“And I’d make you sit in the corner all day until you learned some manners.”
“I’d never learn any manners if it meant I got to stay in your corner all day.”
“Why is your voice like that?” Charlie asks him. “You sound like a girl.” It’s not entirely true, but Vince does sound different.
Vince clears his throat. “I do not—punk.” Now he sounds like The Rock.
Charlie and I laugh, but I feel like crying and I don’t even know why.
It is difficult to eat when you’re surrounded by so much testosterone. The tacos are, in fact, delicious, and Mr. Devlin’s townhouse is gorgeous. I’m not sure why I’m here tonight and Sharon isn’t, but it’s kind of great being entertained by these four boys. Gabe, Neil and Charlie are having a grand old time telling embarrassing stories about Vince, and it’s so cute.
“When Vinnie was thirteen,” Gabe says, pointing to his brother, “I told him that the magic line for getting into girls’ pants was: ‘I’ve got so much love in me, I just want to put it in you.’ And he said it to this girl after a dance and she busted a gut laughing and ran and told everyone.”
“She didn’t laugh.”
“Well she didn’t let you put it in her!”
“Because I didn’t try—we were thirteen! Shut up.”
“Well, that line works on me every time, lemme tell ya. I am just filled with his love.”
After a beat, Gabe, Neil and Vince burst out laughing, and Charlie laughs too, even though I really hope he doesn’t actually get what we’re talking about.
“Where’d you find this one again?” his dad says to him. “On stage at the Comedy Cellar?”
“Yep, she’ll be there all week.”
“No really, how did you guys meet?”
Ahh, he hasn’t told him. Well, why would he?
“Just in the neighborhood,” Vince says. “I saw her in a store and asked her for a date.”
The PG version. Sounds good to me.
“And you actually said yes?” Gabe asks me, truly disbelieving.
“Eventually,” I say.
I feel Vince’s hand squeeze my thigh. The way he’s looking at me right now, I actually do feel like I’m filled with his love and it makes it even more difficult for me to digest my dinner. Seeing him with his family like this is making feel so stupidly emotional and it’s totally unexpected.
I wipe my fingers on the napkin and clear my throat. “I’ve had too much lemonade. I need to be excused.”
“There is no excuse for you dating my brother,” Gabe says.
“Down that hall first door on your left, hon.”
“Thanks.”
I squeeze Vince’s hand as I get up. His concerned face is forcing me to look away from him, or I’ll just start crying at the table like a freak.
As soon as the bathroom door clicks shut, tears just start squirting out of my eyeballs. What is happening to me? I grab two Kleenexes and press them up against the inner corners of my eyes. Thank God I’m not wearing eye makeup today.
It’s been so much easier for me to throw myself into this rebound/summer fling by categorizing him as the kind of guy I could never really have a long-term relationship with, and right now I’m feeling like I want that and it’s just crazy.
Pull it together, Parks!
You are the boss of you, not your hormones.
If you can’t just enjoy this and have fun in the moment then you don’t even deserve to get schtupped by a hot guy for two months.
He knocks on the door, quietly. “You okay in there?”
I let out an involuntary sigh. “I’m great! One second!” I blow my nose and flush the Kleenex down the toilet to get rid of the evidence. I splash cold water into my eyes, dab them dry with a hand towel.
“You can do this,” I say to my reflection, before unlocking the door.
Before I can step out into the hallway, Vince guides me back inside the bathroom and shuts the door. He hugs me and kisses my neck.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Sorry if they’re a little too intense.”
“Oh my God no—your family is wonderful.”
“Are you upset that I didn’t tell them about how we know each other?”
“No. God no. I get it. That’s basically what I told my parents too.”
“Okay. Because honestly, I barely even remember how we met. It feels like we’ve known each other forever.” He pulls away from the hug and says: “Okay that was literally the cheesiest thing I’ve ever said. I just threw up in my mouth a little. I don’t even blame you if that grosses you out.”
I grab his face and kiss him so hard, neither of us can breathe.
If it’s a mistake to fall for him like this, then it’s the best fucking mistake I have ever made.
After dinner, Vince drove me home and gave me my gift: two record albums (Joni Mitchell’s Blue and Court and Spark) and a beautiful vintage record player. He said it was making him nuts that I just listened to Spotify on my phone.
He went back to his dad’s place to stay with Charlie while Neil spent the night at Sharon’s, and I listened to “Help Me” and “A Case of You” over and over until I fell asleep crying.
This morning I woke up to a call from him, asking me if I wanted to meet him in an hour at the Transit Garden, which is not far from where I live. It’s a private community garden that I’ve always been curious about, and it turns out the Devlins are members and they have a memorial planter there in honor of Colette Parks.
He said he was going to stop by there to water the plants on the way to a meeting.
I managed to tell him I’d join him without bursting into tears on the phone. It just feels like such a significant thing for him to invite me to—but it may be no different from all the other things he’s called me up to ask me to meet him for.
Regardless, I show up with a small lavender plant that I got at my favorite garden center in Boerum Hill. When I tell him I was hoping there’d be room for it in their planter, he makes a little guttural noise and says, “Thanks, that’s sweet. She loved lavender.” He smells the plant. “Yeah, she loved this stuff.” His eyes are pink-rimmed. I’m a jerk for loving that, but I’ve made him blush and get pink-eyed within twenty-four hours—I don’t want to push it.
The garden is lovely. Surrounded by a brick wall and metal fence, it’s a rustic little private oasis in the middle of Carroll Gardens. Vince is dressed for work, so I offer to do the planting and watering. They have a raised planter box with sunflowers and geraniums and marigolds.
As I’m tucking the plant into the soil, something occurs to me. “She’s not actually…in here, right? Her ashes?”
“No. She’s buried at Green-Wood. She just loved plants, so we got this for her.”
I wait for him to offer more information.
Finally, after a lengthy silence, all he says is: “She had cancer. For like a year. It sucked. It seemed like she was getting better, but then all of a sudden she just…”
“Oh, Vince.” I wipe my dirty hand on my jeans before reaching out to touch his arm. “I’m so sorry.”
“I had a hard time dealing with it. But she was just the best.” He looks at me as though he’s going to say something else, but he doesn’t. He suddenly retreats into some place that I’m not a part of, and I let him. I spend more time dusting dirt off of leaves than I need to, until he says: “You want to come with me to grab a coffee on my way? I gotta be someplace in twenty.”
“Sure.”
We hold hands on the way to the coffee place, even though he talks on the phone to Eve about some deal they’re closing for most of the way.
“You got big plans for today?” he asks, opening the door and not looking at me.
“I’m meeting Marnie for lunch and then I’m going to catch up on a bunch of professional guides and education blogs and start planning next year’s curriculum.”
“Really? But it’s still the middle of summer.”
&nb
sp; “Yeah, it’s never too soon to prepare for the next term.”
“Geez. Show the kids videos the first week of classes, Miss Parks. That’s all they want anyway.”
I notice a woman staring at us, sitting at a corner table by herself. I get the same shiver of awareness that I had at the bar the night of Eve’s party. This is another one of his exes. He doesn’t see her, and she looks less interested in talking to him than the other one did. I manage to ignore her, but when Vince’s coffee is ready before my chai tea latte is, he kisses me and has to leave before me to get to his appointment.
“I’ll call you later, okay? I might be able to cancel my dinner if you’re free.”
“Sure. Have a good day.”
I watch him walk out of the coffee shop, pretty sure he’s completely unaware of the girl in the corner.
“You should be careful.” The sultry voice comes from right behind me. She says it so casually, as if we’re friends in mid-conversation. I turn to face her. Though just as striking, she has a very different look from the other woman. A tiny diamond stud in her nose and great shag haircut makes me think she is some kind of musician, although I can’t help but wonder if this is Sadie. She arranges her messenger bag strap on her shoulder.
I clear my throat. “Hi, do I know you?”
She smiles and shakes her head as she puts on her aviator sunglasses. “No, but I know exactly how you’re feeling right now. He take you for a ride on his bike yet?”
I blink.
“Yeah. Don’t let those sad eyes fool you. He’s hot, and he can seem like the nicest guy in the world sometimes, but he’ll ghost you sooner or later. He always disappears.”
And then she disappears out the door, leaving me to my chai tea latte and stunned silence.
Chapter Eighteen
Vince
After I took Nina home from dinner at my Dad’s, I got a text from my Dad that said: Dear God please don’t fuck things up with this one.
Nice vote of confidence for her, not so much for me.
From my brother: If you don’t marry her, I will. Fuck you.
That’s a first from Gabe, who literally hasn’t dated anyone for longer than two months in his entire horndog life.
Eve hasn’t shut up about her since her birthday party.
Charlie’s already asking when she’s coming over again. That doesn’t surprise me. She was so great with him, especially when he fell down. Seeing her with all her baggies full of mom purse stuff spread out over the sidewalk, I had this weird urge to impregnate her. That was a first for me.
I probably shouldn’t have taken her to the garden so soon after dinner with my family. I’ve felt weird since then, but it’s definitely not Nina’s fault. Nothing’s Nina’s fault. She’s perfect. For the first time in my life, I’m wondering if I’m even good enough for someone. It one hundred percent blows.
I know I’m moving too fast, but I don’t know how else to move. Especially when it comes to her. What we have is still so new and there are still things she doesn’t know about me, but I’m starting to feel like I could lose her any day now. I thought I could win her over in a summer, but each day that passes just feels like a death march towards September. It’s how I always felt about going back to school, but this is so much more than losing my freedom when school starts. I could lose her. She’ll realize how different we are and our schedules won’t mesh and she’ll be seeing the fucking principal every day, and she’ll remember this is just a rebound. Fuck. This is why Dr. Glass wanted me to keep up with the sessions.
Whatever.
I’m being an idiot.
I still have another month.
A lot can happen in a month. A lot has already happened. Like, a lot.
She doesn’t answer until the third ring, which is weird.
“Hi,” she says, her voice soft.
“Did I wake you up or something?”
“No, not at all.”
“I hate to bother you with this, but Charlie’s at day camp and his new part-time nanny has some family emergency all of a sudden so she can’t pick him up. Are you busy now? I know you said you have work to do, so you can say no, I can call someone else.”
“I can get him, of course. Do you want me to take him somewhere or bring him back to my place?”
“That’s great, thank you. Yeah take him to your place, I’ll pick you guys up after work and then we’ll drop him off at Gabe’s and you and I can go to dinner.”
“Uh huh.”
“You still want to go to dinner?”
“Yeah, of course. Listen, don’t hesitate to call me if you need someone to pick Charlie up or drop him off at the day camp. It’s so close to me, it’s no trouble.
I feel my jaw tensing up. I don’t want to turn her into another nanny here. She’s just being sweet, I know. “Okay yeah thanks, hopefully it won’t be necessary.”
Silence on the other end.
“Sooo, text me when you’ve got Charlie and I’ll call when I’m leaving the office, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, thanks again. Bye.”
“Bye.”
What the fuck was that? Our first not-great phone call. Actually, I’ve been trying to avoid phone calls to her lately, because it’s so hard to end them. I keep wanting to say “love you bye” like a total pussy. Or maybe I just never want to say goodbye to her.
I look around to make sure no one’s looking through the glass walls of my office, before putting my hand on my crotch to make sure I still have balls.
When I see Charlie bounding down the steps with Nina, he looks like a happy puppy and I get that bittersweet feeling that’s becoming so familiar to me.
“Hey, Punk. What’s that around your mouth?” I wipe a bit of crusty beige stuff from the corner of his lips and he tries to push my hand away.
“Oh, that’s probably hummus.”
“You got him to eat hummus?!”
Nina grins.
“I liked it with the celery and carrot sticks.”
“You got him to eat celery and carrots?!”
“We started with a ranch dressing dip and then I ran out of ranch dressing, so we switched to hummus.” She mouths to me: “I didn’t run out of ranch dressing.”
“You got a lot of tricks up your sleeve, Miss Parks.”
“They pretty much all involve ranch dressing.”
“Oh no, you’ve got a few other tricks as I recall.” I put my arm around her waist and pull her to me. “Hi.”
“Hi.” She rubs my back. I kiss her, but she keeps her eyes on Charlie.
“Gross,” he says. “Can Nina come to dinner?”
We walk back to my double-parked car.
“Not tonight Buddy, I’m dropping you off at Gabe’s and then I get Nina to myself.”
“For boning?”
“What’d I say?!”
“Sorry Nina,” he says, sheepishly.
She doesn’t laugh like she did yesterday, or every other day I’ve known her.
Something’s up.
“What’d you guys do this afternoon?”
“We just read and watched Netflix.”
“Oh yeah? You Netflix and chilled with my little brother?”
“He’s reading Matilda,” she says in a sing-song voice.
“The girl book?”
“SHE. IS. NOT. MY. GIRLFRIEND!” Charlie stomps on the pavement with each screamed word.
“Alright alright settle down.”
She doesn’t look at me when I get back to the car after taking Charlie to Gabe’s door. She’s not cold or anything, just distant.
“You okay?”
She smiles and nods.
“You still want to get dinner?”
“Yeah, definitely.”
I turn off the engine and twist around to face her. “What is it?”
She takes a deep breath before speaking, stares straight ahead. “So, I met someone you know. Or knew. At the coffee shop, after you left this morning.”
/> “Oh yeah?” This can’t be good.
“I’m not sure what her name is, actually, but she knew you. I guess you must have dated at some point.”
“Oh. She talked to you?”
“Yeah, you know, not a lot.”
“What’d she say?”
“Nothing bad, exactly. I mean.”
“Nina.”
“It’s not a big deal, we don’t have to talk about it.”
“I want to talk about it. I can’t even guess who it was that talked to you, because—spoiler alert—I’ve been with a lot of women in my life. I’m not gonna sugar coat it and I’m not gonna make any excuses. I dated them for a little bit and then I moved on. I wasn’t mean to anyone, I just made my exit. I made it clear to all of them up front what to expect. But I’ve only been with two women in the past year and a half. Sadie and You. Before Sadie, I just never really committed to anyone.”
“So Sadie was special?”
Be very careful what you say here, buddy. “I wanted her to be. She was my little brother’s nanny. She came around at a time when we were all reeling from Clara leaving my dad and him. I wasn’t used to seeing a hot chick around my family. I figured it was time for me to try to be in a relationship. I gave it a shot. It didn’t work out so well. Not just the way it ended, but I probably wasn’t the greatest boyfriend to Sadie. But I want to be better for you. I want to be the best for you.”
She runs her hand down the side of my face and neck then rests her head against my shoulder and I’m dying inside.
“I’m yours now, remember? Those are the rules.”
She takes a really deep breath and looks up at me. She nods her head. “So…I know you’re busy. And I totally understand if you don’t have enough time to make plans, but a few months ago I booked a room at a luxury resort on Lake George, for next weekend.”
“For you and the principal?”
“Yeah. It would have been our three-year anniversary. I was going to surprise him, even though he hates surprises. Anyway. I didn’t cancel the reservation, because the librarian at our school was just raving about it, and this woman never raves about anything. Except JK Rowling and CrossFit. I was going to go by myself or ask Marnie or another girlfriend, but…”
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