“I don’t know what you mean,” Madeline sniffed. “I have too stepped out of my bubble.” She ignored the nagging thought that she had turned off her cell phone so that she would not receive messages from anyone who could possibly pull her out of her bubble.
“Oh, really?” Trudi asked, and looked up slyly from her chip. She didn’t come out and say it, but she was talking about Stephen, a man Madeline had dated a few times. Trudi’s husband had introduced them. Stephen was a lawyer, a successful guy who could drape himself over a chair and look at you in a way that would make you melt inside. He was fun, he was respectful… but then he’d gone and ruined it all a couple of weeks ago when he’d said he wanted to take things “to the next level.” That sounded vaguely like a video game to Madeline, and it made her uncomfortable. Since then, she’d been sort of dodging Stephen. She had her breakup speech all worked out. There was no sound reason for her reluctance. Madeline was acutely aware that a mature person did not stop dating another mature person because of one little thing he’d said. It didn’t make sense, she got that. But she did not want to go to the next level.
“By the way,” Trudi said, “Stephen asked me to tell you that he has your movie guide.”
Shit. Madeline needed her movie guide; she was a film buff. She and movies had a standing Friday night date, right after soccer. “I know he does, Trudi,” she lied. “I’m going to pick it up tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow.”
“I hope so, because Stephen is hot, he’s a great guy, and he really likes you. He told me.”
Madeline did not believe that men really liked her. She believed Stephen said he did because he thought he was supposed to say it, or had said it to other women and scored with it. “Come on, Trudi,” she scoffed. “I’m a control freak, my condo is so neat that it’s a little obsessive—you yourself have said so many times—and I work all the time. How can he like me so much? He doesn’t even know me that well.”
“How can you say that? He knows you’re pretty and funny and when he figures out how insanely organized you are, he might actually see it as a benefit. Not everyone is as annoyed by it as I am.”
Madeline snorted and reached for a nacho.
“For someone so smart, you can be really dumb sometimes, you know it?” Trudi pointed a chip at Madeline. “You know what’s going on here, don’t you? The reason you don’t believe Stephen could really dig someone like you is because you have so many daddy issues you’re like a walking Lifetime movie. Which is all the more reason you have to go to Colorado and clear this up.”
Madeline laughed. “It has nothing to do with my dad. Please.” But she wasn’t certain that was entirely true.
“This is textbook Dear Abby,” Trudi said with a wave of her pudgy fingers. “Your father abandoned you and now you don’t believe a guy would have deep feelings for you. Hello! Just go, Mad. Go and do yourself a favor and answer all the questions your ten-year-old self had. How can that be a bad thing?” She’d swatted Madeline’s hand away from her nachos. “So what’s it called, this ranch?” Trudi asked as she signaled the waiter and made a gesture to their empty margarita glasses.
“Homecoming Ranch.” When Jackson Crane had told her the name, Madeline had laughed. A high-pitched, nervous laugh. She’d said, this is a joke, and he’d said, no joke. And as Madeline had tried to take it in, to absorb such stunning news, Jackson Crane told her the Colorado ranch was about six hundred acres. Madeline the realtor had done some quick math in her head and had almost swooned with the possibilities.
“Wow,” Trudi said approvingly. “Sounds like a place I’d like to visit. Another reason you have to go.”
“It sounds to me like a place where Sperm Donor wore a ten-gallon hat and rode around on a big black horse while my mom hopped from one tract house to another.”
“Could be some money in it,” Trudi said, and wiggled her eyebrows. “Have you thought of that?”
“I don’t want anything from him, Trudi. I mean, seriously, can you blame me?”
“No,” Trudi said flatly. “But…”
“But what?”
Trudi frowned. She pushed aside her plate, planted her forearms on the table, and leaned across the table. “Okay, look, I wasn’t going to bring this up,” she said low. “But do you remember the box you kept under your bed in the fifth grade?”
Madeline could sense one of Trudi’s “teachable moments” coming on. She glanced at the waitress, wished she’d hurry with the margaritas.
“You know, the one with the magazine cutouts?” Trudi pressed.