Happy Birthday: A Novel

Mike nodded, looking pensive. “I think so. I want to be,” although it seemed scary to him too, and watching April in agony would be upsetting. She didn’t talk about it, but he knew that as the time grew closer, she was as worried as he was. The logistics of it looked damn near impossible to him, and to her too.

They talked about their trip to Italy as April cooked him dinner. She whipped up a primavera pasta from things he had in his refrigerator and a frisée salad with bacon and poached eggs. By the time they went to bed that night, they had agreed on Florence, Siena, Venice, Rome, Bologna, and Arezzo, where April knew a restaurant she insisted they couldn’t miss. They agreed to put off Paris for another trip, since everything was closed in August. And as they piled into bed, after she took another shower to get the smell of smoke off her, she put her arms around him and thanked him again for the great review. He was relieved that he had done it. He had wanted to for a long time, as a gift to her. And this seemed like the right time.

“Larry thinks I should look into opening a second restaurant now,” she said as he turned off the light and she yawned, and Mike looked at her with horror.

“One woman, one restaurant, and one baby are all I can handle right now,” he said honestly, and that was already a lot for him. He had come a long way in the past four months, farther than he ever thought he could. “Could we settle for that for the moment?” She nodded, smiling at him, grateful for all they had. And she wasn’t ready to open a second restaurant either. She had enough to do rebuilding the one she had.

“Do you think we’ll ever have more children?” she asked, as she lay in bed next to him. She couldn’t imagine how Ellen managed three, and she had been an only child, but she liked the relationship between her two half-sisters, and sometimes envied them that.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “Let’s get this one out first.” It seemed like a big project to him. He put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close to him. She was a woman who climbed mountains and was willing to conquer the world. Mike was a lot more easily daunted, but he was following her example and learning a lot from her. As he held her, he could feel the baby kick him, hard. It was difficult to believe that a month from now, they’d be parents. He was excited by the prospect, but if he thought about it too much, it still scared him to death. April was a lot calmer about it. And as he held her in his arms, thinking of all that lay ahead for them, he drifted off to sleep, and April looked at him and smiled. As it turned out, their crazy one-night stand had turned out to be a very good thing.

Chapter 19

After the initial shock of the fire at April’s restaurant, and being reassured that they weren’t needed at home, Jack and Valerie had a fantastic time in Paris. They both loved staying at the Ritz and had stayed there before. They enjoyed the same restaurants, although Valerie introduced him to some new ones, and April told them about others that were intimate and unknown. Paparazzi took their photographs occasionally as they went in and out of the hotel. Neither of them was major news in Europe, but they were both well-known. And they loved being with each other.

Jack was astonishingly generous with her, and bought her a gold bracelet, and a fur jacket she saw and fell in love with. He surprised her with it at the hotel, after saying he had to go out and get some air. Life with him was a constant series of thoughtful, loving gestures, and Valerie was discovering a side of herself she had never known existed. For once in her life, she wasn’t thinking about work, but only her man.

They played “what if” games that Jack invented sometimes at dinner. If the network asked her to choose between him and her job, just how much did she love him, and what would she do?

“That’s easy,” she teased him. “I’d keep my show, and meet you on the sly in cheap motels in New Jersey.” And what if he had to give up sportscasting for her, or his place in the Hall of Fame, would he do it?

“Sportscasting, yes. Hall of Fame, not so easy. I worked my ass off to be in it in the first place,” he said sensibly. And there were times when they both talked seriously about what they wanted to do about their jobs as they got older. They were in an industry that prized youth.

“Barbara Walters has always been my role model,” Valerie said to him. “She has stayed on top for her entire career, and never slipped for a minute. She had to compete with men, her peers, younger women, and she’s still the best and the biggest in the business, and what’s more I really like her.”