Brown-Eyed Girl

  “Did you talk numbers?” he asked eventually.

  “No, but I’m pretty sure the money will be big. Maybe life-changing.”

  He sounded sardonic. “Whether or not the money’s life-changing, the job sure as hell will be.”

  “Joe… this is the kind of opportunity I’ve always dreamed of. It looks like it really could happen. They made it pretty clear that they want to make it work out. If so… I don’t know how I can turn it down.”

  “I told you before, I won’t stand in your way.”

  “Yes, I know that,” I said with a touch of annoyance. “I’m not worried that you’ll try to stand in the way. I’m worried that you won’t try to stay in my life.”

  Joe answered with the weary impatience of someone whose thoughts had been chasing in circles, just like mine. “If your life moves fifteen hundred miles away, Avery, it’s not going to be all that easy for me to stay in it.”

  “What about moving there with me? We could share an apartment. There’s nothing tying you to Texas. You could pack everything up and —”

  “Nothing except my family, friends, home, business, the foundation I agreed to help manage —”

  “People move, Joe. They find ways to stay in touch. They make new beginnings. It’s because I’m the woman, isn’t it? Most women move when their boyfriends or husbands have a job opportunity, but if the situation’s reversed —”

  “Avery, don’t give me that shit. It has nothing to do with sexism.”

  “You could be happy anywhere if you make up your mind to be —”

  “It’s not about that, either. Baby…” I heard a short, tense sigh. “You’re not just choosing a job, you’re choosing a life. A career on rocket fuel. You won’t have one damn minute of spare time. I’m not moving to New York so I can see you for half of one day on the weekend, and twenty minutes every night between the time you get home and the time you go to bed. I can’t see any room in that life for me, or for kids.”

  My heart plummeted. “Kids,” I echoed numbly.

  “Yes. I want kids someday. I want to sit on the front porch and watch them run through the sprinkler. I want to spend time with them, teach them how to play catch. I’m talking about having a family.”

  It was a long time before I could say anything. “I don’t know if I would be a good parent.”

  “No one does.”

  “No, I really don’t. I never had any kind of family. I lived with parts of broken families. One time I came home from school and there was a new man and new kids in the house, and I found out my mother had gotten married again without even telling me. And then one day they all disappeared without warning. Like some magician’s trick.”

  Joe’s voice turned gentle. “Avery, listen —”

  “If I tried to be a parent and failed, I’d never forgive myself. It’s too much of a risk. And it’s too soon to be talking about this. For God’s sake, we’ve never even said —” I broke off as my throat closed.

  “I know. But I sure as hell can’t say it right now, Avery. Because at the moment it would seem like nothing more than a pressure tactic.”

  I had to end the call. I had to retreat.

  “At the very least,” I said, “we can make the most of the time we have left. I have a month until Bethany’s wedding, and after that —”

  “A month of what? Trying not to care about you any more than I already do? Trying to back away from how I feel?” There was something wrong with his breathing, something broken. His voice was no less intense for its quietness. “A month of checking off the days until the final countdown… Damn you, Avery, I can’t do that.”

  Tears brimmed and slid down my cheeks in burning paths.

  “What should I say?”

  “Tell me how to stop wanting you,” he said. “Tell me how to stop —” He broke off and swore. “I’d rather put an end to this right now than drag it out.”

  The phone was trembling in my grip. I was scared. I was as scared as I’d ever been about anything. “Let’s not talk any more tonight,” I said breathlessly. “Nothing’s changed. Nothing’s been decided, okay?”

  More silence.

  “Joe?”

  “I’ll talk to you when you get back,” he said gruffly. “But I want you to think about something, Avery. When you told me the story about your mom’s Chanel bag, you got the metaphor dead wrong. You need to figure out what it really stands for.”

  Twenty-one

  R

  avaged and exhausted from a sleepless night, I applied a heavier layer of makeup than usual the next morning. If the hollow-eyed look was in, I thought bleakly, I was definitely on-trend. I packed my bag and went downstairs a few minutes before I was supposed to meet Hollis, Bethany, and Kolby in the lobby. From there we would travel by limo to Teterboro Airport, about twelve miles away. The small airport, located in the New Jersey Meadowlands, was popular for private aircraft.

  Heading to a lounge off the lobby, I saw Bethany sitting alone at a small table by a window. “Good morning,” I said with a smile. “You’re up early too?”

  She smiled back at me, looking tired. “Can’t sleep too good with all the city noise at night. Kolby’s taking a shower. Want to sit with me?”

  “Yes, I’ll get some coffee.”

  In a minute, I returned to the table with my coffee and sat opposite Bethany. “I looked at the jpegs Finola sent last night,” I said. “What did you think about the skirt redesign?”

  “It was pretty. Finola said they would put beading on it.”

  “So you’re happy with it?”

  Bethany shrugged. “I liked the panels better. But there’s no choice with my bump getting so big.”

  “It will be a gorgeous dress,” I said. “And you’ll look like a queen. I’m sorry I wasn’t there yesterday.”

  “You didn’t need to be. Finola was real nice to me and Mother.” She paused. “She didn’t say anything… but she knows. I could tell.”

  “About what?” I asked without expression.

  “The due date.” Bethany swirled a spoon aimlessly in her coffee cup. “I’m just about to start the last trimester. I may not even fit into that dress by the wedding.”

  “That’s what the last fitting is for,” I said automatically. “It’ll be fine, Bethany.” I drank some coffee and fastened my gaze on the scene outside the window, watching the pedestrians with their necks swathed in stylish scarves… a chic woman on a bicycle… a pair of elderly men, both in fedoras. “Does your mother know?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I tell her everything. I always swear I’m going to keep some things private, and then I end up telling her, and I’m always sorry. But I do it anyway. I guess I always will.”

  “You may not,” I said. “Believe me, I don’t do a lot of the things I thought I’d always be doing.”

  Bethany left the spoon in the mug and pushed it aside. “Mother says you’ll keep quiet about Kolby,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “Please don’t thank me. It’s not my place to say anything.”

  “You’re right. It’s not. But I know you like Ryan, and you probably feel sorry for him. You shouldn’t, though. He’ll be fine.”

  “Is the baby his?” I asked softly.

  Bethany flicked a derisive glance at me. “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s Kolby’s.”

  Her slight smile faded. She didn’t answer.

  She didn’t have to.

  We were both quiet for a minute.

  “I love Kolby,” Bethany said eventually. “It doesn’t make a difference, but I do.”

  “Have you talked to him about it?”

  “Of course.”

  “What does he say?”

  “Stupid stuff. He said he wanted to get married and live in a beach house in Santa Cruz. Like I’d be sending our kid to public school.” She let out a little huff of laughter. “Can you imagine me marrying a waterskiing instructor? Kolby has no money. No one would invite me anywhere. I wouldn’t be anyo
ne.”

  “You’d be with the person you love. The father of your child. You’d have to work, but you’ve got a college degree and connections —”

  “Avery, no one makes money from working. Not real money. Even if you get that TV show job, you’ll never earn anything close to what a Travis or a Chase or a Warner has. I wasn’t raised to live in the top one percent, I was raised to live in the top tenth of the top one percent. That’s who I am. You can’t go down from that. No one would give up the kind of life I have just because they love someone.”

  I didn’t reply.

  “You think I’m a bitch,” Bethany said.

  “No.”

  “Well, I am.”

  “Bethany,” I asked, “what are you going to tell Ryan when the baby is born two months early and it’s obviously not a preemie?”

  “It won’t matter then. We’ll be legally married. Even if Ryan decides to deny paternity and divorce me, he’ll have to pay through the nose. I’ll threaten to fight the prenup in court. Mother says Ryan will pay rather than go through a big public embarrassment.”

  I worked to keep all expression from my face. “Are you sure Kolby won’t say anything? He won’t cause trouble?”

  “No, I told him all he has to do is wait. Once the divorce has gone through and I’ve got money, Kolby can live with me and the baby.”

  I couldn’t speak for a moment. “What a perfect plan,” I finally said.

  I was quiet for most of the flight back, my thoughts seething. Plugging in a pair of earbuds, I started a movie on my laptop and stared blindly at the screen.

  Any trace of compassion or pity I might have felt for Bethany had been obliterated when she had revealed that the wedding was nothing but a means to extort money from Ryan Chase. Bethany and her parents already knew that the marriage wouldn’t last. They knew that he wasn’t the father of the baby. They were taking advantage of Ryan’s innate decency, and he would end up screwed to the wall while Bethany and Kolby lived off his money.

  I was pretty sure I couldn’t live with that.

  In the periphery of my vision, I saw Bethany gesture to Hollis, who joined her on the long sofa at the back of the plane. They whispered together for at least twenty minutes, the discussion becoming increasingly animated, as if the subject were urgent. My guess was that Bethany regretted having told me so much earlier, and she was confessing to her mother. At one point, Hollis looked up and met my gaze directly.

  Yes. I had been identified as a potential problem that would have to be addressed.

  I returned my gaze to the laptop screen.

  Thanks to the time zone change, we arrived at Houston’s Hobby Airport at eleven a.m. “How nice,” I said with a tacked-on smile, sliding my laptop into my carry-on. “Most of the day is still ahead of us.”

  Hollis smiled thinly. Bethany didn’t respond.

  I thanked the pilot and flight attendant while Bethany and Kolby left the plane. Turning toward the exit, I saw that Hollis was waiting for me.

  “Avery,” she said pleasantly, “before we get off the plane, I want to have a little chat.”

  “Certainly,” I said, equally pleasant.

  “I need to explain something because I’m not sure you fully understand our kind of people. The rules are different at our level. If you have any illusions about Ryan Chase, let me tell you something: He’s no better than any other man. Don’t you realize Ryan’s going to keep some sweet young thing on the side? A man with his looks and money, he’ll go through three or four wives at least. What do you care if Bethany’s one of them?” Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not being paid to make judgments or interfere with your clients’ personal lives. Your job is to make this wedding happen. And if anything goes wrong… I’ll make sure no one touches your business. I’ll do whatever’s necessary to ruin your chances of being on that TV show. David and I have friends who own media empires. Don’t even think about crossing me.”

  My cordial expression didn’t falter for one second of her speech.

  “As you said at the beginning of the trip, Hollis, we understand each other.”

  After holding my gaze for a moment, she seemed to relax. “I told Bethany you wouldn’t be a problem. A woman in your situation can’t afford to act against your own interests.”

  “My situation?” I echoed, puzzled.

  “Working.”

  Only Hollis Warner could have made that sound like a dirty word.

  I deliberately took a roundabout route on the way home from Hobby, so I would have the time I needed. I always did my best thinking in the car, especially on longer drives. Somehow the tortured maze of thoughts at forty thousand feet became miraculously untangled as soon as I set foot on the ground.

  There was no denying the importance – the necessity – of having a fulfilling career. But a job was never the most important thing. People were.

  The fact was, I already had a career I loved. I had built it from scratch with my sister, and it was all ours, and I was in control of it, and we were damned successful. We could create our own opportunities.

  Talking with Trevor Stearns’s producers had given me a fleeting taste of what it would be like to be managed and supervised and have everything laid out for me. A fluffy white Pomeranian?… No thanks. I was just fine with my toothless Chihuahua, who, although not pretty, was at least not a stage prop.

  I realized I had been so swept away by the idea of getting the big break I had always dreamed of, and returning to New York in triumph, that I hadn’t paused to consider whether that was still what I wanted.

  Sometimes dreams changed when you weren’t looking.

  The things I’d accomplished and learned, and even lost, had all helped me to look at the world in a different way. But most of all, I had changed because of the people I had chosen to care about. It was as if my heart had been unwrapped and could feel everything more deeply. As if…

  “My God,” I said aloud, swallowing hard as I realized what the Chanel bag metaphor was.

  My heart was the carefully protected object on the shelf. I had tried to keep it safe from damage, tried to use it only when necessary.

  But some things became more beautiful with frequent use. The nicks and scuffs and cracks, the places that had been worn smooth, the areas that had been broken and repaired… all of that meant that an object had served its purpose. What good was a heart that had been grudgingly used? What value did it have if you’d never risked it on anyone? Trying not to feel had never been the right answer to my problems, it was the problem.

  Happiness and fear were pressed together inside me, a double-sided coin that kept spinning. I wanted to go to Joe right then and make sure I hadn’t lost him. I wanted things it was probably better not to think about at the moment.

  That life he’d described… God help me, I wanted it. All of it, including children. Until this moment, I’d always been too scared to admit that, even to myself. I’d been too encumbered by the fear of turning out like my father.

  Except that I wouldn’t.

  Unlike Eli, I was good at loving people. It was the first time I’d ever realized that.

  I had to take off my sunglasses as the bottom rims became slick with tears.

  Right now, I had to take care of a couple of urgent matters. Later I would go to Joe when I could find enough time and privacy. His feelings, and mine, were too important to fit in between errands.

  I pulled into the drive-through at a Whataburger. Waiting in line to order a Diet Dr Pepper, I fished my phone out of my purse and dialed a number.

  “Hello?” came a brusque voice.

  “Ryan?” I asked, wiping my wet cheeks. “It’s Avery.”

  His tone warmed. “Back from the big city?”

  “I am.”

  “How was the trip?”

  “Even more interesting than I expected,” I said. “Ryan, I need to talk to you privately. Is there any way you could take a break and meet me somewhere? Preferably a place with a bar? I wouldn’t ask unle
ss it was important.”

  “Sure, I’ll buy you lunch. Where are you?”

  I told him, and he gave me directions to a bar and grill not far from Montrose.

  I bought a Diet Dr Pepper, bolstered myself with a cold, crackling swallow, and made one more call before leaving the parking lot.

  “Lois? Hi, it’s Avery Crosslin.” I tried to sound regretful. “I’m afraid I’ve had to make a tough decision about Rock the Wedding…”