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I nodded. “My father was a medical rep for a pharmaceutical company at the time, and they agreed that she’d take some time off to stay at home with me. But when I was two, he decided that a toddler and a wife were too much responsibility.”
Sophie’s jaw slackened, surprise flickering briefly across her face, yet she didn’t say anything, only sipped her juice and let me continue.
“He was young at the time, but so was my mom. What he did was unforgivable . . . ” I let my words trail off as an uncomfortable heat crept up my head, like a warning bell urging me to steer the conversation away from the man who I had never really known.
And that was exactly what I did.
“My mom ended up working as a night nurse at an old age home and never got around to doing what she’d always wanted to do. She even had this list of all the places she wanted to visit before she died. A country in each continent. It was stuck up on our fridge with an Eiffel Tower magnet.”
“Is that why you traveled that year after your residency?”
“Yes,” I replied, the edges of my lips quirking up. Speaking about my mom like this with Sophie felt good, as if I needed to share, as if I had held onto the pain for so long that the words began to rip through the seams.
Vicki had always listened half-heartedly—even in the beginning—as if she had something far better to do with her time. After a while, I stopped sharing. With Sophie, it felt different. Her eyes sparkled with curiosity. She watched me with that slight drop in her jaw as if she was hanging onto every word.
“I did it for her, because she never got the chance to go anywhere. She never even left the
State of California.”
“What happened to her?”
“When I was a senior in high school, she got very sick, but she never let it show . . . not until it got so bad she couldn’t hide it anymore. By the time she went to the doctor and got the help she needed, it was too late to do anything about it. She was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer. It had spread to her liver and lungs . . . ”
Sophie’s eyes glinted with what I could only assume was sympathy. It was easy to recognize—the faint pucker of her forehead, the slight drop of her shoulders, the unconscious fidgeting with something. I saw it all the time in the hospital.
People got sick. They died. It was the natural progression of things.
Though it never made it any easier.
Except, the way Sophie reached forward, interlacing her fingers with mine, felt different.
A tangible sort of comfort I hadn’t experienced before.
I scooted closer to her and settled so that she wasn’t reaching out awkwardly. “She died a few weeks after my high school graduation. It was like she did everything she could to just push out until then.”
Sophie’s grip tightened. “I’m so sorry, Alex.”
“Don’t be. It happened a long time ago.” I tried to give a chuckle to show her that I was perfectly fine, all healed up, with nothing more to grieve, but it only came out as a strained brittle laugh.
“Still,” she said. “I’m sorry that she isn’t here today, that she can’t meet her grandbabies.”
“Me too.”
Silence filled the space between us for a while, long enough for the distant hum of traffic and the rustle of leaves above our heads to become noticeable.
I broke my hand free from Sophie’s to reach for that glass of juice—wine would’ve been a better choice—, but Sophie grabbed my wrist and pulled me closer to her.
I shifted toward her and she smoothed her hand up my shoulder to my neck. It took barely two moves to lay her down gently on the blanket, her head resting on the cushion I had managed to slide in beneath her.
She ran her hands down my shoulders to my back and tried to pull me on top of her, but I resisted. Not because I was worried about hurting her, placing pressure on her nearly six-month bump, but because there was something on my mind that needed to be said, that took precedence over any physical touch.
“Sophie,” I breathed. “There’s something I want to tell you.”
But she didn’t let me speak, she only ran her hands up along my neck, wove her fingers into my hair, and then pulled me toher. Our mouths met. Hers soft and sweet, mine suddenly eager and responsive despite the thoughts lingering in my mind.
The kiss deepened, tongues and teeth and hands skating over skin sending a fire within me. I could pick her up and carry her to the bedroom in a matter of seconds. But I didn’t. If I didn’t voice these feelings now, I was sure I never would.
I broke the kiss and pulled back slightly, just enough to keep a gap between us that Sophie couldn’t easily close, not until I’d said what I wanted to say. Breathing in, I locked our eyes and found her hand, interlacing our fingers.
