Page 188 of The Infiniteness of Yesterday
Iclear the plates off the outdoor table, smiling as Roe runs in the sand with a few of her school friends playing soccer. Every year her birthday has me feeling nostalgic. I always thought my parents were crazy when they said it goes by in a blink, but they weren’t kidding.
Spencer’s warm presence shadows over me, his hand pressed against my back as he reaches for what’s left of the cake.
“I swear I was just holding her as a newborn and now we’re here.”
“I was just thinking the same thing,” I sigh.
“She’s turned into a great kid, though, hasn’t she?” He straightens and steps away from me.
“The best.” The walls of my throat constrict.
“It’s because of you,” he murmurs gently. “You’re a great mom.”
I toss the paper plates in the trash bag my mom brought out for clean-up.
“Thank you, but it’s not just me. It’s you and my parents and your parents. She’s surrounded by the best.”
“I’m going to go wrap this up,” he says about the leftover cake.
“I’ll help,” I volunteer, following him inside. Both of our dads have an eye on the kids, so I know they’re in safe hands.
He’s as familiar with my parents’ kitchen as I am, so we work diligently side by side. Somewhere along the way I made myself forget how easy things are with Spencer. I think it must be rare to have a connection like that, and I was too young to realize just how special it really is.
My relationship with Spencer is something I’ve been talking about more in therapy, trying to get to the bottom of my insecurities. I’ve realized that while I placed so much blame on him getting into the Hollywood scene, that wasn’t the whole picture. It was my own insecurities and fears of what that world might do to him, to us, and I became paranoid he might leave me because of it. So, I broke his heart before he could mine, and in the process, I sent us both on a trajectory we couldn’t have predicted. Plus, my fear of settling because of Spencer being the only guy I’d been with didn’t help with the thoughts I was already having. Dr. Michaels tells me it’s normal that I had those thoughts, and even if I was proven wrong by the fact that Spencer never moved on, it doesn’t mean I need to punish myself.
I deserve to move on.
But I don’t think I’m quite there yet, so I don’t want to tell Spencer those things. I want to be one-hundred percent certain, because I don’t want to complicate what might happen if I’m not. I think I’m almost there, though.
“You seem like you’re in deep thought,” he comments.
I tuck my hair behind my ears. “I suppose I am. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately."
"About Iceland?” he teases.
I laugh as I scoot past him to the sink. “Honestly, I thought you were kidding about that.”
“You wash and I’ll dry,” he proposes, joining me at the sink. “And I would never kid about having both my girls with me for Christmas.”
“That’s a long way from here and I’ve never flown,” I hedge. I have a passport and so does Monroe, because I’m the kind of person who likes to be prepared, but considering the pitiful amount in my bank account I’ve never used them.
“It is,” he agrees. “But I’d make sure you got there safe.”
“And how would you do that?” I pass him the clean forks.
“I don’t know, but I would figure it out.”
“It does look incredibly beautiful there,” I muse.
“I think you’d love it, but no pressure. I don’t want you to do anything that’s going to stress you out.”
“It might be nice, though,” I whisper. “Just the three of us for the holidays.”
He glances down at me and steals the breath from my lungs with how pure the look of longing is in his eyes. “It really would be,” he says, sounding a bit choked up.
Hoping I don’t regret it, I reply, “All right. We’ll go.”
His smile is nearly blinding. It has my stomach doing backflips. “You’re serious?”
