“I was scared, I guess. Of something that I didn’t know anything about. Something that seemed very… strange to me.”
Liv tensed. Pull it back, old man.
“But I’d like to get to know you, Vanessa. I’d like to meet you. The real you. If it’s… if it’s not too late.” The general’s eyes watered. His voice thickened, on the verge of breaking. “Because I’ll always be your father. Your daddy.” And now his voice did crack. “You look so beautiful, sweetheart. I wish you and Lenny nothing but the best.” The general offered a shaking hand. “Would you do me the great honor of joining me for the father-daughter dance?”
Vanessa let out a sob, and rose to her feet.
Liv’s eyes welled. It’d been so long since she’d borne witness to this. A moment in which this cruel and terrible world seemed almost good. Almost wonderful. Across the room, Sam was standing at the entrance to the kitchen, wiping away a tear. Liv caught his eye and held his gaze. For a long moment, they were the only two people in the room.
A tiny latch, no bigger than a thimble, sprung open inside Liv’s chest.
Vanessa crossed the floor to her father. Zach put on “You’ve Got A Friend” by James Taylor. The sweet and simple melody filled the hall—“Winter, spring, summer or fall, all you have to do is call…”—and General Tucker Adam Fitzpatrick danced with his only daughter, the two of them holding each other with a careful, new tenderness.
49
It was well after midnight before Darlene and Zach were able to load out their gear. Ordinarily, Darlene wouldn’t need to wait for the end of a wedding before leaving, but she made a lame excuse, and Zach didn’t protest.
Having a fake boyfriend was suiting Darlene Mitchell very, very nicely. When she needed help installing some new blinds: Fake Boyfriend. When she wanted someone to go with her to the Cindy Sherman retrospective at the Met, Fake Boyfriend was on hand. When Fake Boyfriend invited her to go see the Yankees—his version of an art gallery—she accepted. Seeing a professional sports game in New York had been on her bucket list for years, and she was surprised by how much she liked it. Or maybe, how much fun seeing it with a fake boyfriend made it. Zach was getting better at being on time for gigs, and he never skipped out on loading out at the end. And it did not go unnoticed that the usual string of frothy blondes he kept in his orbit had either disappeared or were being kept discreetly out of sight. She hoped the former. Of course they hadn’t had the exclusivity conversation, because they weren’t really dating, but deep down Darlene hoped she was the only person Zach was kissing.
For social media, she reminded herself. For the money.
Photographing themselves for Zach’s Instagram—and the rather disturbing likes Zach’s mother gave their couple photos—had actually helped maintain a boundary between them. Kissing Zach made her think about Zach—a lot—so Darlene had decided no more spontaneous smooches; only staged ones. She made their affection feel like acting in an advertisement, and that was good. That made it manageable, even as she could tell Zach wanted to throw her against a wall and, well…
She’d confessed the scheme to her book club, framing it as a clever plan to make a ton of cash but underlining that obviously, Zach wasn’t a serious contender for a boyfriend. They weren’t as judgmental as she’d expected. “Do you” was the general mantra; “And if that means doing him, more power to you, girl.”
Darlene’s boundaries were getting squiggly. The Harvard Club guests had loved her set and Zach had looked so cute and confident behind the decks and, hey, weddings really did put you in the mood for love…
They piled the equipment into the rental car and came back up for one last sweep of the Great Hall. Incredible how a space could be transformed by a flash mob of love and fun and dancing. Darlene drifted onto the empty dance floor, tipping her head to take in the chandeliers. Zach took her hand, twirling her in a circle. She giggled, tired and punch-drunk. “What are you doing?”
He hooked his arm around her waist, taking her right hand in a waltz position. “Dancing.”
She laughed as he spun her around the floor, awkwardly, out of step, two silly rag dolls. Then he tugged her into a dark corner. His hand lingered close to her ass.
“Zach!” She glanced around. “We’re still at work.” But it was only a half-hearted protest.
He pressed her against the wooden wall. “Damn, Dee. You looked sexy tonight.”
The smell of his skin made her mouth water. His arms felt strong beneath the fabric of his shirt. “This isn’t professional.”
“Dee, everyone already thinks we’re together.”
She could feel the urgency in his every cell: to take her, to kiss her. “What, for another photo?”
His voice was low and delicious in her ear. “No. Because I want you, Darlene.”
The words ran over her like a harpist caressing her strings. It was too much: his blue eyes, and beautiful mouth, and the way he was looking at her like she was the most gorgeous creature he’d ever seen. She wanted this boy. More than anything. Her words came in a breathy pant. “Kiss me.”
Zach Livingstone kissed her like the world had exploded and they were the last two people left on earth. Urgent and desperate but also sweet, also tender. His hands cupped her jaw, warm thumb pads brushing her cheekbones. His kiss was like hearing her favorite song: the hot whoosh of affection; the calm, deep connection; the way it soothed the anxious part of her soul. They were both smiling, and Zach laughed, maybe out of sheer joy or surprise. Darlene pulled him back to her, her hands grabbing his collar, his shirt, unable to get close enough. Everything inside her was flooding, breaking, and she was deliciously, deliriously gone.
“Has anyone seen the band?”
Savannah Shipley’s voice stopped them cold. They sprung apart.
“There you are!” Savannah waved and bounded toward them. “I have your tips!”
“You are a goddess.” Zach grinned and plucked his envelope. He’d transformed so quickly from passionate lover to easy-breezy Zach. Dating-round-the-clock Zach. Very-into-white-girls Zach.
“Stellar effort tonight,” he said to Savannah. “I think you had something to do with the father-daughter dance lovefest?”
Savannah laughed, launching into the story. Zach’s eyes stayed glued on her.
Something scalding and sickening twisted around Darlene’s organs and squeezed like a python.
Jealousy.
So feverish it took her breath away.
Maybe he was charming the nice wedding planner who hired them. Or maybe Zach was just a manslut. He might act like he had real feelings for her. He might even really think it. But if she gave herself to him, would the air go out of the fantasy? She was almost thirty. He wasn’t even the age his parents believed the human brain finished developing at. He wasn’t trustworthy. He was a trust fund baby.
Zach watched Savannah leave, her ass round as a peach in her tight black skirt. He turned back to Darlene with a roguish grin. “Where were we?”
Darlene fortified herself and brushed past him. “Leaving.”
50
Zia arrived at Clay’s to find him sprawled on the sectional overlooking the Hudson River, working on his laptop.
“Hey gorgeous.” He smiled. “How was the wedding?”
“Beautiful. Inspiring. The bride’s speech was so moving.” She plopped down next to him and kicked off her shoes. “I’m still kind of wired. Think we could sneak out to a bar or something?”
“There’s plenty of booze here.” He arched an eyebrow, half joking. “This way, I have you all to myself.”
It turned her cold. Her body and heart closed like an anemone.
“What? What’s wrong?”
Her first instinct was to leave. She met his concerned gaze. “Can we talk?”
Clay closed the computer. “Always.”
Zia took a few grounding breaths. She’d told the story many times, under many different circumstances. It got easier. But it never got easy. “Right after colle
ge, I met an amazing man who I thought I was going to marry. His name was Logan.”
She watched Clay absorb that, yes, this was the piece of her past that was missing. His gaze was entirely focused on her. “I’m listening.”
“He was successful, handsome, charming. I was waitressing—this was way before I started working for Global Care. Logan and his coworkers used to have lunch at a restaurant I worked at in the financial district. The first time I waited on him, he asked if I had a boyfriend. I said no, and he said, ‘Now you do.’ ” Zia shook her head, still baffled by his confidence. “I kind of laughed it off, but he was persistent. He took me to Eleven Madison Park for our first date. I’d never been to a place like that. The food, the service. The bill. Which, of course, we didn’t split. I never paid for anything. He didn’t let me.”
Clay shifted, as if ready to hold her but careful to give her space.
“I was living with my sister and her kids,” Zia went on. “So when he said I should move in with him, y’know, it made sense. So I did. And that’s when things started to get bad.”
“Bad, how?”
“Logan was incredibly controlling,” Zia said. “What I wore, what I ate, how I spoke, who I spoke to. And he was incredibly jealous. He tracked my phone. If I was ever anywhere he didn’t know about, he’d get so mad. One time, I ran into a friend from my neighborhood and we grabbed lunch near his place. Afterward, it started to rain, so I ran up to get an umbrella from his apartment. Out of nowhere, Logan shows up and just starts laying into him.”
Clay looked horrified. “Jesus Christ.”
“It was a nightmare.” Zia rubbed her arms, her muscles tensing. “I knew I should leave him, but when you’re in an abusive relationship, you lose sight of what’s normal. You forget what’s normal. He kept telling me it was because he loved me, and I believed him. So when we’d fight and”—she drew in a shaky breath—“he’d hit me, again, I just thought that was normal. That love was complicated, relationships were hard, and it was my fault for setting him off.”
Clay made a noise: a low, pained sound.
“And so one night, I watched a documentary about people who volunteered at an elephant sanctuary in Thailand. New York was the only city I knew; I’d never even been to Boston. I suggested we take a trip together. Logan traveled for work all the time, and I’d always just be stuck in the apartment. He said no. But I couldn’t let it go. Logan knew all my passwords, so I started a secret email account on a laptop I bought myself. Researched tickets, hotels. I guess I was planning my escape.”
Clay looked like he was holding his breath. His entire body was taut.
Zia kept her voice even. “Logan found my laptop. He locked me in my walk-in closet. And left. I was in there for three days. My sister called the cops, thank God. When they found me, I was almost dead from dehydration. I never saw him again, except for in court.”
“Did he go to jail?”
Zia shook her head. “Suspended sentence.”
Clay’s voice was shaking. “He could’ve killed you.”
“He could’ve. But he didn’t.” Zia exhaled, letting the memory go. She was here, in New York, with a man who cared about her. “That was seven years ago. I’ve been to therapy; I’ve done a lot of work on myself. I don’t date assholes anymore. I know there are good guys in the world.” Her past had shown her a reservoir of strength she didn’t know she had. The ability to persevere. To survive. To forgive. And, to stand up for herself.
“You’re a good guy. But I can’t belong to you.” She touched Clay’s face, feeling the dark stubble shading his chin. “Baby, I don’t want to be a secret anymore. Being a secret makes me feel trapped. Like you’re not serious about me. But I’m serious about you. And if you don’t want that, that’s okay. Really. We’ve had a great time together, an amazing time. But if this isn’t serious for you, I gotta go.”
Clay nodded. His voice was quiet, his words measured. “When we met, I wasn’t ready to trust someone. I remember thinking that if I didn’t have someone, no one could betray me. But that’s no way to live. Relationships are a risk. Life is a risk. And there’s no one I’d rather do it with than you.” He shifted closer. “We’ve always been honest with each other. And what I’m honestly thinking right now is this: If I let you walk away, I’ll regret it every minute of every hour of every day for the rest of my life.” He sounded sincere and resolute, his gold eyes burning. “I feel what you feel. I’m in this. I’m with you.”
Zia’s heart was doubling, tripling in size. “That makes me so happy.”
“You make me happy, Zia. When I’m with you, I feel like myself, and it isn’t a bad thing.”
She smiled, and he pressed his forehead to hers.
“Goddamn,” he murmured. “How’d I end up with such a gorgeous girlfriend?”
Girlfriend. There it was, the first time. And even though it wasn’t a moniker Zia’d been especially fixated on, now that she had, she never wanted to give it back. She lifted her eyes to his, wanting to make sure he knew what he was saying.
His grin back was a little goofy. “Sorry it took so long.”
“No apology necessary.”
“Ah, my girlfriend is the coolest.”
“I think you’ll find that honor goes to my boyfriend,” she told him, feeling a bit goofy herself.
“Boyfriend,” he repeated. “I like the sound of that.”
So did she. So, so much.
Which meant it was time to tell her sister about Clay.
51
Sam stacked a dozen boxes of leftovers and a fat slice of wedding cake for Ben in Liv’s fridge while she paid the babysitter. Usually, Eliot would’ve left a local wedding like Vanessa and Lenny’s hours ago, to put their son to bed and save a hundred bucks on childcare. Tonight, Liv handled it on her own.
Sam closed the fridge door quietly.
“Thanks so much,” Liv whispered. “Sure you’ve got enough yourself?”
“Car’s full,” Sam whispered back. “Love it when clients don’t want leftovers. Dottie’ll be thrilled.”
The day they’d met, when she’d mistaken Sam for a Fresh Direct sex pest, the air had just started to warm up. Now, as they lingered on the front steps of the brownstone, it was humid and heavy with night-blooming flowers.
Sam put his hands in his jeans pockets. “So, I had fun last week.”
“At the movie you fell asleep to?”
“Hey, I just don’t buy a cop whose only job is shooting bad guys and saying things like, ‘Not on my watch.’ ” Sam raised his hands. “Where’s the paperwork? There was zero paperwork!”
Liv laughed. “It was pretty bad.”
“But good company.”
“Yes. Very good.”
Liv and Sam had been on four dates since their first dinner together. Four very nice, PG-rated dates. Strange that it took almost fifty years and one dead husband to be taken on an actual date. One with twilight strolls and dinner reservations and planned fun. She and Eliot didn’t “date.” They got drunk and screwed, or “hooked up,” as it was now called. She and Sam had not yet “hooked up.” They hadn’t even kissed. That was all she could handle. As Liv put it to him on their second date (salted caramel cones from Ample Hills, and a walk around Fort Greene Park), no reckless romance. No expectations, no grand declarations. This was dating as a widow. As a mom. And while the purpose of this was to create boundaries as wide as a six-lane highway, it was only partially successful. Because Liv liked Sam Woods. She liked that he thought cop movies had logic flaws. She liked that he knew when fruit was ripe. She liked his old T-shirts and his big hands. She liked that he was both careful and easy with her son. She liked his kind, crinkly brown eyes. She liked that spending time with him felt unhurried and simple and that they could talk about anything and didn’t have to pretend to be perfect people, people without a past, because they’d both been hurt and that was okay.
And liking Sam Woods scared the bejesus out of Liv.
On
one of their dates, strolling the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, they passed a bride and groom being photographed. Sweetheart neckline doesn’t suit her, Liv thought. And he’s got about a gallon too much hair gel.
Apparently, this was not what Sam was thinking. “Think you’d ever do it again?”
“What—get married?” Liv looked at him like he was mad. “I’d rather be flayed alive.”
Sam tipped his head back and laughed. “You don’t mince words, Olive Goldenhorn.”
They found a bench overlooking the East River. “Don’t tell me you would. I’m not saying this to be mean, but your marriage was pretty much a disaster.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Sam said mildly. “Not entirely.”
“Three years. She was cheating on you for—”
“I know, I know. But the way I see it, Claudia and I had ten good years, and three bad ones. Ten when she was honest, three when she wasn’t. Ten’s more than three. And you said things with Eliot were bad for only a few years, toward the end. But you were married for over two decades. Just because a marriage ends doesn’t make it a failure, or bad. I don’t think of marriage that way—good or bad.”
It was a healthy reframe; Liv understood that. “I see your point. But you’re more hopeful than I am. I’m done with it. When I was younger, I thought it was about the quality of the love. If you loved each other enough, and it was good enough love, marriage would work.”
“Now?”
“Better the devil you know. Marriage sucks. Being single sucks. Pick your poison.”
Sam looked at her like she was an errant school kid squandering her natural ability. “So you don’t believe in love?”
“I believe it exists. I see it every day: couples high on hormones, whose greatest test has been moving in together. But, it’s a delusion. And I’m done with being deluded.”
“That’s a shame.”
“You want to get married again.”
He shrugged. “Sure.”
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