Maybe Never (7 page)

“What’re you doing here?” she asked lightly, taking the seat Brendan had gotten up from.

“Came to get you,” he said, pulling another chair from a nearby table.

Russell looked at them both, his expression that of someone expecting a conflagration.

“I told you I’d be back tomorrow,” Tracy said.

She hung her bag on the side of her chair and reached for the menu. She still wouldn’t look him in the eye.

“I couldn’t wait that long,” Brendan said. “And you know I won’t be able to get to sleep without you.”

Tracy’s lower lip wobbled.

“Okay, y’all better
stop
,” Russell said using both hands to fan his eyes.

“Baby, I’m sorry,” Brendan said, looking directly at Tracy as though Russell hadn’t spoken, as though they were alone. “But when we’re fighting you always tell me what an idiot I am . . . so you
had
to know I was going to mess that whole reaction thing up,” he joked.

The smallest of smiles began at the corner of Tracy’s mouth, though there were tears brimming in her eyes. “You
are
an idiot,” she said quietly, without looking up from the menu.

“Yeah. But I love you,” Brendan said, still trying to meet her gaze. “You know that?”

Tracy’s nod was barely perceptible.

“Trace . . .” Brendan reached over and lightly tipped her chin up so she would look at him, and when she did he smiled. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she said quietly.

Brendan stroked the side of her face with the backs of two fingers then stood, emptying his beer bottle.

“Well, I’m going to leave you guys to your plans. Trace, we’ll stay here tonight? In Brooklyn?”

Tracy looked up at him and nodded, and already the change in her was apparent. Sometimes it felt like he had
too much
control over her moods. Brendan pushed back against the pressing weight of that awesome responsibility.

“Okay, so I’ll see you back at the house later,” he said. He kissed her one last time on the top of the head before he left and reached over to give Russell some pound.

Then Brendan walked out into the late afternoon, the reality of his situation settling inside him.

This was it. Tracy was pregnant. And he was going to have to marry her.

________

Doubt

“Do you not
want
to do this, or what?” Tracy demanded.

She looked up at him from over the top of her laptop and Brendan ran a hand over his head. The tiny niggling pain behind his eyes that had begun that morning was shaping up into a full-blown headache. Like a mezzo soprano clearing her throat, he could feel that it was going to be a headache that just
sang
all day long.

“No, Tracy, I don’t,” he said. “Picking place-settings is your department. We’ll go with whatever you want.”

“What I want is to have this done before we go to Charlotte, Brendan, and you’re not
helping
.”

“Who cares if we do it before we get to Charlotte?” he mumbled. “Do it when you get back . . .”

Tracy made an impatient noise and got up from the bed with the laptop, striding out of the room in a huff. “You have no idea how difficult this is! Weddings don’t just happen, Brendan! Someone has to plan them.”

In spite of his emerging headache and the fact that she was annoying the shit out of him, Brendan couldn’t help it that his eyes were drawn to her retreating ass in all its honey-toned perfection, barely-covered by thin white cotton panties.

Usually, Tracy only wore cotton underwear when she had her period, but there would be no more periods for the duration, so Brendan concluded she just hadn’t given a damn what she put on this morning, which made sense since the only thing she seemed to give a damn about these days was planning the wedding.

Within a week after she dropped the news on him about being pregnant, he’d gone out and bought her a ring. Riley had gone with him to Cartier on Fifth Avenue where together they’d chosen something that they knew would knock her socks off. The cost had literally given him a stomachache for the remainder of the day but the look on Tracy’s face told him he’d definitely been forgiven for his
faux pas
when reacting to the pregnancy news. And hell, what was all his financial success for, if not to spend it on the big moments in life like this one?

The proposal itself was in the most unconventional of ways, in the most unconventional of places. He was giving her head in the shower. Brendan had put the ring on his pinky before they got in and when he fell to his knees in front of her, knew that Tracy would put her hands on his head.

Just before she reached her moment, Brendan had grabbed her hand—the wrong one as it turned out, because who could concentrate on stuff like that when they were giving head—and slid the ring onto her index finger. Tracy’s moans had halted for a moment and then she’d screamed; Brendan still didn’t know whether it was the ring or his lingual expertise that had brought her to that pitch.

She’d been on cloud nine for about a half a day, and then she took a sharp turn into bridezilla territory and had remained there ever since. Brendan mostly just tried to steer clear of her altogether but occasionally she would track him down in the apartment and present him with some decision, like two pale fabrics that to his untrained eye looked practically identical and demand that he choose one. At moment like that he could practically hear the wheels in his brain grind to a halt, and then of course the one he picked was never the right one and she got frustrated with him.

Today Tracy was especially high-strung because the next morning they were flying to North Carolina to visit his parents. And there was no getting away from her either because when he’d suggested earlier that he might head over to Shawn’s to listen to some new music she’d given him a look that made it clear that if he wanted any peace in his life over the next several days, he should keep his ass at home. And so he did, even though his main purpose seemed to be offering opinions on things he knew nothing about.

Part of the reason he wanted to hang out with Shawn was that his friend was generally a man of few words, and Brendan needed the space and time to think. Over the past couple of weeks, Janice had been calling. At first it seemed harmless enough. She had once meant a great deal to him and that afternoon in her apartment had probably made her think he was . . . available in some way. Or shortly about to be.

Wanting to stave off that impression, a couple evenings ago, Brendan had, on an impulse, accepted her invitation to stop by a cocktail reception she was going to at the Gansevoort. The plan was to tell her right then about his engagement. But when Janice met him in the lobby, wearing a little white number that set off her complexion in a way that stole his breath, the folly of his plan had hit him—he’d accepted an invitation to a social event with a woman in order to tell her couldn’t socialize with her.

Upon seeing him, Janice had kissed him on the corner of his mouth and taken his hand, leading him into the party. Brendan hadn’t even had the opportunity to say a proper ‘hello’ to her before people began coming up to them, people he hadn’t seen in ages. Some of them he hadn’t seen since he and Janice were a couple. And then folks were hugging him, and kissing her and saying that it was just like old times seeing them together again.

Just being there, and not correcting that impression felt like a betrayal, but no one was having heart-to-hearts, Brendan kept telling himself, it was just a bunch of old friends standing around having overpriced drinks and remembering the days when they could only dream about being in places like the Gansevoort. Janice kept a hand on his shoulder and stuck close to his side and for a while Brendan almost got swept away with it all. Then a woman he didn’t know had joined a group he was talking and laughing with, and when she turned her head, her hair sent a wave of perfume wafting up to Brendan’s nostrils. It was the same scent Tracy used.

And it was like awakening from a trance. Brendan realized where he was and what he was doing. He was in a bar, at a party, being less than one hundred percent truthful to the beautiful woman at his side, less than honorable to his fiancée waiting at home, and less than honest with his damn self. He leaned in and spoke into Janice’s ear, telling her he had to go. She’d turned and looked up at him, with those limpid, brown eyes and they were filled with disappointment.

I’ll walk you out
, she said, looping an arm through his.

She followed Brendan back out to the lobby and they stood there at the doors for a moment, just smiling at each other.

That was fun, wasn’t it?
Janice said.
The way we used to dream we would live. When we made it. Except now we have and . . . anyway, I know I sound maudlin . . .

Brendan shook his head.
No. You’re right. Last time I saw some of these folks, you were living in that crappy little share in the Village. And now look at you.

Now I’m living in a really nice place and going to really nice parties,
she nodded.
And I ran into you. Feels like it was fated for us to come full circle like this.

Janice . . .

No,
she said.
I can feel that you’re about to say something that’ll change this great mood I’m in. So don’t say it. I’m going back inside and enjoy myself. I’ll call you tomorrow.

Brendan hadn’t the heart to tell her right then that it was better that she not call him tomorrow, or any other time.

And he hadn’t had the heart to say it since then either. So Janice was still calling. And he was still answering those calls though he knew full well he was playing with fire.

________

The Coles weren’t even like parents. Not in the way Tracy expected them to be. For one thing, they seemed so . . . young. Both had to be in their sixties, but were like no sixty-year olds Tracy had ever seen. Each morning they awoke early to play the golf course that bordered their backyard, dressed in plaid and golfing whites and holding hands as they left the house. Their warmth and the physical nature of their affection for Brendan and each other—and even for Tracy whom they had only just met—shouldn’t have been surprising. Because Brendan was just like them; it made perfect sense.

Watching them now as she ate her morning fruit salad at the kitchen table, Tracy couldn’t help but stare at Mr. Cole, her father-in-law to be. Tall, imposing, handsome with salt-and-pepper hair and a completely gray moustache, he smiled all the time like his son and had a loud, booming laugh. And he treated Brendan more like a best friend than a son, constantly grabbing and nudging him, yoking an arm about his neck and pulling him aside for private jokes. Mrs. Cole regarded them both with exasperated and indulgent smiles, shaking her head at Tracy and rolling her eyes when they got really noisy.

All her preparation to impress Brendan’s mother, to win her over, seemed to have been unnecessary. The minute they’d met her in the airport, Mrs. Cole had hugged and kissed her, and Mr. Cole had done the same taking her bag, and as they walked through the terminal complained good-naturedly about traffic, as natural and comfortable as though they’d known her forever. Tracy couldn’t think of very much to say the entire drive to their house.

If you don’t just raise your voice and jump right in, they’ll talk over you all day long
, Brendan warned Tracy, leaning in to her as they walked in the front door.

Tracy had nodded and looked about, taking in the neat, tastefully-furnished suburban home with wraparound porch and pale blue shutters at the windows. The Coles were both retired schoolteachers and had always lived a modest life, until their son bought them this home for their retirement. It had only been over dinner that first evening in a local soul food restaurant that Tracy learned the real reason Brendan had never brought her over for holidays. The Coles were living their retirement dream of traveling to each and every continent. In the last three years alone had visited almost ten countries in Africa, Asia and South America.

While they regaled Tracy with stories about their latest trip, to Brazil, she’d leaned over and whispered to Brendan.

You never told me
, she said,
that they were traveling
.

And Brendan had shrugged as though he never thought about it.

Her suspicion had always been that it was because he wasn’t sure he wanted her to meet his parents. It seemed foolish now, the convoluted reasons she’d spun in her mind for the scarcity of Brendan’s parents. She’d imagined that he thought they would hate her, or that they already did hate her for some unknown reason. Or that some other childhood girlfriend was waiting in the wings who they favored as a mate for their son. And all this time it was the most innocent of reasons. Brendan had never introduced her to his parents because they were almost never around. It was just that simple.

Tracy reached for his hand, which had been resting on the table.

That night, when the house was quiet and she was assured that his parents were asleep, tired though she was, Tracy had turned in Brendan’s arms so she was facing him. She couldn’t see in the dark, but groped downward until she could feel him, and peeled his boxer briefs over his hips, sliding down to take him in her mouth. His quiet, rhythmic breaths, and the knowledge that she was in his parents’ home as his fiancée; all of it made her almost feverish with excitement.

Brendan too, for he had pulled her up after only a few minutes, pressed her back against the sheets and spread her wide, rutting into her in the dark, his mouth working from her neck to her jaw and finally finding her lips, biting them before pressing his tongue aggressively into her mouth. Sometimes—maybe even most of the time—they made love, but that night they had fucked, Brendan lifting her, moving her, arranging her the way he wanted and then not sparing a moment before shoving into her once again. When she came, Tracy had to stifle her scream in a pillow and Brendan had groaned out his own release, face buried in her hair.