“Hold on!” I yelled to Fiona, my college roommate, as I fumbled with the keys to the side door.
Our tiny house only had an unattached garage, which made weather a real concern trying to get in and out of the house. Since Illinois only had about three good months of weather during the year before it turned either surface-of-the-sun hot or subarctic, it made leaving the house at any time obnoxious.
Except near Lake Michigan. Then it was only differing degrees of violently windy.
When we had looked at houses, Nick tried to convince me that the garage would be an issue, but I hadn’t been willing to listen. I fell in love with this house from the street. I adored the cute coziness of it, the original but updated wood floors, the brand new kitchen that was small but modern. I loved the loft style bedroom upstairs and the office with French doors on the first floor.
We had always known we wouldn’t live here forever. This was not a house you could raise a large family in and when we were house hunting, we assumed we would have a large family.
That was something we could both easily agree on.
But we had needed something to start with, something that was just the right size for the two of us and something we could easily afford with our tight budget.
This house had been perfect.
And despite everything that happened, I still thought it was perfect.
Except for the garage situation.
“Sorry,” I huffed once I’d made it through the door. I dropped my tote bag filled with papers and notebooks that needed to be graded, my laptop, my purse and my lunch bag on the ground as soon as I stepped inside. My arm felt like it was going to break off. Annie danced around my feet, licking my legs and begging for attention. “I’m here now.”
“I just can’t believe it,” she moaned. “You two are so perfect for each other.”
My neck immediately started hurting. “I’m not sure that we are.”
“But, K! What happened?” She asked the question then murmured something to her fussy baby.
Fiona and I didn’t get to talk very often, but usually we could spend hours gabbing about nothing or everything or good times from our college years.
Today, though, I hoped her baby’s cries meant she needed to get going. I really didn’t want to have this conversation. I really wanted to talk about anything but my divorce or Nick or me.
The baby cried again and pain seared over my heart. “Shh,” Fiona crooned. “That’s a good boy.” To me she said, “This has been my fussiest baby yet. He is just never satisfied.”
I masked the brokenness in my voice by joking, “Because he’s a man.” I bent down to pet my own baby girl.
Fiona laughed at my joke and the baby settled down. “So tell me what happened. Last time we talked, you guys were doing great!”
We hadn’t been great. We hadn’t been great in a very long time. But I had never told her that.
I resigned myself to telling her the story. She wasn’t going to let it go, so I might as well give her what she wanted as quickly as I could, then get her off the phone so I could wallow in my own pity. Except that when I turned the corner and walked into my kitchen the topic of our discussion was sitting at the kitchen island helping himself to my chocolate cherry ice cream.
“Holy shit!”
“Are you okay?” Fiona asked on the other end.
Nick gave me an apologetic wave but didn’t make a move to stand up. “Uh, um, er, yeah.”
Fiona’s voice echoed through the kitchen as I pulled the phone away from my ear. “K, what’s going on?”
I put the cell slowly back to my mouth. “I’ll call you back, Fi. Something came up here.”
“You’d better!” I heard her call, but I pushed end without saying goodbye.
“Was that Fiona?” Nick asked without preamble.
“Yeah.” I took a solid minute to adjust to his presence, and then demanded, “What are you doing here?”
He took another bite of ice cream to hide his smile. “You literally say that every time you see me.”