Cold Feet (24 page)

“Didn't he ask why?”

“Nope.” Dusty grinned, flashing those goddamn twinkly eyes. “Guys don't do that.” His smile warmed me, and I felt slightly
better for the first time all day. “I missed you when you left earlier. You must have been in a rush. Didn't make your plane, I guess?”

“Yeah, sorry,” I said, remembering how I'd simply ignored his good-bye text. “Something like that.”

“We don't have to talk about it. I'm just glad you're here.”

“Thanks. Me, too.” I paused and glanced at the couch, which looked softer and more inviting than anything possibly ever had before. “Would it be completely rude if I just lie on your couch and watch TV or read? It would be nice to get out of my own head for a while.”

Without missing a beat, he handed me the remote and gestured to a full bookshelf in the corner of the room. “Feel free to help yourself to a book, but I apologize if we don't exactly have the same taste. Where's your stuff?”

“Liv has my suitcase.” I didn't explain why she wasn't with me, or where she was headed, and as I suspected, Dusty didn't press it. “Can I borrow some sweatpants?”

“Of course. Are you staying the night?”

“Yes, if that's okay. I'll pay you and Carrick, of course.” He refused, as I knew he would. Determining that I didn't have the mental energy to deal with the logistical problem of how I would continue this new life without any belongings, I turned back toward the books.

The bookshelf was a corner cupboard, nestled snugly into the wall, packed with dozens of classics and bestsellers alike, including some of my favorite authors. I scanned the titles, impressed by the
variety. Unsurprisingly, I spotted
A Confederacy of Dunces
—or, as I thought of it, every boy in America's favorite book.

“Is this your favorite book?” I turned back to Dusty, holding it out accusatorily.

“Nope. It's good, though. Actually, I think that copy is Carrick's, so I guess we have two of them around here.” He turned around, looking for something. “Do you feel like Thai food?” he asked, locating his phone. “It's the perfect ‘sitting on the couch and not talking or thinking' food.”

“Yes, please. That would be perfect.” I briefly closed my eyes. Then, before I could brace myself or duck my head, I was hit by yet another tidal wave of pain, this time from my memory.

The previous fall, a few weeks after Sam and I were engaged, his roommates were cleaning out their house for a couple new subletters. Dante was heading to Europe, and another roommate, also in the movie business, was leaving for a shoot in Vancouver. They decided to turn cleaning into cash by having a makeshift yard sale, which they did about once a year. This inevitably consisted of them piling junk into their front yard, hours later than everyone else in the neighborhood put out their carefully tagged sales. It was the bargain bin of yard sales, which is saying a lot. I knew from experience that in a couple of hours, when it became clear that no one wanted Sam's plastic Batman communicator, Dante's half-missing Level 1 Portuguese Rosetta Stone, or the pile of black auxiliary cords they'd found behind their TV, we would bundle everything into trash bags and bring it all to Goodwill.

“Who in their right mind would want that random tangle of
black cords?” I called across the yard to the boys from my position as the cashier—also known as the front stoop, where I sat with a steaming latte on my left and a couple of ones and fives in a shoe box on my right. I wasn't concerned about having to make change for their nonexisting customer base, but I wanted the boys to think I was supportive, so I pretended to stress about it for a few minutes that morning while they hauled out their castoffs.

“Emma, people need cords,” Dante explained, looking serious behind his hipster Ray-Bans, while he attempted to detangle the mess.

“For what exactly?”

“Loads of things. Stereos and stuff.”

“Do people still have stereos? Don't people generally have iPhone docks now?”

Dante ignored my excellent point and dropped a box of books in front of me. “Here, nerd, sort these out.” I obediently worked in silence for a few minutes, stacking books while Dante added a price tag to a broken French press.

“Wait a minute, why are you getting rid of all these amazing books?” I asked, reading off some titles. “
A Visit from the Goon Squad
?
A Fraction of the Whole
? These are some of Sam's favorites.”

“Don't you have them, too?” Dante squinted at the pieces in his hand, probably contemplating if he could sell the grinder and glass carafe separately.

“Yeah, so?”

“He's getting rid of them because you're getting married. He said you don't need two copies of each and you're really psycho
about clutter,” Dante added, his honesty doing nothing to take away from the sweetness of the act.

Dusty called out from the kitchen and I was wrenched back to the present. He walked back into the living room with his hand over his cell phone and looked at me expectantly.

“Did you say something?” I asked, disoriented.

“Fried or steamed?”

I stared, stuck in my memory trance. “Sorry, what are you talking about?”

“The dumplings,” he said slowly. “I'm ordering us Thai food.” His tone was one you might use with a child, or with Brendan Fraser after he emerged from the underground bunker in
Blast from the Past
.

“Steamed,” I answered automatically. I suppose I was still in wedding dress mode, worrying about calories. Then I remembered the facts. No more wedding, no more wedding dress, no more vague attempts to avoid fried food. “Actually, is it too late to change to fried?” That, my friends, is what they call a silver lining.

The rest of Wednesday evening passed in a coma of Thai noodles and bad USA movies, including
The Wedding Planner
, which neither of us acknowledged as completely appropriate or inappropriate, pausing only to comment on, and at one point attempt to measure, the enormity of J. Lo's ass. There was nothing overtly romantic in our interactions, but it was nice. There was something intimate about the casualness of the night. It was almost like we had been dating for years and were comfortable enough to joke around while we slurped wonton soup. What's more, as the night wore on, it felt increasingly similar to the images of my life with Sam, like a shadowy parallel
universe unfolding in the background. It reminded me of when a movie you've seen a hundred times is on TV while you're puttering around the house. No reason to turn it off or pay close attention because you know it so well, but every once in a while one of your favorite scenes draws your attention unexpectedly.

Like when Dusty mentioned that he hated olives—the most controversial fruit, in my opinion—and I recalled a debate Sam and I once had about whether or not we could be in a relationship because we both loved olives. In all successful relationships, I argued, there is one olive hater and one olive lover. You cannot have two of the same. Sam scoffed and said I was crazy, offering a compromise that I could have first dibs on green olives for life, if he could have the black ones. For a moment, the pain that I'd been carefully ignoring about Sam sliced through my stomach—missing him, worrying about him, losing him—and almost made me double over. But somehow, I kept it at bay, in no small part due to the distraction of Dusty.

It felt like a case study of whether I could substitute my entire real life with a fake one, if I could do the exact same things over, with someone else. Maybe it would all fall into place. Maybe Dusty could easily slip into Sam's role, our dynamic instantly as natural as when I ate breakfast with Sam in Venice a few days earlier. Maybe the grumpy old theory was true, that we end up with whomever we meet when we're ready to settle down, and the rest are details you could fill in with anyone.

Still, Dusty and I never talked about it, any of it. Presumably he'd figured out that since I wasn't heading back to Los Angeles the wedding wasn't proceeding as planned. Luckily he didn't ask me about it,
or about the search for my father—a reality I couldn't even begin to address at the moment. I knew he would have been more than willing to talk if I brought it up, but I didn't have an urge to open any cans of worms. One could argue that I was so deeply sunk into a pit of denial, I was caked in it. But most of the night I felt okay. I was comfortably numb. All of the bad things from the week felt very far away.

I woke up on the couch on Thursday morning to see Dusty heading out of the shower and walking back to his room in his towel. He must have been getting ready for work. I couldn't help noticing how attractive he was. His hair was dark from the shower, his long eyelashes were sprinkled with tiny droplets of water, and there was that scar, sketched haphazardly on his cheek. I idly wondered how he'd gotten it.

“Good morning,” Dusty said. He stopped at his door, clearly unembarrassed by his state of undress, and said deliberately, “I've been thinking, I have to go to work today, but we could go away this weekend. I'll take Friday off. My buddy has a place in Sonoma where we could go relax, do a little wine tasting. As pals, of course,” he added, somehow not awkwardly.

“That sounds really nice,” I responded gingerly. “Although . . . well, I'm not sure.”

“Think about it,” Dusty said easily, heading to get changed.

What was holding me back? Why couldn't I agree to a free weekend in Sonoma drinking wine with this amazing man? It's time to move on, I told myself decisively, swallowing hard. I was sick of feeling unsure of myself all the time. I remembered what had happened with Sam. With Val. With Mike. I thought about
the chuppah Sam had canceled. I felt the pain traveling from my fingertips, down my arms, and through my body like a poison. It was over. I walked into Dusty's room and found him in blue pants and a soft gray T-shirt, halfway ready for work, standing by his closet.

He turned and I reached up, motioning for a hug. He dropped the collared shirt he was unbuttoning and leaned down to pull me close. I closed my eyes and felt his strong arms circling my back. He was so solid. Here was physical evidence of it. Maybe he could help me forget about Sam. Maybe he could take the pain away. No, I told myself. This wasn't even about Sam. Dusty is amazing all by himself. He understands me; he gets me. He's a tall, gorgeous, completely together man. Sam has nothing to do with any of this. I was tired of feeling bad. I wanted to feel good. I tilted my head up for Dusty to kiss me and he read my cue perfectly.

Several minutes later we were interrupted by a loud knock on the door. It was a self-assured knock, an imposing one. I knew that knock.

“I'll get it,” I said, as Dusty looked at me, bewildered. “I know who it is.”

I straightened my clothes and shut the bedroom door behind me. Quickly, I headed to the front door and pulled it open, filled with a heavy dose of terror, but also certain that if I didn't open it immediately she'd pull a velociraptor and find a way in.

“Emma Elizabeth Moon, what in the world is going on?”

“Hi, Mom. Welcome to San Francisco.”

CHAPTER 24

“S
hould I ask the obvious?” I ventured, after I ushered my mother into the kitchen to avoid Dusty. That was an introduction I definitely did not want to make. I inspected her. She was wearing a tailored suit and it looked like her blond hair had been recently highlighted. I wondered if it was for the wedding and was momentarily touched, until I remembered that I had called it off and the wasted time and effort would probably annoy her even more.

“What's that, Emma?” she responded warily.

“Well, there are a couple things. One, what are you doing here? Two, do you realize what time it is? And three, how in the world did you find me?”

Caro laughed crisply. “Yes, I am aware of the time. I took a five
A.M.
flight to get here at this hour. I've been on a plane for six hours and traveling for eight. What would you have me do? Check into a hotel for a few hours?” It had been so long since I'd seen her that even watching words come out of her mouth was a singularly fascinating activity. I'd forgotten how she spoke, how she talked with her hands far more than I guessed she realized, and her expression when she was both irritated and defensive.

“No, of course not. Okay, how did you know I was here?”

“Hunter contacted me.” My mouth dropped open in surprise. I couldn't have been more stunned than if she'd said the producers of
The Voice
had called, offering her a ticket to the blind auditions.

“My fake dad called you?” I didn't mean it to sound snarky but as soon as it came out of my mouth I knew she would take it that way. That was the problem with us. There are people out there who naturally get each other, whose interactions flow easily and fluidly. My mother and I are not those people. We communicate clumsily, through stops and starts, passing the hurt and offended baton back and forth as we go.

“Yes, Emma, he did. I spoke with him and then with Olivia, who gave me the address where you were most likely staying. But before we discuss any of that, I need some coffee.”

I stared at her blankly. She talked to Liv? How much did she know? Who else had she spoken to—Sam? This thought crossed my mind painfully and I willed it away, reminding myself that he wasn't in my life anymore. It didn't matter who talked to him, on
my behalf or not. Wordlessly, I pulled my jacket on over Dusty's sweatpants and T-shirt, and we headed out.

“How was the flight?” I asked, after several minutes of silence. We were settled inside a cozy French café down the street from Dusty's apartment. I'd been there before, when it was bustling to the point of discomfort, but as we'd just missed the morning rush, we had the place practically to ourselves. There were a few old-timers who actually looked French examining their wrinkly, foreign-looking newspapers, and a girl in her twenties with wild hair and a short skirt at the counter trying to order a Frappuccino, much to the barista's disgust. Ah, the walk of shame. I felt a fierce stab of missing Liv, remembering our game of counting walks of shame over Sunday brunch in law school.

“The flight? Well, I didn't relish waking up at the crack of dawn to catch it, or paying hundreds of dollars to change my ticket. Not to mention telling my boss that I had to skip a congressional hearing. But I really had no choice.” Caro paused for a second to take a sip of her cappuccino and allow the guilt to sink in properly. “I received a call that my child was running all over San Francisco, comparing freckles with men and living with two strange boys while her fiancé waited in purgatory. Really, Emma, were such dramatics necessary?” I felt the heat rising to my cheeks and felt myself losing it, but I gave myself a stern talking-to. This was not the time to be weak. I was not the one who should be embarrassed, I reminded myself.

“The only reason I was ‘running around comparing freckles with men,' as you put it, is because for the past twenty-nine years,
I have been lied to about who my father is and where I come from.” I sat back and crossed my arms pointedly.

Caro scoffed at this. “You've been watching too much reality TV, Emma. You know exactly where you come from. And as for Hunter, what difference did it make what I said his name was? He never had any impact on your life before, why should he now?” Her eyes remained focused as she said this, the picture of reason and detachment. It was the same neutral, self-assured face she made while testifying before Congress about the results of the latest tobacco study, which infuriated me further. How dare she keep her cool right now?

“What
difference
did it make? Do you hear yourself?” I tried to keep my tone firm but low, as I was pretty sure the Frenchmen wouldn't appreciate a screaming match in their pleasant patisserie.

“You're getting caught up in the semantics.”

“The semantics of my
own father's name
? You're unbelievable. I can't believe you would try and twist this into my problem. You've been in Washington too long if you're going to try to spin this one. My whole life you've been doing this, dismissing me, acting like I'm this irritating, ridiculous person. Let me fill you in on something. It isn't overdramatic to care about who your father is.” Caroline was silent, stirring the contents of her white porcelain cup with the tiny silver spoon they'd provided. I kept going, though. I was on a roll. “Also, you don't know the first thing about what happened between Sam and me, or what he's doing
innocently
waiting for me. It's over. And it's not because of Hunter or this trip, or anything like that. He cheated on me.” My words broke on this last sentence, shattering the strength I was trying desperately to convey.

“Okay, Emma,” Caro said more softly now, putting up both hands as if in surrender. “You're right. I don't know what happened with Sam. All I know is what happened with Hunter. And with Mike.” She took a pause and sipped her cappuccino, appearing to need a break after saying his name. I felt a shifting in my stomach, or maybe my heart. Either way it hurt. “I'm ready and willing to tell you everything.”

She sighed again and looked through her purse, pulling out several pieces of paper, folded together, reluctant to continue but determined to finish. “I know I haven't been the best mother, so I am going to take this opportunity to do something for you, something I know you need. I got you a plane ticket,” she said carefully, placing the folded paper on the smooth black table. “Back to Los Angeles. This afternoon. I'm willing to offer you a compromise. If you come with me on this flight, I'll tell you everything you want to know about your father. The whole story. What happened and why it happened. What happened with Hunter, what happened with Mike, everything. Trust me, there is nothing I want to do less than talk about this, but you have a right to know.” She paused. “But if you don't come with me this afternoon, there are no promises, no guarantees. I can see what you're doing in San Francisco right now, I can see the mistakes you're making, even if you can't. We may not be close, Emma, but I know you. I know you're shutting down and shutting everyone out, and it isn't right. What's more, I'm certain you'll regret it. You have to go home and face everything. Face Sam. Call off the wedding if you like, but don't do it like this.

“If you come back to Los Angeles today, I'll tell you everything
you want to know. Otherwise, I will choose to maintain my privacy. But first, you have to get on the plane.” She took a moment to let this sink in. She may have had a point about my ignoring reality and shutting people out—Dr. Majdi was probably nodding knowingly somewhere in Downtown L.A.—but she had been absent from my life for years. How could she really know what was best for me?

My disbelief must have showed, because she went on. “I know this is extreme, and maybe a bit silly, but I feel I have very little choice. I know I don't have any sway with you. You won't take my advice. If I say you should go back to L.A. because it's the right thing to do, you won't do it. All I have to convince you with is the truth. It's the trip for the story, no negotiations.”

In one smooth motion, she picked up her cappuccino and finished it. “I'm sure you need some time to settle your affairs and hopefully to pack, so I'm going to go. I hope to see you at the airport in a few hours.” Pushing the flight information toward me on the table and tapping it lightly, Caro turned and walked away, leaving me stunned into silence, still clutching my mostly foam latte.

Once, when I was about seven years old, I was at home alone, watching cartoons on a scratchy orange couch, the kind quite popular in the eighties, a decade full of uncomfortable furniture, when an advertisement for a retail mortgage lender came on and started screaming at me:
Don't lose your home because your mortgage is too high! Don't end up out on the street because of out-of-control interest
rates!
I sat glued to my seat, Lucky Charms sliding down my milky spoon, mesmerized by the television and certain that it was vital to remember every word. I tried furiously to memorize what I was seeing on the screen. It all sounded terrifyingly foreign, and I was sure that if I didn't pay very careful attention, whatever they were warning would certainly occur.

At the time, we were staying with one of Caro's friends from grad school, a very nice man named Danny, who lived in a basement apartment in Dupont Circle. Knowing what I do now about the neighborhood and cutoff jean shorts, I'm pretty sure he was gay. All I knew then was that Danny was my mom's friend, he had an extra bedroom, and he was kind. Danny didn't make me feel like he was counting down the minutes until his favor quota was up and we would get out of his apartment like so many others, and when he teased my mom or called me a chatterbox, it made me giggle. When he wasn't making us laugh or cooking amazing meals involving spices I'd never heard of, Danny was playing Simon & Garfunkel morning, noon, and night. I fell asleep at night under a blanket of safety, lulled by the smell of cumin and the melody of “Bleecker Street.”

I loved living there. I loved snuggling on the wool couch on Sunday while Danny and my mom went to the market, making my trundle bed carefully every morning and watering the kitchen plants with their sprawling vines, which composed the entirety of my chores. I remember praying as hard as I could that my mom would marry Danny so we could live there forever.