The Year We Turned Forty (2 page)

Claire's phone vibrated in her hand and her stomach jumped as she realized the adorable guy she had bantered with last night was now calling. She pulled her magazine up slightly to hide her smile from Gabriela. Forty was starting off right.

•  •  •

Jessie squeezed her eyes, fighting the flow of tears that continued to gush from them, like a pipe that had burst inside her. She hugged her baby to her chest tightly, putting her finger inside his hand and watching as he gripped it. She studied her newborn son's scrunched face, searching for her own features, trying to calm her rapid breath as she instantly recognized the shape of his nose and jut of his chin. She glanced over at Grant. Did he see it too? She had promised herself that she would tell him today. That he deserved to know the truth. She even let herself believe that he might stay anyway, although she was smart enough to realize that it would never be the same, that she'd never again catch him looking at her like he'd just met her and was intrigued by all the things he didn't yet know.

Grant pressed his lips to her forehead and combed his fingers through her damp hair. She looked at him hard, trying to etch each angle of his face into her memory, so she could always remember what it was like to have him love her like this.

“I have something to tell you,” Jessie said in a lowered voice as she glanced at the nurses busily cleaning up.

“Me too.”
Grant gently took the baby from her and cuddled him against his broad chest, his eyes glinting with tears. “I love the girls with all my heart, but I never knew it would feel this way to have a son.”

Jessie swallowed the words that had been sitting on her tongue and made a choice. She had no idea if it was the right one, but it was the only one she was capable of making. “I'm so glad. He looks just like you.”

“Mom?”

Jessie folded her new gold one-piece bathing suit in thirds and placed it carefully into her suitcase, already picturing herself wearing it poolside at the Aria Hotel with a skinny margarita in one hand, a
People
magazine resting against her thighs, and her two best friends by her side.
Heaven
. She'd try not to be envious of Gabriela in the string bikini she knew she'd be wearing—probably white, to show off her caramel-colored skin—or of Claire's freakishly youthful appearance—people often thought she was in her late thirties, even though she would be turning fifty tomorrow. When Claire had suggested Vegas as their destination, Jessie's first feeling had been panic, as she'd imagined all the twentysomething bleach blondes in tight miniskirts strutting through the casinos making her feel frumpy and out of place. But she couldn't tell Claire and Gabriela that. They both seemed to have the metabolism of fourteen-year-old boys and wouldn't understand.

Not that Jessie was overweight. But she was still carrying ten
extra pounds, her body not bouncing back from Lucas' birth as easily as it had with her now twenty-year-old twins, Madison and Morgan. It was a side effect of having a baby at forty, not thirty. Jessie wished she could've been one of those supermoms who went straight from the hospital bed to the gym, sliding effortlessly into her skinny jeans just weeks after giving birth. But she'd been so exhausted all the time, she was barely able to rouse herself out of bed at all hours of the night to feed Lucas before hauling herself into the shower to start each day, jam-packed with driving car pool to the girls' sports practices and games. Not to mention she'd always had a general apathy toward actual exercise. So before she knew it, the loose skin around her middle had taken permanent residence, as had the extra pounds that had attached to her hips and thighs. But Jessie had grown used to her new body, artfully disguising it under carefully cut tops and tailored jeans.

“
Mom?
” Lucas' voice was more urgent this time.

“In my room,” Jessie answered as she took a selfie while wearing a fedora she'd purchased on a whim yesterday, before sending it to Madison and Morgan.
Can I pull this off?
She texted with the girls almost daily. It was the perfect way to keep in touch with them while still giving them their space.

“Dad's here,” Lucas announced as he plopped down on her bed, his thick brown hair a sharp contrast against her pale peach comforter, the furrow between his emerald eyes deepening as he squinted at the soccer ball he was tossing in the air above him.

Jessie listened to the sound of the ball rhythmically hitting Lucas' palms as she placed her toiletries in the outside zipper pocket and released a sharp breath just as she caught her son's eye, not realizing he had been watching her. Quickly, she transformed her frown into a smile.

Dad.

“Okay,” Jessie answered with forced cheer, picturing Grant sitting out front in his ancient Toyota 4Runner, tapping his hands against the steering wheel, strumming to the beat of some classic rock band—probably the Eagles.

Their relationship was fine,
now
. But it had taken them years, and most days, even fine was still an exaggeration, at least for Jessie. But in front of Lucas, and Madison and Morgan when they were home from college, they were like two politicians smiling for the cameras. Grant would kiss her on the cheek when he saw her, and even though it made her insides flop around like the clothes inside a dryer, Jessie would smile and ask him how Janet was doing. Great, he'd say. She was always so damn great.

It shouldn't have been a surprise when Grant moved out. Or when he asked for the divorce a year after that. Because that's what people do when you cheat on them. And it shouldn't have shocked Jessie that Grant couldn't get over it, that he didn't want to look her in the eye each day and recall how she'd betrayed him. That she wasn't the woman he thought she'd been. Yet she'd fallen to her knees anyway, begging him to give it a little more time. Deep down, she knew Grant had only delayed filing for as long as he had because he'd felt sorry for Jessie. She could tell by how he looked at her—like a bird with a broken wing, hobbling along, trying in vain to fly. She'd tried to convince him she'd been weak—that she'd let what began as a sliver of insecurity morph into a crater-sized doubt about him, about their marriage. She'd told him she was sorry, that she should've tried harder to talk to him about how lonely and rejected she'd felt. But he'd only looked at her with steely eyes and told her she was too late. She'd made the choice to turn to another man when she
should've turned to him. And now he could never trust her not to do that again.

Grant had leased an apartment across town almost immediately after she'd told him what she'd done. Jessie still cursed herself for not pushing him to try marriage counseling. Instead, she backed off when he'd been against the idea, not feeling she had the right to demand it after what she'd done, too afraid to strain what had quickly become a very fragile union.

“Have a great time, honey!” Jessie walked over and kissed the top of her son's head as she pushed a tuft of hair out of his eyes and instantly regretted not getting him a haircut yesterday, knowing full well he'd return on Sunday night with a fresh cut that Janet had taken him to get.

“Dad's at the door, Mom. Says he wants to talk to you,” Lucas said as he wiggled from her grasp and ran into his room to get his duffel bag.

As she headed downstairs, Jessie was thankful she'd gotten her dirty blond hair highlighted yesterday and that she was wearing her most flattering pair of jeans. And that she'd selected the navy blue top she knew not only brought out the golden flecks in her blue eyes but had always been Grant's favorite color on her. But she still wondered, as she often did, when she'd stop caring how she looked when she saw him. They'd been officially divorced for eight years, yet he always lingered in the background of her thoughts, just a heartbeat away from stepping out of the shadows.

She'd stood there helplessly after her confession, watching their entire future crumble, Grant's lip trembling as he fought back the tears. After he'd left, she'd clung to the memories of their wedding day like they were a thick tree trunk in a windstorm, remembering what they'd once been: deliriously happy newlyweds, him dabbing, not smashing, a tiny piece of cake on
her nose; frightened new parents leaving the hospital with twins, Grant never accelerating above fifteen miles per hour; excited first-time homeowners, joking as they shared a bottle of wine that they hoped they'd make the mortgage each month. But just four words had changed everything. Four words had instantly trumped all the fights, the months without sex, the names they'd called each other. Just four words ruined their thirteen-year marriage.

Lucas isn't your son.

“Hi,” Jessie said, her voice sounding too high pitched.

“Hey.” Grant ran his hand over his smooth head. He'd finally been forced to shave it, his thin hair refusing to grow even with Rogaine. But somehow the baldness suited him. He'd started playing tennis in the past few years and he was tanned and toned. He looked better than he ever had. “Did Lucas have fun yesterday?”

“He did,” Jessie said, thinking back on the birthday sleepover he'd had with his friends. “But be prepared, he might be up late tonight because he's so excited to officially be in double digits tomorrow.”

“I'll be ready,” Grant said. “And I wanted to talk to you about something real quick.”

“Oh?” Jessie arched an eyebrow as she watched her ex-husband's eyes dart around the foyer. He probably wanted to ask her if Lucas could stay with him an extra night. He'd had to travel last week for work so he hadn't seen Lucas on Wednesday. She'd be tired from Vegas anyway, and a night alone would be nice.

“Where's Lucas?”

“Right here,” Lucas said as he bounded down the stairs two at a time, his lanky legs curling up with each stride, reminding Jessie of a grasshopper's.

“Hey, buddy, will you go out front and kick the ball around? I need to talk to your mom for a minute,” Grant said.

“Sure,” Lucas said, smiling at Grant with pride. His club team had just won a national tournament and his dad's approval meant everything. Jessie couldn't help but smile on the sidelines, watching him search for Grant in the crowd each time he sunk the ball deep into the net of the goal.

But she stiffened as she watched Lucas bouncing the ball on his knee now. He still didn't know the truth. And with each passing day, every camping trip with Grant, every Father's Day, every time he asked for his dad—
Grant
—Jessie hoped she would never have to tell him. When she and Grant did argue, this was the hot topic. Should he or shouldn't he know who his real dad is? And if so, when? Jessie leaned toward no, Grant toward yes, arguing Lucas had a right to know, even if his biological father had made zero effort to be in contact. And while Jessie agreed that it was Lucas' right, she worried it might destroy him. Or worse, her relationship with him. And she couldn't even begin to think about how the girls would react.

Her infidelity had been a secret she and Grant had held close, blaming their split on having grown apart. And in many ways that was true. Their marriage had slowly shifted from giddy laughter on lazy Sunday mornings while they read the paper and sipped their coffee to strained voices and clipped tones from too many sleepless nights once they'd become a family of four. But that was okay. Jessie understood that they wouldn't always experience the highs of new love, that fervor that came with the knowledge you've found the person who completes you. She knew that time eventually wore passion down to its nub. But what she hadn't anticipated was Grant's declining sexual interest in her after the twins' arrival.

They'd always had an active sex life. Jessie had felt almost smug as she'd listened to her married friends with new babies
complain about their husbands nagging them to do it when they just didn't want to. Jessie was sure that would
never
happen to her and Grant. She craved him the way someone might want chocolate or a glass of wine. She needed to feel him pressed against her, to smell his skin. They'd often joked during their first year together that they might be addicted to each other.

The changes in Grant were subtle, developing over several years. He stopped kissing her as deeply, his tongue no longer lingering, his hands no longer moving down her hips clearly wanting more. He stopped looking at her with a hunger in his eyes, and began almost looking through her. They stopped taking weekends away. Their sex, when they did have it, became predictable, then stale, and finally, infrequent. And at some point, it stopped altogether.

She remembered lying in bed, willing him to touch her, seething as she heard the sound of his first snore. She reached over and nudged him. Hard.

“Hey,” Grant mumbled.

Jessie rubbed his naked back and worked her hands downward. “I think you forgot something before you fell asleep,” she teased. She hoped she sounded confident. That she wasn't betraying the insecure corners of her mind—the same ones that had made her slightly obsessed with Sadie, his new assistant.

“Babe,” Grant began, “I'm so tired. I promise I'll make it up to you tomorrow night. We'll get the kids to bed early.”

Jessie snapped her hand back. “That's what you said last time. And the time before that.”

Grant rolled over. “You really want to discuss this now? When I'm half asleep?”

“When the hell else are we going to talk, Grant? You're never here!”

Grant sighed. “Is that what this is
really
about? You're pissed off that I work too much?”

“No, this is about the fact that we haven't had sex in three months. Do you even realize that?”

Grant sat up. “There is no way it's been that long. What about after Claire's dinner party?”