I still wanted to believe he understood.
He didn’t.
Friday evening, Carl practically bounced through the front door.
“So,” he announced while cracking open a beer he hadn’t paid for, “I’m throwing a pool party. For my 40th. A big one!”
“Here?”
“Where else? Steve’s coming. Alice too, obviously.”
Obviously.
“Carl, I’m exhausted. Onica isn’t sleeping through the night. Bradley…”
“Nina. It’s my 40th!”
I looked at him.
The fresh haircut.
The phone always lying face down.
The man who once brought me flowers for no reason.
“Fine,” I said. “We’ll have a party.”
Quietly, standing there in my stained shirt, I made one decision.
Whatever it took, I was walking out to that pool looking like the woman I remembered.
Four o’clock arrived much too soon that Saturday.
I stood in the kitchen icing cupcakes with one hand while warming a bottle with the other.
Onica slept in her bouncer beside me.
Carl was still upstairs.
By nine, I’d hung patio lights, inflated a palm tree, dressed Bradley in tiny swim trunks, and taped a Happy 40th banner across the fence.
Carl finally wandered downstairs nearly an hour later, yawning.
“Wow, the place looks decent,” he said. “You didn’t overdo the cheesy stuff, right?”
“Just the right amount of cheesy,” I replied.
Guests began arriving around noon.
Steve carried in a cooler.
Alice followed with an enormous fruit platter.
The moment she saw me, she wrapped me in a hug.
“Nina, sit down. I mean it,” she whispered. “Let me hold Onica. Go eat something that isn’t a Goldfish cracker.”
I couldn’t help smiling.
“You sure?”
“Give me that baby.”
She had Onica in her arms before I finished asking.
