Page 41 of Perfect Pairing
Brie snorted. “Please. I’m the one who got an orgasm out of the deal, plus the best pizza I’ve ever had. I definitely don’t regret it.”
I rolled my eyes. “Aside from all that, I mean.”
“No, Ezra,” she said softly. “I could never regret you.”
MARCH
“When is your birthday?”
I went silent. How could she possibly be asking that today of all days? We’d been conducting these late-night FaceTime calls for weeks now, and it had never once come up.
“Uh…” I trailed off.Fuck.
“Are you having a stroke or something?” she asked. “Did you just forget your own birthday?”
“No,” I said slowly. “I didn’t forget. It’s just… It’s tomorrow.” I faked a cough on the last word, hoping to cover the worst of it, but no dice.
“Tomorrow?” Brie shrieked. “And you’re just now telling me?”
“I don’t want to make a big deal out of it. Hansen’s birthday is really the only one that matters to me now.”
Brie scoffed. “Birthdays should always be celebrated, Ez.”
“Please,” I begged her. “Please, just…let it go.”
I could tell by her silence that she wasn’t happy with me, but that was fine. Her anger was better than learning how fucked up I truly was—so fucked up, in fact, that my birthday hadbecome an anniversary from hell rather than something joyful to celebrate.
I breathed a sigh of relief when she seemed to move on.
“I have another question,” she blurted suddenly. “And you absolutely don’t have to answer, but…I’ve been dying to know.”
“I’ll tell you anything you want to know.” For her, I was an open book.
“Where is Hansen’s mom? Is she…dead?”
“No,” I said quickly, swallowing hard. “Though that might be easier.”
Once again, she’d unknowingly pushed on a bruise. She’d given me an out, but this was a story I wanted—no,needed—to share with her. Somehow, I knew she’d handle it all with care, take the news in stride, exactly like she’d done with everything else. She was so young, it would’ve been easy for her to freak out and run away from me.
But she hadn’t. She was still here, still wanted whatever we were doing. Hell, she still wantedmore, even if we knew we couldn’t have it.
I hadn’t allowed anyone but Dad and Shannon’s parents to shoulder this burden with me. Maybe it was time I let someone else help me carry it.
“Then what happened?” she asked softly.
I took a deep breath, craning my neck from side to side. I felt like I was preparing to run a marathon. I knew when I finished telling this story, I’d be emotionally exhausted in a way I hadn’t been since everything had gone down.
“She’s in prison,” I said flatly, giving Brie a beat to digest the statement.
She sucked in a gasp but didn’t speak, allowing me space to continue.
“Everything about Shannon had been so glamorous when I met her,” I started. “She came from money, like…descended from John Rockefeller kind of money. And somehow, she’d fallen for me, this lower-middle class guy who only wanted to make good food and live a relatively quiet life. I wanted a family one day, but I wasn’t sureherfamily or their lifestyle was the one for me.
“And then, she got pregnant, and everything changed.”
I remembered that day like it was yesterday, when she’d showed up at the restaurant where I worked at the time, distraught, causing a scene in the middle of the dinner rush in an effort to speak to me. I’d ushered her into the small office at the back of the kitchen and, sobbing so hard I could barely understand her, she told me she was pregnant.
“I’d done what I thought was expected of me,” I said, shrugging. “I proposed on the spot, in a dingy, six-square-foot office that may as well have been a cardboard box. I was the product of a single parent household, and while my dad had done everything he could to make sure I never went without, I didn’t want that for my own child. I didn’t want him or her to have to split their time, to be shuffled back and forth until they graduated high school. Getting married was the logical step. While her family wasn’t…thrilled, exactly, they welcomed me as best they could.”
