One True Theory of Love (32 page)

The stadium around Meg swirled and blurred; even Sandi for a moment wasn’t clearly visible. A pinpoint of light was on Phillip alone, the single lightbulb swinging in the interrogation room.

“You know you could tell me if you were.” Meg kept her voice even. “I might actually be okay with it. In fact, it would be important to me that you told me the truth.”

“I think your mother’s seeing someone,” he said. Sandi frowned at him.

“She is,” Meg confirmed. “She’s seeing a very decent thirty-two-year-old athlete. I’m asking about
you,
Dad. About you and Sandi.”

When her father stood, Meg’s heart quickened. If he turned, he’d see her. But he didn’t. He stretched and reached for Sandi’s hand. “It’s a lonely world, Magpie.”

“I know it is, Dad,” she said. “I’ve been alone for a long time myself. And I know that even though you were with Mom, you were alone, too. I understand your loneliness.”

“Dad?” Meg prompted.

“Sandi and I are very good friends,” he said. “And I think there’s a good chance we will date in the future. She’s the kind of woman I can see myself being happy with.”

Jonathan’s leaving her had been the most painful experience of Meg’s life, bar none. But watching her father smile at Sandi, thinking he was pulling a fast one on his daughter as she sat right behind him and watched him do it, ranked a very close second. Meg was fading. Evaporating. She gripped the edge of the bleacher, having no one anymore to keep her grounded.

As Ahmed had said, lying was a deal breaker.

“Is there anything else you should tell me?” Meg could hardly hear her own voice—that was how weak it came out. “Now’s the time, Dad.”

He sat back down next to Sandi. “Not that I can think of, Magpie. Were you able to get my baseball-card collection out of the house?”

The cocky son of a bitch had his arm back around Sandi. And it had been there for years, no matter what lie he was feeding Meg now.

“I think it’s time you stopped calling me
Magpie
,” she said. “I’m not a little kid anymore.”

As the silence on the other end of the line screamed at her, Meg slipped down the back steps to the ground level of the stadium. She couldn’t stand having her father in her sight, in her heart, in her life anymore.

Meg tossed into a trash can the envelope that contained the remainder of her father’s only legacy from a hobby he’d loved for a lifetime.

“The baseball cards are gone,” she said. “Every last one is gone.”

W
hen Meg arrived back home, the complex was readying itself for bed. Now that the sun had set, the pool’s underwater lights glowed, beckoning the swimmer who’d break the smooth surface. The lawn sprinklers spurted, and curtains were drawn, shielding those inside from the world that had gone dark on them. Occasional laugh tracks punctured the otherwise still night.

When Meg caught sight of Ahmed on her patio, some of the brittleness left her heart. He’d stayed behind to keep an eye on Henry and Violet, who were into their third hour of Monopoly.

Ahmed—her protector, her lion. It wasn’t true that she had no one anymore to keep her grounded. She had him. She rested her hand on his shoulder as she passed him to take a seat.

“I gave him the opportunity to come clean with me,” she said. “He chose not to.”

She tried to strike a match to light her vanilla-scented tabletop candle, but the flame sputtered and she had to strike a second one. That one never sparked. The third, however, flared cooperatively, and after she lit the candle, Meg turned to Ahmed to take in his luminescence. He was beautiful by candlelight. Beautiful by any light, actually.

He looked far away, though. His right elbow rested on the table, his index finger pressed against his lower lip, as if he were rubbing away dead skin or the remnants of a kiss.

“Ahmed?” His eyes were dark. Haunted, almost. “Ahmed?” she said again.

He studied her for a long moment. Then from his lap he pulled out the envelope from Jonathan, inside of which was the card and the check.

“Oh shit
.
” As Meg sank back in her chair, a meteor shot straight out of the sky and fell on her. Meg knew it would hurt like hell in the morning. He must have come across the envelope in her junk drawer, probably while in the midst of doing something nice for her son.

Ahmed’s expression was noncommittal. “You’ve got one chance to explain this.”

What could she say—
it’s not what you think?

Meg tried to take his hand.

“Don’t,” he said.

Meg picked up the book of matches, flipped the cover open, then tucked it closed again. Ahmed raised an eyebrow, and Meg knew he wasn’t going to make things easy for her. “Can I just say, first, that besides Henry, you are the most important person in my life?”

“And yet . . . ,” Ahmed said.

“And yet,” she agreed lamely.

When Ahmed’s eyes sank closed, Meg suspected what was going on behind them—a litany of their love, a parade of memories stored that were now resurfacing, unbidden, unwanted, seen in the new context of her betrayal. She knew, because she’d been there herself minutes before and a decade ago.

Fear coursed through her. “It’s not what you think.”

“You don’t know what I think,” he said.

“You think I lied,” she said. “I told you I wasn’t going to see him and then I saw him. But I swear, when I told you I wasn’t going to see him, I didn’t intend to. It sort of happened after the fact.”

“And you conveniently forgot to mention it?”

“Ask me anything, Ahmed,” she said desperately. “I’ll answer with complete honesty.”

When Ahmed held out the envelope, Meg accepted it, wishing Jonathan had never sent the check. She didn’t need the hundred thousand dollars. She needed Ahmed.

“What does he mean about the gum?” he asked.

Of all the rotten, stinking, crappy luck.

Meg could have kicked the ground. Words did not exist to explain about the gum.

“He sent me this money because it’s what he owes me in back child support. He was in town over Thanksgiving and I met him at a park.” Meg rushed her words. “My dad and I went to see a lawyer for advice on how to handle things, because I was concerned Jonathan might want visitation with Henry, and . . . well . . .” She stopped and gulped for air. “My father told me not to tell you, and I took his advice. I’m sorry. I regret it profusely.”

“Your father’s judgment’s not the greatest,” Ahmed said. “That much we know. But I asked about the gum.”

Men don’t want you to have a past,
Amy had said.
They want to believe your life started the moment you met them. And if you’re smart, you let them.

She and Jonathan had been dating for only a few weeks the first time he asked her for a piece of gum. They were in the stairwell at school, shoved behind a propped-open doorway that led to the second floor, stealing a few minutes of puppy love before going to their shared geometry class. That day she wore a short plaid skirt with knee-highs, stupidly fashionable, and chomped on her gum. He stepped close to her, pressing her backward with his very nearness. Once she was cornered, captured, he asked for a piece.

In Ahmed’s backyard, there had been that moment when Meg, after a moment of trepidation, stripped out of her red dress and stood naked before him. Naked in the moonlight, shivering with love. As Meg thought back now, that was their secret handshake, hers and Ahmed’s, being as bold as the moment called for. Being as bold in the moment as they could possibly be.

In the hallway of Catalina High, when Jonathan trapped her in the corner and asked for a piece of gum, she’d brought his mouth to hers and with her tongue pushed to him the piece of watermelon-flavored Bubble Yum she’d been chewing.

That’s so gross,
he’d said, laughing.

You didn’t ask for a
new
piece.
She’d been as coquettish as her fifteen-year-old virgin self could be.

Here,
he said.
Take it back.

Their first inside joke, their secret handshake—they’d passed used gum back and forth for years.

Meg couldn’t do it.

She couldn’t look Ahmed in his brokenhearted eyes and tell him about the gum. It was her memory, and it was private. She’d no sooner tell Ahmed about the gum than she’d tell Jonathan what had happened in Ahmed’s backyard that night.

“I’ve got no idea what possessed him to mention the gum,” she said smoothly. “It was a silly thing, and it meant nothing.”

“You’re such a liar.” Disgusted, Ahmed pushed back from the table. “You’re hoodwinked by this guy all over again. You can’t hide it. It’s all over your face. You’ve got this wistful yearning in your eyes for what I’m sure is your rosy-eyed view of a marriage that probably wasn’t all that great in the first place.”

“You weren’t there,” Meg said. “You don’t know what my marriage was like.”

“Do you, Meg?” Ahmed glared at her. “He was a jerk. He left you high and dry. He’s not all of a sudden a great guy just because he gave you the money that he’s owed you for ten years! A decent person would’ve provided for his son all along.”

“I know that,” Meg said.

“I don’t think you do. He’s trying to buy his way back into your life, and you don’t see it.”

“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to worry you,” she said.

“Well, you succeeded,” he said. “I skipped worry and went straight to anger. Your not telling me that you saw him is the same as flat-out lying about it. And as I said very clearly, lying’s a deal breaker for me. I won’t be in a relationship with someone I can’t trust.”

“You can trust me,” she begged. “I’m never going to see him again.”

“See him all you want.”

“Please, Ahmed,” she pleaded. “I thought we were in this forever! I thought you were going to ask me to marry you!”

Ahmed stood to leave. Meg stood, too. “I don’t even know who you are,” he said, “except a person who lies to me.”

“Jonathan and I had unfinished business.” She looked at him imploringly. “That’s all it was. I saw him at a park. We wished each other well. He made good on his child-support payments. He doesn’t want me back. He knows about you. The gum was just some stupid joke back from when we were in high school.
Please,
Ahmed.”

She wondered why she always felt compelled to say
please
. It never worked. Ahmed looked away from her, to the curtained kitchen window. Inside was a boy who loved him very much, a boy he’d seemed to be willing to accept as his own. He looked at her, pained. ”You say he doesn’t want you back, as if that’s supposed to matter. What if he did? What if he does the next time?”

“There’s not going to be a next time,” Meg said. “I promise.”

“Were you ever planning to tell me you saw him?” Ahmed asked. “Were you ever planning to tell me about this massive check he gave you?”

She knew that the truth—that she hadn’t exactly decided how or if to tell him—would not go over well.

“Jonathan’s not a threat to you,” she said. “Yes, I have complicated feelings where he’s concerned, but he’s my yesterday. Ahmed, you’re my forever.”

“One small problem, Meg,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“Besides the fact that what you just said is sappier than hell at a time when you need to be very plainspoken?”

Geez.
So much for wooing him back with words.

“Yes,” she said weakly. “Besides that.”

He leaned close to emphasize his point. “I don’t trust a word that comes out of your mouth anymore.”

“That’s not a small problem,” she said in a very small voice.

“You’re right,” Ahmed agreed. “But you know how it is. Sometimes it’s just easier to lie.”

As he walked off, Meg closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to watch him go, so she could pretend she wasn’t being left, yet again, by the man she loved.