Page 38 of When in December

“I know, but you even admitted it a while ago, and I thought it didn’t matter. But the more I think about it, the more I realize it does matter to me. More than anything.”

“What does?”

“It could be hard for us? Having kids. Together.”

“Well, yes. But we won’t know. There could be no issue.”

“It could maybe not even happen, right?”

I stared at him, mouth open, dumbstruck as I watched everything fall around me like the glitter confetti I’d debated was too tacky to throw at our wedding instead of bubbles or rice.

“That’s a possibility,” I answered honestly.

Lincoln nodded, expecting it. “I don’t see a life without kids. Ever.”

“But what about the wedding? The plans we started and moving in …”

“I can’t, Poppy. I can’t wait around and hope and take the chance. I thought I could. I did. I wanted to, but I’m sorry. I can’t commit to disappointment.”

I was disappointment.

I wished I could say that I didn’t cry while I packed up all the things I’d left in his apartment or that I at least held it together until after he dropped me off at the house on the west side of the city, where I had always lived with my parents. But I couldn’t.

Tears tracked down my cheeks the whole time, and he didn’t stop one of them until I got out of the car, reaching to close the passenger door behind me.

“Poppy, wait.”

A traitorous part of me hoped when I leaned back in the car, he’d say he was wrong and that we could pretend all of this hadn’t happened. Instead, he reached out, cupping my head, and kissed me with one of those simple, easy kisses one last time.

Hannah had taken me out for drinks after my breakup, if that was what you could call it, for one of the first times we ever went out together and then again after I found out that Lincoln had gotten married within seven months. He and his high school sweetheart had a small backyard wedding in the suburbs. She had a glittery dress and a flower headpiece. They looked like a sweet couple. She was pregnant by the time they came back from their honeymoon, from what I had seen in the announcements on social media, unable to bring myself to unfollow him.

And I couldn’t stop from asking myself how happy he must’ve been now that he didn’t have me. That he didn’t have to wait and see for disappointment. Because I knew what the girl he’d married and could build a home with had that I didn’t. And it was that she was, in all factual evidence and design, the perfect partner—better than me.

I got the drunkest I had been in my entire life after Lincoln and I broke up. Or that didn’t sound right. Ended things? Splitup? All the ways to put it felt inconsequential. I felt the hangover for days after passing out in Hannah’s apartment, filled to the brim with four other girls she’d been living with ever since she had come to the city.

It was one of the few times I’d ever seen her apartment, cluttered with clothes and half walls to separate all the roommates you could always hear clattering around in the background.

“I didn’t think you’d want your parents to see you like that.” Hannah rubbed my calf as she looked into my dead eyes before declaring that she was making breakfast. She burned the pancakes but added enough strawberries and whipped cream that I barely noticed.

It had been then and there that I knew that Hannah was the best friend I could ever ask for, even if we only ever saw one another at work or in personal crises. We worked well that way, and she agreed. From then on, we encouraged the other’s overworking habits while feeding and watering one another.

Only now, I wasn’t sure how long I had left to work at Home Haven with Hannah. When Home Haven found out what had happened and what I had done, I was certain that it wasn’t only the promotion I was going to lose.

nine

. . .

Aaron

I pacedthrough the empty cabin. The homemaker, interior designer, DIY mess of a woman I had started to see, had left.

Just like that.

It was what I’d wanted.

She was gone. She’d gathered most of her things up; she hadn’t paused before she headed to her car and left like hell was on her heels.

My phone continued its overly loud ring from the nightstand. The obnoxious sound pulled me back out of my head. I pressed the cool glass to my ear and dropped myself on the mattress that remained on the floor. My legs stretched out in front of me.

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