I believed physical attraction and love were temporal. Nobody went around making professions of eternal physical attraction. That would be ludicrous. Sure, some people got lucky and the span of their feelings for each other outlasted their natural lives.
But what I longed for was more akin to a long-lived friendship, something like what I had with Zion, but more intimate. I worried Micah would prefer a lightning-flash, short-lived passionate affair. I could have given him that if I hadn’t started to want more.
So much for taking things slowly. Now instead of feeling like we were tentatively working toward a steady relationship, I’d likely always brace for the inevitable end. Micah went so fast, sooner or later, he’d burn out and move on. I couldn’t think of a thing in the world that would convince me otherwise. I smiled anyway and hid all signs of internal waffling.
I suddenly became aware of the time. “Micah, I’m going to have to either find a snack soon or eat an early supper.”
He texted his driver while I texted Zion to let him know we were leaving. The driver dropped us at a Mexican restaurant around the corner from Micah’s townhouse. After a dinner of tacos, we ditched the town car and walked back. The evening sky had just begun to grow dim, and the afternoon heat hadn’t quite dissipated. We chatted as we strolled companionably though not hand in hand.
“I moved here after our first single took off.” His eyes scanned the buildings along his street. “I’d been living in a one bedroom in Crown Heights for a while.”
“Why’d you decide—” I stopped walking. A boy with mop hair and fish belly translucent skin leaned against Micah’s stoop rail, blotting his brow with the front of his shirt. As soon as he dropped the fabric, his eyes met mine. He heaved himself onto his feet and began down the sidewalk, fumbling for a camera that obviously hadn’t been prepared for this moment.
Micah never broke pace except to turn back and wait for me to catch up. By the time we reached the steps, the boy had taken control of his camera and shot several pictures. Micah reached out his hand. “Hello. What’s your name?”
The kid swallowed and shoved his hand into a small backpack, producing a bent notepad. “My name is Jim.” His hands shook as he poised a pen above the paper. “I contribute materials to FanBlogger.com. Have you heard of it?”
Both Micah and I shook our heads. Micah twisted his mouth. “Are you with the press?”
“We’re a kind of news organization driven on one-hundred-percent reader-submitted content. I wanted to ask you some questions.”
Micah relaxed and beamed the smile he gave the public. It was a beautiful smile, but I’d seen the real deal. This smile didn’t come close. “Sure. What would you like to know?”
Jim dug his phone out of his bag and brought it back to life. “By any chance, have you seen this article? It was uploaded to FanBlogger earlier today.”
“May I?” Micah reached out and took the phone. I leaned over to see what it said.
Micah Sinclair Blows Fans Off Outside Club.
Micah licked his lips. “Is this about Tuesday?” Jim nodded, and Micah handed the phone back. “I wasn’t at my best. You can certainly print that I appreciate my fans, and I’d like to apologize to those two girls. It was just a bad night.”
I stepped up. “It was my fault.”
Micah threw his hand out in front of me, like we were in a car that stopped short. “Jo.”
Jim tilted his head and appraised me. “You were the girl in the background, right? You’re Jo Wilder, the paparazza seen with Micah last week?” I didn’t have a chance to answer one way or another. Jim went on. “There were divided opinions about that. I thought it was you.” His hand drifted to his camera, no longer shaking. As he gripped it and turned it around, he asked, “So are you two dating?”
Micah moved toward the steps. “No.”
“Did you hire her as a personal paparazza?”
“We’re done here.” Micah shot me a glance, and I followed him up to the front door.
“Or Miss Wilder, are you looking for a breakout inside scoop?”
We ignored the question while Micah dug in his pocket for his house key. As he slid it into the lock, Jim threw out, “I guess I’m going to be forced to print that you are rude to your fans.”
The door opened, and Micah stood back to let me through. As soon as we had a wall separating us from Jim, I turned on Micah. “Why’d you say we weren’t dating? What happened to not keeping any secrets from the media?”
Micah pressed his lips together. “Jo, I didn’t mean—”
“You talk with them about all the other girls you date. Am I somehow not good enough?” I leaned against the wall and slumped. The whole encounter with Jim had stressed me out more than I’d expected it might. And he was pitiful compared to the real paparazzi. Yet still better than me.
Micah moved into my space and pushed my hair out of my face. “Don’t you know you’re different than all the other girls I’ve ever dated? I just want to protect this. Once we open up about this, it’s going to be like that all the time. For a while at least. And they’ll dig, Jo.” He laid his hands on either side of my face and looked into my eyes. “And I want to keep this for myself as long as I can.”
I relaxed. “I’m sorry. How do you deal with that all the time? It’s—”
“The price of fame.” He pulled me into a hug, and I forgot about Jim. “Hey.” He leaned back. “I bought season one of Seinfeld. You owe me a sitcom.”
I laughed. “All right.”
“Feel like dressing up for it?” He held up the sack from the flea market with an eyebrow waggle.
“Maybe later.” The encounter outside had left me out of sorts. “I’d really love to just snuggle up. That okay?”
He lifted my hand and kissed my fingers. “Anything you want.”
Chapter 21
The drive to Micah’s parents’ reminded me of something out of the The Sopranos until we got into Woodbridge where all the houses we passed had a similar weary look. His driver parked behind two other cars, and before we got out Micah stopped me for a second. He took my hand and winced. “This is going to be weird.”
Instead of going up to the front door, he walked around the side through a gate and into the backyard. As soon as we closed the gate, a woman screeched, “Micah’s here!” A tall blonde rushed over and grabbed Micah’s face in her hands, fussing over his weight and his lack of communication for a full minute before she seemed to even notice I stood beside him.
Clearly Micah’s mom. It was uncanny how much Micah took after her. After seeing him next to Eden, I didn’t know what to expect. Mrs. Sinclair looked like she’d stepped out of a Better Homes and Gardens magazine from the fifties. Hollywood sunglasses and an oversize sun hat shrouded her face. Maybe my reputation for shooting candid photos had preceded me, but I didn’t have my work camera with me. And if I had, Andy wouldn’t want any photos of Micah’s mom anyway.
I was glad I’d put on a sundress, ignoring Micah’s pleas for me to wear the piece of cloth he’d bought me at the flea market. I’d worn that for about five minutes the night before—five minutes before he’d peeled it right back off me.
“And who’s your friend?”
“Mom, this is Josie. Josie, Mom.”
I put on my sweetest meet-the-parents smile. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Sinclair.”
She waved her hand, “Oh, you can call me Peg.”
Eden had already arrived and sat on the patio next to an older man I assumed must be their dad. He was reading an actual newspaper.
Peg hollered over. “Look, Howard. Micah’s brought a girl with him.”
Micah’s dad folded back his newspaper. “I have eyes, Peg.”
Peg wasn’t having it. “Howard.”
Howard grunted and put the paper down. Then I saw the dark hair that Eden had inherited. From what I could tell, she’d also gotten a fair portion of her dad’s more withdrawn personality. Micah claimed all the bubbling vivaciousness from their mother.
When Howard came around to shake my hand, he did a solid job of pretending he wasn’t put out. “It’s very nice to meet you, Josie.” And then he retreated to his chair and disappeared behind his paper.
Secretly, I loved this display of long-suffering matrimony. Ridiculous as it might seem, this was my dream. I had no use for empty professions of love. I wanted a committed relationship through good times and bad, in sickness and in health. Not for as long as we both had swooping feelings. Couples like Peg and Howard might seem bored with each other on the surface, but I’d observed enough older couples to recognize an invisible yoke tied them together and made them as dependent on one another as if they were a pair of conjoined twins.
Peg looked from Micah to me and back. “So where did you meet?”
Micah’s eyes twinkled. “She was walking the street.”
Undaunted, Peg followed up. “Which street?”
Micah led me over to the patio table and held out a chair for me. Eden greeted me with a wicked grin. “Hey. I noticed our trick didn’t pan out.”
Micah said, “She’s got you turning tricks, too?”
“Goodness! Look how pretty Josie’s hair is,” Peg said. “Eden, look at how she manages to keep her curls so untangled. What do you use, Josie?”
Eden’s rueful expression nearly made me do a spit take. I got the feeling this wasn’t the first time she’d been on the receiving end of an inadvertent insult. Her mouth twisted into a half smile. “Come inside, Josie. There’s plenty of food.”
Peg’s hands flew up. “Oh, yes. Come on inside.”
All of us except Howard went in through the sliding doors into a family room that had time-traveled from the 1970s. I followed along to a more recently renovated kitchen. On the island sat an assortment of choices: a Crock-Pot filled with melted cheese and specks of red pepper, a casserole dish of miniature hot dogs in some kind of brownish-red molasses, fried white bread filled with either mayonnaise or cream cheese, and bags upon bags of chips.
“Help yourself,” said Peg. “And we have strawberry soda, or if you’d like, I can make you a nonalcoholic margarita.”
“What’s in that?”
“Mostly sour mix and 7UP.”
I stared at all the poison, trying to figure out the nicest way to insult this woman. But then Micah casually announced, “She can’t eat any of that, Mom. She’s diabetic.”
Eden frowned. “Lucky.”
Peg declared, “My cousin’s diabetic. She has to get shots every day. Do you?”
“No, ma’am.”
Micah laughed. “She’s part robot.” He went to the fridge and started pulling things out. “How about some milk and . . .”
It was cute watching him try to figure out what I could eat based on the limited time he’d spent with me. He pulled out celery and peanut butter and a deviled egg.
“Mom, do you have any wheat bread or crackers?”
Eden said, “Can you fix me something, too?”
Peg touched Eden’s forehead. “Are you feeling okay, Eden? You look a little pale.”
“I always look pale, Mom.”
“You’re not sick, are you?”
Eden made eye contact with me for a second. “I’m fine, Mom.”
Once Micah handed us each a plate and a cup of milk, Eden said, “Come with me, Jo. I want to show you those pictures I told you about.”
She walked toward the front of the house into a sitting room where a digital frame flipped through random pictures of Micah and Eden. Some were from when they were children. Micah held a guitar in most of them. But when he didn’t, he made funny faces or stood in front of accidentally inappropriate road signs or intentionally inappropriate props.
“Aw. That was taken the summer before Micah left home.” A younger version of Eden and Micah sat on the driveway in front of this very house. Eden’s hair was shorter, curlier. Her arms and legs were sticks. The girl next to me now had filled out, or she was putting on weight.
“How are you feeling?”
Her hand passed over her belly reflexively. “Good. I mean, I’m sick half the time, but the doctor says everything’s fine.” She dropped her voice. “I heard the heartbeat on Friday. I wish Adam could’ve been there. But he’ll be home this week.”
“So . . . you really are pregnant?” It weirded me out that of all the people in this house—her entire family—the only person who knew her secret was me—the tabloid media, her enemy.
Her laugh came out like she’d been given the Heimlich maneuver, fast and hard. “Did you think I was lying?”
I shrugged. “When we first met, all you knew was that I worked for Andy. Knowing your history, it crossed my mind you might have set me up to hand him a story that could be easily proven false.”
She touched my wrist. “I want you to know that I’ve grown to trust you, but you’re right that at first, I worried.” She sighed. “Nothing personal, but it wasn’t ideal having you of all people discover us. We were idiots to talk about it while you were wandering around. I appreciate that you kept it quiet.”
“Of course.”
“I would’ve loved to tell my family about it today, but next week is soon enough. Adam will want to be here. He’ll get all the credit and move one more rung up the ladder of my mom’s esteem.”
“It’s great news.”
“Speaking of my mom’s esteem . . . I finally had something over Micah, and then he turns up with you.”
“What do you mean?”
She rolled her eyes up to the ceiling. “You have no idea.” She sat in one of the wingback chairs and tucked her bare feet under her knees. “She used to nag at me relentlessly to find a guy. Any guy. Seriously, she couldn’t let it go. But Micah could do nothing wrong.” She chuckled. “Thank God for Adam.”
“Hasn’t Micah ever brought home a girl?”
She stood and walked to the edge of the room to peer up the hall. “Listen. About that email I sent you last week . . .” She blew out her lips. “I’m glad I didn’t make you go running for the hills. But I was right, wasn’t I? I mean, he looks like he’s on a sugar high whenever he sees you.”
“He’s the most transparent person I’ve ever met.”
“Yeah, he is.”
“I still don’t know what he sees in me. It’s hard to keep up.”
She bit her lip and appraised me a moment. “I really like you, Jo. But I hope you’ll be careful with him.”
I still didn’t know if she was worried about me or Micah. “I’m trying.”
Micah hollered up the hall. “Did you guys leave?” He entered the living room. “Come outside with everyone. Mom wants to take a picture of us.”
I glanced at the picture frame as we walked out, wondering if one day my face would rotate through, marking today, frozen forever this way. Or would I rotate right back out of Micah’s life?
Peg stood in the yard, fussing with a string of Christmas lights that inexplicably decorated her rose bushes. She waved us over and proceeded to pose us in various configurations: Micah with Eden, Micah with me and Eden, Micah with me.
Between shots, she stared at the camera, perplexed. “Howard, I don’t think this is working. I click it, but I don’t see a flash”
Howard didn’t look up from his paper. “Peg, it’s broad daylight. You don’t need a flash.”
I should have offered to take the pictures for her, but I got the feeling she enjoyed the whole ceremony of it. She pushed me next to Eden, saying, “I wish Adam could have been here. Where’d he go this time?”
Eden shrugged off Peg’s attempts to lay her hand on my arm. “He’s in Japan, Mom.”
Peg took three steps back and peered into the viewfinder. I cringed when she put her finger over the lens. “I don’t understand why he’d want to spend so much money to fly to Japan just to play music.” She snapped the picture and then held the camera a foot from her face. “Howard, the pictures are all pink, now.”
“Mom, they pay Adam to play music in Jap
an, too.”
Peg handed the camera to Howard to mess with. Howard laid down his paper and weighed in on the conversation. “Micah makes a good living, and he’s never gone for long. Why can’t Adam play closer to home?”
Eden’s lips were so firmly pinched, I thought she might pull a muscle in her face.
Micah stepped in, “Adam’s band is world famous, Mom. I’d love to headline a show in Japan.”
Peg poured herself a glass of some bright green concoction with floating chunks of squares I hoped were fruit—pineapples? “Micah, how could you court such a lovely young lady if you’re running all over the world?” I blushed to the roots of my hair and stared at my shoes. She added, “It’s a wonder Eden ever managed to set a date for her wedding.”
My head jerked up, and I looked from Eden to Peg. Howard had handed the camera back to Peg, and she messed with the settings again, completely oblivious of the bomb ticking down around her. If I asked her the date, I’m sure she would have told me. What could Eden do? And why shouldn’t I ask it? Eden held my gaze.
Howard broke the silence. “Peg, I don’t think the kids are announcing their wedding date.”
Peg pursed her lips. “Oh, well. We’re with family. There’s no reason to hide anything here.” She raised the camera, again. “Now, everyone smile.”
After a nice afternoon with the Sinclair family, the driver picked us up to take us to Park Slope. On the way, Micah’s phone rang, and he winced when he glanced at the call screen. “This can’t be good.” He hit Answer, “Hi, Sandy. What’s on fire?” The voice on the other end sounded like a mosquito, shrill and busy. “Right. I know, but—” He dropped his head in defeat. “Okay. It won’t.” And he hung up.
I took his hand. “Trouble?”
“My agent. She’s pissed about how I handled Jim yesterday. She said she knew about the disgruntled fan blog but wasn’t worried because nobody takes that site too seriously. And it would have blown over if I hadn’t given him anything to go back to his blog with.”
I shrugged. “FanBlogger? You probably wouldn’t even be able to find that through a Google search. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
A Crazy Kind of Love Page 21