So far nothing about this visit to Cam’s parents’ house is comfortable. I find myself entertaining the possibility of pretending to feel sick and just spending the rest of the day hiding out in Cam’s room.
“Thanks,” I say. “So how did you meet Eli?” Not that I’m all that curious, really. But I feel as if I have to attempt to take part in this rather curt conversation.
My effort is unnecessary, apparently.
Holly flips the laptop closed with her fingertips and slides it into a bag she retrieves from the floor. “I have to take care of some things,” she says, and begins to walk past us.
“Holly isn’t one for small talk,” Katy says.
Holly pauses, smiling a little. She points a finger at Katy while she looks at me. “She gets me,” she says, and goes up on tiptoe to plant a kiss on Katy’s cheek. Then she’s gone, the only sound for a moment her flip-flops flip-flopping down the hall.
“That was…abrupt.” I feel almost dazed at the weirdness of the aborted conversation.
“Holly’s a sweet girl,” Katy says. “But she’s had a rough way to go in life, and she doesn’t always respond to things the way most people might. It takes some patience to get to know her.”
I don’t think I’ll have time to invest in that. Thank God.
“She and Eli are a puzzling match, then,” I say. “He’s never struck me as the most patient person.”
“There’s more to Eli than you realize,” she says. “There’s more to Eli than Eli realizes.”
Machiavelli Couldn't Be Prouder
Cam
This house is huge, and there are plenty of unused bedrooms, but it honestly would not have surprised me at all if Dad had rented out my bedroom as soon as I moved out for college. It still shocks me somewhat when I return home and it’s still there with all the same stuff in it I had in high school.
Maybe the old man is getting sentimental in his old age.
Maybe he just hasn’t thought about it.
I drop our bags on the floor by the bed. Since we’ll only be up here a couple of days we packed light, and I was able to bring our small suitcases in a single trip.
The window looks out onto the back yard and the fields behind the house. A prominent elm that has stood in that field near the yard is gone. The hill dips down so that I cannot see where the stump of that tree still anchors in the ground, but a column of black smoke rises from that spot to curl in the spring air. I know that my father, my brother Eli, and Eric are gathered around the smoking remains, probably drinking beer.
I should go out to see them, but I have trouble finding the reserves of energy to interact with Dad right now. Instead, I plop back onto my bed.
It’s a king size—of course. Probably more than a high school kid needs. It’s about an acre of mattress. I feel myself smiling. I had a lot of fun on this bed, back in my wild and wooly teenage years. My mind briefly drifts to escapades with old girlfriends…and with friends’ girlfriends…and with girlfriends’ sisters…and I realize that none of them ever really belonged in this bed.
I stare up at the familiar ceiling, tracing the lines of texture familiar as the back of my hand. All I see in those lines is Aimee’s face.
We will share this room tonight. This bed. Something I’ve wanted to do for so long. Months that seem like years. And now that we will be, it feels…awkward.
Because it’s not what she wants. This is something she’s only doing for me, as a favor.
I find myself wishing for things. Wishing that I was better at saying what I feel. Wishing that Aimee could just know how I feel without me having to say it. Wishing I hadn’t fucked things up between us.
If wishes were horses, or something like that. No sense dwelling. Go handle business.
Time to go see Dad.
***
For some reason, Eric and Eli have always gotten along. I’ve never been able to figure it out. In general, my younger brother is an insecure and envious little prick, always trying to be the best person in the room at everything and getting pissed when he can’t. I’ve always figured that Eric’s verifiable badassery would make him a prime candidate to be loathed by my kid brother, but they’ve always been pretty friendly.
Maybe it’s because Eli recognizes that trying to be a dick to the toughest guy in the room could result in getting his perfect teeth knocked in. Dad spent a lot of money making those teeth look as good as they do.
Eli’s been resentful of my status as “elder son”—whatever that means—ever since we were little, as if we’re two guys from the Old Testament vying to see who gets to inherit the old man’s goat herd when he kicks off. It’s as if there has always been some competition between us over who got Dad’s attention and affection. I’ve never bothered to participate in the competition, because I’ve just never much cared about it, but Eli cares a lot, and so he competes like hell and doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere.
But I’m sure this new twist in my life—Dad’s threat to cut me off—has seemed to Eli like a golden opportunity to finally take my place in Dad’s eyes as the rightful heir to his throne. It has to gall the hell out of him that I have succeeded in making good on my end and brought a fiance—fake or not—to show off to Dad and retain my status as favored son.
The old man sees me coming and stares at me a moment, sucks his teeth, shakes his head, and then turns back to the smoking heap in front of him. A pointed moment of consideration and subsequent dismissal. Per usual.
This is what it’s like to be favored by Jason Simons.
This is the sort of treatment Eli would fight a bear to receive.
The whole thing makes me grit my teeth. I should let them have each other.
Eric sees me and raises his beer. Eli glowers.
“Brother,” I say. He doesn’t respond. “So exactly what the hell is it you guys are out here doing? Because to me it just seems to be three guys out watching smoke come out of the ground.”
Dad motions to the charred carcass of the stump with his beer. “Didn’t think the damn thing would burn for three days, to be honest. We used enough gasoline to run your brother’s Hummer across the state. You’d think it would have just all gone up at once.”
I want to tell him that there is a helluva lot of tree under the ground that doesn’t burn fast because of the lack of oxygen. But there really isn’t “telling” my dad anything. If you know something that he doesn’t he dismisses it as unimportant. He can’t always have been this way, because you can’t build a billion dollar empire without being willing to learn from other people, but as he’s gotten older he’s definitely gotten more stodgy. Normally this irritates me, but today it makes me want to tell him just where he can put it: the company, the family, the damn stump he’s burning. Right up his ass. I open my mouth to tell him, but I don’t.
I can’t talk that way to Dad. No one talks that way to Dad. Call it magnetism, call it presence. Whatever it is that makes leaders seem unassailable, he’s got it. And it doesn’t seem to be fading with age. Even now, in his late fifties, he carries himself like a much younger man. His skin is good and his shoulders remain wide and square. He’s not tall—I get that from Mom’s side—but he’s always had a vitality and energy that make him seem bigger than he is. He’s always seemed bigger than me, and I’ve got him by at least four inches and thirty pounds.
He turns halfway to me, favors me with a cocked eyebrow. “You bring her?” he asks, his voice a growl. As if “she” is a pony that I want to show off.
And now that I think of it, that’s a reasonable approximation of how this entire thing is supposed to work. I show off my fake bride-to-be like livestock in order to regain acceptance into my own family. I’m just starting to absorb that when I feel a hand slide between my ribs and elbow until the arm comes through and links with mine. Even if I didn’t recognize the arm, I’d know the ring.
“He certainly did bring her, Jason,” Aimee says beside me. And I turn my head and she’s looking up at me with a smile
that seems to come right from the bottom of her soul and right then, for this moment, there is nothing I won’t do to keep that smile right where it is. Even if it means telling my father to fuck his ultimatum and keep his money. I open my mouth, again.
Then I remember that the smile is an act and the ring is just a prop and as soon as we’re done here Aimee and I go back to being nothing again. My heart begins to sink, but I keep my own smile plastered to my face.
“I certainly did,” I finish like a dope.
My brother is staring at us, his face first going stark white, and then reddening. I see a pulse in his throat. Eric doesn’t look at us, just takes a pull on his beer.
But my dad turns fully now. He sees the girl on my arm and his eyes widen slightly. And then a big grin spreads across his face and he lets loose with a deep laugh.
“I knew it,” he says, his gaze moving back and forth between us. Then he does something I have almost never seen in my life. He takes three steps forward, wraps his arms around Aimee in a giant hug, and lifts her off her feet.
“Whoa, there,” she says, starting to laugh as well. Dad ignores her, just puts her down, turns to me and hugs me. For just a second I’m worried he’s going to try to pick me up, too, but instead he just grabs me up tight and kisses my neck. My father is not a hugger. I can see my brother over Dad’s shoulder. Muscles in his jaw clench, and then he turns and stalks back toward the house. Eric, on the other hand, goes the other direction, ambling out into the field. He does that sometimes; goes off to be with his own thoughts. A deep one, our Eric.
“It’s about goddamn time,” Dad says, his voice going rough.
“I keep hearing that,” Aimee says. “It seems our little romance was a mystery to no one but us.” She looks at me. “Or is it just me?”
I shrug. I have no idea what she’s talking about. Yeah, people have always speculated. But as far as I know no one has been writing wedding invitations for us.
Dad takes a step back, eyes us with a steely glare. “It’s never been a mystery. You two were just too young to see what was right in front of you.”
I’d expected to have to do some convincing, to make it believable that my childhood best friend had very conveniently become my fiance. But apparently it had just been taken as a given. I almost have the impression that it was if I had brought someone else that I would have had to be convincing.
Aimee’s eyes have widened and her mouth is just slightly open. I am nearly overcome by an irresistible urge to kiss her right now. That might be the only thing that could surprise either of us more than my father’s greeting.
He looks at me, his eyes warmer than I have ever seen them. He seems about to say something, then just nods instead.
“Let’s head up to the house,” he says.
I wave at the column of smoke from the smoldering stump. “You sure you want to just leave that going? Might wind up like that coal mine in Pennsylvania that’s been burning underground for the last sixty years.”
He shakes his head. “It’ll keep. Besides, caterers should be here any minute.”
“Caterers?” Mom has always insisted on doing the cooking. I might have been raised in a family that’s richer than God, but Mom wasn’t, and there are certain privileges she has never taken full advantage of.
Dad nods, his stride long and purposeful. “Yep. Having a party tonight. Prodigal son has returned.”
Aimee makes an exasperated sound. I say, “Jesus, Dad, you guys didn’t kill a cow for this, did you?”
He looks at me, puzzled. “What?” He doesn’t get the religious message from his own metaphor.
“Nothing.” I pause. “So, a party for us. But how did you know I’d bring anyone at all?”
He shrugs. “I didn’t.” One big hand waves at the house. “But Eli brought his girl, and they seem pretty serious about things. So if you didn’t come through, the party was going to be for him and Holly.”
Machiavelli couldn’t be prouder. Beside me I hear Aimee take in a hissing breath. “Does…does Eli know that, Dad?” Please tell me he doesn’t.
“Of course he knows,” Dad replies, as if this sort of thing was fucking normal. “He lives here in the house. I didn’t see a reason to hide it.”
Of course not. Why should he hide something like that? Something that would dangle acceptance and honor in front of Eli—the two things he would have died for—and then snatch it away through no fault of his. I understand why my brother is more hostile than usual, and my heart goes out to him. I look down at Aimee and she is shaking her head in disbelief.
“That’s fucked up, Dad.”
He stops and looks back at me sharply. “Why?”
I didn’t expect to have to explain something that seems so obvious, so I don’t have anything immediate to say. When I don’t answer right away, he just turns and continues walking toward the house as if nothing had happened.
“What the hell?” Aimee whispers.
My Plus Ones
Aimee
I can never be sure, stumbling into a Simons’ dinner part, exactly what sort of party I’m getting myself into. They are notoriously inconsistent with regard to size, loudness, and general behavior of the guests. Senior year of high school I attended one, decked out in an evening gown and shoes I probably shouldn’t have bought (but that I absolutely loved), and it wound up being Jason, Katy, Cameron, and a salesman from one of the trucking companies that did business with Simons LP. Other times the kitchen and living room couldn’t hold all the people that came, and the party spilled out onto the massive stone deck and into the back yard.
This party is somewhere in between.
Somewhere between thirty and forty people mill about inside the house. Some of them wear the black-on-white livery of the catering service. They move about with a frantic urgency, so it’s impossible to tell how many there really are. Cameron’s aunt and uncle from North Carolina, Chloe and Garth Richardson—who famously drove here in separate vehicles because any time they spend more than an hour or so in one another’s company they start fighting like cats and dogs—are dressed to the nines, doing their best to fit in with the wealthy side of the family. Chloe and Katy Richardson had not been born into money; Chloe had not married into it, either.
In addition to family, it seems that members of every stratum of Simons LP has showed up at Jason’s behest. A couple of older gentlemen are decked out in tuxedos, escorting ladies dressed for a fairy-tale ball. There are suit-clad younger men who are obviously middle management. At least one of them has ambitions of greatness; he keeps looking at the interior of the home with an appraising eye. By the look on his face it doesn’t quite measure up to the type of home he would be willing to live in. There are several men in blue chambray shirts, probably superintendents or rig foremen.
And kids. Although there are probably only seven or eight of them, it seems that there are dozens, all under the age of ten, all moving at great speed in continually-shifting directions. They are blond and dark-haired, skin of all different tones, but they all seem like some version of the same little person. And all wacked out of their mind on the Coca Colas that seem to exist in endless quantities in the huge galvanized tub of ice on the patio. The kids dash between the adults, sometimes between the adults’ legs, playing obscure games and shrieking with glee and, sometimes, the agony the accompanies running near wooden furniture. One runs by me, squalling, and I find myself grinning. I glance up and catch Cam watching me, and he grins too. Before I realize that we’re having a moment, he’s already wandered away.
It’s clear that Jason wants to give some public acknowledgment of Cameron’s secure future in the Simons family. I find myself wondering if Cam’s possibly ouster from his inheritance is public knowledge throughout the company. Knowing what I now know of Jason Simons, that seems like a real possibility. Cam can drive me crazy with his insensitivity and general lack of concern for others, but compared to his father he’s a saint. I find myself wondering how the apple fell as f
ar from the tree as it did. But I don’t have to look far for an answer.
Katy.
This is truly her element. She wears an ankle-length maroon dress that hugs tight at her bosom and hips, and flares below her thighs. Her silvery hair is bound up on her head in a loose knot, and she moves with the serene elegance of the lifelong hostess. Even while Jason huddles with senior members of his staff at the head of the giant formal table, his wife moves easily through the crowd, smiling at the judge-y middle management guy, offering a broad greeting to each field worker in turn, giving hugs, touching shoulders, ruffling the hair of the children that zip by her. And every so often she looks at one of her sons and her eyes crinkle with pleasure.
Jason sits with his movers and shakers, middle-aged men who work for Simons LP as vice presidents and Chief-Whatever-Officers. He is leaned over his plate and discussing things that are obviously important. I’d think, since this party is supposed to be about us—well, about Cam, anyway—that Jason would give a toast or something. Make some sort of loud endorsement of our exciting new step. Then again, it doesn’t surprise me in the least that he doesn’t. It is increasingly clear to me that Jason Simons expects to get what he wants. Expects it so surely that when he does get it, it’s not a surprise to him. It’s not something to get excited about. It’s not something to toast. Because you don’t give a toast when nothing difficult has been overcome, do you?
In this same position, I wonder, would Cam give a toast to his son?
I’ve kept my distance from him for the last half hour or so, content to make my way alone through the barbecue buffet and eat my brisket and potatoes and corn on the cob in the corner, watching the other people mill about. If my dad was here, he’d have lain his plate on the table and gone about with his big smile, talking to people and telling jokes. He would have forgotten all about his food. It’s just the kind of man he was. He wasn’t a party animal; he just really loved people. My eyes sting a little, and I blink. The dining room is suddenly much too active, so I make my way through the crowd, holding my paper plate tight to my chest.
All Yours: A Second Chance Romance Page 10