by Sara Rider
“Why not?”
“Besides the fact that Mom and Dad would be too paranoid to let me try something like that, I won’t have time if I have to go to a new school.”
“Is the commute really that far?”
Emily fidgeted with the seatbelt, sliding her thumb and finger along the chest strap. “It’s not just the commute. It’s everything.”
Julia frowned. This had quickly turned into a conversation where she didn’t belong, but she could feel the angst radiating from the teen. It was so obvious Emily wanted to talk to someone about her school situation. How could Julia ignore that? “What do you mean?”
“Hawkins is a super-competitive school. There’s a Facebook group for incoming students, and some other students were saying that it’s really tough and there’s hours of homework every night.”
Yikes. Julia couldn’t image spending that much time studying at fourteen years old. “You don’t think you can handle that?”
Emily snorted. “I can totally handle it. That’s why I applied. School has always been really easy and boring for me, and the academic program at Hawkins looks challenging. But I didn’t think I’d get the scholarship, and now I don’t know if it’s what I really want anymore.”
“What do you want?”
“The thing is…” The bravado in her voice faded. “There’s this TV show being filmed in Vancouver. It’s a period drama about Queen Victoria.”
Julia frowned. That was not the direction she’d expected this conversation to take. “You’re interested in Victorian England?”
“No! Well, yes, but that’s not what I meant. I auditioned for a part.”
“Oh. Did you get it?”
“Yeah. Just a small role. But it’s a regular one.” Emily grinned, and Julia had never seen so much unbridled excitement in her. “I’d have to miss school a few days a week and I need my parents to sign all this paperwork before it can be official.”
“Have you told your parents about any of this?”
The eye-roll Emily gave was so intense, Julia couldn’t help but feel bad for all the times she’d done the same to her mom growing up. “They won’t understand. The only thing that matters to them is that I’m successful and I have ‘every opportunity in the world.’” Emily made air quotes, imbuing a mountain-sized level of sarcasm into the words.
“They love you,” Julia said cautiously.
Emily gaze dropped to her hands. “It’s not that I’m not grateful. They’re great parents and I know they love me. But all they ever seem to do is work and worry about my future. Mom kept rejecting Tom for years, even though he’s like the love of her life, because she was so worried about how I would handle it. And Dad’s the same way. They act like having fun is some kind of awful sin. It’s too much pressure. But then, sometimes I worry that they’re right. What if I don’t go to Hawkins and then my future is ruined? What if I let them down?”
Julia needed to take a breath just to process everything Emily was telling her. Julia had always done okay in school, but she’d never excelled at it the way Emily did. It was hard to imagine just how much pressure was resting on those fourteen-year-old shoulders. “I know it’s hard to believe sometimes, but I bet your parents will be proud of you no matter what you do in life.”
“I doubt they’d be proud of me if I told them I wanted to give up the scholarship to focus on being an actress.”
“Maybe they’ll surprise you.”
Emily bit her lip and looked at Julia with an expression full of vulnerability. “What do you think I should do?”
Julia had no right to answer that question, but that didn’t stop her from having an opinion. Still, she bit back her instinct to intrude. “I don’t think I’m the right person to be giving you advice about that.”
“Fine. Don’t answer.” Julia could feel Emily’s spirit deflate, sucking the air from the car along with it. Julia turned to face forward once more, assuming that was the end of the conversation, but after a few seconds of silence, Emily said in a hushed, conspiratorial voice, “But can you tell me what you would do in my shoes?”
Julia let out her breath. Somehow it didn’t surprise her that Fergus’s daughter was smart enough to find a loophole. Julia had often won arguments this way when she was Emily’s age—twists of logic and annoyingly nuanced arguments until the other person’s resolve broke down.
She looked out the window to see Fergus had just replaced the nozzle and was pulling out his wallet to pay. It was now or never. She turned back to Emily and spoke quickly. “I didn’t graduate college and my life turned out okay. Event planning isn’t the most secure job in the world, but it’s what I love. There’s nothing wrong with following your dreams or pursuing a nontraditional career path, but you still have to work super hard, and there’s no guarantee anything will work out.”
The driver’s side door opened and Fergus slid inside. “All done. Thanks for waiting.”
“No problem,” Julia said, forcing a smile that would mask the nagging guilt swirling in her chest.
19
“That’s my sweatshirt,” Fergus said gruffly as Emily stuffed the navy cotton with the faded emblem of his alma mater on the front into her duffle bag. “I love that sweatshirt.”
“You love me more,” she said sweetly. “It’s mine now.”
His heart bounced around in his chest like a volleyball. His daughter had no idea just how right she was. This past week with her had been one of the best of his life, and he would give every single possession he owned to have her stay another week, but spring break was over as of tomorrow. He needed to get her back to her mom’s.
Emily zipped the bag shut. “All done.”
He exhaled slowly, readying himself for the inevitable. “Okay, let’s get going.” It wasn’t so bad, he reminded himself. He’d be driving back to Seattle in two weeks to visit her again, just as he had twice a month for the last two years. But he couldn’t help feeling like things we changing. His little girl was a teenager now. In just a few years, she’d be able to drive herself. Hell, she’d even offered to take the bus back by herself tonight.
Emily slung her bag over her shoulder. “Aren’t we going to say goodbye to Julia?”
Fergus stopped at the threshold of Emily’s bedroom door. “Why?”
“Because she’s your girlfriend. She’s part of your life. Besides”—she let the bag fall off her shoulder—“I like her. I think we had a good connection.”
“Yeah?” Despite the long drive awaiting him, he was eager to see Julia again. The more time he spent with her, the more he found himself addicted to her. She filled his thoughts when he should have been focusing on work or cooking or anything else that required concentration. It wasn’t just a physical attraction anymore. Even after a week of not being able to hold her or touch her the way he wanted, it was her stubborn determination and kindness and ridiculous sense of humor that he thought about the most in those quiet moments.
“Yes, Dad. And judging by that puppy dog smile you get whenever you think about her, you like her, too.”
“I don’t—” The protest died on his lips at the sight of Emily’s raised eyebrow. “Fine, I do like her. A lot. We can stop by her book club and say goodbye.”
“And ask her again to come to Mom and Tom’s wedding?”
Fergus nodded, wondering when in the hell his daughter had gotten so much smarter than him.
“A cliffhanger ending?” Julia gasped at the thought, as did everyone else in her Books & Brews club. They’d been engaged in a thorough debate about what constituted a happily-ever-after ending versus a happy-for-now when Clem mentioned the latest book she’d narrated had ended without any resolution at all. The members of the Books & Brews club might have radically different opinions on prologues, alpha heroes, and first versus third person, but they all agreed that surprise cliffhangers were the worst.
“I know, right? I don’t even want to record the second book just out of spite,” Clem said.
Julia
shuddered. Life was too complicated and uncertain already. The assurance of a happy ending where all the wrongs of the world could be righted was something she craved in her reading. She wasn’t naïve or unsophisticated, and nor were the books she read. She knew better than anyone that finding out how to create a happy ending from the messiness of relationships was a more difficult feat than simply killing all the characters off and calling it a day.
“At least Heart’s Blade had a fantastic ending,” Lisa said, looking at Lorenzo with a dreamy smile.
Julia grinned. Heart’s Blade had been Lorenzo’s selection. He was the only man currently partaking in the Books & Brews club, and had been too shy to recommend anything until now.
Despite having already discussed the ending, the group broke into another conversation about the epilogue that lasted well past their scheduled end time. Eventually, the looming threat of an early wake up for the new workweek was too strong and everyone dispersed, leaving only Clem, Nora, and Julia behind.
Julia started tidying up the glasses and plates left behind, but something about Nora and Clem’s oddly giddy energy stopped her. “What?”
“We found something,” Nora said, trying and failing to hold back smile.
“Something awesome,” Clem added.
Julia watched with growing curiosity as Nora dug into a tote bag she’d brought with her and pulled out a stack of old, battered paperbacks. Julia picked one up and examined the title. She didn’t recognize it. “What is this?”
“Look closer,” Nora prodded.
It was a paranormal romance with dark purple shading and a shirtless man with black wings protruding from his back. “Holy shit, that’s Fergus!”
Nora dumped the rest onto the table. “All of them are. Clem and I did a little digging and found a whole bunch. Did you know he did all of these? They’re amazing.”
“No. He doesn’t really like talking about it.” She looked at the half-dozen books in front of her, increasingly awed by each one. It was so bizarre seeing him like this—vampire teeth dripping blood on one cover, and the classic historical clinch pose in the next. Her favorite, though, was the one of him resting against a fence with cowboy hat on, plaid shirt open, and a rather suggestive outline along the upper thigh of his jeans. He was gorgeous. He was still gorgeous. But this wasn’t the man she’d fallen in love with.
The real Fergus was a quiet, devoted dad who made her laugh with the most terrible jokes and saw her in ways the rest of the world never could. He was a man who loved puzzles and sketching, not ripping the bodices from innocent but plucky young maidens. He was kind and thoughtful and…much less certain about his feelings for Julia than any of the characters in these books were about their love interests. She swallowed the uncomfortable pain in her throat.
“Fergus!” Nora said loudly, pulling Julia from her thoughts.
“I know,” Julia said, confused. “We already established that Fergus is on the cover of all these romance novels.”
Clem nudged Julia in the side. “No, she means Fergus is here.”
Julia whipped her head around to see Fergus and Emily standing at the doorway of the room, each of them staring at her with wide, horrified eyes. The color drained from her cheeks as nausea rose in her stomach. “What are you doing here?”
Fergus’s expression turned so cold, she shivered. “Emily wanted to say goodbye to you.”
Emily pointed to the paperback in Julia’s hands—the one with Fergus clad in nothing but a kilt. “Is that my dad?”
Julia quickly hid it behind her back, but it was too late. She could see the fury in his dark, unforgiving eyes.
“Come on, Emily. We’re going.”
Julia closed her eyes and her heart sank into her stomach. This was bad. This was so, so bad.
Emily didn’t say anything as Fergus led her from the Holy Grale, nor when he started the car and drove onto the highway heading south. It wasn’t until they were thirty miles out of town that she finally spoke. “Sooooo…you never told me you were a romance novel cover model.”
He gripped the steering wheel so hard, the muscles in his neck tensed. “It was a long time ago.” He wasn’t prepared for this conversation. He would probably never be prepared, which was why he’d hoped Emily never found out. His brain still struggled to understand the betrayal. It didn’t matter that Julia hadn’t expected him to show up. She was making fun of him behind his back with her friends, acting like it was some big joke, even though she knew how he felt about it. How could he have been so wrong about her?
“Why didn’t you tell me about it?” Emily spoke quietly. There was no trace of humor or disgust in her voice. Just hurt. It was the last thing he expected.
He took a long time to consider his answer. “Because I didn’t want to embarrass you.”
Emily stared out her window, tracing a heart onto the glass. “It’s not embarrassing.”
“Really?”
She huffed. “Okay, fine. It’s a little weird. But you still should have told me.”
“It’s something I did for money a long time ago when your Mom and I first got married. I didn’t tell you because you couldn’t look at me for a week after you found the ad I did for a watch company. And that was with all my clothes on. I don’t want you thinking that using your looks is a good way to get ahead in life.”
“Why not? It worked for you.”
“I got lucky that the opportunity fell into my lap when I needed it, but I don’t want that to be the example I set for you. The world is still an unfair place. I saw how much crap your mom went through as a young woman in medical school. She had to work twice as hard to get half the respect.”
“You and Mom act like working hard is the only thing that matters in life. Sometimes I wonder if you would have stayed together if either of you were ever willing to relax a little and have fun together. If you hadn’t had me to take care of, maybe you wouldn’t have fallen out of love.”
The accusation sucker punched him right in the chest. “That’s not why your mom and I split up. You were the best thing that ever happened to us. We divorced because we weren’t in love anymore. It’s that simple. Your mom deserves to be with someone who makes her happy.”
“Like Tom makes her happy?”
Fergus nodded. He would never be able to completely like a guy who insisted on wearing an ironic bowtie every day, even on weekends, but he couldn’t deny that Nicole was happy with him. “Yeah.”
“And like Julia makes you happy?”
A sadness he hadn’t felt in a long time swept over him—the kind of sadness he’d tried to steal himself away from for the last seven years. “That’s not the same.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not the kind of thing I’m going to discuss with my teenage daughter.”
Emily huffed. “You need to talk about it with somebody. I’ve never seen you this happy before. I don’t want you to go back to being the boring dad who does nothing but work and spend time with me. That’s not the kind of life you’re supposed to have.”
“Is that why you don’t want to go to Hawkins Academy next year?”
“Is that your way of changing the subject?”
“Yes.”
He didn’t look away from the road, but he’d developed a sonar-like detector for his daughter’s eye rolls. “It’s not that I don’t want to go. I’m just afraid of not having time for anything else. I want…”
He could feel her warring with herself whether to admit whatever it was she wanted to say. No one ever warned him about this part of parenting—the pain of realizing his kid had an entire life and feelings and opinions that he would never really know unless she told him. That desperate hope that he would be worthy enough for her to share them with him.
“I auditioned for a role on a TV show.”
His hands slipped on the wheel, veering toward the shoulder before correcting sharply. “What?” His brain spun with a million questions, but that was all he could seem to get out.
“A TV show. It’s a drama about Queen Victoria.”
“Why?”
“Because I like acting. Do you remember that I did musical theatre after school last semester?”
“Yeah.” Of course he remembered. He’d travelled down for her performance last fall to watch her. She’d been great and he was happy she had an extracurricular to add to her curriculum vitae. But when she didn’t sign up for it again in the spring, he assumed she’d gotten bored with it. It was all the more reason he wanted her to go to Hawkins—to keep her motivated and challenged.
“My theater teacher encouraged me to try out. I got the part.”
“What?”
“It’s a small role, but it’s an important one.” There was so much pride in her voice, he barely recognized her. “It films in Vancouver so I’d have to miss school a few times a week, but they’ll provide an onset tutor to help me catch up.”
“Your mom’s okay with this?”
“I haven’t told her yet. I know what she’s going to say and I was hoping that if you told her it was okay, she would agree.”
“Emily.” Jesus. What the hell was he supposed to say? She was fourteen. She needed to be in school, preparing for her future. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“Because acting isn’t a reliable future. You’re a kid. You need to be in school. A good school, like Hawkins, that will help you get into a good college.”
“Julia said she didn’t finish college and her life turned out okay.”
“You talked to Julia about this?”
“She’s easy to talk to and she gave me good advice. She told me I need to follow my dreams.”
Whatever betrayal he’d felt about the covers was nothing compared to this. Julia had interfered with his daughter’s life. No matter how strongly he felt about her—how much he goddamn loved her—he would always put Emily’s wellbeing first.
“No. I’m not going to agree to this.”