Meant For Me (4 page)

“Why does she need to talk? Emma doesn’t talk either.” She was looking at me like I was a moron.

“Because she can’t call 911 if something happens.”

“She’s mute, not stupid.”

Frustrated, I ran my fingers through my hair and shook my hair. “Alright, got it. Mind my own damn business.”

“I’m not saying you have to mind your own business. I just don’t get it. If she dials 911 they’ll show up here. What is the big deal?”

“I don’t know. Never mind.” Bottom line was, I wasn’t a parent. If she didn’t think it was an issue, I needed to shut the fuck up. I didn’t know a damn thing about taking care of a baby.

“How are you?” she asked.

Immediately her words made me feel defensive. “What do you mean?” That was a ‘bless your heart,’ tone of voice.

“I mean, how are you? You dropped out of law school. Mom says you’re drinking a lot.” She made a face. “I mean, I don’t how what’s Mom’s definition of a lot is. Maybe you have two beers on Friday. But I’m asking you- how are you?”

“I’m fine.” I raised my eyebrows up and down. “Though I could use a beer right now. And that pizza. What time did you want to go because I’m starving.”

“Smooth. But don’t think I’m just going to forget what we were talking about because you changed the subject. I may have baby brain right now, but I haven’t totally lost my edge.”

I snorted. “What edge? You’re not a card shark.”

“I have an edge!” She laughed.

Emma gave a rip roaring burp, her head wobbling backwards.

“Damn. Your baby sounds like you.”

Aubrey stuck her tongue out at me. “Jerk.”

“Brat.”

Yeah, this was our sibling relationship exactly as it always had been. It was actually reassuring. There were certain things in life that should never change.

“So can you believe the difference a year makes?” Aubrey asked. “God, when I got here last year, I was messed up from Jared, thinking a place like this was good for hiding, nothing more. And now I can honestly say I expect to live here forever, raising Emma and another baby or two with Riker.”

Aubrey had a brightness, a glow, a pink-cheeked, glassy-eyed good health and happiness thing going on that made me feel both tremendously grateful she’d found her place, and melancholy as hell. “That is nuts. And a year ago, I thought I had my shit together.” I raised my eyebrows up and down to indicate it was a joke, that I didn’t particularly care. “Can I hold Emma again? Is she done eating? And by the way, how do you know a baby is done eating?”

“You know she’s done because she either falls asleep, or she stops sucking, or she pulls back and milk is dribbling off the corner of her mouth.”

“And I’m sorry I asked.” When I’d gotten engaged to Caitlyn, I’d actually thought I was ready to get married and start a family oh, about now. Yeah. Totally not ready.

Then again, maybe if I was in love, and in a healthy relationship, I would be. Emma was pretty damn cute. I stood up and reached for the baby. Aubrey lifted her up to me a la Simba in
The Lion King
and I clumsily put my hands under her warm body. “Don’t let go until I’m sure I have her.” The thought of dropping my niece and giving her brain damage seemed like the worst possible exclamation point to my year of fucking up. “Okay, got her.”

Aubrey looked bemused. I found it interesting that she wasn’t a neurotic new mother, making me wash my hands and take a first aid course before touching Emma.

“She looks like Dad, don’t you think?”

“God, I hope not.” My father was a decent looking guy, hell, I looked like him, but Emma was a girl. She didn’t need balding in her future. “Then again, she doesn’t have much more hair than he does.”

She laughed. “Well, considering Dad has been way cooler about all of this than Mom, I think it’s only fair.”

“Mom is a control freak.” It was a family trait. Running my hand over Emma’s wispy blonde hair, I marveled at how adorable she was, and how serious her expression was. “She’s very intense.”

“I think she’s like her uncle that way. So what happened with law school, Ethan? For real. You know I won’t say anything to Mom and Dad.”

I looked up at my sister. “It’s no mystery and it’s no secret. I partied too hard and I was doing lousy so I withdrew before they kicked me out.”

“But why were you partying? Why
are
you partying?”

She wasn’t going to let me get away with the obvious, apparently. “I don’t know. Not exactly. I mean, the breakup with Caitlyn screwed me up. Then I started throwing over all my rules, you know? About drinking and hookups and what motivates me to get through the day. And it occurred to me that if I could do all that, then I wasn’t really sure about anything.”

It also occurred to me that I kept thinking of my breakup with Caitlyn as being not that long ago, but it would be two years in a couple of months. Damn. Chloe was right. It didn’t matter anymore.

“Ethan.” Aubrey’s expression had softened. It was sympathy, but it was more than that- it was understanding. “I know what it’s like to just be on a ride that you don’t really like and you have no idea how to exit. But the thing is at some point you have to just jump off it, you know what I’m saying? You’ll be glad you did.”

I could see her point. “But what if I break a few bones when I jump? On the ride I know what I’m getting.”

“Yeah. Nauseous.”

I laughed. “Good point.”

There was a knock on the door. “That’s probably Chloe,” she said.

Emma was doing that burbling thing again. Her mouth was like a chemistry beaker- it just kept oozing. When did babies learn to contain their own spit, I wondered. I pondered that and tried not to be curious when Chloe came into the room. I was even more weirded out now that I knew she was mute by choice. Or not exactly by choice, as Aubrey had instructed me, but because of a disorder that presumably could be fixed. It wasn’t a physical limitation.

Chloe waved to me, a shy smile playing about her lips.

She really was a beautiful girl. With very little makeup she would look glamorous, even girl-next-door fresh. Maybe it was a good thing she was on this rock of an island, protected from men who would prey on her and her disability.

“Hi, Chloe,” I said. “Thanks for babysitting.” Standing up, I walked over so I could pass the baby to her.

She nodded.

Aubrey was talking about diapers and where the bottles where and mom crap, but I didn’t think Chloe was listening to her. She was watching me carefully under her eyelashes, and I could see the rapid rise and fall of her chest as I invaded her space. For the sole purpose of giving her the baby, of course. I couldn’t go there. Wouldn’t go there. You couldn’t hand a baby over from five feet away though. Our hands touched and I heard Chloe’s breath suck in. She was looking at Emma now, not me, but I could feel her nervousness.

Suddenly, that was the last thing I wanted. I didn’t want her to feel I was a predator. That I wanted something from her. That she was an object to entertain me. “Got her?” I asked gruffly.

She nodded.

I stepped away. “Thanks. Aubrey, I’m sorry, can you repeat all of that? I accidentally distracted Chloe.”

Aubrey gave me a curious look but she started to repeat her instructions, moving closer to Chloe. I drifted towards the door. I had distracted Chloe without meaning to. That was it. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Emma cried and Chloe shifted her to her shoulder, gently rocking her back and forth and making shushing noises. It was the first sound I’d heard from Chloe’s lips and it seemed strange that she could do that and yet couldn’t force words out. But a baby was a forgiving audience.

As soon as she realized I was watching her, she stopped.

It made me feel even more worthless than I had when I had woken up that morning in Lila’s bed.

For the first time in a very long ass time, I wanted something different. Something better.

As I ate an entire pizza solo, and Aubrey picked her way through two slices, we talked about being kids, having kids, Riker, and the probability that our father was a closet alcoholic. The usual. It was easy and casual and comfortable.

Until she brought up Caitlyn. “She and Heath are planning to get married next summer.”

I dropped my final piece of pizza down half eaten and took a swallow of my beer. “I guess that’s not surprising. They’ve been together awhile now.”

“You don’t have to see her while you’re here, you know. She got a job teaching, and Heath is out on his boat every day. And it’s not like I was planning to invite them over for happy hour or anything.”

Reflecting on my feelings, I said, “I think I need to see her. Maybe it’s the way I can finally let go. Because I’m blaming her for changing my life and that’s not fucking fair. I know it’s not. She had to do what she had to do, what was right for her.”

“You actually broke up with her,” Aubrey reminded me. “She didn’t get back with Heath until you ended things.”

“That’s a technicality and you know it.” I didn’t really want to rehash this. “She wanted to be with him, she was just trying to hedge her bets by staying with me.”

“You don’t know that. I think she was genuinely torn between the two of you.”

“Fine.” I was done with the conversation. “It’s time to put that chapter of my life behind me. It’s long overdue. She clearly has.” The idea of her getting married wasn’t particularly upsetting. It had been my assumption they would at some point. Frankly, I’d been surprised they hadn’t already. “I’ll text her and see if I can stop by and say hi.”

“With Heath there?” Aubrey shook her head. “Just let me invite her over and then you can be there.”

That didn’t seem any less obvious to me, but if that’s what Aubrey thought was best, I wasn’t really sure I cared one way or the other. “Sure.”

We talked for another ten minutes, then I paid the bill. Aubrey protested but I was firm. “No way are you paying. That’s ridiculous.”

“Can you afford it?”

That was a fair question but the truth was ironic. “I have more money now than I did when I was in law school. I work forty hours a week.”

“I never pictured you as a bartender.”

“Me either.” Former fraternity president, volunteer, summa cum laude graduate with a list of accomplishments as long as my arms. College prep and law school prep accomplishments. I wasn’t sure what those things meant in the real world. “It works for now.” It did. If I would stop flirting with customers and drinking on my nights off.

“You look pasty for August. You need to see a little more daylight. We should go for a boat ride.”

“I have become a little bit of a vampire. That sounds cool.” Taking the ferry had been relaxing, I had to admit.

We walked back up the hill. It seemed weird to me to not always be jumping in a car. Aubrey had offered to drive us down but it didn’t seem like a big deal to walk. I liked the heat on my skin. She was right, I’d spent the whole damn summer inside in the dark. In another minute the snow would be flying and I hadn’t even enjoyed the summer.

I told myself that was why I offered to walk Chloe home when we got back. Emma was sleeping and even though it was nowhere near dark and Chloe lived within view of the house, I answered Aubrey’s curious look with, “I need the exercise. Too much beer and not enough time in the gym. I’m getting a gut.”

“Walking another five hundred feet down the road is going to combat a beer gut?”

“It can’t hurt.”

“You’re better off going in the barn. Riker has all his workout stuff there. I’ll show you later.”

So she was basically telling me no. I couldn’t walk Chloe home. She handed some money to Chloe, who pocketed it then glanced over at me. Chloe gestured for me to come with her.

So there, Aubrey. I shot my sister a triumphant look. Her eyes narrowed and she gave me a look that was clearly a warning. I made a face back. What the hell did she think I was going to do? I wasn’t into popping cherries for the hell of it, and it was pretty damn obvious that Chloe was innocent. Then again, people weren’t always what they seemed. Maybe she had an active dating life. I shouldn’t make assumptions based on her silence.

I opened the door for her. She waved to my sister and stepped out onto the porch. The smile she gave me was shy, but not fearful. She pointed to my stomach. Then gave a thumbs up. My conclusion was she wanted to know how dinner was. It was interesting that she’d managed to figure out how to live her life in a perpetual game of charades.

“Yeah, the pizza was good,” I told her. “I needed to eat. Woke up totally hungover this morning.”

She nodded in understanding. Or I was just going to assume it was in understanding. It was impossible to know for sure. I followed Chloe down the steps and out onto the walk. She cut across the grass instead of going down the driveway.

“It was stupid to go out last night,” I continued, because talking to Chloe was a bit like thinking out loud. Immediately I felt like an asshole for even thinking it, but there was a truth to it, no matter how uncomfortable the thought was. “I knew I was taking that ferry today and yet I was up half the night and drank way more rum than should be legal. What’s your poison, Chloe?”

But she just shook her head and I wasn’t sure if she didn’t have a poison or she didn’t want to talk about it.

We walked in silence for a minute, but then she held her hand out, palm up, towards me.

“What?” I asked blankly. I didn’t understand what she was doing.

She pulled her phone out of her pocket and shoved it towards me. She hadn’t written anything on it and the screen was dark so I still felt clueless. When I didn’t take it, she reached out with her other hand, took my hand, and brought it to her phone. “Um…”

Chloe mimicked making a phone call. Then pointed to me and then to her.

“You want my number?” Clearly not for actual phone calls. I didn’t want to give her my number. She made me feel… unclean. A waste of space. Like her silent innocence made my worthlessness even more obvious. Which was my problem, not hers, clearly, but whatever. I didn’t want to give her my number. “I’m leaving in just a couple of days, Chloe. I probably won’t come to Vinalhaven again for awhile.”