“I am so ready for sleep,” Micah says, leaning his head on mine.
“Me too,” I say with a yawn.
I nearly trip over my own feet when we round the corner, and I see Oliver talking to a nurse I haven’t seen before. He’s standing against the wall, and she’s leaning into him like he’s her next meal. I catch his eye and he straightens a bit, but I look away and lean into Micah, walking out of the hospital before he can approach me—not that I expect him to. It kills me to admit to myself that I feel anything when I see something like that happen. It kills me, because I’m really not the kind of girl who gets jealous over anything, yet when it comes to Oliver, I feel possessive.
I go home and sleep like the dead. I don’t hear my phone calls or text messages or shouts from my brother downstairs telling me I need to eat. I don’t even care about any of it, until I realize I have a missed call from my realtor, and I call her back frantically, hoping for good news.
“Hello?”
“I don’t want you to get your hopes up, but we have a possible buyer.”
“Oh, thank God! Finally!”
She goes on to tell me how much they offered and lets me know she’ll get back to me as soon as she needs me again. I stretch and go downstairs, half expecting not to see my brother there, but unfortunately come face to face with not only him, but his friend Bobby from work, as well. And I look like shit.
“Hey, Elle, good to see you again,” Bobby says, smiling as his eyes run up and down my body.
“Hey. Sorry you had to see me in this condition, but I’ve been sleeping for like . . .”
“Eighteen hours,” Vic interrupts.
“No shit.”
“Yes, shit.”
“Wow. I guess I was really tired.”
“Yeah, I guess. Bean called asking for you.”
I frown and pop my head out of the fridge. “And?”
“And I thought that was odd,” Vic says with a shrug. “You’ve been hanging out a lot, right?”
“Not really.” I go back into the fridge, looking for nothing in particular.
“He says he tried calling you and couldn’t get through.”
“I’ll call him back later. I think he’s working tonight anyway.”
“Yeah, isn’t tonight Grace’s night?” Bobby asks with a laugh over a mouthful of muffin.
Vic doesn’t respond, just looks at me for a reaction I don’t give him. Inside I’m screaming “Who the fuck is Grace?” but I can’t let that show. If anything, this cements the reason my brother shouldn’t know anything about Oliver and me. It just bugs me that they seem to know his every move. It makes me realize that I don’t.
“Mom called too.”
“Okay, Vic. What are you, the freaking operator? I’ll call everybody back when I feel like it.” I turn around and head back up to my room.
“Damn. Maybe she needs more sleep.”
Vic scoffs. “She was born bitchy.”
WHEN ALL ELSE fails, run home to your mother. At least those were my thoughts when I woke up this morning. I didn’t consider that, once I pulled into her driveway, I would be accosted by her and asked a gazillion questions I didn’t want to deal with. Have you been eating well? How has it been staying with your brother? Is he eating well? How did it go with Derek? I’m setting you up on another date, you’ll like this guy, I promise. How’s the studio? I heard you did a great job with the hospital. And lastly . . . Come in, let me feed you!
Which of course, I did. I sat in the dining table overlooking the mountains and the ocean behind them. Vic and I were water babies, but my parents preferred the Santa Barbara Mountain View. They owned a house in Malibu that we used to drive to on weekends. Sometimes we were with them, but mostly we were with friends.
“Vic says you’ve been hanging out with Oliver a lot,” my mom comments, using her nonchalant voice, as if curiosity isn’t coloring the undertones of her voice.
I groan. “Vic is so annoying. We see each other a lot in the hospital. We hung out once outside of work. Big deal!” Her laugh makes my eyes snap to her. “What?”
She shrugs. “Your brother didn’t think anything of it until I mentioned it was odd that you were hanging out. You used to hate him, didn’t you?”
“No I didn’t.” I frown. Where the hell would she get that idea?
“I thought you did. You were always talking about what a player he was.”
“Because he was,” I say, giving her a “no shit” look.
“And now?”
I stare at her for a while, my hands playing with the napkin on the table. People say I’m a carbon copy of her, and that if they cloned me I wouldn’t have looked more like her than I do. The thought makes me smile, because my mother is really a beautiful person, inside and out. Even with her demanding career as a professor, she’s always managed to put her family first. Like today, when she saw my car pulling into the driveway, she immediately called out sick. I’m used to telling her everything, but for some reason, I can’t talk to her about Oliver. I just can’t. He’s like a third child of this house. It’s not like Wyatt, where I could come and complain about him or say beautiful things about him, and it wouldn’t matter either way because he was an outsider to everybody. Oliver practically lived here growing up. And even though absolutely nothing is going on, as usual, I would hate to paint him in a bad light.
“I don’t know, Mom,” I say, finally. “I honestly don’t know. I’m sure Vic can tell you better than I can.”
“But you see him at work.”
“Yeah, and?”
“Does he have a girlfriend? Or girlfriends?” she asks, rolling her hazel eyes.
I shrug. “You know him. He flirts with anything that walks, so I guess.”
“Do you think he sleeps with all of them?”
My eyes widen. “Okay, this is getting awkward, and again, I don’t know.”
“Sometimes guys like him get a bad rap, don’t you think? I mean, he’s always been such a good boy.”
I make a noncommittal wave of my hands. “I don’t care. Why are we talking about this?”
Then she smiles, really wide, and I sink back in my seat. I’m half expecting her to tell me she’s setting me up with him on a date.
“Because, this guy, Zach, sort of has that reputation with the ladies, but I hear he’s not a player at all,” she starts.
“Mom.”
“And he is so cute, Estelle!”
“Mom.”
“He owns a gallery in Malibu.”
“Zach Edwin?” I practically shout.
My mom smiles, nodding and raising her eyebrows as if she just tasted all the cookies in the jar and didn’t get caught.
“How the hell do you know him?” I ask a little too enthusiastically for my own good.
“Well, it’s a funny story, Bettina and I were doing some shopping a couple of weeks ago and happened to step in his shop. He has gorgeous things in there, by the way, but the piece that caught our eye was a heart—one of your hearts. We stepped in, pretending we didn’t know anything about anything, and asked him how much the heart was.” She pauses for dramatic effect. “Four thousand dollars.”
My mouth drops.
“He says he sold the last one for three thousand, and this is the only one he has left, but the person he bought them from didn’t leave a card so he can’t get in touch with who made it. Elle, are you all right?”
I shake my head, my mouth still hanging open.
My mom laughs and taps my hand with hers. “Can you believe that? I’m assuming he bought them from Wyatt.”
I swallow, recollecting myself. “Yeah, Wyatt mentioned selling him a few pieces years back but . . . wow . . . four thousand dollars?”
“So you haven’t gotten a cut from that?” my mom asks, frowning.
“It wasn’t on consignment. He sold it to get rid of them, because I had made too many for a show we were attending, and Wyatt thought selling to Zach would be good for me later on. Obviously I neve
r followed up, and Wyatt probably forgot his cards, as usual, but oh my God.”
“I know!” my mom squeals.
“Okay, so how did the date thing come about?”
“Oh. Well, I told him my daughter was the one who made it, and he was very impressed.”
“Uh-huh?”
“And then I got on my phone and showed him the website to your studio. He saw your photo, and I just saw his eyes light up.”
“Oh my God, Mom,” I say, burying my face in my hands.
“So I told him the short version about Wyatt and that you’re dating now. I asked him if he would be interested, and he jumped on the chance.”
“Oh my God, Mom!” I say again, still talking into my hands.
“Have you seen him, Elle?” she asks. I peer at her through my fingers and nod. “He’s good looking!”
“He’s freaking hot, but I can’t go out with him! This isn’t the fifteen hundreds. You can’t just go around trying to court me to people!”
“Why the hell not?” she says, frowning. “Haven’t you seen those shows on television where people are actually paying to be set up with others? Millionaire Matchmaker or something?”
I stare blankly. “No, I haven’t had the pleasure of watching that. Just . . . I don’t know, I mean, I would love to sell him some of my work, but I can’t date him!”
“Is it because he’s a player?”
“What? No!”
Zach does have that whole player reputation, with good reason. He doesn’t usually date people in the industry, but the one girl he dated, he married, cheated on, and divorced within a year. After that, he’d been known to sleep with models, actresses, and whoever else walked into his shop on two slender legs and a short skirt.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive! I’m not looking for anything serious, so why would I care about his reputation?”
“I don’t think his reputation is who he is. I’m telling you, he’s a charmer, but I don’t think he sleeps around as much as we’re led to believe.”
“Are we done? I’d really like to eat my pancakes in peace now,” I mumble.
“Of course, dear. More coffee?”
“Sure. Where’s Dad?”
“He left at sun up. Long day today. Three celebrity clients.”
“Fun.”
“Yeah, I’m sure we’ll hear all about it when he gets back. Are you staying here tonight?”
I sigh and pour syrup on my pancakes. “Yeah, I think I will.”
“You’re sure you don’t want to meet Zach? He lives a couple of blocks away.”
My gaze cuts to hers. “You’re kidding.”
“What if he just comes over for dinner? That way it won’t be a date, but a way for you to talk about your art.”
“Since when are you interested in art? You hated when Wyatt used to come over and talk about art.”
She gasps, placing a hand over her heart. “I never hated when he came over! I just didn’t like how he spoke to you sometimes.”
“Really? How’s that?” I say, stabbing a piece of pancake. I don’t mean for her to answer, but she does anyway.
“Like you were a child.”
My chewing slows. I was a child. He was eleven years older than I was and had the experience of an eighty-year-old.
“He didn’t speak to me like I was a child,” I say.
“You were his muse . . . his light, I guess. I see that now, but at the time, it was unnerving, the way he wanted you stuck to his side every time your father’s friends were around. As if he thought they would take you away from him. You never got that vibe?”
I shoot her a look. “Of course I did. Men are like that.”
She tilts her head, seemingly weighing out my words. “I suppose they are. Anyhow, he obviously loved you in his own way and helped you a lot. But, just think, Zach Edwin!”
The rest of the day is spent shopping with my mom and Bettina (Mia’s mom), talking about Zach and how he’s coming over for dinner. Mia called threatening to kill me if I don’t call her as soon as he leaves. At one point, between trying on shoes at Neiman Marcus and having drinks at Chili’s, my brother gets wind of the whole thing and calls me to tell me he’ll kill me if I hook up with Zach because he heard he hooks up with everybody, including a client’s ex-wife. I turn off my phone after that. I have enough chatter to listen to from Bettina and my mom as they go on and on talking about all the guys Mia and I could have married by now. I don’t know if they forget that I was engaged, or they just choose to ignore it because I wasn’t engaged to somebody of their liking.
At night, I wear one of the dresses I bought earlier, a short—but not too short—flowery dress that hugs my torso but opens up and flows past my waist. My mom insists I wear a pair of red heels with it because it’ll make my legs look miraculous (her words). When the door swings open at seven o’clock, I practically jump on my father before he has a chance to put his briefcase down. He laughs, his big Santa Claus-like laugh comes straight from his core, and he hugs me tightly.
“Someone missed me,” he says, smiling when he lets me go. His once sandy brown hair is now covered in salt, and the lines of his face are marked with every time he’s laughed—and there have been a lot of those. His brown eyes shine when he looks at me, and it makes me feel like a kid again.
“You’re the only other normal person in this house,” I whisper-shout dramatically as he continues to chuckle and shake his head.
“Nobody told you to stay alone with you mother,” he whispers back conspiratorially.
“And Bettina!”
His eyes widen. “Oh Jesus, you need a drink.”
“Or twenty.”
He laughs again, putting his hand over my shoulder.
“Thomas! You’re home!” my mom says, smiling widely as she saunters over to us, wearing a knee-length black dress.
“Are you trying to give a man a heart attack, Hannah? What are you wearing?” he asks, dropping his arm from my shoulder and reaching for my mom.
Watching them is like watching Gone with the Wind. You know, that last part, where Rhett Butler holds Scarlett O’Hara’s face in his hands? That sums up my parents. Every. Single. Day.
“Oh, stop it, Tom, you know Elle hates public displays of affection,” my mom coos as she throws her arms around his neck.
I laugh, shaking my head. “I do not, but I’ll be outside if you need me.”
“Why do you insist on setting her up on these stupid dates?” I hear my dad whisper to her as I walk away.
“Because, she needs to move on!”
“She’ll move on when she’s ready, honey. Your meddling isn’t helping. And now I have Victor calling to say he’s coming over to intervene,” he says. I freeze with my hand over the doorknob. I have a moment of clarity, where I think maybe I’ll call it a night and go home, but then remember where home is right now and decide to walk outside and sit in my parents yard.
Growing up, I had two types of friends: the ones who had overbearing parents and the ones who had parents who didn’t care what their kids were doing. I always wanted to have the second type of parents. Mine weren’t strict, unless I got bad grades, and they only meddled when . . . well, they always meddled. When Wyatt died, I was grateful for that because I would have probably gone weeks without eating had it not been for them practically spoon-feeding me. Needless to say, I’m not surprised Vic decided to follow me home after he learned about the Zach thing, especially after he made the comment about his client. This is more than his normal big brother overprotection; it’s about work.
My dad joins me outside after he’s showered and hands me a glass of white wine.
“Figured you’d need it,” he says, toasting me with his own.
“Thanks,” I respond, taking a sip and leaning back into the cushions of the seat.
“I heard you did a great job at the hospital.”
I glance at him and smile. “I think we did.”
“I’m proud of y
ou, Elle. I know I always said art was a waste of time and you should have stuck with something else, but then you go and do things like this, and I can’t help but to be proud of you.”
“Thank you,” I say, leaning over and giving him a kiss on the cheek.
“Your mom isn’t going to give up until you find a new boyfriend, you know? I think you should just pretend you’re in love so she can let this go already.”
“Mom isn’t going to stop until I have kids.”
“I thought you didn’t want kids,” he says, taking a sip of wine. He doesn’t look at me when he says it. His eyes are far off into the distance. He doesn’t see the crumbled look on my face. Wyatt didn’t want kids. I turn my body away and mimic his pose, staring at the mountains—at the spot where I know the ocean is, but it’s too dark to see right now.
“I haven’t decided yet,” I say finally.
“Sometimes we give up a lot of ourselves for the people we love,” my dad says. “It’s hard knowing when to stop doing that, because you feel like if you love someone, you should be okay giving things up for them.” I nod and sip on my wine. “When I married Erika,” he says, recalling his deceased wife—the woman he lost years before he met my mother. “I gave up everything I loved. I gave up school and got a job because I felt I needed to provide for her. That’s what men do, you know, we provide for our woman—for our family. Then I lost her to a drunk driver and thought—what is my life now? I have nothing. And the thing is, I didn’t feel that way because I lost her, I felt that way because of the things I’d given up for her.”
I gulp a big sip of wine, knowing exactly how he feels. “And with Mom? And us?”
“Well, by the time I met your mother, I was back on track. She was younger, so I waited for her to graduate, I didn’t want her making the same mistake I made with Erika. I never wanted to be the reason she looked back on her life and regretted the things she didn’t do.”
“Do you think all men are like that? Waiting for the right time to do things?” I ask, thinking of Oliver.
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