“I’m sorry to just stop by. But I saw your tweet earlier today about showing off your apartment here in New York and figured this was as good a time as any. I didn’t know you had company.” CeCe’s gaze flickered to me for a second, her eyes full of pity. “May I come in?”
Ryan moved out of the way and let her inside. CeCe put the little boy down. He stayed close to her, wrapping his arms around her leg.
“What are you doing here?” Ryan asked.
“There’s no good way to say ‘Surprise, you’re a daddy,’ so surprise. You’re a daddy. This is Thomas. He’s a little over two years old.”
My whole body tensed as fingers of dread wrapped around my spine. My heart raced erratically. Ryan? A father?
I’d known the truth of it the second I saw Thomas. One night when we were in California at his house, his aunt had spent the evening showing me photo albums of Ryan as a baby and small boy.
Thomas was the spitting image of Ryan at the same age.
Some of his features were different. He had a small cleft in his chin, where Ryan didn’t. Thomas’s coloring didn’t match Ryan’s, either, but he must have taken after CeCe.
As if somebody had punched me hard in the gut, I realized Ryan was a dad. He had fathered a child he hadn’t even known about. An empty hollowness started in my chest and slowly spread until I felt completely numb. I wasn’t angry or sad.
There was just nothing.
Ryan’s face had gone pale. “I’m sorry for asking, but how do you know he’s mine? We were always so careful.”
“Nothing’s a hundred percent effective. And you were the only person I was dating at the time. I mean, if you don’t believe me, you can get a paternity test. But I’m not lying to you.”
“Of course he’s yours.” I spoke up without meaning to, especially since this was none of my business. “He looks just like you.”
“Why . . .” Ryan seemed at a total loss for words. “Why tell me now? Why didn’t you tell me as soon as you knew you were pregnant?”
CeCe patted the top of Thomas’s head. “I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. If I was going to keep him. And then I saw an ultrasound and fell head over heels in love. You weren’t exactly father material back then, and I thought Thomas would be better off without you. But everything I see and read about you now makes me think you’ve changed. That you’d be capable of being a good dad. I grew up without a father, and I don’t want that for my son. Our son.”
I’d played a part in this. My fake-then-real relationship with Ryan was meant to convince the record label about his growth and maturity. To show that he had changed from that silly party boy into a more serious, adult artist.
I heard CeCe say, “I want you to know this isn’t about money but about a relationship.”
My knees felt weak, and I collapsed into a nearby chair, feeling the blood draining from my head.
Ryan was a father.
That cute little boy clinging to his mother’s leg was physical proof of everything I’d feared about falling in love with Ryan. I saw myself in Thomas, with a musician father who would be in and out of his life, never really there. I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t live through this again.
My soul began to break, and it fractured from the pressure more and more until it shattered completely, scattering shards everywhere.
I couldn’t be here. I couldn’t be a part of this. I grabbed my purse off the counter and headed to the door.
“Maisy, wait!”
Ryan caught up with me in the hall, grabbing my arm and spinning me around. “Where are you going? I need you here.”
“I can’t do this. You had a baby with someone else. When I finally got to the point where I was ready to be the one to have—” I had to stop as my throat swelled, a knot of tears lodging inside it. “They were supposed to be our babies. Not your babies with someone else.”
“Let’s straighten everything out first. Let me get a paternity test and make sure he’s mine, and then we’ll figure out where we go from there. Together.”
Together? How could he say that to me, as if we still had a future? As if I could just get over the fact that he’d impregnated some random fan? Like that shouldn’t matter to me? I hit his shoulders out of frustration. “There is no more together. No more us. I told you and told you how I felt about this. You’re exactly like my father!”
Ryan looked stricken, as if I’d slapped him across the face. He knew that for me, it was the worst possible insult I could have given. “Maisy, that’s not true. You know me.”
Breaking free of his grasp, determined not to cry, I held up my head. “Stay with your baby mama, and work out whatever you have to work out. I’m done. I’m done with us. I’m done with you. Don’t call or text me ever again.”
Not wanting to wait for the elevator, I ran for the stairs. Ryan called after me at least three times that I heard, but there was no way he could follow me, given that CeCe and Thomas were waiting for him in his apartment.
Nausea roiled in my stomach as the doorman got me a taxi. The second he closed the door behind me, I dissolved into tears. My shoulders curled in, and I brought my knees up, wrapping my arms around them. My chest ached as I cried and cried so hard that I nearly hyperventilated. How could Ryan do this? Have a baby with some woman he’d never even mentioned?
In a single moment, my entire life had been totally destroyed. Just as I’d always feared it would.
The only other time I’d felt this kind of hopeless despair was the night I found out about my mom’s accident.
My phone rang. It rang and rang and rang. All the calls were from Ryan. I turned the phone off.
The cab driver brought me to my hotel, and I tipped him extra for leaving my tears and snot all over the back seat. My brain pounded, making it difficult to think or see. I don’t know how I got to the right floor. I found Fitz’s room, not wanting to be alone.
He called over Parker and Cole, and in between sobs I told them I needed to go back to California. I didn’t give them any details. I couldn’t talk about it yet. My brothers made a bunch of threats about going over to Ryan’s apartment, but I begged them not to. I just wanted to go home. And not on Ryan’s tour bus.
Fitz got online immediately and bought us four plane tickets. My brothers helped me pack up and took me and all our stuff to the airport.
Three hours later we were onboard a California-bound flight. I would go home, and things would be better. I’d get back to normal and live my life the way I had before I ever met Ryan.
Exhaustion claimed me, but as I drifted off to sleep, I knew there would be no going back. We were going to sell our house. I didn’t have a job or a place to live.
And Ryan had ripped out a huge chunk of my heart. I didn’t know how I’d go on living without it.
We sold the house to a pregnant couple. It gave me some measure of happiness to know that a family would live here and love it the same way we had.
Since that money would take care of Mom’s facility, Fitz split up all the money we had earned on tour with Ryan. It wasn’t a small amount, either. It enabled us to go off on our own. Get our own places. I bought a brand-new phone and had the salesman give me a new number. I found a reasonably priced studio apartment in Venice Beach. The area felt comfortable, familiar.
I would move on with my life.
Angie asked over and over again what had happened with Ryan and me, but I still wasn’t ready to talk about it.
“Just tell me this. Do I need to have Fox take him out for you?”
I laughed and cried at the same time, but I said I didn’t want to talk about him anymore. From time to time, I’d catch her with this look in her eyes, where I knew she wanted to tell me something about him, but she respected my wishes.
Today she and I were shopping to find her a new dress to wear. She was going to meet Fox’s parents and wanted to look perfect. We’d been to three regular women’s stores already, and now we were at a bridal shop. When I’d asked why, Angie told me they had informal dresses for sale, as well.
“It’s a big step. The parent thing,” she told me as she thumbed through any number of cocktail dresses that would have looked amazing on her. One of them had a blue-and-white pattern, which made me think of the dress I’d worn the night we’d surprised Angie and Fox into going on their first official date. As if where I’d be stopping for lunch wouldn’t be enough of a reminder.
It had been happening more and more. Instead of remembering why I was mad at Ryan, how he’d promised not to hurt me and then immediately did, I kept thinking about all the fun we’d had together. How much I still loved him.
This is Angie’s day, I reminded myself. I would not wallow, and I would be a good friend and do what I had been asked to do.
One of the clerks came over and offered us a tray with champagne on it. “I thought they did that only for brides.”
“When in Rome, right?” Angie accepted a flute, but I waved it off. The last thing my morose self needed was to be drunk.
“Meeting Fox’s parents is a big step. But they’ll love you. And Hector Jr. If they don’t, then they can just . . . I don’t know. Suck it.”
Angie laughed as she pulled out a red sparkly dress. She knocked back the rest of her drink before setting the glass on a shelf. “I’m going to try on this one.”
A song came over the trendy boutique’s speakers. At first I thought I was hallucinating, but no, it was “One More Night.” The words twisted painfully against my heart, like they were enclosing it in barbed wire. I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall, remembering when Ryan and I sang it together. How I’d felt an intimate, soul-deep connection with him.
Before I could start crying, Angie came out and twirled around in her dress. “What do you think?”
“You look gorgeous,” I told her, my voice tight. “But ask yourself, what kind of dress is this? Is this The Dress? The one you’d wear to the Governor’s Ball? The one you’d want to get proposed to in? Go to the Academy Awards in?”
Not hearing my none-too-subtle slip of the tongue, Angie sized herself up in the mirror. “It’s probably not formal enough for that stuff, but I do love it.”
“Then you should wear it out of the store. Be fancy for lunch.”
“You know what? I will,” she said, smoothing down the material over her legs.
After she paid for the dress and got the tags removed, we went back to her car. Angie had become very good at carrying on one-sided conversations with me.
“You should probably let me drive,” I said, interrupting her. I’d finally figured out the best way to finish up this afternoon. “I know you didn’t have that much champagne, but better safe than sorry, right?”
“Absolutely.” She tossed me her keys, and I caught them. I had to adjust her seat and mirrors when I got in, since she was so much shorter. As she put on her seat belt, she glanced at me. “Maybe it was just the champagne talking. Won’t I be really overdressed for lunch?”
Not at all. “It’ll be fine. Who cares what other people think?”
“Where are we eating?”
“It’s not far,” I told her. That was all the information she’d be getting out of me for the rest of the day.
She was in the middle of telling me a story about something adorable Hector Jr. had done with a bowl of spaghetti when I pulled up in front of the restaurant.
“La Isla Cubana?” Angie asked, her face full of worry and concern. She had no idea what was about to happen, and instead of wondering, she thought of me first.
I got out of the car, forcing her to follow. “All your answers are inside.”
She hesitated on the sidewalk, but I pulled open the door and gave her a gentle nudge. Just beyond the hostess station, I could see they had cleared all the tables except for one. Fox knelt in the middle of the floor, surrounded by a sea of flowers, holding out a ring box to Angie.
Since her back was to me, I couldn’t see Angie’s expression, but I saw her hands fly up to her mouth in what I hoped was excitement. I let the door fall shut, letting them have their moment. I would be really and truly happy for them both. I would not stand out here and wonder if Ryan had been involved with this. If he was somewhere close by even now.
I wouldn’t think about how I’d been ready to marry Ryan.
Even though it made my heart break all over again.
When I got home, I tried, again, to write a song about Ryan and the breakup, thinking it might help me process my pain. It didn’t. It just brought back the agonizing grief. I decided it was better not to think about him.
As if that were possible when every song on the radio was his, and I saw his face practically every time I turned on the television.
He hadn’t told the media about our breakup, and I didn’t want to share that information, either. If they knew, it would have turned into a feeding frenzy. They wouldn’t have left me alone.
My still-intact privacy was one of the few things I was currently grateful for.
I should have known it wouldn’t last.