What a Girl Needs Read Free Page A

goes on, “I can’t leave town right now, but I can’t have you sitting alone in the house waiting for me to come home. I need for you to be happy.”
    I know I shouldn’t doubt his words, but he needs for me to be happy, so he’s propelling me out of town like a rock from a slingshot? “I’ve never made you feel like you had to entertain me, have I? I don’t expect for you to be my world.”
    “No, no. It’s not that.”
    “How did you afford this?”
    “My Dad gave me his frequent flyer miles.”
    His dad. So not only am I being sent away, but on someone else’s dime?
    I hold up the card he’s given me and try to decipher what he’s telling me. “So this gift is a trip by myself? For our anniversary?” I don’t care what marriage book you’re reading, that can’t be good.
    “I think, Ashley,” Kevin says in his sweetest southern drawl, “you should go home to the Bay Area for a visit. Figure out what will make you happy again, and then do what you must to make it happen when you return. I don’t want you to resent me or my work.”
    “I don’t resent you.” I resented the toilet brush. I may resent this weird “gift”—but I don’t resent him.
    “I’d like to keep it that way.” Kevin shakes his head. “I was selfish to get married when I knew what I was facing in this residency and then the fellowship.”
    The lump in my throat swells and my eyes sting. “So what you’re saying is that you wish you weren’t married? That’s a stellar anniversary gift.”
    “Not for a second. That’s what makes me feel so badly. I’d do it again in a hot minute, but there was a price to pay, Ashley, and you’re paying it and I’m feeling it. No real man lets his wife take the fall. It’s not lost on me that you’re taking the fall.”
    “So you’re sending me away? That’s your answer?”
    “I’m not putting this well, I’m—”
    The waiter enters the wine cellar, takes one look at me and my quivering lower lip, and makes a mad dash exit.
    “Brea knows you’re coming,” Kevin adds, as if I’ve won some kind of anniversary lottery.
    Brea’s my best friend. She has been for an eternity and she knows me like the back of her hand. Maybe better, because she has two boys under five, so I don’t think she actually ever gets to look at her own hand. She’s been so busy, I barely hear from her, so maybe Kevin is right. Maybe building back old friendships is the key to figuring out my future.
    “When do I leave?” I ask, as if I’m headed for the gallows. It’s one thing to win a vacation, it’s another when you get a lone ticket across the country for your two-year anniversary.
    “Wednesday. You’ll have tomorrow to pack and then you’ll be on your way. I have that big study going on and I’m not going to be home much anyway.” He says this like it was some kind of anomaly. He’s never home, but when he is, it’s worth all the trouble. Doesn’t he understand that? It’s like getting a guilt offering rather than an anniversary gift.
    I suddenly remember what I wanted to tell him about my future, and I don’t have to, because it’s as if he’s read my mind. It feels like breaking up with someone when you don’t want him or her to do it first so that you can maintain a shred of dignity.
    “Here, I thought we were going to discuss our future family.”
    Kevin gives a mild shrug. “Is that what you want to discuss?”
    I suddenly feel like I’m talking to a stranger. My throat goes dry. “Seems a moot point now.”
    When I first got married, I thought I wanted a family right away. Thirty-three is no Spring Chicken for having babies, no matter what Hollywood tries to tell us, but my ticking clock started to slow when I visited Kevin at work. Seeing all those preemies, so pink, delicate and the size of gerbils, bringing new life into this world didn’t seem as simple. A fear developed. It’s hard to take the miracle of life for granted, or believe that a healthy baby ever