“By ‘house,’ I’m guessing you mean ‘yurt,’” I tease. She laughs, the phone shaking in her hand, and half-shrugs.
“Never know. How’s the green today?”
I turn the phone around and pan it over the golf course behind my house. Mom hates the development I chose to live in, where every house looks the same and the only trees to be found are saplings in the medians. But the golf course, in her mind, makes up for it all. It’s a favorite hobby for her and Patch, even though neither are very good. They just love the serenity.
“We’ll have to play, next time I’m in town. Speaking of which, I needed to ask Timmy about Thanksgiving at the estate—have you heard from him today? He hasn’t answered my calls. I’ve been trying to reach him since yesterday.”
“Huh, that’s weird. Cohen couldn’t reach any of them, either.” Cait flaking out on plans isn’t too strange, but not answering her phone is. And Aunt Jeannie and Uncle Tim carry theirs like they remind them how to breathe.
“He’s probably in a meeting or something.” Mom waves her hand, bracelets chiming down her wrist as she scoffs. If Tim is the epitome of old money and the great American mogul, my mother is the poster child for rebellion. She shunned the family money and went granola during her debutante classes, culminating in a dramatic escape the day she graduated high school. The way Uncle Tim tells the story, it sounds like something out of a John Hughes movie: Dad thundering into the Fairfield estate on his motorcycle, revving the engine until Mom ran out of her own graduation party, hopped on the back, and shook out her diamond hairclips as they sped away.
“I’ll let you know if I hear from him,” I tell her. “And I’ll send you photos when your totally-necessary wind chimes arrive.”
“Thank you. Tell your friend there in the background I said hi. Love you!”
“Love y— Wait, what?”
Mom ends the call; the screen blanks out to gray.
“Hope she didn’t hang up because of me,” Mara says, pulling the door shut behind her. “I wasn’t eavesdropping or anything, I promise.”
“It’s okay. Just my mom being...my mom.” I motion to the patio chair beside mine. “Are you feeling better?”
She winces as she nods. “I shouldn’t have freaked out like that. Not at you. Sorry.”
“No, I didn’t have to keep harping on it. I do think you should, you know...work through all that, for your sake. But at the same time, it isn’t really my business.” I pause, the words suddenly sounding wrong. “On the other hand, I guess it kind of is. If we’re.... I mean, you and I are something now.” Slowly, I drag my eyes to hers. “Aren’t we?”
“Labels are never good.” Her smile seems sweet, but I feel like it’s just an accessory slapped onto the sentence. “Let’s just see what happens.”
Instinctively, I want to protest this. Seeing what happens only gets you so far. If there’s one thing the last two years have taught me, it’s that there’s definitely a balance to maintain between leaving things to fend for themselves, and micromanaging the hell out of them. Neither’s worked out well for me, lately.
I’m not looking to start another argument, though, so I say, “Sure. If that’s what you want.”
“It is,” she says quickly, voice muffled by her knees as she brings her legs to her chest.
We sit and watch the golfers a while. The weather is still gorgeous, that first breath of autumn avalanching onto the green from the treetops. Mara shuts her eyes in the breeze.
“By the way,” she says, after several minutes pass with nothing but leaves rustling and golf carts buzzing, “you look ridiculously cute in your old man glasses.”
It’s then I remember I’ve still got my giant plastic reading glasses perched on my nose. I slip them off and tuck them into my collar. “Thanks.”
“No, really, I like them. That whole sexy-nerd vibe.”
I laugh softly and thank her again. I’m glad things feel okay between us, but I can’t help but notice they also feel different. Whatever we had this morning, it’s long gone, now.
That’s the thing about serenity, and why I find it kind of crazy my Mom and Patch insist on chasing it: it never sticks around.
22
“When you said ‘you knew a little place,’ I was expecting some, like, hole-in-the-wall gem.” I spin to face Levi after we pass through the Acre’s gleaming doors. “Maison is not little.”
“Our attempt at a first date was...less than spectacular,” he counters, and puts his hands on my waist to turn me back around. The pressure of his thumb against my stomach makes me hungry for his touch on the rest of my body. Forget dinner: I’d be happy to fast-forward straight to the end of the night.
Then he steps up beside me and slips his hand into mine, and something strange happens: I’m not so eager to skip ahead. I still can’t wait for tonight, when I can tumble headfirst into another marathon of pleasure—but I’m suddenly curious to see what an actual date feels like. Especially if it is, in fact, spectacular.
“If I’d gotten some warning,” I tell him, “I would’ve dressed up.”
“You are dressed up. I mean, you’re in a dress.”
“And boots.”
“I’m not dressed up, either,” he reminds me, and tugs the hem of his polo. “Relax. Maison isn’t all black-tie, no-jacket-no-service. You could roll up in Crocs and Daisy Dukes, and they’d still serve you.”
“Then why is everyone else dressed up?” Not a single person we pass on our way to the table is sporting anything remotely casual.
“Because they think they have to.”
I shake my head. Whether they know Maison has no dress code or not doesn’t matter. It’s that the place is so ritzy, any other clothes make you feel like human garbage. When you’re eating five-star cuisine, you get the urge to dress the part.
Not that I’d know firsthand. “I’ve never been here,” I confess, when we’re seated with our menus. Levi was instantly recognized and welcomed by the maître d’, who informed him one of the private dining rooms was available, if he wanted to use it. The table is larger than we need, but I have to admit, it’s nice: two of the walls are lined with heavy maroon drapes, and the others are made of frosted glass. Through the haze, I can see the candles on the other tables below, and Maison’s chandelier twinkling above.
“You don’t have to do this, you know.”
He sips his water, eyebrow peaked. “Do what?”
“Go all-out, or whatever. Because of the festival.”
“I’m not.” He shrugs when he hears how completely fake this sounds. “Okay, maybe a little. But it’s not a guilt response.”
“Then...what is it?”
Levi’s eyes flicker in the candlelight from the centerpiece as he thinks. “A redo.”
A few days ago, I’d have been quick to tell him there’s no such thing. Nothing can really be redone, because nothing can be undone. I’m tempted to say so even now, partly resisting so I don’t sound all woe-is-me again like I did at the festival. Self-pity is not a good look.
More than anything, though, I don’t tell him redos are impossible because I suddenly can’t think of one reason they should be. Sure, in the strictest sense of the word, you can’t undo anything and do it again, pretending the first try—or the second, or third—never happened.
But you can still fade the old, soak and scrub it away until all that’s left are the faintest lines, showing you where to draw the next time around. Guiding you how to get it right.
So instead of my typical snark, I tuck my tongue into my cheek and take a breath.
“A redo,” I repeat, nodding. The wine he ordered hasn’t arrived yet, so I hold up my water. “I’ll drink to that.”
Levi smiles and taps his glass to mine.
“Can I tell you,” he asks, voice low and flowing through me, like the strains of the cello set in a glittering, far-flung corner of Maison, “that I haven’t stopped thinking about last night for more than five minutes at a time, all day?” H
e puts his hand overtop mine and slides his thumb back and forth on my skin. Then, adorably, he blushes at his own confession and pulls back to read his menu.
“Can I tell you...” I begin, and trail my voice as I lean closer, until I’m sure he can smell my perfume. Until he looks at me.
“...that you should really be wearing your reading glasses, right now?”
He stares at my mouth. “Yeah?” he smirks. “Why’s that—you dying to have dinner with some sexy nerd?”
“Maybe.” I hook my ankle around his beneath the table, running it up and down his leg. “Or maybe it’s because you’re squinting at that menu like you’re staring straight into the sun.”
It takes him a second to register what I’ve said. When he does, I laugh at the way he sighs and sits back, slipping his glasses out of the case in his pocket. He makes a big show of putting them on. “There. Happy?”
“Yes.” I reach out and adjust them, fixing his hair trapped behind the earpieces. The second I look him in the eyes, he kisses me.
“You have to admit—I’m pretty damn good at this first-date thing.”
Mara nods as we walk through the Acre’s lobby. With the holidays on the horizon, spaces near the gift shop, tearoom, and guest lounges are being cleared to make way for coat and toy drives, professional gingerbread houses, and about a hundred miniature Christmas trees. We stop in front of a fireplace that hasn’t been used in decades and stare at the portrait over the mantle.
“You are good,” she says. “Not that I’d have anything to compare it to.”
I look at her, fast. “You’ve never been on a date?”
“By your definition, like, all the stuff outside of drinks and sex? Nope.”
“Wow. All I can say is, the rest of the men in this city must be insane.”
“It wasn’t them.” Mara scuffs the floor with her boot, sending a high-pitched squeak across the tile. “It was me.”
My do-over plan seems to be going well, all things considered; it feels like we’re getting some of that earlier sureness back. Now, though, I see that draw of her mouth to one side, one arm folding across her already, and know tonight is more important than I thought.
“Well.” I slide my foot to hers and nudge it. “Thanks for making an exception for me. I’m not sure I could’ve handled the rejection.”
My joke works: she relaxes, laughing under her breath.
“So.” Her hand sweeps toward the painting over the fireplace—more specifically, the elaborate mustache on the man’s face, curling at the edges. “Who’s this old fuck?”
I curb my smile and run my tongue over my teeth. “That,” I answer, “would be Bourne Fairfield. My great-great-grandpa.”
Mara’s hand flies to her mouth, but she can’t stop laughing. “Shit,” she breathes, cracking up again. “Sorry.”
“Yeah, you sound sorry. I’ll have you know he was considered very stylish in his day.”
“I bet,” she sputters. “Totally GQ.”
We pull ourselves together and wander in the other direction. She runs her hands along the gilded details and marble columns as we pass. “Your portrait anywhere in this place?”
“Uh, no. Couldn’t grow an impressive enough mustache.”
Mara’s laughter peals down the hall in front of us, earning a glare from Lupé, the Acre’s event and meeting coordinator. When he sees it’s me, and on a date, no less, he gives a visibly surprised smile and waves us on our way. Great: even Lupé pitied me, assuming I’d stay single forever.
You’re still single, my brain argues, but I shut it down. Maybe it’s too soon for labels and relationships, but Mara and I are something. It doesn’t have to have a name to be important.
“Bourne Fairfield,” I explain, as we amble past a glass-block window overlooking the courtyard, “bought this hotel. The party line is that he ‘saved the city from deplorable sin’—that’s a direct quote from an article in my uncle’s office, by the way—because the Acre used to be one of the most popular brothels on the coast.”
“No way.”
“Swear to God. The Fairfields tried to hide it for years, then they just spun the story so it made it sound like our family did it on purpose, for moral reasons or whatever.” I shake my head, putting my mouth close to her ear like sharing a secret. “It was just good real estate.”
“So he didn’t know it was a brothel, when he bought it?”
“Oh, he knew. That’s another thing the family likes to hide: he’d seen the inside of that place many, many times.”
“Scandalous.”
“Every family tree’s got a secret or two.”
Mara follows me down another hallway. This one leads to a meeting room, business center, and gym. The walls feature grainy photos of the Acre Hotel in the late 1800s. She stops in front of one taken shortly after Bourne bought the place; the hotel is half-finished, covered in scaffolding.
“It’s so weird.” Her fingertips skate across the glass, then pull back like we’re in a museum. “All that blank sky behind it.”
“The Acre was one of the tallest buildings in the city, for a while. Most of the lots around it, where those skyscrapers are now? Nothing but grass and some houses. That bank across the street was still there, though. One time someone staying at the Acre robbed it—you can see bullet holes in the brick.”
“Did he get caught?”
“It was a woman, actually.” I take her hand and lead her to another frame, this one holding a yellowed newspaper clipping: POLICE CATCH MADISON STREET BANK ROBBER, “GIRL WITH GUN.” “She was a national story for a long time, even though she didn’t take much and nobody got injured. People were just shocked she’d been so bold, because women…usually weren’t.”
“We weren’t allowed to be,” she says quietly, smirking. This time, she lets her fingers touch the picture and stay there.
“Must have been your great-great-grandma.” She laughs and shoves me.
The halls through the first floor form one big square, so eventually we come back to the lobby. Mara pauses at the doors and takes it all in again.
“Thank you. This...this was a wonderful first date.” Her teeth sink into her lip as she shrugs. “Even if I have nothing to compare it to.”
“You’re very welcome.” I motion for her to go first. “But you’re forgetting one thing: the date’s not over, yet.”
The sly smile she throws over her shoulder sends a barrage of filthy thoughts through my head. I find myself praying the golf course is deserted.
“Another bold woman robbing a bank?” Mara jokes, when we step outside and see a news van at the curb.
“Probably one of those holiday puff pieces,” I explain. “They do the same stuff every year—how many lights go up, how tall the tree is....” My voice trails as the reporter and cameraman set up on the sidewalk directly across from us. “Huh.”
“What?”
“Well...usually the news channels come onto the property, or even inside. Tim never stops them. And it is kind of early for them to be doing a holiday piece. They at least wait until Halloween.”
We stand and stare a moment, before something makes me turn back to the hotel. Uncle Tim’s office is a converted suite on the second floor. It’s one of many, actually, when you consider the fact he’s got two offices at the Fairfield estate and one at every business he’s owned or partnered with through the years. But this one, formerly occupied by his great-grandfather and every firstborn son to follow, is his favorite.
“You mind if we go check on my uncle?”
“Is he actually here?” she asks, surprised. Her boots squeak on the tile again as she follows me inside to the elevators. “I didn’t think he stayed too involved with this place. Seems like it’d run itself.”
“It does.” I punch the button for the second floor, then the Door Close button, before anyone can duck inside with us. “He loves his office, though. He spends more time there than at his house.”
In the reflection of the doors, I see
her make a face. “That’s sad.”
I nod, even if it hurts to agree. It’s exactly what I used to do, too.
“Do you think there’s something up with that news van outside?”
“I don’t know. I just...I just got this weird feeling about it. He wasn’t answering his phone for anyone today. That’s not like him.”
While I lead the way down the hall, our shoes silent on the carpet, I feel her study me. “I’m sure he’s okay,” she offers.
“Yeah,” I say, too fast, automatically fixing my collar. It’s part nervous response, part general habit: Uncle Tim has been my business mentor ever since I opened Fairfield Party Suppliers with little more than a van, a bounce house, and his blessing to use the family name. His first lesson: never go into a meeting looking sloppy, whether personal or professional.
It’s why I’m so shocked when I knock on the modified suite door, hear the buzz, and open it to find Tim in sweats and an undershirt, hair uncombed, face unshaved, and eyes glazed with alcohol.
“Uncle Tim?” We step inside like the floor is covered in trash, tiptoeing through to his desk. “I, uh...I wanted to check on you. Mom and Cohen couldn’t reach any of you guys, and there’s a news van outside....” The words crackle like leaves, dissolving into dust as he finally looks up from the rocks glass in front of him. I cough, but it doesn’t help. “Something felt off.”
“Smart thinking.” His scoff barks through the air. “Used to think you learned that from me.”
It’s been a long time since I saw him drunk, and even that wasn’t anything like this: it was New Year’s, and I was sixteen. His words were slurred but warm when he offered me real champagne, instead of the sparkling cider the Acre staff passed out to minors at the charity ball. We toasted to the new year on the ballroom balcony before he brought me here, this same office, this same spot, and told me I didn’t have to keep walking dogs, doing seasonal construction—whatever I could get my hands on, working myself to death for shit pay. He was the first and only person who told me I could have a great future, with or without a diploma.
Honey, When It Ends: The Fairfields | Book Two Page 15