Gentleman Nine

“No.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah, I definitely don’t have to worry about you spilling my business.”

“Let me ask you something. If you found out today that Amber only had days to live, would you go to her?”

“Of course, I would.”

“Days are all we have, Rory. That’s all life is…a bunch of days threaded together. All we can be guaranteed is today. No one knows what’s going to happen beyond today. We should never make decisions based on an assumed future, but rather on how we feel at this very moment. That’s the first thing. The second is, how the hell can you be so sure that she’d rather have a baby over you? Did you even give her a choice? You were the love of her life for nine years. You didn’t give her a say in the matter.” He leaned in. “Let me tell you something you may not know.”

“Alright…”

“My Ellie was barren. Stephanie is adopted. We were in our forties when we got her after years of trying.”

“No shit? I had no idea. She even looks like you.”

Boris had been married for fifty-seven years when his wife Ellie passed away. Since they had a daughter, I never imagined that Ellie couldn’t have kids.

He continued, “I knew about Ellie before I married her. Of course, I wanted to have our own kids, but if it were a matter of losing her or having a biological child, there was no contest. If she’d done to me what you did to Amber, in my mind, that would have been a tragedy. I have no regrets. I have a beautiful daughter.”

Maybe it was the alcohol, but suddenly I was doubting everything. Had I made a colossal mistake?

That night, I tossed and turned, obsessing over Boris’s advice. My life felt like it hadn’t progressed in the months since Amber and I had been apart. I wasn’t as strong as I thought I’d be.

Opening the top drawer to my bureau, I took out the one-and-a-half carat Tiffany diamond ring I’d purchased a month before the accident. I’d planned to propose to Amber tonight at the restaurant at the top of the Prudential building. It was going to be perfect. Our lives were going to be perfect. Then the accident happened, and that perfect dream was shattered.

When you love someone, you feel it in your soul, even when they’re not physically with you. Maybe it was also possible to feel the moment that you were losing them. If that were true, it was happening to me right now. I felt something strange inside of me tonight, a feeling of loss that I hadn’t really felt up until now. I mean, of course, I’d left her, but I hadn’t felt like I’d lost her until now. It was a feeling of looming finality that I needed to intercept now or never.

It was too late to call her. Amber typically didn’t stay up past eleven. It was well past midnight. Still, I didn’t feel like this could wait until tomorrow. I had to get my thoughts out now. So, I decided to text her.

What felt like a million words were at the tip of my tongue, but my finger wouldn’t move. It just hovered over the keypad.

Ultimately, what I needed to say couldn’t fully be communicated in a text.

I typed out a simple message.Rory: I really need to see you.CHAPTER TWENTY* * *CHANNINGAmber’s and my mother’s laughter could be heard from down the hall. I was catching up on some work in the bedroom but would stop from time to time to listen to their sounds.

Overall, Mom was not doing well. She even called Amber “Lainey” the other day. But as much as the dementia was showing its ugly face, my mother seemed happy here. Amber would do her hair, and they’d bake together. In fact, I must have put on at least a pound this week alone from all of the cookies and brownies. Every night, it was something different.

In a short amount of time, it was starting to feel like we were a family. I hadn’t felt that in years.

Closing my laptop, I decided to shut down for the evening and join them in the kitchen.

A tray of some kind of delicious, coconut-covered dessert was cooling on the stove.

Rubbing my stomach, I said, “You two and your sweets are gonna be the end of me.”

“Your mother was reminding me about the stage you went through where you refused to wear anything but Ed Hardy clothes.” Amber cackled.

That was a blast from the past.

“That was hot,” I joked, looking over at my mother. “I can’t believe you brought that up.”

For someone who was losing her memory, she had to go and remember that shit? But that was the thing…being here with Amber seemed to bring old memories out of my mother’s mind bank even when she couldn’t always remember what happened a half-hour ago.