The Trouble With Before (2 page)

BEFORE I’M EVEN
up the steps, I can practically taste Ms. Red’s famous homemade biscuits, rice, and gravy. If I’m lucky, she’s made sausage.

“Aidan!”

I steady my balance, ready for my favorite little person in the world to jump on me. She runs down the steps, her blond pigtails bouncing all over the place, and I brace myself as she jumps into my arms.

“What’s up, Willa bear?” I ask, lifting her over my shoulders.

“Guess what?” she asks sneakily.

“Let’s see . . . you’ve grown a tail?”

She smacks her lips. “No! I got A-plus on my spelling test,” she says with all the excitement of an eight-year-old on a sugar rush.

I set her down and give her a high five. “That’s awesome!” I take her hand as I walk up to the door, but she jumps in front of me with her hand held out.

“Remember what you said?” She laughs, her eyes twinkling, and I push the thought of her mother out of my head.

I let out an exaggerated sigh and pull the ten bucks I promised her out of my back pocket. “You’re breaking me kid,” I say with fake irritation.

She snatches it out of my hand and runs into the house. I follow her inside.

“Aidan, it’s so good to see you,” Ms. Red says, ushering me over to the sink after giving me a quick hug.

“You called me right on time. I’m starving.” After I finish washing my hands, I sit down at the table.

She sets a plate of rice, gravy biscuits, and
score
, sausage in front of me.

“Jackpot.” I rub my hands together before digging in.

She lightly swats my shoulder before frowning at me. I sigh and bow my head to say a quick grace, then I can stuff my face. I watch her pour me a glass of lemonade, and I notice no one else is eating.

“We all ate earlier. You know us.” She smiles with a quick shrug before sitting across from me. “So tell me, how is my little one?” She rests her chin in her hand as she watches me devour my food.

I swallow a spoonful of rice before rinsing my mouth with orange juice. “Chris or Caylen?” I joke, and she lets out a small laugh. “The big one is pretty much going crazy since Lauren just hit the six-month mark and he’s going to have three women in the house soon. Caylen is keeping him busy too.”

I reflect on the couple of days I spent with her son’s family. After visiting that household, I realize how calm my life is, which says a lot. My life is far from calm, but having a wife, a little girl, and twins on the way makes my friend’s life a circus.

“I can’t wait until I get there. I’m going next week to stay with them until Lauren has the babies.” She beams.

“I’m going to take care of Daddy and do all the cooking,” Willa sings, popping up beside me like a silent ninja.

“She is. I’ve showed her how to make eggs and oatmeal, and tomorrow she learns how to make my famous French toast.” Ms. Red winks at me.

“When the babies get here, me and Dad are going to help take care of the babies too,” Willa explains happily.

I smile widely at her, even though it still weirds me out to hear her call him Dad. He is her dad, through unfortunate circumstances, but after everything, fate or destiny has a funny sense of humor. A little person who almost destroyed their family has become such a permanent fixture in all of our lives. It’s as if she’s always been around even though she pretty much fell from the sky into our lives. Kind of like a bomb dropped, she was meant to destroy everything, but instead she fixed it . . . I can’t help but wonder sometimes if Ms. Red is a saint. I couldn’t have dealt with accepting and loving my spouse’s illegitimate child as my own, but if it works for them, it’s not for me to judge. I don’t think Ms. Red has loved anything in the world as much as she loves Willa, and that makes me admire her even more.

“Sweetheart, I have some towels in the dryer that should be stopping soon. Can you fold them up for me how you did last time?” she asks Willa, who nods happily before running out of the room. “So how are things with Hillary? I hear that you two are getting pretty serious?”

I instantly lose my appetite. Good thing I’ve already eaten most of what’s on my plate.

“Uh oh,” she says hesitantly.

I lay my head flat on the table. If Ms. Red thinks things are getting pretty serious, it’s because either Hillary told her we’re getting serious or Lauren told her we’re getting serious because she heard it from Hillary. Either way, that’s bad, bad, bad.

“I don’t know why everyone keeps thinking that.” I clear my throat, and she gives me a disbelieving look.

“What’s that face for?” she asks cautiously.

I lean back and stretch my legs. Ms. Red has always been like a mother to me and seems as though she could give some good advice. “Okay, things got really intense really, really fast . . .” I’m trying to sum up Hillary’s and my relationship in the best way possible.

She nods, seemingly understanding.

“I don’t know if the whole Chris and Lauren thing is getting to her, but she wants to move waaay faster than I want to move.” I shrug.

“When you say fast, what do you mean?” she asks.

I sigh. “She’s talking about moving in together, and when I went and visited her, she took me to this jewelry store supposedly to get
earrings
for herself, but we spent an awful lot of time at the ring section. It was more than awkward and completely weirded me out . . .”

Ms. Red nods thoughtfully.

“We’ve only been dating for, like, a year, and it wasn’t ever supposed to be exclusive,” I tell her, and she doesn’t look sympathetic but almost amused. “Well, it’s really been like a few months since we live in different states and don’t see each other all the time,” I say a little sheepishly.

“Do you love her?” Ms. Red asks, and I rub the back of my head.

“I’ve never really been in love. I’ve been in lust, a lot, with tons of women. I’ve liked girls, and I’m really in lust with Hillary to be honest. She’s cool, always willing to try things . . .” I chuckle.

“When you’re in love, you’ll know it,” Ms. Redd says, giving my hand a squeeze with a reassuring smile.

“I don’t know if I would.” I chuckle. “Most of the girls I’ve dated haven’t complimented me on being in touch with my feminine side.”

She shakes her head. “Love isn’t a feminine emotion. I understand why you’re afraid, but love, it trumps hate, anger, even un-forgiveness,” she says the last part quietly. A moment of awkwardness slips in, but if anyone can say that, it’s definitely her. She lets out a quick breath and flashes me a bright smile. “Love can be the single greatest thing that’s ever happened to you.”

I nod, my phone vibrates, and I pull it out and see that Hillary’s calling again. Is that a sign, or just a sign of crazy?

“I actually asked you here for a hidden agenda,” she says reluctantly.

I feel my eyebrow arch. Ms. Red has a hidden agenda? That’s actually funny.

“Do you need me to kick somebody’s ass?” I ask, and she laughs.
Please be your husband’s, please be your husband’s.
“I mean, do you need me to kick someone’s butt?”

She shakes her head. “No, nothing like that.” She sighs.

Shit, no such luck. I can tell by her demeanor change that she’s about to say something serious.

“Umm, I talked to Lisa this morning,” she says quietly, and her eyes narrow on me.

I slump back in my chair and let out my breath. I didn’t expect to hear Lisa’s name come out of her mouth, but then again, I would have never expected her to be raising Lisa’s daughter. I never expected Lisa would drop her kid off on their doorstep like an unwanted package. I can feel myself getting really pissed off. Ms. Red must be able to tell because she wrings her hands nervously together, so I shake my head to calm it.

“She’s calls every so often . . . to check on things . . .” she explains. I can tell she’s uncomfortable even mentioning her, at least to me. “I’m really worried about her, Aidan.”

I clear my throat. Wow. After everything Lisa did to this woman, she’s worried about her. “You really are a saint, Ms. Red,” I mutter in disbelief.

She shakes her head.

“She’s not someone you should be worried about. She obviously doesn’t worry about anyone or anything else,” I say, hearing the bitterness in my tone.

“She was your friend. Your
best
friend,” she says pleadingly.

“She was
Chris’s
best friend,” I correct her. I notice I’m pouting like a kid, and she frowns at me.

“I tried to talk to Chris about this . . .”

I can imagine how that went.

“If Lauren didn’t have two human beings in her . . .” she continues.

I roll my eyes, feeling disgusted. “I don’t know why you’re worried about her. She’s only ever worried about herself. She isn’t even worried about her own daughter.”

“I care because she’s Willa’s mother.”

“If you can call her that,” I mutter. “What’s the emergency? San Diego isn’t sunny enough for her? Brett didn’t get her the perfect gift for her birthday?”

“She’s hurting.”

The tone of Ms. Red’s voice makes my heart skip a beat. It’s funny how you can write a person off after they do so much crap and hurt so many people, but a small part of you
still
manages to care.

“And if anyone knows what hurting sounds like, it’s me,” she continues, her eyes locking on mine.

I nod guiltily. If anyone deserves to hate and refuse to forgive Lisa, it’s Ms. Red, but somehow she’s managed to.

“When she called me, she sounded terrible. Not in an obvious way; in a way only a person who has been there can recognize,” she continues. “I tried to call her mother, but that didn’t go so well.”

I roll my eyes. The only mother worse than no mother would be Lisa’s mother. We used to bond over that fact. She had Evie as a mom, and I didn’t have one at all most of the time.

“I know that . . . I appreciate that you’re so angry with her for me,” she tries to explain. “But if something happened to her, you and Chris would really regret not doing anything.”

I let out a long sigh. She’s right. Lisa’s like the stain you get on a shirt that you keep wearing because it was your favorite and the stain happened on one of the best nights of your life. “You think she’s really in trouble? What did she say?”

“She called and asked about Willa, then she just started crying, and when I asked her what was wrong, she said nothing and started to apologize for what she did. She said that she screws up everyone around her . . . and that it’d all be fixed soon.”

I roll my eyes. “Lisa’s too selfish to kill herself.”

“She sounded really drunk or high off of something maybe,” she says worriedly.

I think of the last time I talked to Lisa, how she pretty much told me she was shirking motherhood and escaping to California. I wanted to throw up.

When we were younger, Lisa and I were friends because of our best friend, Chris. We tolerated each other because of him, but somewhere along the line, we became close. She was one of the only girls who could put me in my place, who I could hang out with without any pressure or a hidden agenda. She was smart, funny, and could hold her own with the guys. And in some ways, we were alike. Chris was always the good kid, the Boy Scout with the perfect parents and perfect home. Lisa and I were kind of the outsiders, the kids no one expected to be much. We had it a lot harder than most.

When I found out what she had done with Chris’s dad, and how she hid a whole person from us for all those years, I couldn’t believe it. Still I stuck by her. I went off on her of course, but I didn’t
abandon
her. I would have never left her. So for her to abandon her daughter without a thought disgusted me. Even after she told me she was leaving to go to California, I hoped she’d change her mind. I knew if she went through with it, that would be it. I’d never be able to look at her the same way. She’d lose me the way she’d lost everyone else, so when she called me and told me she’d made it to California and she left Willa with the Scotts—who Willa had never even met—to
find
herself in California, I was done.

I told her to never call me again, and that she was a selfish bitch who deserved to be alone the rest of her life.

It’s been almost seven months since that call. Someone I used to talk to every day became someone I pretended didn’t exist for seven months. I guess humans are so resilient that someone essential to your life can so easily be wiped out of it.

“I don’t know where she is. I haven’t spoken to her since a few days after she left,” I tell Ms. Red.

“This is the address.” She slides a piece of paper toward me.

I look at her curiously. How the hell did she get Lisa’s address?

“She called me from this hotel. Last I checked, which was an hour ago, she’s still checked in,” she explains. “There’s a flight that leaves at four today I could book for you . . .”

I chuckle, and she smiles sympathetically. My phone buzzes again. It’s a text from Hillary saying she’s on her way to see me, complete with an angry face and a bunch of expletives. I throw my head back in frustration, then I text her back and tell her not to bother because I’m in California, bitch! Well, without the bitch part.