what point will Sean be forced to tell his perfect kid that her mom loved drugs more than she loved them?
I remember walking out of his bedroom the morning after our first tipsy hookup to find Phoebe sitting at the kitchen table eating Rice Chex, hair already in crooked pigtails, wearing mismatched socks, puppy-dog leggings, and a polka-dot sweater. In his haze of flirtation, Sean hadn’t mentioned he had a kid. I try to see it more as a testament to how great my boobs looked in that blue sweater than a huge, dickish omission on his part.
That morning, she looked up at me, eyes wide enough to easily confirm what he’d said the night before—that he hadn’t brought a woman home with him in three years—and asked if I was a new roommate.
How could I say no to puppy-dog leggings and crooked ponytails? I’ve been there every night since.
It’s not really a sacrifice. Sean is a dream in bed, easygoing, and makes a mean cup of coffee. At forty-two, he’s also financially secure, which goes a long way when you’re staring down the barrel at med school loans. And maybe it was initially the alcohol, but sex with him was only the second sex of my life that didn’t feel immediately afterward like I’d sent something priceless crashing to the floor.
“Chex?” I ask her, blindly reaching for the coffee filters above the sink.
“Yes, please.”
“Sleep good?”
She gives a small grunt of affirmation and then, after a minute, mumbles, “It was hot.”
So it wasn’t just my body’s claustrophobic response to seeing Elliot and waking up beside Sean; her dad’s been futzing with the thermostat again. That man was born for central Texas weather, not Bay Area. I move across the room, turning the heat down. “I thought you were on Daddy Heater Duty last night.”
Phoebe giggles. “He snuck away from me.”
The sound of the shower turning on drifts into the kitchen, and I feel like I’ve just been given a game-show challenge with a buzzer counting down: Get out of the house in the next two minutes!
I pour Phoebe’s cereal, jog into the bedroom, pull on a clean set of scrubs, pour my coffee, yank my shoes on, and plant one more kiss on Phoebe’s head before I’m out the door.
It’s crazy—at least it makes me sound crazy—but if Sean asked me about my day yesterday, I know without a doubt it would all come tumbling out.
I saw Elliot Petropoulos yesterday for the first time in almost exactly eleven years and I realized that I’m still in love with him and probably always will be.
Still want to marry me?
Unfortunately, a couple of days of distance doesn’t appear to be in the cards: Elliot is waiting outside the hospital when I walk up the hill from the bus stop.
It isn’t accurate to say that my heart stops, because really I feel its existence intensely, a phantom limb. My heart pinches in, and then roars to life, brutally punching me from the inside out. I slow my steps and try to figure out what to say. Irritation flares in me. He can’t be faulted for showing up at Saul’s when I happened to be there yesterday, but today is all him.
“Elliot.”
He turns when I call his name, and his posture deflates a little in relief. “I was hoping you’d show up early today.”
Early?
I look at him as I approach, eyes narrowed. Stopping a few feet from where he stands, hands deep in the pockets of his black jeans, I ask, “How did you know where and what time I was supposed to work?”
Guilt drains the color from his cheeks. “George’s wife works in reception there.” He lifts his chin, indicating the woman who is sitting just inside the sliding doors, and whom I’ve seen every morning for the past few months.
“Her name is Liz,” I confirm flatly, remembering the three letters etched into her blue plastic name tag.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “Liz Petropoulos.”
I laugh incredulously. Under no other circumstances can I imagine a hospital administrative employee giving out information about a physician’s work schedule. People turn pretty unreasonable when a loved one gets sick. Make that loved one a child and forget about it. Even in the short time I’ve been working here, I’ve seen parents go after doctors who failed to cure their kid.
Elliot stares at me, unblinking. “Liz knows I’m not dangerous, Macy.”
“She could be fired. I’m a physician in critical pediatrics. She can’t just give out my information, not even