Wooing Cadie McCaffrey

by Bethany Turner

  I felt like I was seventeen again, walking into the house after Layton Forrester spent the entire evening dancing with Jacie Anderson—despite the fact that he was my date. And from the look on my dad’s face, I think he felt like I was seventeen again too.

  “Are you up for this, Daddy?” I asked, pulling my hand away and wiping my eyes on the cloth napkin that had been resting on my lap. “Because if you would rather I talk to Mom about it, we can just sit here and discuss other things, and I won’t be offended in the least.”

  He exhaled slowly. “Honestly, it makes me a little sad that you have to ask me that.”

  “It’s not a bad thing. At all! I just know that it upsets you when I cry.”

  “Of course it upsets me when you cry, Cadie. Because you’re hurting, and I usually don’t know how to fix it.” He scooted his chair closer, rested his elbows on the table, and placed his chin on his interlaced fingers. “But it is one of my greatest privileges to be the one you cry to.”

  I smiled at him as tears rolled down my cheeks. So many people had benefited from his genuine concern and attention through the years. My mother had always been a queen in his eyes, the members of the church were all like family to him, despite the fact that there were far too many of them for him to know all their names, and even Milo probably felt as if he’d made an authentic, soul-level connection with him. But I was his little girl. His only one. I knew there was a section of real estate in his heart reserved only for me.

  “Will and I broke up,” I said softly, and then I picked up my fork and took a bite of mesclun salad. Ignoring all of my good breeding, I continued with my mouth full of greens. “Sunday. At least, that’s when it officially ended. In many ways I really think it had been over for a long time. I know how much you like Will, Daddy. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, my sweet girl. I hope you don’t actually believe that you owe me an apology. All I want is what’s best for you. You know that, right? If Will Whitaker isn’t what’s best for you, then good riddance!”

  He took a bite of his caviar and I couldn’t resist laughing at the look of indifference he had plastered on his face.

  “Good riddance, huh?”

  “Yes. Good riddance.”

  “Now you don’t have anyone to talk about sports with. Or to take to ball games. And didn’t you guys actually play doubles tennis together for a while?”

  “Yes, but that was a disaster. I just used him for his serve. Once the ball was in the air, he was useless. He was much more likely to trip over his own feet than score a point.” He sighed. “And as for talking sports and going to games, I’m really not too worried about it. I have you and your mother, so who else could I possibly need?”

  I pulled the crisp linen napkin up to my face again, this time to cover my mouth as I laughed. The thought of Nessa McCaffrey trying to carry on a conversation about athletics was nearly enough to make me spit out my mustard greens. And my father had long ago discovered that there was absolutely no benefit derived from his daughter’s cool job. The coolness was wasted on me.

  “So, let’s have it,” he continued, setting down his mother-of-pearl caviar spoon. “Tell me what happened.”

  I shrugged my shoulders and raised my hands slightly in the air. “I’m not sure I could tell you. I’m not sure I know, really. I just know it had been a really, really long time coming.”

  “How long?”

  “A year, maybe.”

  His eyes grew wider. “A year? You’ve been unhappy for a year?”

  I shook my head. No matter how true the “long time coming” statement was, I knew that going that far wasn’t quite fair.

  “I don’t mean that I’ve been continually unhappy, but it’s probably been about a year since I first began worrying it wasn’t going to work out.”

  He studied me for a moment before picking up his spoon again and elegantly spreading caviar on a cracker. “What was the final straw?”

  There it was. I knew that I could easily answer his question in a hundred different ways that wouldn’t require me to say the words, “I thought he was going to propose and we had sex, but actually he was just planning to invite me to the Poconos.”

  Nope. I just couldn’t imagine saying those words to Oliver McCaffrey, the reverend, and I certainly couldn’t imagine saying them to Oliver McCaffrey, my dad. However, I had imagined saying them to my mother, and in so many ways that was infinitely more horrifying. Maybe I’d lucked out by my dad being the one to show up at Le Bernardin. Maybe the absolute best thing I could do would be to confess all and let him break the news to my mom. Was it the coward’s way out? Sure. Did that bother me? Not so much.

  Milo cleared our plates away and, seconds later, placed our second courses in front of us. My dad took a bite of his crab-filled calamari a la plancha and I began fiddling with my red snapper.

  Seemingly sensing my hesitation, my dad broke the silence. “I know that whatever happened, it’s not like when you fell off your bike and all it took was a bandage and a scoop of ice cream to make you forget it had ever happened,” my dad said softly, never taking his eyes off of his plate. “You can tell me if you want, or not tell me if you want. If there’s a way I can help, you know I want to.” He finally met my eyes and smiled. “Ice cream is always on the table, of course.”

  “Thanks, Daddy,” I replied, returning his smile. “All that really matters, I guess, is that I just couldn’t see the point of staying in a relationship that was heading nowhere.” I sat up straighter in my chair, increasingly confident in the only version of the truth my dad needed to hear. “The last year was so frustrating. There were so many times I was sure Will was going to propose, and he never did. And each time he didn’t, I was left wondering why he wasn’t as in love with me as I was with him.”

  He nodded, and I saw a slight shift in him. I recognized the appearance of the protective defender, who undoubtedly wanted to rake Will over the coals for not loving me enough. As if things were still as simple as when he wrote a note to get me excused from gym class.

  “And you wanted to marry him?”

  I shrugged—such an indication of indifference and nonchalance, and not at all reflective of my years of absolute certainty that my name would someday be Cadie Whitaker.

  “Cadie, whatever happened between the two of you, I am absolutely positive that Will not loving you couldn’t have been the problem. Trust me. I saw how he looked at you and heard how he talked about you. How he talked to you. I know that he was committed to—”

  I placed my hand on his to stop him and then shook my head and lowered my eyes. “Don’t do that. Please. I know he loved me. Loves me, probably. That’s not the point. The point is he didn’t—doesn’t—love me enough.”

  My dad began studying me again. “You told your mother you couldn’t see yourself spending your life with him.”

  “I can’t. Not anymore.”

  Exquisite, expensive, delicious red snapper with spiced tomatillo nage had never before been subjected to the mistreatment it was receiving from my fork. I poked and prodded and did everything but eat it.

  Suddenly I didn’t feel as if any part of the story could be told without telling the rest of it. How could I explain that he had asked me to marry him but that I had turned him down without also explaining that it took him grasping at straws to try and save our relationship for him to finally take a step toward marriage in the first place?

  “It’ll be fine,” I said, finally diving into my fish. “Work will probably be a little awkward for a while, but we’ll move past it.”

  “You can always come work for us,” he countered with a smirk.

  I simultaneously laughed and shuddered at the thought. “I’m sure that would go well . . .”

  He swallowed another bite of calamari and set down his fork. As he did, he relaxed to the back of his chair and chuckled. “It would go better than you think. We have the studio right there in Syosset now—”

  “Which means I would have to commute fr
om Manhattan every day? I don’t think so.”

  “Or you could just move to Syosset.”

  I had just begun sipping my iced tea, and in response to that fabulous idea, I began sputtering and ever-so-slightly choking on the beverage. And that was nothing compared to how my mind was choking on the thought.

  “Okay, okay,” my dad said in response. “Maybe not. But there are a lot of great places on Long Island—”

  “Daddy! No. I love the city. I have no intention of ever leaving Manhattan, and if I do, I’m certainly not ever going back to Long Island. Nothing personal. I just can’t move backward, you know?”

  “Fair enough. I’m serious about the job, though.”

  “I know you are, and I’m grateful.” I sighed and shook my head at the thought—not only the thought of working for my parents, or even the thought of being back in Oyster Bay. No, I shook my head at the thought of admitting defeat and leaving a job that I loved, all because of a boy. “It really will be fine. Like I said, it will just be awkward for a while. But the truth of the matter is I was there long before Will was, so if for some reason we reach a point where it’s too difficult to work together, I don’t see any reason why I should be the one to go anywhere.”

  “Good for you.” He nodded with a proud smile. “You’re absolutely right. You are established and, frankly, indispensable.”

  “That’s right!” I concurred. Whether I truly believed it or not, my confidence was in desperate need of the boost.

  “He’s only been there, what? Four years? I doubt they even know Will Whitaker’s name.” He shrugged in response to my cocked eyebrow. In light of the first part of our conversation, he had obviously overreached. “Well, I guarantee ASN knows how lucky they are to have you working there.”

  Milo reappeared to refill our drinks and remove our second course dishes, but before he could do any or all of that, he froze and gasped. In a very heavy French accent, he asked, “Mademoiselle, je vous demande pardon. You work for American Sports Network?”

  It was very rare that I got to encounter a sports-obsessed fan, since I was not someone who would ever be recognized. Oh sure, in the old days when Darby and I used to go out to dinner with The Daily Dribble crew on Thursdays, we were in the mix of it all. But that was long ago, before we all got too busy and The Daily Dribble team grew too large. The timing of Milo’s starstruck recognition couldn’t have been better—at least for my ego’s sake.

  My dad seemed to think so too. A smile overtook his face as he gestured at Milo and then sat back in his chair with his arms crossed in a manner that clearly communicated, “See? Told you.”

  I smiled at my dad and then up at our waiter. “Yes, I do. I’ve been there about ten years.”

  The excitement on Milo’s face increased. “I am such a big fanatic of the American Sports Network and all of the American sports!” He looked around him to see who was close enough to call over. After all, Le Bernardin is a classy establishment and not the type where you shout across the dining hall, but he did the best he could, considering where he was. He whispered in French to a passing waiter, whose eyes and attention were instantly on me. The conversation continued quietly, in a language I hadn’t studied since eighth grade.

  My eyes darted back to my dad, who was as amused by it all as I was.

  “If I may be so bold as to ask, what do you do at ASN?” the second waiter asked. “Forgive me if I am being too forward.”

  “No, not at all,” I replied. “My job is rather boring, I’m afraid. I oversee the accounting department—”

  “For all of the American Sports Network?” Milo asked eagerly.

  I know I had just gotten out of a long-term relationship, and I was so far away from being interested in dating, but I was keenly aware that each time my dreamy French waiter laboriously referred to ASN as the American Sports Network, he got cuter and cuter.

  “Not everything, no, but a lot of it. All of the prime-time programming.” I chuckled and shook my head. “See? Pretty boring.”

  “No, Mademoiselle! Not at all!” Milo argued. “You probably do not work directly with people who we see on the screen, no?”

  “I work with quite a few of them, actually.” Here we go. Time to name-drop and blow his mind. “Do you know who Ellis Haywood is? I work pretty closely with him sometimes. And Kevin Lamont?”

  They both gasped in unison. It was official. I was a superstar.

  “He’s on TV, of course,” I continued, “but he’s also the head of prime-time programming—”

  “And you work in prime-time programming!”

  I nodded. “He’s my boss.”

  “Quelle chance!” Milo said, nearly tingling with excitement. “The Daily Dribble is the best program on the American Sports Network!”

  Cuter and cuter and cuter and cuter . . .

  “It’s a great program, isn’t it?” my dad interjected.

  The Daily Dribble was just one of the many programs my office worked on, of course, but it was the one that would always have a special place in my heart. I’d been part of the small team dedicated to getting the show up and running in the beginning, and Kevin and I, along with a handful of others, owed our current status with the network at least in part to the show’s success. I imagined it would always be gratifying to be reminded of that success.

  Milo nodded enthusiastically. “Le meilleur! The best! Today we have talked about nothing other than Le Magicien.”

  Oh, Milo. Why’d you have to go and ruin it?

  “Ah yes. That has been a pretty big deal,” I said, my smile becoming a little less genuine. I looked at my dad and raised my eyebrows as high as they would go. “So, what are you thinking for dessert?”

  “Dessert! Oui, oui! My apologies, Mademoiselle. I am afraid I have gotten carried away.” He flapped his hand to indicate that his friend should shoo, and I realized I had been somewhat rude.

  “Not at all. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. I was more than happy to talk about it.”

  My dad kicked into gear, reading the situation perfectly, and affably charmed Milo back into certainty that we were the greatest table he had ever waited on in his entire life. I heard the warm tones, I heard the laughter on both sides, but I didn’t hear all of the words. I was too distracted by the sight of the second waiter in the back of the room, fervently pantomiming various sports postures to a busboy.

  All of a sudden, the two of them were rushing toward our table.

  “Pardon,” the second waiter said as they approached. “My little brother, Alexandre, is the biggest fan of sports there is. He has just one question to ask you, if it is not too much of an inconvenience, Mademoiselle.”

  “Of course,” I said and smiled, all the while in the back of my mind repeating, Don’t let it be a sports question I can’t answer. Don’t let it be a sports question I can’t answer.

  We all looked intently at Alexandre, but he didn’t say a word. His older brother jumped in and said, “I apologize. He has not yet learned English. He knows only . . . eh . . . fourteen words.” Then he whispered emphatically to him in French.

  I shook it off and smiled kindly at Alexandre, and then the words erupted out of him.

  “Le Magicien? Eh . . . how you say . . . Will Whitaker?”

  Really? Really? So much for my dad’s theory that ASN didn’t know Will’s name. Even busboys who only know fourteen words of English apparently knew his name.

  I nodded. “Yes. We work together. I know him.”

  My dad reached out and grabbed my hand across the table, and I suddenly felt emotionally gobsmacked as I realized my heart was torn in two—half of me was so proud of Will, and the other half hoped the clock was ticking loudly on his fifteen minutes of fame.

  “Milo.” My dad interrupted the Will Whitaker fanboy moment with a sigh and a sad smile. “I think my girl could use some ice cream.”

  12

  The Bacteria Portion of the Morning

  Will was always amazed by how slowly time
passed when sleep was elusive. On nights when hours were filled with nothing more than watching shadows on the wall and rethinking every decision you’ve ever made, it was as if the night would never end—and Will was equally impatient and full of dread, waiting for the moment when it finally would. At 5:40 a.m., when the darkness felt unchanged from how it had been all night long but the sounds outside his apartment indicated the start of a new day, Will finally gave up and climbed out of bed.

  He was used to not sleeping very much, but not sleeping at all was new. Usually, when sleep was hard to come by, he could pinpoint why—and more often than not the culprit was his brain, which wouldn’t shut off. But that night had been different. He’d practiced all of his tried and true techniques for winding down, but there had been something churning inside of him that hadn’t been receptive to any of his normal tricks. By 5:40 a.m. he’d decided to chalk it up to convoluted emotions from the day before, refusing to let go.

  It should have been one of the best days of his life. He was so aware of that, all day long—when he walked into the commissioner’s press room and saw his name on that chair way in the back corner, while Commissioner Levinson was downplaying ASN’s involvement and claiming he had been about to break the story himself, when he tried feeding the reporters that ridiculous story about how he considered The Magician a hero—Will knew through it all. He knew that every single detail was coming together in the best possible way for him.

  But all he wanted to do was call Cadie. He wanted to send her a text asking if she saw him on TV, and for her to send some ridiculous text back saying, “Not unless you’re on Downton Abbey” or something. And he would have laughed, because he would have known that she was watching. He would have known that she was proud of him and that, despite the fact that she would never let him get a big head, she’d be bragging to everyone she knew. All day long he was busy living one of the best days of his life, and he didn’t see the point of any of it.