I let myself envision a future where he meets Audrey and falls in love with her as much as I have. A collage of scenes flashes through my mind. Her first birthday party, her dad holding her for pictures. Dance recitals and a giant rock god in a moto jacket holding the hand of a little girl in a pink tutu. Sunday morning pancake breakfasts—all of us in pajamas.
But I snuff out all of those ideas as I keep on reading and watching tabloid ‘news’ videos online.
One perky, young reporter for a gossip site smiles through her reporting on the band.
“In other news, Brenner Reindhart was spotted with his old flame, Swedish supermodel Emma Johanssen, in Berlin earlier this week before the announcement of their new album. This, even after much speculation about the mysterious Sofia who broke his heart.
“I don’t know about you ladies, but if this Sofia was dumb enough to let Brenner Reindhart go, she deserves for him to rekindle the relationship with the stunning Emma Johanssen.”
Get it together, Sofia, I think to myself. He wrote those songs over a year ago and probably didn’t think about the ramifications of having to go on singing them for a long time. He isn’t thinking about me anymore. Clearly, he moved on, and he did so with Emma. Maybe it’s time for me to move on as well.
Then I get angry. How dare he use my name in his songs? Was he that mad at me to risk bringing me into the media’s insanity if my identity were to ever be revealed? I mean, even in “Late Night Legs,” he never mentioned Emma by name.
Now I have Audrey to think about and protect. If paparazzi start buzzing around me or my daughter, Brenner Reindhart had better be prepared for my wrath.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Sofia
When I take Addy out of the car, I grab the car seat base and hand it to David. “Thanks,” I say. We’d bumped into each other in the parking lot, and he’d offered to help. David also grabs the massive diaper bag and trails Addy and me—as we now call her, because her grandma had a hard time pronouncing ‘Audrey’—into the bar before opening hours.
“She’s getting big,” David says.
“She is,” I say and look down at Addy in the car seat as she says the second word-like thing she has learned: “Gah.” The first word she learned was ‘ma.’
“You turn around for one second, and she’s a little bit bigger when you look again.”
David unlocks the front door and holds it open for me. “Thanks. You’re my savior.”
He smiles wide.
“What brings you to our neck of the woods?” I ask him.
“Business. I have a meeting with Joe today to go over some numbers. And I wanted to see you.”
“Ah. I don’t know if he’s in yet,” I say, ignoring the last part of his answer.
“Sofia, are you ever going to let me take you out on a date?”
The truth is, David is persistent in a gentle way, and he is starting to wear me down. I haven’t seen or heard from Bren since he proposed. And it has been so damned long since I’ve been out that my collection of new sex toys is my only company.
“Maybe,” I say, and David’s big, hopeful eyes snap up to mine.
“Really?” he asks.
“When do you leave?”
“I don’t have a timeline.”
I chew the inside of my lip. There is really no better candidate. He already knows I have a baby and doesn’t seem to mind. I don’t envision much of a future with him, but a nice night out with some male attention sounds fantastic. “If I can get a sitter tomorrow, and the expectations are nothing but dinner and good company—”
“Of course,” he hastens to reassure me.
“Then maybe dinner tomorrow night?”
“I’ll take it,” David says with enthusiasm.
I take Addy out of the car seat, leaving it on the table where I’d set her. She reaches her arms out to David before he can leave for the back office. “Gah,” she says and starts giggling.