by JA Huss
In my most cheerful good-daughter voice I say, “Hey, Mom! Happy Thanksgiving!”
“Did you get my message last night?” she asks.
“Oh…” Whoops. “Yup! Sorry. I’m kinda busy.” Lies. Both statements. I didn’t listen to her message, but I don’t want to admit that. It just seems… heartless. “So can I call you back later, maybe?”
“Call me back? What time are you coming over?”
“Over?” Jesus Christ. What’s she talking about? “Sorry. Where are you?” I ask, trying to play this off.
“Honey… The Four Seasons,” she says, her high-pitched I’m-frustrated-with-you voice making me wince.
“The Four—? In Las Vegas?” I ask. Dumbly.
“Madison. Did you even listen to my message?”
“Yes, I just—” I insist. Once you lie, you kinda just have to go with it.
“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. Dinner. Today. With us, your family. At four o’clock. But we want you to come over early. You know, so we can all catch up and talk before we eat. Your father is so excited to be here. And we can’t wait to see you.”
What. The actual. Fuck.
“Mom. I—Why didn’t you give me a heads up on any of this before yesterday?”
“We’ll tell you everything when we see you. Can you make it or… Should we come to you? Would that be better?”
“No!” I say, too aggressively, then auto-correct, “No. No. Sorry, just, uh, no. I can make it. I’m… excited to see you.” I am, I realize. “So just give me a bit to wrap up a couple of things and change and stuff and I’ll be over. OK?“
“Wonderful, we’re in room three nine one five. I’ll text it to you because I know you’ll never remember. Where are you, by the way?”
“Uh, I’m working, why?”
“It sounds like a nightclub.”
Fuck. “Uh, sorry, Mom! Have to handle something real quick, but I’ll be there soon, K? See ya in a bit!”
I end the call and lean back in my sad, rickety office chair with a confused sigh. Well, that’s a strange turn of events. How the hell did my parents get to Vegas?
Who cares, I decide. I might even be smiling. Because… I have family here! On a day meant to be spent with family. Shit. I am not poor Maddie, girl perpetually on her own. What do you know. I have somewhere to go. I have a place I belong. And even if it’s just some hotel restaurant, it’s still better than sleeping away my day feeling lonely and desperate.
On my way out of Pete’s I wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving. I smile as I say it. I might even have a spring in my step.
When I get home, I choose my most conservative outfit—tan trousers, pink silk blouse with a ruffle at the neck and wrists—and put on a pair of shoes that no stripper would be caught dead in. I even put on earrings. And not the kind that droop down to my shoulders. Real earrings. With genuine sapphires and diamonds.
Sitting next to a foil-covered pumpkin pie on the kitchen counter is a note from Diane and Caroline. For you, it says.
Sweet. Now I have something to bring. Good daughter.
I gather up my purse, my pie, and get into Diane’s car.
It’s nearly two o’clock by the time I fight Strip traffic and pull into the valet at the Four Seasons drop-off at Mandalay Bay. I figure what the hell. I’m never gonna get that money together for Carlos, I might as well enjoy life while I still can.
Inside I am a little lost because you can’t ever find the elevators in Las Vegas. They hide them, hoping you’ll stumble into a casino and spend all your money. A man greets me with a huge smile you only find on the faces of greeters at five-star hotels. “Can I help you with that, ma’am?” he asks, pointing to my pie.
“Um, no. I’m just looking for the elevators for room”—I check the text my mother sent, because she knows me well. I never remember anything—“three nine one five.”
His smile grows wider, if that’s possible. “Well, let me escort you up.” He takes my pie with an assertiveness that implies carrying it myself isn’t an option.
“Thanks. I’m here to see my parents,” I say, kinda loopy like I’m a little high. I continue to give way more information than the guy needs. “They’re in from Monaco. They surprised me,” I say, unnaturally excited about the turn in my day.
“Great!” he says, equally unnatural in his enthusiasm.
He flashes his ID badge at an elevator that’s tucked into a short, private hallway, and then waves me inside. There’s a bench, which is unusual for most elevators in Vegas. I mean, typically they want to cram as many people as they can into these things. But it is the Four Seasons, so that must be what you pay extra for here, right?
The ride up is quick and we make no stops. Just right up to the—I stare at the panel of available floors on the side of the elevator. Just one to choose from. Top.
The doors open to another short hallway leading to a tall wooden door with the room-number placard off to the side. My escort knocks for me, then hands me my pie and says, “Happy Thanksgiving.”
I fish a bill out of my purse, pull up a twenty—fuck it, why not—and hand it over with a sweet, “You too,” that I actually mean.
The door opens and my mother and father are there. Wrapping me in hugs, talking a mile a minute, saying things like, “You look great!” and, “Do you believe this suite?”
And that’s when I see the staircase.
Staircase? Who the hell has a staircase in a hotel room?
And that’s when I see who’s coming down the staircase.
You have got to be fucking kidding me.
Chapter Twelve - Tyler & Maddie
TYLER
She looks surprised to see me. No, not surprised—um, what’s the word for when someone looks like they’re trying to decide whether to turn and walk away, scream at the top of their lungs, or murder something? Whatever that’s called, that’s the expression she has on.
It’s OK. To be expected. Give the gift. Not about you. Breathe. Stay present. Like your Rinpoche in Nepal taught you. Or just don’t be a fucking asshole. Like your Rinpoche in the strip club taught you.
“Why. Is. Tyler. Here?” Maddie says.
Her mother Georgina—who looks terrific, I must say—answers, “He insisted that we not tell you.”
Her dad Simon chimes in, “Well, he also insisted that we come in the first place, so in fairness, the least we could do was to honor the surprise, since Tyler did strongarm us into letting him pay for all this.” He gestures around the presidential suite of the Four Seasons to emphasize that this is the “this” he’s referring to, and grabs me by the shoulders, giving me a shake in a ‘you old so-and-so’ kind of a way. Simon’s always been a hail-fellow-well-met sort of a guy. I like it. It’s festive.
“He. What?” Maddie asks, a little loudly.
There’s an awkward beat during which Georgina and Simon look at each other and then at me. I smile and shrug.
“Uh,” Simon begins. “Well, Tyler called us a few days ago—”
“Which was such a lovely surprise,” Georgina adds.
“Yeah!” says Simon. “It really was. So he calls us up to see how we were doing and we got to chatting and then he asked when we might get to see each other—”
“—and then he suggested that, with Thanksgiving coming up, we should try to see each other now,” says Georgina. I don’t say anything. They’re telling the story exactly right. Also, Maddie just keeps staring at me, so I’m holding back on chatting it up too much.
Evan told me that when Maddie came to see him, she said it had been a couple of years since she saw her folks. So I anticipated the possibility that it might take her a moment to adjust when she found out what an awesome thing I’d done for her. Because it is an awesome thing I’ve done. It is. I know it is. I’ve given her a gift. She just has to see it.
Fuckin’ Tyler Morgan. Good Samaritan and all-around excellent guy. Pretty much only Evan says so.
But I’m working on changing that.
Maddie’s focused stare on me intensifies a bit.
“Did he?” she says. “What’d he tell you?” she manages to ask through what appears to be a completely clenched jaw.
Again, all totally expected. No need to stress. All’s OK. She’ll relax in a minute. Or not. Not your call. No attachment to the outcome. If she kills you, she kills you. Nobody said altruism was an easy ride.
“He told us that you’ve been working yourself into the ground with your new business, and that you keep saying how much you wish you could get away, but since you can’t, we all agreed that we should come see you,” Georgina says sweetly. True. That is what I told them. “And besides—” Georgina now lowers her voice to a more appropriate whisper, but I can still hear her. (I’ve got amazing hearing, which is wild considering how many times shit has exploded next to me.) “We feel… Your father and I feel like... We’ve... We’ve missed you. We feel like we should all make an effort to see each other more often. We love you. We want to be more involved in your life. We just… We love you, sweetheart.”
And then Georgina pulls her into a tight hug, and Maddie takes her eyes off me for the first time. She closes her eyelids. I’m no expert on human emotions, but my instinct tells me she’s trying to keep from crying. I do know what that looks like.
“Maddie!” Simon bellows as he slaps me on the back, breaking the mood, as is his wont. “You should’ve told us you’ve been seeing Tyler! We had no idea he was back!”
Maddie pulls away from her mom now, opens her eyes, which are a bit moist but have no proper tears, and says, “Yeah, well…” I grimace without intending to, unsure what’s gonna come next. I made a calculated risk putting this whole thing together, but even though it’s calculated, it’s still a risk. And then she says, “...Like he said, I’ve been busy. So… I guess I just forgot to mention it. But yeah. He’s back, all right.”
And then she kind of smiles at me. Like she means it.
Well, would you look at that.
Namaste, motherfuckers.
MADDIE
My emotions have been getting whipped around by a cyclone for the last few weeks and I’m tired. Beyond tired. Exhausted in a way that doesn’t have a word to describe it. So in this moment, even though there are about twenty different feelings coursing through me, I decide to just pick one and let it rule the day. And to my surprise, the one that wins out is… gratitude.
Because right now, instead of sitting alone in the house I share with two hookers, now that the third hooker has driven off into the sunset to be with her high-school soulmate (how is this my life?), I’m here in the presidential suite of the Four Seasons with my parents.
And, of course, Tyler Morgan. Who somehow knew what I needed even though I didn’t. And then he made it happen.
Son of a bitch.
“So,” I say to him, in an attempt to make this all seem completely normal and not walk my parents into a conversation about anything having to do with me and Tyler, “you convinced Mom and Dad to let you pay for all this? Hell, that’s a Thanksgiving miracle in itself.”
Mom walks over to Tyler so that she’s on one side of him and Dad’s on the other. She takes up his hand. “Well,” she says, “he’s very persuasive.” She squeezes his palm and nudges him. He grins in his unforgivably charming way and winks.
Is—is Tyler Morgan flirting with my mom? Shit, is my mom flirting with Tyler Morgan?
Dad then makes fists and sort of shadow boxes with him, saying. “Yep! Sure is!”
Forget Mom, is Dad flirting with him? Jesus Christ.
“Shall we have a drink before we head down for Thanksgiving dinner?” asks Mom.
“We?” I ask. “Is… Tyler? Are you… having Thanksgiving dinner with us?”
“Well, sure he is!” bellows Dad. “That was part of the deal! We said, ‘OK, we’ll let you pay for the suite and all, but dinner is on us, and you have to come!’”
I swear to fuck, I feel like I’m in the middle of some bizarre, alternate-universe holiday commercial for… like, long-distance service, or some damn thing.
“Come on,” Mom says. “Let’s all head into the living room for a cocktail.”
“I got it,” Tyler exclaims, stepping over to the bar in the corner. “Georgina, still gin and tonic? Simon, you want a Manhattan?”
“You remember!” Mom says, delighted.
“Maddie? Whatcha drinking?” Tyler asks.
All three of them look at me expectantly, broad smiles plastered across their faces.
“Um… Just mix up everything that’s there into a glass, and make it a double.”
“And then after a few years of seeing what the world had to offer a guy like me, I just kind of wound up back here.”
Tyler’s wrapping up the story of where he’s been for the last seven years. I’m alternately surprised by the little details I didn’t know and pissed off that I’m only just discovering it all now. Because it reminds me again of how far gone from us—from me—he’s been.
“Wow. That’s some kind of a story,” says my dad. “And what happened with Nadir’s—that was his name, yeah? Nadir?” Tyler nods, affirming the name of the translator he worked with to develop the technology he sold that made him a multi-millionaire. The translator who died before he got to benefit from what he and Tyler made. “What happened with Nadir’s family?” Dad finishes asking.
Tyler gets solemn. “Um, yeah. Yeah. I don’t really know, actually. I…” Tyler trails off. Huh, it’s not solemnity I see. It’s shame. “Yeah. I dunno.”
There’s an awkward pause. Then Dad says, “Well, that’s war, huh? Hell, as they say.”
“Yeah,” Tyler huffs out. “It can be.”
“Well”—my mom takes Tyler by the arm—“we’re just glad you’re OK. And that you’re back home!” I forgot how much Mom and Dad always loved Tyler. They kind of saw him as a second son. Especially after his mother died. He was at our place all the time. His dad was such a bastard. Probably still is. And for just a moment, I get sad for someone other than myself. But then I stuff it down. Because I can’t afford to share my sorrow.
Mom touches Tyler’s beard. “And what’s all this about? Is this a trendy thing that you’re doing, or…?”
“No, Georgina, just too damn lazy to shave.” Tyler smirks and everyone laughs. I dunno how he fucking does it, but he does.
“So, Maddie!” says Dad. “Tell us more about this real estate thing you’re doing! You’ve been so hush-hush about it, but Tyler says it’s going well.”
“Oh…” Shit. I really don’t want to have to lie straight to my parents’ faces. “Yeah, well, um…”
“Tell ’em about Robert, Maddie,” Tyler chimes in, encouraging with a knowing look. Evan must have told him that I came by the station. Fuck.
“Oh, well, yeah, just, um, Robert Vanderbilt and I are maybe talking about—”
“Robert is Evan’s husband,” Tyler volunteers.
“Evan’s married?” Mom asks.
“Oh, yeah,” Tyler says. “His husband is the biggest real estate developer in town. And he’s working exclusively with Maddie.” He smiles a wide smile.
“Honey!” Dad barks out. “That’s great! This might be the one then, huh?”
The looks on Mom’s and Dad’s faces are so hopeful that I want to punch Tyler in the stomach for offering it all up. Because the greater the expectation, the greater the disappointment when they discover the truth. But to hell with it. Right now, here, today, we can all pretend that everything’s OK. So I do.
“Fingers crossed!” I say with a tight smile.
“Fantastic!” beams Mom. “And is Evan well? Still fighting fires?”
For the tiniest of moments there is a thick cloud in the air. Because I know every one of us thinks of Scotty. But then the cloud quickly rolls off.
“Yep,” Tyler answers. “He’s great. Never seen him happier. He’s really in love. They’re funny to watch in the morning. They have a chef who comes in, but Robert insists on making Evan’s smoothies personally, because he knows how he likes them. It’s sweet.”
“Oh,” Dad starts, “is that where you’re living?” Which is a good question. Why the hell is Tyler at Evan’s in the morning?
“Oh, yeah,” Tyler says. “Just for a while. I had an apartment in The Mandarin, but it… Um. I’m... Moving on from there. Time to make a change. So I’m staying with Evan and Robert for a while. That’s all. That’s why we’re here and not there!” He puts on something like a forced smile and I’m not sure what the hell’s going on. We fucked in his apartment in the Mandarin like a month ago. I even joked that it looked like he had just moved in because there was virtually no furniture. Something’s weird here.
Then he claps his hands and says, “So! Shall we?” He stands quickly, and as he does, he bumps into my mom’s hand, the one holding her gin and tonic, and the drink splashes out of her tumbler and all over me. All over my ruffled blouse and my pretty tan trousers. Perfect. Just fucking perfect.
I stand, and Tyler yelps, “Oh, shit, I’m sorry,” as he fumbles to try to help wipe me off, knocking over the glass of whiskey I have sitting on the arm of my chair and onto the ass of my pants in the attempt. “Jesus!” he shouts. “Fuck! I’m sorry. Fuck, I’m sorry, Georgina. Didn’t mean to say fuck. Fuck.”
Tyler Morgan, ladies and gentlemen.
“It’s fine,” Mom says. “Just… Oh, honey. Your pants.”
“Yeah, no, I know,” I pretty much growl.
“You need to get some soda water onto those before it sets,” offers Dad.
And suddenly everyone has their hands all over me, trying to be helpful.