The First Move Read online

  Rey’s street was shutting down for the night. Lights in apartment windows were turning off and couples were laughing together as they struggled to get their keys in the locks of nearby buildings, their movements imprecise with alcohol and lust. He wanted to be a part of such small moments with Rey, but she wanted nothing to do with him.

  He’d left his headlights on. And his car unlocked. She’d blindsided him.

  He’d said he wouldn’t call her, and he’d also told her he kept his promises. But he’d seen the look on her face while she was dancing and heard the joy in her laugh after her turns. She wasn’t indifferent and she wasn’t playing hard to get; something else constrained Rey’s actions.

  Did he want to push her? Stupid question—of course he did. Rey had been his high school fantasy, but his current desire was for the flesh-and-blood woman who’d left him on the sidewalk. If he wanted her to trust him—a gift she obviously didn’t give easily—he couldn’t push her. He could engineer a couple “accidental” meetings on the street, but then he’d look like a stalker pretty quickly. Miles leaned his head against the headrest, his keys in the ignition, and contemplated the corner he’d walked himself into.

  Rey wrapped her emotions so tightly with Kevlar, it was as if she was afraid of her life slipping out of control. And judging by her conversation with her daughter, she acted out of fear first, then changed her mind and went for what she wanted. If he wanted her to trust him, maybe he had to trust her first.

  * * *

  RENIA SAT ON her couch, where earlier in the night Miles had waited for her to change after a childish show of...of what, she wasn’t sure. It wasn’t independence. She’d been trying to avoid making a decision, and being alone wasn’t the same as independence. Worse, she’d nearly denied herself a lovely night.

  She leaned forward and snatched her copy of Runner’s World from the coffee table. Maybe she should run a marathon this year. Not the Chicago marathon. That was in October, which didn’t leave her long enough to train and her family would want to watch. Maybe a spring marathon? She thumbed through the ads, looking for inspiration. All she found was an article on running with a partner.

  Who would want to run with a partner? Wasn’t the joy of running the solitude of the experience?

  Listen to yourself, Renia.

  The magazine hit her lap as she leaned back into the cushions. She was thinking of running a marathon in another town so her family couldn’t watch. She’d had a wonderful evening with a nice man who didn’t seem to care that she’d given up a baby. He taught you to dance and made you laugh. But when he drove her home, she’d told him she never wanted to see him again before he could say, “We’re here.”

  Have you ever gone to a birth mothers’ support group?

  Her neighbor turned on rap music and the beat pulsed through her apartment. The woman who lived in the unit next to her often listened to loud music at late hours. Renia would be mad, except she rarely slept through the night anyway. She had no reason to blame her neighbor for her own nights spent reading instead of sleeping.

  God, maybe she wasn’t as recovered from relinquishing her daughter as she thought she was.

  She got up and rifled through her purse for her phone. After a little searching, she found a birth mothers’ support group meeting Sunday afternoons at a church not far from her apartment. She could work tomorrow, and on Sunday, run in the morning, then go to the meeting. She wasn’t committing to anything—if it didn’t help, she didn’t have to go back.

  But what could it hurt? They couldn’t force her to confess her story to the group. Listening would be all that was required of her. And maybe it would help. Maybe the next time she had a memorable evening with a good-looking man, one she could imagine a life with, she wouldn’t run and hide.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  AMY CAME OVER, bursting with curiosity and bags of food. “I brought dumplings,” she said, as she pulled container after container out of plastic bags. “No sense in talking about men without pork wrapped in dough.”

  “I’m not hungry.” Compared to the earthquake of a phone call from her daughter, the support group had only been a tremor, but she still felt queasy. In a few days she’d had enough shaking for a lifetime.

  “Consider it a big snack.” Amy opened the fridge and pulled out two pops. “With drinks. You will tell me all about the man Patty saw you with at Nacional 27, and I will tell you about my awful date.”

  “Can we talk about your date first?”

  “I knew you were hiding something big. I should be insulted you didn’t tell me, only I really want to know what it is.”

  “It’s nothing.” Keeping her secrets had become such a habit Renia easily pretended she didn’t have any when asked by her best friend.

  I had to learn to have faith in the people I choose to let into my life, a woman in the support group had said. I chose them for a reason. If they were going to punish me, I wanted to know so I could get them out of my life. If they were going to love me anyway, I decided I wanted to know sooner, rather than later.

  She would tell Amy about her daughter, and about Miles, but only after she’d eaten and the sensation of being full dulled her thought process.

  “Liar—” Amy brought the dumplings over to the table while Renia got out soy sauce and sriracha for dipping “—but I’ll go first.”

  They sat and opened the containers of steaming Chinese food.

  “Can you tell me why I bother going out on dates?” Amy was waving her chopsticks and Renia had to dodge the dumpling clinging to the end.

  “You like sex and want to have it again?”

  “Well, yes, but why do I put my picture on those online dating sites?” Renia didn’t answer. Amy didn’t need an answer, just an audience. “Men don’t even look at the damn things. They see enough to know I’m Asian and are then disappointed when they meet me in real life.”

  Renia just nodded as she hunted through the containers for some bok choy. Amy always brought over vegetables with dumplings.

  “This guy I went out with last night, he took one look at my boobs and said, ‘You’re not Chinese.’” Amy was voluptuous, rather than svelte. “‘You should’ve listed on your profile that you’re half, so I didn’t waste my time.’”

  “Ouch.” Renia winced.

  Amy didn’t even hear her. “I said, ‘I’m half, all right. Half-done with my drink and fully done with this date.’ And then I left. I don’t know why I didn’t dump that drink on his head. I should’ve.” She plopped a dumpling in her mouth and chewed. “You’d think the men would be happy. They get black hair, almond-shaped eyes and boobs. It’s like the best of both worlds. I’m glad I didn’t have to waste a babysitter on that man.”

  “Maybe you should advertise that you aren’t interested in men with an Asian fetish.”

  “Seems unfair. You don’t have to tell people you’re not a walking, talking Polack joke. Why should I have to tell people that I’m not a walking, talking fetish?”

  “Maybe it’s not the walking fetish that’s the problem, but the talking fetish?”

  They met each other’s eyes and burst into laughter.

  “Seriously,” Amy said, “what is it with men and these fantasies they have? Why can’t they imagine real women when they’re spending quality time in the shower?”

  “Do you imagine real men?”

  Amy snorted. “Not any of the men I’ve met recently,” she said, sending
them into another fit of giggles. “Speaking of men, who was the man at Nacional 27?”

  “That was Miles.”

  “You’re dating a man named Miles?”

  “We’re not dating.”

  “Sleeping with?”

  “Would you hush for a moment and I’ll tell you the story.”

  Renia told the story—the whole story, including the pregnancy at sixteen and hanging up on her daughter’s phone call. Once she started talking, she couldn’t seem to stop.

  Amy first stopped eating, then she put down her chopsticks. Finally, she folded her arms on the table and leaned in. “Aren’t you clever, sneaking around my back at the studio. I have two questions. One, why didn’t you tell me any of this before and, two, how are you not going absolutely nuts right now?”

  “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t tell anyone. No one outside of my family knew. It, my daughter, didn’t start out as a secret, but once she was, once I realized no one but my family and her father knew, she became a secret. And, well, you don’t tell people secrets because secrets are shameful. Truthfully, I’m not sure what I would have done if Miles hadn’t been there when she called.”

  There. She’d said it. If Miles hadn’t been there when her daughter called, and Renia hung up on her, would she have added that shame to her pile of secrets to take to her grave? Just cried and panicked, but not done anything about it? The hopeful part of her said, Of course you would have tracked her down, while the more realistic part of her said, Most people are cowardly most of the time.

  If she hadn’t made any effort to find her daughter after that phone call, she would never have been able to look at herself in the mirror again. Not only had Miles helped her create a strategy for finding her lost daughter, but his presence also forced her not to pretend her daughter hadn’t called. Or that she didn’t exist. No matter what else happened between her and her daughter, or her and Miles, he stood between her and self-disgust.

  For that, she would always be grateful.

  “Okay. I get that. I mean, I don’t actually get it—I’m a black hole for other people’s secrets, but a meteor shower bursting with my own—but I get, maybe, why you didn’t tell.” Amy had recovered herself and picked up her chopsticks again. “Don’t think I’ve forgiven you for not telling me, though. That will take some time...like until we’re done with dinner, at least.”

  “I’ll be too busy eating to hold my breath.”

  “That doesn’t answer the second question. Why are you not insane right now?” Amy recapped Renia’s past week. “And you’re just sitting here eating dumplings and cracking jokes like it’s nothing.”

  “You didn’t miss any of the salient points.”

  Amy sighed and pointedly stuck a dumpling in her mouth, adding extra effort to her chew, in case Renia didn’t know she shouldn’t avoid the question.

  “I’m so close to going crazy, thinking about it nearly pushes me over the edge. When she first called—God, I don’t even know her name—it was like I was looking through a fisheye lens. All I could see was the oversized, gaping black hole that was my missing daughter. Miles started knocking the roundness out of the image and letting me see the whole scene. He helped me see the possibilities and realize that my daughter wasn’t lost forever.”

  If she closed her eyes for too long, Renia’s field of view shrank again. The possibilities contracted and blurred in the periphery of her vision, overemphasizing the mistakes she had made that led to hanging up on her daughter.

  She tried not to blink.

  “So long as I’m thinking about those possibilities, if I keep my eye on the golden ticket, I can keep myself sane. I have a plan. I may be in a holding position right now, but I’m not stagnant. I’m just waiting. When I do find her, and I know now that I will, I don’t want to be to be a broken shell of myself. I want to be me.”

  “You with a daughter.”

  “I’ve always been me with a daughter. I’m just now me admitting I have a daughter.”

  Her life was a twelve-step program. Again.

  Step one, admit you have daughter. Step two... Miles had said something about forgiveness that she was ignoring so she could concentrate on enjoying step one.

  “And the man?”

  “What man?” Renia asked, knowing full well who Amy meant.

  “Don’t ‘what man’ me. We’ve been friends long enough for you to know not to confuse my talking with not listening. Or noticing. You have a shell around you. You’ve had it for so long I don’t even think you notice it anymore. And the crack isn’t just that you’ve admitted to having a daughter.” Amy emphasized her point with bok choy waggling between her chopsticks. “You let a man get close to you.”

  Only recently, Tilly had accused Renia of only dating men she could push around. Now Amy was accusing her of not letting men get close. “Unfair.”

  Amy raised an eyebrow. “No, unfair is some hot guy coming out of your past—did I mention hot, because that’s part of what makes this unfair—and asking you out on a date when I’m stuck with men who are disappointed because I have boobs and hips. You not letting men get close to you is truth.”

  Renia’s only response was a loud huff. Tilly had been right a month ago and Amy was right now. Which didn’t mean Miles was getting any closer to her than he already was. He knew about her daughter, had helped create a plan to find her daughter and had taken her out to dinner. And that was the end. There was no more to the story.

  “Miles doesn’t fit into that,” she said, and then started at the sound of the words coming out of her mouth.

  Amy just laughed. “Always perfectly calm Renia is disturbed enough to say things she doesn’t mean. You’re probably telling yourself it’s just the news about your daughter that’s shaken you up, but I know it’s not true.” Renia opened her mouth to interrupt but Amy cut her off. “That man has something to do with it, too.”

  “Until you have, and relinquish, a child, you can’t know what it’s like to be in my shoes right now. What shakes me and what doesn’t.” She hadn’t known how much hearing her daughter’s voice would unbalance her until she’d hung up the phone.

  Amy’s cheery face sobered immediately. “No, you’re right. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have the daughter I’ve kept secret from the world call me on the phone. It’s probably why I’m concentrating so much on Miles. I’d like to be able to imagine a hot man from my past coming into my life someday. But on a scale of important things happening to you, your daughter is ten. Miles is, well, maybe a five.”

  I’d give him an eight. A horrifying thought, which at least she didn’t say out loud.

  “But you’re reacting to your week like some kind of supernormal Renia, countering a big stress in your life with a calm that could make it snow in the Gobi. Still calm, but with an icy snap about you. So maybe I’ll give Miles a little higher of a number.”

  Renia just raised her eyebrows at her friend.

  “I’ll shut up now.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “No, I do. I have to pick up Lily from her dad’s. You called saying you needed to talk to me, and you look more relaxed now.”

  “I feel better.” She did. Not great, but better. She’d been honest with her best friend, who hadn’t walked away with disgust or said something hurtful. She’d had a little faith in Amy and had been rewarded for it. “I have a plan. If I can’t hold on to my daughter, I can hold on to that plan.”

  “I want
to know everything. No more of this secrets stuff. Everything.”

  “Go get your daughter.”

  Amy left and Renia was stuck with the mess from their dumpling dinner. Since she was also stuck with the mess of her life, the soy sauce drips on her table didn’t seem so bad.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “MOM WANTS to talk with you,” Sarah shouted up the stairs.

  Miles had no idea what his ex-wife could have to say to him that was so important she interrupted her honeymoon, but he picked up the phone anyway. “How’s Belize?”

  “Raining.” Cathy didn’t sound like her honeymoon was the magical getaway she’d hoped it would be. They had moved past the contentious period of their divorce, so he didn’t point out that August was the rainy season in Central America and she really shouldn’t have been surprised. “Sarah said she wasn’t home the last afternoon I called because you were out getting coffee. You know I don’t like her to have that much coffee.”

  Sarah needed to learn to keep her mouth shut if she wanted her father to spoil her with treats her mother didn’t allow her to have. Cathy needed to realize Sarah was sixteen and coffee was hardly a gateway drug. “We ran into your wedding photographer up at the Botanic Gardens. Sarah was interested in photography, so we bought Rey some coffee.”

  But Cathy wouldn’t be distracted. “What else are you doing so Sarah doesn’t want to come live with me and Richard?”

  Ah, they were back to worrying who Sarah loved best again. “You mean besides the Porsche convertible I bought her?”

  “Don’t be flippant. You know what I mean.”

  Miles swallowed his sigh. He didn’t want to get into a fight with Cathy. Not just because she was on her honeymoon, but they were divorced and pretty amicably, too. “If you want to pick a fight, you have a new husband.”