Chapter 14
Jill
“And now for the piece de resistance.”
Kat shows me one of her newest prototype necklaces, with a miniature padlock modelled after the ones hung on the Lover’s Bridge in Paris. “A spin-off from the holiday line,” she adds, referring to the Paris-themed necklaces that were sold in tandem with cufflinks made from the old locks from the bridge. Her fiancé’s company made the cufflinks and then manufactured the necklaces she designed. They were a massive hit at stores and now she’s doing the hers version of the padlocks as a necklace.
I turn around, and sweep up my hair with one hand. She loops the jewelry around my neck, letting the charm fall against my skin.
She spins me around so I can face the mirror behind her door. “See? You look mah-velous, dahling! Simply mah-velous.”
She’s so genuinely happy, in general, but also for me. Happy that I’m spending the afternoon with Patrick. She knows how long I’ve been in love with him, how I’ve hoped for this moment for years. And now it’s here and I try to ignore the hollow pit in my stomach. Only, it’s hardly hollow. It’s filled with all my guilt over what I did with my director the other night. I let him touch me. I begged him to touch me. I practically threw myself at him in the car, grabbing his shirt, and then pleaded with him to make me come.
I was a crazed animal, beseeched with need.
And it makes no sense how I could have wanted him so badly, but be so terribly in love with the man I’m meeting for coffee in an hour. The perfect man for me. Patrick with his music, and his songs, and the duets we sing together so well. Patrick who wants to be my friend first. Patrick who I’ve loved for so long.
All Davis wants is to f*ck me.
I have to focus on today, on the here and now. Not on the other night.
I turn back to the mirror, appraising my appearance. I’m wearing jeans, red cowboy boots and a scoop neck top. My hair is down and I tuck it behind my ears, because it’s the only way I can wear it that doesn’t remind me of Davis. Of how he can’t keep his hands out of my hair. How he likes my hair up, how he likes my hair down, how he can’t stop touching me. Here with my hair tucked primly, I don’t feel like the woman who’s playing two men.
“Um, no. What are you? A schoolgirl? Let it free!” Kat threads her fingers in my hair and makes it wild again. “Never tuck your hair behind your ears on a date.”
“It’s not even a date. We’re just friends,” I say, as if that makes what I’m doing okay.
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah. Go have fun with your friend. I’m going to go call my friend Bryan,” she says, sketching air quotes, “to see if he wants to come over and be friends.”
“I mean it, Kat. How much more platonic could it be? We’re going out on a Sunday afternoon. It’s not that way with Patrick.”
She fixes me a serious look. “Make it that way then, Jill. Make it the way you want it. Now’s your time.”
I grab my coat, my purse and my phone and catch the subway, those last few words still echoing. Now’s my time. Because I’ve done my time, right? I’ve beaten myself up over Aaron. I’ve read his letters thousands of times. They’re branded in my brain. They’re tattooed on my heart. They’re alive in my head, eating away at me.
I close my eyes as the train rattles under the city, and Aaron’s written words ring in my ears.
I f*cking love you so much.
Do you have any idea what it feels like to love a person this much?
It’s killing me to be without you.
I press my fingers against my temple, as if I can squeeze out the reminders of him. The memories I’m dying to bury for good. I still don’t understand it. He was so good to me the whole time we were together. Captain of the swim team, president of student council, the model upstanding guy. He was unimpeachable, and he was crazy about me. If I’d loved him as much as he loved me, would things have been different? Would I be different? But it’s so hard to know anymore. All I know is that love should be free from the kind of weight and hold that Aaron had on me. Love should be perfect and pure.
The train pulls into Seventy-Second Street and soon I’m walking to a coffee shop where I’m greeted by the blazingly beautiful smile of Patrick, the very reason I’m no longer in that dark, awful place I lived in after things ended with Aaron. He’s the reason, he got me through and he’s here now, wearing jeans and a navy blue pullover, his honey-gold eyes twinkling when he sees me.
He wraps me in a hug and his arms feel warm and safe around me, as I always imagined they’d be. Yes, this is the opposite of all my lonely days and nights. This is the beginning of the end of feeling like the worst person in the world.
For the next hour, we drink lattes and chat about our favorite shows, then our favorite movies, then our favorite songs, and it’s all such standard getting-to-know you stuff, and it’s fun. Really, it’s fun. When we finish and leave the cafe, he tips his forehead to the end of the block. “There’s a great indie bookstore on Seventy-Third. Want to pop in?”
“Of course.”
Once inside, he stops at the first table and taps a celebrity tell-all tale from the latest reality star du jour. “God, I love these books,” he says and grabs it, and opens it to a random page. He adopts a high-pitched voice to match that of the starlet. “But spending the summers in Lake Como with my movie star boyfriend isn’t as glamorous as everyone thinks it would be. My iPhone has spotty reception there, so it’s hard for me to keep up with Twitter.”
He chuckles deeply. “I have to get this.” He lowers his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Don’t tell anyone though. It’s my addiction. A total vice. I eat these books up like they’re candy. It’s junk reading, but I don’t care. They make me happy.”
I bring a finger to my lips. “I won’t breathe a word.”
“What about you? What do you like to read?”
I bite my lip and look away. Do I tell him the truth? That I read red-hot racy romance novels? That I love stories with sexy alpha males who border on bossy? That I crave tales of men who work hard and f*ck hard and say dirty sexy things to their women? There was a time when I went for the sweeter stuff. But lately, I need the heat way up to get off.
Yeah, maybe I won’t tell him all this. Especially considering all I needed the other night was a man who doesn’t even want me. A man who won’t even take me out to dinner, much less for a coffee. Not that I’d even want to go out with him. Not when I have a chance with Patrick.
“Oh, you know, this and that,” I say evasively.
“C’mon, now,” he says in a teasing voice. “You can tell me.”
This is what I wanted, right? To get to know him. To let him get to know me. I hesitate, though, because I don’t know how it would feel to speak the truth. To open up. Even about a little thing like what I read. But it’s not really a little thing. It’s a big thing, because it has everything to do with who I am now. With why I am this person. I read these books because it’s all I’ve allowed myself. Because I’m terrified of getting close to another person again. Because I’m petrified of a twisted kind of love.
Because make-believe is more than a job. It’s a way of life for me.
“Elmore Leonard. Get Shorty is not only an awesome movie, but a fantastic book too,” I say, because he’s my brother’s favorite author. I’m using his lines too, telling Patrick exactly what Chris has said to me about Elmore Leonard. A wave of self-loathing pounds me because I’m lying to Patrick over something so minor. Would it be so hard for me to tell him the truth about something as innocuous as what I read? But even as I try to get the honest words past my lips I’m layering on another little white lie. “And Carl Hiassen, too. He just tells the craziest stories and they suck me into his world.”
More lines from Chris. More lies to Patrick.
“Do you have his newest?”
I shake my head.
“Let me get it for you then. As a gift.”
“Okay,” I say in a strangled voice. But he doesn’t notice, because he’s grabbing two copies of the Hiassen from the shelves and happily heading to the counter with books to buy. Soon, he’s presenting me the book, and a part of me is over the moon because Patrick Carlson—the love of my life—is giving me a gift, but another part of me feels so unworthy. He’s such a good guy, and I’m so messed up.
“So your homework is to read this, and next time we get together we can talk about it. I bought myself a copy too. But it might have to wait a few days because I’m going to have to tear through this memoir first.”
I clutch the book against my chest. “Thank you. I can’t wait for our book club, Patrick.”
At least that’s the truth.
At least, I think it is.
* * *
My heart pounds and my legs burn, and my breath is visible in the frozen morning air. It’s Monday, still early in the dawn, and the sun is barely peeking over the wintry New York horizon.
I turn around and run backwards for several paces.
“Almost there,” I call out to my crew of mommy warriors as we run behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They are a resilient group, decked out in nylon running pants and fleece jackets. This group is my most advanced set, and they’re the ones training for the upcoming 10K to raise money for breast cancer research. It’s their third year doing it, and if they improve their times they’ll land more matching money from corporate sponsors. “Keep up your pace. Keep your elbows at your side, and don’t forget to breathe.”
I flash them a smile and I turn back around as we run towards the reservoir in Central Park. The women are quiet in the home stretch and so am I, as I let the running do what it does: wash away the little while lie I told yesterday. I run it off, and leave it all behind me.
I tell myself I’m starting over. That I’m a new kind of person starting a new kind of life, one where I don’t feel so damn responsible for all that went wrong. Maybe this new me likes Carl Hiassen.
I should give Carl a chance, right?
When we reach the end of the reservoir, I raise a fist in the air, encouraging all of my ladies as they slow down and finish a hard morning run.
“You’re amazing. You’re going to do great on Saturday.”
I hug them all, and soon we go our separate ways. As I walk across Eighty-Sixth Street towards the subway, I fast forward to tonight. To the next private rehearsal. Should I wear my hair up or down? Should I wear that black V-neck sweater that hugs my breasts just so? Or maybe the navy blue one since it matches my eyes? Wait, I know what to wear.
My red sweater with the little buttons up the front.
I bet he likes red.
Then I realize I’m about to walk into traffic because I’ve been daydreaming about tonight. I stop at the curb, and press the crosswalk button, and tell myself to stop thinking about Davis.