Page 106 of A Really Bad Idea

I nod my head. “Crazy, right? Oh, and get this—you are going to love this one. While we’ve been ‘dating’”—I use air quotes with the word dating—“I’ve fallen in love with him. Isn’t that a kick in the pants? So, don’t worry because I’ve managed to screw this relationship up, too. It’ll be over soon, so you can give me grief about that at our next family barbecue.”

He massages his temples like my words are giving him a headache. “You’re mixing up sex and love.”

“Oh, how I wish that were true. You might not think highly of my relationships, but I know what love is. In fact, I think it took a broken heart to realize exactly what true love is.” I sag into the wall and lightly bang my head against it as I look at the defibrillator on the wall, just waiting for someone to need their heart to be shocked back to life. “Do you know why I always had the worst taste in boyfriends? Because they were never Christian. In high school, I liked the boys as athletic as him and always wound up with someone who was too busy, trying to get their hands up my skirt. In college, I dated guys as smart as him. They were always snobbish and cold. As an adult, I looked to find someone who was as fun and easy to talk to as Christian. I wound up married to a big, fat lie.”

Brian’s demeanor shifts. His hands rub his eyes as he takes some deep breaths and absorbs everything I said. When he lowers his hands, his light eyes are turned down at the ends. That annoyed stance of before has morphed into something softer.

He opens his mouth to speak and then closes it because heart-to-hearts really aren’t his strong suit. Instead, he goes for rational.

“If you really wanted him all this time, you wouldn’t have been able to be friends and see him date other women. Hell, you were married to another man for seven years.”

“Isn’t that the million-dollar question? How do two people with such insane chemistry and an outstanding friendship stay away from each other sexually their entire lives?” I say sarcastically.

“I’ve never spoken this much about sex in my life, and I’m having this conversation in a hallway with my sister.”

I have to laugh at that comment. Even Brian lets out a chuckle. I’m glad I didn’t blink and miss it.

“He friend-zoned me.” I lean my head against the glass and think of Christian as a teenager with his shaved head, which grew out like peach fuzz. I used to rub my hands over it, and he would laugh. He has the best laugh, even then.

“We were in my room, studying for finals. There were study guides on the floor as we took practice exams, and all I remember is wishing he’d look at me as more than a silly girl he studied with or hung out with in the basement, playing video games. I was going to tell him I had a crush on him. Ask him out. I was so nervous. My palms were sweating; I dropped my pencil twice. I never got the chance. He looked at me with these bright eyes, almost like this amazing revelation had just come to him. He said I was his best friend and that I was the only one he could count on. My little heart was disappointed, and yet I felt special. He thought I was so amazing that he gave me the greatest title a teenager could bear. I figured maybe someday he’d look at me as more. But, as the years ticked by, I was always the confidant—the one he called for relationship advice or to vent to about school. We fell into a routine, and I stopped wondering if we’d morph into something more. I was okay with it. Until now. This deal we made with each other, it brought all of those feelings to the surface. The ones I’d buried over and over are now magnified greater than the sun. I’m so far gone; I won’t be able to push them back into that hidden corner of my heart again.”

Brian takes in my sigh and the words of my confession and analyzes them. He leans a hand on the glass as the nurse swaddles the baby back in her blanket and laces her in the portable crib. “Do you think he loves you, too?”

Do I believe Christian loves me? As a friend, yes. I know for a fact that there is so much love in his heart. He’d never have agreed to have a child with me otherwise.

To love me as a wife? His career is too important to him. He wants his freedom, and when he pictures himself old and gray, I’m certain it’s not with me by his side, feeding our chickens in our country house Upstate. How do I know this? Because, since we were in college, that has been his mantra. It hasn’t changed in all the years, and I doubt it ever will.

“No,” I whisper.

“You can’t …” he starts and stops, clearly not comfortable with what he’s about to say. “You can’t have a baby with Christian if you’re in love with him.”

Having someone as your moral conscience is daunting.

I’ve loved hard in the past, and I’ve had a broken heart because of betrayal. But this? This will break my soul.

“I know.” I push off the wall and continue to hug myself. “I know.” Taking a few steps away, I turn to my brother and explain, “It just feels like, now, I’m losing two dreams.”

Brian’s mouth pulls in. There’s a sincere expression in his eyes as he stands here with nothing to say. I’m actually thankful for the fact that he doesn’t fill the air with words just for the sake of talking because there is nothing he can say right now that will make me feel better.

“I’ll see you upstairs.” I walk away, needing more time to be alone with my thoughts. “Thanks for the talk.”

“Meadow,” Brian calls me before I push open the door to the stairwell.

“My life is really great. I’m only hard on you because I want you to have it, too. Your all,” he says without a hint of emotion on his face. And then he adds, “Mom really knows Beth’s ovulation schedule?”

I give him a nod with a face that matches his perplexed expression and then watch as he looks through the glass while the nurse starts to wheel the baby back out. I hope he and Beth decide to have a third child. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping for a niece I could spoil with tiaras and tea parties. Yes, I believe a girl can be anything she wants, but every girl deserves to be a princess now and then.

I make my way back to the fourth floor, but I’m not ready to go back to the waiting room. Perhaps this overthinking has been good for me today. It’s kept my mind off of Mom. I know that, when I walk in that room, I’ll find out the results of her surgery, and I’m not ready to hear it.

I take a seat on the concrete stair and rest my head on my knees.

In here, time is still.

I don’t know what is happening with my mother.

I don’t have to end things with Christian.

My heart isn’t shattered, as I have a feeling it will be soon.