Commitment (15 page)

Other times, she thought she may have imagined it all, made up those memories in her head when she was a kid. Now she could no longer tell the difference between what was true and what she’d wished for so long ago.

“Tell me,” her mother said finally.

“Brian and I broke up.”

“Oh.
” Lorna did not sound particularly shocked by the revelation. “Lousy timing for him, I would think. Unless he did the breaking up.”

“I guess it was mutual.”

“I thought you two were pretty comfortable.”

“We were.”
Maybe too comfortable.

“So what happened?”

“Shawn . . .” she began.

“Are you pregnant, Riley?”

Riley laughed. “Where is
that
coming from? No. I’m not pregnant.”

“I don’t know,” Lorna said sounding mollified. “I just had a premonition something big was going on with you, that’s all.”

“Shawn asked me to marry him, Mom.”

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” Lorna said
with a derisive laugh
. And when Riley didn’t respond, there was a brief silence
followed by
a sigh. “Jesus Riley. You’re not considering it, are you?”

“I . . .
I don’t know. I never thought . . .”

“You know what this is about, right?”

She held the phone away from her ear for a moment.

“It’s like he’s acquiring
property
. That’s all. It’s that misogynistic rap subculture.”

“Mom, please. Could you stop? Stop being a sociologist for once and just be my friend
?
”

“I am being your friend! By pointing out what I see and what you’re obviously not in the state of mind to see for yourself. What have you been telling me all these months about Shawn?

“
About how jealous he gets when he’s on the road and can’t reach you? How he keeps trying to get you to fly with him all over the damn country?
How threatened he is about Brian? And now all of a sudden he wants to get married. How very
convenient
that would be for him.”

“It’s not that sudden. We’ve been seeing each other for almost a year.”

“
Seeing
each other? I think that overstates it just a little, don’t you?”

Riley gritted her teeth, willing herself not to respond.

“Just how much of that time have you actually spent together? Three nights at the most per month? Riley. You don’t need to attach yourself to a man to be a woman.”

“Now you’re being insulting. Don’t you think I know that?” 

“Riley, you’re a strong, beautiful, intelligent woman. Shawn is not the kind of man who can handle you trying to make your own place for yourself in the world. He wants a ‘wife’, Riley. Not some rabblerousing, loudmouthed writer. He doesn’t see who you really are.”

“Thanks a lot. That’s a really nice thing to say. And how would you know what kind of man he is anyway?”

“
Newsflash: they’re all
very
similar. At least in this regard.”

“That is absolutely not true and you know it. The least you could try to do is muster up something more original than your old man-hating diatribe!”

“Well, he can’t know how important your work is to you
.” Lorna said, heading straight to the heart of what she knew was most important to Riley.
“
He hasn’t seen you consistently enough to know that.

“
All he knows is that the sex is good and you don’t hassle him to make a commitment. Men are
not
that complicated, Riley. Just because you seem so casual about this relationship, it’s made him desperate to keep you. And
what do
you
do? Y
ou
break up with Brian just to placate him
.
”

Riley said nothing. The same things had occurred to her. Maybe that was the only reason Shawn wanted her so badly. Because he was competing with Brian and because she didn’t seem to want him as much.
God, if he only knew.
If her mother only knew.

Or maybe she had an inkling.

“Riley
,” she said finally, her voice almost desperate. “
You’re only twenty-five.”

For her to have resorted to such traditional objections, Riley knew Lorna must really be scared. Was there something in her voice that betrayed how much she wanted to say yes?

“I’ve thought about that,” she admitted.

“Think about it some more. Do you know how many people you’re going to meet in the course of your adult life?
Fascinating, interesting people who will help you grow and learn.
Isn’t it a little early to foreclose all of those possibilities?”

Maybe so, but she was having a hard time seeing any other possibility besides Shawn. And no, she didn’t know who she might meet later, but she remembered her mother’s parade of lovers and that hadn’t seemed like such a great bargain either.
If there had been ‘growth and learning’ in those relationships, Riley had missed it.

All she recalled were the messy endings.
Sometimes older, sometimes younger, they were men who came and went – some lasting as few as three days, one as long as five years. And when they were gone, her mother’s explanation was always the same.

It ran its course, Riley.

That was
Lorna’s
theory of relationships. They simply reached the point of diminished returns and had to be terminated quickly and painlessly. Painless for her at least. Some of the men in her mother’s lif
e Riley had liked. Even loved.
And when they were suddenly gone, no one bothered to stop and ask her how she felt.

“Y’know what’s funny about this conversation?” Riley said. “You haven’t even asked me if I love him.”

“Because it’s irrelevant.”

“How can it be irrelevant? We’re talking about
marriage
.”

“Exactly. An institution that – as you well know – has very little to do with how you feel.”

“Maybe that’s true in your classroom, Mom. But in the real world, people still like to think that love h
as a little something to do with it
. . .”

“Look. You’ve obviously made up your mind. So go ahead. Marry him. But don’t expect my support on this. And don’t think I’ll be there wearing some
goddamn
frilly mother-of-the-bride dress either. Because I won’t.
If y
ou
do this
,
you’re
doing it
on your own, girl.”

Riley ignored the pang in her chest and took a deep breath.

“Fine. I’ll take that into consideration. Look, I have to go, okay? I’ll talk to you later.”

There was a sharp click and the phone went dead.

g

The magazine was one that she never read, and that often featured cover stories about the latest pop star heading off to rehab, or affairs on movie sets. This issue was no different, but what immediately captured Riley’s attention was one of the smaller captions and the accompanying photo.

Shawn was wearing a brown leather jacket, dress shirt with a crisp pressed pant and looked like he was on the way to, or coming from a big event. He was grinning conspiratorially at his companion. Riley was used to seeing him on the occasional magazine cover, so that wasn’t at all unusual. She often marveled at how disconnected she felt from the shots. Those weren’t pictures of Shawn, really. They were of his alter-ego, K
Smooth
.

This time though, his smile was familiar to her and felt personal, only it was directed at the young woman next to him. She was the latest hot young thing, a pop-star who had three top-
ten
songs on the charts and was known not only for her voice, but for her waist-length platinum blonde hair and highly sexual onstage persona. In the photo, she was smiling back at Shawn in a way that looked more than casual.

Riley grabbed the magazine off the newsstand and paid for it, almost forgetting to wait for her change. She read it while she rode the train to the office.

An unnamed source claimed that K
Smooth
had been “secretly hooking up” with pop’s newest sensation for “several weeks” and that the couple – the “couple”! – was planning to take their romance public for the Continental Music Awards. The strange white-hot surge that filled Riley’s chest was a feeling she was so unaccustomed to that she almost didn’t recognize it for what it was.

She folded the magazine and stuffed it into her backpack, planning to toss it as soon as she got to the office.

Was this why she hadn’t spoken to Shawn in so long?

He’d called her twice since she’d been
out West
, but the first call didn’t count. Neither did the second one, which had lasted all of five minutes, as he dashed off to catch a flight to Vancouver.

All he’d had time to tell her was that he’d read all of her articles and that his touring schedule had him exhausted. He was about to say more when Brendan interrupted and rushed him off the phone.

That small contact had sustained her for a week or so, but now, almost a full month before she would see him again,
this
.

She fought the urge to pull the magazine out again and study the photo
for clues. But she couldn’t bear to see the headline above it which asked salaciously: ‘
Secret Lovers?
’ At her stop, she took the steps two at a time out of the subway, bypassing her usual spot at the Greek deli for a bagel and cream cheese. She had no appetite. But coffee . . . she made a U-turn then looked at the time. It was early, so in Arizona where Shawn was, it was just after seven? He was generally up early if Brendan had anything to say about it.

And so what if he wasn’t? She was owed an explanation. You didn’t just ask someone to marry you and then practically ignore them for weeks and go on dates with starlets. She spun round once again and almost sprinted toward her building. Riley waited impatiently for the elevator, head down, hoping not to run into anyone. She couldn’t carry on a conversation until she cleared this up. Not until he told her it wasn’t true.

The office was quiet. Most of the writing staff usually straggled in around
ten
a.m. and even when they did come in early, it was to sequester themselves in their offices and bang out their pages to meet deadline.
No one would think anything of it if they came in and her door was shut.

Riley
sat at her desk for a moment before picking up the phone. She would have to measure her words and tone very carefully. She’d never confronted Shawn about something like this before and even now wasn’t sure she should. But there was no way she was going to be able to make it through the day, the week, and certainly not the next month until he came to New York, if she didn’t know the truth. She pulled the magazine out one last time and it was the sight of his fingers, and the hand of the pop tart reaching as though to grab hold of them that finally spurred her to action.

Riley almost never used his cell phone number unless they were texting. She’d called him for only one reason in the past – to tell him she was on her way to his hotel and her estimated time of arrival if she were running late. He was the one who generally called. And often enough that she’d never had reason to call him before.

“Hey baby, what’s up?”

The sound of his voice, gravelly and tired as though he’d been woken out of a deep sleep
,
but still calling her “baby” swayed Riley momentarily and her confidence that she was owed an explanation waned.

“I woke you didn’t I?”
she said,
her
voice uncertain
.

“
You a’ight?”

She could hear rustling as though he was getting out of bed, and then the sound of running water.

Shit
. He’d had his show in Tempe last night. He was probably dead on his feet.

“Yeah. It was just this thing that . . . never mind.”

“What thing?”

“It’s not important. How was your show?”

“The show was tight. But what thing?”

“It’s nothing,” she insisted.

“It’s got to be
something,
Riley. Otherwise you wouldn’t have called me. And I’m up now, so you may as well tell me what it is,” he said, yawning.

She hesitated for a moment then described the photo, omitting what the caption read.
He said nothing for what seemed like a really long time.

“What’s with this ridiculous silence?”
Her voice rose higher than she intended.

“I don’t understand what you want me to say,” he responded.