CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
It’s still cold as hell when the plane lands in New York. I steel myself against the icy air when I step out of the plane and the wind whips around my face. The staff on Rowan’s jet makes the landing and transportation home the easiest I’ve experienced in all of my travels. But there’s nothing to help with the heavy sadness that creeps over me as the car drives me back to my lonely apartment in Brooklyn. I know Joanna is still at the damn house, so I know Rowan’s house would be even lonelier. And Joanna, twirling around and proclaiming that she had finally decided to have Rowan’s child.
Rowan’s face, when he looked at me in misery.
He might not know it, given what he said. But I know he’d rather be with me than that witch who showed back up in his life uninvited. But I also know when I’ve overstayed my welcome. Even if he did want me there, he doesn’t need two women running around the place and making his life a living hell.
One he loves. One he used to love, one who wants to have his baby.
When the limo drops me off in the incongruously bad neighborhood in Brooklyn, I’m left alone with my jars of paint and my thoughts. And I stay that way for a long time after I deposit the $100,000 in my bank account. I sit on my ass in my apartment for days, avoiding Anna’s phone calls and paying the bills that I’ve ignored for so long. I run the heat up to 72 degrees in the apartment, and I strip down to a t-shirt and shorts, nearly sweating as I lay on the couch, reading romance novels and watching an entire season of Jane the Virgin on Netflix.
Sometimes, I cry and think about all the things I’ve lost. Sometimes I sleep, but it’s never at the right time. I rumble with the grief and the heartbreak, fight with all the rage and the sadness that washes over me in waves. But finally, I let it come. And I cry. Finally, I make a tiny painting with a picture of a heart on it and set it up on the mantle. I’m not sure if it represents the love I lost when the embryo never grew, or the love I left behind in New Mexico because the time wasn’t right.
Maybe it’s both. Maybe it’s all of that and the thoughts and hopes and ideas that come whenever there’s the possibility of a baby or a new, beautiful love in your life. The dreams of marriage and togetherness, the soft, sweet desire of holding a baby’s hand for the first time, while someone you care about sits beside you.
It’s all of that.
After a week of looking at that heart, I find myself wishing that Rowan would break his promise not to contact me. I look at my phone, and it’s blank besides one message from Anna and a long, rambling email from Star.
how are you, the message from Anna reads.
Like usual, she hasn’t used any punctuation or any capital letters. For a second in time, I feel like I don’t deserve her. I’ve been out of touch for most of January, responding to her messages and calls here and there, and never seeing her. Now it’s February 1st though, and it’s about time I crawled out of my grief and into the light.
I’m okay. I gave up a good man for a cold ass apartment in New York, and now I barely even remember why.
But I do remember why, and like any smart woman, I have to stand by my decision. I had to make myself a priority instead of making Rowan the focus of my life as soon as I met him. A listless, sick feeling creeps over my stomach, and I wonder if he’s forgotten me altogether, if I’ll be hearing from him this month. In those last few days, we refused to say the word. Love. But it’s there inside of me, even though we didn’t dare speak its name in our remaining time together, with the threat of Joanna looming silently from the guest house.
Maybe he’s making love to the fertile model woman, I type.
doubtful, Anna replies. She punctuates her thought with a little alligator emoji. It’s probably not meant to make any sense, but it’s as accurate a representation of Joanna as any. I smile and put down my phone.
“I’ll go to the studio,” I say out loud. “Today, I’ll paint.” I almost look around for Eliza. Like Rowan, I adopted his habit of talking to the dog. And even a month later, I miss her, listening to me and pushing her heavy head against my body. I close my eyes and think of Eliza, the silky spot on the top of her head. I imagine the supple leather of Rowan’s couch, and the worn, textured surface of his antique coffee table, the scent of pine from the Christmas tree filling the room.
Rowan’s rough hands on my cold, bare skin in the mudroom. Rowan’s lips, parting mine insistently. Rowan’s hair, shaggy and long in places it shouldn’t be, his blue eyes sparkling in the sun as it rises over the mountains behind his ranch.