“Yeah. Well…that was really embarrassing.”
I already knew he was embarrassed, but am surprised and disarmed that he is admitting it to me so candidly, days later. “No, it’s not,” I say with an odd feeling of déjà vu that must be stemming from a similar, distant memory, a time when I felt protective of his pride or feelings. “It happens a lot. Do you remember when George Bush choked on a pretzel?”
“George W?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Remember he was watching football at the White House and choked, then passed out.”
“Yeah, vaguely,” he says, his voice lighter.
“Can you imagine? All that Secret Service surrounding and protecting him, and he nearly died alone, watching football?”
Will laughs, and I get a sharp pang of nostalgia. I always loved his laugh—a low, breathy chortle—and I especially loved when I was the source of it. He didn’t laugh easily, sometimes only smiling during really funny movies, so it always felt like an accomplishment when I could make him laugh.
“So what else?” I ask. “Is everything okay with Edie?”
“Oh, yeah. She’s doing great,” he says, sounding a little stiff again, but no longer overtly uncomfortable. “At least she is at home. How’s she doing in school?”
“Great,” I say. “They’re in music now. It’s my free period. That’s why I could call you in the middle of the day.”
“Oh, yeah,” he says. “That makes sense.”
“Uh-huh,” I say just to fill the silence, wondering if that’s all he has to say. “So? Was there…something else?” I ask casually, determined not to let my voice betray the hopeful, needy way I feel—although I have no idea what I want him to say. For years, my fantasy was for him to call me, tell me that he was getting a divorce, that he’d made a big mistake, that he wanted to be with me and only me. But now I wouldn’t want that to happen to Edie.
“Um, yeah. Kind of,” he says. “I just…I wanted to…I don’t know…clear the air. About us…”
“Us?” I say, my pulse quickening again.
“Well, not us. But you know, the past—what happened with us. I just feel badly about how things ended….”
“Bad,” I say, making a conscious decision to correct his grammar.
“What?”
“Bad. Not badly,” I say, smiling a little, remembering how many times I tried to explain to him that the adverb badly, when modifying the verb feel, means you have poor tactile sensation, perhaps from a severe burn on your fingertips. Feeling badly would make it difficult to, say, read braille. Feeling bad, on the other hand, means you have negative feelings on a subject. “You know, the adjective versus the adverb.”
“Oh, yeah, right, grammar girl. Bad. I feel bad about how we ended things.”
I resist the urge to point out that we didn’t end things; he did that. All on his own. “It’s okay,” I say instead, feeling healed by his pseudo-apology all these years later. “But, Will…I didn’t cheat on you….” My voice trails off.
“Yeah. Well, whether you did or didn’t, I was a little harsh….Everyone makes mistakes….”
“Yes, but I really and truly didn’t,” I say, remembering that terrible night. Maybe the second worst of my life.
“Okay,” he says.
“Do you believe me?” I ask him.
He hesitates, then says, “Josie—you were in bed with him….I caught you in bed with him.”
“But it wasn’t like that,” I say. “I swear…I’ve never told you the whole truth about that night. But only because I couldn’t….”
“You couldn’t?” he asks.
“I thought I couldn’t,” I say. “It was just…so complicated and had nothing to do with us. It had to do with Daniel…but I regret it. At least I regretted it for years. I wish I’d been straight with you….I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. It all worked out,” he says. “Right?”
I swallow, then bite my lip. “Right. You have a beautiful family,” I say, feeling proud for taking the high ground.
“Thank you,” he says.
“I really like Andrea,” I add.
“Yeah. She likes you, too,” he says, as it occurs to me that she may have put him up to this call. There is suddenly no doubt in my mind that, at the very least, she has made him a kinder, more compassionate version of who he once was.
“So. Yeah. Things worked out,” I say, perhaps a little too cheerfully to be convincing.
Sure enough, he hesitates, then says, with distinct concern in his voice, “So what about you?”
“What about me?”
“Are you happy now? Things are good with you, too?”
“Oh, yeah. Things are great,” I say, my cheeks beginning to warm. I then overcompensate and blurt out my birth plan. “I’m actually planning to have a baby…with a sperm donor….”
“Really?” he asks, sounding more than a little surprised.