27. Cali
CALI
Saturday afternoon, my bedroom looks like a bomb went off.
I've got a dozen dresses laid out on the bed and no idea which one to wear, because Ronan won't tell me where we're going. All the text said was Dress warm, but pretty.
What does that even mean?
"That one!" Isabella decides. She's sitting on the floor with a necklace of mine draped over her head like a tiara and her feet jammed into a pair of my heels, the straps flopping loose around her tiny ankles. "The red one. It's the prettiest."
"You think so?"
"Red is the prettiest color," she says. "Everybody knows that."
She stands up in the heels, wobbling, arms out for balance. She takes one step and nearly goes down. I lunge, but she catches herself on the edge of the bed and giggles.
"Careful, bug."
"I'm walking like you, Mommy!" she cries out happily. "Look! Clack, clack, clack."
Hayden is on the bed, lying on his back with his legs up the wall, upside down. He's been trying to guess exactly where we're going all night long, but I don't think he's any closer to cracking the case than I am.
"Maybe he's taking you to a lighthouse," he says. "Ooh, I bet it's haunted!"
"It's not going to be a haunted lighthouse, honey."
He pouts. "You don't know that."
I pick up the red dress and hold it against myself. I don't have a mirror to check—still don't, thanks to a certain man—so I hold up my phone and take a picture at arm's length.
Isabella clomps over in the heels and looks at the picture over my elbow. "See? Prettiest."
"Okay. Red it is. You've convinced me."
She beams and does a ballerina pirouette, hands over her head and everything.
"Who's watching us?" Hayden asks, flipping right side up so fast the blood rushes back into his face and he goes pink. "Is it Juliet again?"
"Yes, sir."
"Yes!" He pumps a fist. "She lets us stay up 'til eight-thirty."
"She does not!" Isabella says in alarm, looking at me with wide, fearful eyes. "You're lying!"
"Am not!"
"Are too!"
"At ease, children," I interrupt. I wave a hand to defuse their argument before it can enter the high decibel territory. "There's a little wiggle room on weekend nights, but it's a firm nine o'clock bedtime, copy that? Juliet and I are going to talk to make sure we're on the same page before I go."
"Yes, Mother," they chorus in dead, creepy voices that they copied from a zombie movie they weren't supposed to watch. Then they break into giggles and flop around on the bed.
Then, because peace and quiet amongst children can never last long, Hayden throws a pillow at her.
She shrieks and throws it back and misses by a mile, which knocks the whole stack of dresses half off the bed.
I catch the pillow and give them each a firm bop over the head, and for a second, we're all just laughing, the three of us, in the mess of my bedroom with the sun coming through the window.
This is the good stuff. I know it even while it's happening, which doesn't happen often. Usually, you only figure out a moment was good after it's already gone.
"Alright, alright. Both of you, out of my room while I do my face. Go pick a movie for tonight."
"Can we watch the shark one?" Hayden asks.
"No sharks before bed," I scold. "You'll have nightmares."
He gives me his best puppy dog eyes. "I promise I won't!"
"You will. Last time, you slept in my bed and kicked me all night."
"That wasn't because of sharks. That was because of the giant squid."
Isabella takes off the heels and lines both of them up neat by the closet, exactly the way Ronan lined up mine the morning after the gala. I don't know where she picked that up. She just does it with all her powers of attention, then pats them once like they're good dogs.
"Go on," I say. "Git. Scram. Skedaddle. Both of you."
They go, Hayden thundering down the stairs, Isabella following at a slower, more dignified pace like the little princess she is.
I do my makeup with my phone propped against the toothbrush holder. I've gotten good at it. The eyeliner only takes two tries now instead of ten. In show business, we call that "progress."
I'm halfway into the red dress, holding my hair up off my neck and trying to work out how I'll reach the zipper by myself, when I hear it.
A small, wet, unmistakable sound from downstairs.
Then Isabella's voice, high and horrified. "MOM! Hayden threw up on the couch."
I immediately scramble downstairs in a panic, flopping out of my dress, hair akimbo.
By the time I get down there, Hayden is sitting on the bottom stair with his head between his knees, gray as a dead fish, and there's a mess on the living room rug and a smaller mess on the couch cushion, and Isabella is standing a careful ten feet away with her hand clamped over her nose like she's at a crime scene.
"Oh, buddy." I crouch down in front of him, wrinkles or vomit backsplash on the red dress be damned. I put my hand on his forehead. He's warm. Not burning, but definitely heating up. "How long have you felt bad?"
"A while," he mumbles.
"Since when?"
"I dunno. My tummy felt weird. But I didn't want to tell you 'cause you have your date."
My heart just about breaks in half. "Hey.
Look at me." I tip his chin up the way Ronan tips mine.
"You never, ever keep it a secret from me when you feel sick.
Not for a date. Not for anything. Okay? Your job is to tell me.
I'm your mom, and taking care of you is the most important thing in the world, okay? "
"Okay," he says miserably.
"I mean it. There's no date in the world more important than you."
He nods, and his lip does a little wobble. Then he burps and I get him to the downstairs bathroom just in time for another round of purging.
I comb back his sweat-plastered hair, which he lets me do without protest. That's how I know he feels really bad. I rub his back and I tell him he's okay, he's doing great, get it all out. Isabella hovers in the doorway offering commentary.
"Doctor Fuzz threw up once," she informs us. "It was very small."
"Doctor Fuzz is a caterpillar," Hayden groans.
"Yes, and he was very brave about it."
When it's over, I get him settled on the good end of the couch, away from the mess, with a trash can, a glass of water, and a cool washcloth on his forehead. He's clammy and pathetic, winding the clock back until he's a helpless little bread loaf in my arms again, just like when he was a baby.
Just like that, I let the date evaporate without a second thought.
When I'm sure he's asleep and okay for now, I pry a hand free from the cuddle puddle, find my phone, and fire off a text to Juliet first.
So sorry—Hayden's got a stomach bug, need to cancel tonight. Will still pay you for your time of course.
Then I sit there dawdling with my thumb over Ronan's name. I don't know how to phrase a text, so I call him instead.
He picks up right away, as always. "Ms. Meadows. I hope you're not calling to tell me you can't decide what to wear, because the answer is that I don't care, you'll look—"
"Hayden's sick."
His voice changes instantly. "Sick how?"
"Stomach bug. He's throwing up. He's okay, it's not serious, it's just—" I close my eyes. "I have to cancel. I'm so sorry. I can't leave him like this. I'm really sorry, Ronan. I know you had something planned. I'll make it up to you, I promise."
"I'll be there in thirty minutes."
Alarmed, I sit up. Hayden groans a protest at the loss of his pillow and I ease him back down. "Ronan, you don't have to do that. You don't want to spend your Saturday night in a house with a puking nine-year-old. Trust me."
"I've spent Saturday nights in far worse places, with far worse company," he says. "I'll see you all soon."
He hangs up before I can argue.
I look down at the phone. Then at Hayden, gray and small against the cushion. Then at Isabella, who has appointed herself head nurse and is currently taking Hayden's temperature and jotting down notes in crayon on a clipboard.
"Well," I tell them. "Change of plans."
He shows up in twenty-five minutes, not thirty, in dark jeans and a soft blue henley with the sleeves shoved up.
I've never seen him out of a suit, but as much as I'd like to make him stand in the center of my living room and do slow circles so I can admire him from every angle, my kid is sick and now is unfortunately not the time.
"What's in the bag?" I ask when I open the front door with one hand while my other hand holds up the sagging strap of the red dress.
"I brought supplies." He steps past me into the house, easy as anything, like he's done it a hundred times. He clocks the whole living room in one sweep—the bucket, the washcloth, the sick kid, the small nurse-in-training—and nods. "Mr. Hayden. I hear you've had a rough evening."
Hayden peers over the edge of the blanket. He's suspicious. He's never met Ronan face-to-face, only heard about him, and he's not the kind of kid who warms up on command. "Are you the mirror guy?"
I choke.
Ronan doesn't miss a beat. "That's me,” he confirms gravely, crouching down by the couch so he's at Hayden's level, not looming over him. "Your mother tell you about that?"
"She told Grandma on the phone and I heard." Hayden studies him. "That was weird."
"It was extremely weird," Ronan agrees. "I stand by it."
Something in Hayden's suspicious little face loosens, just a hair. He respects a man who owns his weirdness.
"I brought you flat ginger ale," Ronan says, setting the bag down and unpacking.
"Because the bubbles are hard on a sick stomach, but the ginger helps.
Saltines, too. My favorite flavor of applesauce.
And this." He holds up a box. "Popsicles, with real fruit.
When you can't keep water down, you can usually keep down a popsicle, because it goes slow. "
Hayden is mildly impressed by this wealth of intel, delivered with the seriousness of a Navy SEAL. "How do you know all that?"
"I know a lot of things."