It Had to Be You by Georgia Clark (e reader for manga .txt) 📗

Sam’s next partner would probably be someone Savannah’s age. It was risky and silly to think about love and sex (Wait, why am I thinking about sex? Stop thinking about sex!). There was no way anything would, should, or could ever happen between her and Sam Woods.

Liv tipped every last grain of risotto into the trash. “I don’t know what happened. We followed the recipe.” More or less.

“Sometimes, things just don’t work out how you think they’re going to,” Ben said. He got quiet.

Liv scooted a chair next to him and ran her fingers through his hair in the way that always soothed him. “You thinking about Daddy, honey?”

He nodded, eyes on the floor.

“You miss him?”

He nodded again.

Her heart felt like a wet dishrag being squeezed until it was bone-dry. “I miss him too.” She kept stroking his hair. “Hey, remember all the crazy costumes Daddy would make for Halloween?”

A smile almost lifted her son’s mouth. “Yeah.”

“How many can you remember?” She ticked off her fingers. “There was the year he was Willy Wonka and you were an Oompa Loompa, and then, what else?”

“I was Harry Potter and he was Dumbledore.”

She’d made a wizard robe out of an old blanket. Ben looked adorable in his stripy scarf and round glasses. “That’s right. Oh, what about the year Dad was a Ghostbuster and you were the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man?”

“I don’t remember that.” Ben sounded worried.

“Yeah, you were still pretty little, but we have about one thousand photos. So we won’t ever forget.”

Her son looked up at her. “Do you think I’ll ever forget Dad?”

“No!” A pit opened up in Liv’s stomach, its depth surprising her. She felt horrified. “No, sweetie, I don’t, I really don’t. You won’t, I promise.”

“But how? I don’t remember being the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.”

Liv hadn’t contemplated the fact she’d be the primary bearer of Eliot’s memory. And that would mean swallowing her betrayal forever, only giving Ben the highlights. That was her maternal duty. But it also felt a bit like lying. “Because we’re going to talk about him. And look at pictures and tell stories and keep him alive in here.” She pressed her hand against her son’s chest. “In our hearts.”

“Mom,” he said, “that’s really cheesy.”

She laughed. “Maybe. Maybe it’s okay to be cheesy. Every now and then.”

“Mom?”

“Yes, baby?”

“Can I order the pizza now?”

Liv unlocked her phone, checking there was no Amazing news!! text from Savannah. There wasn’t. “You got it, mister.”

Financial ruin, here we come.

“No, I want to call.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Do you know how?”

He nodded.

“Okay.” She handed him her phone.

Ben tapped and scrolled until he found the number and dialed. “Hello? I’d like to order a large cheese pizza. Yes, that’s the address. We’ll pay in cash. Thank you.”

“Look at you, ordering a pizza like a pro.” Liv knew she was biased, but it was quite possible her child was the smartest kid in Prospect Heights, and maybe even the entire world. She wanted to give him everything. “So clever, Benny.”

“Well, I’ve seen you do it a million times.” He sounded more upbeat than a few minutes ago. “You and Dad didn’t really cook a lot.”

“That’s true. What were we doing all the time?”

Ben pushed his glasses up his nose. “Working.”

He was right. They did work all the time. But in different ways.

When Ben was still a mysterious lump in Liv’s belly, she’d had many conversations with Eliot about equal parenting. She intended to raise a feminist, and that meant seeing his dad cleaning and his mom sitting at the head at the table. “He should know masculine and feminine is all on a spectrum,” Liv would say, rubbing her swollen belly while munching dill pickles. “My unborn child will respect women or I’ll have failed as a parent.”

“He will, sweetheart,” Eliot promised, helping himself to the last pickle. “And if we’re especially lucky, he’ll also be a genderfluid poet who wants to save the whales.”

“One can only hope.” Liv chuckled.

But somewhere along the way, Liv’s gender-neutral parenting dreams had been diluted. On top of running In Love in New York, she was the one doing the majority of the physical and emotional labor of raising her son: the one who packed the lunches and did his laundry and consoled him after a fall. Even progressive Brooklyn was behind the times: the parenting group she joined was called Prospect Heights Moms, the attendees of which complimented her as a career woman and, more upsettingly, a girl boss. “There’s no career men,” Liv would point out. “Or boy bosses.” The moms would all ooh, fascinated, and switch the topic to keto diets.

Things changed between her and Eliot after Ben was finally born, following their punishing four-year IVF journey. Benny was a fussy baby, mother-hungry, and cranky with Eliot. Their couple identity didn’t flow easily from “couple trying to conceive” to “couple being parents.” Eliot wasn’t a bad father, but he wasn’t an exceptionally good one. Liv suspected he liked being the baby of the relationship, vaguely resentful that Liv was no longer on tap to indulge his need for reassurance—that he was lovable, or a genius, or impressively virile. Liv had a new love. A tiny, unreliable god in the shape of a frog-faced baby she adored with swoony fierceness.

Liv’s desire to have a second child, a baby girl, pushed them further apart. Every time she brought it up, Eliot would look at her like she was absolutely mad. “You’re too old,” he’d say, or “I think we have our hands full with one.” Unequivocally no. And so her secret fantasies of teaching a girl how to be a woman, sharing all the important things her own mother did, or didn’t do, went unmet. Instead, she focused on Ben’s needs, and the needs of the business, a demanding and fulfilling entity that she also deeply loved.

Liv’s line of work involved negotiating tradition (what was expected) with change (what was truly desired). She met the life she was given with the ideals