How to Be a Grown-up (14 page)

“Yes, but only mine.” I wrestled my arm into my sleeve. “Claire, do I need a B plan to my B plan?”

“Can I talk to the chick who was selling the crap out of this site ten minutes ago? You have to trust yourself, Rory. Hey, guys, wasn’t your mom awesome up there?”

“I didn’t see you,” Wynn answered. “Lachlan has crowntail Siamese fighting fish. That thing’s so expensive they don’t even have them at the zoo.”

“Study hard,” I instructed. “Get a good job, and buy one for yourself someday.” I put my arm around him as Claire waved good-bye. “We’re meeting Dad at the finish line,” I said, hoping the kids couldn’t read my nerves.

“Yay!” they cheered.

I felt like such a fool. What was that ad? In life there are drivers and there are passengers? I was a passenger. Wearing a blindfold. In the back of an unmarked van. In the Mojave.

I fixed my lipstick and then, holding their hands, we pushed through the crowd. I spotted Blake before the kids did.
Turn
, I thought.
See me
. Our eyes met, and his softened. I smiled. His hug was exactly what I needed to ground me.

“Hi!” I said as we reached him.

“Daddy!” Maya yelled, and he heaved her into his arms before we could connect.

“Dad, we could see, like, the whole park from the party. It was awesome,” Wynn said as Blake hugged him. “And he had this fighter fish that kills any fish you put in the tank. It was the coolest.”

“Is Daddy coming home tonight?” Maya asked as she climbed on his shoulders.

“Yeah, Dad, is your shoot done yet?”

Jostling strangers pushed us closer. “They’re, uh, trying to figure out a new ending. We’re in a holding pattern.”

“But you want it to wrap up?” I sought his confirmation.

“We’ve put a lot into it. We just want it to be good, you know?”

And from what Blake had told me about his parents’ divorce, this was where his mom would have started screaming until his dad ran off—all the way to Scottsdale to buy a condo with the hygienist.
You can’t just—!
And,
How dare you?

So I couldn’t do that. But I had to do
something
. We were literally standing at the finish line for fuck’s sake.

“Thanksgiving,” I announced with the certainty I didn’t remotely feel. Blake’s eyes flew to mine. “Daddy’s shoot will be done on Thanksgiving and we’ll be eating turkey together at Grandma and Gramps.” Heart pounding, I pivoted to clap for passing runners. He just needed to be invited back to the party. His own mother told me so. “You can do it!” I shouted into the crowd. “You can do it!”

It was written on Blake’s shirt just as surely as the markered tanks of those limping past. If he couldn’t see it, I would see it for both of us.

Chapter Nine

“Thanksgiving,” I said to Jessica on the way into the office Monday morning. “Three weeks. I can do that.”

“You can totally do that. In your sleep. They’re calling my flight. I’ll text you when I land.” She hung up.

“Rory.” Ginger caught me before I put my bag down. “Taylor wants you.”

As I approached Taylor’s door I overheard, “God, why does my stepmother have to be such a fucking round hairbrush in my asshole?” I paused.

“It’s her life’s purpose,” Kimmy wheezed.

Had I Googled Taylor before taking the job, I would have known she was Asher’s daughter from one of the four wives who had led him to the “bikini designer” I’d met in Kathryn’s bathroom, who was—and I’m giving Taylor this—two years older than her. Was JeuneBug just Taylor’s elaborate ploy to get back at Daddy for Fly?

“My dad doesn’t even talk to her. They have dinner, like, once a month and between retching up her food in the bathroom, she tells him she heard at some party we’re
understaffed?!
So now I—the one who runs an actual business, not just some fucking moleskin full of lame sketches of bathing suits—
I
have to waste time combing spread sheets like some fucking accountant. It’s totally unfair.”

“It is.”

“Fucking. Hate. Her.”

Shit, had Asher’s wife figured out who I was? Had she shared
that
with Asher between her retches? And if she found out, would it reflect badly on Kathryn—or me? Girding myself, I stepped inside and found Taylor filling her PUSSY mug. I was starting to suspect she just liked pouring liquid from one container to another, like Maya in the bath.

“Good. You’re here.” She pressed her freshly glossed lips together and strutted to a side table that’d been liberated of its hot pink Buddha head. She gestured for me to take one of the three chairs that had been shoved around it.

Kimmy pulled out the chair abutting mine, where she was forced to swivel her knees to the wall. Was this Taylor’s idea of a sit-down?

Tinkling sounds came from the hall, like a hundred knives clinking against a hundred glasses, insisting a groom kiss his bride. Taylor plopped in the chair beside us and eyed the doorway expectantly.

Silence.

Annoyed, Taylor breathed out, mouth closed, a Darth Vader sound, then called brightly, “Gavin?”

A young guy appeared in an expensively distressed leather coat, tucking his chin-length blond hair behind his ear. I knew him . . . from? From? From? Oh, no. “Cool if I come in?” I watched as the guy who wanted to be inside me on Halloween rolled in a luggage cart dangling crystal light fixtures.

“Um, yes?” Taylor said with the half-smile of a head cheerleader enduring the class nerd. “It’s your meeting.”

“Hey, Gav,” Kimmy called.

“Hey, Kim.”

Crap.

He shrugged his coat off and then took in the room. “Barbi-tastic. You made nice, Tay.”

“Which you’d know if you ever came by, asshole.” What
was
he to her? Roommate? Little brother? Little brother of an old roommate? “This is my boyfriend, Gavin Roth. Rory’s the head of our Be vertical.”

I stood as he came to shake my hand, our skin meeting at the tips of his fingerless gloves. “Great to meet you,” he said, his eyes widening in recognition.

“Tell her,” Taylor prompted impatiently, her tone like a tapping foot.

“Right. So . . .” He spun to his work, so thrown he looked like he’d never seen it before. “Um, yeah, so everything’s hand-blown in Bushwick. And I, uh, found this artisanal sand in—”

“Not the boring creative bullshit. The stats,” Taylor spat. He looked as endearingly confused as I would have been. “The stats. The stats!” It would never have occurred to me to talk to a guy like this. I couldn’t have even imagined there was a bark-at-him-like-he’s-a-fucking-idiot option on the Get Him to Love Me menu.

Taylor pushed back her chair, practically tipping the tiny table into Kimmy’s lap. “Fine, I’ll do it. Apple Paltrow Martin has one. Ivanka Trump hung one in her nursery and ABC Carpet is asking for samples. Gavin is
the
up-and-coming children’s chandelier designer.”

“Congratulations,” I said, as it seemed in order. “Are there many of you?”

“He has interest in Dubai,” Kimmy said flatly.

“We
have
to feature him,” Taylor said. “It’s done.”

Okay, Asher’s daughter, whose best friend is her CFO, let’s feature your boyfriend. For someone so obsessed with reinvention, her management style was skewing pretty Borgia.

Gavin cleared his throat. “Yeah, um, I was inspired by Roald Dahl, you know? Quentin Blake?” The three of them watched me look at the spiky pieces. “All the shadow in his work. I wanted to explore the juxtaposition.”

“Gavin’s going to make a shit-ton,” Taylor assessed.

He blushed. “Well—”

“If he doesn’t smoke it first.”

“Mm-hm,” Kimmy agreed, but whether to Gavin’s sales potential or drug consumption was unclear.

“I got inspired in Peru.” Gavin explained—possibly both.

“Okay.” Taylor climbed out of our Business Women Tableau. “I want these all over the next Be spread. We’ll take our next call in Kimmy’s office. Make a good impression, Gavin.” Taylor waved Kimmy to the door before turning back. “My place tonight,” she informed him.

I would have paid cash money to see Taylor’s response when a guy pushed her head down to his crotch during a hookup. Cash. Money. On a scale of confidence, with zero being, “I’m a waste of space,” Taylor was permanently set at ten. It was weirdly reassuring that I got the same version of her that her boyfriend, dry cleaner, and Chinese delivery guy got too.

“You’re gonna be cool, right?” Gavin asked furtively once we were alone.

“I’m going to work something up and send it over to you.” I had no intention of having that conversation.

“Just so you know, we’ve only been together a few months, like, maybe, six, tops so when you and I—” He stopped short as Taylor lapped in to pick up her phone, eye him, and leave.

“Let’s not,” I said, exactly as I had to Wynn when I’d found him typing
boobs
into Google. I took out my phone to get some photos of the lights. “These are great.”

“You think so?”

“Yes. They’re really amazing, actually.”

He tilted his head, my compliment reigniting the cockiness that had pulled me to him on Halloween. “Look, I just hope you didn’t get the wrong impression.” Was this child trying to let me down? “I wouldn’t want you to think—”

“Oh my God, I didn’t
think
anything because I’m
married
.” I flittered my fingers Beyoncé-style. Now he looked confused. “We’re just going through a thing. You were an oat. Something I would pour milk on.
If
I had taken you up on your offer, which, for future reference,
could
give a less married girl the wrong impression—this would be a different conversation.”

He went to kiss me.

I jerked back, barely catching myself on the rack, which teetered precariously.

“Fuck.” He steadied the lights. “You’re just so—”

“Are you breaking them?” Taylor appeared.

“Just testing weight for the shoot.” I made a show of lifting one. “Perfect. I’ll start making calls and we’ll go hell for leather in the opposite direction,” I said to Gavin. “Don’t want to repeat a single thing that’s been done. Fresh start.” I did an about-face and left.

I’d like to say that having a hot guy make a pass at me while the gatekeeper to his “shit ton” was in the next room played no role in my restored confidence. I’d like to say a lot of things. But when I picked up the phone on Thanksgiving to tell Blake the car was packed for our annual trek to my parents and we’d be over shortly to collect him, it helped.

He looked cringingly uncertain when we pulled up outside Jack’s, but then I tossed him his parka and offered the wheel and in no time we were listening to Wynn explain
The Hobbit
. It felt surprisingly good to clear the bridge and see the winter sky stretch out around us. Blake hummed along to the radio. Maya danced her stuffed rabbit to the beat. The McDonald’s pit stop led to a game of guessing how many diapers we’d changed in its bathroom over the years. As we rounded the hill into Oneonta, the cluster of Victorians looked picturesque in the gently drifting snow.
Yes,
I thought,
let’s be charming.

The kids tumbled from the car as soon as we arrived, giddily abandoning their nests of cracker crumbs and headphone wires to race up the walk. “Great driving.” I dared to squeeze Blake’s hand as he withdrew the key from the ignition. “You made great time.”

“It’s good to get out of the city,” he said, looking down at where we’d touched.

“Um,” I tentatively broached, “so I haven’t said anything to my family about . . .”

He nodded.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t been tempted. When my mom called to ask how I was doing, obviously sensing not well, shame kept me from answering truthfully. From admitting my husband’s defeat, but more so, mine. Perhaps it had been delusional—like hoping they wouldn’t notice that the vase in the dining room was missing because it was lying in shards under my bed, all attempts to reglue it by my then nine-year-old hands having failed miserably.
But,
I thought, as I unbuckled myself,
thank God,
because here we were, intact.

“Mom?” Wynn was back, rapping on my window. I opened the door. “Aunt Jen needs a gravy boat.”

“What?”

“Hey, Rory! Hey, Blake!” My very pregnant sister-in-law came down the walk in my mother’s Kiss the Accountant apron. “We’re doing two gravies, and I’m parked in.” She waved at where her minivan sat between the garage and my uncle’s Honda. “Would you mind? My back door’s open. Just grab it out of the china hutch.”

“No prob.” I hugged her and then turned to Blake. “You want to come?” A quickie in their game room?

“I’ll go in and say hello, if that’s cool.” He got out to stretch.

“Of course! Grab yourself a beer. Back in a jiff.”