sorry.”
“Ari. You must know I have feelings for you, too. I don’t want to rush any decision. I’m having trouble getting my mind around this. But you are here, now, and I have tickets for the ballet tomorrow. There’s no reason we can’t spend this weekend together as friends. As for the future…let’s not think about it. Or, rather, of course we’ll be thinking about it, but let’s…” Beck gave a short laugh. “As a therapist, I’m bungling this. As a man, I’m completely at sea.” He grew serious. “Because to be with you would mean to act as father to another man’s child.”
“To my child,” Ari whispered.
“So here’s the plan. We’re going to be good friends this weekend. Tonight we’ll watch my favorite television series, Q.I., which stands for Quite Interesting. It’s a sort of quiz show where the panelists get points not for having the right answer but for having an answer that’s quite interesting. It’s funny, and it’s smart. Tomorrow we’ll go to Boston as planned, see the museums, have dinner, attend the ballet.”
“That’s a good plan, Beck.” Ari took a deep breath. She had done it. She had told him. She had told him two things, actually, two enormous, significant things: that she was pregnant, and that she was falling in love with him. She was relieved that they could be friends for the weekend. She was glad, and sad, that she slept in Hen’s bedroom that night.
Their day in Boston was perfect. At breakfast they were stiff, uncomfortable with each other, but by the time they were in the city, the awkwardness had passed. Beck was such an amiable, intelligent companion. He wore a lightweight navy blazer that set off his blue eyes. Ari wore a flowered summer frock that flounced when she walked and her amethyst necklace and earrings. It was fun to dress up after being in the sand and water five days a week. She saw people turn to look at him, or maybe, also, at her. He looked a bit like Prince William back when he had hair, and she looked like Kate Middleton. Kind of.
They toured the Museum of Fine Arts, and then, such a change, the Museum of Science. They had a delicious meal at the Atlantic Fish Company. They talked about everything—their families, their school years, their friends.
But when they were seated in silence at the Boston Ballet, Ari was miserable. She wasn’t moved by the swelling music or the exquisite performance of the dancers. She only wanted to leave the auditorium and run away from Beck’s car all the way to Logan Airport, where she could take a bus to Plymouth and a taxi to Beck’s house, and settle in her own car and drive herself back to Hyannis and take the car ferry home.
The logistics of travel would drive a Gothic romance heroine mad, Ari thought, with an inner smile. She was sitting here being too dramatic. Probably because she was pregnant.
Probably because last night she had told Beck she was pregnant.
Tonight Ari and Beck sat side by side in the middle of a center row. She knew he was aware that her knee could so easily have touched his, and he could have so easily taken her hand, but that didn’t happen. She could feel how uneasy he was now, in the dark, so close. She knew that this weekend they could have made love for the first time, and become lovers. They could have talked about the future. Well, they had talked about the future. Now they were thinking about the future. Separately. It was a relief when the ballet ended.
They listened to a local radio station on the drive back to Plymouth. It was after midnight when they returned to his house.
“I would ask if you’d like a nightcap,” Beck said with a smile. “But…”
A nightcap, Ari thought, and immediately an image flashed into her head, from a beautifully illustrated version of The Night Before Christmas: “And mamma in her ’kerchief, and I in my cap, / Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap…” It was all there, in the picture she’d studied as a child—the warm house, the children snug in their beds, their mother in a ruffled cap, their father in his stocking cap with a pom-pom on the end. If she could wave a wand, that would be her and Beck and this thimble-size baby inside her, and another child, one of theirs, together. But