They left and we fell silent for a few moments, the busboy taking our empty plates.
“Well, she landed herself a nice fish,” my mother commented.
“He’s a person, not a trophy, Mom,” I said, more tartly than I meant to. I wished I had some of my cocktail left to wash away the bitter realization of how much I’d thought of Daniel the same way. “Just…lay off, okay?”
“You know how I feel about her.”
“Yes. And you know how I feel about her. She’s my friend. So is Daniel.”
“Very nice friends you have, Marcia,” George put in, holding up the check he’d just received. “They comped the tab. Seems I owe you a meal still. Tell them thank you, from us.”
“I will.” Taking that cue, I stood, Damien moving with me, anticipating. My mom and George stood, too. “I know you have a train to catch, and I have to get back to work, but it was very nice meeting you.” I offered my hand, meaning it sincerely, despite the platitude. “You’ve made my mom really happy.”
Damien held the chair back, helping me edge out. I hugged my mom. “Happy Thanksgiving,” I told her. “Have fun.”
She held on fiercely. “I want to talk to you about this boy. We’ll be just over here.” She pulled me off to a corner, whispering harshly, “Pooky, listen. When you said you were bringing someone to meet me, I thought, maybe you’d finally met a nice boy. But this—” She shook a hand in Damien’s direction. “He is not marriage material.”
“Maybe I’m not looking to get married,” I shot back. Wow. I really meant that.
“Of course you want to get married. Don’t become like me.” Her voice wavered as she warmed to her favorite topic. “You have no idea how hard it was.”
“Yes, I do. I was right there with you, through all of it. Remember?”
“But you were a child. You couldn’t know—” She began weeping.
I took her hands. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m sure it was horribly difficult and lonely.”
“Yes.” She sniffled.
“But now you’ve met George and he seems really great. He likes you, a lot. I’m sorry for the way I behaved. However it works out with him, I wish you well.”
Her eyes filled with tears and she cupped my cheeks. “Thank you.” Her eyes flicked to Damien, who’d sat again and seemed to be talking easily with George, and back to me. “I wish I could say the same about you,” she whispered. “I’m just so worried. You always have your head in the clouds.”
“Don’t worry. I’m fine. I’m happy.”
“That eye color—is he wearing contact lenses?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care. I like him for himself.”
She frowned, searching my face. “Are you still a virgin?”
“Not answering that.” Belatedly I realized I should have just lied.
She gasped. “But he’s—”
“My business, Mom. He’s my business, just as George is yours.”
“But you’re my daughter!”
I laughed and hugged her. “Always. And you’re my mother. Nothing ever changes that.”
Strangely enough, as I walked out holding Damien’s hand, I found I wasn’t bothered by the conversation. I was happy and I planned to enjoy the moment.
“Warned you against my wicked ways, did she?” Damien asked as he helped me into my coat.
“I’m really sorry,” I said. He kissed my temple from behind and nuzzled my ear.
“For what? I just got an excellent lunch and whiskey cocktail with my gorgeous girlfriend.”
The phrase—applied to me—caught me by surprise. I’d never be gorgeous. Certainly not Charley-gorgeous. But then, she was forever pointing out that looking good was part of her job. I turned in his arms. “Is that what I am—your girlfriend?”
He edged me to the side as a couple emerged from the elevator, then held the doors open for me. Once they closed, he gave me another kiss that was far less gentlemanly.
“I should hope so,” he said, when the doors opened at street level and we came up for air. “Else I faced your dragon of a mum for nothing.”
I kind of groaned and laughed at once. “She really does mean well—and she’s protective of me.”
“Hey, maybe I look just like the bloke who seduced her and blew town.”
That arrested me. I’d always pictured my dad as Prince Charming, not trouble in black leather. Could my mom have gone for a bad boy, long ago?
“Except that’s not me—you know that right? I wouldn’t be that guy.” Damien stopped just inside the lobby doors, turning me so I faced him, his hands around my waist. Some concern darkened his eyes. “I know we’ve come at this… in a different way. But no matter what else, I’m sincere that I like you. I mean, I really do.”
“I know you do. I like you, too.” The admission burned raw against my heart on the way out. I kissed him, but he had some reserve to it now. “Is something wrong?”
“No.” He seemed to shake himself. “No, but I need to explain some stuff.”
“What stuff?”
His phone chimed and he pulled it out. “Motherfucker. I have to go. Work.”
“Can’t shirk your gainful employment.”
“Minx.” He tapped my nose. “I’m balls to the wall for the next day. See you on Thanksgiving for this shindig with the chosen family?”
“Well, now you’ve met Charley and Daniel. Are you sure you want to suffer that times four?”
“For you, luv?” He kissed me and this time it felt right. “Oh yeah. I’d suffer that and a lot more.”
~ 12 ~
“I cannot believe you made me get up at five in the morning on a holiday,” I said, not for the first time.
Julie just grinned at me and rang the bell. “Someone’s gotta make the donuts.”
Charley opened Daniel’s door. Even with no makeup, hair tousled, and in worn PJs, she looked glamorous. And she smelled like sex.
Even Julie picked up on it. “Were you just having sex?” she accused.
Charley gave us a lazy feline smile and held the door open. “You want to pull us out of bed at the buttcrack of dawn on a holiday, you get what you get.” Her gaze narrowed on me. “How are you, Marcia?”
Helping Julie wrestle the cart of goods—enough to feed a small third-world country—through the door, I blinked at Charley’s tone. “I’m just fine, Charlotte. How are you?”
She waved a hand at me, saw something on her nail and frowned at it. “We need to talk.”
“Not on Thanksgiving,” Julie declared. “No fighting today.”
Charley transferred the frown to her. “I said talk, not fight.”
“Is it soup yet?” Daniel asked, coming down the hall, wearing a brown robe over red flannel PJs. He should not look so adorable, but he did. Charley clearly thought so, too, because she got that goofy, melty smile and straightened his lapels.
“Dinner goes on the table at noon,” Julie informed him. “Guests arrive around eleven. Maybe you two should just go back to bed.”
“No,” started Charley, “I can—”
“Okay,” Daniel said cheerfully, swooping Charley up like a bride. She huffed in protest, but started laughing when he kissed her. “Call us if you need anything.” Then he tossed a grin over his shoulder. “Or, rather, don’t.”
Julie watched them go, shaking her head. “Those two scare me. I’d be jealous if they weren’t so damn perfect for each other.”
I was busy setting bags and boxes on the counter. “And besides, you have Steve. He’s coming today, right?” I hadn’t met him yet.
Julie made a face. “Meh. I told him not to bother. He’d agreed grudgingly anyway. Was much more het up to have some pot-smoking, pizza-bingeing fest with his homeboys anyway.”
“Oh, honey.” When had that happened? I’d been too wrapped up in my own affair. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. He wasn’t anything special. I think we maybe should have a system for scoring longer-term. He was barely a four-p
ointer and shedding them fast. I wish I’d spotted it sooner.” She shrugged. “You know what I mean. Not the One, for sure.”
“Do you think there is such a thing?” I opened the fridge to load in the perishables. There was a lot of room in there.
“Who are you and what have you done with my friend Marcia?”
“Oh, ha-ha. I’ve just been thinking.”
“Sorry lunch with your mom sucked so badly. Help me here.”
“It’s not that.” Between the two of us, we heaved the ginormous turkey into one side of the double sink. “Well, it’s kind of that. She’s just so…judgmental, particularly of anyone who’d not living by her rules. She did not like Damien.”
“Well,” Julie said carefully, extracting the bag of giblets, “you, yourself, said he’s not your type. That you liked him because he isn’t. Dig out the butter, would you?”
“Exactly!” I found the butter and set to organizing the rest. Julie liked having help, but to be the only hands-on person. That’s okay, because touching the wrinkly raw turkey skin freaked me out a little. “With Damien, I know it’s not going anywhere, so it’s like I had no huge expectations. I wasn’t forever measuring him against this impossible standard.”
She gave me a sideways frown. “You mean, like I did with Steve?”
“No! No, I didn’t mean that at all. You didn’t really like him all that much.”
“How could you tell?”
“I just…could.” I shrugged a little. Ice had a point, that this wasn’t all quantifiable.
“Do you think Amy likes Brad all that much?” She asked.
Hmm. “I think she wants to,” I temporized.
“That’s what I think, too.”
* * *
Charley and Daniel re-emerged by ten, all showered and looking content. He set to making some special family eggnog, while Charley noshed on the hors d’oeuvres Julie had set out. I took the reprieve to grab my bag and use the guest bath to shower off the cooking schmutz and get dressed.
By the time I emerged, Ice had arrived, along with Amy and Brad.
“No date for Ice?” I murmured to Amy, who’d commandeered the big dining table, draping it with a coffee-brown cloth and then a brilliant gold runner. Brad was over talking to Daniel, drinking eggnog and doing the hail-fellow-well-met.
Amy shook her head. “She said none of them were good enough for us.”
Ice put an arm around each of us, wedging herself in between. “They’re not. I only want to be with you guys. Run off with me to Bali and we’ll weave baskets and live together forever.”
“Have you been drinking already?” I asked.
She held up her glass of eggnog. “This is powerful shiz, and on an empty stomach. When do we eat?”
“Precisely at noon,” Amy and I said together.
I rolled my eyes and laughed. “You know Julie and her timetables.”
“It smells amazing.” Ice wandered off again. “Charley, honey, how come I never see you anymore?”
“Is she okay?” I asked.
“Hard semester, I think.” Amy extracted miniature vases tied with gold bows, and put one at each place setting. “She’ll be better after finals.”
“Yeah. She always is.” Ice drove herself really hard, for lots of reasons. Her mother made mine look like a teddy bear.
“Charley, Daniel—smile!” Brad took a picture of them with his phone. “Perfect. This will be great on Instagram. Hashtag Thanksgiving. Hashtag Chicago. Hashtag Chicagolife…”
“Hashtag let me suck up some more,” Amy said under her breath.
“Are you okay?” I asked, taken aback.
She nodded, then shook her head, bowing her face over the box, then wiping a tear away with her shoulder. “Let’s talk about it later. I want the table to be pretty.”
“Amy—”
“Yoo-hooo, Marcia! Your date is here.” Ice did a little hip shimmy with it. Behind her, Damien cocked his brow, giving me a dubious look.
“I’m going to kill her,” I muttered.
“Not on Thanksgiving,” Amy replied. “Julie would never forgive you.”
I went to meet Damien, ridiculously happy to see him there. He’d gone back to all black, jewelry included, making those aqua eyes all the more startling in contrast. Were they contact lenses? It didn’t matter.
“Hello, luv.” He gave me a smile. Ice already had his jacket, hanging it up.
“I see you met Ice.”
She came back, giving him a big smile and threading her arm through his. “I like this one, Marcia.”
“You can’t have him. Mine.”
She thrust out her lip in a pout. “I’d share with you.”
“Sorry,” I said to Damien. “She’s a shameless flirt.”
“I am.” She sighed. “It’s my cross to bear. Disappointing your parents takes a lot of dedicated effort.”
“Ice is a chill name.” Damien patted her hand, giving me a conspiratorial smile.
“Short for Anaisa. No one but my family—my blood family—calls me that.”
“Let me introduce you around.” I pointedly pried Damien away from Ice. Behind his back she held up a hand splayed with five fingers and the other in an “OK” sign, mouthing “five-point-oh,” just in case I didn’t get it. “I tried to warn you,” I said, then sniffed. “Why do you smell like makeup? Like that pancake stuff Charley uses.”
“Do I?” He frowned. “No idea. That’s weird.”
“Hi, I’m Charley. We met the other day.” Charley, glass in one hand, held out the other to shake Damien’s, as if anyone could forget her. “And you’re Damien,” she said, in a weirdly pointed way.
“That’s right,” he said, squeezing her hand. Some communication passed between them, and I looked back and forth, not sure what was going on.
Charley glanced at me, then released Damien’s hand. She started to say something, but Amy came over. Then she took Damien to meet Brad, and Daniel got him some eggnog. The three guys started talking about the Cubs—Damien surprising me by falling right into the groove with them—so I went to see if I could help Julie.
“Thank God,” she said to me. “Stir the gravy. Don’t you dare stop.”
I stirred, watching Damien with the other guys. Both Brad and Daniel were nice, clean-cut looking guys. Pressed slacks, sport shirts, corporate hair. The marriageable type. My guy, in contrast, slouched gracefully against the counter, hipshot in his black jeans, pointing a finger holding his eggnog glass, saying something that the other two nodded at.
“Mine,” I said to myself.
“You can devour him later. Food now,” Julie said. “Let’s get this dinner served.” She paused, though, pushing back her dark curls with her forearm. “He is yummy, though. I get it.”
“You do?” I hadn’t expected that.
“Oh yeah. He suits you.”
Damien looked over and smiled at me, making my heart tumble. “He really does,” I replied. “He’s the real thing.”
* * *
Dinner was amazing. Of course. Not just the food, either. Daniel poured the wine liberally, perfectly suited to the turkey with the gravy Julie had made an extra vat of. We laughed a lot.
Brad went on a bit, relentlessly snapping and posting pics to social media, until Amy asked him to put his phone away after one too many “hashtag turkeys.” Unfortunately, without the diversion, he talked about social media and the attention economy instead.
“If I hear ‘viral’ one more time,” Damien murmured to me, “I might come down with a fever myself.” Which, of course, had me snorting to hold back the laugh.
I wished Amy looked like she was having more fun, but everything was going as wonderfully as even Julie could want. Until Damien chipped a tooth on the pecan pie.
Or that’s what I thought. He yelped, clapped a hand over his mouth, then covered it with a napkin.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he mumbled. “Bit down wrong.”
“Let
me see,” Ice said.
“Nah, it’s okay.”
But she’d already leaned across me. “I’m a doctor. Let me see.”
“You’re not a doctor yet,” Charley pointed out.
“That’s why I have to practice every minute.” She did have the commanding attitude, clamping Damien’s jaw and opening his mouth. “Shit, you chipped the front tooth. Does it hurt?”
“Nah.” He yanked out of her hands, then froze, staring at me. Or at my expression. Because I’d already seen.
That chipped front tooth. So appealing in that otherwise perfect face, with his angelic golden curls. The guy from the train.
“Gabriel?” I whispered.
Charley threw down her napkin. “I told you fucking so, didn’t I?” she accused Daniel, who put a quelling hand on her.
Amy, Ice, and Julie all looked shocked, Ice putting her arm around me and pulling me back a little. “Take a moment, honey,” she murmured in my ear.
But I shrugged her off, looking from Damien—no, Gabriel—to Charley and back again. Both looked guilty.
“Fuck me,” I said, the curse falling heavily.
“What’s going on?” Brad asked, holding up his phone, and Amy shushed him, snatching it away.
“Look, Marcia,” Damien said, all accent gone. “Let me explain.”
“Explain?” My voice rose dangerously. “Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary. I want you to leave.”
“Luv, I—”
“Don’t call me that,” I hissed, then kicked back my chair, nearly unseating Ice with it. “Never mind. I’m leaving.”
“Marcia,” Charley said. “I didn’t—”
I pointed at her, rage sheer and fine coursing in my blood stream. “Shut up. You had your fun. You finally got your revenge, didn’t you? And you.” Damien had risen, too, putting a hand on my arm. I viciously shoved him back, those fake eyes going wide in shock. Contact lenses. “You don’t ever touch me again. I can’t believe I let you—You lied to me and…used me.” A sob burst out of my aching chest.
“It wasn’t like that,” he said tightly.
“Wasn’t it?” Charley’s voice whipped out, tight and furious. “You were supposed to romance her, not fuck her silly!”
Missed Connections Box Set Page 23