“Yes, ma’am, I do.” Josh shot Phil a bemused glance and she returned it with a hesitant smile. It was wonderful how quickly her family seemed to be taking to her best friend but she wondered how Josh would feel after spending a whole evening with them. Even more, she wondered what she was going to tell Christian.
Chapter Eighteen
“Yes, I know it’s important to you but spending time with my family is important to me.” Phil hunched over her cell phone, standing on the large, wrap-around porch that encircled the lavender mansion on States Street. Christian was even angrier than she’d expected him to be and she was still getting used to being able to stand up for herself. This was turning out to be a difficult conversation.
“You’ve known about this for months, Phil.” Christian’s voice was impatient. “You know how important it is for me to go in there looking successful and make a good impression. How can I do that without you there to support me?”
She felt a lump rising in her throat. “What about when I need support, Christian? I asked you to come to my office beach party months ago when you would have had plenty of time to get the day off and you completely blew me off.”
“We went over that already. We decided that my missing a productive day of work to make an appearance at your beach party wasn’t a good use of my time. Remember?” Christian sounded frustrated.
“No, we didn’t decide—you decided.” She heard the quiver in her voice and tried to control it. “You said you didn’t want to go and that was the end of it. Well now I’m telling you I don’t want to go to your party either. You can go by yourself and tell everyone I’m sick.”
“That is not acceptable.” She could almost hear the frown in Christian’s voice. “What’s gotten into you, Phil? You used to be so easy going and now all of a sudden you’re constantly emotional.” His voice rose an octave. “My God, you’re not pregnant, are you?”
“I don’t see how I could be,” Phil said acidly. “I can’t even remember the last time we made love.”
“C’mon, babe.” Christian sounded uneasy now—uneasy but relieved. “You know I’ve just been tired from working these long hours. Now why don’t you be a good girl and come on back to the apartment to change? If you leave now we can still make it in plenty of time for cocktails.”
“Christian, I’m sorry.” Phil made her voice as firm as she could. “But I said no and I meant it. It wouldn’t do us any good to be together tonight anyway—we’d just fight the whole evening. I’m going to stay here and have a family dinner with my nana and my sisters.” She didn’t mention Josh and it gave her a little twinge of guilt to keep that piece of information from her fiancé. But it wasn’t like they were running away together—they were just having dinner at her grandmother’s house.
“I can’t believe this!” He sounded genuinely bewildered. “What happened to my sweet little fiancé who never caused any trouble?”
“She’s gone—for good, I hope,” Phil told him. “And by causing trouble I suppose you mean standing up for myself and not jumping every time you say to?”
“You can call it what you want, Phil but you’ve changed and not for the better,” her fiancé said darkly. “I was hoping that maybe you were just starting your cycle or something this morning but now…I don’t know what the hell is wrong with you.”
“Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you shot down my dream this morning—did you ever consider that?” she said, giving in to her anger. “Maybe it has to do with you wanting me to stay home and play Leave it to Beaver while you do the big macho corporate man thing.”
“Christ,” she heard Christian mutter. “Not this again! Look, Phil, you and I both know this isn’t the time to discuss that issue.”
“Well when is the time?” Phil demanded. She was squeezing the phone so tightly she could hear the plastic casing creak. “I’ve been waiting for over a year to talk about this and you give me fifteen minutes this morning. Fifteen minutes of your valuable time in which you tell me that I’ve been working for the last four years for nothing because you never intended to hold up your end of our bargain in the first place. Tell me, Christian, how am I supposed to feel about that?”
“You want to go to law school? You want to waste hundreds of thousands of dollars instead of having the easy life I offered you?” Christian exploded on the other end of the phone. “Fine. You can go to law school. We’ll get married tomorrow if you want and you can apply to any school in the area. Will that make you happy?”
“I didn’t give up a school in this area to be with you, Christian,” she said quietly. “I gave up Stanford. And I did it because I loved you. I thought you loved me too.”
Christian sighed deeply and she could almost see him massaging his temples with one hand, the way he always did when he was tense. “Babe, I never said I didn’t love you. But you’re making things damn hard on me here.”
“How?” Phil demanded. “By asking you to live up to your end of the bargain? By asking you to believe in me the way I believed in you? Christian, you have no idea what kind of day I’ve had. I got into it with my boss this morning and now I have to go to a HR review tomorrow. I…I don’t even know if I’ll have a job when it’s all said and done.”
“You what?” Christian’s voice was ragged. “Phil, I know you hate that job but we can’t afford for you to stop working just yet. I mean that is the ultimate goal—to just have you stay home and take care of the house and kids whenever they come along—but we’re not there yet.”
“Whose goal is that?” Phil asked through numb lips. “Yours? Because it certainly isn’t mine. Don’t you even want to know what happened? Don’t you want to hear my side of it?”
“Your side, your boss’s side—it doesn’t matter, Phil. What matters is you hold onto your job just a little while longer.”
Phil felt like crying. “You really don’t get it, do you Christian? You have no idea what he did to me—what he said. And you don’t care, either.”
“Babe, I don’t know what you want from me and I don’t have time for this right now.” His voice was flat. “Now are you coming to the party or aren’t you?”
“If I said yes, that I would come to your party tonight, would you consider coming to my office beach party the day after tomorrow?” she asked, already knowing the answer.
“I already said no to that Phil. You know my answer isn’t going to change.”
“Fine.” Phil took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. “I’m not willing to change my answer either, Christian. But I think you should know that I feel like our relationship has hit a dead end and I…I don’t know where to go from here. What you said to me today hurt and right now I don’t know if I can forgive you for that.”
“So that’s what this is really all about.” Christian took a deep breath and his voice was suddenly soft and coaxing. “Okay, I’m sorry if what I said hurt you, Philly-babe—I truly am. I was just trying to spare you pain on down the line. But please don’t punish me like this. I need you by my side tonight. Come be with me. Please?”
His pleading tone almost melted her but Phil knew she had to be strong. This was no longer about her fiancé’s office party—it had become a matter of principle. “I can’t, Christian,” she said, trying to push back the tears that threatened to choke her voice. “I just…I can’t be with you tonight. I need some time to think. Some space. I feel like you and I are going in two separate directions.”
“I’m going in the same direction I always was.” Christian just sounded tired now. “You’re the one who jumped the tracks, Phil. I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with you lately but I wish to God you’d get whatever it is resolved and get back to your normal self.”
“I may resolve some of it,” she said, thinking of her desire to get her fairy godmother to reverse the disastrous birthday wish. “But I’m not going to go back to being a doormat. I’ve put my life on hold long enough and I deserve to make some progress instead of always treading water.”
&
nbsp; “I don’t know what to tell you, babe,” Christian said. “I know we’re going through a hard time right now—maybe the hardest we’ve ever had. Just…don’t make any rash decisions, all right? Try and remember the good times and focus on that.”
“I’m trying.” Her voice was choked with tears. “But I can’t live on the past, Christian. I need something concrete to carry me into the future.”
“And I’ll give it to you, Philly-babe,” he said. “I swear I will, just not right now. I understand that you don’t want to come with me to my office party but if I don’t go now, I’m gonna be late. We’ll talk about all this later—I promise. Okay?”
“Christian, I—” she began but he had already hung up. Phil stared at the phone in her hand for a moment, her gut churning with so many different emotions she couldn’t name them all. It’s always later, she thought. Always, ‘later, babe, I don’t have time right now.’ The sun was setting and a soft breeze had sprung up, bringing the scent of her grandmother’s garden to her. But Phil couldn’t take pleasure in any of it. All she could think about was the past.
She remembered the first apartment she and Christian had shared together—so horribly hot in the summer and freezing cold in the short Tampa winter. The way they used to go to the Tampa Yankees games together—they were a Triple-A team but the seats were only five dollars apiece and she and Christian would share a hot dog and cheer no matter who was winning. On weekend nights they always went to the drive-in because it was cheaper than the movie theater. They watched cheesy horror movies and ate microwave popcorn they smuggled in. Phil remembered hiding her face in Christian’s shoulder during the scary parts and feeling so safe, so loved… When did that feeling melt away? she wondered dismally. It’s not just my birthday wish that’s changing things—I know it’s not. When did I stop feeling like Christian and I were the center of each other’s universes?
She and her fiancé had history together, it was true. They had been through some hard years when he was going through law school and she had always believed if they could make it through that, they could make it through anything. But now she wasn’t so sure.
“Swann?”
The familiar voice behind her made her turn quickly, still clutching the cell phone in her hand. Josh was standing there with a big grin on his face, wearing one of her nana’s flowery aprons with the lace edged pockets. With his five o’clock shadow and the devil-may-care grin on his face, he looked like a pirate that had decided to try his hand in the kitchen.
“What do you think?” he asked, spreading his arms. “Your nana said she didn’t want me to get my nice clothes all dirty while I barbecued. I hope you like balsamic glazed chicken by the way—it’s my one and only gourmet meal and this is the first time I’ve tried grilling it.”
“Sounds delicious.” Phil crossed her arms over her chest and tried to make her voice light. “I can’t wait to try it.”
“Hey.” He stepped forward and touched her cheek with the tips of two fingers. “What are these for?”
“Oh.” Phil took a step back and raised her own hand to her cheek. Her fingertips came away wet. “It’s nothing.” She tried to smile. “Just…nothing. Christian wasn’t very happy about me staying at Nana’s house for dinner tonight but he’ll get over it. It made me think about the past. The way things used to be and…they way they are now.” She sighed and lifted her chin—she wasn’t going to let the fight with her fiancé spoil her evening. “So, I never got a chance to thank you for providing a distraction at Peaceful Beach. Starting the bingo game again was a stroke of genius.”
“Well, you know. Mainly it was the dinner theater tickets that got them going—I’m going to have to buy a pair and send them over so whoever won the game won’t be disappointed. I knew that would do it—my grandparents love that crap. They took me with them once to see a production of Beauty and the Beast.” Josh laughed. “I was the only person in the room that was over ten and under sixty. All the other grandkids that came were little girls who couldn’t wait to meet Belle after the show.”
“What about you?” she asked. “Didn’t you want to meet Belle?”
He rubbed his chin, making a sandpapery sound and pretended to consider. “Well, she was pretty hot but I was kind of afraid my grandma would make me wear one of the little sparkly ‘birthday’ tiaras all the other girls were wearing and you know I’m just not the tiara wearing type.” He gestured to the apron. “This is about as girly as I get—sorry if that ruins your image of me as a domestic goddess.”
She smiled. “So do they live around here—your grandparents, I mean? Did they retire to Florida?” Josh didn’t talk about his family much but she sometimes got the feeling that he missed them a lot.
“Nope—still in California along with everyone else. I’ve been, uh, thinking about that a lot lately. I ought to move back there while Grandma and Grandpa are still alive so I can spend time with them. My sisters, too—I mean, they’re all married now, having kids. Oughta get to know the nieces and nephews before it’s too late to be the ‘cool uncle.’”
Phil felt a strange, empty sensation in the pit of her stomach at the idea of her best friend moving so far away. “Why would you want to move all the way back there and leave me alone at BB&D?” she joked, trying to grin. “What would I do without you to bandage my paper cuts and give Dickson’s hardware viruses?”
Josh laughed, his brown eyes twinkling. “Oh, man. That sounds wrong in so many ways—but maybe I just have a dirty mind.” He stuck his hands in his pants pockets, looking completely at ease despite the flowered apron that hung to his knees. “Speaking of having a dirty mind,” he said, lowering his voice. “Your nana wears the worst perfume I’ve ever smelled. But she’s really sweet and…I found her kind of attractive. Is that weird?” He looked so upset about it that Phil had to laugh.
“It should be, but it’s not. Not in my family, anyway.” She tried to think of how to explain things to him without sounding like a lunatic. “It’s that awful, uh, perfume that makes her so attractive. It’s kind of a…well, I guess it’s like a pheromone spray and I think it works on just about anything male—that’s what caused all the confusion at Peaceful Beach. So it’s not your fault if you think she’s kind of a hottie.”
“Oh, good.” He put a hand over his heart and rolled his eyes in relief. “And here I thought I was developing an Oedipus complex. Or at the very least, an interest in older women.”
Phil slapped his arm lightly. “Don’t let Nana hear you say that. She’s on the prowl for a boyfriend and she’d snap you up quick if she knew you were single.”
“Well, you’ll just have to tell her my heart’s already taken.” Josh smiled at her but his deep brown eyes were serious. Phil felt her stomach do a flip-flop.
“So Nana put you right to work, huh?” she said, trying for a quick subject change. “She doesn’t waste much time.”
He nodded. “Yeah, and your sisters sent me out here to ask you to come in and help in the kitchen. Well, that wasn’t exactly how they put it, but…”
Phil laughed and wiped at her eyes again. “Knowing Cass she probably told you to tell me to get my lazy ass in the kitchen and pitch in.”
Josh broke into a grin and ran a hand through his hair. In the last light of the setting sun it had reddish highlights. Phil wondered how she had never seen them before. She suddenly wanted to reach up and touch it—touch him. But the wish didn’t extend to physical action and she was able to restrain herself.
“Yeah, well, something like that,” Josh said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to the grill and watch the chicken. An outfit like this demands perfection, as I’m sure you’ll agree.”
She laughed again. “Uh-huh. I can see that. If only you’d had it on earlier when you were serving me my sandwich at Chez Bowman.”
“Oh, this is too fancy for Chez Bowman,” Josh protested as they walked around the porch to the kitchen door. “This is haute couture. I couldn’t possibly wear it anyw
here but your nana’s backyard. Or, you know, the presidential inauguration—whichever. It’s that special.”
“It’s special all right.” Phil was still laughing when he gave her a mock salute and went back to his post by the barbeque pit. She decided to have a good night tonight no matter what.
Chapter Nineteen
Her determination wavered almost at once. When she pushed open the kitchen door, the horrendous burnt hair and rotten eggs smell nearly knocked her over. Cass was doing dishes and Rory appeared to be looking for something in the dark oak cabinets that covered the far wall of the large eat-in kitchen.
“Ugh!” Phil put a hand to her nose. “Is that Nana’s potion?”
“Sure is.” Cass nodded at the stove where a large sauce pan filled to the brim with brownish green gunk was sitting. “And you’re elected to get rid of it.”
“Why me?” Phil protested, crossing her arms.
“Because we did it last time.” Rory pulled a box of rice pilaf mix out of the cabinet and studied the directions.
“And just because you don’t live here anymore doesn’t mean you’re absolved of all the family responsibilities,” Cass added. “Come on, Phil, just dump it and come back and make the salad. You know we can’t eat with it in the house.”
“Fine,” Phil muttered. Taking a careful hold of the saucepan’s handle, she carried it out the door, holding it as far away from herself as possible. She would have to dump it somewhere in the yard, she decided, and probably bury it, as well.
She didn’t want to answer awkward questions about Nana’s cooking skills so she took the long way around the porch, avoiding Josh and the barbeque pit. Along one side of the house Nana had planted a flower and vegetable garden. A long length of green garden hose coiled like a snake in the grass and her trowel and gloves lay discarded on the small ornamental bench to one side of the rose bushes. Phil made use of both, digging a hole in the middle of the zinnias with the trowel and pulling on the gloves to complete the operation of disposing of the noxious potion.
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