Gavin looks at his watch, prompting me to look down at mine. Maybe he wants to get down to business and talk about how we’re going to deal with Maddox.
“It’s almost six,” he says. “I don’t want to be presumptuous, but we do have a lot to talk about. Would you stay for dinner? I can call down for room service.”
Right on cue, my stomach grumbles and I giggle.
“I’m not sure I ever told you this, but I love that sound,” he says.
“The sound of me starving?” I tease.
He laughs. “No, actually, that sound I hate. How about you eat with me so we can get rid of it?”
“I guess I can do that, just let me text Callie.”
“Callie?” he asks.
“Maddox’s nanny. She lives with us,” I explain, pulling out my phone. “She’s great, a real friend and constant lifesaver.”
“Ah, the woman from the hotel pool,” he says.
I put down my phone and frown. “I can’t imagine what that must have been like for you—seeing the son you never knew about.”
He nods, sighing. “It was surreal,” he says. “It was the most terrifying moment of my life, but also the greatest at the same time.” He stares at me. “He looks like me.”
“Yes. He does.”
“Was that ever hard for you?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe,” I say.
His lips turn up into a smile. “Thank you.”
“For what?” I ask.
“For being completely honest with me.”
“I always was,” I say.
“I know.” He nods. “It was one of the things I loved about you.”
He picks up the room service menu, completely unaware of the shards that splinter my heart. I know it’s silly, but him referring to his love of me as past tense, hurts. And way more than I’d like to admit.
Angie was wrong.
I pull out my phone.
Me: I’m staying for dinner. Can you guys order pizza or something?
Callie: Oh, reeeeeally?
Me: Shut up. We have a lot to talk about.
Callie: Sure you do. We won’t wait up.
Me: Very funny. Kiss him for me if I’m not back by bedtime.
Callie: Will do. And I’ll be very disappointed if you are.
Me: Bye, Callie.
I put the phone back in my purse as Gavin says, “I hope you still like burgers. If you don’t, I’ll call back down and get you something else.”
“A burger is fine. Thank you.”
“So, you’ve made quite a name for yourself, Baylor.” He nods to my book. “You’re an author, and twelve books, that’s an incredible accomplishment.”
“Thirteen actually,” I correct him. “One was just released yesterday.”
“Ahhh, yes,” he says. “The great day that I ruined. I’m really sorry about that. I wondered what you were doing hugging the UPS guy.”
“Are you stalking me now?” I joke. “I see nothing has changed in the past eight years.”
He grabs his chest feigning ignorance. “Me—stalk? Never,” he says dramatically.
“Oh, right. So you never followed me to find out my daily routine?” I ask. “And you never got my class schedule so you could sign up for the same classes? Oh, and you definitely never just happened to be out running at the exact same time I was?”
“So you knew about all that?” he asks.
He at least has the decency to look embarrassed.
“It was all very sweet, actually,” I admit.
“And I suppose you haven’t Googled me at all, have you Mitchell?” He raises an eyebrow.
“Of course I have,” I say. “I can’t have a serial killer meeting my son . . . uh, our son.”
Wow, that was weird. It’s the first time I’ve ever said that. Our son. It’s unreal. It’s scary. It’s oddly wonderful.
“But I never looked you up until I saw you in Chicago,” I tell him.
“You’re kidding?” he says.
I shake my head.
“Me either,” he says. “I never Googled you until a few weeks ago. I didn’t ever want to know if you had gotten married, or became a famous food critic, or . . . died. I stayed off social media, too.”
“What, no Facebook?” I ask. “Haven’t you heard that everybody who’s anybody is on Facebook?”
“Especially Facebook,” he asserts. “That was what ruined us. God, Baylor, if you could have seen the things she put up there about you.”
I put my hand up to stop him. “I don’t need to know. I have the letter. I know how cruel she can be. I can only imagine what she posted on-line. I’ve never been on Facebook either, or anything else, for the same reason—I didn’t want to hear about you.”
“Un-fucking-believable,” he says. Then he winces and utters an apology. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I tell him. “I’m used to it. Callie curses like a sailor.”
“In front of our kid?” he asks.
I laugh. “No, not in front of our kid.”
He shakes his head. “Feels strange, doesn’t it, calling him our kid? I still can’t believe I have a son.”
There’s a knock on the door and we hear, “Room service.”
I stand up and grab my purse, heading for the door before Gavin can locate his wallet. I let the waiter in and then tip him on his way out, all the while aware that Gavin is watching my every move.
He smirks at me and doesn’t break our stare as he saunters over to where I put my purse and drops a twenty-dollar bill into it.
My jaw drops. “I knew it!” I squeal. “I always wondered why I never had to hit the ATM. Turns out I had my own personal one.” I giggle.
A bright smile touches his eyes and I suddenly remember what he said about loving that sound. And then of course, I blush.
“Come on, let’s eat.” He removes the silver domes from our plates.
I sit down at the nicely appointed table in the corner of the suite that has windows overlooking the one river that runs through our little town. I look down at what he’s placed in front of me. “You got me a chocolate shake? You remembered.”
“I remember everything, Bay.”
He uses my nickname, which has me wondering about his company. “So, Bay Watch Productions, huh?”
“Mmm hmm.” He nods his head while he takes a bite of his cheeseburger.
“Why did you choose that name? Didn’t you hate me?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know,” he says. “But you were the one who got me to go after it. I changed my major because of you. I change my life because of you. How could I not honor that in some small way?”
“I’m an author because of you, you know,” I say, earning me an incredulous look. I nod my head. “It’s true. You probably don’t remember, but you asked me once what I did at the children’s hospital and I said I used to read to the kids but then I started telling them stories.”
“And then I said that you should write books,” he says.
“Yes.” I’m impressed that he recalls the conversation.
“But you said you wouldn’t be good at it and I told you you’d never know until you tried,” he says.
He smirks and I know exactly what he’s going to say next. My face is already heating up in anticipation.
“Then I told you that you didn’t know you were good at giving blow jobs until you tried that either.” He winks. “I told you, I remember everything.”
I sit here and muse over the fact that, as much as fate worked to tear us apart eight years ago, you could knock me down with a feather right now with all the coincidences life is throwing at us today.
“I could ask you the same question about names, you know,” he says. “Not that I’m complaining, in fact I love it, but why did you name him Maddox if you hated me?”
“Ahhh, Touché.” I rip apart a french fry and pop half of it into my mouth. “I guess I wanted Maddox to feel like a part of you, because I felt bad for him that you didn’t want him.”
“Fuck!” He slams a fist on the table. “That bitch!” He looks at me apologetically. “Sorry,” he says, before taking a drink of his soda.
“Don’t be, she is a bitch,” I say. “She’s a goddamn lying shit-slinging bitch whore.”
Gavin spits his drink out, laughing. “Oh, my God, was that hard for you to say?”
“Nah, I’ve had some practice over the years.”
He pushes his plate of fries over towards me.
“Thanks, I’ve got enough here,” I say.
He stares at me with raised eyebrows.
“Oh . . . twenty questions?” I ask, laughing.
“Not twenty,” he says. “I need about a million. I want to know everything. About you. About Maddox. About the eight years I missed.”
“Okay.” I push his fries back at him. “But I can do better than twenty questions.” I get up from the table and walk over to pull the heavy photo album from my satchel. I place it next to his plate on the table. “I have pictures of every birthday, every holiday, every milestone. Almost everything you need to know about Maddox is right here.”
His eyes go wide and he stares at the album like he’s scared of it. Maybe he is. In a way, he’s about to meet his son for the first time. He wipes his mouth and puts the napkin on his plate of unfinished food. He gets up and goes over to the bar. He pours himself a few fingers of whiskey then he reaches inside a cabinet and comes out with a bottle of Merlot.
“What? How?” I ask.
“I read your author bio. It said you love a good Merlot.”
I smile as he pours me a glass. I take the album to the couch and he sits next to me as I open it to the first page. He stares at the picture of Maddox where I’m holding him as a newborn in the hospital. He takes a finger and traces his little face. Then he traces mine and my insides tingle. He’s only touching a picture of me, but it might as well be my own flesh with how intimate it seems.
“He’s so tiny,” he says.
“Six pounds, eight ounces.” I point to his birth announcement on the next page.
“November 7th,” he says, reading it out loud. He looks over at me. “I’m telling you right now, I’m gonna spoil the shit out of this kid. And I’m not waiting until his birthday to do it.”
I laugh.
He slowly turns each page as I narrate Maddox’s life for him. I captured all of it—first smile, first tooth, first step, first haircut—and everything in between.
“Wow, is that Skylar? She looks exactly like you did,” he says, pointing to a picture of Piper.
I shake my head. “No, that’s Piper. She was eighteen then. That was taken three years ago at her going away party. She saved every cent she ever made in high school and decided to spend that and her college fund traveling the world with a friend. She’s in China now. Or maybe Korea, I forget which.”
“That’s right. I think I remember Skylar telling me that Piper didn’t want to go into the family business,” he says.
“Ha! No way. I’m not sure she’ll ever go into any business. She’s a free spirit, a gypsy,” I say. “Piper decided long ago, after spending a semester abroad her junior year in high school, that she would lead a nomadic life. Skylar, on the other hand, is now managing Mitchell’s NYC. She’s in heaven being in the city.”
He comes across a picture of me crying in an embrace with Maddox. “Why are you so sad in this one?” he asks.
“This was his first day of kindergarten. I was a mess,” I say, laughing. “They practically had to rip him out of my arms. Not because he didn’t want to go, but because I didn’t want to release him. After Callie took this picture I’m pretty sure he rolled his five-year-old eyes at me and turned to walk away without ever looking back.”
Gavin laughs. “Independent, is he? I wonder where he got that from?” He winks at me and butterflies take up residence in my stomach.
He turns the page to see a gap-toothed Maddox smiling for the camera, wearing a Red Sox T-ball uniform. “Baseball . . . really?” He gives me an evil eye.
I roll my eyes. “Just wait.”
A few pages later, Gavin gives me a smug smile when he sees Maddox holding a soccer trophy. “Hey, there we go!” he shouts.
“I swear to God it’s in his blood,” I say. “I tried him at every sport. I think I may have even tried to dissuade him from playing soccer, but he kept coming back to it.”
“Ha! That’s my boy,” he says. Then he gets all choked up. “Oh, God—that’s my boy.”
I see him try to hide another tear that rolls down his cheek. A powerful rush of emotions makes my throat sting with regret.
“Fuck,” he says, turning away. “I’m crying like a damn girl. I haven’t done that since the day you left.”
My heart breaks for him. For us. For all the needless suffering we went through. He stares down at Maddox, who is wearing a dirty soccer uniform. He has several bandages on his knees and is sporting a silly grin that screams he’s Gavin’s son.
Tears fall onto the album. His tears. My tears. He doesn’t have to explain to me why he’s crying. I already know. He cries for all the soccer games he didn’t get to attend. He cries for all the skinned knees he didn’t treat and first days of school that he missed. He cries for all the memories he will never have. And I cry right along with him.
Somewhere in all the tears, our hands find each other and our fingers lace together. He reaches his other hand up to wipe my tears and then I reach up to wipe his. Neither of us can stop it when our lips meet and we taste each other as if for the first time. A hungry swipe of his tongue takes my breath away. Our kisses are heated, demanding, punishing even. Our tongues work fervently, licking, sucking and tasting with unwavering urgency. We break apart only long enough to gasp for air while my hands weave into his blonde locks and his gently hold the sides of my face. We lock eyes as he puts his forehead against me and we breathe into each other, him exchanging his breath for mine.
“Miss me?” he asks.
“No,” I say, unable to stop more tears from falling.
“Liar,” he says.
“Yes,” I respond.