By the time I tumble into bed, I can’t help thinking that it’s going to be even more complicated than I thought, the situation between me and Ethan, raising Riley together.
Chapter Fifteen
Ethan
“My parents insisted that we both needed a break,” I tell Lara as I get us both a couple of beers from the fridge.
She’d come over to discuss the paperwork we need to fill out for her to be Riley’s legal guardian, so that she can take my daughter to doctors’ appointments if she needs to, or in case something happens.
“It kind of feels weird to be here without her,” Lara admits. I can’t deny I feel the same. The haunted feeling in the house hasn’t quite gone away, and it’s been five weeks since Alexis died.
“I figure we’d probably get more done if we don’t have to wrangle Riley, too,” I point out. It’s true, we can probably get through all the paperwork and all the details pretty fast, but it’s more that I don’t want to be in the house all by myself if I don’t have to.
“Yeah, that’s probably right,” Lara says. She looks how I feel, awkward, kind of at a loss for what to do. It isn’t her first time in the house, but it’s the first time she’s been here without being focused on Riley. We clink our beers together and I lead her to the living room, and we sit down on opposite ends of the couch.
“I ordered a pizza before you got here,” I say. It seemed like the easiest way to handle dinner. I definitely didn’t want to be doing dishes or cooking when Lara arrived.
“Sounds good. You didn’t get green olives on it, right?” Lara looks almost queasy and I remember while Alexis loved green olives on pizza, Lara has always hated them.
“I didn’t get any kind of olives. I got pepperoni and an extra cheese,” I tell her.
Lara looks relieved, and takes another quick sip of her beer.
“So, what all do we need to do?” I grab the folder off the coffee table and hand it to her. Lara reads through it and I try to find something to do with myself, but I’m at a loss. I still feel numb and suddenly very tired.
The pizza guy arrives then, and I’m more than happy to hop up and get the door and pay the guy. “Have a good night, man,” I say, giving him a quick smile before I close the door.
“This all looks pretty straightforward,” Lara says, setting the paperwork aside as I put the pizza down on the table.
“Let me get some plates,” I suggest.
Lara laughs.
“It’s pizza. We can just take slices out of the boxes, can’t we? Did Alexis do such a good job on domesticating you?” she asks.
“Good point,” I agree, and instead of going into the kitchen, I sit down on the couch once again.
“So, I’m going to be Riley’s legal guardian,” Lara says thoughtfully, and we open the boxes and help ourselves to a slice each. I take a bite of pizza, molten-hot and delicious.
“In a million years, I never would have thought something like this would happen,” she adds, glancing at me.
“What do you mean?”
Lara gives me a slightly sarcastic-looking smile and shrugs. “Well, for one, I never thought I’d have anything to do with you, or Alexis, or even really Riley, in my entire life,” Lara says.
“Why not? I mean, you loved Riley from the moment you met her,” I point out.
Lara takes a couple of quick bites of her slice of pizza, like she wants to keep herself from being able at all to speak. She chews, swallows and takes another sip of her beer, glancing at me once or twice, and I can see the hurt in her eyes, even if I don’t understand it.
She clears her mouth and says, looking out the window, “You gave your child with my sister the name we talked about giving our child.”
It takes me completely by surprise. By the time Riley arrived, I had almost completely forgotten the plans that Lara and I had talked about when we’d been together.
“I mean, it’s a name I always wanted for a daughter,” I point out.
Lara nods, and looks down into the pizza box. She takes another bite of her slice and sits back on the couch.
“It was just… it was so awful, in a way. And I love Riley, I’ve loved her from the moment I set eyes on her. You’re right about that. But when I heard you’d named her that…” she smiles sadly and shrugs again.
I sit there a little stunned. I had always liked the name Riley.
Lara sighs. “We shouldn’t talk about it,” she says, shaking her head again. She takes a few more bites of her pizza in quick succession and then gnaws on the leftover crust almost angrily.
“No, I think we should,” I say.
“Why? What good is it going to do?” Lara looks at me and it’s so similar to the expression I saw on her face the day she found out about me and Alexis. It’s almost exactly the same.
“We’re never going to move past it if we don’t just… have it out,” I tell her.
Lara presses her lips together and I see her breasts rise and fall against the fabric of her shirt as she takes a slow, deep breath. I know I shouldn’t even be looking at that part of my sister-in-law’s body, but the movement draws my eyes.
“Do you have any idea how much both of you hurt me?” Lara sets down the crust in her hands, and
