Back With Baby, Ex Regrets Deeply novel · Chapter 5 of 32

Chapter 5: No Seat

"You were supposed to be in Rotterdam," I said.

"Rotterdam will keep." He handed Teddy a box lid for a roof. "Rotterdam is mostly containers."

"Da," Teddy said, pointing at him, in case I'd missed it. "Da bus."

"I see that, baby."

"Da big bus."

"He's being generous," Alistair said. "It's a small bus. Structurally it's a disgrace."

I stood in the doorway in my coat with the stroller behind me and didn't know what to do with my hands.

Three years of marriage, and he could still do that to me.

Walk into a room and take the air out of it.

"When did you land?"

"Ten." He checked the watch on the table. "I've ordered lunch. Grilled cheese for the gentleman. Soup for you, because my grandmother phoned the plane to tell me you'd be thin."

"I've been gone two days."

"I'm only passing it on."

I took my coat off.

I sat on the arm of the sofa.

Teddy drove the bus over my foot and on toward the window.

Alistair got up off the floor, all six foot three of him unfolding in a way that should have been awkward and never was.

He held his phone out to me.

Laurel's post was on the screen.

"Four hundred and twelve likes," he said. "Six hundred now, I expect."

"I've seen it."

"I gathered." He put the phone down. "Tell me what you want done."

That was always how he said it.

Not what happened. Not are you all right.

What do you want done?

"Nothing," I said.

He waited.

"I mean it. Nothing. This is my family and my mother's house and my mess. I'm not having you fly in and buy the block and set fire to it."

"I wasn't going to set fire to anything."

"Alistair."

"Very little fire."

I almost smiled.

I didn't.

"I mean it," I said again. "I don't want to be the girl whose husband fixed it. I was that girl at the registry office. I want to be the one who did it."

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he nodded once.

"Then it's yours."

"Thank you."

"I'll hold your coat," he said.

It went through me like a needle.

He'd said it so easily.

Like it meant nothing.

Room service came.

Teddy ate the crusts off his grilled cheese and left the middle for the bus.

Alistair ate his soup standing at the window, watching the traffic on Boylston.

I watched him.

"Do you remember the night after my mother's funeral?" I said.

He didn't turn around.

"I wasn't there, Faye."

"You gave me your coat. You told me the city looked best at four in the morning because nobody was lying in it yet."

"That's a good line. I wish it were mine."

"You had a cut on your knuckle. You said you'd punched a wall at a board meeting."

"I've never punched a wall in my life." He did turn, then. His face was perfectly calm. "Walls cost money."

I set my spoon down.

Three years, and he'd never once slipped.

Teddy went down for his nap at two, curled sideways in the travel cot with the bus under his cheek.

I closed the bedroom door on him and stood with my back against it.

Alistair was at the desk, answering email, his sleeves rolled to the elbow.

I was so angry I couldn't see straight.

At Laurel. At Dorian's sailor suit. At my father's yellow sticky flags.

At the man at the desk who swore he'd never sat on a wall with me in the rain.

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