Nuts

  Chapter 18

  I slammed the pan down on the burner. My knife cut angrily through the butter. I tossed a pat or two into the pan, watching it instantly sizzle.

  Dammit.

  I added olive oil, swirled the two together, then pressed a sixteen-ounce rib eye into the hot pan. I let it char on one side, while I chopped the parsley as if it had done something personal to me.

  Dammit.

  I listened to the steak sizzle, trusting my ears to tell me when it was time to flip it as I murdered the parsley. The familiar rhythm of chopping distracted me from the thoughts that were rolling around inside my brain like bowling balls¸ heading down the alley toward my very firmly ensconced pins.

  Pin 1. Don’t get involved.

  Pin 2. Enjoy the penis. Engage no other organ.

  Pin 3. Attachments are for suckers. See also Mom.

  Pin 4. Falling in love sucks.

  Whoa, whoa, hold the phone there. Falling in love? Who said anything about—

  I mentally picked up the bowling balls and threw them through the plate glass window in the bowling alley in my mind.

  Dammit!

  After I’d left Leo’s I’d driven home, circled the driveway, headed back into town, dropped by the butcher shop, and asked for the biggest, most beautiful cut they had. The Flintstones-sized rib eye was perfect. I scraped my parsley into a bowl and started pulverizing a perfectly innocent clove of garlic.

  Innocent, my foot—let’s see what you’re hiding. I pounded and smashed, added a sprinkle of kosher salt, and mashed it all into a beautiful little paste, which I stirred into the parsley, which was glad to no longer be the object of my . . . anger? Was I angry?

  Did that parsley just snort at me? I drowned it in olive oil, squeezing a lemon over the entire mixture until it yelled “Uncle!” then whisked it into oblivion.

  All to avoid feeling the . . .

  Steak’s done! I forked it onto the cutting board, covering it with foil to let it rest while I looked around the kitchen for something else to massacre. Tomatoes. Oh, look at that—tomatoes. Harvested by hand, from plants nurtured in perfectly tilled soil by perfectly bearded hipsters, in the land of organic milk and asshole honey, where everyone was happy and in tune with the earth, and the entire world narrowed down to slow, sustainable, and the concept du jour—local.

  Fuck local. I’d fucked local, and look where it got me. Angry/not angry, listening/not listening for a phone call or text, feeling/not feeling overwhelmed, confused, betrayed, and slightly . . . used?

  I grabbed the goddamned tomatoes by their stupid vines, tore the door almost from its hinges, and threw them as hard as I could across the backyard, splashing through the tangle of vines to spatter against the Airstream.

  “Nice shot.”

  Dammit! The last tomato in my hand became gazpacho. I whirled around to find Leo standing next to the house, and I had to resist two simultaneous urges. To mash the tomato into his face. And to then lick it off.

  I chose neither, opting for calm and neutral.

  “What are you doing here, Leo?” I asked, throwing the dripping tomato into some bushes and stalking back into the house, knowing he’d follow. As I rinsed and dried off my hands, I was surprised at how much they were shaking. So much for neutral.

  I could feel his eyes on me as I moved around the kitchen, and I avoided his gaze, tidying up, restacking plates that didn’t need it.

  He didn’t answer my question, so I finally looked up at him, raising my eyebrows. His face was cautious, tinged with something a little like . . . hope? I steeled myself.

  “I wanted to talk to you,” he finally answered, watching as I uncovered the steak that had been resting.

  I picked up a carving knife and began to slice. “So, talk,” I replied, arranging the steak on a plate and drizzling the parsley and lemon mixture over it. No way was I going first here. I wasn’t playing my hand until I saw what else he might have.

  He said, “You ran out of there so fast this afternoon I didn’t have a chance to—”

  “I’ve been here for weeks, Leo—weeks! And you never once thought to mention you had a daughter?” I jammed a bite of steak into my mouth and chewed it furiously. “Like, hey, Roxie, here’s some of these strawberries you like—my kid loves them too,” or, “Thanks for showing me this swimming hole; I’ll have to bring Polly up here sometime,” or, “Hey, Roxie, before I fuck you senseless, did I mention the fact that I’ve got a secret daughter?”

  I cut the steak so hard that half of it went flying to the floor, and the other half streaked across the platter. I blinked up at Leo, who wore an expression that I imagine someone who’s just been slapped might wear.

  “You’re kidding me, right?” he asked softly.

  I dug into the remaining half of my steak, sawing back and forth with a vengeance. “Not sure what I’d be kidding about here, Leo. You lied to me.”

  “I never lied.”

  “You want to talk semantics? A lie of omission is still a lie.” I forked up a big bite of steak and shoved it in.

  Leo scrubbed his hands down his face, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Did you really just Bill Clinton me?”

  “Call it what you want. But you and I both know that you chose not to tell me about your daughter, and where I come from”—I paused to swallow—“that makes you a liar.”

  “Where I come from, it doesn’t make me a liar. It makes me cautious about who I trust with my family,” he replied evenly, crossing his arms and leaning back against the counter.

  Before I had a chance to send over the next volley, he looked straight through me. “And you and I both know that you made it clear from the beginning that you wanted nothing to do with me beyond this summer.”

  “I didn’t . . . that’s not . . . you make it sound like . . .” I spluttered, trying to form a sentence.

  “You did, it is, and it’s exactly what it sounds like,” he replied.

  “You agreed! I asked you, and you agreed! We both went into this knowing exactly what this was, and haven’t we had a grand old time?” I snapped, kicking my chair back into its place and dumping my plate into the sink. “This, right here, is the reason I don’t get involved.”

  I glared into the sink, the room now silent except for the drip drip drip from the old faucet. Then a shuffle, and then the hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up. Because he was behind me, and my stupid traitor skin knew enough to be thrilled.

  “That night you made me dinner, here, with the beets? What did you tell me?” he asked, his voice low, his mouth only inches away from my ear.

  “I told you lots of things,” I hedged, trying like hell to resist the muscle memory that was aching to lean my head back, onto his chest, which I knew was steady and strong.

  “You told me love was messy, painful, and emotionally draining.”

  I winced to hear my words thrown back at me. But then he went on. “Do you remember that first night I had you, on the porch?”

  The memory came so fast the moan was out of my mouth before I could stop it. Leo, strong and beautiful, sliding in and out of me, gazing down at me with something like wonder. I nodded, biting down on my lip to stop from moaning again.

  His hands were on either side of me now, his heat all around me. “And I told you it’d been a long time for me?”

  I did remember. That first time, it’d been frantic and furious and incredible. Then he’d fucked me again upstairs, this time slow and sure, with more of the same incredible. I nodded again, wondering where this was going.

  “My daughter is seven years old,” he whispered, his lips nearly touching my ear.

  My brow crinkled. What did that have to do with—oh. Oh now, wait a minute. He couldn’t mean . . . oh. Realization dawning, I spun around, confused but not really that confused anymore.

  “You mean that you hadn’t— Not since—Really?” I asked, my hands automatically going to his chest, looking him dead in the eyes. “But that’s
. . . You’re so . . . That’s criminal!”

  “Criminal?” he asked, the corner of his mouth lifting the tiniest bit.

  I smacked his chest for emphasis. “Have you seen yourself? More to the point, have you fucked yourself?”

  And that, ladies and gentlemen, brought to mind imagery that would keep me warm on cold winter nights for the rest of my life. Not to mention the heat that flared in his eyes. I felt my own cheeks flame, and I knew I was losing credibility here. “I just mean— hell. I don’t know what I mean.” I patted his chest absently, grounding myself in the feel of him. “I guess the question is, why?”

  “Why I hadn’t had sex in so long? Or why I didn’t tell you about Polly?” he asked, his arms still on either side of me. One hand came up easily to my hip, settling there, his thumb stroking the skin exposed.

  It thrilled me no end to have his hands on me once more. And it scared me beyond belief that his hands could thrill me so. Did I have the courage to push past that?

  “Answer both,” I ventured, my hands no longer patting but smoothing, soothing. Touching just because I could? Okay, we’ll go with that.

  “I will answer both; they’re actually linked. But it’s a bit of a story—are you up for it? It’s all the things you say you don’t like: messy, painful”—he bumped his hips into mine—“and emotionally draining.”

  He was giving me a choice here. Not just to hear his story, but to take this next step with him. To hear his story, and let him in. To hear his story, and he’d trust me with it. Was I up for this?

  I chewed on my lip. He stroked my hip.

  “Okay,” I said carefully, then placed a kiss in the exact center of his chest. “Let’s hear it.”

  We sat on the front porch on opposite ends of the old wicker sofa, separated by a pillow I’d unwittingly erected between us. Probably not the most receptive-seeming way to listen to his story, but I needed this small distance.

  These strong emotions were exhausting. I now understood why, when my girlfriends complained about how stressful relationships were, they said they were tired of all the back and forth and arguing and feeling let down.

  Frustration, elation, being determined and driven—I knew those feelings inside and out. But the emotions of being involved with someone romantically? I had no primer except my mother’s—hence the determined, driven, and avoidant.

  After telling Leo okay, I went straight for the scotch, and he accepted my offer of a highball. So here we sat, just us and our highballs, and Leo told me his story.

  “I was born in Manhattan, Lenox Hill hospital—”

  “A poor black child?” I just couldn’t help it.

  He smiled, but arched an eyebrow. “Pretty sure you agreed to hear my story, not embellish it.”

  I mimed zipping my lip, locking it, then throwing the key over my shoulder. I then had to fish around in my pocket for a second key to unlock it so I could take a sip of my water, as I was thirsty.

  He watched all of this with an amused expression, then waited for me to get settled. “You done there, squirmy?”

  I nodded. “Proceed.”

  He did. Being born into a family of extreme privilege brought its obvious perks, but also a side of life that I’d never given much thought to.

  “What elementary school did you go to?” he asked.

  “Bailey Falls East Elementary.”

  “And why did you go to that school?”

  “Because we lived closer to it than Bailey Falls West Elementary.”

  “Mm-hmm. Easy. Simple. Not the same for me. The name Leopold Matthew Maxwell was on the list for Dalton two weeks after I was born. Unofficially, even before I was born, there was a Baby Maxwell on the list. My whole life, I was brought up according to the best things that particular life had to offer. When it came time for college, there was no question about where I’d go.”

  “Adirondack Community College?” I asked, earning a grin.

  “My father went to Yale, my grandfather went to Yale—guess where my great-grandfather went to school?”

  “Adirondack Community College?” I repeated.

  He gave me a shocked look. “How’d you guess?” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. I could hear the rasp against his fingertips, and I’d come to associate that sound with Leo and that sandy-blond gorgeous. “My great-grandfather was even a legacy student: we Maxwells go back six generations in New Haven.

  “Everything was preset. Parties, trips, vacations around the world. There was a circuit I was on—we all traveled together, pledged the same clubs and fraternities together. And the girls—wow, they were everywhere. I was a dick back then. Girls and women all wanted a piece, and I was only too glad to give them one. My friends were all exactly like me: just going through the motions, enjoying the extremely easy lifestyle until we could get on with the business of real life. And the definition of ‘real life’ to us? Of the guys I went to high school and college with, there are at least three congressmen, four CEOs, an ambassador, and one host of a very important political talk show on CNN.”

  I threw back the last of my drink. My head was starting to spin. “Okay, so life of a young rich boy, I got it. When did you get off the train? Where did you deviate?”

  “Funny you should mention that,” he said with a rueful look.

  As he went on, the picture of charmed life began to have a slightly darker underbelly. After Leo graduated from Yale he went to work for his father, going into banking as he simultaneously pursued his MBA.

  “I was learning a little bit of everything, trying to find my place within the system. Each generation of my family tries it all, works in almost all sectors of our business, before finding their particular niche. I bounced around longer than most. It wasn’t that I didn’t have an appreciation for what my family had built. But nothing was ringing any bells for me. Nothing was interesting beyond the paycheck. What I was interested in was partying, enjoying the good life that, frankly, I hadn’t earned. But try telling that to a twenty-three-year-old.”

  I kicked back on the swing, the movement soothing as I listened to Leo’s story—the parties, the women, the coke. I can’t say I was ready to pronounce him a poor little rich boy, but it certainly seemed there was a pressure that came with the extreme wealth he’d been born into. He did bounce around within his family’s company, although it was clear when your last name was Maxwell it wasn’t a hard forty-hour work week, like some. Forty hours, pfft. My mother worked fifty to sixty my entire life, and that was a hard fifty to sixty.

  “Remember the financial crisis a few years back? All those mortgage loans, all those foreclosures, all those people who lost their homes because they couldn’t afford their balloon payments?”

  “I sure do. My mother almost lost this house,” I replied, and I watched as he winced. “She’d been dating a mortgage guy who talked her into refinancing. And not thinking that the loan would surely outlast the relationship, she was completely surprised when the payments increased—something about an adjustable rate?”

  “Yep, tons of people got suckered into new loans called ARMs: adjustable rate mortgages.”

  “We were lucky. We knew the president of the local bank and were able to get her moved back into her original loan, but she lost a ton of her savings to do so.” I stopped swinging. “Was your family involved in that kind of banking?”

  “My family is involved in all kinds of banking. My family is banking.” He looked stricken.

  “So, yes then.”

  “Yes. Of course yes. Did you know there are probably less than twenty people in the world who can actually explain the clusterfuck that happened, how many arms and legs that entire mess had, and the effect it had on literally everything? The statistics of it, the advanced mathematical theories that need to be employed to truly understand what happened, and how truly fucked up it was, are staggering.”

  “I don’t need to understand the math to know it was fucked up. My mother was considering moving into the diner. I get it.” I star
ted to swing again, my foot angrily kicking at the porch, keeping up the pace.

  “I started to think twice about the family business, how thoroughly linked it all was, and what it stood for. And around that time, as I was beginning to question my place within the company, I met Melissa.”

  It’s amazing how quickly an opinion can be formed. All I knew about this woman was her name, and I was instantly on guard. I had an almost physical reaction to another woman’s name on Leo’s lips. And that told me more about my own feelings that I cared to admit, at least for the moment. I kept up the swinging, needing the rhythm.

  “At first, she was just another girl, one of many. Melissa had just filtered into the group I was running with at the time, a friend of a friend, and as she began to be at the same places I was, an attraction happened. And other things happened. But as I got to know her, she seemed . . . hmm,” he paused for almost the first time in his story, seeming almost lost in thought. “Different. She was different from everyone else. She came to New York from a small town in Wisconsin, she wasn’t at all concerned with money and last names and who everyone was or might become one day. Anyway, we started dating, and then dating more seriously, and just like that, I was head over heels. I introduced her to my parents, stopped dating anyone else, and we became exclusive.” He paused to look at me carefully. “You okay?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be okay?” I asked.

  “You’re about to swing us right off this porch,” he said, and I noticed for the first time how much air we were catching. My body had a very definite reaction to this Melissa. Dragging a foot, I slowed us down to a normal pace.

  “Sorry about that. You and this Melissa—I mean, you and Melissa—exclusive. Go on.” I forced my foot to just barely graze the porch every so often.

  He did. They dated for months, she met everyone he was close to, she was welcomed thoroughly into the family. A junior partner at an accounting firm, she was knowledgeable in many areas of finance, and could hold her own in most conversations. She could kill it at a cocktail party, he said, and he was proud to have her on his arm.