Chapter Fifteen

ETHAN

“My parents insisted that we both needed a break,” I tell Lara as I get us both a couple of beers from the fridge.

She’d come over to discuss the paperwork we need to fill out for her to be Riley’s legal guardian, so that she can take my daughter to doctors’ appointments if she needs to, or in case something happens.

“It kind of feels weird to be here without her,” Lara admits. I can’t deny I feel the same. The haunted feeling in the house hasn’t quite gone away, and it’s been five weeks since Alexis died.

“I figure we’d probably get more done if we don’t have to wrangle Riley, too,” I point out. It’s true, we can probably get through all the paperwork and all the details pretty fast, but it’s more that I don’t want to be in the house all by myself if I don’t have to.

“Yeah, that’s probably right,” Lara says. She looks how I feel, awkward, kind of at a loss for what to do. It isn’t her first time in the house, but it’s the first time she’s been here without being focused on Riley. We clink our beers together and I lead her to the living room, and we sit down on opposite ends of the couch.

“I ordered a pizza before you got here,” I say. It seemed like the easiest way to handle dinner. I definitely didn’t want to be doing dishes or cooking when Lara arrived.

“Sounds good. You didn’t get green olives on it, right?” Lara looks almost queasy and I remember while Alexis loved green olives on pizza, Lara has always hated them.

“I didn’t get any kind of olives. I got pepperoni and an extra cheese,” I tell her.

Lara looks relieved, and takes another quick sip of her beer.

“So, what all do we need to do?” I grab the folder off the coffee table and hand it to her. Lara reads through it and I try to find something to do with myself, but I’m at a loss. I still feel numb and suddenly very tired.

The pizza guy arrives then, and I’m more than happy to hop up and get the door and pay the guy. “Have a good night, man,” I say, giving him a quick smile before I close the door.

“This all looks pretty straightforward,” Lara says, setting the paperwork aside as I put the pizza down on the table.

“Let me get some plates,” I suggest.

Lara laughs.

“It’s pizza. We can just take slices out of the boxes, can’t we? Did Alexis do such a good job on domesticating you?” she asks.

“Good point,” I agree, and instead of going into the kitchen, I sit down on the couch once again.

“So, I’m going to be Riley’s legal guardian,” Lara says thoughtfully, and we open the boxes and help ourselves to a slice each. I take a bite of pizza, molten-hot and delicious.

“In a million years, I never would have thought something like this would happen,” she adds, glancing at me.

“What do you mean?”

Lara gives me a slightly sarcastic-looking smile and shrugs. “Well, for one, I never thought I’d have anything to do with you, or Alexis, or even really Riley, in my entire life,” Lara says.

“Why not? I mean, you loved Riley from the moment you met her,” I point out.

Lara takes a couple of quick bites of her slice of pizza, like she wants to keep herself from being able at all to speak. She chews, swallows and takes another sip of her beer, glancing at me once or twice, and I can see the hurt in her eyes, even if I don’t understand it.

She clears her mouth and says, looking out the window, “You gave your child with my sister the name we talked about giving our child.”

It takes me completely by surprise. By the time Riley arrived, I had almost completely forgotten the plans that Lara and I had talked about when we’d been together.

“I mean, it’s a name I always wanted for a daughter,” I point out.

Lara nods, and looks down into the pizza box. She takes another bite of her slice and sits back on the couch.

“It was just… it was so awful, in a way. And I love Riley, I’ve loved her from the moment I set eyes on her. You’re right about that. But when I heard you’d named her that…” she smiles sadly and shrugs again.

I sit there a little stunned. I had always liked the name Riley.

Lara sighs. “We shouldn’t talk about it,” she says, shaking her head again. She takes a few more bites of her pizza in quick succession and then gnaws on the leftover crust almost angrily.

“No, I think we should,” I say.

“Why? What good is it going to do?” Lara looks at me and it’s so similar to the expression I saw on her face the day she found out about me and Alexis. It’s almost exactly the same.

“We’re never going to move past it if we don’t just… have it out,” I tell her.

Lara presses her lips together and I see her breasts rise and fall against the fabric of her shirt as she takes a slow, deep breath. I know I shouldn’t even be looking at that part of my sister-in-law’s body, but the movement draws my eyes.

“Do you have any idea how much both of you hurt me?” Lara sets down the crust in her hands, and dusts her hands on her jeans.

“You’d broken up with me. You’d ended things between us long before,” I say.

Lara laughs, and it sounds bitter. “That doesn’t mean that I’d ever have been okay with you dating my sister,” she says. She looks at me for just a moment and I can see the tears glinting in her eyes. “I need to get a paper towel.”

She gets up and walks into the kitchen, and I’m too shocked by what she said to even think about insisting on doing it myself. She comes back a moment later with two paper towels, and tosses one in my direction. I grab it before it can land on top of the pizza closest to me.

“Don’t you think it hurt me when you broke us up?” I ask.

Lara raises an eyebrow at my comment and sits down heavily, snagging another piece of pizza for herself.

“Of course it hurt you, but it hurt me too,” she says.

“So, you’re supposed to be able to move on, but I’m not?”

I’m starting to regret inviting her over for dinner. Maybe Lara was right. Maybe it was a big mistake for us to ever discuss our past.

“No. Look, I just…” Lara sighs. She takes a bite of her pizza and just stares at the carpet for a few moments.

“What?” In spite of knowing that it’s probably a terrible idea, I can’t help but be curious as to what she has to say.

“Why did you have to date my sister? My sister, Ethan.”

“Because… Alexis and I agreed to never say anything, but,” I take a deep breath and continue, “under the circumstances I think you should know. It was a one-night stand with your sister. We were at the same bar and we just started talking. I had a bit too much to drink and did she. It wasn’t supposed to happen. And it wasn’t supposed to happen with her.”

The words just tumble out of me and I feel lighter, but Lara is the last person I ever thought I would tell this too.

“A one-night stand?” Lara says quietly.

“Yes. Riley was conceived that night. Alexis told me a few weeks later that she was pregnant. She did not want to end the pregnancy and I supported her decision.”

“Ethan, I never knew this. I know that things happened pretty quickly, but I figured it was because you were trying to hide the relationship from me. I guessed that Riley was a surprise…”

“Given that you cut Alexis out of your life as soon as we told you that we were together and then that she was pregnant with my child, how could we tell you it was the result of a one-night stand? Did you call your sister every time you started seeing someone?”

“I guess not.”

“You even stopped talking to your parents,” I say. I remember going over to the house and it was like a cloud was hanging over everything without her there.

“They took Alexis’ side and I felt betrayed.”

“I know but she was pregnant. Neither of us did this to hurt you. We decided to make the most of the situation. As I said, Alexis did not want to end the pregnancy and I supported her. You know I wanted children. We decided to tell friends and family about the relationship first and then break the news about the pregnancy later. Our marriage was not perfect, but Riley is, and she is the reason for everything.”

Lara looks down at the carpet.

“I had no idea,” she says quietly.

“The funny thing was that I went over to her that night in the bar to ask her how you were doing. We just started talking. I bought Alexis a drink. One thing led to another. Here I am almost two and a half years later.”

Lara starts fiddling with her hands.

“What happened between your sister and me that night was wrong. However, my beautiful Riley came from that and I will be forever grateful to your sister.”

We both go back to eating pizza for a few moments.

“You started dating my sister, and it was like… all the stuff that I’d wanted, that I’d dreamed of having with you, you just… gave it to her,” Lara says.

“You didn’t want it with me!” I say to her. In my mind I can see Alexis’ face all the times her mother or father had told her that Lara had refused to go to some family event because she and I would be there.

“I did! The reason I broke up with you was because I didn’t think I’d ever get it with you!” Lara looks me dead in the eyes, and I can hear the pain in her cracking voice and see it written all over her face.

“So, because you weren’t patient enough to wait for me to be ready, you had to punish your sister?”

“She hooked up with my ex-boyfriend,” Lara says.

“Ex-boyfriend,” I say. “We were broken up. It was years ago. There has to be a statute of limitations on these things.”

“That doesn’t make it okay,” Lara insists.

“Why not? I mean, there wasn’t anything between us anymore. You were the one who’d ended things between us.”

Lara opens her mouth to speak and then closes it, and I see her take a deep breath again, she’s obviously trying to keep herself under control.

“There are certain things you don’t do. You don’t date your ex’s family members, and you don’t date your sister’s ex. It’s an unwritten law,” she insists.

“So that’s why you had to punish her for the rest of her life?”

Lara sighs. “I wasn’t punishing her. I just couldn’t stand to be around the two of you. Imagine being stabbed in the back, and then having to basically have the knife taken out and stabbed back into you every holiday.” She wipes her face with her paper towel and chews on the crust of the pizza in her hand thoughtfully.

“I’m sorry we hurt you,” I say, and I mean it.

“I’m sorry I never really reconciled with Alexis,” Lara says quietly. She looks at me. “I’m sorry she died with me still pretty much hating her.”

“I don’t get why you hate her and me, but I guess… I guess I have to accept that it’s just how you feel.” We’re both silent for a few minutes, eating our pizzas.

“I should probably just sign the paperwork and get home,” Lara tells me, and I have to agree that’s probably for the best.