“That was never part of the plan. This was your present. We focused so much on what we wanted to do to you, we forgot to involve ourselves.” He released me. “Let me wash your hair. After I take off these clothes.”
I let Neil pamper me and bring me back to a better frame of mind. After the shower, he massaged my back and arms to ward off soreness, though I would still be stiff the next day. He even rubbed my feet, though that was more of a treat for him than for me. The man was a total perv for feet.
“Shall we sleep here tonight?” He asked, coming to the bedroom with some of the fuzzy pajamas he kept in the aftercare room.
I didn’t want to sit up, as warm and snuggly as I was nestled in the thick duvet. Neil’s clothes would still be all wet, even though he’d hung them up in the bathroom and I wasn’t sure he’d be down with driving back to the house naked or getting the leather interior wet.
But I did want to be in our bed, snuggled up together in our place that was somehow more intimate than our playhouse.
“I think I’m going to pull the birthday girl card and be a pain in the ass,” I said, pushing myself up on my hands.
“Well, that will be a nice change of pace.” He smirked.
“Oh, shut up. I just want to get in bed with you and watch TV and drink all the water in the world.” I laughed and flopped back down. “And it’s a nice night. We could walk back, so you don’t have to get the seats wet.”
“The thought of putting those wet clothes back on chills me to my very marrow.” He sighed. “My brand new bone marrow.”
I raised an eyebrow. “It’s not brand new anymore.”
“Gently used,” he corrected himself. “But for you, I will risk consumption, rheumatic fever—“
“Oh, walk naked then,” I said with a laugh, and reluctantly hauled myself up.
I dressed in my pajamas and ran a comb through my hair and put it back in pigtail braids. There wasn’t much I could do about the mascara that still shadowed my eyes or the redness in my face from crying. Neil met me outside the doors, dressed miserably in his wet clothes. He turned the lights off from a master panel and set the alarm. He glanced over at me and did a double take.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Sophie.” He gestured at my hair with the hand that wasn’t holding his ruined shoes. “Are you trying to make me feel like—”
“Like a dirty old man?” I teased.
“That’s not funny.” For all Neil told me that I shouldn’t care about my age, he was incredibly sensitive about his, especially about our age gap.
“You have to stop doing that, you know.” I tried to slip my arm through his as we walked, but his wet, clammy shirt felt disgusting, even through my flannel. “I’m thirty now. I’m a real, live grown up.”
“That’s fair.”
I had a feeling he only agreed with me because it was my birthday.
We walked in silence for a short while, until the words came to me. “I wish I could love myself as much as you and El-Mudad love me.”
Neil took my hand and squeezed it. “I do, too.”
At that moment, gazing into the eyes of this man, with whom I’d survived a lifetime of tragedy and sorrow and come out stronger for it, I truly did.
Then Neil stumbled and cursed. “Oh, bloody...I’ve stubbed my fucking toe.”
I sputtered a laugh that I immediately covered with my hand. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t be...it’s not funny.”
He stopped and wriggled his feet into his wet shoes, grimacing. “Now they’ll be water-stained, two-sizes too small, and filled with a pint of my blood.”
That only made me laugh harder.
Then the wet shoes started making the most obscene squelching sound, and he couldn’t contain himself anymore, either. We laughed until we were both doubled over, gasping.
When I finally got myself under control, I said, “Even though today started out really shitty...This was a great birthday.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” he said, still out of breath. Just down the hill, the lights of the electric golf cart security used to drive around the compound winked into view. “Do you know what would make it even more special?”
“A ride on a golf cart?” I asked with a quirk of my lips.
“Just so.” Neil raised his arms and waved, calling, “Hello! Could we trouble you for a lift?”
I tilted my head back and looked up at the stars. I had two men who were madly in love with me. More friends and loved ones than I probably deserved.
Maybe thirty wouldn’t be such a terrible year, after all.
Chapter Three
A few weeks after my birthday, I got the best ever belated present.
“They found a kidney!” My half-sister, Molly, shouted over the phone the moment I said, “Hello?”
Seconds before, I’d been walking out of Hermès. Now, I stood in the door, my purchases on the ground beside me.
“Ma’am?” someone said behind me, snapping me back to reality. I picked up my shopping bag and hustled through the rest of the way out, into the crisp New York autumn.
“Sophie? Are you there?”
I juggled the phone to my other ear, my hands shaking. “Yes, I’m just stunned! Oh my god! When do you have the surgery?”
“Like, now,” she said excitedly. “I just got to Ann Arbor. They flew me here!”
Yeah, they better have. Whether it was strictly ethical or not, the annual donations I had promised the teaching hospital hadn’t come entirely without implied payback. I couldn’t legally buy my sister an organ, but I was absolutely able to purchase the best care possible for her.
“Let me call Neil, and we’ll get a flight plan filed—”
“Seriously, the surgery is like, in a few hours. Don’t bother to come all this way.” Those were our other sister, Susan’s, words coming out of Molly’s mouth.
“Okay. I just want you to know that I can be there if you want me to.” I knew that Susan felt I somehow spoiled Molly. I didn’t think Susan resented the fact that we had money, just the fact that I could give her sister things that she couldn’t. She and her mother had chosen not to seek me out for years, not even to tell me about my father’s death until Molly had needed a kidney.
A kidney I couldn’t give her, owing to my fun new diabetes diagnosis.
“You’ll come to see me afterward when it’s okay to have visitors?” she asked hopefully.
“Hell yes. And don’t forget, I told you that the second you were able to, you were going to come out to New York and visit me.” There was no way Sasha would deny her daughter the chance to go see Broadway shows and tourist spots in the name of sisterly bonding.
“Yes! I can’t wait!” She went suddenly quiet. “Thank you, Sophie.”
“You’re fully welcome.” A lump rose in my throat, and I tried to talk around it. “Have a good surgery, okay?”
“I’m gonna crush surgery,” she promised, laughing. We hung up the phone without “I love you” because we hadn’t quite gotten there yet, but tears of relief washed down my cheeks. I swiped them away and only then noticed how many annoyed people had to nudge their way around me as I stood motionless in the middle of the sidewalk.
I wanted to shout, “Sorry to inconvenience you, but my baby sister is going to live!”
I quickly called my driver and told her to meet me at the end of the block, and to notify the pilot of our helicopter to be ready to go in forty-five minutes. I couldn’t wait to tell Neil, but I wanted to do it in person.
In the meantime, I would go tell my sister-by-choice.
“Take me to Holli’s?” I asked our new driver, Andrea, over the intercom once I hopped inside.
“Yes, ma’am,” she said, and I bristled at being called “ma’am” for the second god damn time that day. But nothing could bring my mood down now.
Holli and Deja had recently moved into an artsy downtown loft on a street Deja described as “the last refuge of Gen Xers who don’t want to admit they’re aging.” Now that
Deja owned the magazine we’d created—and since the print version had taken off, a fucking miracle in the digital age—and Holli had started pulling in increasingly bigger paychecks for her acting and modeling work, they lived like the coolest moms on Earth. Their building’s doorman wore a sharp suit instead of some outdated uniform, and he communicated with residents via a headset. He already had his finger to his ear, pressing the button and mumbling as I got out of the car.
“Ms. Scaife,” he greeted me. I came over so often, he’d learned my name within a month. “Ms. Williams said to come up. Does your driver need an off-street space?”
“No, I’m not going to be here that long,” I said, striding toward the stairs. It was only the second floor up, so there was no reason to wait for an elevator. When I reached their story, I took the short hall on the right and knocked on the door.
“Guess what!” I said excitedly as the door opened, but my enthusiasm faded quickly when I saw the look on Deja’s face. Somewhere within the apartment, Piett howled. In her ripped Smiths t-shirt and faded gray leggings, Deja looked more disheveled than I’d ever seen her.
And she’d gone to Vegas with me.
“Oh my gosh, are you okay?” I asked, reaching out to take her upper arm as though she were some shell-shocked victim of a terrible crime.
“I’m just really tired.” She burst into tears.
“Is Holli home?” I asked, stepping in and closing the door behind me. “I’m so sorry, I should not have just dropped in on you like this.”
“It’s fine,” Deja sobbed.
I shrugged off my coat and hung it on the industrial hardware rack on the wall. “What can I help with?”
“Can you get a teething baby with an ear infection to stop screaming?” she asked, wiping her nose on the back of her hand.
Yeesh.
“Probably not,” I admitted. “But I do know that you need sleep if you’re going to deal with that particular situation. How much have you had lately?”
“None. Holli is in L.A. until Monday doing a judging spot on some body paint challenge show. I’ve been running the office from home as much as I can, between dealing with—” Deja gestured helplessly with one hand in the direction of the nursery, then dejectedly let it fall. “But it’s like I can’t lay zir down. Zie wants me to rock zir all day and night. I haven’t showered in two days—”
“Then go shower.” I rolled up my sleeves, though why I did that, I had no idea. Probably because it felt decisive. “I’ll get Piett for right now.”
“No—” she tried to protest, but I steamrolled over her again.
“And I’ll stay until the night nurse gets here,” I went on.
She rubbed her eyes. “We don’t have a night nurse anymore. We haven’t had for months now.”
“I’m getting you one, starting tonight.” I reached for my phone. “I’ve got Mariposa’s agency right here, just a call away. You can trust them. And don’t worry about the expense. It’s on me, for as long as you need help.”
Deja’s shoulders hunched. “Okay. But I’m going to feel terrible about it the whole time.”
“I would expect no less.” I went to the nursery where Piett lay in zir crib, thrashing and crying furiously. I scooped zir up, and zie quieted against my shoulder.
“Do your ears hurt?” I smelled the top of zir head. Not because I thought babies were terrific and their smell was super addictive. Because I always tried to figure out why people thought babies had a super addictive smell that instantly triggered a need to breed. I took another whiff.
Nope, still didn’t work on me.
I jiggled Piett a little to calm zir down. “You just need to be upright, huh? Olivia wanted to be, too.”
That had been the worst part of Olivia’s ear infections. She hadn’t wanted Mariposa, she’d wanted us, and she’d wanted us to keep her upright at all times. “It’s something about the pressure in your ears or something draining,” I explained as zie quieted.
When I got zir settled down a bit, I put Piett in zir bouncy seat and turned on the vibration. It kept zir as quiet as zie was willing to be while I contacted the nanny agency for emergency help. By the time Deja emerged from the bathroom, Piett was asleep, and help was on the way.
“Okay,” I said, tiptoeing through the open plan first floor to meet Deja near the dining room table. “Zie’s out. I’ve got a night nurse coming in. She’ll be here the whole week. If you need her longer—”
Deja burst into tears and fell into hugging me. I put my arms around her rail-thin body and tried to soothe her with the gentle shushing that had worked with Piett.
“I’m sorry,” Deja sobbed. “I can’t let you do that for me.”
“It clearly needs to be done.” I glanced around their usually immaculate apartment and noticed the piles of sorted laundry on the floor and the dirty dishes on the dining room table. “Are you guys...okay?”
“People’s houses get dirty, Sophie!” Deja snapped.
I chalked that up as totally forgivable. She was exhausted and overwhelmed, something I’d heard about new moms going through. I had no idea it could pop up months after the baby was born.
“Of course. And I’m not judging you. I’m just seeing that you’re tired, and it’s making things hard on you,” I tried to explain. “I want to help.”
“It’s really nothing that can be helped.” Deja wiped her eyes. “I just need to get used to things being like this for the rest of this kid’s life.”
“Yikes. I can identify with that.” I motioned to the table. “Sit down. I’m going to make you tea.”
“Neil’s English has rubbed off on you,” she said with a grim laugh.
“A lot of stuff has rubbed off on me lately,” I said over the sound of the water running. I trusted myself enough to use to their electric kettle, despite past mishaps. “Like knowing about the elevation trick to ear infections. Olivia had them all the time, and we had to hold her upright to soothe the pain. Then, my mom said to let her sleep in her car seat, and voila, we got to be actually horizontal for a full night.”
“You have a full-time nanny,” she reminded me a little bitterly.
“Fair. But we also have a responsibility to Olivia. And she wanted us.” I came back to the table and sat down. “I know I’m not her mom, and Neil isn’t her dad, but we do parent her. And we’re not so rich and out of touch that we think it’s cool to opt out of doing things for her. But there are times when you have to help yourself if you’re going to help a baby.”
Deja shook her head. “I feel like it shouldn’t be this hard. I wanted a baby. I was ready to have a baby. I was so excited. I just thought—”
“That it was going to be the way everyone makes it look?” I knew that feeling way too well. “Believe me, even though I was completely terrified when Olivia came to live with us, I still had this thought in the back of my mind that it really wasn’t going to be that hard. Like, people were just exaggerating how difficult it is to raise a child, and I was totally going to breeze through it.”
Some of that had been because I didn’t want to be a mother. Ever. I still didn’t, and I didn’t consider myself one to Olivia. I loved her with all my heart and would do everything to keep her safe and happy and cared for, but I would never forget that she was someone else’s daughter, someone I desperately wished was still with us.
But I knew what Deja meant. “There’s nothing wrong with having some help.”
“I know there isn’t,” she admitted. “But I don’t know that. Someone asked me about preschools last week on Facebook. Preschool? I can’t even get zir to sleep through the night. Can I just get over that first, please?”
My stomach turned. “Wait, we’re supposed to be thinking about preschools?”
Deja blinked at me, her eyes going alarmingly wide. “You should have started thinking about this like...a long time ago. She’s three, she should already be in preschool.”
“Wait, what?” Why hadn’t Neil mentioned this? He’d ha
d a child. He should have known.
“Yeah, people start fighting for spots in preschool when the baby is still gestating, I guess,” she explained, her eyes widening. “I mean, I’m sure you won’t have a problem. You have a lot of money.”
We did have, but so did a lot of people in New York. Some more than us.
Had we negligently destroyed Olivia’s future by not getting her into preschool on time?
“I can’t fucking believe this.” I dropped my head into my hands. “I was just feeling so accomplished in the ‘raising kids’ arena, and now I find this out.”
In the kitchen, the kettle clicked off.
Deja slowly stood. “You know what? I’m going to go get that.”
“No, no, I’m trying to help you out,” I protested, moving to get to my feet.
She held out a hand to stop me. “Look, I’m dealing with teething. You’re dealing with preschool. I’ll get the damn tea.”
So much for me being a helpful and supportive friend, I guessed.
* * * *
“Neil!” I shouted from the kitchen door. “Neil!”
I didn’t care that he might be too far away to hear me. I didn’t even know if he was home. I dropped my purse on the floor and raced through the house shouting because it just felt so damn good.
“Sophie?” he called back finally. He met me at the entrance to the den. “Is everything all right?”
“Everything is fucking great!” I shouted enthusiastically.
From near the television, a small voice called, “Bad word!”
“We agreed, I get one bad word per week,” I called past Neil.
“What are you shouting for? Is the intercom broken?” He put his hand on the small of my back and guided me into the vast, airy room. Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows behind the loft, the colors of the sky had drifted from warm to cool, and our landscape lighting had clicked on. I’d held onto the news all the way from Holli and Deja’s house back to Sagaponack. I couldn’t wait to share it now.
“Kidney!” I shouted with glee, bouncing on the balls of my feet in my Alexander Wang ankle boots. “She’s got a kidney!”
The Boyfriend Page 5