Melia-Irrevocable Journey (Sequel to Irrevocable Quest)

057:

057:

Melia had showered; Robert had gone down to his boat, a beautiful cruiser she could see now from her balcony window. Megan had left to go to Australia where she was working on an internship with a producer out of Sidney. This was Cousin Stevie's project while waiting for their project to come up. Her mother had checked her and proclaimed her ready for a day in bed or very close to it, and she'd felt a little relief. Taking care of the two babies was about all she felt she could handle today.

She turned around with a start as a throat cleared at her doorway.

One hand rose to her chest. "Hi, Robert!" She exclaimed as he came in, quirkily dressed, and began picking up books on her desk and examining them carefully.

"So, I was thinking." He said without preamble and she found she liked that about him. Melia went and sat in the rocker next to Abby's bed.

"Yeah?" She prompted with a smile, thinking that she really liked him, he was so funny, so goofy silly right now, dressed in deck shoes and striped shorts and an orange striped blouse over an orange and yellow t-shirt that read Kill Me Now and had a picture of a big red buck.

"Well, not too long ago you told me we would never be friends. I think the time has come to amend that statement. I think we have entered the friend zone." He still wouldn't look at her, and she watched him in silence, remembering that day in the mother's lounge when she'd told him, in regards to his very forward judgments on her state of mind in marrying Ryan, that they would never be friends.

"Okay. I'll admit that. We definitely have a friendship going." She agreed with a slight smile. No moment in time since then had even suggested that she meant those rude and cruel words.

He still wasn't looking at her, but had paced around the room to her nightstand and was handling the baby monitor that lay there not plugged in, that she had used for Hannah when she slept with Megan.

"I was a little too brash in telling you not to marry Ryan, but I did stand by as you did it." He informed her without batting an eye in her direction.

"Did you tell it to Ryan as well?" She swallowed, wondering if his and Ryan's friendship was such that they confided in each other.

He nodded, his very suave and trendy 'stache and goatee quirked at her, but his eyes remained fixed on the photograph she'd left there of Jared holding Hannah. He picked it up. Melia's eyes remained glued to that picture in his hands. She'd not meant for anyone to see it. That was so personal. She'd meant to put it inside the drawer there with other personal things.

He finally glanced over at her and dangled the picture from his fingers. "Hannah?"

She nodded, feeling uncomfortable with him looking at her most intimate things. He placed it back against her clock radio and turned. "How is your marriage with Ryan going?" That was point blank, and she remembered that very forthright ability he had... the one she had admired before.

"Okay." She said, knowing there was nothing else she could say. It wasn't okay, but he'd already seen the tabloids from two months ago, and they hadn't talked about it since then. She hadn't with Robert and no one had with Ryan.

"I don't believe you." He said calmly. "Ryan's been all over town, partying like the animal he is. I was thinking of asking you two to go camping with me and some friends in the next week or two."

"You just said he's a party animal, why would you want us to come with? It's like a set up for failure. If he's partying, which I don't know anything about, and I'm obviously not, then we will be at odds. It would wreck your little campout." Her heart was beating unhappily at the thought of Ryan out partying, mostly because that meant he had given up on the church. Or at the very least wasn't active anymore. Leaving his mission had been a bad thing for Ryan, maybe for both of them. She just couldn't see him in the same light as she once had. She wished they had waited until after the baby came to get married. That had been a pushed idea. But it had seemed right at the time, even with Robert's admonition to the contrary.