Chapter 10
“What are you, blind!” a voice bellowed over the blaring sound of the Jets game as Freddie walked through his parents’ front door.
He had taken the subway, out of nostalgia as much as convenience, and when he walked up the steps onto Queens Boulevard, he suddenly felt eighteen years old again, coming back to his parents’ house after class at NYU.
He walked the three blocks to their house, too lost in the memory to notice how the temperature had dropped, until he stepped inside and paused on the threshold, his nose numb, even as he smelled the garlic and onions wafting down from the kitchen.
It was a moment that could have been bottled from his childhood.
“Hey! I’m here,” he called out, closing the door behind him.
His father’s head popped around the corner from the living room, his brow furrowed like he was still in doubt of who had just walked into the house.
“Jets are down fourteen. Can you believe it?”
Freddie smiled. “Dad, they’re one in five. I can believe it.”
His father sighed. Not only was Fred Wentworth Sr. a carbon copy of his son, just thirty years in the future; he had also passed down his eternal—and oftentimes heartbreaking—love of the New York Jets.
“Freddie!” His mother’s five-foot frame appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. She hurried down the hall as he hung up his coat, and enveloped him into a warm embrace only to pull back a moment later and glare at him with a critical eye. “You look tired. What’s wrong?”
“My mom made me come out to Queens on a Sunday to get her Christmas decorations up from the basement,” he said, feigning his best martyred expression.
Jean Wentworth rolled her eyes. “I can’t with you.”
“I haven’t even had breakfast, Mom. I’m so weak…”
She waved a hand at him as she turned and headed back into the kitchen. Freddie followed, while somewhere in the living room, he heard his dad’s deep chuckle.
The kitchen had always been the heart of the Wentworth house, with food always readily available, while even more was in the process of being cooked.
Today was no exception. A covered pot was simmering on the stovetop while the oven light revealed a loaf of bread baking.
The standard fare was on the kitchen table: a bowl of grapes, a bag of fennel taralli, and, in the wild card spot, one lone banana.
“The tree is in the basement by the boiler, but check the box because it might have gotten wet when we had that big storm in June. And I still can’t find that light-up Santa that goes on the roof, so keep an eye out.”
Freddie nodded as he grabbed a few grapes from the bowl and popped one in his mouth. That Santa was terrifying and had given him nightmares since he was five, so he would not keep an eye out.
Fred Sr. appeared in the doorway then, slowly making his way over to the refrigerator and grabbing a beer.
Freddie was tempted to tell him that he could have gotten that for him and saved his father the trip, but he stayed quiet.
Since Fred Sr.’s operation last summer for a herniated disk, he didn’t move as quickly as he used to, but he’d be damned if anyone reminded him of that.
“Is it me, or do we keep getting the Christmas decorations out earlier and earlier every year?” he asked, twisting the cap off his bottle.
Jean ignored the question as she took the lid off the pot and gave it a stir. “We can keep everything in the dining room for now and wait until next weekend to put up the tree, don’t you think?”
Fred Sr. turned to his son. “I’ll pay you twenty bucks to leave the tree down there.”
His wife smacked his arm. Fred Sr. chuckled again and grabbed his apron-clad wife around the waist to pull her in for a quick kiss before she turned away with a coy grin. Freddie had watched this scene play out his entire life. It was truly disgusting.
At least, that’s what he and his sister thought when they were little. There had been nothing more embarrassing than the fact that their parents actually liked each other. But now that he was older, he couldn’t help but smile to himself.
The front door opened again, then slammed shut, followed by the sound of his sister’s voice. “Where is everybody?”
“In the kitchen,” their father called back.
A moment later, she appeared, her pink hair shooting out in all directions like she had just taken off a hat. “It’s like a party in here.”
Freddie popped another grape in his mouth. “If that’s true, I worry about your social life.”
She made a face at him, the same scrunched-up, cross-eyed one from when she was six.
“Hey,” her mother smacked her arm. It was the height of Jean Wentworth’s discipline. “Be nice.”
“If I were an only child, I would be,” Sophie answered sweetly, then collapsed into one of the chairs at the table.
“Where have you been?” their father asked her. He was halfway out the doorway, as if he hadn’t quite decided whether to stay for the conversation or go back to the Jets.
“I was at the shop, picking up some stuff from the back office that I need to organize,” Sophie said. “And then I had coffee with Anne Elliot.”
Shit. Freddie’s head fell forward. Here we go.
Jean’s wooden spoon clattered onto the top of the stove. “What?”
“Oh, didn’t Freddie tell you? She lives in his new building,” Sophie said, a devious smile curling her lips. She was enjoying this too much. Meanwhile, their father winced and turned back to the living room.
Smart man, Freddie thought.
“Freddie!” his mother shrieked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because we broke up eight years ago, Mom,” he replied.
“But it’s Anne!” Their mother turned back to Sophie. “How is she? What is she doing? I bet she’s a high-powered businesswoman. Like Melanie Griffith in Working Girl.”
Freddie let out a deep sigh. For his mom, nothing equated professional success more than a corner office and shoulder pads.
Even after he sold his company for a small fortune last year, she still couldn’t move past the idea that he was now unemployed.
She had no frame of reference for a career that didn’t require long hours in the city and a 401(k).
“She’s good. Working at her dad’s production company. Or she used to? Anyway, she offered to help me with all the bookkeeping for the shop,” Sophie said, reaching for the grapes.
Freddie slid them out of her reach. “Excuse me?”
Sophie reached over and grabbed the bowl, setting it in her lap. “She’s got some downtime and offered to organize the shop’s finances so I’m not having a panic attack every day.”
Their mother let out a wistful sigh. “She was always so smart. And helpful. And so beautiful.”
Freddie ignored her, keeping his attention on his sister. She was still wearing the same shit-eating grin, but he couldn’t decipher whether it was entirely due to telling their mom about Anne, or whether she was actually serious about accepting Anne’s help.
“What happened to hiring someone?” he asked.
“I will, eventually. But for now, she offered, and I think she would be perfect.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea, Soph.”
His sister turned to him with a frown. “Why not?”
He didn’t even know. There was an odd panic clawing at his chest that he couldn’t quite pinpoint. All he knew was that his need to keep Anne at a distance would be futile with Sophie Wentworth in the mix.
“I’m glad she’s going to organize things for you, but who’s going to be doing that on a daily basis when you open?” Freddie replied, trying his best to appear nonchalant. “There’s receipts, budgets, taxes. It’s a lot, and you can’t handle it on your own.”
By trying to keep his voice even, he sounded condescending, and both Sophie and their mother narrowed their eyes at him.
“Wow,” his sister deadpanned. “Thanks for that vote of confidence.”
“I just mean…” Freddie paused, trying to regain control of the narrative. “I still think you need to bring someone on full-time. Opening a business is hard enough—you have to actually run it, too. Who’s going to do all that work six months from now?”
“I think you’re just pissed that I have an excuse to spend more time with your ex-girlfriend than you do.”
“Oh!” Their mother jumped again, as if a life-altering thought had just entered her brain. “Freddie, you should ask Anne out for coffee!”
“We broke up eight years ago, Mom,” he reminded her again.
“That doesn’t mean you can’t be friends,” she replied, like she was almost offended.
His gaze went up, hoping somehow the popcorn ceiling would give him patience. “Well, I can’t. I’m busy.”
Sophie snorted out a laugh at the obvious lie. “Doing what?”
Leave it to his sister to call him out.
“I’m meeting with the CEO of a new green tech company in about a week,” he said, grasping at the first thing that popped into his head. “They’re starting to explore sustainable farming and wanted to talk to me.”
His mother turned around, her eyes hopeful. “A job interview?”
It took every ounce of his self-restraint not to roll his eyes. He already knew what she was imagining: her son in a double-breasted suit, walking down Madison Avenue like Don Draper.
“It’s not a job interview,” he replied. “We’re just grabbing lunch.”
His mother sighed, as if relieved. “Thank God. It’s a job interview!”
He threw up his hands. “Sure. Fine. A job interview.”
Sophie didn’t look as thrilled. “I thought you sold your company so you could have some downtime.”
He sighed. “And?”
“We need to be encouraging, Sophie,” their mother scolded. “Your brother hasn’t had a real job in years.”
His sister threw her an incredulous look. “Mom, he sold his company last year for a stupid amount of money.”
Jean Wentworth wasn’t listening, though. She began stirring again, a smug smile on her face. “This is wonderful. I can’t wait to tell Father Keenan to take you out of Sunday’s prayer requests.”
Freddie’s head fell back as he groaned.
He tried to blend into the background after that, listening patiently as his mother detailed the guest list for Thanksgiving and the ever-changing menu.
When the Jets game was over, his dad brought him down to the basement, past his old hydroponics system, to where the Christmas decorations were piled in the corner.
Each box was supernaturally heavy and about to fall apart, but when he finally left two hours later, exhausted and still covered with a dusting of glitter from his mother’s manger set, he was surprised to find he had enjoyed himself.
Freddie took the M train home and walked up to the front door of the Uppercross an hour later. He hadn’t run into Anne since the party, and over the course of the week he had let his guard down so much that he hadn’t expected to see her in the lobby when he walked in.
He froze in the doorway.
She was seated on one of the long leather benches against the wall across from the mailboxes, her blond hair tucked behind her ears and a stack of posters in her lap, listening to an older woman in a Ramones T-shirt who was gathering up her mail.
She couldn’t see him at this angle, and he couldn’t help staring at her profile, the long delicate line that ran down her nose and over her bow lips…
What the hell are you doing? a voice chided in his head.
Shit, what was he doing?
He cleared his throat, starting forward again as if he hadn’t seen her at all.
She looked up as he entered. Her eyes went wide and she stood up, sending the posters shooting across the floor and into his path.
“Crap,” she murmured.
He looked down. For a moment, his brain didn’t register the image on the paper, but then the silver limbs began to make sense. The bare torsos, the curve of a breast. Was that a nipple?
“They’re not mine,” Anne blurted out. “I’m helping Cricket hang posters for her play and… they look like that.”
He brought his gaze up to hers, ready to make a joke, before he remembered that wasn’t something they did anymore. It was a muscle memory he hadn’t unlearned yet.
So instead, he bent down and picked them up, then handed them back to her.
“Thanks,” she said. Her cheeks were flushed, but even that didn’t diminish her sense of composure. She had always been like that, someone who had a quiet sense of control, regardless of the situation.
His mother’s voice rang in his head: And so beautiful.
Damn it. He hated when she was right.
He cleared his throat again, trying to think of the right thing to say, when the older woman joined them, mail in hand. She was eyeing her ConEd bill when she finally noticed Freddie standing in front of her.
“Who are you?” she asked.
He smiled. “Fred Wentworth. I just moved in upstairs—8A.”
The woman eyed him for a long moment, then she turned back to Anne. “Squatters’ rights.”
His brow furrowed, but before he could ask what she meant, the elevator arrived with a ding.
“Okay, Anne, I’ve got the tape and also the best news!” Cricket announced as she skipped out of the elevator and into the lobby. Then her gaze found Freddie. “Freddie! Oh, I’m so glad you’re here for this, too! You’ll never believe it.”
The three of them stared at her, waiting.
Cricket smiled, rolling her shoulders back. “Thanks to an antibiotic-resistant UTI, Hannah had to drop out of the play! You’re looking at the new Fairy Wench #2!”
She bowed dramatically before anyone could figure out an appropriate response, then continued.
“Obviously, I’ll set aside tickets for everyone to attend my debut.
Anne, you already promised to come, so you’re all set.
And James and Ellis committed, too, so maybe you can all head over together! Like a party!”
The older woman glared at her a moment longer, then turned and started toward the elevator.
“Do you want me to leave your ticket at will call, Bev?” Cricket yelled after her.
“I’d rather eat glass, Cricket,” the woman replied as she disappeared inside and the doors slid closed.
Cricket was apparently oblivious to the sarcasm. Her smile widened as she turned back to Freddie.
“What about you?” Cricket asked, taking a step toward him. Her voice had lowered to a suggestive whisper. “Can I interest you in a contemporary take on Shakespeare and an incredibly revealing fairy costume?”
Freddie’s mind raced for a plausible excuse.
He didn’t enjoy live theater even when it was good, so he could only imagine what was waiting for him on that stage.
But then his gaze snagged on Anne. She was watching him from the corner of her eye with that same look she had given him at the party.
The one that made him feel like she had already made up her mind about him, already knew exactly what he was going to do—offer a polite excuse and walk away.
It was all the motivation he needed to turn his attention back to Cricket and offer her one of his signature grins. “I’ll be there.”