?

Cbow: Yeah. I guess. Unless his house is somehow blocked by satellite interference.

Totallyfkd: Well, it could be worse.

Cbow: I know. If I hadn't run out of there like an idiot. I didn't even know how I was gonna get home.

Totallyfkd: Yeah—at least you got a ride.

Cbow: I'd rather have frozen to death.

Totallyfkd: Ugh. I hate your mother. Hate mine too. I would never do that to my kid.

Cbow: No shit.

Totallyfkd: And DH? Do you think he'll tell everyone you came to your senses and bailed?

Cbow: More like chickened out. And does it matter? If he doesn't, I'm a slut. If he does, then everyone will know how I chickened out. I'm such a loser.

Totallyfkd: It is kind of funny. I keep picturing him lying there. . . .

Cbow: Doesn't feel funny. Feels like shit.

Totallyfkd: I know. Sorry. You know how I feel about DH.

Cait sat back at her desk and read the last entry. TF had no idea how well she knew about all of this, and Cait wanted so much to tell her—that they shared a school, a town, a guy. They shared an entire life. But there was some divine comfort in this anonymity and what it had allowed them to have. For now, it was enough that they had this. A friendship.

 

Cbow: What do I do about my insides? Can't even get a drink til they go to bed.

Totallyfkd: When will that be?

Cbow: An hour I guess.

Totallyfkd: Wanna keep talking? You haven't told me every detail.

Cbow: OK. I went outside and got in his car. . . .

 

Barlow walked through the kitchen. He stopped to pour a drink, took the glass from the cabinet, reached for the bottle he kept up high. As he loosened the cap, a sound stopped him, made him turn. It was his wife, and she was laughing.

Curious now, he put the glass down and walked toward the back of the large room, turned the corner, and saw her at her desk. She was reading the screen, then typing. But she wasn't laughing. She was crying.

He watched her, still undetected, thinking through all the things he was going to say to her tonight. Over and over, he had rehearsed them in his mind, quietly and calmly to himself. They had suffered for so long, forcing
life into something that was already dead. He had been cruel on that plane, telling her that he never loved her, that she had been nothing more to him than an admission ticket. It was weak and self-indulgent. And it wasn't entirely accurate. It was one thing to feel the truth twenty years later, in hindsight. It was quite another to believe that the feelings he'd had for her had been nothing more than calculations. Love couldn't be sorted out that easily. Especially not now, after all these years. He had wanted her, chased her, made love to her honestly and with his whole heart believing in what they had. Then he'd married her, had five children with her. They had a history together that demanded his respect, regardless of where they now stood.

He drew a breath and thought about the drink. He could have it after, when the fallout began. He would need it then, surely more than he did in this moment.

 

Rosalyn felt him approaching, so she typed quickly.

 

Totallyfkd: Cbow, gotta go. Will you be OK?

 

Then came the response.

 

Cbow: Yeah. I feel better. Maybe just go to sleep. Thanks a mil. You're a good friend.

 

Rosalyn wiped the tears from her face.

 

Totallyfkd: So are you. Write tomorrow. XO, TF.

 

She shut down the screen. Barlow pulled up a chair. She looked at him, studied him for a brief moment. And she knew.

“Are you okay? You've been crying,” he said. The conflict was evident, written all over his face.
Maybe she wasn't that person he couldn't love. Maybe she was soft and vulnerable and he could hold her and feel like a man. Maybe he shouldn't say what he so wanted to say to her right now, to put an end to this long chapter in their lives
.

Rosalyn smiled. “I'm fine.” And she was, without his pity or sympathy
or whatever feeling her tears had always provoked in him. She couldn't spend a lifetime crying just to make her husband love her.

“I think we should talk. We haven't really, since the plane.”

Rosalyn crossed her arms.

“I know what you think about Sara. About me and Sara.” Barlow lowered his eyes as he spoke, forcing the words out in an awkward way. “But you're wrong. Dead wrong.”

Rosalyn knew the way anyone would after so many years that he was telling the truth. And although it changed many things, in this moment it didn't matter at all.

“Stop. Just stop,” she said, meeting his eyes. “We do need to talk. But not about the identity of your lover. We need to talk about what happened on the plane.”

Barlow nodded several times, garnering the courage to face that night and the reconnection that had been so fleeting, and yet still do what had to be done. For him, for her. For all of them.

“I know. I've been thinking a lot about it—,” he began, but Rosalyn cut him off.

“Barlow, I'm pregnant.”

The words may as well have lifted him from his seat and thrown him to the ground, leaving him bleeding as she continued.

“The plane. I'm six weeks.”

From that place where he lay, completely and totally decimated, he looked at her for a sign, something that would help him understand this. But all he saw was resignation.

She said nothing else, but waited, patiently, for him to climb back into that chair, sit up straight, and face what they now had to face. Together. And when she saw that he was coming around, she got up and went to the kitchen to pour him that drink, a big one, in the glass he liked with lots of cold ice and warm scotch. She walked back to her chair and placed the drink on the desk beside him. But he did not take it. He just let it sit there.

Instead, he took her hand. And within her open palm, he gently laid his head.