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“What am I supposed to do? Wait for my future husband to appear on the fire escape outside my kitchen window? I want to stop, but what is that going to get me? I know it’s not cool to say it because I’m supposed to love my independence and not need anyone to complete my life—and don’t even get me started on my parents and their marriages—but I want to be married, I want to be settled, and I want to stop feeling like I’m living in the in-between. I want to stop looking for someone to love me.” When I was finished heaving my sob story into his lap, he met my eyes with a dark, even gaze and said,
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He smiled at me then, wide and toothy and definitely smug. “Ryan Ralston has a heart,” he said. “I haven’t seen it until now because you left it with her.”
“How do you know her again?” Stella asked. I watched Emme help the karate-kicker tuck a disaster of papers in his desk. When she was finished, she gave me a nod. I felt my lips turning up into a smile. The obvious answer was from back home, from high school, from ninth-grade biology, from listening to music in her car during lunch all of senior year so I didn’t have to talk to anyone. But I heard myself say, “She’s my favorite thing in the world.”
I rolled up my sleeves and led the kids in a few sets of jumping jacks, squats, and stretches. Then, with Emme’s permission, I took them to run around the building a few times.
Hell on earth for my chunkiness
We stared at each other. I knew she was thinking we would hurt my family when we split up. But I was thinking we could spare everyone and just keep this ruse going for the next fifty, sixty years.
“The jalapeño grits sound good,” Ruthie said, sounding bored. “The crab cake benedict too.” “No. Get something else,” I said, shifting to stare across the table at my sister. “Em’s allergic to shellfish.”
Ryan set the platter down on the bed and bent at the waist, his hands on his knees and his chest heaving. It took me a minute but I realized he was laughing.
“You want a baby? Is that it?” I tipped her chin up and leveled a gaze on her. Gave her ass a rough squeeze. “Because I can give you a baby. We can get to work on that right now.”
