Connor doesn’t take to this well. He shakes his head; he tells me no. “You can’t be alone now, Clara,” he says. “You and me, we’re all we have left. We have to stick together,” he says, reaching out again to clamp my hand, squeezing tightly so that I can’t let go. “We shouldn’t be alone at a time like this,” and as he runs a hand along my hair, he whispers, “You were always too good for him anyway,” and though it’s meant to appease me—comfort me in the wake of Nick’s affair—it strikes me as an odd comment to make. Connor is Nick’s best friend. We don’t say bad things about our best friends, least of all when they’re dead.
The thought that comes to me then is that summer when I was expectant with Maisie, in those early days when only Nick and I knew, too terrified still to share the news and jinx it. It was early in the pregnancy, though the merciless morning sickness had finally relented as I crossed that viaduct between trimesters one and two. I was feeling good for the first time in a long time, no longer bilious and green, and yet consumed with fears that I had yet to share with Nick. I’d become pregnant sooner than expected; Nick and I planned to wait until after our thirtieth birthdays to conceive. And yet here we were, in our early and midtwenties with a baby on the way. To call Maisie a mistake seems cruel, and yet that’s what she was, a miscalculation of dates, a forgotten birth control pill, a romantic night with an expensive bottle of red wine. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to be a mother, though I never told this to Nick, who was so excited to be a father he could practically burst with pride.
Instead I told Connor one summer evening at an outdoor gathering at the home of a mutual friend, a garden party where I was the only one who hadn’t been drinking, and Connor stumbled upon me in the kitchen, drinking tap water and trying not to cry. I confessed to him about the pregnancy, that I was terrified to be a mother, that I was consumed with all the things that likely could and would go wrong. Being responsible for another human life was a formidable task. I wasn’t sure I could do it.
But Connor’s words were rational. Nobody knows what they’re doing the first time around, he said. You’re a smart woman, Clara. You’ll figure it out. And then he held me while I cried. He stroked my hair and comforted me. He told me I would be the best mother, that there wasn’t anything in the world I couldn’t do.
Until that moment, our relationship was purely platonic. We were merely friends.
But as Connor held me there in the kitchen with everyone else safely outside beneath a set of string lights, he nearly kissed me. Not quite but almost. His eyes drifted closed, his inhibitions lowered by the excessive alcohol consumption, leaning into me, though I pressed a gentle hand against his chest and whispered, “Connor, please, don’t.” His only reply was to clutch me by the waistline and pull me closer, to attempt to draw his lips to mine. Connor was the kind of man who was used to getting what he wanted. Women didn’t tell him no. He was drunk, I reasoned at the time, and come morning, he wouldn’t remember. But I would.
I can’t tell you how long I’ve wanted to do this, he breathed deliriously that night as if he didn’t hear my rejection at all, as if he couldn’t feel the palm of my hand against his chest. His eyes stayed closed until a noise jolted them open again, Sarah, the owner of the home, stepping in through the sliding glass door with an armful of wobbly plates balanced on her inner arms, threatening to fall. There was a tower of them, eight plates or more, stacked precariously on top of each other. Connor stepped away from me, moving quickly to Sarah’s side to rescue the plates, though she was so blitzed she didn’t even notice, just as she didn’t notice the near-kiss.
We never spoke of it. It never happened again.
I didn’t think twice about brushing it under the rug. We all do stupid things when we’ve had too much to drink, don’t we? In time, I forgot it happened. I never told Nick, and Connor became like a brother to me, the brother I never had.
“You shouldn’t say that,” I tell him now, slipping my hand from his, though he steps forward as I slowly retreat. “He was your best friend,” I condemn, and though Nick has hurt me, a thousand times over he has hurt me, there isn’t a thing for Nick I wouldn’t still do. I avert my eyes from his, looking anywhere so I don’t see the way he stares at me, making me feel uncomfortable. I want to ask him to leave. I stare out the window, at the clock, at Connor’s abandoned gloves. I stare at Harriet sound asleep.
“Nick was many things,” he says. “But he wasn’t my friend,” and at this I turn to ice, wondering just what exactly Connor means by this. Of course he was Nick’s friend.
“Of course he was,” I say, but Connor responds with, “I thought he was, too. Turns out we were both wrong,” and before I can press him on this, before I can demand to know just what he means by these words, his hands fall to my hips, and he pulls me into him with so much impetus I gasp, his lips moving toward mine. The yeasty smell of alcohol on his breath is nauseating; he’s had far too much to drink. His lips press me in a way that is sloppy and shapeless, his lips wet with beer. I push him away, and as I do he breathes into my ear, “I’ve envied Nick many things, but most of all was you,” and it’s then that I know why Connor was standing at my window the other night, watching as I argued on the phone with the life insurance man. Watching as I called Kat. Watching as I comforted Maisie in the heat of the storm.
It’s because of me.
Connor is in love with me.
And at once I feel many things, from guilt to sadness to despair. Have I done something to deserve this? Have I led Connor on in some way? Is this my fault? I see the pleading in his eyes, the unspoken words. Let me be your Nick, he silently begs.
And then suddenly the words are spoken, as Connor says to me, a forced whisper so that I feel the breath of his words against my skin, “Let me take care of you, Clara. You and the kids. I’ll take such good care of you,” and I know he would. That’s the hardest part. I know that in the wake of Nick’s transgressions that Connor would take the very best care of the children and me, but I can’t bear to imagine myself in another man’s arms, in another man’s bed.
There’s so much hope in his eyes, hope and desperation, a toxic combination, it seems—so much to gain, so much to lose.
And I know that when I deny him, I’ll lose Connor, too. My words get lost in my throat. I can’t speak because when I do, I’ll break both of our hearts.
After tonight, Connor and I can no longer be friends.
And then I hear a noise. My saving grace.