Chapter 51 #2
He’s right, of course. I’ve worked at The Eastmoor for over a year, and I still can’t fathom the wealth and influence I see every day, or my own invisibility. Ravenna didn’t even realize where she recognized me from when she showed up in Fischer’s apartment that time.
As I’m considering this, the knock on my door scares the shit out of me.
“Matthew?” A female voice.
I swear to God, my sister.
I bottle all my rage, pain, and confusion and start for the door. Flinging it open, I couldn’t be more surprised if it were my dead grandmother.
“Uncle Matty?”
My eyes drift down from Nicole’s face to Vaughn’s.
“Mom, you didn’t tell me we were gonna see Matty. I had a toy for him.”
“Sorry, sweetie. I wasn’t thinking. Hi,” she says to me.
I don’t know Nicole well. She’s one of those picture perfect women who smiles easily and always has a witty comeback. But she looks nervous, that easy smile only a slight twitch of her lips. Like she just can’t make herself.
“Hi.”
I squat down to give Vaughn a hug before I realize Nicole might not want me to.
But she lets go of his hand, and he comes into my arms.
“Hey,” I tell him. He smells like sweat and fruit snacks. He’s sticky as usual.
“Is Dad here?”
“Not right now, bud.”
“I have a toy for you, but it’s at home.”
“What is it?” I ask.
“A truck, but when you push it really hard, sparks come out of it.”
“Sparks?” Is he a pyro, too? Jesus, this kid scares the crap out of me.
His eyes light up as he nods.
“Yeah, I’d love to take that off your hands,” I say.
A slight laugh comes from Nicole, and I look back up at her.
I put my hand on Vaughn’s head and use it as leverage to stand and face her. “Come in, I guess.”
“Thanks.”
“Oh. My. God.” Vaughn says.
I turn to find him looking at the tree.
“Wow,” Nicole murmurs.
I swallow hard and turn my back on them both, choked up suddenly and not knowing what to do with this punched in the chest feeling. I also realize I’m not wearing a shirt. God.
Gavin gathers his things as I walk to my dresser, pull out the first thing I grab—a tight black tank—and pull it over my head. It’s not as tight as it was last time I wore it—a result of the last week.
I wonder if I look as wasted as I feel.
“Fischer mentioned it was incredible,” Nicole says. She hasn’t noticed Gavin. She’s still staring at the tree.
I’m a fucking mess. I close my eyes and give my head a slight shake to pull myself together, trying to get Fischer’s image out of my mind. But it’s impossible with his son in the room.
Nicole turns as Gavin passes me, giving my arm a squeeze. “Call me if you need anything,” he says quietly.
“Hey—” I grab for his hand, stopping him.
He looks at me, wide-eyed and expectant.
“Thank you.”
He gives me a soft smile and nods. “It’s gonna be okay,” he reminds me once again.
I nod and let him go. He slips quietly out the door, and I turn back to Nicole who looks like she’s trying to solve a physics problem.
I should probably offer her something. Coffee or water or…what could she possibly want? There’s barely anything left of me.
“Maggie gave me your address,” she says when my words fail to materialize.
I nod. I figured.
“Everyone’s worried about you.”
I can’t read her tone, but I lift my arms like what you see is what you get. “Still standing,” I tell her. “That’s why you’re here? Because there are a lot of people who want to see him, and I figured I’d be at the bottom of that list.” I nod toward Vaughn.
“Can I climb it, Matty?”
I look at my nephew, horrified. “No. Look. Come here.” He walks with me to the couch. I open up my iPad to the sketching app and hand him the digital pencil. “Draw it for me. You know how to change the colors, right?”
“I’ll figure it out,” he says, squinting across the loft at the tree.
“It’s glass, dude.” I feel compelled to add. “You can’t climb things made of glass.”
He sighs like that’s the dumbest rule ever.
“It’s supposed to be art. You take art class right?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s for looking at. Draw it. There’s thirteen hundred leaves on it. Can you count that high?”
“Maybe.”
“Go for it.”
He accepts the challenge, immediately changing the pen’s color to green.
I leave him to it and walk back to Nicole, gesturing at the kitchen table, where all of Fischer’s notes, pads, and pens still litter the surface.
I start stacking them up as she takes a seat.
My hands are shaking, and I hate that for myself.
I give up trying to organize his mess and collapse into a chair. But I can’t look at her. “What’s up?”
“I have a lot of questions,” she says.
I inhale deeply. “I can’t promise I’m gonna answer any.”
“I had no idea Fischer was attracted to men.”
“I didn’t either until a couple months ago.”
“No?”
I shake my head.
“I’m not sure I knew you were either.”
“No offense, Nicole, but it’s never been any of your business.”
“I know. I want you to know that’s not the issue.”
“To be honest, I don’t know what the fuck is going on.
All I know is one second, I’m trying to keep myself from getting too excited about being in love with someone for the first time, because it’s terrifying, and the next second he’s gone, and I realize I was right to be scared.
So in terms of the details about you wanting to keep Vaughn away from his dad—that’s about all I know.
I don’t know what he did wrong. I don’t know what you heard. So what do you want?”
She speaks without pretense or filter. “I want to know who Fischer is. Because I might have been married to him, but all of a sudden people are telling me things, and I feel like I don’t know shit.
Which means as far as I know, my child is with a virtual stranger who’s screwing one of my friends and his brother—”
Indignation flares. A sign of life. “I’m not his fucking brother. He was never there. He never acted like one. He never treated me like one, and I don’t mean that in some sick, perverted way, or whatever the fuck my mother thinks now—I mean he wanted nothing to do with us.”
“He did tell me that,” she says softly.
“Well, believe it. He was an asshole. I’ve never even heard him call my parents by anything other than their names. He calls my dad Dick for fuck’s sake.”
“I know,” she says.
“Right. So what else?”
“Sex clubs?”
“It’s his friend Gibson’s club.”
“Gibson?” she says loudly enough to make Vaughn’s head jerk up. And then she leans in and whispers, “Gibson has a sex club?”
“Best kept secret on the Upper East Side apparently.”
“Oh my God.”
“Look—I don’t know about your sex life, and I don’t want to, that’s not me asking, because it’s none of my fucking business. I wouldn’t want to tell you about mine either, but you’ve been single in this town before. You know how it goes.”
“I mean…right, but…”
“Anyway, no one’s having threesomes in his living room that I’m aware of. I know he had a thing with your friend Raven for a few months where she’d come up and keep him company some nights, but—”
“She mentioned another man in his apartment.”
I shut up and look at her, my gut twisting. “What?”
“A blond? Kinda feminine?”
“Gavin?” I point at the door Gavin just exited. “His assistant?”
“Was that him?” If it’s possible, she looks even more concerned.
“Yeah. What? What’s that look?”
Nicole shakes her head and seems to sink inside her own frame. “I just want to understand what the hell is going on.”
“He works for him, and he was checking on me—that’s it. What the hell do you think is going on?”
“Raven made it sound like—”
“Like what?” I snap, reaching the end of my rope.
Her voice is small when she answers. She can’t seem to bring herself to look at me. “Like parties and hookers and drugs…”
“Drugs? He’s just bi, Nicole. He drinks too much sometimes, but there aren’t any drugs. No parties, either, and I would know. I’m the fucking doorman.”
“Right,” she whispers.
“Maybe you should try talking to him,” I suggest, not kindly.
“Vaughn said you were kissing.”
I bite down on my lips. “And?”
She shakes her head. “Snuggling…”
This is exasperating. “So not snorting lines with our dicks out, then. Or taking turns on Gavin.”
She takes a deep breath. Her tone changes, softening. “He’s changed so much.”
“Fischer? Yeah. He’s been through a lot.”
“I wish he’d have let me know him. Better.”
That’s not something I can speak to, what Fischer decides to share with whom and when. I just know his heart. And I love it more than anything.
“Where is he?” she asks.
“Got me. I assume he’s at his place.”
“You haven’t talked to him?”
“Nope.”
“Oh. Matthew.”
“What’d you expect? That he’d pick me over him?” I nod toward the couch where Vaughn looks like he’s trying to get the job done.
“That’s not—I wasn’t trying to—”
“I don’t blame him. You either. Kinda figured it wasn’t meant to be a long time ago.”
She makes a sympathetic noise, and it makes me want to ask her to go.
“He’s so fucking easy to love,” she says. “I used to tell him that, and he’d blow me off, remind me how his mother gave him away and never came looking. Like that was because of him somehow.”
I suck in my cheeks, trying hard not to tear up.
“But he just runs from it, you know?”
“Yeah,” I choke out.
“I’m sorry he ran from you,” she says.
“Don’t take his kid, Nicole.”
Our eyes meet. “Can you swear to me that I overreacted? That nothing Raven implied is remotely true.”
“I shouldn’t have to,” I mumble.
“Please.”
“Yes. Fuck. It’s just me and him. It’s always been me and him. If he touched another man, I’d lose my fucking mind, and I imagine he feels the same way.”
She looks stricken. Hurt, and also ashamed.
Good.
“Okay,” she whispers.
“Did Vaughn say he felt unsafe?” I ask, not letting her off the hook that easy.
“No. No…” she rushes to assure me. “He says you give the best snuggles.”
I swallow hard, tears burning my eyes.
She puts her hands on the table and scoots back. “I’m sorry for upsetting you. Thank you for talking to me. Vaughn? Wanna say bye to Uncle Matty?”
Vaughn runs over way too fast with my iPad and shows me how far he got with the drawing. It vaguely resembles a tree. Not the tree, but a tree. “I counted to five-hundred and twenty-five in my head while I was drawing.”
“Not bad.” I sniff, extracting the tablet and pen from his sticky hands.
Vaughn turns and looks up at Nicole. “Can we go see Dad now?”
“Yes,” she says. “Let’s go see your dad.”
“Yes,” Vaughn says with a victorious gesture. “Bye, Matty.”
I rub his head. “Bye, bud. Give your dad a hug for me, okay?”
I don’t know why I said that. I wish I could stuff the words back into my mouth.
I show them out and sink to the floor with my back against the door. Alone again, my insides feel hollowed out. I fight the urge to cry, afraid I’ll get sick again. But the restlessness won’t let me sit still.
Fischer’s nightmare might be over, but mine is just beginning.
So while I can’t end what I feel for him, how much I still want him and frankly fucking require him to function properly, I need to end something. So the question becomes—what do I know for sure, without question, I can live without.
I’ve been going down the list:
Maggie’s condescension.
The Eastmoor. Fuck that place.
This loft.
This city.
This language.
This country.
But it’s not enough. Because I still can’t fucking breathe.
The royal blue leaf I dropped on the floor when Maggie told me Fischer wouldn’t be coming home winks at me from a distance.