“If it was just flowers, maybe not, but…” I got up and went to my room, returning with the bag, the heart necklace, and the silver frame. “These aren’t little tokens,” I said.
“Holy.” Dani put down the yogurt she was eating at the counter and took the bag from me, admiring it as she turned it in her hands.
“I can’t accept it. It’s not right.”
“What are you going to do then?”
“Take it back.”
She rolled her eyes. “You take back the stuff you get for yourself. You won’t at least keep this? It was a gift.”
“It just feels…wrong. Not like I owe him anything, but more like… I just don’t want this stuff,” I said. How can I explain how I feel?
“Did you maybe say something to make him think you’re upset that he’s been busy this week?”
I shook my head. “That’s the thing. I totally get it. We’ve talked about how busy we both are. That was the whole point of keeping things casual.”
Dani grinned, squeezing the bag to her chest. “Yeah. This is not casual.”
“Like, at all, right?” I asked her, my voice rising. “What does this all mean? Do you think he’s getting invested in this? Maybe I should cut it off now…”
“He’s just trying to spoil you,” she suggested, still cradling the bag. “He’s trying to show you he cares about you.”
“He’s not supposed to care about me.” I wanted him to care. What was wrong with me?
Dani stared at me for a long minute, squinting her eyes and wrinkling her nose as she petted the bag. “Do you want him to care about you?”
Yes. “No,” I said. That was not the deal. No caring in “casual.”
“You don’t care about him?” Her head was tilted to one side, and she was watching me intently. I turned and walked away to get out from under her gaze.
“I care. I just… I mean, I wouldn’t want anything to happen to him, of course.”
“And if he told you he thought you should end it, that he wanted to see someone else?”
Even the idea made me sick. “I’d get over it.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“Nothing. No, that’s not true. I’m afraid of you spilling on that bag.” I pulled the bag from her hands. “If you get yogurt on it, I can’t return it.”
“You’re afraid that if you let yourself care about Trent, admit you might want more than a casual fling, you might get hurt.” Dani spooned yogurt into her mouth, looking smug, like she believed she’d just solved the biggest problem the world had ever seen.
“That’s not it.”
“Really.” It wasn’t a question. She knew she was right.
I exhaled in a huff. “Fine. Yes. That scares the shit out of me, okay?” I hugged the bag to my chest. “When do I ever get what I want? My life doesn’t go that way. When I decide I want something, the universe finds a way to make sure I can’t have it.”
“You’re going to med school.”
An uncomfortable heat spread through my veins as I thought about the financial aid forms I’d filled out, the sheer amount of debt I’d be in if I took the loans they offered. “No. I got into med school. I don’t think I can afford to actually go.”
Dani shook her head. “Don’t you do that. Don’t you self-sabotage. You’re going.”
“How, Dani? I’ll be hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt before I ever see a paycheck as a doctor. It’s not a responsible decision.”
My sister slumped down into one of the chairs at the counter and dropped her head into her hands. “Fine. Sell it.” Her voice was small, almost a whisper.
“What?”
“Sell the house. Sell Nan’s house.” She looked up at me then, her eyes shining. “It makes sense. Sell the house.”
I sat down next to her, staring at the bag in my hands. “I don’t know if I can,” I admitted. “But thanks for saying that.”
“What will you do with the money if you return that bag?” She pulled it from my hands again, clearly ready for a change of subject.
“I’m giving it back to him,” I said quickly. “I already called him to tell him I couldn’t keep it. He was okay with me returning it.”
“He told you to return it?”
“He might have misunderstood,” I told her honestly. “He told me to pick something I liked better. But either way, I’ll give the money back. It’s too much.”
She pressed her lips together, seeming satisfied with this. “Okay, let’s go to the mall,” she said. “Friday afternoon shopping trip.”
“Returning trip,” I said.
“Whatever.”
We both took a couple minutes to get ready and then left, walking to Horton Plaza through the still-bright San Diego afternoon sunshine. “You’re at Rob’s a lot lately,” I ventured as we walked.
Her aviator shades blocked whatever expression her eyes might have held. “I’m going to move in, Amy.” Her voice was uncertain.
“That’s amazing,” I said, genuinely happy for her but unable to stave off a pang of fear at the prospect of being alone.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “But I don’t like the idea of leaving you.”
“Hey,” I said, poking her in the ribs with an elbow. “It was bound to happen eventually. It’s a good thing. I’ll have more room for all my flowers and gifts.”
“Right.”
…
I had no trouble returning the bag, since it still had tags and had come from Nordstrom. The salesgirl was very gracious about the whole thing, but just as I was completing the transaction, I became aware of someone watching me. I looked up, expecting to find Dani, but she was still busy in the clearance shoe racks behind me. The face peering down in a judgmental sneer as the salesgirl counted out cash into my palm was the one person I would have preferred to never see again—Trudy McNeil.
“Buyer’s remorse?” she asked when I met her eye, a twinkle of something derisive in her voice.
I shook my head. “No, just returning a gift that was a little over the top.” I kicked myself after I’d spoken. She doesn’t need to know. Why did you say that?
“Cash is king,” she said, her voice a smiling singsong that felt like a slap. “I suppose every little bit will help, now that you have to worry about paying for medical school, no?”
I thanked the salesgirl and tucked the cash into my wallet, shaking my head and turning to face Trudy, who wore a suit I was certain was Chanel and held multiple shopping bags in her hand. “No, I’m not keeping the cash. I’m giving it back.”
She raised a penciled eyebrow at me. “May I ask if it was Trent who gave you this exorbitant gift?”
Sure, you can ask. It was none of her business. But I felt like she’d pinned me down with her gaze, like I was a specimen she was investigating. “Yes,” I said, after a pause that was uncomfortably long. “But it was too much. I can’t accept it.”
“I can pass along the message if you like,” she said. Something in her tone implied that I might not speak with him myself.
“He knows, and I’m actually seeing him tonight, so there’s no need.”
Dani arrived at my shoulder then, jutting out a hand and foisting her huge smile on Trudy. “Hi, I’m Amy’s sister, Dani.”
“Hello,” Trudy said, and I watched her evaluate my sister, seeing Dani through her eyes and wishing I could protect my little sister somehow from her judgment. “Well, I’ll let you girls get back to your…shopping.” She pasted on a smile that looked painful in its falseness and turned, walking away.
“What a sweet little old lady,” Dani said, just a little too loudly on purpose. Trudy’s shoulders stiffened, but she didn’t turn around.
“That’s not helpful,” I hissed at her. “She already hates me.”
“Now she hates me, too,” she said, taking my arm as we left the store.
…
Trent picked me up that evening, promising a quick errand and then a night of staying in at his place, watching movies
and ordering food. His face was paler than usual, and dark circles bruised the skin beneath his eyes. He looked tired.
I was looking forward to a night spent at his side, no matter what we did. Dani’s announcement that she was moving in with Rob had been drifting around in my head, pinging my emotions back and forth between joy that my sister was happy and sadness over my own childish fears of abandonment. Nan had left us not long ago, and the house had gotten quieter. And if Dani left, too, I’d be all alone. Maybe selling it was the right choice. I tried not to think about it, letting the sadness and childish fear settle into a heavy place in my chest—there, but not at the forefront of my mind. I shifted my attention to Trent, confidently hot behind the wheel of his car as I rode beside him.
He looks so handsome behind the wheel. He was still in his suit pants and tie, having come straight from the office, and I had to clench my hands in my lap to keep them from wandering up the smooth planes of his chest to pull apart his carefully tailored professional look. Trent in a T-shirt and jeans was hot. Trent in what I called his “fireman outfit”—a term he wasn’t especially fond of—was absolutely smoking. But Trent in a tie? The little spark that glowed inside me at just the thought of him had burst into a flame when he’d appeared dressed like this tonight, and I was tempted to climb over the center console of the car and onto his lap.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“We need to get you a proper ring,” he said, flashing a huge smile at me.
Oh God. If I’d wanted him to stop spending money, this was probably not going to be the night it happened. “Trent. I don’t really need a ring.”
He raised an eyebrow, and the little crinkles around his eyes gathered as he smiled. “You need a ring,” he said, but his voice had lost its enthusiasm. We parked in front of a jewelry store, and he stared out the window a long minute over the steering wheel. His jaw flexed, and I couldn’t help but trace a finger down that angled line. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want. I mean…any of it.” There was a dull sadness in his gaze, and I wondered how much of it was fatigue from a long week and how much really related to me saying I didn’t want a ring.
“I want to,” I said softly. “I mean…I want to spend time with you.” I watched his eyes clear, and some of the fatigue lifted from his face at those words, making me more certain. I wanted to see him smile, wanted to be his reason to be happy.
“Okay,” he said. “Then are you ready?” He turned to me with his high-watt smile.
“For my fake engagement ring for our fake engagement?” I said, adding a burst of false enthusiasm to my voice.
His smile faded. “Right.”
I knew Trent still felt guilty over the situation we were in, and I didn’t want to bring the sadness back to his face. I was beginning to realize that when someone as naturally buoyant as Trent was unhappy, the world felt off-kilter—it altered the natural rhythm of things. “It will be fun, Trent.” I was trying to sound enthusiastic. “I’ve never really thought much about engagement rings and weddings.”
“Really? I thought all little girls thought about that stuff.”
“I didn’t,” I said, and part of me hoped he wouldn’t ask more. But there was a tiny part of me that wondered if maybe today he would.
From the beginning, Trent had been different from other guys I’d dated. At first, I hadn’t been able to figure him out and thought maybe his agenda was just more difficult to determine, hidden as it was behind the dark brown eyes, the happy grin, and the easygoing attitude. But I was starting to see that Trent’s attitude was a conscious choice, that he’d been brought up by less-than-easygoing folks who certainly weren’t wowed by a guy who was willing to just roll with life’s punches. Trent’s nice-guy demeanor was a conscious choice he’d made somewhere along the line, and his respect for the limits I’d set out early were a choice he’d made about me specifically.
It was hard not to fall for a guy like that—and I knew I was in danger of falling for him. It might have been one of the reasons I was okay with this pretend-to-be-engaged scenario.
“Never?” he asked, prodding just a little. He looked at me, his expression as open and honest as I’d ever seen it.
“Maybe there was a time. But then I had other things to think about…”
“Amy,” he said, reaching for my hands and staring at them held between his own as we sat in the quiet bubble of the car. “I’ve never really asked about it. And if you don’t want to talk about it, I respect that. But I know there are things in your past that…” He swallowed and looked up to meet my eyes. “Things that were difficult.”
I nodded. I wasn’t sure how else to categorize the events he was referring to. They were difficult. That’s accurate.
“I just want you to know that if you ever do want to talk, I’ll listen.”
I squeezed his fingers gently in acknowledgment. “Thanks,” I said. “It’s not that I don’t want to tell you. It’s more… It’s just…there were a couple years there where I got pretty confused about who I was and what the world was about. When I was in foster care—you know this part, right?” I met his gaze, and he nodded.
“So the rest.” I faltered. “I was just a little kid, and so I didn’t know how wrong everything was exactly, that the things my foster family were doing weren’t what all seven-year-olds without parents were supposed to go through. And now that I’m older and I know how wrong it all was, it isn’t something I like to revisit. And it’s not something a lot of other people can hear easily.”
Trent shook his head slowly, and I could see him struggling to understand what I was alluding to. I decided to just tell him. “I mean…how do you talk to someone about being basically locked in a closet for a year?” I said the words out loud and then forced myself to hold eye contact, my chin higher than normal. It was hard not to feel the shame that came from that admission—not shame that it had been done to me, but the shame that came from a seven-year-old girl’s mind. A mind that believed she had deserved it; had deserved to be deprived repeatedly of light and food and human contact, deserved to be punished. “I slept in there, and they kept me in there during the day instead of paying a sitter or finding daycare. Or sending me to school. I should have been in first grade. They snowed the child services lady who checked on me, but I slipped and mentioned it once when she came—and that was my last day with those people.”
Trent’s eyes shone as he looked right back at me, never breaking my gaze. “Why didn’t you say something to her sooner?”
“They told me I’d get in trouble. I don’t know, I believed them. I was seven.” Tears threatened as I thought about how scared I’d been when I mentioned it during a check-in visit, about what kind of punishment my foster mom would have for me when the social worker left. But when she left, she took me with her.
His head shook the tiniest bit, as if he could deny what I’d told him. “Amy,” he whispered. “God, Amy…” He slid his hands up my arms and wrapped them around my back, pulling me in to him across the center of the car. I let my head find his shoulder and took a shuddering breath there as his hands moved over my back. “I’m so sorry.”
I found my strong voice, the one that went with my tough-girl persona. “It was a long time ago.” I’m not going to fall apart right now. I’m a different person now.
“No one should ever have to…” He shook his head, his face reddening in misplaced fury about something he couldn’t possibly correct. “You were just a little girl…a little girl who just needed someone looking out for her. And that anyone could do that…did do that…to you…” He clenched his teeth, a muscle flexing in his jaw.
“It’s okay,” I told him. “I’m okay now.” Never in a million years did I envision myself comforting someone else over what had been done to me, but Trent was clearly shaken. “Hey,” I said, taking his hands again. “I’m okay now.”
He stared at me for a long minute and seemed to consciously decide to let go of the anger he’d been feeling o
n my behalf. “Right,” he said. “Okay.”
I leaned across the car, put a hand to his jaw, and pressed myself up to kiss him.
His lips met mine softly at first, and then his arms went around me fiercely, protectively, and his mouth became firmer against mine. As his tongue slid against mine, the tension between us melted away, replaced by an expectant heat that sizzled and wound around us in the small space of his car. We kissed, hands and tongues and lips moving for long minutes to undo what had been done, to set the world right once again. And then I pulled back and looked up at him, smiling at the dazed expression on his handsome face. “Let’s go get me a ring,” I said.
“Let’s get you a ring,” he agreed, and we stepped out of the car and back into the flow of the real world.
…
The jewelry store was a place I wouldn’t have ventured on my own. It wasn’t that I felt inadequate to shop for jewelry. It was more that in the hierarchy of fancy jewelry stores, this one ranked somewhere above where I imagined the Tiffany store on Fifth Avenue in New York might in terms of exclusivity. I’d always thought that if jewelry came in a little blue box, that was about as fancy as it could get, but I quickly revised that opinion upon stepping into this little store. Tiffany was a brand for the masses. The real glitterati shopped at tiny exclusive boutiques like this one, where the proprietor came around the counter with a huge smile and greeted you by name.
“Trent,” Emile said, smiling and taking Trent’s hand before turning to me. “And Miss Hodge. I had hoped to see you soon.”
Emile waved at a young girl behind the counter on the far side of the small shop, and she disappeared, returning with two flutes of champagne. “Congratulations on your engagement. Let me show you some options that I think will suit you well. Sit here, Miss Hodge.”
Trent grinned at me as Emile whisked me to a comfortable upholstered chair in front of a dark wooden desk. Trent sat down next to me in a plush chair and smiled, looking right at home, as if being personal-shopped through a collection of million-dollar gems was an everyday occurrence for him. There was some comfort in having met Emile before, though I had to push down a desire to recoil at anything that smacked too much of Trudy. I couldn’t hold it against Emile that Mrs. McNeil liked to spend money with him.
Without Promises (Under the Pier) Page 11