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“Go ahead,” he repeated, although this time there was a hint of hesitation in his voice.
“How did you and Ashley get together?”
He leaned back against the booth’s cushion. “Do you really want to hear this?”
“Yes. No. Yes.”
David looked at her for a long moment, before telling her, “It was on my birthday.”
Paige thought back to meeting David so many years ago on his birthday and made a face without realizing it.
“I knew you wouldn’t want to hear this,” he said.
“It’s just …” She took a long breath. “It’s fine. Really.”
It wasn’t, but what was she supposed to say? That she had a proprietary claim on his birthday and therefore he and Ashley should’ve gotten together on another day?
Reluctantly, David continued. “I’d had an appointment that ran a little late that day, so it was almost seven before I closed up. Ashley offered to take me out for a drink to celebrate and at first I said no, but she was persistent, so I finally said yes. She took me to a bar and had arranged for Miles, Nate, and Alex to be there. There was a fair amount of drinking and at one point, Miles tried to set me up with a woman at the next table. He said she could be my birthday present and before I could decline, Ashley declined for me and told Miles … uh …”
“That she’d be your birthday present, instead?”
He nodded, not looking at her. “A few hours later, instead of thinking about the reasons I shouldn’t go down that road, I was thinking of the reasons I should. And, I’m ashamed to say one of those reasons was that it would make it easier to stop associating you with my birthday.”
Hearing that actually hurt a lot and Paige couldn’t help but wonder if it had worked. However, she was too afraid the answer would be yes, so the question remained unasked.
“Anyway, after that night, we started seeing one another and three months later, she was pregnant and everything changed. We moved into a house together and went from a relationship based on—” he abruptly broke off, cringing a little.
“Sex?” she supplied, as neutrally as possible.
He took a drink of his beer.
“I’m a big girl, David.” Paige looked at him pointedly. “So, you went from a relationship based on sex, to … what?”
“To a relationship based on having a baby,” he finished quietly.
“But you didn’t get married.”
“No. There was a brief moment, right after Jacob was born, when I really thought about it. I talked to my mom and asked her about ‘doing the right thing’. I figured she’d want me to considering how my dad had treated her, but she didn’t. She told me that marrying someone I didn’t love for the sake of a child was not ‘doing the right thing’. She wanted me to marry for love and since I could honestly say I wasn’t in love with Ashley, I backed away from it.”
“But there must have been something on your end. When I first saw you two at the restaurant, you both seemed happy. Connected. You had a hand wrapped around her neck, for God’s sake. She called you baby.” Paige’s eyes widened. “Sorry. That came out really bitchy.”
“It’s fine.”
Still feeling embarrassed, she took a drink of her wine.
“I’m not going to say I didn’t feel anything for her, because I did,” David said. “But what I felt for her never evolved into love. We were just two people that had a baby and lived together. I was comfortable with our life and I was committed to her as much as I could be, but most of that commitment was because of Jacob.” He sighed. “Dick told me more than once I should’ve cut her loose, but—”
“Dick?”
“He’s a friend. I met him a few years ago,” David explained. Then in a lower voice, he added, “The day we got divorced, actually.”
“Well, I’m glad something good came out of that day, even if his name is … Dick. God, what a terrible name.”
He grinned. “That’s actually his nickname.”
“That’s a terrible nickname.”
His grin grew. “I’m the one who gave it to him.”
