“I think it might be a total loss,” he said, pulling at the zipper. “Do you have another suitcase you can use?”
“No, um, this is my only one,” I replied, still staring at him.
“Well, we’ll just have to go track down another one for you. Where are you off to this time?” he asked.
My hallucination was still examining my bag and not looking directly at me. It gave me a chance to drink him in totally, from his disheveled hair to his crooked nose to his wonderful broad shoulders and long, rangy legs. I inhaled, and my senses were filled with the clean, soapy aroma that was unmistakably Jack, and suddenly I knew that it was really him. While I was willing to believe that my eyes could play tricks on me, I was sure that my olfactory senses weren’t so easily fooled.
“London. I was coming . . . going . . . to find you,” I stuttered. “What are you doing here?”
This time Jack did look at me, and as I gazed into his green-flecked eyes, I immediately knew that everything would be okay. It was the same expression I’d woken up to on Christmas morning, the same naked honesty I’d seen when he told me he loved me. These were not the eyes of a man who had fallen into the waiting arms of Sophie Dahl, or Jenny the travel agent.
“I came to find you,” he said simply. He rested a tentative hand on my shoulder, and I grinned at him. But before I could throw myself into his arms, Jack stood up and then reached down and pulled me to my feet. “Rather than having this conversation sitting on the sidewalk, why don’t we go up to your apartment.”
“What are we going to do about the suitcase?” I asked, looking at it doubtfully. “Do you want to stay here for a minute, while I run upstairs and get a bag or something to dump the clothes in?”
“No, I’ll just lift it as is,” Jack said, and after we stuffed everything back into the suitcase, he heaved the bag up, grunting at the effort. “What’s in here?” he gasped, staggering up the front stairs of my building.
“Oh, just about everything I own,” I said, laughing, and held the door open for him.
We went upstairs, moving very slowly, and by the time we got to my apartment, Jack looked ready to pass out. He dropped the suitcase just inside my door, kicked it rather maliciously, and then collapsed on the couch, his face red and his breath so short it sounded like he’d just run a marathon. I hurried to get him a glass of water before joining him on the couch.
“I think I liked it better when you greeted me by shocking me with your stun gun,” Jack said. He glanced around my apartment, taking in the boxes. Some of them were still neatly packed and taped up; the others, the ones I had ransacked, were torn open, some lying on their sides, others upside down, all of the contents scattered across the floor. “Were you robbed?”
“No, no. I’m in the process of moving,” I said, smiling.
I’d been unable to wipe the grin off of my face, even as I watched Jack struggle up the stairs with my bag, refusing my offers to help. Still, I felt a little shy around him, and since he hadn’t made a move to kiss me or pull me back into his arms, I hung back and waited for his cue.
“I got the job at Retreat, in Chicago,” I explained. “But never mind about that, tell me, why are you here?”
“Chicago,” Jack repeated, and he frowned.
“What?”
“You’re moving in the wrong direction,” he said.
I wriggled with frustration. My move to Chicago was the last thing I wanted to talk about.
“Come on, tell me what you’re doing here. I mean, this is either an incredible coincidence, your showing up here just as I was going to look for you, or . . .” I said, my voice trailing off in a question mark.
“Okay, let me just catch my breath, and I’ll tell you everything. And then I want you to tell me about this move,” he said, shrugging out of his coat and then reaching for his glass of water. After he took a few gulps, and his color faded back to its normal rosy hue, he began to talk.
“Ever since we last spoke, I’ve been trying to get Maddy to see me. I knew that you meant what you said, and that as long as she forbade our seeing each other, you wouldn’t. You’re so stubborn, I knew there was no chance you’d bend, so I had to get her to change her mind,” Jack explained.
“But I thought . . . I mean, when we talked, you said . . . you said that you weren’t going to chase after me anymore,” I said hesitatingly, almost worried that if he was suddenly reminded of this oath, he would slap his hand against his forehead, say “Now I remember,” and walk back out of my life.
“I know, but I was angry and stupid. I thought that maybe you were playing games with me, although Maddy assured me that when it comes to relationships, you really are that closed off and defensive,” he said, smiling to soften his words and let me know that he was joking. Sort of.
“So you did talk to Maddy,” I said, wondering why in the hell she hadn’t mentioned that to me on the phone yesterday.
“Yup. She finally agreed to have dinner with me, just a few days ago. I was a little nervous about seeing her, after how wiggy she went—did you know that she’d hired a private detective to follow me?”
I hesitated, but figured there’d been quite enough half-truths flying around, and so nodded. “She’d talked about it, but I really didn’t think she’d go through with it,” I explained.
Jack shook his head incredulously. “Hell hath no fury,” he muttered, and took another gulp of water. “And when it came down to it, she was the one who cheated on me, not the other way around. But that doesn’t matter, and it’s not why I wanted to talk to her. I had to convince her to forgive you, to make her see how much we cared about each other, and how wrong it was for her to keep us apart.”
I stared at him. “You told her all of that? But . . . I’m surprised she’d even listen to it, after how angry she was.”
Jack shrugged. “I can be very charming and persuasive when need be,” he said, smiling. “And I let her call me every nasty thing she could think of first, which helped her to blow off some steam.”
“And so what happened?”
“Once she ran out of insults, she finally quieted down and started listening to what I had to say. And she began to slowly come around to acknowledging that our relationship wasn’t quite as she had remembered it. I don’t think we were ever that happy together, or even capable of making the other one happy. It’s probably why she started seeing her boss,” he said.
“Wow. So you guys are okay, then?” I asked.
“Well, after everything that’s happened, I doubt that we’ll do the Jerry and Elaine thing and stay best buds, but I think that we basically parted as friends. Especially since she said that she wanted to patch things up with you . . . and that she wouldn’t stand in our way if we still wanted to see each other. But I’m guessing you already know that part,” Jack said.
I nodded. “She called me yesterday and told me the same thing. Not about having dinner with you—she left that part out—but the rest of it,” I said.
“I wanted to surprise you by coming out here, so I asked her not to mention our talk,” Jack said, smiling mischievously. “But I guess it wasn’t the best plan, since if your suitcase hadn’t burst open, I might have completely missed you. It must have been fate.”
“Hmmm. Fate. Maybe so,” I said.
And then he pulled me toward him and kissed me hard on the mouth. Nothing had changed—it had the same toe-curling, dipped-in-chocolate sensation as before. Wanting to lose myself in him, I kissed him back eagerly, more than ready to push aside all of the concerns and anxieties that had been percolating in my mind over the past month.
“Wait,” Jack said, leaning back and breaking off our kiss. “If you were coming to London, then that means you were going to chase after me for a change.”
“Yup. I guess I was. That’s progress, right?”
“The very best kind,” Jack murmured, and he leaned in for another kiss, and this time, nothing interrupted our reunion.
A little while later, when we
were comfortably snuggled up together in my bed—one of the few places in my apartment that wasn’t covered with cardboard boxes—and I was lying perpendicular to Jack, my head resting on his bare stomach, while he lazily stroked my hair, I asked, “So this means we’re back together, right?”
“After everything I’ve been through in the past month? It better,” he said sleepily.
“I just wanted to make sure,” I said happily. “Besides, the last month hasn’t been all that easy for me either, you know.”
“Good,” he said.
“Good?”
“Well, I don’t want to be the only one who was pining away,” Jack said, tousling my hair.
“Mmmm, pining, that’s a nice word. Hey, know what?” I murmured, starting to feel my eyes grow heavy as his head massage lulled me to sleep.
“What?”
“I haven’t taken off my necklace since you gave it to me, not once,” I said.
“Really?”
“Yup. How’s that for devotion?” I mumbled. “Love you.”
I didn’t hear what he said in response, because a moment later I’d drifted off to sleep. Despite the fact that I was stark naked, with every non-modelish flaw hanging out there for Jack to see, and despite that I’d bared myself with the most intimate of declarations, I was completely at ease, all of my defenses discarded to one side. Now that was progress. Maybe there was hope for me after all.
Chapter 25
“I think you’re going to have to get over your obsession with ice,” Jack said, laughing at me as I emptied the ice cube tray into my glass before filling it with water.
“No way. You can take the girl out of the U.S., but you can’t deprive her of her creature comforts,” I replied, happily rattling the ice cubes around in my glass.
“Getting used to room-temperature beverages is only the beginning. Now that you’re an official resident of London, you’re going to have to get used to all sorts of things. For instance, don’t refer to your trousers as ‘pants,’ because here that means ‘underwear.’ And you don’t ask where the bathroom is, ask for the loo,” Jack said.
“Trousers and loos. Gotcha,” I said. “But I’m still not giving up my ice.”
The doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” I said, hopping off of the sleek stainless steel stool that nestled up against the black-granite-counter-topped island in Jack’s—or should I say our—kitchen. Granted, it had only been a few days since I’d moved to London from Chicago and begun cohabitating with Jack, but I still felt like I was on one of my frequent long-weekend visits. It was going to be hard to get used to the idea of living full-time with my boyfriend, although the fact that he had such a fabulous town house and idyllic, newly redecorated country house certainly made it a lot easier. I’d spent the last year subletting what turned out to be a pit of an apartment from Kit’s anthropologist professor friend, who had an unhealthy obsession with unframed posters, sisal carpeting, and papa-san chairs acquired from Pier One. She shared the same crunchy-granola taste that Robert, my old editor from Sassy Seniors!, loved, and that was about as far away from my beloved Pottery Barn yuppie porn as you could get. Jack’s house—I mean, our house—was a salve for my wounded aesthetic.
“Oh my God, I can’t believe you’re actually here,” Maddy shrieked as she blew into the front hall. She hugged me and then thrust forward her left hand to show off the enormous sparkly bauble residing on her ring finger.
“Look, look, look,” she said, waving her hand in front of me.
“So you’re still going to go through with it?” I asked jokingly.
She snorted. “You’d better believe it. You should see my dress. It’s Vera Wang,” she bragged shamelessly.
Maddy had not only bounced back after her breakup with Jack, but she’d gone through a period of intense self-examination, even going to therapy for a while. Both her mother and I had encouraged her to see someone after she lost her dad, but she’d resisted, and as a result, she had a lot of repressed baggage to work through. After all of this introspection, one of her conclusions was that by always needing to have a boyfriend, even if it meant being in a shallow relationship or with someone who, like Jack, was inherently unsuited to her, she’d lost a lot of opportunities for personal growth. To make up for it, she decided to call a moratorium on all dating, and swore up and down that she wasn’t going to have another boyfriend until she’d spent some time finding herself. Two weeks later, she met Colin Wentworth, the acerbic and brilliant British conservative columnist. They fell madly in love with each other, and were engaged a few months later. Normally, I’d have been alarmed at the rapid pace of events, but after seeing Maddy and Colin together, and how much they adored each other, I began to think that maybe she’d actually gotten it right for once.
“Besides,” Maddy continued, her voice dropping to a whisper, “if we don’t get married soon, the dress will have to be let out to make room for the bump.”
She rubbed her stomach in a self-satisfied way, and I stared at her for a minute while what she said processed. The bump . . . her stomach . . .
“Ohmigod, you’re pregnant!” I screeched, and hugged her again.
“Shh, shh,” Maddy said. “It’s supposed to still be a secret.”
“It won’t be for long. Pretty soon you’ll be as big and round as a pumpkin,” I said, laughing. “But how do you feel about it? I thought that you didn’t want to do the minivan, suburban-mom thing.”
“A little freaked out at first. But it all feels . . . right. And Colin is thrilled, of course. Besides, there’s a whole industry of chic, high-end baby products out there catering to hip, urban moms. I’ve been having a ball shopping for everything, and I’ve barely scratched the surface,” she said gleefully.
“Am I supposed to pretend that I haven’t overheard everything you two have been saying, or can I offer the new mommy congratulations?” Jack asked, appearing in the hallway behind us. Maddy laughed, and he hugged her and kissed her cheek, which I was glad to see. For a long time, the two of them had been uncomfortable when they were together, and normally when I was in London on one of my frequent trips, I’d have to spend time with each of them separately. But in the past few months, and especially since Maddy had met Colin, Maddy and Jack had begun to ease up around each other. We’d even double-dated a few times.
“This calls for champagne,” Jack said, leading the way back to the kitchen.
“Or milk for one of us,” I reminded him.
“Yes, but please put it in a wineglass, so I can at least pretend,” Maddy requested.
Once we were settled in the kitchen, and had toasted the new mother and bride, Maddy filled us in on the latest wedding plans. The afternoon ceremony was only a few weeks away, and was going to be followed by a glam reception at the Ritz. I was to be her sole attendant, and she promised me that I’d love the dress.
“I thought about dressing you in pink ruffles, because when else am I going to have the opportunity to torture you with bridesmaid fashion, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. The pictures would have looked too awful,” she said, grinning.
“So what does it look like?” I asked.
“It’s a simple navy blue sheath that will just glide right over your curves. Oh, and it has a plunging neckline. It’s going to look amazing on you,” Maddy promised.
“Mmmm, plunging neckline. I like the sound of that,” Jack said.
“All right, enough wedding talk. Tell me, how’re you settling in? What did Retreat say about you going freelance?” Maddy asked.
“They weren’t thrilled, especially since I’d only been there for a year,” I admitted. “But they did say they would throw some work my way. And Jack says he has some contacts here that he can put me in touch with. You play squash with someone at Hello, right?” I asked, and Jack nodded.
“And I know a few people, too . . . I know one of the editors at Living, Etc. and I think also someone at British InStyle,” Maddy said. “I’ll check on Monday, and see if I can set u
p some lunches for you, ’kay?”
“Great,” I said happily.
Strangely enough, I hadn’t yet gotten flippy about my decision to go freelance, and the lack of security that it meant. Considering that I’d packed up my entire life and moved to a foreign country in order to be with the man that I adored, when only eighteen months ago the very idea that I would ever fall in love seemed as remote as my winning the New York lottery, the change in my career path seemed less dramatic. Sure, I loved my job at Retreat—but trading it in for this new life with Jack hadn’t been a hard decision to make. I felt like I was on a wild ride, and for once in my life, instead of bracing myself for the impact of the inevitable crash, I was just enjoying it. After all, life changed, people changed. Maddy was a prime example. I don’t think even she could have expected that she was so close to meeting and marrying the love of her life, and now impending mommyhood to boot.
Later, after Maddy had left to tackle some last-minute wedding preparations, Jack and I lounged around, listening to a Diana Krall CD and trying to decide what we wanted to do about dinner and whether we felt like actually getting up and going out.
Jack nudged me, and asked, “So what do you think about Maddy’s news?”
“The pregnancy, you mean? I was surprised that it happened so soon, but not shocked that she’s so happy. I always figured she’d be a great mom. Besides, I doubt she’ll leave her party days behind her. She’ll probably just find a group of glamorous moms and get herself on the A-list for all of the happening kiddy parties,” I said, and snuggled up against him. My hunger hadn’t become intense enough to motivate me into getting up, especially when Jack’s broad chest made such a comfy resting place.
“I’m just glad that the two of you are okay, and that there weren’t any lasting hurt feelings,” Jack said. He wrapped his arms around me and rested his chin on the top of my head.
“Well, it took a while, but everything seems back to normal now. And everything got a lot better when she met Colin,” I said.
True Love (and Other Lies) Page 32