BRIDGET NOLAN HAD DECIDED to marry Chris Dooley the day he took a piss in her kiddie pool. Like not a British “took the piss,” but an actual piss. To her credit, she didn’t decide to marry him until his mother dragged him away by the ear from said kiddie pool and took his Game Boy. It was his tear-streaked face while he apologized—with the sole purpose of getting his handheld gaming system back—that sealed the deal.
In her four-year-old mind, anyone who could apologize as beautifully as Chris Dooley—who cared that much about hurting her feelings—had to be a keeper. It didn’t even matter that her dad had to clean out the pink plastic kiddie pool with bleach while cursing a blue streak.
The kiddie-pool incident was his first apology to her even though he’d already been the major source of consternation in her short life. Prior to the pool incident, he hadn’t apologized for pulling her pigtail so hard the curl her mother had painstakingly constructed for her brother Jack’s First Communion party went flat—and lopsided pigtails were definitely worthy of an apology. The lack thereof had made it impossible for her to stop thinking about him for weeks.
And he hadn’t apologized when he poked her in the eye with his Super Soaker at her other brother Michael’s birthday party a month later. He’d merely looked chagrined when Bridget’s mom had “accidentally” thwacked him in the back of the head with her water gun. Even her mother’s vengeance hadn’t stopped her from thinking about him.
When she’d told her mother that Chris Dooley had taken over at least half of her waking thoughts, she’d said, “He probably just has a crush on you. Ignore it and he’ll go away.” But he hadn’t gone away. And her thoughts of him had only intensified. The only solution would be to marry him. Maybe then she could stop thinking about him. It had certainly worked that way for her parents.
Her commitment to marry Chris had been deadly serious—much more so because she’d made it in the midst of her parents’ divorce. Unlike the elder Nolans, she was never going to get a divorce. She would never rip a family apart the way hers was rent at the seams.
She’d finally started dating Chris Dooley officially when she was fifteen and he was seventeen. He’d finally started using her first name instead of calling her “Little Nolan,” which constantly reminded her that she was the baby of the family, and totally below any interest of his that would include kissing.
However, even being her boyfriend had not decreased his rate of asshole moves to apologies. And Bridget had just eaten the apologies he gave her and starved the rest of the time. That’s what a relationship was to her—surviving on crumbs. In a way, it made her understand her mother leaving. It wasn’t like her dad emoted very much. But she was stronger than her mother had been and would never give up just because a relationship wasn’t precisely to her specifications. And she’d dated Chris for a dozen years to prove it.
She thought that he’d chosen her, just like she’d chosen him every day since he’d peed in her kiddie pool. She’d thought they were playing for keeps.
Until she realized that she did not want to play for keeps—definitely not with Chris. And maybe not with anyone.
All of her carefully laid plans about the kind of future she would have—where they’d live, how many children they’d have, and how they’d manage to pay off their student loans right in time to send their own kids to school—had gone up in smoke over about ten minutes. She’d nuked her whole life before her mashed potatoes had cooled off enough to eat.
After Chris left her apartment in a hurry, confused and full of the shame/rage thing that some guys did whenever things didn’t go their way, she kind of fell apart for a while. She’d shed actual tears even though she’d previously thought that she was missing the gene that would allow her to feel sorry for herself.
Bridget expressing actual human emotions had thrown her dad and brothers off a bit. They didn’t know how to handle her when she wasn’t her put-together, perfectionist self. For a while, she’d