“Yeah. Her boyfriend’s going to be good for her, I think.” This is as good an opening as I’m going to get. “So it’ll just be the two of you?”
She opens her mouth but just looks at me.
“Let me put it this way,” I say. “If I didn’t have Marissa to see, would you be bringing me home to meet the dad?”
“No.” She plays with the hem of the shirt. “It wouldn’t be a good time. What with my mom’s stuff and all.”
A movement outside catches my eye. The people in the apartment across the street have their curtains open and lights on. So do we. I wonder if they saw what we just did, if they notice us verging on an argument. “So that’s the only reason?” I ask, returning my attention to her.
“No.”
My throat gets dry. She’s obviously circumventing the truth, hiding something. “You promised me honesty, Halston.”
She sucks in a breath and spits it out. “Rich will be at the house. His parents too.”
I press my lips into a line. Rich was right, and I must’ve looked like a complete ass yesterday, peacocking around like I knew what was what. “Were you going to tell me?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
She frowns. “When I was ready. You don’t corner the market on complicated.”
“I know, so I’m asking you to explain.”
She rubs the tip of her nose. A light goes off in the apartment across the street. “He still thinks Rich and I are a couple,” she says. “Everyone does. His parents, our colleagues. Except Benny. She knows.”
My face warms. A couple. With Rich. I flex my hands in and out of fists. “Why?”
“It’s a hard time of year for Dad. He’s under a lot of pressure with it being the end of the last quarter, and dealing with the anniversary of Mom’s death—”
“How is that different from every other year?”
“It’s not, but . . .” She crosses her legs more tightly. “I mean it is, because it’s ten years now. That’s big.”
“I get that, I do. But there’ll always be something. At some point, you have to stop giving your dad the excuse to run your life.”
“I tried. I told him I was ending it with Rich and stopping the meds, but it’s too much right now. I could see how stressed he was. It could only be one or the other, and I knew I could lie to him about Rich, but not about my treatment.”
She’s not hearing me. I have to wonder if she’s making excuses so she doesn’t have to cut off her dad’s power over her. Either she’s afraid of him, or she’s gotten so used to it, she doesn’t really want the freedom she says she does. “It’s not healthy, Hals. You’ve got to come clean with him. You don’t owe him your life because of a mistake you made years ago.”
“I’m not going to kick him when he’s down. When I’m medicated and being looked after, he doesn’t worry about me as much. I couldn’t take both those things out of the equation and expect him to be okay with that.”
“He doesn’t have to be okay with it. You’re a grown woman.”
“He’s my dad.” She frowns. “I’m only talking about a few weeks. I’ll tell him after December. Why does it have to be now?”
“Because I get the feeling you’ve been making excuses for him for a while. Is that why you never broke up with Rich?”
Her posture slumps a little. “It’s not that black and white.”
That answer’s as good as yes. It is the reason. She was willing to stay with Rich to make her dad happy. Would she go back to him for that reason? Her dad introduced them after all. “Is that why you got together with him in the first place? For your dad?”
“Would it make you feel better if I did?”
People stay in relationships for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with love—including not believing they deserve better. “It makes me think if push comes to shove, you’d put your dad before yourself. And that could be bad for us.”
Her expression softens. “You still think I might go back to Rich.”
“If your dad’s been controlling you this long, what happens if he doesn’t accept your breakup?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know how else to tell you it’s over.”
“Does Rich know that?”
“God, Finn, you have to understand—it means absolutely nothing. It’s just a show for my dad. Rich wants me back, but that’s his issue.”
I lean my back against the headboard. “I’m asking you to tell your dad now. Before Rich’s family comes over.”
“I can’t. It’s Christmas. It’ll ruin everyone’s holiday.” She looks at her hands. “I’m sorry. We’ll all spend a polite weekend together, and then I’ll come home to you.”
“Weekend?”
“I’m going to take the train to Westchester tomorrow after work. My mom baked on the twenty-fourth, and I think my dad would really like if I started that tradition again.”
I look out the window. Dinner with the ex and his family isn’t how I want my girlfriend spending her holiday weekend, but I’m doing the exact same thing. I’m not sure how else to tell her what I want. “Let’s forget about it for now,” I say. “We’ll spend a few days apart, make our families happy, and before we know it, we’ll be back in bed, fucking in the new year.”
She launches herself at me. “Best idea I’ve heard all day.”
I catch her and lie us back on the mattress. “But what’ll we do until then?”
She straddles me. “I can think of a few things.”
“You know people can see us?”
She looks sidelong out the window. “Does it bother you?”
I lift her t-shirt to steal a peek at her breasts, appreciating their round fullness, the pretty pink peaks. My pretty pink peaks. “A little.”
“Aw.” She reaches between to touch me. She’s not as timid as she was when we started sleeping together. I liked her timid sometimes, but I also like her bold if it’s because I’ve made her comfortable. She sinks down on me. “You’re jealous?”
“You would be too if—” I groan as she swivels her hips. “If you had someone others could only dream of having.”
She drops her forehead to mine, looks me in the eye, and says, “I do.”
I try to focus on how her warmth envelops me.
I try not to wonder what Christmas at the Fox’s is like.
Or if I mistakenly worried about Rich when it’s becoming clear Halston’s dad is the one pulling the strings.
20
I wake up early to pack for Westchester so I can spend the morning with Finn. It occurs to me as I bag up tampons that I’ve hardly been to my apartment the last few weeks. I’
m not bringing much, most of what I’d need is already at my dad’s, but it’s still strange to pack here rather than at home.
I put my overnight bag by the front door and take my phone into the kitchen. I check inside the refrigerator. I haven’t ever made Finn breakfast, but that’s usually because he’s up before me. I get out some eggs and find bacon in the freezer. While I wait for it to defrost in the microwave, I check our latest post. Only thirty-two photos in and we’re nearing three thousand followers. It’s incredible. I have friends who’ve been using the app for years and can’t crack a thousand. I’ve started tracking the number of followers we get a day. If the photos are good, we can double our numbers by posting twice in twenty-four hours. We can quadruple them or more if a bigger account shares our work.
Not every photo works. I’ve inspected the ones that don’t—the angle, my pose, my words—to see what’s missing. I don’t have enough data to identify any patterns yet, but the sexier the photo, the more attention it gets. The peek at the tops of my stockings has been one of the most successful ones, but one of just my hair and bra strap fell flat.
I put the phone away to search for a frying pan and bump the coffee maker with my hand.
I forgot.
About coffee.
It’s not the first time this has happened. One day last week, I didn’t think about it until three in the afternoon, and that point, I didn’t feel like making any. Even before I drank it like water, I still had a cup a day.
This must be what it feels like to be satisfied. Happy. I stopped the antidepressants on the seventeenth—the anniversary of my mom’s death—and I can’t help but think it was the right choice. Aside from some headaches, mood swings, and minor anxiety, I’ve handled the transition well.
I get a pot going. I’m scrambling eggs when Finn zombie-walks into the kitchen wearing only boxer-briefs. His burnt-butter hair sticks up on one side, and his eyes are heavy with sleep. He yawns. “Eight solid hours, and I still feel like I was knocked out with a two-by-four.”
“That’s the power of good pussy.”
“The power of your pussy.” He grins. “What’s all this?”