After my early hair appointment, I put a hat on before Spencer picks me up. He ran some errands while I was in there.
He was supposed to go get the kids from Savannah and Derek, but they aren't in the back seat.
"I think you forgot something," I tell him, looking behind us at the empty back of the car.
Spencer laughs and shakes his head. "No, I just wanted one more night with just the two of us."
I raise an eyebrow at him. "Alright, but... last time. I miss them."
When we get home, I lock myself in the bathroom to do my makeup while Spencer works on a 'surprise' downstairs.
I don't know what it is, but I'm excited to find out. He wouldn't even let me help him with the groceries he got.
I start to get ready, having to style my hair in a slightly more messy way than the hairdresser did it.
With the area that was shaved being at an interesting length, I had to cut off all of my hair to get something normal-looking. What I ended up with was a layered, bowl cut with an undercut and pixie type of situation. My bangs are really short, hanging just above my eyebrows. The undercut is bleached and the rest is dyed with pastel colors— pink, aqua blue, yellow, mint green, and lavender.
When I get my makeup finished and pull on an older pink gingham dress that has a pretty heart-shaped twin cherry pattern on it, pairing it with my giant, heart-patterned pink cardigan, and sparkly pink boots that I haven't worn in forever.
I feel like myself again. Me— with shorter hair than I've ever had. But maybe the happiest I've ever been.
Sure, things have been rough. But I'm content. I'm happy with Spencer, and I'm figuring out the mom thing.
I sneak down the staircase, peeking around the corner and catching Spencer hanging up decorations. Streamers. There's more, I just can't see it.
Quietly, I head back up to our room to wait for him.
I sit down on our bed, reading through the news on my phone. I hear a bell jingle and look around.
Klaus! I haven't seen him since I got home.
I click my tongue and call his name, patting on the bed. Soon enough, he jumps onto the bed. There's a blue strip in his mouth. A ribbon?
"Hey, what do you have? What are you chewing on, buddy?" I scoop him up and put him in my lap, taking the strip from his mouth. It's not a ribbon, it's stretchy.
No, I know what this is.
It's a tourniquet.
Is Spencer using again?
I carefully move Klaus off of my lap after giving him a kiss, then move over to Spencer's side of the bed, getting on my knees in front of the nightstand to look through the drawer.
Nothing.
Alright, where else? Sock drawer? People always think that hiding things in their sock drawer is a smart move, but it really isn't.
I go to our dresser and go through his socks finding one in the back of the drawer with something in it. A tiny glass bottle.
I take it out of the sock to find that it's half-empty.
God, Spencer...
I don't even think about it before heading downstairs.
I'm sad for him, but I'm also fuming.
I find him in the dining area on a step ladder, hanging up a 'happy birthday' banner on the wall.
He grins when he sees me. "Wow! You look so beautiful, Al— wait—" He looks back up at the banner. "Babe, you were supposed to wait upstairs."
"What's this?" I ask, holding up the tourniquet and bottle for him to see.
"How did you—"
"Klaus was chewing on the blue thing!" I raise my voice a little bit, tears building up in my eyes. "How long have you been doing this?"
He steps off of the ladder and takes them out of my hand before setting them down on the table and taking my hands into his.
"It was only twice, the babies weren't here. I haven't touched it in a month, I promise you."
I stare up at him before yanking my hands out of his. "A month? You were doing it a month ago and you didn't tell me?"
A guilty expression takes over his face. "I didn't want to worry you. I just—"
"So, you only did it after I woke up?" I ask him, a little bit confused. "You couldn't just tell me that something was wrong?"
"Allie—"
"What else aren't you telling me, Spencer?" I raise my voice again to talk over him. "What else?"
He breaks eye contact and looks down at the floor.
"So, there's something else?" I scoff and shake my head at him. "Of course there is. So, tell me."
"Can we talk about this upsta—" He starts, but I'm quick to cut him off again.
"No, Spencer! Tell me!"
Tears spill down my cheeks as I stare back at him, waiting for an answer.
Spencer doesn't look up at me, but I can see tears rolling down his cheeks, too. "I... I cheated on you."
"What?" I croak out after a few seconds.
This has to be some sort of dream. Some... horrible reality that my mind cooked up because I'm still in that coma and about to finally just flatline.
He doesn't say anything, he doesn't even try to explain.
"Look me in the eyes and tell me what you just told me again," I tell him quietly, trying to keep all of my pain and anger contained.
It takes him a few seconds, but he meets my gaze. His brown eyes are bloodshot, his cheeks are wet with tears.
"I cheated on you." He says again as he cries. "Allie, I'm so sorry."
This isn't a dream. This is real.
"When? With who?" I cross my arms, feeling sick to my stomach.
"The nanny that I hired... the night before you woke up." He explains.
I roll my eyes and run my hands through my hair. "God! Of course!"
"You have to know how sorry I am, Allie. I was hurting and it was stupid! I... I thought you were never going to wake up!" He raises his voice back at me at the end. "I was decorating for Christmas and the thought of not being able to spend another holiday with you—"
"You gave up on me," I cut him off. "And it only took, what, five seconds after you did to fuck someone?"
"No—"
"Six years and you weren't over Maeve but fuck, it only took you five months to give up on your fiancée who was in a coma! Real nice, Spencer!"
Spencer is crying his eyes out, so am I. He steps closer to me and takes my hands. "Al—"
Again, I yank my hands away from him. "Don't touch me! You know, I thought something was off about you since I woke up. When I found that stupid, tacky barrette in the couch I thought for a split second that something was up, but I pushed that thought away," I wipe my tears with the sleeve of my cardigan. "I told myself, 'Spencer would never do that to me! Spencer is honest, he loves me.' And—"
He cuts me off before I can say anything else. "I do love you, Allie. I love you more than anything in the world. I've never loved someone the way that I love you."
"So what? You never loved them enough to fuck another person?" I ask quietly. "That's reassuring."
Spencer looks back at me in defeat. "That isn't... that doesn't—"
I let out a sigh and look down at my left hand, at the engagement ring he gave me over a year ago now.
"Please don't take it off," He begs. "Allie, please."
I'm afraid to do it, afraid to end things...
But this is how it has to be, I think.
When I reach to take it off, Spencer grabs my hands. "Please, Allie."
When I don't say anything or look up, I think it clicks for him that this is it. He releases my hands and instead wraps his arms around me. "I love you, I really do."
The thing is... I know that he does. I know that he loves me. Maybe it was just a mistake, a lapse in judgement because of his sadness. But I need to think things through. Outside of a relationship with him.
"We're the parents of those babies together. Nothing more," I slide the ring off the rest of the way after Spencer pulls out of his one-sided embrace. "Don't try to hug me, kiss me. We can move the extra bed into the office and I'll bring my desk into our room."
Spencer nods, wiping his cheek. "Okay. If that's what you want, I respect it."
I hold the ring out to him in the palm of my hand.
"That's yours. Keep it," He shakes his head.
It's now that I see something move out of the corner of my eye. Around the wall, someone was peeking in.
"Is someone here?" I ask Spencer.
"Everyone from the team— the old team," He says without looking up at me. "I was throwing you a surprise party to celebrate everything that you missed. Your birthday, our anniversary, my birthday, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas..."
I feel my heart sink. Yeah, I might be mad at him, but now his entire team is going to see him differently. I didn't mean to embarrass him like that.
"All of them are—"
"That's why I wanted to go upstairs," He's got tears in his eyes again.
I want to apologize, but I think this outburst of mine was justified. The only thing that makes me feel like I need to say that I'm sorry is my anxiety that gives me an overwhelming need to apologize for everything.
I'm not going to apologize.
"Why don't you have this get-together with your friends? I just want to be by myself."
When he nods, I walk away, running back up the stairs and to our room.
I lay down on the bed and take out my phone, clicking on the link to the dropbox that Penelope sent me last night.
The day before I woke up... December eighteenth?
I scrub through the footage of the bedroom, finding nothing. Then, the footage from the living room. Spencer and her decorate together until past midnight, taking me onto the footage from the nineteenth. Around two hours into the footage, I see them sitting on the couch. She turns his head and she kisses him. He doesn't pull away, he doesn't even hesitate or say anything. They just kiss for awhile and she starts to undo his tie, undo his shirt...
I watch the encounter several times over while I sob. Tears race down my cheeks and my entire body shakes.
I can't believe he did this to me. I seriously can't even wrap my head around it.
Once I stop watching, I shuffle Taylor Swift and play it over the bluetooth speaker on a low volume. Every happy song is skipped. I want to be sad, I want to sulk.
I fall asleep after some time and only wake up when I hear the door opening.
"Allie?" I hear Spencer ask. "Can I come in?"
I'm laying on my side, faced away from the door. I don't look back at him or even sit up. "Okay."
When he walks into my view and sits on the edge of the bed, I feel my stomach start to ache again.
I want him to lay down, hug me to his chest, tell me everything will be okay. At the same time I don't even want to be within a mile of him.
"Luke helped me move the bed into the office. Your desk is still in there, I can just bring it in here tomorrow after work." He says with a sigh. "Do you think you can take care of Joshua and Winter while I'm gone tomorrow?"
"If I can't, I'll just call a nanny and fuck her on the couch," I say quickly, instantly regretting it. That was too much. "I'm sorry, that—"
"It was justified," He cuts me off. "Don't apologize. Wait... did you say—"
I grab my phone from under the pillow and unlock it, opening the video back up. "I found the camera in the living room and asked Penelope about it. She sent me the link to the dropbox. It didn't take me long to find this after this morning." I offer him the phone. "Have you watched it? I have about a dozen times."
"I'd rather not," He says quietly, making me look up at him.
"I think that you should. Actually, let's watch it together—"
"Allie—"
I press play, listening to the groans and curses that I could probably recite after watching it as many times as I did.
"Six years after Maeve died you couldn't tell me that you loved me because of her. Six months after I went into a coma, though... you were so easily seduced by the nanny. That's—"
"Alexandria, enough," Spencer takes the phone from me and shuts the screen off. "Please, just... tell me where we go from here."
I stay silent, thinking it over for a few seconds before answering him.
"I don't know, Spencer. I wish I did. Maybe knowing would make all of this easier..."
I hear him sigh and look up as he runs both of his hands through his hair. "You meant it when you said that... we're not together?"
"We're roommates and parents," I say in response. "Not a couple. Not in a relationship."
"So you want to see other people?"
"No. I don't want to see anyone. I just want to focus on myself and on being a good mom to my kids."
Spencer nods and looks down at his lap before saying, "While we're talking can I ask you something?"
"Okay," I nod in response, sitting up to face him and pulling the sleeves of my cardigan over my hands and wrapping it tighter around me.
He's quiet for a few seconds. "Why did you lie and tell me that you got your bachelor's?"
Shit. He found out about that?
"You knew I was working toward it," I shrug. "You just didn't know how long and... I had finished all of the course requirements for it and... I just didn't want to make you wait for the marriage, the kids..." I shake my head. "I just wanted to give you the world, Spencer."
"Josh told me that... you never wanted kids. That you thought you wouldn't be a good mom."
Ah, so that's how he found out about my degree. Josh.
I wonder what else he told him.
I nod. "You knew that. We talked about it."
"But... did you even want to have these kids, Allie? And... please tell me the truth."
I let out a sigh and look him in the eyes. "Not at first, no. Then... when we were at that first ultrasound, I was so... in my head, thinking about everything that could go wrong, but you tucked my hair behind my ear and gave me this little smile," I tear up recalling that moment. Something so little changed my entire view on the situation. "And... I knew that I wanted this with you."
Spencer bites his lip. "You threw away a lot for me, Allie. You settled for less than you wanted out of life-- just to be with me."
"What do you mean?" I ask him.
"You had so much that you wanted to do before you met me. You didn't do any of it. You quit your band, you took a job mixing other people's music instead of making your own. Why would you push away the things that you were passionate about for me?"
I tilt my head at him. Shouldn't it be obvious? "Because I love you, you idiot." I shake my head at him. "I found something that I was more passionate about. You. I didn't push away my passions, I just put them on pause. I saw... a man that deserved so much and had been given so little. All that I wanted to do was make you happy, to love you..."
Spencer's eyes fill with tears once again. "But you weren't ready for any of this. I know that you weren't."
"If we'd waited until I was ready, we would have been waiting forever. When I'm nervous about things... I just have to jump in. I can't dip my toe to test the water because if it's cold, I won't go in at all. Do you know what I mean?"
With a nod, he wipes off his cheeks. "Do you think... do you think that you can ever give me another chance?"
"I don't know, Spencer. Do you think you deserve one?"
"No," Spencer shakes his head and meets my eyes. "I don't. Do you?"
I shake my head at him. "No."
I watch as he stands up from the bed. "Well, I... I'm gonna get some clothes from the closet and go to bed."
"Spencer," I say just as he turns to walk to the closet.
He stops and turns to me, even more sadness in his eyes. "Yeah?"
"I don't want you to think that... just because we aren't together it means that I don't care about you. If you need me, I'm always here for you to talk to."
"Ditto," He says sincerely before turning to head to the closet once again. He disappears into it for a few minutes before coming out with pajamas and clothes for tomorrow.
-
It took a while for Spencer and I to fall out of our old habits.
The very next morning, he went to kiss me goodbye before apologizing and saying that it was habitual. I'd flirt with him on occasion or reach for his hand.
We became friends, though. We're able to sit and talk, joke around. He tells me about his days, I tell him about mine.
I pretend that I don't know he sleeps with one of my cardigans the same way that he pretends that he doesn't know that I sleep with his Caltech shirt.
I don't ask him if he's seeing anyone, but I know that he's invited Elle over a few times over the past eight months. I've been up for a few 'mornings after' and found him walking her out. I think it's more of a walk of shame for him than it is for her. It was probably like that prior to Spencer and I getting together, too. I don't think he's much of a 'casual sex' person. He gets embarrassed about it, I believe.
I won't lie, my sex life has been... interesting. Over these past eight months, I think I've slept with more people than Spencer has in his entire life. Fourteen. Some women, some men...
After locking up the door following a quick, late-night Tinder hook-up, I've run into Spencer in the kitchen probably four or five times. Plus, I'm sure that I saw him peek in the door once. I don't doubt that he's stood outside of the door, listening. I'll even admit that I put a bit of a show on when I do think that he's listening.
I want him to be jealous. The way that I am after Elle leaves, especially when I pass his room and see toys left out on the floor. The ones that he never used on me, even though I wanted him to.
Outside of sexual encounters, I've gotten back into having friends. I got back into touch with my old bandmates Polly, Everett, and Martin. We get together twice a month to have mini jam sessions and write together. While it isn't anything that's serious, we've gotten a short EP written and we're working on recording it. On those two nights every month, the babies stay with Derek, Penelope, or another friend of Spencer and I. Those two nights off keep us both sane, I think. Spencer gets to do whatever he wants and I go have musical therapy sessions.
We celebrated Winter and Joshua's first birthday with the team, including JJ, who flew in for the occasion. The twins are wonderful and experiencing all of their milestones has been such a fun ride. The first steps, first words, the teething, the crawling...
Joshua will not say 'mama' but can and will say 'dada' every two seconds. Winter's first word was 'no'. While continuing to teach her 'mama' and 'dada', I'd jokingly say 'dada, no!' when Spencer did anything, which then led to her and Joshua laughing, which in turn led to them both shouting 'dada, no!' at Spencer and bursting into laughter. It really is the funniest thing in the world.
Spencer and I are making it. We're a good pair as friends. He comes to me to talk and get things off of his chest every once in a while. A lot of it has been surrounding his mom.
She hasn't been well, and she's completely forgotten him.
We go visit her every weekend and the visits are painful for me, so I can't imagine just how terrible it is for Spencer.
I may have lost my parents, but having a parent forget you completely seems worse somehow.
My birthday was this past weekend and Spencer presented me with a gift box including candles, a few clothing items, and a succulent in a pink, Brontosaurus-shaped, ceramic pot. I keep him on my vanity, giving the plant the name 'Walter' and the Brontosaurus the name 'Brent'. Brent the Brontosaurus.
Now, I'm getting ready for our first night off this month. I'm excited to continue recording. I've already dropped Winter and Joshua off with Penelope.
I'm sitting at my vanity, just finishing putting my makeup on, when my phone rings, flashing Spencer's name and contact photo.
"Hey, dada," I answer casually.
I hear a sniffle on his end before he speaks up. "Al-Allie?" His voice is croaky.
"Spencer? What's going on?" I ask him, getting up from my vanity and turning the volume up on my phone.
"I, um, I got a... I got call before I left work," Spencer begins to explain, obviously trying to level out his voice. "That my mom-- that she--" Before he can even finish the sentence, I hear him sob. "Allie, she... she's gone."
I can almost feel my heart snap in half. Tears build up in my eyes.
Fuck.
He really needs me right now. I'm gonna be there for him.
"Where are you, Spence?" I ask him, grabbing my purse and booking it down the stairs.
He quiets down, sniffling. "Everly Funeral Home, the one in Falls Church. I... I'm too scared to go in. Will you... can you come here?"
"I'm on my way, I'm locking up the door right now," I tell him as I turn the key and head to my car, getting in and putting my seatbelt on while telling him to stay on the line with me. "I'm on my way, Spence."
I hear his quiet sobs over the speaker system when my phone connects to the bluetooth system. He keeps saying that he can't believe it, that he doesn't know what to do, that she can't be gone.
It breaks my heart. He's coming apart at the seams.
"I'll be there soon, Spence," I say, hoping that it will offer some comfort.
I'll be there soon.