One To Watch (39 page)

“I had a worksheet to finish,” she said matter-of-factly as she walked downstairs, but she paused when she hit the ground-floor landing. “What are those?”

She nodded toward the gifts Bea had left on the table in the entryway—Bea got up to retrieve them.

“They’re for us?” Gwen asked.

Linus gasped. “
Presents,
” he whispered, his eyes growing wide behind his giant glasses.

“I was going to wait until after dinner, but …” Bea made eye contact with Asher, who nodded.

“You can open them now, but quickly. Aren’t you guys as hungry as I am?”

“No!” Linus exclaimed as he tore through the paper on his gift—but Gwen just held hers in silence as she took her seat at the table, making no move to unwrap it.

“Richard Ave-don,” Linus sounded out the name. “Who’s that?”

“It’s pronounced Ah-ve-don,” Bea said gently, opening the oversized book of photos she’d bought for him. “He’s one of the most famous fashion photographers ever. Some of his pictures are even in museums.”

“No way.” Linus turned the pages delicately. “Like the museum you went to with Dad?”

“Exactly.” Bea grinned and caught Asher’s eye. “Your dad told me you really like clothes, like I do. These were some of my favorite pictures when I was your age, so I thought you might like them too.”

Linus gave Bea a tight hug—well, as tight as his tutu would allow—and she closed her eyes, feeling the weight of his small frame nestled against her. When she looked up, she saw that Asher was watching them, his eyes full of emotion.

But across the table, Gwen regarded Bea with distaste.

“Did you think this was all you needed to do?” she asked. “You bring us presents, we’ll want you to be our new mother?”

“Gwen!” Asher exclaimed.

“What?” Gwen’s tone was impassive. “It’s true, isn’t it?”

“It’s not,” Bea interjected softly. “Obviously, I don’t expect you to set your opinion about me based on gifts. We’re supposed to be spending time getting to know each other—that’s what tonight is for.”

“Why did you bring the gifts, then?”

“To make a good impression.” Bea smiled. “And you see? My plan worked flawlessly.”

There was a moment of stillness as Gwen looked at Bea, appraising her. Bea held her gaze … and then Gwen unwrapped her gift: a DVD of the 1938 classic movie
Bringing Up Baby.

“It’s one of my all-time favorites,” Bea explained, “and I thought you might like it too.”

“Why would you think that?” Gwen wrinkled her nose. “It looks like a romance.”

“It is,” Bea admitted, “but Baby is a leopard—the leopard is Katharine Hepburn’s pet, and it gets loose, so there’s a whole thing about that, and your dad, um. He told me you like leopards? Cary Grant plays a museum director, and there’s a dog who steals a dinosaur bone, so …”

Bea looked to Asher for help, but he shrugged apologetically. “I’ve never seen it.”

“So Dad told you about my research project.” Gwen turned over the DVD in her hands. “I take it you two talk a lot about Linus and me?”

“Of course we do,” Bea replied. “He’s really proud of you guys.”

“But in Morocco, you told him you didn’t know if you were ready to be a mom.”

“Gwen,” Asher warned, “that’s between Bea and me, okay?”

“No, it isn’t,” Gwen corrected him sharply. “It was on TV—everyone knows. And it concerns us, Dad. What if Bea decides to walk out on us like Mom did?”

Bea drew in a sharp breath—this was the most she’d heard about the circumstances of Asher’s divorce, and in truth, she was dying to know more.

“This is neither the time nor the place to discuss that.” Asher’s tone was terse, and Bea noticed a flush of anger creeping into his skin.

“Then when is?” Gwen demanded. “This is our only time to meet Bea, and we’re supposed to say ‘Oh goody, can’t wait for her to move in’ by the end of dinner?”

Asher moved to respond, but Bea put a hand on his arm to stop him.

“Hey,” she said to Gwen and Linus, “did you guys know my biological father left our family when I was a baby?”

The two kids turned to look at her, Linus’s eyes wide, Gwen’s narrow.

“That wasn’t your dad in Ohio?” Linus asked.

“That was my stepdad,” Bea explained. “He and my mom got together when I was four, so as far as I’m concerned, he’s my real dad. They didn’t show this on TV, but that day at my parents’ house, I got really sad—I went and hid in my room, and my parents came to find me. I told them I was scared that I would never fall in love, that I would always be alone.”

Asher looked at her, his expression pained.

“What did they say?” Linus asked.

“My stepdad told me that if I wanted to get married, I couldn’t just fall in love. He said I had to choose someone to be my family, and that they had to choose me back. He said that was how it felt with our family—that we didn’t just happen. We chose each other. Do you know what I did right after that?”

Gwen looked up at Bea, piecing it together. “You went to talk to Dad.”

“Yeah.” Bea swallowed hard. “That was when I told him how I felt about him, and it was when he told me about you guys.”

“I didn’t know that,” Asher said quietly. She turned to him, hoping she could convey with her expression how much that moment had meant to her—and how much this one did.

“I know what a big deal this is for you, Gwen, I promise,” Bea assured her. “But I want you to know that, for me, this is about us deciding if we all want to choose each other. Not just me, and not just your dad, but both of you too. All of us have to choose together. I can’t speak for your dad, but I know I would never feel comfortable joining your family if all four of us didn’t agree it was the right thing to do. Okay?”

Gwen looked at Bea for a long moment … then nodded. “Okay.”

“Do you have any other questions?” Bea asked. “I’ll do my best to answer everything.”

“Hey guys,” Asher said gently, “do you think we can stop grilling Bea for a minute so we can eat? The food is getting cold.”

The kids nodded, and for a few moments, the only sound was forks and knives scraping on plates as they all started eating. Then Gwen looked up at Asher.

“You’re home tomorrow, right?”

Asher nodded. “I leave for New York on Saturday.”

“Can we watch Bea’s movie tomorrow night, then? So you can tell her whether we liked it next time you see her.”

“That sounds like a great plan,” Asher agreed. He looked up and caught Bea’s eye across the table. With the smallest of smiles, he mouthed the words,
I told you.

“Cool,” Gwen said, then went back to her chicken and mashed potatoes like nothing big had just happened, like this hadn’t suddenly become one of the best nights of Bea’s entire life.

Bea couldn’t believe she was only two weeks away from this whole insane experience being over; she also couldn’t believe how, well,
okay
everything seemed considering how shaken she’d been by the Jefferson meltdown just a week ago. Bea’s spirits were high as she pulled up to meet Sam on the steps of Shirley Chisholm Elementary in downtown Newark, where he’d spent two years teaching, and where he still volunteered coaching the girls’ basketball team.

“Hey, beautiful.” He wrapped Bea in a tight hug. “I missed you this week.”

“I missed you too.” She realized the words were true as she kissed him hello.

“I don’t want to bring us down right away, but I do have some bad news I need to share.”

“Yeah? What’s up?”

“On our last date, at the hammam, I took off my clothes to impress you—”

“Oh, is that what happened?”

“Yeah, and it worked too.” Sam grinned.

“Okay,” Bea teased, “confidence, I like that. So what’s the bad news?”

“Well”—Sam affected a hushed, serious tone—“this is a place of
learning
. For
children
. So I think it behooves us both to keep our clothes on.”

“Maybe we should just go back to Morocco.” Bea leaned close to him.

“I think that’s a really good idea,” he whispered, then pulled her in for a kiss. “We just gotta do something first.”

“Oh?” Bea raised an eyebrow, and Sam took her hand and led her through mural-covered hallways toward the school gym. She expected he might introduce her to the basketball team, but when he opened the door, she saw the room was absolutely packed with people—dozens of adults and kids sitting in rows of folding chairs with a long aisle spaced out in the middle—and they all started clapping and shouting as Bea and Sam walked in.

“You guys doing all right?” Sam shouted, to general assent.

“Sam, what is this?” Bea asked as he escorted her to a seat in the front row.

Sam stood in front of the audience, and spoke into a handheld microphone. “Bea, when I told the girls on the basketball team I coach that you were coming to visit, and suggested that maybe we could do something special to welcome you, they said, ‘Coach Sam, tell us about Bea. Who is she? What does she like?’”

The whole audience turned toward Bea as if to divine this information by looking at her, but Sam kept going.

“And I told them, ‘Bea is a very beautiful, very funny, very smart lady. And she loves fashion—she writes about fashion for her job.’ The kids loved that. So they wanted to know if they could welcome you to our town with their very own fashion show.”

On cue, the lights changed in the gym, Lizzo started blaring over the gym’s loudspeakers, and the aisle between the rows of chairs turned into a makeshift catwalk.

“Oh my God!” Bea cheered and applauded as each little girl strutted her stuff down the aisle, all while Sam served as emcee.

“Keria is wearing a hand-draped outfit, that’s her nod to traditional Grecian dresswear,” he explained as a little girl with a very fierce attitude worked her bedsheet creation.

“Keria, that looks
excellent,
” Bea shouted, and Keria tossed her hair and spun in a perfectly timed pivot when she hit the end of the runway.

“Sam, where did you learn about Grecian draping?” Bea called to him.

“I read about it on a very informative blog,” he answered, and Bea flushed with pride.

When the show was over, the kids and their families all crowded around for pizza and juice, and Sam introduced Bea to his many adoring former students and colleagues.

“It’s a good thing Sam found some ten-year-old girls to play ball with, because he cannot hold his own on the court,” one middle-aged teacher ribbed.

“Easy now, I’ve got some game,” Sam retorted.

“Oh yeah? What do you think, Bea? Does Sam have game?” The teacher winked in Bea’s direction, and she turned to Sam and grinned.

“I don’t know, Sam. Maybe you should show me this supposed game of yours.”

“You want to see my game?” Sam called out. “What do you guys think, should I show Bea I’ve got some game?”

The crowd cheered, and Bea thought he was going to go off and find a basketball, but she was absolutely shocked when he took her in his arms and kissed her instead. It wasn’t a quick peck either—it was a long, sexy kiss while he dipped Bea backward like they were old-time Hollywood stars and this was the grand finale. The crowd whooped and whistled, and Bea could feel herself blushing bright red, but she also reveled in the moment, how good it felt to kiss Sam.

“So, what do you think?” he asked softly as he lifted her to her feet.

“I concede it.” Bea kissed him again, gently. “You’ve got game.”

That night, Bea was meeting Sam’s family for dinner at their home in Short Hills. Though just twenty minutes away, the wealthy town was a far cry from the crowded, vibrant streets of downtown Newark. These avenues were wide and tree-lined, and the colossal houses were set so far back that Bea could barely make them out in the lingering daylight.

“Holy shit,” Bea gasped as they went through the gate and up the long driveway of Sam’s family’s house—it was a gorgeous whitewashed brick colonial with dark shutters and a copper roof that had faded to a deep, rich patina.

“You’re judging me a little less for crashing with my parents now, aren’t you?” Sam laughed as he met Bea on the porch.

Walking into the lavish home filled with sculpted ceilings, wood-paneled walls, generously proportioned furniture, and a staggering art collection, Bea was thankful she’d changed her clothes for dinner. Jeans were fine for a tour of an elementary school, but now Sam was wearing trim charcoal slacks and a dark silk sweater, and Bea was glad to look equally presentable in wide-cut raspberry pink Prabal Gurung trousers paired with a crisp red shirt.

“You look like Valentine’s Day.” Sam kissed Bea on the cheek.

“Does that mean you’re going to be mine?” Bea teased.

“I hope so.” Sam was all bravado as usual, but Bea couldn’t help but notice how full of anxious energy he seemed as he led her into the formal dining room, where his family was waiting.

Sam introduced Bea to his father, Steve, a vice president of a big Wall Street brokerage firm, and his mother, Claudette, who was the chief cardiac surgeon at Mountainside Hospital. His sisters, Zoe and Jessica, had joined as well. They were an imposing group: razor-sharp, impeccably dressed, each more accomplished than the next. Bea understood how living with these people could give you an inferiority complex—she felt a sudden rush of appreciation for her own family and their simple, unyielding support for one another.