Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I round the corner from my bedroom with my freshly showered wet hair, acting like I know how to fly-kick the air like a certified ninja.
“Okay, Rocky,” Em says, stirring the hollandaise sauce. I throw a few air punches while running in place. A poor impression, but it makes her laugh.
Once the air conditioner of my car cooled me down, I called Em to let her know that our summer of self-defense did not go to waste. When she asked if I saw the eye of his tiger, I promptly replied, “Ewww,” followed by, “No, but I might have touched it.”
No, I have not told my best friend, who has explicitly told me to fuck Xander, that we had a little late-night make out session.
No good can come from her knowing I practically mauled him in the middle of the night.
And yet, I can’t get the strained sound of my name in his throat out of my head.
Like he had to muster up every ounce of restraint including past, present, and future just to function.
I refuse to let myself smile at this, even though I am in the safety of my own home. I am not safe around Em, the enabler.
I bite my bottom lip as I walk behind her and pour us two giant mugs of coffee. “One day, you’re going to teach me how to make your hollandaise sauce,” I say as Em plates up. The thing I love about Em’s eggs benny is that she replaces the muffin with hash browns. She’s a genius.
“You know, today could be that day, it’s really not hard,” she starts to say, but is cut off by my phone vibrating on the bench next to her.
Not gonna lie, one day is more of a state of mind than an actual moment in time.
She peers at the screen and says, “It’s your mom.
Am I answering it, or are we ignoring her? ”
“Answer it. She’ll just call back,” I say, taking a sip of my coffee. She hits the answer button.
“You haven’t RSVPed to your father’s wedding,” Mom blasts through the loudspeaker. Never with the hello, how are you … Wait, what? “It’s next month!”
Before I have the chance to process, Mom says, “When we signed the contract, we were promised full creative control, and we all know sex sells,” which I have learned is not part of our conversation, but the second conversation she’s having at the same time.
I called her out on it once, to which she replied, “If you don’t take the reins, no one else will. ”
Today, though, I am thankful for her multitasking. I look over at Em as if she might be able to shed some light on this situation. In response she takes a sip of her coffee. Equally clueless.
“I’m sorry,” I say, walking up to the phone like distance has distorted the news. “But what did you just say?”
“Why haven’t you RSVPed to your father’s wedding?”
I’m clearly hallucinating. I pick up my coffee cup and look inside at the dark brown matter. Is coffee a hallucinogenic now? Did the DEA reclassify it in the last month? I take a sip anyway.
“Dad’s getting married?” I ask finally. Dubiously.
My dad isn’t the kind of guy that goes and marries someone. I mean, that’s why he and Mom got divorced. It’s why they’re both perpetually single. Love is family. Sex is fleeting. Marriage is a sham.
It’s the Hutchinson way. We don’t find The One. We find family. And we find lovers. They aren’t ever the same person—and we’re better off for it. We’re happy.
“Are you sure?” I ask, trying to muffle my laugh. I mean, last time I checked, hell had not frozen over.
“Yes, Ash. Next month,” she says, almost annoyed at my incompetence. And then, just like this is regular old news on par with the world getting warmer and corrupt politics, she adds, “You should have gotten the invitation.”
I look to Em. She can read my expression like the blurb of a book.
She’s gotten the entire rundown of my brain in a simple eye-bugging stare.
She grabs my hand on the counter and squeezes it.
Reassuring me that Yes, I’ll be your date.
Of course. And we can debrief this batshit crazy idea later.
As the warmth from Em’s hand spreads from my fingers to my brain, warming me up, hell is alive and kicking. And I’m living in it.
“Right. Of course. The wedding invitation. To Dad’s wedding.
Which I knew about, obviously.” I make a strange sound I hope comes off as a carefree laugh as I move my coffee mug off the pile of envelopes that I’ve been using as a coaster, the multiple dark-stained rings reminding me I’ve been avoiding this pile for a long time.
I sift through envelopes I will never open until I find a cream-colored one addressed to me in hand-painted calligraphy.
The one Mom gave me when I saw her last. It’s all becoming clear now.
“I thought I sent my RSVP weeks ago,” I say, continuing to play the game. There’s a long pause and I’m not sure she’s buying it. I don’t ask, and instead wait her out.
“I’ll just text your dad to let him know you’re coming,” she says and goes quiet for a moment. For someone so hip for her age, she’s the world’s slowest texter. Usually, this annoys me. Today, I’m grateful for the silence it provides.
I look up to see Emily busying herself in the kitchen, turning our breakfast into brunch with Bloody Marys. She is a good friend.
“Who are you bringing?” she says, still typing, I assume.
“Emily,” I say, without thinking twice. Mom laughs through the phone. That’s her way of confirming that of course she’s RSVPing for us both. Em gives me a thumbs-up.
“I’m flying solo,” she says, offering up this information like I asked for it. I didn’t. Because I know she’s going to say, “No need to involve anyone I’m involved with. I don’t need to be giving them any ideas about a future. Can you imagine?” I can hear her shudder on the other end.
Now that is the kind of reaction I expect from my parents. Not collecting RSVPs for table placements for weddings.
“Done,” she says, exasperated.
My phone pings seconds later. It’s from my dad. The time stamp on the prior message is from months ago.
Glad you’re coming to the wedding. Want money for a dress? Love, Dad and Keeley.
It hits me again.
My dad.
Is getting married.
To a random woman named Keeley.
Marriage. Until mere minutes ago, I didn’t think my family bought into that institution anymore.
I think back to fifteen years ago, when I was in high school and I caught Dad cheating on Mom, and how devastatingly heartbroken I was for those few days before Mom finally confronted me and I had to be the one to tell her.
For a moment, she was eerily calm when she told me it was okay that Dad was “being intimate” with Alice, the receptionist (he’s so cliché, I know).
She said she loved my dad with her whole heart.
And that we’re family—we’ll always be family. Love is family.
Sex, she said, is about chemistry. And it’s fleeting.
She spoke so highly of my dad and their love—a love so unconditional, not even extramarital sex could ruin it. And when a love is as great as theirs, it’s beyond sex, she said.
I admit, I was skeptical as fuck. And with good reason because as it turns out, Mom’s compassion was also fleeting.
That’s when all hell broke loose in the Hutchinson household. And subsequently when Mom started writing her bestselling book. And the motto women across the world have adopted as their own. Myself included.
“Okay, I’ve got to run. Love you,” Mom says and hangs up.
“What the actual fuck?” I say, just as a Bloody Mary appears in front of me. I discard the half-drunken coffee and take a sip of the spiked tomato juice. Not strong enough. I reach my hand out expectantly and Em slides over the Tito’s bottle. I top mine up with more vodka.
“I did not have this on my bingo card for our summer,” Em says, sliding in the seat next to me and holding out her Bloody Mary. I top hers up as well. We each take a long sip in silence. Then another.
I reach for the cream envelope with the coffee stains and open it with a pop. I am covered in pink glitter. Great. I attempt to pluck the glitter shrapnel off my clean wet hair. It’s useless. Motherfucker. I dust the invite off and skim-read it.
“Saturday the twenty-fourth?” I say, handing the invite to Em to read. That’s in four weeks.
What sort of wedding gift does one buy their dad who explained that the reason he constantly cheated on their mom was because love is unrealistic and who is now throwing what appears to be, based on the thickness of the paper stock for the invite, a very expensive wedding to proclaim that, in fact, love isn’t a sham anymore, anyway? A SodaStream?
“Want to talk about it?”
What’s there to talk about? My chemistry is glitching with Xander. Dad is getting married. The system’s breaking down. The only thing holding my rules together right now is the image of the billboard on the 101 of Mom’s show going number one across fourteen countries.
And so, I settle for saying, “It’s a bit rich expecting us to celebrate when he’s setting Keeley up to be ex-wife number two.
” I practically shrug as I take another long sip.
The subtext: There’s nothing to talk about.
“I am, however, declaring today a total write-off.” We were planning on venturing to the beach to cool down.
My air conditioner coupled with the giant bottle of Tito’s that lives in the freezer permanently is a perfect substitute.
“Happy hour on the hour?” Em says, not missing a beat.
“Exactly,” I say.
And before we know it, we’ve quit the tomato juice, which to be honest was just slowing us down and sitting heavy in our stomachs, in favor of straight vodka shots.