by Shen, L. J.
“Shouldn’t she start with small quantities?” Katie turned to Amber.
“I’m hun-grayyyyyy,” Clementine whined, throwing her head back.
“Really, it’ll be no trouble at all. It will take me ten minutes,” Madison began to explain in the cacophony of voices that spoke over one another.
“Just let her have pancakes!” my father boomed all of a sudden, slamming his fist on the table. The room fell quiet. Madison sprang into action, scurrying to the kitchen.
I turned my attention back to my food.
“Aren’t you going to accompany your fiancée?” Julian sat back, starting a new shitstorm.
I shrugged. “She can find her way around your kitchen.”
“Can you find your way to the twenty-first century, though? That’s quite chauvinistic.”
I fought an eye roll. “Since when is it chauvinistic to insinuate that my girlfriend can make her own food? Doesn’t it make her independent? Anyway, when was the last time you fixed yourself a plate of something that wasn’t bought at Whole Foods?”
“Girlfriend?” Julian arched an eyebrow that said busted. “Thought she was your fiancée.”
“Chase. Julian. Stop,” my mother bit out. “You’re upsetting your father.”
He started it, I wanted to protest. For obvious reasons, I didn’t.
I could see Madison making herself comfortable in Julian and Amber’s kitchen. Heard the sound of the sizzling butter as it hit the pan. The scent of warm sugar wafted through the air, and I didn’t think there was one asshole at the table who wanted to eat crab stuffed into organic vegetables instead of what my fake fiancée was making.
“I really like Maddie.” Booger Face sucked on her organic boxed juice, sighing.
“That’s nice, sweetheart.” Amber looked away from her plate, blinking rapidly.
“I really, really like her,” Clementine continued, not winning any tact points this evening. “It is nice of her to make me pancakes. I hope I see her in the clinic again soon.”
Amber snapped her head up like a guard dog who’d just heard a twig crunching under a boot. “In the clinic?”
“Yeah. When I went to get my shots. I wanted to say hello, but you were talking on the phone and said there was no time, remember?” Clementine glanced at her in confusion, and something very dark and very cold uncurled inside my chest. I bet Amber hadn’t been paying attention to what Clementine said at the time. “I saw her when I went to the doctor to get my shots. Maddie hugged my doctor. She hugged him hard. For a long time. Like couples in movies do. It was so disgusting.” Booger Face shivered, shaking her head with disgust.
The room was so quiet I could hear my own heartbeat. All eyes slowly slid in my direction. I had nothing to say. Nothing other than WHY WAS MADISON HUGGING THE ASSHOLE WITH THE TIE AND TIGHTS LONG AND HARD LIKE COUPLES IN MOVIES DO?
Hugging led to other things, and all those things assaulted my brain in a collage of Mad and Dr. Tights going at it like bunnies in front of a pediatric clinic. Him grabbing the back of her neck roughly, thrusting his tongue into her mouth. I took a sip of my water, concentrating on not tossing the table and everything on it through the floor-to-ceiling window. I wanted to do something radical and violent and shocking but knew it wasn’t going to help my case.
I didn’t trust myself to speak. To think.
“Is that so, sweetheart?” Julian poured more water into my glass, his voice like a snake’s hiss. “What’s your pediatrician’s name again?”
“Dr. Goodman,” Clementine purred, stupidly delighted to be acknowledged by her father. “He has the best ties, Dad. Of cartoons and Disney characters. And he lets me pinch him when he gives me shots. I like him, even though he hugged Maddie so hard there was no space between their bodies. Then he kissed her cheek. Yuck.”
I was going to commit murder. I was sure of it.
Amber’s eyes were clinging to my face, but it was Katie who asked brokenly, “Chase? I mean . . . is this true?”
I had two options. Making Booger Face look like a liar—which she wasn’t—or chalking this up to her wild nine-year-old imagination. There was also a third option, of admitting it to be true and coming clean. But that meant letting Julian win. Three years ago, I’d have bowed out of this gracefully.
Today, though, it was war.
“Maybe you saw someone who looks like her, Booger.” I ran my hand through Clementine’s braid.
She stared at me, serious as a heart attack, scowling. “No, I didn’t. She wore the same green dress with the little avocados she did in the Hamptons. I told Mommy I want a dress like that, and she said she would rather set herself on fire than have me wear it.”
Fuck my life in the ass. I’d chosen the most recognizable woman in New York to play my doting fake fiancée. Everyone was watching our exchange intently. My father, especially, looked pale and extra frail. He knotted his fingers together, tapping his index fingers to his lips contemplatively.
I gave Julian a meaningful stare.
He waved his fingers at me dismissively. He didn’t fucking care.
Mad chose that exact moment to make her grand return with a big smile, oven mitts, and a plate stacked with a mountain of steaming pancakes. She slid the plate in Clementine’s direction, drenching the pancakes in enough maple syrup to drown a hamster. “There you go, sweets.”
“Maddie.” Julian almost sprawled in his seat, he was so smug. “Clementine just shared something very interesting with us. She said she saw you hugging her pediatrician, Dr. Goodman, this week, and that he kissed your cheek. Is this true?” He elevated an eyebrow, feigning surprise.
“Chase says she must’ve seen wrong.” Amber jumped on the shit wagon, recovering quickly from her failure to feed her own child. “But I know my daughter, and she is extremely observant.”
Madison’s eyes darted to me. I held her gaze. I wasn’t sure what I was asking her, but I knew if she was going to refuse it, there was a good chance I’d set the world on fire.
Tick.
Tock.
Tick.
Tock.
Since when were clocks so goddamn loud? I waited for her to say something. Anything. How the tables had turned. Six months ago, Madison Goldbloom would bend over backward to make me happy (quite literally—we’d tried that position twice). Now, I was at her mercy.
Her lips parted, and the room sucked in a collective breath.
“Oh, Dr. Goodman!” she exclaimed with her big Maddie smile, but I could see right through it. The self-disgust laced with panic swimming in her big brown eyes. “Clemmy, you definitely saw me! Dr. Goodman and I are old friends. He is practicing for a half marathon. I just dropped by with some baked goods because I was in the area visiting a friend.”
Of course. A friend. A friend. Why hadn’t I thought of that?
Because the only women you talk to who are not blood related to you end up in your bed. You wouldn’t recognize friendship with the fairer sex if it kneed you in the nuts.
Clementine seemed to be appeased by that, smiling her partly toothless grin at Madison like she’d hung the stars and moon for her.
Julian, however, wasn’t impressed by this bullshit. He looked between Mad and me, arching an eyebrow. He was about to say something I 100 percent didn’t want to hear, his mouth falling open, when a loud bang snapped everyone out of the drama. My gaze darted to the head of the table.
Dad.
CHAPTER NINE
CHASE
I hooked Dad’s right arm, propping him on my shoulder. Julian took his left side. We zigzagged across the living room unevenly, the height difference between Jul and me making Dad sway unconsciously between us like a rag flapping on a clothesline.
“Let’s take him to my bedroom,” Julian groaned, his knees buckling under my father’s weight. We dragged him through the hallway, Mom and Katie on our heels. I heard Amber cracking open a bottle of liquor and Madison asking Clementine enthusiastically to show her her book collection.
&nb
sp; The hallway was never ending, stretching for miles, and I pushed away the thoughts of Dad dying in my arms tonight. The pictures on the walls blurred. When we got to Julian and Amber’s bedroom, we rested Dad on top of the bed. I dialed Grant’s number. Fuck his date with Layla. I paced back and forth as Katie tried to pour a little water between Dad’s dry, colorless lips. He regained consciousness, but that meant jack shit after his head had collided with his plate and he’d passed out on the table mere minutes ago.
As if remembering herself, Mom rushed back to the living room to fetch the medicine bag she’d brought for Dad (because carrying a medicine bag everywhere was now a thing). It was a big black device that had all kinds of oxygen masks and an array of orange pill bottles.
“Pick up, pick up, pick up,” I muttered, my phone plastered to my ear, pacing back and forth in a room I never wanted to be in. Grant picked up on the second ring. I rehashed the events in a clipped tone.
“Put Ronan on the phone, please,” Grant said, annoyingly composed. My four-year-old self wanted to throw sand in his eyes. What are you so calm about? My dad is dying.
Mom handed me the medicine bag. I unzipped it. Katie propped Dad’s back against the headboard, a thin veil of sweat coating her forehead. I hurried to help her, pinning my phone between my ear and shoulder.
“Just tell me what to do.”
“Chase, I can’t.”
“I’m your best friend,” I hissed through clenched teeth, recognizing how childish it sounded.
“You could be the pope for all I care. You need to put your dad on the phone. He is the only person I can discuss his meds with, unless I get his verbal permission.”
We both knew Dad wouldn’t grant me permission to discuss his health while he was still in a position to make his own decision. He was stubbornly proud. Reluctantly, I handed Dad my phone. His fingers curled around the device shakily. He began to sift through the medicine bag in his lap as he hmm-hmmed to the phone. Ranitidine, slow-release morphine, diclofenac, methylprednisolone. Hospice medicine, designed to make him comfortable, not better.
Katie galloped to the en suite bathroom, and I heard her retch as she threw up. It was too much for her. The realness of losing him.
Dad popped a few pills, drank more water, and answered various questions Grant had asked him. I didn’t think it was standard procedure for a doctor off duty to sit around and listen to his patient’s slow breaths for twenty minutes, but he did. Dad put Grant on speaker, and Katie got back to the room.
“Hey, Mr. Black, remember when Chase and I watched The Shining while we had a sleepover and I pissed my pants and you helped me clean it up? Bet you never thought things would turn out this way, huh?” Grant laughed. Dad did too.
I silently thanked the universe for gifting me a doctor best friend and not a douchey Wall Street broker of the variety I’d gone to school with.
“How could I forget?” He chuckled. “You’ve come a long way.”
“Well, it has been a few years.” I heard Grant grin.
Dad hung up and handed me the phone back, his stern father voice giving me whiplash. “Grant’s going to drop by at my house in a little to make sure my head is okay. He’s a good friend. Make sure you don’t lose him or Madison. They please me.”
“Really?” I cocked an eyebrow. “You just passed out, and that’s what you want to talk about? My friend and girlfriend?”
“Fiancée,” Julian corrected with a bleached smile.
Right. I needed to ink this onto my wrist in order not to forget. Julian was a skilled chess player. But he was also a predictable player, and his favorite method was to capture the pawns before going in for the kill.
In this case, Madison was the pawn, but I’d be damned if I’d see her knocked over by Julian as an afterthought.
“And yes, surrounding yourself with good people is the key to happiness. I found out about it the hard way. Now, I don’t know what Clemmy was talking about out there”—Dad pointed at the door—“but you cannot lose this woman. She is too good to let go.”
“What makes you say that?” I ran a hand over my jaw. I wasn’t disagreeing with him. But I found it hard to believe we appreciated the same things in Mad. Frankly speaking, her great ass, fuckable mouth, smart-ass observations, and eccentric tendencies.
“She is smart, sassy, loving, and easy on the eyes.”
Okay, maybe we did see the exact same things. They just sounded a lot less filthy coming from him.
“She respects your family. She works hard for what she wants. She always has a smile on her face, even though I’m sure she didn’t always have it easy,” he elaborated.
“Dad.” Julian sat on the edge of the bed, taking Dad’s pale hand in his. Sometimes I forgot Julian wasn’t my brother. He felt like my brother. Until Dad had announced I was his successor, anyway. From that point onward, Julian had been quick to point out he was only a “mere” cousin. In fact, he called him Uncle Ronan 90 percent of the time these days, even though he knew it ripped my father to shreds. Julian patted Dad’s hand awkwardly, like it was made out of slime. He couldn’t fake his way to a genuine feeling if he had a How to Be Human for Dummies manual right in front of him.
“I think maybe it’s time for you to take care of yourself. Spend more time at home with Lori.” Of course, Mom was Lori now. All the sleepless nights she’d spent hugging him tight when he’d had nightmares after his parents had passed away. All the birthday parties she’d thrown for him. All the tears she’d cried when he was hurting. “Maybe it’s time to . . . retire,” Julian finished, his forehead crumpling in fake concern.
“Retire?” My father tasted the word on his tongue for the first time. He hadn’t missed a day of work in fifty-five years. I doubted it ever crossed his mind. Working made him happy. He didn’t know himself outside the context of work. “You want me to retire?”
“Nobody wants you to retire,” I hissed, pinning Julian with a death glare. “You must’ve misheard. That’s what happens when people talk with a mouth full of shit.”
“Chase!” Mom gasped.
“He is struggling.” Julian straightened his back, jutting his chin out. “What if there’s a power outage in the building and he is in the elevator? What if he falls? What if he needs his meds and there’s no one to give them to him? So many things can go wrong.”
True. I can accidentally push you out the window, for instance.
“Julian, shut up,” I snapped.
“The shareholders are going to ask questions soon. It’s a two-point-three-billion-dollar company, and it is being run by someone who is not well. I’m sorry—I’m just saying what no one else is brave enough to.” Julian held his hands up in surrender. “It is ethically wrong to hide this kind of medical condition from the board. What if—”
“Shut up, Jul!” Katie barked, bursting into tears. It was not unlike my sister to cry. It was unlike my sister to be confrontational. Then again, Dad had gotten sick, and all of a sudden this family had turned into Lord of the Flies. And Julian, the classic middle management guy—good at nothing other than possessing a staggering amount of confidence—was the man who’d decided to replace him, no matter the fact the role had been promised to me. Katie stabbed me with a look. “I’ll take Mom and Dad home.”
“I’ll take them.” I picked up Dad’s medicine bag, hoisting it over my shoulder.
“No, they can stay here. I . . .” Julian put his hand on Dad’s arm. We both shut him up with a glare.
“I’ll handle this,” I assured my baby sister.
“C’mon, Chase. You came here by train. I have my car, and I wanted to crash at theirs, anyway. It’s close to the half-marathon starting point.”
I nodded, torn between joining them and getting Madison home. But I knew Dad didn’t want an entire production—it would only make him feel more vulnerable if we all escorted him back home—and besides, I wanted to wrap things up with Mad. It was probably the last time we were going to see each other.
S
he is too good to let go, my dad had said.
Too bad I couldn’t keep her.
I spent the ride back to Madison’s apartment counting the reasons why she shouldn’t be with Ethan Goodman in my head. I stopped at thirty when I realized that there were at least a hundred more in the pipeline and that I was too proud to say jack shit about it to her, anyway.
Madison alternated between glancing at me with concern and munching on her lower lip.
It was disgustingly hot and packed in the subway. Every single motherfucker inside was either sweating, holding a greasy takeout bag, or both. A baby whined. A teenage couple made out on the seat in front of us, partly masked by the backs of two men in suits who were standing and reading on their phones. I wanted to get out, take Madison with me, hail a cab—an Uber Copter if I could—and go back to my Park Avenue apartment, where I’d put Elliott Smith on blast and bury myself in my ex-girlfriend.
Which, there was no point denying at this stage, was what she was to me.
When we finally got out of the train and I walked her to her apartment, I realized it was probably the last time I was going to visit her street. Goodbye hung in the air, fat and looming and un-fucking-fair. But what could I do? She wanted marriage. She was obsessed with weddings—designed wedding dresses for a living, had flowers everywhere—and I thought marriage was the stupidest idea mankind had entertained. Never had I seen such a popular idea being utilized over and over again despite garnering such poor results. Fifty percent divorce rate average, anyone?
Nah, marriage was not for me. And yet . . .
The morning walks with horny Daisy.
Our arrangement.
Our banter.