The Marriage Thing

Alex pulled out his phone and made the call. Twenty-four hours later he and Priest were seated in a lavish restaurant overlooking the bay, 2000 miles from home. The idyllic view of sails against an azure sky and lush greens in the distance was wasted as they both stared anxiously at the restaurant’s entrance. Priest sipped a scotch and soda hoping the simple cocktail would calm the worst case of nerves he’d had in years.

“What if she doesn’t show?” he asked.

Alex was calm. “She’s gonna show.”

At exactly six o’clock, Sydney Charles walked into the eatery not bothering to dress for her posh surroundings. Priest saw the heads that turned in her direction—the ones that turned back to their dinners and the ones whose eyes lingered a little longer than they should have. Even in jeans and a t-shirt she put every woman in the place to shame. After four years apart, Priest wished he could say he was over her, but he couldn’t. As she spotted them and waved off the hostess, his heart flipped wildly in his chest just like it did the night they met. As she neared the table he realized it probably always would.

Priest and Alex both stood when she reached the table, but she opened her arms and flashed her smile at only one.

“What’s up, Doc?” Alex asked, pulling her in for a quick hug. Priest sat down.

“You turned into Bugs Bunny since I graduated?” she laughed, offering her cheek for his kiss.

“It’s good to see you,” Alex said, pulling out a chair. “Have a seat.”

“Thanks,” she responded sliding into the seat. “It’s good to see you, too,”

She turned to Priest, her smile fading. “Hey,” she greeted.

“Hey.”

She studied his face a moment and then turned her attention to Alex.

“So, what’s so delicate that you couldn’t discuss it over the phone?”

“We need your help,” Alex stated.

“We or he?” she asked, tossing a dismissive glance in Priest’s direction.

“Play nice,” Alex directed.

Sydney let out an irritated sigh. “Fine, I’m listening.”

Alex got right to the point. “We need you to marry him.”

Her eyes rounded in disbelief, her laughter bordered on raucous. “Marry?” she repeated. “Him?” She turned to Priest. “You?”

“I knew this was a bad idea,” Priest muttered.

“Yet here you are anyway!” she snapped.

“Syd, let me explain,” Alex said in an even tone Priest recognized as his mediator voice. He was probably trying to keep Sydney from rocketing from zero to infinity, but he was too late. Her eyes were already flashing, her jaw clenched.

“Explain what? There is nothing you can say to make me help him that much.” She ground out, and then whipped around to face Priest, glaring. “Nothing, you understand?”

Her breaths were fast, heavy. Her eyes told him she couldn’t believe he had the nerve to ask. She was going to leave but now that he had her attention, he couldn’t let her go without trying.

“My daughter’s grandparents are trying to take her from me,” he pronounced in a low quiet voice that caressed the air between them. “I can’t let that happen.”

“The only grounds they would have would be his lifestyle,” Alex offered in a rush. “But if we can prove she’s already in a loving, stable 2-parent—”

Sydney’s eyes shifted from one to the other of them before reaching for the purse she’d dropped on the floor by her chair. “I am out!” she huffed.

Priest saw a flicker of something other than anger in her eyes. “Syd—"

“No! You went out and had a whole baby as soon as we broke up and you’re asking me to live in your house and raise her? Screw you, Priest! And you too Alex! I thought you needed my help in a professional capacity. You brought me here for this?”

“Syd you said you hear us out,” Alex implored.

“When I thought it was business.”

“I never said it was.”

“So, marrying my ex-boyfriend and raising his jump-off’s kid should have been my next guess?”

Sydney jumped to her feet and Alex followed suit. “Syd, hear him out. Please. He’s a good father. If you don’t want to do it for him, do it for her. Please, sit back down. Please.”

Sydney was still, seeming to weigh his pleas then with a reluctant sigh, sat down.

“I’ll meet you back at the hotel,” he said to Priest and made a hasty exit as though he were afraid Sydney would try to leave with him.

Priest watched his best friend leave the restaurant. He had gotten him to a point where he and Sydney were at least breathing the same air, and for now, she was entertaining the thought of listening. He turned to look at her. She was taking deep breaths and shooting daggers from her brown eyes as she returned his stare. Priest knew he’d better speak his piece quickly or the next time she opened her mouth flames might shoot out. Trouble was, he was willing to take the risk of getting burned. He missed her and knew the faster he talked, the sooner she’d be gone. He decided to take the long way around. He sipped the last of his scotch and soda.

“Congratulations on the doctorate, Dr. Sydney Charles.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m really proud of you.”

“I don’t care.”

He searched her face. She cared. She just couldn’t put her guard down yet, and he didn’t blame her.

“You know, even before Alex brought up the marriage thing, it was obvious you didn’t want to see me.” He paused. “Why’d you come?”

“I like the cake here,” she answered raising a sarcastic eyebrow.

“You like the cake here,” he repeated with a low chuckle. “Smart ass,” he added, “but really, why did you come?’

Her eyes softened, a little. She shrugged. “Alot of reasons.”

“Can I show you something?” he asked sliding his phone across the table. Sydney looked down at the photo of a little girl with mocha skin and laughing eyes, a hole in her grin where a tooth used to be. “This is Kennedy,” he began, starting a slow scroll through the pictures. “I know what we’re asking is crazy. It sounded crazy when Alex said it to me, but if there’s a chance that it works, that it helps me to keep her…”

“Why me?”

“Is that a joke? You’re the kid whisperer.”

“Kid whisperer, huh?” she gave a soft chuckle at the nickname he gave her after stopping by her job at the youth center and watching her work. Pulling the phone closer, she examined the photos. “She’s beautiful.”

Her voice sounded sad and it pained him. “I know this is hard,” he said.

She pushed the phone back across the table and met his eyes—no daggers. “Yeah,” she agreed, “this is hard, considering we were supposed to have a couple of those by now.”

Priest held her gaze wishing he could go back to the beginning with her; he’d do everything differently.

“I’m sorry I hurt you. I said it a thousand times and I’ll say it a thousand more. I don’t have the right to ask you for anything, but I have to because you’re the only person I know who is going to be as good for her as you are to her. She deserves the best Syd, and that’s you.”

She didn’t respond, but her eyes glistened with tears. Priest reached out, covering her hand with his. She snatched it away, curling her fingers tight around her water glass. Her reaction sliced deeper than anything she could say. It was confirmation that what they had, what they were, was truly lost.

“You hate me, don’t you?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered, “some days…but it’s a little more complicated than that.”

Priest nodded, watching as she blinked back tears before they could fall. Stopping a waiter, he ordered another drink, his own eyes clouding as he realized how hard she was trying not to cry.

“Another drink?” she asked, frowning.

“Third one’s the charm.”

“Third? It can’t be charming for Kennedy if her father’s a drunk.”

“I’m not a drunk.”

“Then what are you?”

“I’m scared!” he confessed. “Two strangers are trying to take my daughter away and the only shot I have is a long one with a woman who hates me. Some days.”

They sat in silence until the waiter sat the old-fashioned glass of scotch and soda in front of Priest. He traced over the cut glass with his finger remembering how perfect life was when he was with her, how perfect it could be if she said yes to him and Kennedy. That was the moment he realized he didn’t need a third drink. He had to be high to still think it could happen. He glanced at her to find she was following his fingers along the cut glass.

He wondered what she was thinking—probably about what an arrogant asshole he was.

She cleared her throat and drank a few sips of the water, and Priest braced himself for what she was about to say. When she looked at him there was a wistfulness in her eyes, a glint of the Sydney who loved him all the time, not just some days.

“You know,” she began, a tiny smile curving her lips, “the months after we first split, I would sit some days thinking about making that call.”

“What call?”

“That awkward one. The one where I’d say, hey, I just wanted to give you a call and say hi.”

“Oh, that call.” Priest was thoughtful; he could relate. “So, what stopped you?”

She sighed. “A picture of you and your very pregnant girlfriend on the front page of a tabloid at the market.”

In that moment the day stopped being about him, Kennedy. Meeting with Syd was about helping her to heal, even if just a little. There was a truth she didn’t know. Nobody knew. But if telling her alleviated any of the pain he’d caused it was worth it. Besides, there was no one else he’d trust with his secret more than her anyway.

“Sydney,” he began in a shaky breath. “I met Kennedy’s mother at a bar. She was…troubled, homeless. When I asked her why she didn’t go back home, to her parents, she said because it wasn’t safe, the way you weren’t safe. I just wanted to help her. She wasn’t a girlfriend or jump-off—”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I messed up with you, I hurt you but I want you to know I never cheated on you. Never.”

Anger lit her eyes again. “So I’m stupid, now? Your daughter was born barely six months after we—”

Priest cut her off. “She’s not mine.”

“What?”

“She was pregnant when I met her.” Priest downed the rest of his drink. “I tried to help her but she couldn’t leave the drug thing alone. She overdosed in the back of some club and I had Kennedy. Everybody already thought she was mine so...four years later she’s my daughter. Truth is, I have absolutely no legal claim to this child. None.”

Sydney sat in stunned silence. Emotions played across her face as she processed what he was saying about Kennedy, about them.

“So, who knows?” she asked finally.

“You.”

Priest watched as the first tear rolled down her cheek. “This is a lot,” she managed to say. He nodded. It was a lot.

“You should go, you have a long drive,” he said, raising a finger to beckon the waiter. “I ordered you a slice of chocolate cake, to go. I do know you like the cake here.”

She reached across the table, covered his hand with hers and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“Tell him to make it two,” she said.