The Prenup: a love story

by Lauren Layne

  A quick search later, and I see that this mysterious Vesper is pretty close to a martini. I pull the vodka and gin off the sleek bar cart Colin keeps in the corner of the living room and find a bottle of the third ingredient, something called Lillet Blanc, in the refrigerator.

  I contemplate shaking it. It’s very Bond after all. But the picture of the drink I found on the Internet is perfectly clear, and shaking the cocktail will make it cloudy.

  I put two cocktail glasses in the freezer to chill and then snoop around Colin’s kitchen until I come up with a crystal mixing glass and a bar spoon.

  The mixing glass is small, so I have to make the drinks one at a time, measuring carefully, pouring over ice, and stirring for a good minute or so to get the liquor ice cold before straining into the glasses.

  I’m digging around in the refrigerator for a lemon to garnish the drinks when Colin emerges from the bedroom.

  He pauses, looking at the two finished cocktails in surprise. “I said I’d make them.”

  “I heard you.” I hold up the lemon. “Do you have a little—?”

  I mime the motion of making a lemon twist to garnish the drinks.

  Colin shrugs out of his suit jacket and drapes it over the back of the barstool, rolling up the sleeves of his dress shirt as he walks toward me.

  He opens a drawer and pulls out a channel knife, but instead of handing it over, he reaches out for the lemon. My fingers close around the fruit reflexively, so accustomed to living alone, to doing things my way, that I immediately resist giving up control.

  Colin’s apparently used to being in control too, because he continues to reach for the lemon. Only, I’m holding it so tightly he can’t grab the lemon without also grabbing my hand.

  Things that are not sexy: lemons.

  Things that are sexy: Colin Walsh holding my hand holding a lemon.

  It shouldn’t be. I know that. But the second his fingers make contact with mine, I feel it in places I have no business feeling anything as it relates to this man.

  Still, my hand doesn’t pull back, and, I realize belatedly … neither does his.

  I lift my gaze to his and see something that looks like a flash of heat—if a bit angry heat—before he tugs the lemon out of my hand.

  Clearing his throat, he adds a lemon twist to the cocktails with an adeptness that tells me I’m not the only one who knows his way around the home bar.

  He hands me one of the glasses before lifting his own in a silent toast and taking a drink. “Not bad.”

  “You sound surprised.”

  He studies his drink for a moment. “No. Well. A little. I’ve never had a woman besides female bartenders make me a beverage.”

  “And you thought we were incapable?”

  “Don’t put words in my mouth.”

  “Well, what else am I supposed to—”

  Colin reaches out and sets a single finger along the base of my cocktail glass, managing to tip it toward my face without spilling a single drop. “Shut up and drink your damn drink.”

  I take a sip, not quite sure what to expect. “Oh! It’s good.”

  “You sound surprised,” he says, mimicking my earlier statement.

  I make a ha ha face then take another sip of the drink. “I didn’t know quite what to expect with the vodka and gin together, but it’s … pleasant, isn’t it?”

  He shrugs. “Bond thought so.”

  “So, is this your drink of choice?” I ask, settling on a barstool, determined to lure him into conversation, and maybe, just maybe—something resembling civility.

  “I’ve been known to order it.”

  “But is it your favorite?”

  “What am I, twelve?”

  “I didn’t ask you to please rate your favorite Power Rangers in reverse order,” I say, striving for patience. “I was just asking if this is your go-to drink order.”

  “No.”

  God give me strength.

  “So what is your go-to drink order?”

  “Are you always this talkative?”

  “Yes. Most people find it extremely charming.”

  “Most people aren’t married to you.”

  “Only because I’ve been taken since I was twenty-one.” I flutter my eyelashes.

  He rewards me with a very slight upward tilt of the corner of his mouth. “I don’t think that guy knew what he was getting into.”

  “Oh, please. You’ve been dealing with me for all of one week. Don’t tell me that the twice annual emails or text messages over the past decade were too much for you to handle.”

  “I survived.”

  I spin my drink in a slow circle. “Why did we last so long, do you think?”

  He gives a casual shrug. “I never really had reason to end it.”

  “Until now.”

  “Until now,” he agrees.

  “What changed? I mean, I’m not complaining, I’m just curious.”

  “I guess I realized I’m an adult. No longer a kid in need of a green card.”

  “And I’m no longer a rebellious girl in need of her trust fund to escape her parents.”

  “No. You’re not.”

  I narrow my eyes because there’s a little something extra in his tone.

  “What’s that I’m hearing?” I say. “Judgment? It sounds like judgment.”

  “I just find it interesting that you’ve been in the city for a week and haven’t seen or spoken with your mother. Or father.”

  “How do you know I haven’t called them? Or seen them?”

  “Your mother told me.”

  I nearly spit out my drink. “You talk to my mom? When?”

  “She texted me yesterday when she hadn’t heard from you.”

  “She texts?”

  “Yes, Charlotte. Both of your parents are savvy enough to have mastered text messages. Something you might know had you taken the time to stay in touch this past decade.”

  “Hey. My relationship with my parents is not your business. I don’t go around asking the last time you’ve seen your parents.”

  His jaw tightens.

  I give him a vaguely smug look. “So. Then you’re not really one to talk now, are you?”

  He stares me down, and I stare right back, and damn it. He wins, because I cave.

  “What did she want?” I ask.

  “Your mother?”

  I nod.

  Colin shrugs. “She knows you’re back. Knows about our situation. Wanted to see how you were.”

  “She could have called me,” I grumble.

  “Would you have picked up?”

  “Yes.” Maybe. Probably. Possibly not.

  It’s not like I’ve had no contact with my parents. We’ve thawed slowly over the years, mostly due to my brother’s persistence. I call on birthdays. We talk on Christmas. I saw them at my grandmother’s funeral and at my brother’s wedding in the past couple of years.

  It’s just … chilly. We don’t understand each other. They’re two of the most opinionated people on the planet, and yet they somehow manage to be both baffled and outraged that they got an opinionated daughter who refuses to subscribe to the life they’d laid out for her.

  “So, did you know my mom once grounded me for getting my hair cut?”

  “Yes, of course. I keep track of all your past haircuts and have a list of all the times you were grounded as a child.”

  I let out a little laugh, delighted by the dry sarcasm, but I forge ahead to make my point. “I was seventeen. I read an article on pixie cuts in Cosmopolitan, thought it would look cute on me, so I went to the salon, showed them the picture, and came home with a pixie cut.”

  “Fascinating stuff.”

  “My mom was so horrified, she grounded me for a week. I missed the spring formal. Because of a haircut, Colin.”

  He sips his drink. “How old are you?”

  “You know exactly how old I am.”

  “Yes. I do. Which is how I know that this episode with the pixie whatever happened a long
time ago. Perhaps it’s time to let that one go. Perhaps it’s time to let it all go.”

  “You’re not wrong.”

  His hand freezes midway toward setting his glass on the counter, and it’s oddly gratifying to know I can surprise this man. “I’m not?”

  I shrug. “Like you said, it’s been long enough.”

  With that, I stand and pick up my own glass, and head back toward my bedroom.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To call my mom,” I call over my shoulder. “If you hear screaming, be a good husband and make me another drink, would you?”

  CHAPTER 9

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 30

  Is it still too hot to be wearing leather pants? Absolutely.

  But it’s a small price to pay for showing my parents that, while we might be meeting on their turf, I’m still me. The version of me that pairs leather pants with red patent leather shoes and a black silk camisole. No cardigan. It’s the no cardigan that will get my mother, mark my words.

  What? I said it was time to let it all go, not become a doormat.

  The cabbie gives me an impatient look in the rearview mirror, and I realize my stalling time is over. With a grimace, I shove open the cab door and step onto a street I haven’t set foot on in a long, long time.

  I look around, somehow completely unsurprised to see that the street I grew up on looks exactly the same. You often hear people say how New York City is always changing, and it’s true. Just not on the Upper East Side. Or at least not on Sixty-third Street.

  I glance at the row of town houses as the cabbie drives away, and on a closer look, a few things have changed. The Steins’ door is dark blue instead of red. Mrs. Krause’s home has gotten a facelift, no doubt by its new owners, considering Mrs. Krause had been in her late eighties when I was a girl. Trees are taller, flowerpots refreshed, but the essence of the street is still exactly as I remember it.

  Finally, I fix my gaze straight ahead, at the home I grew up in. My parents’ town house has changed …

  Not at all.

  There’s still the dark gray door. The perfectly kept steps. No flowerpots at this house. My mother finds them messy. The welcome mat is strictly practical. No cheeky puns or friendly sayings, just a place to wipe your feet before entering the pristine foyer.

  Sounds fun, right?

  And now you’re wondering what I’m doing here. I was told, after all, that if I walked out the door, I was not to come back.

  Yeah, well, I’m sort of wondering what I’m doing here myself. One minute I was making strained small talk with my mother, and the next she was informing me she’d see me at five for Sunday dinner.

  Note that I said informing. Not asking if I was available, or if I’d like to come over. It was simply there. A command. I haven’t had Sunday dinner with my family for the better part of two decades, but you’d have never guessed it from my mom’s casual insistence.

  And, so … here I am. Preparing to enter the lion’s den.

  I manage the steps just fine, but the front door gives me pause, and I realize just what sort of mind games ten years can play.

  Do I knock? Or merely … enter?

  The thought of knocking feels unthinkable. I’ve burst through this door hundreds of times. Thousands. But I’m not an eighth grader bounding home from school any longer. I’m a thirty-one-year-old woman.

  And this is no longer my home.

  If you walk out that door, Charlotte Spencer, don’t expect to walk back in again, now or ever again.

  The prideful part of me wants to reverse court and prove to my mother that you reap what you sow. You tell your only daughter never to come back, maybe she won’t.

  And yet the other part of me, the one that’s grown up, the one that’s determined to be a kinder, better person, suspects that my mom’s demand that I be here for dinner tonight wasn’t uttered out of bossiness or control-freak tendencies, but out of fear. If I had to guess, I’d say that my mom was terrified that if she didn’t make me come for dinner, I wouldn’t.

  Of course, it still irks that she hasn’t learned me well enough to know that the tighter she tugs the reins, the more I pull back, and that had she merely invited me to dinner, I’d be inside playing nice instead of lurking stubbornly on the porch.

  Grow up, Charlotte.

  Strangely, it’s Colin’s voice I hear in my head. Not that I’ve heard him utter those precise words, but close enough.

  And it’s him I’m determined to prove wrong when I open the door.

  I’m a little surprised to find it unlocked. And the second I step inside, I’m surprised by the slap of emotion. I’d thought it would be like stepping into a stranger’s home, or at best, a little sliver of my past.

  My reaction is much more visceral than that, and much warmer. This is my home. Or at least it feels like it. Everything, from the click of my heel against the dark wood floor, to the elaborate flower arrangement on the entryway table, to the smell, is familiar.

  A nice familiar, I’m a little surprised to realize. The first door to the right was my dad’s office, and poking my head into the dark room, I see that has remained the same. Same dark wood desk, same faintly woodsy smell. The computer’s been upgraded—a newer model Mac, which surprises me. I’d have pegged my dad as a PC guy for life.

  I back out of the room and head toward the parlor, and yes, they call it that. My parents are, oh, how do I put this …

  Stuffy as heck.

  No casual meals are eaten around a friendly kitchen table, no snacks to be nibbled at the kitchen counter. Meals, even breakfast, were formal, seated affairs in the dining room.

  Even the before dinner ritual had been stuffy, with mandatory “cocktails, conversation, and nibbles” in the parlor, and don’t even think about showing up in bare feet, shorts, or with messy hair.

  Growing up, “cocktails” had meant lemonade or Shirley Temples for me, but I’m most definitely planning on a more adult beverage option tonight. For obvious reasons. Sure enough, I find my mom exactly where I expect to—in the parlor, and again the sheer familiarity of the moment washes over me.

  Mom turns to face me, and the butterflies dislodge from my stomach and seem to lodge in my throat when I meet her familiar blue eyes.

  She looks the same. Same pearl necklace, same muted red lipstick, same shoulder-length bob, and perfect posture.

  But not exactly the same. Like the street outside and the home itself, there are subtle changes. Soft changes. Crepe paper lines around her eyes and silver mixed in with the straight blond hair.

  My mom’s gaze, too, is softer than I remember it being, though just for a moment before she lifts her chin slightly. “Charlotte. Good, you’re here. You’re still on that lax California schedule, I suppose.”

  My mother, ladies and gentleman. Let the record state that I’m exactly three minutes past her five o’clock summons.

  “Where’s Dad?” I ask, glancing around the room, then doing a double take. There’s a man standing at the wet bar, but it’s most definitely not my father.

  “What are you doing here?” I blurt out.

  “Charlotte, be polite,” Mom says, not liking my West Coast manners any more than she likes my willy-nilly time table, apparently.

  Colin idly lifts a cocktail glass in greeting. “Wife.”

  “You said you had plans,” I accuse. I haven’t seen him since he left our place around noon.

  “I do, and they involve Sunday dinner with Eileen and Paul.”

  “Since when has your weekend plans involved dinner at my parents’?”

  “Since always,” my mother answers for him. “Colin, would you be a doll and fix Charlotte something to drink? I’m going to go find your father. He’s out in the garden again, doting on his herbs. And then I’d like a nice glass of white wine when I return.”

  Herbs? The father I remember tolerated the outdoors to golf, and only then when it was to advance a business deal. He most certainly didn’t go outside willingly. And he�
��d never dote.

  I stare after my mom’s back as she leaves the room then shake my head. “I can’t figure out what’s more surprising: that you do regular dinners with my family or that my dad has an herb garden.”

  Colin shrugs. “It’s been part of his quest to figure out what he wants to do with his life after retirement. Model airplanes, photography, and writing the next great American novel have all been ruled out,” Colin says, not turning around as he fixes a drink at the bar.

  “You know him better than I do,” I murmur, walking toward him.

  He glances down at me as I approach, his gaze skimming over my outfit. His expression is detached, as usual, but I don’t miss the way his eyes linger on the V-cut of my camisole before dropping to my leather pants.

  “Nice outfit. Where’d you park your motorcycle?”

  I let out a little laugh and accept the drink he holds out.

  “What is this?” I take a sip and smile. “A Vesper.”

  He shrugs, reaching up to pull down a wine glass, filling it from a bottle of white wine chilling in an ice bucket. He sets it aside, presumably for my mom, then picks up his own glass once more.

  “You really come here every Sunday?”

  “Most.”

  “Why?” I ask, trying to wrap my head around why a grown man would willingly put himself in this situation on the regular.

  “I enjoy your parents.”

  “Really.”

  He looks away. “It’s nice. To have people in the city to …” He clears his throat. “I don’t have family in the city. And neither do they.”

  There’s no accusation in his tone, but I feel the guilt all the same. I left. Justin left. Colin stayed.

  I suppose a son-in-law who stayed beats a daughter who left.

  “She’s glad you’re here,” Colin says softly.

  I’m startled by the comment, but before I can respond, my mother sails back into the room, surprisingly graceful for a woman on the north side of her sixtieth birthday.

  My father’s right behind her, and my heart squeezes at the sight of him. I don’t know what I was expecting, given this whole herb garden hobby. Overalls. Dirt under the fingernails. A beard.