Wesley messaged me when he was just a few hours outside of the Bay. I was at the bar, as usual. My hands shook with sudden nerves, unable to grip the phone. The text was simple enough. “Hey. I’ll be back tonight. What about I use the last of these Vegas funds to take us out? A nice dinner. We’ve never had something like that, Rem.”

It was true. Throughout our teenage years, we’d subsisted mostly off of cigarettes and stolen alcohol, hot dogs, and whatever else we could squander from my parents’ pantry. We’d hardly been to a sit-down restaurant, unless you counted the diner. At the time—before all those fancy dinners with Tyler—I’d counted those meals as sit-down, as almost romantic. As long as I was with Wesley, it was enough.

Quintin caught me shaking and was eyeing me darkly from his stance at the microwave. On the platter inside, a stack of mozzarella sticks sizzled. The fare we sold at Station to Station wasn’t exactly high-end, but it’s what the clientele wanted.

“You’re anxious today,” he said, his voice booming. Sometimes, he spoke so similarly to Wes, it freaked me out. “What’s going on? You stay up all night working on the script again?”

“Of course I did.” I gave him a small smile. “It’s all I can think about.” This had been true until Wesley had flown into town and then back out. This had been true before the topic of “to breed or not to breed” had dropped on the table.

“You gotta give yourself a rest,” Quintin said. He pulled the platter of mozzarella sticks from the microwave, taking one for himself. His pause wasn’t long enough before he took a bite and made a face. With eyes clenched, he muttered, “Fuck! Fuck fuck. So hot.”

---

Sometimes, it seemed no one actually grew up.

“Actually, I’d love the night off,” I said to him, watching him drop the platter in front of—who else?—drunk Marshall. “I want to sleep and edit the back-half of the script. And Mondays are normally pretty dead, right?”

“Sure thing,” Quintin said. He nodded, tapping the back of his pants pocket and drawing out a pack of cigarettes. “I don’t mind at all. Just let me take a smoke break and you can be on your way.”

After Quintin ambled back in, reeking of smoke, I waved my goodbye, slipped off my apron, and darted across the street. My legs were all jittery, like a wild animal’s or a strange bug’s. I certainly felt bug-eyed. Back at my apartment, I reached for the half-drunk bottle of white in the fridge and chugged it back, hoping it would calm my nerves. “You’re going to do it,” I whispered to myself, conscious that this decision was akin to jumping off a cliff. “You’re going to have this baby. You’re going to take the money. And you’re going to make your film.”

It was all I wanted in the world.

But of course, I had questions churning in the back of my mind. What on earth would this reality feel like, once it happened? My belly, stretched out and filled with Wes’s child? A baby, so tiny, a nubby nose and bright eyes like Wes’s, wrapped in a blanket and tucked in my arms?

Just imagining the weight of the child brought a wave of love through my heart. A wave of “what could be.” And then—once born—what next? Would I help raise this baby? Would I see his first steps, or hold her hand? Would I kiss her good night, or sing him songs?

My maternal instincts, left behind years ago, or so I’d thought, swirled in my heart.

---

I slipped into a light yellow dress—almost virginal, I thought—and walked across the city, west, toward the water. I was familiar with the steep inclines and declines of the city, my muscles cranking up and stalling, depending on which direction I went. It was early September, and the air was surprisingly cool, glittering across the sweat beads on my arms and legs as I walked. I imagined what Wesley would say when he spotted me in this dress. Perhaps that I looked just as I had as a younger girl—an eighteen-year-old with my arms spread out for the world. Perhaps that he wanted to fuck me in it. That he wanted our baby to be conceived that night.

I walked a bit north, toward the pier, stood near the edge, and gazed out at the haze of Alcatraz Island, the old prison. When Wesley and I were sixteen, maybe seventeen, we’d taken the ferry across, holding hands as the wind whipped at our hair. We’d listened in rapt amazement to the stories of the men who’d lived—and escaped—there. Something about the way Wesley had strutted through the grounds, so sure of himself, had told me that he wasn’t the type to stay home, to read about stories like this. He was the type to live them. He so wanted to charge his way through life.

And in so many respects, that’s what I had wanted, too.

Wesley texted me details for the restaurant: near the Golden Gate Bridge, overlooking the water. Eight-thirty. “I can pick you up wherever you are,” he said. But I told him I would meet him there. I needed as much time as I could get to mentally prepare. I knew now that seeing him put a jolt of love, of lust, through my stomach and spine. It was akin to looking at the most beautiful memory you’d ever had, walking along, living life without you. You needed to cling onto it more than it ever needed you at all. It was painful, in its beauty.

I arrived at the restaurant just after eight-twenty. It was a trendy, high-end seafood restaurant, with white tablecloths, a wide window that stretched out toward the cliffs, and high-waisted-jeans-wearing techie-hipsters eating six-course meals with their multi-hundred-thousand-dollar salaries. I could smell the tech money on the San Franciscans now, and recognize that they weren’t the same crew I’d been surrounded by as a younger girl. When I’d so loved my city.

The maître d’ led me to a candlelit table at the far end of the restaurant. I ordered a deep Chianti, something I recognized from Italy, which Tyler had loved. I sipped the wine a bit too quickly, listening to a table a few away from me. The man—glasses, a V-neck sweater—was explaining the start-up he wanted to build, which, he said, would revolutionize the meatpacking industry. My stomach felt twisted. These people weren’t Wes’s people or mine.

Wes appeared in the doorway, following the maître d’. Immediately, my stomach clenched with fear. He smiled at me, and I could feel the depth of his penetrating eyes. His legs—long, muscular, stretched forward—illuminated his expensive, almost European-looking shoes. I wondered if he’d gone shopping in Vegas.

I stood, almost feeling like I was floating. He reached me and kissed my cheek, murmuring in my ear. “You must be the prettiest girl in this entire restaurant.”

It was what he’d said when we were children, teenagers. He’d always said it like that, like it was our secret. We were all the other needed.

My cheeks grew bright red as I sat across from him, watching his familiar lips order a whiskey. He gestured around him, at the crowded techie-filled tables. “What happened to our city, Remy?” he asked, cackling. “These assholes, they’re taking over! And they’re working for my father. Building that family fortune.”|

I shifted, remembering that was the point of this dinner: his family’s fortune. In a sense, the people around us were cogs in the machine that would align me with my movie. I swallowed sharply, feeling suddenly disgusted with myself. Hunting for words, I watched as the server returned with a whiskey and took Wesley’s rather surprising appetizer orders—calamari, a type of Spanish cheese, and a high-grain bread. “Everyone in this town is avoiding bread, but I say, let’s embrace it!” he said. “We only live once, right?”

He was the man I’d loved. Perhaps, in some ways, that love wasn’t eager to go away.

“I appreciate that sentiment,” I said, giggling. “If you’re going to die tomorrow, you’d rather say that you ate some grainy bread than some spinach salad, I guess.”

“Imagine being on your deathbed and saying, God, I wish I could have one more salad,” Wesley said. “It’s not the type of life you and I were ever meant to live. I think we both knew that.”

The appetizers came, and Wesley ordered us a first course, then a second. We dove into the conversation of old friends, of old lovers. What we’d been like at the age of twenty-five. “An actual asshole, instead of someone just flirting with the idea,” Wesley told me. “I thought the entire world belonged to me. I think I robbed one too many gas stations in North Carolina and now I can’t go back to the entire state. I also almost married this woman in Alabama, just so I could learn her apple pie recipe.”

I chuckled, lost in his eyes. “When I was twenty-five, I was probably going to my millionth audition,” I said. “Running lines with Sam. You remember Sam?”

“Oh, your prissy best friend. Sure,” Wesley said. His hand twitched over the tablecloth, drawing over mine. Our skin sizzled at the touch. “I remember her. I remember how much she hated me.”

“Just at the end,” I said. “But I guess that’s appropriate.”

“To think, we thought it would be the end,” Wesley said, leaning closer to me. “But here we are, Rem. And you—you said you might want to talk to me about, you know.”

I sniffed, feeling a smile twitch across my lips. Everything within me glowed, as if my body was ready, eager to leap over to him. My heart pumped wildly, feeling like it was going to shatter me. I wanted to blast from the restaurant, to fuck him directly on the pier. I craved his every inch.

“Because, well, I know you know this, but I could have any girl do this,” Wesley began. “Have my heir, whatever. But I want you to do it. Of all the girls in the world.”

I felt a wave of rage, intermixed with sadness. I gripped my neck, my eyes searching his face. “Any girl in the world?” I asked, my voice soft.

Wesley recognized he’d made a mistake. He drew back, crossing his arms over his chest. Silence fell.

“Come on. Say something,” I snapped. “You’re always so ready to say something, Wesley. And now you’re so quiet.”

My mind raced. I rose and strode toward the door, my heels clacking on the fine wood floors. The techie millionaires erupted in laughter as I marched past.

Within seconds, I found my route just outside the door and barreled toward the sand. The beach was in full view of the Golden Gate, glowing in its familiar red across the bay. I stood, shaking and staring out at it. A sight I’d taken for granted of as a teenager. A sight that now seemed to regenerate me.

I couldn’t believe I’d almost made such a mistake: fucking and creating new life with one of the most arrogant men in the world. Yes, he’d been my love. But I’d wised up. Become an artist. Not just some woman he wanted to toss onto his mattress and fuck. “I could have any girl do this.” The words echoed from ear to ear. “I could have any girl in the world.”

OK, I thought. Then why the hell don’t you? I obviously wasn’t enough for you before. Why the hell should I be good enough for you now?

I steamed, knowing Wesley would just hop up on his motorbike and rush out of town, leaving me there beneath the moon. I knew he would, because people didn’t change. It was one of the first rules of screenwriting: your characters always did things within their character boundaries. They said the things they were always going to say. And Wesley? Once the baby was born, anyway, he would be out of my life. And I knew I wasn’t emotionally strong enough to hack it.