Page 20 of The Work Boyfriend

Camille pulled me into an awkward hug. “Kelly, hello, dear. You look lovely, as always.”

“Thank you, Camille,” I said. “As do you. Those pearls are stunning. Happy Christmas.”

“Robert, take those overnight things up to the guest room. You and Kelly can sleep in there. Then come down and join us at the table. Kelly, you’ll be seated next to Audrey, beside Arthur. Go on through while I put this bottle of wine in the fridge.”

Rob headed up the massive staircase two steps at a time while I walked through the hallway and into the dining room. Arthur, Rob’s father, stood up and said hello. Rob’s brother and sister-in-law nodded as I took my appointed seat.

The table was impressively set with a giant poinsettia arrangement blessing its center. The room smelled amazing: expensive candles mixed with the gourmet meal that Camille had catered—we’d be having turkey. In fact, wealwayshad turkey for Christmas and Thanksgiving at Rob’s mother’s house. I would have loved for her to switch things up, but Camille had very specific ideas about holiday entertaining. We didn’t have opinions; we had praise, and it needed to be enthusiastic. Such a heavy, intense Christmas dinner at Camille’s made for a rough couple of days of nonstop eating between our two families.

Over in Etobicoke, my mother made turkey, too, but she did it herself; she brined the bird for a day, sometimes two, made her own stuffing and cranberry sauce, whipped the potatoes within an inch of their life, melted marshmallows on top of the sweet potatoes until they were soft and gooey, and served corn she had cut off the cob in the summer and frozen so it would still taste fresh in December. We ate the leftovers for days, made turkey stock, made sandwiches.

Once she and Carl had started living together, my mother had taken the idea of family seriously. Gone were days of frozen meals cobbled together with the three of us huddled around a cheap kitchen table with squishy seats and less-than-comfortable metal backs. Gone were the days of my mother handing us some cash on Christmas Eve, saying, “You know yourselves so well, get what you want.” Gone were the days of feeling disappointed and sad when no call from our father came—it was no longer expected. Even if he had called, I doubt my mother would have let us talk to him anyway. “Quite simply,” she would say, “assume he’s written himself out of your story. You’re strong, independent girls. You’ll be fine without him.”

On Christmas mornings, Meghan, Josh, Daniel, and I would spend an awkward few hours together opening presents while Carl and my mother smiled expectantly at us. The presents were opened slowly, with each person getting a turn, and they were clearly marked as being from my mother, from Carl, or from both. She signed her presents for the boys Love, your stepmother, Linda. And Carl signed his presents for us Love, your stepfather, Carl. The lines were clear, but we were also now wholly connected. The boys were a decade younger than me and Meghan but they were insanely fun to be around—they loved video games, loved board games, loved to do family things around the holidays, and got a kick out of us coming to their hockey games. And it all worked, as patched together as it was, especially when you added Annie to the mix.

As busy as my mother was rushing around cooking, cleaning, and generally panicking about everything from the state of her floors to the fact that the Christmas tree might be drying out, the day was always genial and relaxed. Before and after we ate, we’d cycle through various holiday movies old, new, and simply inappropriate (Bad Santahad been Daniel’s choice last year, and I would not recommend watching it with your middle-aged stepfather), drink warm eggnog or hot chocolate, and lazily admire all our presents.

My mother was trying to make up for the rough years between my father’s leaving and her finding Carl, the love of her life. Now she was obsessed with tradition, imprinting good memories to lay over the shallow grave of the bad. Her hyperfocus on stability now that we were adults and didn’t need it wasn’t lost on her, I didn’t think, but it hadn’t stopped her holiday furor in any measure.

At Camille’s dining table, excessively polite chitchat continued until Rob came down and everyone was seated. Halfway through the first course—thick, heavy soup with rustic undertones, as Camille’s catererslovedroot vegetables—Stephen picked up his wine glass and announced he had something to say. I closed my eyes and slowly cracked my neck. Tried to focus.

“Audrey and I are having a baby!”

And that makes two.

There was no way I couldn’t tell Rob about my sister now. Plus, I’d now be spending the next year with baby craziness on both sides. No escape. It made sense for Rob’s brother and his wife. They were on the Camille timeline. After all, they were one whole year into their marriage. Camille cooed and stood up, hugged her firstborn, and embraced Audrey. I stood up, said a congratulations that I tried very hard to make sincere, and hugged her tight. Rob cleared his throat and said, “It’s going to be quite the night for announcements, Mom.”

As he stood up, he took a small box out of his pocket. Immediately, I set down my wine glass and eyed him suspiciously.

“We haven’t talked about the subject in a while,” he continued, addressing me, “and I know that you’re not one hundred percent convinced about marriage, but I have to ask. Kelly, please, will you at least take the ring and promise to think about it?”

Inside the box was a gorgeous antique art deco ring. I think I actually gasped. Camille said, “It was my grandmother’s ring. We had it resized.”

“Kelly?” Rob said.

“Yes,” I said, loving him enough to know I wouldn’t embarrass him in front of his entire family. I nodded. “Yes, I’ll think about it.”

Rob had a smile that cracked open his face in ways I found irresistible. It was what had first drawn me in. When he stepped around the table to put that ring, which obviously meant so much to him and to his mother, on my finger, my stomach bottomed out. “I know how you feel, and we could also be engaged forever.” He kissed me and said, “That’s all I’m asking right now.”

Instantly, I felt guilty for the strip club, for being completely preoccupied with my “other relationship,” and generally being an awful girlfriend the last few days. My internal life didn’t meet my external one at all, and I hadn’t the slightest idea how to fix it. And I was lying. All the time. Little half truths were scattered all over the floor of our relationship, waiting for Rob to pick them up and realize I was a coward. This is what you did when you loved someone. You married them. You had babies. And then you lived together in semihappiness, never hating each other at the same time, until someone died.

“We all know you’reunconventional, Kelly,” Camille said.

“I’ve never before saidalmostwhen marriage has come up,” I joked.

Luckily Rob’s family laughed, and the merry mood continued with Camille excited about the event planning she would be doing, and both Rob and Stephen telling her to slow down. Audrey expressed her gratitude for all Camille’s expert help, saying that she’d need her input about everything, especially the nursery. The wine never tasted so delicious. Tears threatened, but I held it together.

Ever since we’d bought the condo and properly started living together, Camille had insisted on asking Rob and me when we were getting married every time we got together. “Never,” I would always say. And Camille’s response was always, “Never say never, dear.”

Arthur laughed now. “Time for a toast. To my ever-growing family.”

Glasses clinked around me, and all I could think about was how I was going to tell Garrett that I had managed to up and get engaged. The words weren’t there. We had had maybe a half-dozen joking conversations about me getting knocked up and becoming a lady who lunched. Garrett was convinced that Rob would impregnate me with his seed and lock me away like Rapunzel, “only with less hair.” He’d crack himself up and then rub my stomach, talk to it like there was a baby in there, and I’d haul off and punch him in the shoulder. It wasn’t like I was making a choice not to get married or have a baby—it was simply not what I wanted at this stage of my life. Or maybe ever.

“Don’t marry that guy,” Garrett had said about six months ago. We were sitting at the good food court under the bank building eating mulligatawny soup. Garrett had looked exhausted, and he wasn’t sleeping. I was talking about how Rob and I were spending my two weeks off at his cottage, which was more like a compound, complete with a grounds staff, and joked about doing a Muskoka celebrity crawl.

“Wait, what?”

“Don’t marry that guy.”

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