Page 106 of Pick-Up
“Honestly, Sasha, I assumed you knew.”
Ethan is not wrong. Like theEscapadeeditor in chief details, this information was easily accessible. On some level, I chose not to look. But I still feel defensive.
“It’s a big school! I don’t know who belongs to who! I’ve avoided getting too engaged for this exact reason!”
“You were afraid you’d have sex with all the dads?”
I shoot him my best death stare. “No, Ethan,” I say through gritted teeth. “But my divorce from Cliff, his Golden Globes antics, turned really public. Everyone at school knew. It was humiliating! So, I like to keep things separate. Private.”
“Understandable.” He shrugs a shoulder.
“And, by your own account, you were never around. No pick-up. Not even drop-off. How could I have known? It’s not like Kaitlin and I hang out.”
He is shaking his head, confounded. “But, Sasha,” he says quietly. “Wemet.”
“I know. You said that. But I don’t remember everyone I meet in passing!”
He presses his lips together, clearly bothered. “It wasn’t in passing.”
I am stopped dead in my tracks. Brakes screeching. All aboard the home-wrecker train. “It wasn’t?”
Ethan looks legitimately hurt. His eyes are downcast, and he’sfiddling with a loose string on the comforter’s seam. And that sears a hole in me.
“Ethan. Tell me.”
“You really don’t remember at all?” I shake my head. “The girls, Ruby and Nettie, had a playdate once at the park when they were small. Kaitlin had to leave, so you and I stayed alone together. We met. Wetalked. For hours. About real things.”
“We talked,” I repeat. To no one in particular. Myself. Ethan. The cheerful yellow lampshade on my bedside table which, in this tense moment, is looking for a reason to excuse itself.
How could I have spaced on talking to this amazing man? Granted, I was a mess in those days. Cliff was disappearing, and I had tunnel vision, trying to navigate caring for the kids on my own. But still. Was this willful denial on my part? Did I not know because I didn’t want to? All those times I never asked Ethan about his daughter, never asked Ruby’s name. Was I avoiding an inconvenient truth? On some unconscious level, had Ethan simply enabled my myopia?
What already felt complicated now seems like a Rubik’s Cube. Perhaps solvable for some, but not for me. Suddenly, I am just so naked under the covers, my skin nervy against the cotton sheets. I pull my bare thigh back underneath.
“I’m just trying to process this,” I say. “It’s not your fault.”
Ethan nods. But, by the way he’s looking at me, I can tell he doesn’t totally understand why this is a big deal, never mind why I forgot him. I get it. It’s not that Kaitlin and I are tight. We’re absolutely not. I know nothing about her, as evidenced by this current shocker. And I knew his wife was a mother at the school. It’s not surprising that I know her a little or have seen her around. But things have just gotten real. I have fallen back down to earth. And, as is my style, I have landed like a sack of potatoes.
“Sasha, I’m sorry you didn’t realize. But this doesn’t have to change anything. This,” he says, referencing the room, the messy bed, the cool-kid condom wrappers, us, “was great.Isgreat.”
I nod. Fair enough. I concede. It was great.
But that just confounds me more. What seems so good turns sour as soon as it hits the air outside this room.
“Please don’t freak out,” he continues, leaning in, a hand resting on my cheek. “You haven’t betrayed anyone. Kaitlin and I were all wrong. As she clearly demonstrated.”
“By telling you she was unhappy?”
“No. By fucking someone else for like a year.”
“Oh, that. Yeah. Right.”
“But you and I…” He exhales, dragging a hand through his hair. “I think maybe there’s something that’s really right here. Something—”
Before Ethan can continue, the front door to the villa slams. We both hear it. And, though I can’t be in his body, I think it gets us both in the gut. Winds us. We listen as Stephanie, presumably, kicks off her flip-flops and pads across the living room floor.
“Damn,” he whispers. “Reality.”
“It’s a bitch.” I nod.
