Chapter 20

I’m on my way home from work the next night, Sunday, when I get a phone call from a landlord I’d called a few days earlier about an apartment. It’s a two-bedroom in Ballard, and it had sounded really promising from the description.

As per Jack’s wishes, we had (amazing) sex again twice more last night after he went down on me. “We’re going to do this as much as we possibly can until our time runs out,” he said, after his third and my sixth orgasm, right before I sent him back to his room. Light was beginning to seep in the window and Gabe would be up soon.

It was a brutal day of work on just a couple of hours’ sleep, but orgasms have magical power to combat sleep deprivation, so I managed to be pretty cheerful through all the usual workday crises. So much so that one of my coworkers asked me if I had any good news to share with her.

Somehow, I’m doing the dirty (again) with my baby daddy wasn’t going to come out sounding like something I should be celebrating, so I kept my mouth shut about that and just shrugged and said I was in a good mood.

When the call about the apartment comes through, I almost tell the landlord I’m not interested in seeing the place anymore. It’s pretty hard, after what happened last night, to imagine just blithely continuing the apartment hunt. And yet, what else can I do? I can’t squat at Jack’s house forever, and both of us know sex between us has to have a definite end. Because: history and hurt and incompatible views of monogamy and family.

So I head into Ballard to take a look at the apartment. And I’m glad I did. It’s small but beautiful—two tiny bedrooms, and a combo living room–kitchen with huge windows. Wood floors, in reasonably decent condition, and a bathroom that looks like it was redone in the last couple of years.

Of course, I’m flooded with mixed feelings. So much relief at finding a place that’s perfect for Gabe and me. But also fear that we won’t get it. The landlord told me, just before she took me through, that she had already shown it to a couple of people earlier today. I couldn’t get here any sooner, though, because of work.

On top of all that, there’s my ambivalence about leaving Jack’s place. Because it’s one thing to put an expiration date on the sex and something else entirely to know that it’s just ten days out. This place is available in a week and a half.

But the truth is, I really need this apartment to be The One. Not just because I need a decent, safe place for Gabe and me to live, although of course that’s a major consideration, but because I need to get out of Jack’s house before I get in any deeper than I already am. Which is starting to seem more and more likely. Not just because of the sex, but because of moments like the one Friday night when we were watching the movie together. Those moments aren’t about chemistry or the size of Jack’s package or how well he knows my body. They’re about Jack and me and how easy it is to be with him, like it always had been. And that’s the problem.

I could fall right back into it. I could fall right back in love with him.

So as tempting as it is to postpone the inevitable, as tempting as it is to, as Jack put it, reap some benefits from the shitty housing market, I need to get this apartment and get out of Jack’s house. I need to have my eyes fixed on that prize.

I come out of the bathroom to find the landlord on the phone, and I can tell from the look she gives me, even before I hear her say, “You can email the application to—” that I’m not going to get the apartment.

She hangs up and says, “The woman I showed it to right before you is sending me an application.”

“So I’m too late?”

She’s sixtyish, with big green-framed glasses and gray hair that looks like it’s been set over her head like a helmet. She tilts her head and examines me thoughtfully. “I’ll take your application if you can get it to me tonight. Email it to me.” She hands me a card. “But,” she says sternly. I think she is probably a schoolteacher or someone else used to keeping troublemakers in line. “Unless there’s something missing from her application or she doesn’t qualify, Seattle law says I have to let her have it. She was here first.”

I know the law she’s talking about. It was put in place to combat racism and other forms of discrimination in the housing process. I appreciate the fact that she knows the law and wants to follow it. So even though part of me is still tempted to beg her for the apartment, I give her my email address so she can send me the application, and then I follow her out of the building and trudge back to my car.

In the car, I pull my laptop out of my backpack, find the landlord’s email, fill out the application, and hit send. I’m not going to leave anything to chance that I can control. And I’m not even going to let myself feel hopeful about this place. I filled out the application, sure, but I’m going to assume it’s a lost cause. That way I can’t be too disappointed when I don’t get it.

Or too relieved, I think, before I can stop myself.

I sigh.

As much as I want to find a place to stay, I’m dead on my feet after a week of working and apartment hunting, and there’s nothing promising left on my list of prospects.

I guess I’m heading back to Jack’s house.

As I get close, my heart beats a little faster, my adrenaline rising. I tell myself that the eagerness I feel to get home is about wanting to see Gabe and nothing else. Not about Jack.

When I pull up in front of Jack’s house, his mom’s and Sienna’s cars are in the driveway. And even though I figured they’d probably be there—Jack had said they were going to come spend the afternoon and evening with Gabe—I’m instantly bummed. I don’t feel like talking about the failed apartment hunt with a bunch of people who don’t necessarily have my back. I want—

I want to go back to bed with Jack. But that’s maybe not the best idea ever. Every time he makes me feel the way he did last night, I’m going to slide closer to feeling like I want sex with Jack to be a permanent fixture in my life. Closer to feeling like I want Jack to be a permanent fixture in my life. So maybe it’s a blessing that Jack’s mother and sister are here tonight. They’ll make a great buffer.

They’re sitting in the living room. Sienna and Jack have beers in front of them, Barb has a glass of wine, and they’re playing Hearts.

“Hey,” Sienna says, smiling at me as I shut the door behind me. “Give me a minute. I’m about to win.”

“Hello, Maddie,” Barb says formally—no smile.

“Hi,” I say, feeling shy.

As I watch, Sienna’s prediction comes true. Barb’s total tops a hundred, ending the game, and Sienna has the lowest score.

“Can we deal you in?” Sienna tilts her head.

I start to wave my hand (so exhausted, heading off to bed), but Jack looks up and gives me a lopsided smile that I can feel in about a hundred separate places, and I find myself plopping onto the sofa beside him.

“How was the house-hunting?” he asks, as Sienna deals.

“I found this amazing place—” I begin.

“Oh, good,” Barb says. “I was just saying to Jack, you two need to be out of each other’s hair.”

I’m already regretting having sat down. Barb has never tried to hide her feelings toward me. I guess it’s not too shocking: I’m the woman who trapped her baby boy. And something happened between Barb and my mom after Jack’s dad left. I don’t know exactly what it was, but their friendship, which had been close, just—vanished. I think I got lumped in there, too—guilty by association.

“Mom, Jack’s already told you that’s not true.” Sienna turns to me. “He said it’s been nothing but great having you guys here,” she tells me warmly, and then mouths, Sorry, rolling her eyes toward her mother.

I’m more surprised by Sienna’s coming to my rescue than by Barb’s attack. Like I said, I pretty much know where I stand with Barb. But I’ve never been so sure with Sienna. When we were little, Sienna sometimes played with Jack and me, but more often, she was off with girls her age, and I was already a senior when Sienna started high school, so I never knew her well. Whenever we’ve crossed paths since then—those occasional holiday dinners, drop-offs and pickups—she’s always been kind, but I’ve always felt like there was a distance between us. At first I thought it might be judgment. But she’s never said anything to make me feel like she holds the accidental pregnancy, or Jack’s decision to support Gabe financially, against me. And she obviously loves Gabe like crazy, would do anything for him.

I shoot her a grateful smile, and she smiles back.

“So you found a place?” Jack asks. I can’t read the expression on his face.

“I did, but I’m probably not going to get it. The landlord had already taken one application, and she said that unless something was wrong with that one, I’d be second in line.”

His mother gives a sigh of obvious disappointment.

“That sucks,” Jack says.

It does, of course it does, but some stupid, juvenile part of me wishes he’d said something else. Like, Good. I’m not ready to let you and Gabe go yet.

Fat fucking chance, I chastise myself.

“Fingers crossed,” Sienna says.

“I’m trying not to get my hopes up.”

I sneak a look at Jack, and he looks back. And there’s a moment, just a moment, where I think we might be on the same page. Like, I don’t know what to want anymore. Not sure which way my hopes are even headed. I get a giddy swirl in my chest, and then—

Fear, of course. Like a lead blanket on the giddy.

“Everyone in?” Sienna asks, and when we all nod, she deals.

It’s been a long time since I’ve played Hearts, and the rest of them are all warmed up, so it’s clear I’m getting my butt kicked. Meanwhile, I do my best to try to draw Barb into conversation, asking about her trip, asking how things are going with her librarian job—but it’s like squeezing water from a stone.

“Mom. Tell Maddie about the game you were playing with Gabe,” Sienna says.

“It was just a game,” Barb says, playing into the current trick, then taking it.

Sienna rolls her eyes at me again, and the unexpected solidarity, especially in light of the family relationships, makes me feel teary. I guess when you’re feeling suddenly short on girlfriends, it doesn’t take much.

Sienna and I could be friends, I think.

The eager little jump in my stomach is followed by me getting a firm grip on myself:

I. Don’t. Live. Here.

This isn’t my life, and I have to remember that.

Jack takes the next trick and winks at me. Oh, God, the wink. He taught himself how to wink when he was ten. Even then, before it should have had any power over me, it made me feel off balance.

“She put all the couch cushions on the floor and they took off their shoes—” Sienna begins.

Barb cannot resist. “The rules are,” she says primly, scooping up the next set of cards, “you can’t step on the carpet. Only the cushions. The carpet is molten lava.”

“Oh, God, he must have loved that.” I can picture Gabe hooting with joy as he tiptoed and jumped from cushion to cushion. It’s exactly up his alley.

“Oh, he did,” Barb says, growing more animated. “He was hopping around, saying, ‘Gramma, you be careful! You be careful!’ You should have seen him. And when he ‘fell in,’ I had to fish him out, and I made it very dramatic—”

She stops as if she’s suddenly realized she’s sharing a moment with the enemy. Then smiles at me almost shyly.

“He’s a good kid,” she says. She sounds reluctant, but—kind.

My stomach warms.

Then lurches.

I. Don’t.

Live. Here.

Barb wins.

She crows wildly, lording it over all of us. But I don’t mind at all, because she includes me in the lording, and she’s clearly having a good time. And I think about the Barb I knew as a girl, tight-lipped, with bruised dark skin under her eyes.

This Barb looks…she looks relaxed. Free.

And Sienna, too—Sienna was one of those girls who was always a little wary. Like she was braced for something to go wrong. But now she’s laughing at her mother’s antics and casting friendly glances my way. She seems like she’s grown into young adulthood beautifully.

I guess maybe Jack’s dad leaving was the best thing that could have happened to either of those women, in the long run.

If only Jack could be like that, too. If he could see his father’s leaving as a blessing, instead of more evidence that he is stupid and worthless.

Barb and Sienna get to their feet, carry their glasses into the kitchen, and help clean up the snacks and the cards. “Hey,” Sienna says. “Some friends and I are going to see Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, the musical version, at the Fifth Avenue Theater Tuesday night. I have a couple of extra tickets. Any interest?”

I think my mouth falls open.

My immediate response is Yes! Like the kind of yes where if she were actually holding the tickets in her hand, I would have to sit on my hands to keep from grabbing at them.

The yes isn’t for the particular musical, which I don’t know anything about, or the theater, which I’ve heard good things about but don’t feel any huge need to attend—it’s for how much I’d like to be Sienna’s friend.

But—

I don’t live here. This isn’t my life.

She must sense my hesitation. “I know you might have found a new place by then, but then it’ll be even easier, right? If you’re in the city?”

“I’ll have to find someone to watch Gabe.”

“I can,” Jack and Barb say at the same time.

Do you know that thing they say about how when God shuts a door, he opens a window? Standing in Harris’s apartment, looking at the wreckage of my life, I felt so wretched.

And now I feel lucky. I have things to do, places to go, people to hang with, and family to help me. Even if the luck terrifies me a little (because it can’t hold, can it?), I am not stupid enough to cast it off.

“Sure,” I say.

Sienna grins, pleased, which makes me grin too, until we’re grinning at each other like crazy fools. She and Barb hug Jack good night, and then they hug me—Barb is a warm, soft, grandmotherly cloud of Tide laundry soap, Sienna a sharp, bony hugger who still manages to convey affection in the tightness of her grip. They head out into the night and I’m left standing in the living room while Jack shuts the door and turns toward me.