Page 54 of What We Broke

“I shouldn’t have said it like that,” she says. She grabs my hands and squeezes. “I’m worried about Jesse, Leo. I’m worried that he’s been taking care of us all for far too long. And I just want to know who’s taking care of him.”

Unbeknownst to Zara, I had placed that responsibility on her. “I thought you were,” I tell her.

Her face blanches, and I see the second she no longer cares about hurting my feelings. “So what, you just wash your hands of him, just like that?”

“That’s not what I said,” I say sternly. “You asked who was taking care of him and I answered.”

“And just out of curiosity, are you going to step up any time soon?”

I didn’t have an answer for her. What I want to do and what I’m capable of are two very different things.

“Are you going to truly leave him?” Her voice cracks.

She’s still crouched down in front of me, her body language not indifferent or uncomfortable. I don’t know why that matters to me, but it offers enough of a safety net for me to try and explain to her exactly how I feel.

“I don’t know,” I tell her. “You’re asking me if I’m going to step up and take care of him, and I think not feeling obligated to take care of me would be doing exactly that.”

“Honestly, you’re insufferable.” She pushes off me and stands, raising her hands in the air in frustration. “You think losing you is what he needs? After everything you’ve both lost, you think losingyouwill make it better?”

“In time,” I say confidently. “I can see the better life he’ll have with you and Raine. I can see the better life he’ll have with his family that isn’t so beaten down and broken.”

“Why do you say things like that?”

“Like what?”

She’s back down crouching in front of me. “You sayhisfamilylike you’re not a part of that.” I can see the heartbreak in her eyes as she continues. “Like you’re not my best friend just as much as he is. As if you’re not Raine’s father just as much as he is. Like being Jesse’s husband isn’t enough to make you part of this family.”

As I sit there with wet hair and a hairdresser’s cape on, she delivers blow after blow, reality check after reality check.

“How do you do it?” I ask her. “How do you and Jesse just get up every day and do the things that need to be done?”

I don’t, for even a second, doubt their love for Lola, but I truly want to know why they could and I couldn’t.

“It just looks different,” she says. “I cry every day. I cried the day after and I’m still crying fifteen months later.”

She turns to look at the pool behind her, and I catch the movement of her hands that suggests she’s wiping her eyes. “Jesse swims. Some days when you weren’t here, Raine would call me and tell me he’d been in the pool, swimming laps for hours. She didn’t know whether to leave him alone or tell him to come out.”

“And then there’s Raine.”

She doesn’t look back at me this time, and I feel the pain she holds for her daughter. Pain I know I’ve caused.

“She’s too much like Jesse,” she continues. “She bottles it all up to protect us all. It’ll be years before I know how deep this loss is for her.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, my voice thick with emotion.

“No.” She shakes her head and looks at me over her shoulder, tears streaming freely down her face. “You don’t get to wear that one alone.”

She shifts her gaze back to the pool. “But I do need you to be around when she crumbles. Jesse and I both do.”

“I never wanted any of this, you know?” I hear my thoughts tumble out of my mouth before I have the chance to take them back. “Marriage, kids. I didn’t care for any of it till I met Jesse. And then you and Raine.” I wring my hands together underneath the cape. “Having you both in my life was like being accepted into the cool club.

“I finally felt like I belonged somewhere and I could stop chasing my tail,” I admit. “Add in Jesse, and I felt invincible. Like we could have it all.”

I know we’re both lost in thought, remembering that day. How we went from having it all to losing it all in the very same breath.

“Did Jesse ever tell you before you got pregnant we found out I was sterile?”

“No.” Her eyes widen as she walks back in my direction. “I know it seems like we tell each other everything, but he didn’t tell me that.” She raises a finger in the air as she walks past me and back into position to cut my hair. “If I remember correctly, it was you who told me you two weren’t going to find out which sperm was used in the insemination or which fertilized. So I assumed that meant both were viable.”

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