Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Knock knock.”
Mack, Sam, and Abbi showed up at the hospital door with so many flowers and balloons they could barely fit through the door.
“Connor made cookies,” Mack said, opening a tin of frosted sugar cookies in dinosaur shapes. Maya was sitting up in bed and had just been complaining about how the Jell-O was “too wiggly.” But a green triceratops cookie? There was no way she’d say no to that.
“Tell Connor to be careful,” Claire said with a sniffle as Maya dug in. “She’s going to want to be in the hospital all the time if it means this kind of royal treatment.”
Mack kissed Maya’s forehead and then passed Claire a tissue.
“Come on, Mama,” Abbi said, rubbing Claire’s back. “No more crying.”
“I know,” Claire said, wiping her eyes. She’d been trying to sob a little less in front of Maya, but it wasn’t going so well.
“The doctor said I ate something I wasn’t supposed to,” Maya said knowingly when Sam asked how she was feeling.
“It’s not your fault, sweet pea,” Claire said. “But remember what we talked about? How if someone gives you something, you have to ask?”
“I know,” Maya said, and looked a little less enthusiastic about her cookies. “But I was hungry, and I forgot.”
“Where was she?” Sam asked.
Just thinking about it made the tears flow again. “Ryan took her to a bar. And then basically ignored her. Someone else gave her a handful of those bar snacks; you know the things they have out in bowls? Pretzels and peanuts.”
“Where’s Ryan?” Maya immediately asked, and Claire knew she shouldn’t have brought up his name.
“He’s not here,” she said gently.
“When is he coming back?”
Claire glanced at her friends, hoping for some clue to how to handle this. But they all seemed to have the same question. How could she explain that sometimes the right thing to do was the thing that hurt the most?
“I don’t know,” she said. Which was sort of true. Even if the more honest answer was more like, “Never.”
“His friend was teaching me the drums,” Maya said. “I want to learn to play the drums, Mom. And the guitar. And I can sing, and—”
“Okay, sweetie,” Claire said wearily, crossing her fingers that it was the medication speaking and not something Maya was going to remember and bug her about for a year. Just another thing she’d kill Ryan over. If she ever laid eyes on him again.
“I’ll save him a dinosaur cookie,” Maya decided, taking a T. rex and putting it off to the side. Claire wasn’t sure how long that willpower would last, but she was impressed.
And heartbroken.
She had no idea how to tell her daughter that her favorite friend wasn’t coming back.
Maya was released from the hospital the next day. Claire took her home and got her set up in bed with her stuffed animals, a stack of books, and a sandwich. But when she came back into Maya’s room with a glass of milk, the kid was fast asleep, clutching her dinosaur under her arm. The doctor said she’d be tired for days. She was going to miss school, but at least she was going to be okay.
Claire went back downstairs where her friends had formed their own caretaking committee. Mack had brought wine, Sam had ordered a pizza, and Abbi was loading up their plates.
“I can’t even think about food,” Claire said, sinking into the sofa.
“You need to eat,” Abbi said, putting a plate in front of her.
“Is she asleep?” Mack asked.
Claire nodded and picked up the plate. On second thought, it did smell amazing.
“Thanks, you guys,” she said as she took a bite. “I really appreciate all your help this weekend.”
“You always take care of everyone else,” Mack said. “At least now we get a chance to repay you.”
“And get the rest of the story,” Abbi said pointedly. “Tell us the dirt. Where’s Ryan?”
Claire sighed. “I don’t know. Chicago, I assume.”
“You assume?”
“We didn’t exactly hash it out, okay?”
“What do you mean? He just…left?” Sam plunked down next to her, eyes wide in surprise.
“I think I made it pretty clear that was his only option.”
Claire felt like shit. But she sat up a little straighter when she said it. This was her life, and it was her decision, so she’d better own it. Or something.
“But he’s called, right?” Mack asked. “I mean, at least to check up on Maya?” She sounded incredulous. Claire couldn’t blame her. If she hadn’t known Ryan as well as she did, she wouldn’t have believed it, either.
“You have to understand,” she said, picking at her pizza. “This is who Ryan is. It’s what he does. He’s fun and perfect and charming, and you get so swept up in him, the way Maya did.” The way I did. “But then something happens. Something real. Something where he has to make a tough decision, be an adult, put himself second for a change. Think about somebody else. And he just…” She tossed the pizza slice back on the plate. “He can’t do it, okay? And I can’t get caught up in that. Not again, and not anymore.”
“You’ll make it through this,” Mack said. “We know you will.” But Claire could feel the glances over her shoulder, the questions they had.
She looked down, feeling her eyes start to fill, and spotted Ryan’s guitar still in the corner of the living room where he’d left it. His favorite guitar, the one he hadn’t been without since he bought it with the earnings of his first sold-out show.
She could practically hear his playing, his hands strong and agile as they moved across the strings. Those same hands that held her body tightly. That could be so gentle covering Maya’s as he placed her fingers over the frets.
It wasn’t helping her resolve, and a tear spilled and dropped down her cheek.
“Are you really sure it has to be over?” Sam asked quietly, reaching for her hand.
Some other time, Claire could have imagined asking the same thing. She’d sat with each of her friends in moments like this and tried to find out whether everything really was as bad as it felt. Sometimes, it was. But when it came to the men they’d settled down with, she’d been the one encouraging them to go for it, take the plunge, let love in—especially in the times when it felt like too big a risk.
But this was different. No one here knew Ryan like she did. And while they loved Maya, it just wasn’t the same.
“It has to be,” she said, wiping the tear away. “It doesn’t matter how great he is in other ways. He took my kid to a bar and didn’t pay attention to her or stop to think that, hey, maybe when she was hungry he should have fed her, or at the very minimum pay some attention to what a near stranger was giving her. I can’t pretend that’s okay. I thought he’d changed but—” She shook her head. “I think I just got swept up in this whole thing we were doing, and I didn’t realize it wasn’t enough.” And it was Maya who got caught in the crosshairs.
So, to answer Sam’s question, she was sure. Breaking her own heart was a small sacrifice. She’d done it once before, and look at how well she’d recovered.
But the truth, she now realized, was that she’d never fully gotten over that hurt. There was a splinter still in her heart. The scar tissue had healed around it, stronger than before. But it would never be as whole as it once was.
It had seemed so easy for her to break her heart again. To say Ryan couldn’t be in her life—not after the way he’d let her down.
Only now she was crying, her head in her hands, and it felt like it mattered, her love and her happiness, in ways she’d never quite allowed it to before.