“Damn. I didn’t know that.”
“Why are you up? I thought you said your shift didn’t start until eight today?”
I ran my fingers through my hair. “I couldn’t sleep.”
Calliope nodded. The coffee pot beeped to indicate it’d finished brewing, and she grabbed two mugs from the cabinet above her head. “Still take your coffee the same way?”
“I do. I don’t change good things.”
Calliope fixed us both coffees, and together we sat at the kitchen table. “Is the bed in the guest room not comfortable?”
“No, it’s fine.”
She sipped her mug and watched me over the brim. “You look pathetic, Simon. Like someone just ran over your dog. When are you just going to give in?”
“Give in?”
“That you have feelings for Bridget, and you belong together.”
I wouldn’t even attempt to lie about the first part. “I do have feelings for her. But we don’t belong together—we want very different things. That’s the problem.”
“What does she want that you don’t?”
“A family, for starters.”
“Why are you so adamant that you don’t want a family to begin with? You’re still so young. You’d make an incredible father. You shouldn’t rule that out as a possibility.”
“Look who’s talking? I don’t see your house filled with a bunch of little buggers running around. Tell me, Calliope, why is that? Because I’m pretty sure that our reasons aren’t all that different.”
Calliope looked away for a minute and then her eyes met mine. “Nigel and I have been trying for two years. I’ve had three early miscarriages.”
“Fuck. I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about. I didn’t tell you to make you feel bad. I told you to prove a point.” She reached out and took my hand. “I was there, too, Simon. I feel as responsible as you do. We were stupid kids when the three of us went out on that lake together. I think of Blake all the time. But I’m not punishing myself by not having children of my own.”
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“Really? Then what are you doing?”
“I don’t know the first thing about having kids.”
“Newsflash, buddy, no one does when they start off. You drop them a few times, pull their head out from between the stair balusters, and get scared when their poop turns hot pink to match the crayon they snuck and ate when you weren’t looking. But you figure it out.”
“Bridget has a kid. She knows what she’s doing.”
Calliope studied me for a moment. “Let me ask you something. What does Brendan want more than anything?”
I shrugged. “A new bike. Flat black with flames.” I wonder if they make one my size.
“And is he allergic to anything?”
“Latex. What’s your point?”
“Just go with it. How about his teacher? What’s her name?”
“Miss Santoro. Cute, but doesn’t hold a candle to Bridget.”
“Favorite subject?”
“Science.”
“And did you go to field day with him a few weeks ago where he smiled all that day and then for two more after?”
“Yes.”
“Seems like you know what you’re doing with Bridget’s kid, too, Simon. So what other excuse you got?”
“Well, there’s the little fact that my home is in England.”
Calliope shook her head. “What’s back there for you? A home isn’t a bunch of bricks. A home is your happy place.” She looked at the time on her watch. “I gotta get going. But think about it. If I told you to close your eyes right now and imagine being anywhere in the world you could, what would you see?”
I waited until my friend was out the door before I sat at the kitchen table and shut my eyes for a few minutes. I wanted to conjure up pictures of an oceanfront hut in the Indian Ocean, or the top of the beautiful mountains of Snowdonia in Wales as my happy place. But when I closed my eyes, the only thing I was able to see was Bridget. She was my happy place.
Fuck. I was even more screwed than I thought.
I woke up in a cold sweat and with my hand down my pants.
Lucky for me, no one else was in the residents’ lounge. I’d finally fallen asleep for a bit, only to have the most intense dream I’d ever had in my entire life happen while at work. That was some serious shit. I sat up and blinked a few times. The vividness of it hadn’t been dulled by my consciousness.
Bridget and I were in the supply room here at the hospital. Everything was in black and white—our clothes, our skin, the supplies—everything except her mouth. Her fucking lips were painted blood red—gorgeous, full, glossy, blood red. And those lips were wrapped tight around my cock.