Page 44 of Turning Back

I wonder what her name is?

Rochelle who? I laugh, taking a sip of my brandy.

“Mr. Bricman?” Margaret says in an apologetic tone. “I’m sorry to bother you tonight. But you’ve been gone all afternoon and the Christmas tree people say they need to set things up early this year. They’re overbooked.”

“Early?” I ask. “Fuck that.”

“I know you hate Christmas, but they say they have no choice. The Club takes two days to decorate and—”

“Wait,” I say, remembering the little pumpkin back at the loft. “Yeah, OK. Tell them OK.”

“Really?” Margaret asks, stunned at my reversal.

“Yeah. Rochelle came back. She’s got a kid now, did you know that?”

“No,” Margaret says, her face all scrunched up. “Is it—”

“We don’t know who the father is,” I say, reading her mind. “Either me or Quin. But she’s damn cute, Margaret. So let’s get this Christmas shit started. I can’t wait to see her on Smith’s lap at the party. I’m gonna need a million pictures of that.”

Jordan can have that wannabe-dom girl who thinks she knows what kinky sex is.

I’m in a new game now.

Chapter Ten - Quin

“I guess it’s just us,” Rochelle says after Bric leaves.

We eat for a few minutes in silence. I watch the baby play with her noodles. God, I’m a lucky guy. She’s so beautiful. Both of them. They are so damn beautiful.

But… things feel… different.

“Are you going to stay the night?” Rochelle asks. Probably just trying to fill in the awkward silence.

I think about this for a while, trying to figure out what’s happening.

“Quin?” she asks again.

“You know when you’re in a relationship and your boyfriend goes out with his buddies for a night of drunken debauchery?”

Rochelle just looks at me from across the table. Blinks. “Um… OK.”

“And you’re kinda pissed off about it, but what can you do, right? Be that girl?”

“Yeah.”

“No woman wants to be that woman, right? She wants to be cool about this. She wants to trust her man. She wants to know he’ll come home to her when he’s done with his friends and fuck her. Tell her she’s the only one he loves.”

“Where are you going with this?” Rochelle asks.

I ignore that. “But it’s like midnight, right? And he’s still out. So you text, Hey, how’s it going? Having a good time? Of course he’s having a good time. That’s why he’s still out with his buddies.”

Rochelle squints her eyes at me.

“He doesn’t answer. He’s drinking with the guys. No one answers a text when they’re out with the guys.”

“That’s not true. You always answered me.”

I hold up a finger. “Stay with me here, OK? So he doesn’t answer and you get mad, right? It’s three AM now and the bars are closed. Where the fuck is he? And then you think, holy shit, he got in a car accident. He’s in a ditch. He’s at the hospital. He’s dead. And then you start looking up the phone numbers for hospitals. And you consider calling to see if there was an accident. You’re imagining this whole life without him and you’re so fucking sad you just want to cry.”