Midlife Do Over

“What if I want to stay?”

She let out a huff of laughter that was far from amused. “I don’t need you to stay here out of guilt, Ryan. There’s nothing to feel guilty about, so please, just leave me alone.”

“We need to talk Pip.”

She nodded. “I know you didn’t plan for this, but guess what? I didn’t plan for this either, but it’s now my reality and I’m fine with it. I’m happy about it, in fact.” She sat a little taller but her exhaustion wouldn’t allow it for too long.

I heard what she was saying, and I didn’t like it one bit, so I glared down at her. “I’m hearing a whole of I’s and me’s, but that’s my child too Pippa.”

“Oh,” she arched a brow up at me. “Now you’re sure of that?”

“It was just a damn question, Pip.”

“Yeah and it was an insulting one.” She raised her hands to stop the apology on the tip of my tongue. “Look, it doesn’t matter Ryan. If you want to be involved with the baby, do it. I’m not trying to tie you down to a life you don’t want, but I also don’t want you to make promises you don’t intend to keep.”

I turned my head to the ceiling, arms outstretched as frustration coursed through my veins as I let out a low, growl. “Back to this again? How many times do we have to go through this same old argument, Pip?”

“We don’t have to have any arguments at all Ryan. I asked you to leave.” Her eyes fluttered shut and her head fell back against the sofa cushion. She was silent for so long I thought maybe she’d drifted off to sleep. “I can only go by what I know of our past, Ryan and back then you lied to me often.”

“I did not! I never lied to you, not once.”

She nodded. “Every time you said you could see me in a white dress with my cleavage spilling over, our redheaded kids with your exact shade of hazel eyes, it was a lie. Every time you told me you saw us holding hands, all wrinkled and gray haired as we rocked together on the porch sipping Tennessee lemonade, you lied to me. You knew long before I did that we didn’t have a future, but still you let me believe. No, you didn’t just let me believe it, you sold me on a dream you knew would never come true.” She released another tired sigh. “If those aren’t broken promises, then I don’t know what qualifies in your book.”

I had no response, because I could see exactly how that was her perspective, but it wasn’t true. “I loved you Pip, more than anyone before or since. I did see that future for us, every time I said it, I saw it. I thought that was what lay ahead for us.”

“You didn’t. You’d already planned your move, and you knew long before I did that I wasn’t coming with, wasn’t even invited. So when and how were we going to have that future?”

Shit. She was absolutely right. I did want that future, and every night I saw it as clearly as I saw me and my brothers on stage performing for large crowds. But I hadn’t thought about how both of those dreams were going to come true.

Pippa kicked off her shoes and turned to let her whole body sink into the sofa. “I’m not trying to hurt you Ryan, but I have a plan and I can do this without you if that’s what you prefer. But you’ve given me no reason to trust you or your word. So please just think long and hard about what you want, what you really see in your future, before making promises.”

“I have done nothing but think about this since you said those words to me, Pip. All I’ve done is think about the fact that I’m going to be a father, and I’ll be doing it with a woman who hates me.”

“I don’t hate you, Ryan. I just can’t trust you the way you want me to. But I trust that my job is safe as long as I’m performing well.”

“Of course your job is safe. You’ve made Dark Horse succeed far more than I could have imagined. Your job is safe, unless you put your health and the baby’s health at risk.”

“That’s for me to decide,” she shot back around a yawn.

“I’m sorry Pip.”

“What for?”

I smiled even though she couldn’t see me because it was such a typical Pippa question. “Because you’re right. I loved you to the moon and back as a teenager, and the truth is that I never stopped. You’re just it for me, Pip. But I didn’t think about how I could have success with the band and with you, and I thought it was selfish to ask you to come to Nashville with us when you had plans to work restaurants in New York and Chicago, San Francisco. You wanted to do it all and see it all, and I wanted that for you, that and so much more.” I shook my head, and what an idiot I’d been for so long. Too long. “I should have just talked to you. I don’t know why I didn’t, we talked about everything back then, nothing was too big or too small for us to talk about for hours. It’s some of my best memories of us. But I didn’t, and it messed everything up.”