30. Ainsley
Chapter 30
Ainsley
W e all stand in silence as the elevator doors slide closed, sealing us off from the hotel lobby. After a beat, Taylor’s the first to speak.
“Well, that was a family dinner for the history books.”
“It was like reality TV or something,” Gemma huffs.
Taylor turns sharply to me, taking a step forward.
I instinctively step back.
“Boyfriend, huh?”
He’s not upset. If anything, he looks amused.
I knew I’d have to answer for my outburst sooner or later, but I didn’t expect it the second we were alone.
I shrug. “I just…” It's like the liquid courage from the wine evaporates from my veins all at once as I consider what to say.
That I've been feeling it for weeks?
That I've never felt more honest in my life?
That I’m terrified and confused and considering dropping out of college and running to the other side of the globe to hide from it all?
Instead of any of that, I say this. “I was pissed at him. I would have said anything to get under his skin.”
The flicker of shock and confusion flashes through Taylor’s eyes and is gone in a split second, but I saw it.
He takes a step back, and I want to rush forward.
To tell him I didn’t mean it.
But I don’t.
“Yeah,” he says, apparently letting it go. “The guy’s a piece of work. I can see why you’re so gun-shy all the time.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean, he’s got shit all figured out. And he seems pretty accustomed to everyone falling in line.”
I snort. “That about sums it up.”
“It makes the Victoria thing seem even stranger, honestly,” Gem muses from where she leans against the wall on the other side of the elevator.
Taylor nods. “I agree. It opens him up to so much criticism. As much as he can clearly defend himself, he doesn’t seem like a guy who necessarily wants to do that all the time.”
I nod at the observations. They mirror ones I had when I first stumbled upon the two of them together in my dad’s beach house. “Honestly, that’s why I’ve been so chill about the whole thing. I mean, other than the fact that there really wasn’t anything serious between Vicki and me. He was acting so unlike himself, I decided that must be what true love looks like. He was willing to burn his whole life to the ground to be with her. I mean, after all the drama of him finding out she’d been lying the whole time and bailing to go back to New York, planning on never speaking to her again and all.”
They both perk up at that, just as the elevator doors open to reveal our private rooftop patio.
“Now that sounds like a good story. ”
It is a good story, but now’s not the time. “Maybe later, okay?”
Taylor slides his key in the door and holds it open as Gem walks into the gloriously chilly living room.He steps into the center of the doorway, however, when I try to pass. “We going to talk about this boyfriend thing instead?”
I give him a half-assed shove, but he holds his ground, glowering at me with amusement and…something else.
The heat that rushes through my body doesn't mix well with the belly full of rich food and wine. I have to get him off my case. “No, asshole, we’re going to talk about how Gemma broke down at dinner and accused my father of aiding in her mother’s death. We’re going to make sure she’s okay.”
He backs down immediately, stepping aside so I can pass. “Of course.”
We find Gem in the lower-level bathroom, already barefoot in a robe and wiping her makeup off with a wet washcloth.
“That was fast. I was hoping to be the one to take that dress off you,” Taylor muses, leaning against the doorframe.
She smiles over at us, eye makeup smeared adorably as she works to remove it. “I’m just really tired.”
“I think we should talk about what happened at dinner, Gemma,” I say, and she turns back to the mirror, expression stoney.
“Let’s talk tomorrow, okay?”
Taylor shakes his head, stepping into the room and coming up behind her, wrapping both arms around her middle. “I think we should talk while it’s all still stirred up. That was a lot of big feelings, and we don’t want you sitting with them alone.”
She finishes her eyes and then sets the cloth down, nodding. Taylor leads her, still in his arms, back to the living room. I sit on one end of the couch, and they curl up together in the middle.
I could scoot closer, but I’m suddenly feeling like I don’t know my place in this relationship. Like the ground is splintering beneath me. I start, needing to get some of this off my chest. “I had no idea you felt that way about my dad, Gem.”
My voice cracks, and I clear my throat. “The idea that you’ve spent all this time thinking he’s to blame for your mom’s death and never said anything…” I break off and have to look away. I don’t want it to sound like an accusation, but it’s hard to hide my true feelings.
“I’m sorry,” she starts in a whisper.
The words hit me like stones. “No, no. That's not what I meant. You don’t need to be sorry. I’m fucking sorry. I should have thought about the connection between him and her, how that must have looked to you. How it felt for you. We were kids back then, and things were happening out of our control, I can see how you would have looked at him like the one who was to blame. But?—”
“I know that it’s not true. I know it was an accident, and that if anyone is to blame, it’s her for being drunk at work. But I’d be lying if I said I haven’t wanted to say those things to him since I was a kid. Your house was the place I felt safest my whole life. When we left, everything really started to fall apart. My little girl brain just put two and two together and came up with a bad guy.”
I can hardly breathe. Gem tries to pull me closer to where they sit together, but I resist. “How can you be with me, then? If that’s how you feel about him?”
I can see the panic in her eyes as she processes my words. “It’s not like that. I don’t see him in you. And I don’t even rationally think he was to blame. When I think of you back then, Ains, I think of the quiet, polite kid who was always alone. The one I wanted to be my friend. I think we’ve always been destined to be together. Fate just took us on separate journeys to this place.”
I shake my head, wanting to believe her, but still overwhelmed by it all. “I’m always going to be connected to him. To the estate. To the sadness of everything you lost. What if I'm just a reminder of that? Tearing the wound open again and again, never letting you heal?”
Gem lifts herself from Taylor’s arms and crawls across the couch, straddling my legs where I sit curled against the arm. She takes my face in her hands and makes me look at her. It’s hard to watch her tears, but I don’t look away.
“This is how healing works, Ains. We heal by allowing our pain to surface and looking it straight on. Do you understand what you gave me tonight? You brought me to the dinner table with my demons. You gave me the platform to allow my inner little girl to say her piece. And he apologized. I don’t feel like a wound is reopened, love. I feel like a wound has lifted off of my soul and evaporated into the ether. I feel healed.”
I’m crying now, too, unable to wipe my tears away with Gem holding my face. I turn my head, and she releases me, but doesn’t move from my lap. I bring an arm down over my face, sniffing loudly to try to get myself together.
It doesn’t work.
I'm grateful for her healing, but I now know the real danger. What I was really afraid of.
The wound that’s open is mine.
“Well, that makes one of us,” I say finally, unable to meet her piercing gaze.
“What do you mean?”
I shake my head, pissed at myself for making this moment about myself, when I should be celebrating her victory. “Nothing.”
“Do you and your dad talk about your mother’s death? ”
I bite my lip and try to look anywhere but her. Gem captures my chin once more and forces me to look her in the eye.
I shake my head. “Never.”
“You’ve never talked about her?”
I shake my head again.
“Where do you keep all the sadness?” she asks softly.
I don’t have to ask what she means.
My hand moves of its own accord, lifting and balling into a fist that I place right over my own heart.
Gem’s teary eyes close briefly before she takes a steadying breath and leans down to place a kiss on my hand. Then she lifts my fist and places her lips right to the place on my chest I was covering. The place I always try to hide.
My eyes fall closed, and I can barely breathe around the tornado of unwelcome emotions.
I feel Taylor curl in close to my side and when I open my eyes, I find his lips pressed to the center of my chest as well.
A sob wracks out of me, and I cover my face with my hands, not wanting to be seen like this.
“Tell us, Ainsley,” Taylor says, his voice gentle but firm.
When I lock eyes with him, I don’t see the confusion I carry, or the shame, or even the secret, smoldering passion. All I see is the man.
My man.
“She was—” I break off and breathe for a moment before collecting myself enough to fill my lungs. My partners wait patiently, holding space for my body and my grief. “She was as tall as my dad. I remember thinking that people had to be the same size to get married. All our housekeepers were shorter than her, and I thought they were single because they couldn’t find men the same size.” My sob is half laugh, and it relaxes the knot in my chest just a bit.
“She loved picture books. More than I did, I think. She had a whole library of them in her own room, ones she collected during college. She went to school to be an illustrator, and she told me that one day she would write the story of us and draw all the pictures. At night, she would bring one of her books in and read it to me, but I would always watch her. She would say, look at the pictures, Ains, and I did it to make her happy, but when she looked away, I would go back to watching her face as she read.”
I fall back in time, to a house that felt like a home. Much smaller than the family estate my dad and I moved to after we lost her. There was carpet on the floors and steps up from the street. She and I would hold hands as we went up and down.
“My dad watched her the same way. No matter what she was doing, his eyes were on her face. You could see everything she was thinking on her face. Her eyes twinkled and stormed. She had a smile for everything. A library of smiles, my dad called it.”
My breaths are coming easier, and it feels like the world is easing up on me a little. Like gravity is giving me a small reprieve from the weight of the universe on my chest.
“The last time I saw her,” I exhale and inhale fully before sharing my deepest, darkest secret. “She had passed. We sat with her for those last hours, and when she passed, she had this smile on her lips. The faintest smile, but still there. I told my dad that it was her goodbye smile. He said, ‘What?’ And I said, ‘From her library of smiles. That’s the goodbye smile.’ And he…”
I trail off, regretting my choice to even go down this road. Gemma squeezes my hand tightly and when I look up, she’s giving me a small, encouraging smile.
I wonder if everyone has a library of smiles. A library of frowns, of looks, and sighs.
“He said, ‘She’s not smiling anymore.’ But I could see her smiling right there. I was too scared to argue with him. He was so sad. So I just let it go. And I started smiling myself. I started making him smile. And I never stopped.”
“Until you ran off to Asia and refused to go to college,” Taylor adds with a small, breathy laugh.
I shrug, my shoulders feeling light for the first time in my memory. “It became easier over the years to do my own thing if I couldn’t see his disapproval. Running away was a solution to a problem I didn’t know how to solve.”
“Why did you bring us here, then? You must have known he’d be here.”
I consider this for a long moment. I wasn’t expecting to have to explain myself. Wasn’t expecting anyone to see inside the dark, inner workings of my mind. But somehow, these two found the trap door. “I guess, I just needed it to feel real. If I'm hiding things, they aren’t real. It's only when I have his approval that decisions are made. Until then, it’s just me fucking off or messing around.”
“Is that what he tells you?”
“Yes and no. It's implied more than he states it outright, I think. There’s the path, and then there are the secrets. I grew up understanding that I could have the secrets, but they weren’t part of the path.”
“Well, you sure brought some secrets onto the path tonight.”
Taylor’s statement hits me like a dagger of sadness. Because it’s not true. “I’m not sure if he really thinks that. I’m sure he just considers this some phase and that I’ll fall in line eventually like I always do.”
“And go to law school?”
I don’t need to answer the question, they already know the truth of that.
But what they don’t know is how deep it really goes. “At some point, when you’ve spent your whole life living in the shadow of a man who assumes you will grow up to be just like him, you come to understand that he’s never really seen you.”
Gemma curls down until her arms are wrapped around my center, her head resting in my lap. “I see you.”
“I see you, too, fool,” Taylor adds softly.
No one says anything for so long that my eyes start to droop. I’m exhausted from traveling, from the huge meal, from the emotional upheaval.
Gemma’s breathing shifts and I glance down to find her sleeping in my lap.
When I look back up, Taylor’s watching me. I can’t take another attack on my poor, long guarded secrets, so I look back down at Gem’s sleeping form. “Let’s get her up to bed.”