Chapter Thirty-Two
Cole
“You keep coming back to that point,” I said to Lisa. It was therapy appointment number two, and as I sat there, I was thinking that it would probably be my last, that it had been a mistake to even make a second appointment. This wasn’t actually helping at all.
Especially because Lisa seemed to be harping on the fact that I had broken up with someone who I had been in love with.
“Well, we both keep coming back to it,” she said. “And that’s why you’re here to begin with, isn’t it?”
“I’m here because... because I thought I might need some help sorting out some of my feelings. You know, have a neutral party to talk to, not someone who’s personally involved.”
“And I’m also not here to give you a directive either way,” Lisa said. “I’m not trying to tell you to do something, or to not do something. Any conclusions that you might be drawing are really all on your own.”
“It just seems as though you keep trying to emphasize the point that I’m still in love with Allie.”
“Does it seem that way to you?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm.”
Was she trying to be coy? Was she trying to get me to make some sort of obvious connection that she had made and I had not?
“Listen,” I said, “I think it’s clear from everything that’s been said so far that you think I made a mistake.”
“It doesn’t actually matter what I think.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Is that so? You’re the professional here; I’d think it should matter a whole heck of a lot what you think.”
“In some instances, it might. But in this particular situation, not so much. What really matters is what you think, and whether or not the decisions you have made are the ones that you can live with.”
“Well, you kind of have to live with the decisions you make, don’t you?”
“Of course, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do things to try to change them if you feel like you made the wrong choices.”
“Which you think I did.”
“I’m not saying that.”
“But you’re implying it.”
She didn’t say anything; neither did I. We both sat there, at something of an impasse. I wasn’t sure what I had been hoping would come of going to a therapy appointment, but I sure as hell did not like sitting here feeling like this lady I didn’t even know was judging me.
After I left my appointment, I texted Ben and asked how they were doing. He said that he and Declan were having a good time riding bikes around, so I decided to take a little walk. I parked at Moose Lake and took the walking trail around the lake. I wouldn’t go the whole way around because that would take me half the evening, but I walked far enough in that I was surrounded by woods on one side with a nice lake view on the other. I tried to imagine that Allie was there with me because that’s all I really wanted.
And if she was there with me right then, I let it play out how it would go if I were to tell her about Declan, about Marissa, about all of that. Why I felt like I needed to break up with her to begin with. Allie, I made a promise when Declan was a baby that I would do right by him because it was partially my responsibility for why this was happening in the first place.
We didn’t know that Marissa was pregnant; my mother certainly had no idea when she had come to me that night and asked me if I would try to get the message through to Sam in another way, one that might leave a more lasting impression. Maybe if that hadn’t happened, they would have agreed to stop using, they’d do it together for their baby, and they’d be raising Declan instead of me. Declan would be with his two real parents, and my mother would eventually get over her dislike for Sam; she would have had to because he was her daughter’s husband, her grandson’s father.
Branches slapped at my arms and face as I walked the trail; it had gotten overgrown as the summer had gone on. There were so many possibilities for the way things might have gone, but this was the way they had turned out.
I would talk to Allie. If she didn’t want to take me back, I would understand that, I would deserve it. I hated the idea that I was going to come across as indecisive, but if it meant that she and I might be able to get back together, then it was worth it.
I did not tell Ben my plan; after I got back, we hung out for a little while, I put Declan to bed, and then he took off. Not long after Ben left, though, there was a knock at the door. I went to answer it, surprised to see that it was Allie.
“Hi,” she said, an uncertain note in her voice. “Is Declan asleep?”
“Yeah,” I said. “He is. Come on in.” I stepped back so she could come in. “I was just having a beer on the deck. Would you care to join me?”
“I’ll sit with you on the deck,” she said. “But I’m going to hold off on the beer for now. There’s something I wanted to talk about.”
“Okay,” I said as we walked back outside to the deck. “There was actually something that I wanted to talk to you about too, but you go first.”
Just being this close to her was hard; I wanted to reach over and pull her to me, feel her in my arms again.
“Ben told me everything,” she said.
I let the words sink in, at first not quite believing what I was hearing. “He did what?”
“Don’t be mad at him.”
“I’m not... exactly, I guess,” I said, though I did feel surprised. “You mean, he told you everything about...?”
“About Declan.”
“Why?”
“Because he thought I should know. He thought that it might explain a little bit why you suddenly broke up with me.”
“I see,” I said. Now it felt strange to be sitting here with her, knowing that she knew the one secret I had never thought anyone else would ever know.
“I could say I wish you would have told me, but I understand why you didn’t,” Allie said.
“Would it have changed anything?”
“No. Well, it wouldn’t have changed how I felt about you. How I feel about you. I love you, Cole. I still love you, even though you broke up with me. I think I can understand a little bit better why you did, but that doesn’t change how I feel. I can’t just stop feeling something for you, even if that would make my life a whole hell of a lot easier. And I didn’t come over here tonight expecting you to change your mind about anything. I’m not saying I wouldn’t be thrilled if you did, but... I just wanted you to know that I still do love you, and that I get why you felt like you had to end things, but...”
Her voice trailed off, and I could tell that she was trying not to cry. I reached over and took her hand.
“Allie,” I said. “I hate to see you like this. I hate to think that I hurt you, because you don’t deserve that. And it’s funny, you coming over here tonight to talk because I’d just been thinking that I wanted to talk to you, and I was trying to decide when a good time for that would be. I shouldn’t have broken up with you like that. I didn’t want to; I was just so freaked out by what had happened with Declan that I reacted, and it certainly wasn’t in the right way. I realize that now, and what I’d been planning on talking to you about was whether or not you thought we could get back together. Because that is what I would really like to see happen. And I’m sorry for putting you through all of this in the first place.”
“I’m so glad to hear you say that,” she said. “I’ve been miserable without you.” She took a deep breath. “There. It feels good to say it out loud. Even if that’s not what I’m supposed to be saying.”
“What are you supposed to be saying?”
“That I’ve moved on, that it doesn’t matter, that I’m going to go out on some rebound.”
“Rebound? Did you?”
She gave me a sheepish smile. “Well, Amy tried to set something up for me, but we just went out and ended up getting some food. I just couldn’t do it. It felt too weird.”
“I see. I’m sorry, Allie.”
“You don’t have to apologize. I get why you did it. I’m sorry that I had no idea about everything with Declan. That’s so intense, Cole! Do you...do you want to talk about it?”
I did, and I didn’t. There was so much to say, yet at the same time, I wasn’t sure even where to begin. And that was the thing—after all these years, I didn’t talk about it, so starting now seemed strange. I took a deep breath.
“I know I told you some of the history there,” I said. “I did leave out certain parts. That’s the real reason Marissa got sent away—she was pregnant. My parents just couldn’t believe it, though she didn’t tell them until it was she was almost four months along. She was able to get away with wearing big sweaters and stuff, and even if they’d found out sooner, she said there was no way in hell she was going to get an abortion.”
“That must’ve been such a hard thing for all of you,” Allie said. “I can’t even begin to imagine.”
“It was really hard. For my mother, especially. I had just finished my residency, and I was thinking about what my next steps were going to be, where I wanted to go, and then all this happened. But, you know, I really did what I felt like I had to do. For a time, I thought that maybe my parents were going to be the ones to raise Declan, but it was obvious they just couldn’t do it. They could be there to help out financially if need be, and they’d take him out every Sunday, but doing the whole raising a child again? They just couldn’t do it. Not again, not after what had happened. Not because they didn’t want to or anything, but I just knew they wouldn’t be able to do it.”
It felt undeniably strange to be speaking these words out loud to someone, yet I also felt an overwhelming sense of relief. As if I’d been needing to confess this, like talking about it would somehow absolve me from something.
But what? If I felt I needed to be absolved, wasn’t that admitting that I had done something wrong?
“Oh, Cole,” Allie said.
Originally, the plan was for Marissa to go away, have the baby, and come back. She’d live with my parents, and they would help her raise him. If Sam or his family ever got word that she had a baby and figured out that it was his, my parents were going to offer him money to go away. They figured if they offered enough, he would, and if they had to, they would move, somewhere that Sam would never be able to find them. But I think they knew that because of how he was now, and because of the limited resources his family had, that they wouldn’t do something like that to begin with. But Marissa killed herself, and everything sort of fell apart.”
“So whose idea was it?” Allie asked. “The whole thing just seems so... I don’t know, so crazy.”
“It is,” I said, “and at the same time, it isn’t. It’s just kind of what had to happen. Declan was born at the treatment center, and Marissa stayed there for a few weeks after he was born. She was on methadone at that point, so when he was born, he was addicted to opioids, too. He went through withdrawal, and it was awful. My parents had gone up there when she’d gone into labor, and I could tell after I talked to my mother on the phone that she was not going to be able to handle any of this. She had this whole idea in her mind about how things were going to be, but that was so far from the truth. I mean, they would have done it if I said I wouldn’t, but it would’ve been so hard on them. Getting to see Declan every week like they do works for them. They wouldn’t want to hear me say it like this, but they’re too old to be raising a little kid again.”
Then we were both quiet, watching the fireflies. I did feel better. I felt as though a weight had been lifted from me, as though talking about it like this was what I had needed to do all along.
“Come with me,” I said to Allie.
I got up, and she followed me inside. We went upstairs, and I closed the bedroom door, twisting the lock in the doorknob, too, though Declan rarely ever got up in the middle of the night. Allie and I sat down on the edge of the bed, and I brought my hand up to the side of her face. There was enough moonlight spilling in through the window that I could see her features, I could see the way her eyes closed when I touched her, how she started to smile. I put my other arm around her back, pulling her toward me. I cupped her chin and tilted her head back a little, and then we began to kiss. She was tentative at first, as though she was afraid I was going to push her away at any moment and say I had changed my mind about us getting back together. But then it was as if a switch had been flipped, and she was pressing her mouth against mine, her hands going to my lap, grabbing for my cock through my pants.
My own hands moved down to her breasts, my fingers first feeling her through the thin fabric of her shirt, then pulling the shirt off, reaching around to unhook her bra. She shrugged her shoulders out of it, and I made a trail of kisses from her throat to her left breast, and I slowly ran my tongue over and around her nipple, squeezing her other breast in my hand. I felt her nipple tighten in my mouth, and Allie groaned softly. I pulled my own shirt off, and we laid back on the bed. I slid my hand down between her legs, feeling her grab my cock and give it a squeeze. She was wet, and I was easily able to slide two fingers into her; her muscles clenched around them as I did so. She pressed her hips against me, moved her ass back and forth, working herself up and down on my fingers. I didn’t even have to move my hand, though I did after a moment, twisting my wrist enough so I could rub her clit with my thumb. She bit into my shoulder, trying to muffle the sounds she was making.
After a minute, I pulled my hand away and took my pants off. She lay on her back, and I positioned myself over her, felt the head of my cock pushing up against her warm wetness. Oh, I had missed that feeling. I slowly eased myself in, and once I was all the way in, I lowered down onto my forearms, and we started to kiss, a long, slow kiss, mouths open wide, tongues entwined with each other. While we did this, I began to rock my hips in and out, breathing deeply through my nose, my whole body engulfed with a tingling pleasure that settled over my body like a fine mist.
We stopped kissing and looked at each other, keeping our gazes locked as I continued to fuck her. Doing so made it seem like a completely new experience, seemed to elevate it to a whole new level. I’d looked girls in the eyes before when we’d had sex, but never this long, never with someone that I felt this strongly about. It seemed to intensify everything, and I had to slow down so I wouldn’t climax too early.
She was biting down hard on her lip, trying not to make any sounds, but little whimpers still managed to escape. My breathing got heavier, faster, and part of me wanted to squeeze my eyes shut, grit my teeth, and just chase that feeling until I caught it and was obliterated by it, but I made myself go slow and held her gaze. All sorts of things were happening down there around my cock; she was warm, gushingly wet, slippery like a sponge, except she was so tight that I wasn’t going anywhere. It was the most remarkably pleasurable array of sensations that I could ever recall feeling.
“I love you,” I said. I wanted to say it to her, but not when I was climaxing, because that of course would seem like such a cliché and could be taken as something that was just said in the moment; I wanted her to know that I really meant it, that it wasn’t just something I was saying because I was being overpowered by good feelings.
“I love you, too,” she gasped, and she reached around and grabbed my ass, pulling me to her, hard, and I could tell she was close to coming, so I let myself just go for it, and it was like we were both riding the same wave, so when it peaked, we were there together; it was happening at the exact same time.
I stayed there on top of her long after we had climaxed, her arms wrapped around me. Finally, I rolled over onto my side, but I reached out and took her hand as we lay next to each other.
“You can stay,” I said. “Stay the night. I don’t want to let you go. I want you right here in my arms tomorrow morning.”
“But... what about Declan?”
“It’s okay. If we’re back together now, then there’s really no point in not letting him know that. Plus, he’ll be so excited to see you. He’s missed you.”
“I’ve missed him, too.”
She curled herself up next to me and sighed in contentment. Not just the postcoital sort of contentment, either, but something deeper than that. Everything felt right again, and it was an immense relief. That’s what it was—underneath all the other feelings, the happiness, the after-sex buzz, was the feeling of relief.
We were up early in the next day, even though I wouldn’t have minded staying in bed all day long. When Declan came downstairs, Allie was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, and I was mixing batter together for waffles. He stood there in the doorway for a minute, blinking, looking as if he thought he might still be dreaming.
“Miss Allie?” he said.
“Good morning, Declan.”
Declan looked from her to me, then a huge smile broke out onto his face. “Are you making waffles, Dad?” he asked.
“Yes, I am,” I said. “So, I hope you’re hungry.”
“Did you sleep over last night?” Declan asked Allie, as he climbed up onto the chair next to her. “You look like you’re in your pajamas.”
She was actually wearing one of my T-shirts, a big one that came down almost to her knees, and a pair of my boxer shorts.
“I did,” Allie said, glancing at me. I just smiled and kept stirring the batter.
“So you and Dad aren’t fighting anymore?”
“No,” Allie said. “We weren’t really fighting to begin with, though.”
I opened the waffle iron and ladled out the batter, then closed the lid.
“Can you sleep over tonight?” Declan was asking.
I tried to hide my smile; he’d probably be more than happy to have her sleep over every night. Then again, so would I.
“We can talk about that later, buddy,” I said. “Want some orange juice?”
When the waffles were ready, the three of us sat at the table. It was the sort of domestic scene that I was used to during my own childhood, that probably would have made me cringe in my early 20s, and now, at 31, was exactly what I wanted. Declan and Allie were both here, and since it was Saturday, we had the whole day ahead of us to do whatever we wanted.
The next day when my parents came over, they took Declan out to the lake and then into town for ice cream. Allie had gone out with Amy for the day, so I went for a long bike ride. I stopped by Ben’s shop and hung out with him for a little while before heading back to the house. I took a quick shower, and as I was drying off, I heard my parents and Declan get back.
I went out back where they were sitting, and Declan told me about swimming at the lake and what kind of ice cream he’d gotten when they went out.
“I jumped off the dock five times!” he said proudly. He had a little smear of chocolate ice cream dried on his chin.
“Five times?” I said. “We’ll have to go there next time we go swimming, and you can show me.”
“Can I show Grandpa the tree I want to have the zipline on?” Declan asked.
“Yeah, of course.”
“A zipline, eh?” my dad said.
“Well, yeah...first, we need to do the treehouse.” I’d had my own treehouse when I’d been a kid and had always envisioned building one for Declan, though I just hadn’t gotten around to it yet.
“I might be able to help with that,” Dad said.
“You could help build a treehouse? You know how?” Declan said, his eyes wide.
“Your grandfather’s very good at that sort of thing,” I said. “He built me a really great treehouse when I was a kid. I’ll have to show you a picture some time.”
When Declan and my father went to inspect the tree, my mother lingered on the deck, looking at me, as though she was expecting me to tell her something.
“Allie and I have gotten back together,” I said.
“You have?” my mother asked, a smile on her face. “Oh, that’s wonderful! I’m so happy to hear that. I kind of had a feeling that would happen. And then... Declan had mentioned that she had stayed over here the other night. He’s so happy that you guys are back together.”
“I am, too. I’d been planning to talk with her, but she actually came over to talk to me the other night. And... I might as well tell you this, too...she knows.”
My mother’s eyes widened. “She knows? You mean...about Declan?”
“Yes, about Declan.”
“Did you tell her?”
“No.”
“Then how does she know?”
“Ben told her.”
“He did? Why would he do something like that?”
“He wanted her to understand, I think.”
My mother shook her head. “It’s no business of his.”
“She’s not going to tell anyone,” I said. “She’s not going to tell Declan.”
My mother was quiet for a moment, her lips pressed together into a thin line. “That’s good. I hope she wouldn’t. But you don’t know if she might tell someone else, who will tell someone else...that’s how it gets started, and then suddenly, the whole town knows. Is that what you want? Do you want Declan to find out because some kid goes up to him on the playground someday and tells him?”
“Of course not,” I said. “And I don’t think that’s going to happen. But if Allie and I are going to be in a relationship, then I want to be completely honest with her. I probably wouldn’t have told her this soon, but it would’ve come up. If the roles were reversed, I would want to know this about her.”
“I am happy to hear that you guys are going to try to work things out,” my mother said.
I only nodded; I decided not to elaborate that there was really nothing to “work out” between us, as if we had some major conflict that we needed to resolve. If that were the case, I wouldn’t have told her about Declan to begin with.