Chapter 37
Lucy
“Holy fucking shit, Lucy. I’ve gone past living vicariously through you. I want to climb inside your actual skin right now.”
I dart a glance at Julian, feeling like I’m playing host in a home that doesn’t belong to me.
In fact, this home doesn’t belong to me—it’s Nico’s house, outside Manhattan with a great view of the city over the water.
From where we’re standing, we can make out the outline of the Empire State Building, partially obscured by others but rising up from the middle like a sentinel.
The city is coated in the finest dusting of snow, the first of the season. Nico muttered about it snowing now, but probably not on Christmas. Dane called him sentimental.
“Don’t be weird,” I laugh, closing the refrigerator with my hip and setting down the charcuterie board on the counter. It’s piled high with salami, prosciutto, plum jam and halved figs. It looks like something put together lovingly, and by hand. That’s how the cheese shop marketed it.
Julian looks at the board with wide eyes, shaking his head and plopping into a stool at the island.
It’s been two weeks since that conversation with my three men, them saying they want to be with me, and don’t want me to keep working as an assistant. And since that day, my life has been very weird.
Monday morning, Dane gave me a phone number and informed me it was for my new driver—a woman, because they thought that would make me most comfortable.
“You still have my card?” he’d asked, boxing me in against the wall, his voice low like talking about the credit card turned him on.
“Yes,” I’d whispered back, tipping my head up, head spinning in the way it always did when any of them got close to me. “I do.”
“Use it,” he’d said, tapping his index finger to the tip of my nose. “Take the car, bring your art things here. Better yet, go to the supply store and get whatever you need for here, so you have it both places. Get your nails done, hair, buy clothes, take your friends out to lunch. Use the card.”
Dane’s voice had dropped down into the timber he used when we were all in bed, directing us on what to do and forcing us to hold back, to keep from what we wanted. It was impossibly hot before, and in this moment, too.
“Okay,” I’d finally whispered, swallowing and not missing the way his eyes tracked the movement. “I will.”
And I kept my promise. I went shopping, putting together a gift basket for Mary with chocolates and cookies, her favorite goodies.
At a fancy soap store, I picked out bath salts and fizzy bombs, lotions and creams I thought might make her feel better.
Finally, I’d added gift cards to all her favorite restaurants, and some to streaming services and bookstores so she would have something to do on bed rest. Then I paid the ridiculous fee to ship it across the country.
Each time I swiped Dane’s card, my heart caught in my throat, and I worried that it would decline. That it would be rejected and a hulking security guard would appear, slap cuffs on me, and take me in.
But it was never rejected. I bought and bought—mostly gifts for other people, but also a set of lingerie for myself. It’s in the bedroom now, and my cheeks heat as I think of it.
“Oh my god,” Julian says, through a bite of cheese, cracker, and jam. “This is so fucking good. I hate you. I love you.”
The charcuterie board also went on Dane’s card.
When he got home, I’d started listing out the things I got and what they were for, “since Julian’s coming over—” and Dane grabbed the back of my neck, kissed me hard, and said I didn’t have to justify the purchases to him. That he just wanted to make me happy.
“It feels weird,” I admit to Julian, shifting back and forth from one foot to the other. “Like, I was plucked out of my other life and dropped into this one.”
He toasts me with his fancy sparkling water, “Here’s to never going back, right?”
“Right,” I say, clinking my drink against his, a strange frothy feeling in my chest.
“So, what are you doing all day, now that you’re unemployed? Just getting massages and facials and stuff?”
“Actually—” I pause, clear my throat, wonder if I want to tell him this. Then, deciding I’m okay with showing him, I say, “I’ve been painting.”
Of course, that leads to Julian asking what I’ve been painting, which leads to him trailing me to the sunroom, where Nico said I should set up my painting supplies.
Since the moment I came back with a truck following me from the art supply store—which was embarrassing to a ridiculous degree—and watched the delivery people shuttle the easels and paints and canvases inside, I’ve spent pretty much every spare second in this room.
At first, I thought I was painting without direction or focus, but then, when the finished works were lined up, I realized they were chronological.
A hazy, foggy New York morning as seen through the window of a plane.
An empty desk with the suggestion of a powerful presence not behind it.
The inky black of the sea through the bottom of a boat.
A sea monster just barely visible through the black, so faint Julian squints and rubs his eyes and asks if he’s supposed to be seeing things.
“Yes,” I smile, wrapping my arms around myself, glad it has the effect I was hoping for. “Yeah—that’s the point. It’s from when I went on Nico’s boat, and it has this glass bottom. It’s like, when you’re thinking about the terrible things lurking below the beauty.”
Julian raises an eyebrow at me, “This isn’t a metaphor for your life, right? You’re not like, being held hostage?”
Embarrassingly, tears prick at my eyes, and I wave my hand, “No, no—the guys are amazing. It’s not that. I, uh…”
“That shit that happened with your family.” Julian doesn’t ask the question but states the obvious.
And, yeah. That’s the problem. The problem is that I don’t know how to have all these wonderful things without my family. As much trouble as my parents are, my heart is still cleaving in half with the pain of the situation.
With Dane’s card, I could be flying my mother into the city, watching the awe and admiration on her face as I take her to all my favorite places.
I could use this card to prove to both my parents that the city isn’t stinky or gross.
Isn’t over-run with organized crime or gangs, like they seem to think.
That this thing with my men isn’t gross or bad. It’s not a sin. It’s a miracle.
But they won’t talk to me.
I tried texting my mom about Thanksgiving, on the day. Stupidly, I’d thought a question about how to make her sweet potatoes would get her to answer me back.
Maybe, if it was just mom. But it’s not—if she texted me, she would have to answer to dad. And the moment I sent the text, I knew she wouldn’t do that. That she would mention something about submitting to her husband and trying to keep the peace.
Never mind the fact that Dad nearly punched me.
“Lucy,” Julian says, stepping forward and taking my hands in his.
When I glance up into his eyes, I see something like understanding there.
“I—I know it’s not the same thing, but I know a thing or two about family rejecting you.
If this whole thing isn’t just a crazy fling, if you love these guys, and they love you, and they treat you well—it’s worth it.
To suffer a few blows with your family. It’s always worth it to be yourself, even when there are people who don’t like it. ”
And just like that, I’m crying. For the fact that I didn’t sit at the old wooden table with the creaky inserts at Thanksgiving.
That I’m not there to watch movies with Mary and joke about painting on her belly.
That if this goes on, my first niece and nephew might grow up without ever knowing who I am.
I’ll be the Aunt Ruby, the black sheep, spoken about but not really known. Not really loved.
“It’s okay,” Julian says, wrapping his arms around me. He rests his cheek on the top of my head, humming a little. We stand like that together, then he says, “That’s the beautiful thing about this city. It’s a place you go to find your family. You get to choose them, and they choose you back.”
“I just wish I’d had more… I wish I’d been able to choose how to tell them,” I say, pulling back and wiping the backs of my hands over my cheeks.
Julian nods, tilts his head from side to side, then says, “My dad found me with a boy in the barn, I know, it doesn’t get more cliche than that. Also said I wasn’t his son, another boring cliche.”
His tone is joking, but I can hear the hurt shimmering beneath it. “That’s when I ran away to the city and found your aunt. I’m not saying never talk to your family again, but I am saying you deserve to be happy. To start making your own traditions.”
I nod and scrub at my face again, thinking about Thanksgiving. I’d spent the morning with the guys, watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and prepping with Nico. He and I moved around the kitchen together easily, silently. It was nice.
Then, I had lunch with Aunt Ruby at a fancy restaurant doing a vegan holiday meal. It was different, but delicious, all mushrooms and tofu. We decidedly did not talk about our family, except at the end of the meal when she said, “Are you ready to talk shit about your mom’s flat ass now?”
It was the first time I really laughed since coming back to the city.
And then Aunt Ruby had carefully told me, again, to be careful.
“It’s one thing to let a man pay for you,” she’d said, swirling her wine around in her cup. “But it’s another not to be able to support yourself. I just want to make sure this is good for you, too.”
“It’s very good for me,” I’d said, flushing deeply before clearing my throat, trying to ignore the accidental innuendo, and telling her about the promise of a trust for me from the guys.
Even hearing that, Aunt Ruby was skeptical. Worried. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t plant a seed of worry in my chest, too.
“Okay, we have to stop being so depressing in this house,” Julian says, ending the hug and clapping his hands together. “It’s a crime to be sad in anything that costs over a million dollars.”
“Doesn’t every building in New York cost over a million dollars?”
Julian points at me, “Touché.”
When Julian finds out there’s a hot tub and a sauna, he insists on us getting in, and I rummage around in Nico’s drawers until I find a pair of swim trunks—tags still on—for Julian to wear.
“I don’t think he’ll mind,” I say, even as my heart is still thudding in my chest at the intimacy of it. Offering my friend a change of clothes that belongs to my boyfriend.
One of my boyfriends.
Julian and I sit in the hot tub and look out over the city as the sun goes down. He tells me about a guy he’s started seeing, a book influencer who’s so well-read he makes Julian feel dumb.
“And I’m not dumb!” he insists, laughing and taking another sip of wine. “I went to college!”
Nico is the first one home. When he pops his head out onto the balcony, clearly looking for me, he finds Julian and me in the hot tub, under the heat lamps, and his eyebrows raise.
For a second, I think he might ask about me renting out his swim trunks. I think he might be upset that he’s home now, and Julian is still here.
But, instead, Nico just grins and asks, “More wine?”
Julian swoons, holds out his glass, and says, “Please.”