It wasn’t until our fourth date that Ted told me he had a daughter. We weren’t broaching the topic of parenthood or school, or anything remotely related to children. The information just sort of slipped out, like a woman’s leg through the slit of a dress, and I think it startled him how quickly I looked up from my lasagna.
“She’s twenty-two,” he said, voice weak, as though he’d only just realized it.
I knew Ted was old. He had gray hair and lines like spiderwebs around his eyes, and he hadn’t attempted to alter his profile photos to mask this. When I handed my phone to my friends, Shanti and Miriam, they agreed that he looked good for fifty-six. They thought it might be fun, hot even, to be with a man who had been a man for longer than he had been a boy. All three of us agreed we were so over boys.
“She graduated from Clemson this spring. Just recently moved back home with her mother over the summer,” Ted explained. He was sitting directly across from me but wouldn’t make eye contact. I ducked my head a little, worming my neck around to try and catch him, but he retreated further into himself with each attempt.
I sipped my Riesling and stole a glance around the room. Ted had chosen a respectable establishment, with white tablecloths and minimalist centerpieces that consisted of single stalks of wheat suspended in thin glass flutes, and although the conversation surrounding us was faint, it was lively. Men in suits gesticulated broadly at women in long dresses, who laughed politely behind their cloth napkins. Waiters cautiously interrupted couples to refill drinks and ask if everything came out all right. One woman pointed to the dish in front of her—I couldn’t quite make out what it was—and nodded vigorously. Excellent. It was just excellent.
“She studied business,” Ted said.
“I’m sorry?”
“My daughter.”
“Ah.” I took another, longer sip of wine.
Ted and his ex-wife had divorced four months prior. He divulged this fact during our first date, which started at a booth in some swanky bar not far from the real estate agency he owned and ended at his newly acquired apartment, a sparsely furnished two-bedroom suite excessively spacious for one man. Ted was rather good in bed, a passionate lover, though things started a bit timorously and he cried afterward, commenting on the suppleness of my skin, how it still possessed the freshness of youth. I FaceTimed Shanti and Miriam the next day, after he’d dropped me off at my apartment, and they agreed upon the source of his tears.
“He feels gross,” Shanti said, “fucking a young woman right after divorcing his wife. He probably told himself he’d never be that creep who hooked up with a woman half his age and now look what he’s doing.”
“Exactly,” Miriam said. She was breathing heavily on the other end of the phone. The camera was pointed at her ceiling, but I could tell she was on the elliptical. “Every man likes to think he’s above it, but he probably sat up at night looking at his wife when things were getting bad, picturing her back when she was young and hot and wanted to fuck him every night, and then he looked over at you and felt nasty for feeling so good.”
I saw their point and thought they might be right, but I didn’t know if it permitted or forbade what we were doing. I wasn’t under any delusion that Ted’s attraction toward me was predatory. I’d messaged him first and made my intentions clear: it was a casual thing, no need to overthink it. He’d picked the bar, and I agreed, and when we were walking out to his truck, I was the one who suggested we stop by his place for more drinks. Despite our age difference, we were both grown, with stable jobs and fully formed frontal lobes, and I thought he knew that. So, when he started to cry, my stomach all sticky and the sheets curled up like a cat at the foot of his bed, I felt the need to console him. I rubbed his head and cooed like a mother until he fell asleep, and in the morning, I made coffee. When he ambled into the kitchen in his boxers, clearly at a loss for words, I handed him the mug silently, offering him an out by pretending as though it’d never happened. He’d taken it.
“She made good grades,” he said and set his fork down. He’d left his saltimbocca largely untouched, and he’d taken at best two sips of his wine.
I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t formulate words. Ted had a daughter. Looking at him now, his eyes soft and his skin lived-in, it was embarrassingly obvious, though for some reason it felt like a revelation.
“Business degree,” he repeated, in case I’d somehow missed it. “So, there’s a lot you can do with that. I don’t think she knows what she wants yet, though.”
I couldn’t help it. I chuckled. Ted’s right eyebrow twitched slightly.
“I know,” he said, a stiff laugh escaping his lips. “I know.”
For a few seconds, I just watched him. He straightened his posture, straining to maintain my eye contact as he drew his lips into a tight line and nodded as if to say: Yes. I understand. Take your time.
The restaurant fell away, the wooden seat beneath me morphing into the soft sheets of a king-sized bed. I felt his tears pooling on my chest again, seeping between my breasts. I remembered how young he looked, eyes all puffy and rubbed raw, and in that remembrance, a possibility occurred to me: maybe that first time, after he slipped out of me like a pair of new shoes and crawled up my body to meet my eyes, he saw his daughter looking back at him. I was only four years older than her, after all.
~
Shanti had been my best friend and surrogate-sibling since middle school. Though I had a brother, he was much older, already in college by the time I reached double digits, so I was practically an only child. I was amazed whenever I visited Shanti’s home, a narrow, Charleston-style single full of four older siblings who were loud and energetic, and two happily married parents who insisted on family dinners at a set time every night, especially school nights. Shanti couldn’t understand my fascination and mostly considered her living situation an annoyance. It was our opposite nature, I suppose, that made us inseparable.
We met Miriam freshman year of college. A bubbly and unpretentious brunette who lived across the hall, she’d made herself well-known around campus, particularly among the fraternity brothers she entertained every weekend in her twin-sized dormitory bed. When her roommates grew tired of her frequent male visitors, Miriam put in a room change request and got reassigned to Shanti and my suite. We quickly bonded, and our dorm became the sex-dorm, for lack of a better term. This trend carried on into the apartment we rented together our sophomore and junior years, as well as the little house we inhabited as seniors. We told ourselves that we’d move off after graduation, go someplace extravagant, settle into careers that fulfilled us and start families that satiated our overwhelming desires to be loved and needed and taken care of.
What happened instead was much more predictable. We found jobs in the area—Shanti teaching junior high Algebra, Miriam as a labor and delivery nurse, and me grant writing from home. We got our own apartments a few blocks apart, went out every weekend, and continued to casually date, consoling each other when things with that one shitty guy we met at that one shitty bar inevitably didn’t work out. But we kept each other hopeful: The next guy will be different. The next guy will be the one. It’s why, after Ted told me about Emma, I allowed him to take me to his place, to undress me. He was the most put-together man I’d ever slept with, and surely having a daughter only solidified this fact. This stability, I thought, was what would allow us to overcome the awkwardness his confession had uncovered.
Still, when he rolled off me and began to snore, I couldn’t shake the rigidness consuming my limbs. The next morning, after he brought me home, I immediately called my friends for a meeting. The “daughter development,” as Miriam had coined it over the phone, felt like the discovery of a deceptively innocuous mole on my chest, and I required a second opinion. I needed to know if it could be fatal.
~
When I arrived at Shanti’s, I tumbled through the door and nearly kicked over a jug of almond milk. She’d emptied everything out of one side of her fridge and was busy wiping it down. A bottle of Cabernet had tipped over from its spot on the door shelf and leaked red onto all the items below it. It looked like blood.
“What’s her name?” Miriam asked, getting right to the point. She was perched on Shanti’s counter, eating some of the recently evicted baby carrots.
“Emma,” I told her. I slipped off my cardigan and let it fall to the floor.
Shanti scrubbed with an incessant arm.
“I found her Instagram,” Miriam said, hopping down to hand me her phone.
The first picture was of Emma and some friends vacationing in Jamaica. They wore tiny bathing suits and posed with cocktails held high above their heads. The water was an endless blue backdrop behind them.
“She’s real cute,” Miriam said.
“Let me see,” Shanti said. She’d finished wiping the fridge down and was now packing everything back in. Miriam plucked the phone from my grip and held it up to her.
“She is,” Shanti agreed.
“She looks so young,” I said. “Is that really how young we looked at that age?”
“Shit, we still look that young!” Shanti slammed the fridge door as she dropped her ass to the ground. Miriam mimed raking dollar bills at her.
I pulled out my phone and scrolled through Emma’s profile. The truth was, I’d already found her social media accounts and thoroughly stalked them earlier that afternoon. Emma’s profile was the only place I’d been able to locate a picture of Ted’s ex-wife, who surprisingly didn’t have any digital footprint. Emma had posted a candid of her for Mother’s Day. The ex-wife’s name was Cindy, and she was quite beautiful, with high cheekbones and the kind of smile that probably cost a shit-ton in orthodontic bills. I hoped to look so good in my fifties.
“Why do you think he told me about her?” I asked.
“Probably felt guilty,” Miriam said. “I mean, you could practically be his daughter.”
“But why would he tell me now?” I locked my phone and slid it into my pocket.
“It’s one of two things with these older men,” Shanti said, coming to stand beside me. “They’re looking for someone to fuck their sadness away, or they’re looking for commitment. Either way, when they’re fresh out of marriage like this, they’re looking for someone young.”
Miriam hummed in affirmation.
“You don’t think it’s the commitment thing?” I asked.
Shanti squeezed my arm. “Well, he hasn’t asked you to meet her yet, has he?”
I shook my head.
“Then I think you’re in the clear for now.”
She let go of my arm and walked back to the fridge, pulling out the red and pouring what survived the spill into three tall glasses. She left one glass on the counter for herself, then picked up the other two by the stems and handed them to us. I took an exaggerated swig, choking a bit as the wine went down. Shanti hovered for a second, waiting for me to regain my breath.
“You good, babe?”
“Yeah,” I said, coughing.
She shook her head. “Girl, he is just a man.”
“An old man!” Miriam yelled. She’d retreated to the living room couch, her hands cupped around her mouth in a makeshift megaphone.
“For real,” Shanti said. “Fuck him! I mean, literally and figuratively: Fuck! Him! Forget about his daughter. She’s got nothing to do with you. The dick is good, right?”
“Oh my God,” I said, swatting her away.
“Oh, yup, it’s good,” Miriam cheered. “Look at her, all red and shit!”
Shanti burst into the kind of laughter that’s an invitation, pulling me into a side hug. I set down my glass and buried my face in my hands. I could hear Miriam clapping obnoxiously from across the apartment.
“We’ll only be this young once,” Shanti said, her eyebrows lifting. It was a phrase we often used with each other, first uttered by Miriam in a Señor Tequila parking lot after a couple of margaritas—she’d vehemently argued she’d never heard of YOLO. “Why not be a little reckless?” Shanti finished.
I tried to smile, but it came out more like a grimace. I rested my head briefly on her shoulder, and she squeezed me once more before letting go to join Miriam. I opened my phone, which hadn’t been closed out of Emma’s profile. Across the apartment, Shanti said something about scuff marks, and I looked up to find her shoving Miriam’s feet off the coffee table. I thought about the gesture, how preserving the appearance of the table was a kind of ode to its future. It was like saying: You will be here for a long time, table, so I will make sure you look your best.
I glanced back at my phone. The display had gone dark, and I saw my reflection there, broken by a crack but clear. I tapped the screen, and my face was replaced with Emma’s semi-nude body—that vacation picture again. Shanti and Miriam called me into the living room. I took another sip of wine before hitting the follow button and abandoning the kitchen to join them.
~
The following weekend, Ted invited me to a bar to watch a basketball game.
“The Hornets,” he said, rubbing circles on my hip. We were lying in bed, still sweaty from our exertion. “Should be a good game. My buddies will be there.”
I sat up, untangling our limbs. “Your friends?”
“No pressure, obviously,” he said. He held up his hands, and my skin turned cold where he no longer touched it. The suggestion felt like the first step toward commitment, but I nodded, and we didn’t mention it again.
When he dropped me off at home, I texted Shanti and Miriam about it. They told me it was a bad idea to meet his friends and that it would only make me more confused. When I didn’t respond, Miriam resorted to FaceTime.
“Why’d he invite you anyways?” she asked. “You think he’s trying to show off?”
“I don’t think he’s like that,” I said.
Shanti sighed. “I know you wanna see the best in people, but Mir might be right. I mean, he’s seeing a younger woman for a reason.”
“But isn’t that more embarrassing than impressive?” I asked.
“Are you embarrassed?” Shanti countered.
I hadn’t thought about it. I couldn’t deny my attraction to Ted. We were good with silence, but we talked about things, too. Nothing serious, just how we spent our days—the encounters he had showing properties and the oddities I observed on the bus whenever I went to the grocery store—but it wasn’t a relationship. I imagined his friends, also twice my age, looking at me, aware of this fact. They’d wonder what kind of woman I was, what I wanted for myself, and how Ted fit into that. I wouldn’t know the answer.
“You know when you set your age preference on that app?” Miriam asked. It was a rhetorical question. “Well, he did, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t go higher than thirty.”
I gripped the phone tighter, plopping down on my bed which was drowning in dirty laundry. Ted hadn’t been inside my apartment yet—we always stayed at his. I considered his embarrassment to be with me again, but for an entirely different reason. Imagine if he witnessed the way I truly lived? I could barely stomach the idea.
“I think he actually likes me,” I said. I sounded wounded, and I hated it.
“Of course he does,” Miriam assured me. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“We just want you to be careful, is all,” Shanti cut in. She looked at me the way I assumed she looked at students when they struggled to grasp a simple Algebraic concept, her expression soft and encouraging. “He told you about his daughter, and now he’s asking you to meet his friends. We just don’t want you to get hurt.”
I thought about what she’d said the week before, how he was just a man, how our arrangement was a reckless yet worthwhile use of my youth, and I wondered what exactly had changed. By then, it was clear that Shanti and Miriam were open to talking about Ted whenever I requested, but they had no desire to actually meet him. I wondered if his friends felt the same way. I was committed to finding out.
~
The bar was packed, and from where I was sitting in the curved booth, my back to the screens, I couldn’t even see the game. Ted sat beside me, his palm resting on my thigh. His friends sat across from us. I tried to visualize his introduction, how he pointed from one friend to the other as the bouncer held my driver’s license up to the shitty overhead light, but I couldn’t remember who was who. They looked too similar to be distinguishable.
“So, what do you do?” one of the men asked. He was small, with protruding ears and thinning gray hair trimmed tightly to his scalp. He had to raise his voice to match the noise.
“I work from home,” I said. “Grant writing for small businesses and nonprofits.”
“That’s cool,” the other friend said. He laid a hand on the table to adjust the fit of his watch. As he rolled his wrist, the watch’s face caught the light from the lamp above us and blinded me for a moment. I brought a hand to my forehead as if shielding my eyes from the sun. “I actually have a buddy looking to apply for a grant,” he said.
“Is that right?” I asked, my eyes still adjusting.
“Yeah, he’s got his own lawn gig going. Real good guy. Doesn’t charge the old couple across the street a penny, but his equipment’s shot.”
“I only do grants for small businesses and nonprofits,” I told him.
“Oh, I wasn’t asking you to do it.”
“Right,” I said.
Ted squeezed my thigh reassuringly. Without thinking, I rested my hand on his then immediately removed it. My palms were clammy. At my retreat, he released my thigh, downing his glass of beer in three large gulps before continuing the conversation.
“Eric works in finance,” he said, pointing to the one with the watch. “Craig’s a litigator.”
I nodded and studied the men, making a conscious effort to commit their names to memory. I racked my brain for something to say about finance or litigation, but I didn’t know what either job entailed, and it felt dumb to ask, like the inquiry would reveal how little life I’d experienced. I leaned forward, preparing to speak, and Ted shifted in the booth to face me. He’d poured himself another beer and was holding it against his chest. I exhaled wordlessly. The silence metastasized.
After a moment, Craig said, “I imagine it’s a rewarding job,” and it took me a minute to realize he was speaking to me. “Nonprofits make the world go around, and they don’t get nearly enough funding.”
“It feels good to help out,” I agreed, though grant writing was mostly just something I dreaded, something I had to force myself to wake up for. When I secured the position through a freelance company fresh out of college, I figured it would only be a steppingstone until I discovered what I really wanted. It’d been nearly five years, though, and I was no closer to knowing what that was.
A loud cheer rang up from the crowd. Eric hollered, standing abruptly and knocking the table with his knee. I shot forward to catch the half-full pitcher of beer which was rocking and beginning to tip toward my lap. A little bit of the frothy liquid sloshed onto my hands. I rubbed it off on my jeans.
“My wife works for a nonprofit,” Eric said, sitting back down. I wasn’t aware he’d been listening. He was still watching the screen. “She’s a speech therapist at a daycare for special needs kids. They never have enough stuff, so she’s always at Goodwill, buying pants and toys. Things like that.”
Ted handed me a napkin. He’d dipped the end of it in his glass of water. I accepted the gesture, scrubbing my fingers harshly to dissolve the sticky residue coating them. He emptied the rest of the pitcher into his cup.
“Your wife sounds like a good person,” I said. I was trying to fill the air.
“She is,” Eric replied, and for the first time all night, he really looked at me. “She’s a great person. I’m a very lucky guy.”
A new kind of silence overtook us, and Eric glanced from me to Ted, his eyes shifting like a slide beneath a microscope, like he was trying really hard to figure something out.
“Well, the game’s almost over,” Ted said. It was halftime. He grabbed my hand to guide me up. “We should probably get going.”
I shuffled my way out of the booth, retrieving my purse from under the table.
“Us too,” Craig said, slapping Eric on the back. “Got a long day moving the kid out tomorrow. This one said he’d help, and these joints aren’t what they used to be.”
“John’s moving out?” Ted asked.
I stood to the side, still gripping his hand.
“Tomorrow’s the day,” Craig confirmed. “Finally found a decent apartment.”
Ted nodded, and I could tell by the crease between his eyebrows that he felt out of the loop. It bothered him. He took a couple of steps forward, breaking our connection. My arm fell like a dead bird against my side.
“Right. Well, I’d love to help if you need. I’ve got my truck.”
“We’re all good, man. No worries.” Craig smiled. “Figured you were busy anyway, with Emma getting back and everything.”
It was the first time since our last date that Emma had come up. I had no interest in talking to Ted about his daughter, but I envied how easily Craig had been able to bring her into the conversation.
“Yeah, how’s Emma?” Eric asked.
“Good,” Ted said. “Looking for jobs, but you know how it is.”
“It’s tough out there,” he agreed.
A lull ensued, and a group of women began to leave the bar. I stepped closer to Ted so they could squeeze by, but he didn’t move. After a beat, Eric approached me, his hand outstretched. I took it in mine. He had a firm grip.
“It was so nice to meet you,” he said.
“You too.” I fashioned my best smile.
“Yes, very nice,” Craig said. He stood a few feet back, arms crossed. “We’ll have to do it again sometime.”
I agreed, taking a tentative step toward the exit. Ted ran ahead of me to hold open the door. When we reached his truck, he wasted no time whipping into reverse and peeling out of the parking lot. I thought about all the beer he’d downed and found myself gripping the seatbelt where it spilt my chest. Other than a question about the heat—did he need to turn it up?—we spent the ride to his apartment in adamant silence. When we made it inside, the first thing he did was apologize.
“I had a good time,” I assured him.
“We don’t get together much anymore. I thought it’d be nice.”
“It was nice.”
Ted hung his jacket on a hook next to the door and turned to face me. The only light in his apartment was the faint glow emanating from two pendants which hung over the kitchen island like stars. The resulting illumination lent him a softness that made me want to tell him something real.
“I’ve only been with guys who hurt me,” I said. I set my purse on the counter. “They’d lead me on and then change their minds.”
He frowned, stepping closer to take my hands into his. He held my knuckles near his lips and said, “You afraid I’m going to change my mind?”
I shrugged. “I’d just like to know what’s on your mind.”
He slid his hands around my back, swaying slightly. I closed my eyes and brought my chest to his, resting my forehead on his shoulder. I couldn’t look at him.
“Eric and Craig think I’m losing it.”
“Are you?”
“I hope not.” He pressed a light kiss to the exposed part of my neck. The contact made me shiver. I couldn’t help myself. I thought about his daughter. I’d been checking her Instagram activity so much I had to limit my time on the app. In the two weeks since I’d followed her, she hadn’t posted anything on her feed, but she did occasionally repost celebrity photos and inspirational quotes on her story. She’d shared a selfie of her and Ted at breakfast a couple of days ago, his arm draped around her shoulder. I unfollowed her after that.
“Do you feel shame?” I asked.
“A wasted emotion,” he quipped.
I stiffened and he withdrew slightly, his shoulders slackening.
“Yes,” he whispered. He sounded unbelievably tired. “I feel shame.”
I wrapped my hand around his neck, guiding his lips toward mine. He kissed me, sliding his thumb beneath my chin and tilting my head to a more manageable position. I stood on my toes, opening my mouth wider and pulling him toward the bedroom by the collar of his shirt. We stumbled through the doorway together, and he laid me down on the mattress, placing his forearms on either side of my head, his fingers woven through my hair. I reached toward his pants and untucked his shirt. He helped me slide it over his head and tossed it onto the hardwood. I began to shakily unbutton my blouse, and he took over, slipping it free from one arm and then the other before blindly dropping it to the floor. I removed my pants, kicking them off and shuffling deeper into the bed, and he followed, placing one of his knees between my thighs. I rolled my hips, and he sat up, breathless, gazing down at me.
“What?” I asked. I tried to tug him back down, but he resisted.
“It’s just hard to believe.” His eyes were glossy, his body warm, like he was still buzzing from the beer.
A smile claimed my lips.“What is?”
“You,” he said with an exhale. “You’re like a fantasy.”
I froze, and Ted cupped one of my breasts, and in a sudden and sobering moment of clarity, I noticed his eyes were nothing more than the eyes of every boy who had ever touched me; every boy who had ever made me believe he would be the last. I wondered what more I had to offer than this: a sense of achievement, an opportunity to let loose, a willing participant in a quest to fulfill a fantasy. I’m not the woman you marry, I thought as Ted massaged me through my bra. I’m the departure.
A single tear sprang loose, sliding down my cheek, followed by another. I rolled over, knocking his hands away and kicking my legs until the comforter enveloped them. I brought my arms to my chest and squeezed my eyelids shut, my breaths shallow and quick.
After what felt like a century, Ted climbed under the covers next to me, pulling my bare body against his chest, skin to skin. The contact felt so far from intimate. Neither of us spoke. He just held me there until I fell asleep, then the rest of the night, too. Like a child.
~
Mom zipped up the back of the dress as far as it would go, and I turned to assess myself in the full-length mirror. The fitting room was cramped. I wished I was alone.
“You’d have to size up,” she said, smoothing down some pleats in the skirt, “but it’s not bad. I think they have your size online.”
“I don’t like the color.”
“It’s not my favorite either,” she said.
My brother’s fiancé, Carol, had picked blush for the wedding: blush bridesmaids’ dresses, blush centerpieces, and a blush arch to loom over the altar. And since I was going to be an honorary groomsmaid, I had to wear a blush dress. Carol didn’t want it to be the same style of blush dress her bridesmaids were wearing, but she wanted them to complement each other. Last week, she’d texted Mom a screenshot of a blush dress on Dillard’s website, and Mom picked me up this morning just an hour after Ted dropped me off. I guess both Carol and Mom knew I wouldn’t have had the initiative to come try it on myself. The wedding was in two weeks.
“Will they be able to get it in on time?” I asked.
Mom took a picture of me, and I hid my face.
“They should,” she said, unzipping it. “Everyone’s gotta compete with Amazon’s overnight delivery now.”
I slipped the thin spaghetti straps off my shoulders and let the garment fall to the ground. Mom picked it up and returned it to the hanger as I shimmied on my jeans.
“I know Bryce is all nerves,” she said. “I’m glad we talked Carol out of an outdoor wedding. Can’t imagine how much worse his nerves would be if he was all worried about the weather acting right.”
“I met a guy,” I said. I didn’t want to discuss Bryce’s wedding any longer.
“Really?” Mom paused her work with the dress. She was tightening the adjustable straps where I’d loosened them. “Who is he?”
“His name’s Ted. He owns a real estate agency.”
“Wow, that’s impressive. What’s it called?”
“Can’t remember,” I said, pulling on my hoodie. I didn’t want her to look it up and find out how old he was. “It’s pretty new.”
She nodded, and I finished tying my shoes.
“Well, do you like this guy?”
I groaned.
“Fine,” she said. “You’re the one who brought him up.”
“Why would I say something if I didn’t like him?”
“I don’t know, honey. Let’s just go.”
I hurried out of the fitting room, and she followed, folding the dress over her forearm. We approached the girl working the register. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen.
“Did you find everything all right?” she asked.
“Yes, thanks. Just not this size,” Mom said, setting the dress on the counter. “But we’d like to order the right one online. We need it by the middle of next week at the latest. My son’s getting married.”
“Oh, that’s exciting,” the girl said. She was inspecting the dress’s tag.
I looked down at the gray carpet, tapping my foot. A man with two little boys got in line behind us. One of the boys sprawled out on the floor to cry, and the other bent to console him. He pulled his brother into a hug, petting his tear-stained face. The dad looked down and nudged the mid-tantrum one with the side of his foot.
“It should be available for pickup next Wednesday morning,” Mom said. She was already heading toward the exit. “You’ll have to come get it because I’ll be at work.”
“Why didn’t you choose delivery?” I asked, staggering behind her. “Just because I work from home doesn’t mean I can leave whenever I want. I have to Zoom with a client that day.”
I could still hear the young boy crying.
“Okay,” Mom said. “One of us will get it. Point is, you need to try it on right away in case it doesn’t work.”
She held the door open for me, and I sulked out. When we got to the car, she turned on the radio only to turn it off again. “So, are you inviting Ted to the wedding?”
“Oh my God, Mom.” I brought my knees to my chest and lodged my head between them.
“Fine.” She turned the radio back up and swatted my shins. I dropped my feet to the floorboard. “Sorry I want to know what’s going on in my child’s life. Is that such a crime? You brought him up, remember?”
“No,” I said. “I’m not bringing him.”
“Well, why not?”
“I don’t think we’re a good fit.”
“But you do like him?”
“I guess so,” I said. The truth was, I didn’t really like him. But I wanted him to like me. I wanted it more than I could stand.
Mom adjusted the radio’s volume again. “You know, when I first met your father, I felt the same way. I was ambivalent. He won me over eventually. Didn’t pan out of course, but we were happy for a long time.”
I nodded, flicking the pine-scented air freshener that hung from the mirror.
“What I’m trying to say is not everything has to be something that lasts. It can still be good and not last.”
“Yeah, I get it,” I said. I thought about Ted’s ex-wife. I wondered if she’d told Emma the same thing. I was fifteen when my parents separated. Sometimes, I still felt that young.
“Shouldn’t I know things by now?” I asked.
We were stopped at a red light, and Mom turned to look at me. “Baby, no one knows things.”
“I just feel like I’m behind or something,” I said, my voice breaking. I tried to meet her eyes, but I found myself staring past her through the window.
The light turned green, but Mom didn’t move. Someone honked.
“You’re not behind, baby. Not at all. You’re doing wonderful. So much better than so many. You’ve got a job. You’ve got an apartment. You’ve got good friends.” She was numbering things off with her fingers. “You’re a good person. A really good person. I’m proud of you, okay?”
I nodded and rubbed my nose on my sleeve. I was crying for some reason.
“I’m doing okay?” I asked, sniffling.
“Yes, baby,” she said, almost amused. She reached over and shook my thigh. “You’re doing more than okay. I’m so proud of you.”
The car behind us honked again, louder this time, but she didn’t budge. I knew she would let the car honk forever if she had to. I let her hold me there for a second longer before whisking her hand away so she could drive. I didn’t want to keep the rest of the road up.
~
I texted Ted the next morning to call things off. He wanted to meet in person to talk. I typed and deleted a few responses, but the decision was overwhelming. With each hour that passed, messaging him back felt impossible. Soon the hours turned to days, and the days to three full weeks. It was immature, and I knew it. Ted only reached out a couple times in those initial days of silence, like a new parent trying not to wake their baby.
I’m not hoping to convince you to change your mind. I respect your decision. I just want to discuss some things, and to say I’m sorry. And a week later: Hey, I hope you’re doing well. I’d really love to talk.
Then it was over. That was it.
Around a month after his last text, Shanti, Miriam, and I were returning from lunch when Miriam saw an open house sign stuck in the lawn of a white, two-story Colonial. She tapped the backseat window with a gasp.
“Ted Coker Real Estate,” she said, pointing to the yard then looking at me. “Isn’t that your old man’s agency?”
I turned and caught the back of the sign. Three red balloons floated in a staggered formation from its metal legs. I tried my best not to start crying.
“We should go inside and pretend to look at the house,” Miriam said.
Shanti stopped at a red light and turned in the driver’s seat. “That’s not funny, Miriam.”
“I’m not trying to be funny,” she said, though she reached toward the passenger seat and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”
I touched her hand briefly then opened my phone to my messages with Ted. My eyes scanned the words: Hey, I hope you’re doing well. I’d really love to talk. Something like guilt washed over me.
“Can you actually turn around?” I asked Shanti. “I want to talk to him.”
She tried to temper her reaction. “Are you sure that’s a good idea, babe? He’s working right now.”
The light flicked green, and I asked her again. She switched to the turning lane and entered the neighborhood, pulling over a few homes down from the one for sale.
“You’re sure about this?” she asked.
I nodded.
“We can come with you,” Miriam offered, but I shook my head before exiting the car.
The front door was propped, so I let myself in. Informational pamphlets sat in a stack on the entryway table. I picked one up and flipped listlessly through its pages. The house appeared recently renovated, and the open concept meant the kitchen was visible from the front door. Ted was leaning against the counter talking to a young couple with a baby. He looked up in contemplation and spotted me across the room. His eyes flicked down, and he excused himself from the conversation.
I returned the pamphlet to the table and took a preparatory breath, but before he could reach me, a woman entered from the living room.
“Hi, I’m Emma,” she said, reaching out a hand.
I instinctually returned the gesture, and she let go just as Ted caught up with us. My eyes threatened to well with water. I cleared my throat but couldn’t manage to respond.
“This is my dad,” she said, pointing toward him with her thumb. “I’m just shadowing him today. What’s your name?”
I glanced at Ted, convinced for a moment he’d answer for me, but he looked at a loss. I returned my gaze to Emma. You recently graduated with a business degree, I thought. You’re job hunting, but the market’s tough. You don’t know what you want to do, so you’re here with your dad. We have that in common.
She widened her smile, waiting politely for my response. I parted my lips, and Ted stepped forward so he stood between Emma and me. “I’ll show her around,” he said, placing a palm on her back. “Why don’t you go to the kitchen?”
Emma appeared confused but obliged, and I followed Ted into the bedroom. He let me go ahead of him then glanced around the hallway before closing the door.
“What are you—”
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come,” I said. “This was a really stupid idea.” I tried to walk past him, but he took hold of my hand.
“Hey, it’s okay. I’m glad to see you, just a little surprised is all.”
I looked up at him then. His face was wound tight. I looked back down at his hand in mine. He let go and shoved it in his pocket.
“I saw the sign outside,” I explained, “and I wanted to apologize.”
“You don’t have anything to apologize for,” he said.
“I should’ve texted you back.”
He rubbed his temple. Shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Can we talk?”
I nodded, and he swung his hands toward the bed as if to guide me. I sat on the edge of the mattress and he sat next to me, a respectable distance away. His added weight caused my body to rise ever so slightly. I wanted to hug him.
“I never thought I’d get divorced,” he said.
“What happened?”
“We grew apart. Sounds cliché, I know, but after Emma moved out, we didn’t have much binding us together anymore. We tried for a while, but it wasn’t working.”
I said it made sense, though his answer did little to satisfy me. It was so predictable, and I wondered how hard he’d tried. “Why’d you get on a dating app?” I asked.
At this, he chuckled. “I don’t know. I guess it’s a big change, being alone. Sounds pitiful, doesn’t it?”
I shook my head. “Makes sense to me.”
“You’re very kind,” he said. “When I dropped you off after that first night, I drove around for almost an hour, just thinking. Beating myself up, really. You were very kind to me when you didn’t have to be.”
“You were kind to me, too. When I cried.”
“That’s not right,” he replied and paused for the right words. “I feel guilty about what I said. That you’re a fantasy. I hope you know you are more than that to me. Way more. I was just dealing with some stuff. And I’m sorry if I made it worse. Bringing you around my friends, telling you about my daughter. That was never my intention. To hurt you.”
“I never thought it was,” I said. I stared at his hands. He was fidgeting with one of the white tassels on the comforter. It was such a vulnerable action, and for a moment, I pictured him as a young boy, not yet burned by love, just made nervous by it.
“I know I’m the old man,” he said, the sentence trailing off. “The old man who goes after the young woman. What an asshole, right?”
I took hold of his hand to steady it. “It wasn’t just you,” I said, sliding my thumb back and forth across his skin. “I swiped right, remember?”
He laughed then choked on his laughter. I reached out my free hand and rubbed circles against his back. He was shaking almost imperceptibly. After a few seconds, he leaned forward and placed his elbows on his knees, severing our contact.
“It was important to me that we meet in person so I could apologize for what I said,” he told me. “That was important to me.”
“That’s good of you,” I replied, and I meant it, even though the apology felt more for his sake than mine. “It means a lot that you did.”
We sat there together, staring at the wall in front of us for what felt like a significant amount of time. Eventually, there was a knock at the door.
We both stood. Ted took an audible breath through his nose then straightened his blazer. He opened the door, and Emma glanced inside. I pretended to admire the crown molding.
“Sorry, but more people are here, and I was getting overwhelmed.”
“I was just leaving.” I stepped forward and Emma moved to the side so I could exit the bedroom. Ted followed me.
“I like the house a lot, but I don’t think it’s for me.”
All three of us ended up at the front door. We stood in a triangle formation.
“That’s okay,” Ted said. “If you change your mind, you know where to reach me.”
“Yes,” I said. We made eye contact, and I could feel Emma glancing quizzically between us, her arms folded across her chest.
“I hope you find the right buyer,” I said to Ted.
“I hope you find everything you’re looking for,” he said in one quick breath.
My eyes began to burn, and I quietly excused myself before turning to exit. I heard Emma whisper, “Well that was weird,” as I jogged down the front steps and retreated across the yard.
Once I climbed into the passenger side of Shanti’s car, I gave in. “I’m good,” I said, wiping my eyes then my mouth. “I’ll be good.”
“I know you will,” Shanti said, turning the key in the initiation. Miriam touched my shoulder again, and the car hummed to life. I shifted my gaze out the window, watching as the houses blurred by.
The day was still young, and I had nothing else planned.
