24. Octavia
Chapter 24
Octavia
M y dad has always been all the things my mom isn’t. The second he hears about Jake’s press release, he calls, but it’s a whirlwind for a few days, especially with my connection as both his girlfriend and a friend of his sister who did the soundtrack for his movie.
I finally make time for him the morning of Bea’s wedding.
“I brought bagels,” he says, when I open the door.
“Dad, I said I’d be making waffles.”
He shrugs. “I didn’t get them toasted or sliced, so if you don’t want them, you can pop them in the fridge and eat them later.” He walks through the door with an abashed smile. “My mom would kill me if she ever found out I showed up somewhere empty-handed.”
“She’s dead,” I say.
“That makes it scarier,” Dad says.
I can’t help my laugh.
Once we get our waffles ready, mine covered in fruit, Dad’s drowning in syrup and chocolate chips, I tell Dad about Mom crashing at my place without telling me.
“Of course she did,” he says. “I swear, most things—like wine—get better with age.” He lifts his eyebrows, leaving me to intuit his meaning. Dad’s always been a big fan of not saying the mean thing, but making it clear with subtext.
“Yeah, Mom looks pretty good, but otherwise she’s not aging well at all.”
“You said it,” he says.
I can’t help my laugh this time either. “Dad, agreeing with me is just as bad.”
“Tell that to your grandmother,” he says. “She was the master of never saying a rude thing but still making her meaning clear.”
My dad clearly adores his mother, even now. I think that’s why my mother’s shortcomings upset him so much. He knew how much better a mother could be.
“How did you ever get her out of here?” Dad glances around, and then he whispers, “Or is she still staying with you?”
“Jake tossed her out,” I say.
He straightens. “I really like this kid.”
“Dad, he’s almost twenty-seven,” I say. “He’s not a kid.”
“Agree to disagree,” he says.
I laugh.
By the time we finish our waffles, I know my dad has something to say. I thought maybe he just came to check on the Jake thing, but it’s more than that. Dad hates blueberries, but he picked one up, dropped it in the syrup puddle on his plate, and now he’s chasing it down like it owes him a car payment or two.
“Dad.”
His head snaps up. “Yeah?”
“What’s up?” I stare pointedly at the blueberry. “That poor thing didn’t do anything to you. Put it out of its misery already.”
“Oh.” He smooshes it and shoves it to the side of the plate. “So, I actually came here to say something.”
“No kidding.” I can’t help loving this poor man. In fact, with his trouble saying things that he cares a great deal about, he reminds me of someone else I like. Maybe he’s what prepared me to understand Jake so well.
“Your mother—” He sighs. “I know it’s my fault. I married her, and that’s why you got stuck with her too.”
Wow. He said something plainly. “That must have been hard for you to say.” I actually appreciate that my dad almost never said anything bad about my mother. He left all the vitriol and pettiness to her. It made my life better, because I was always smart enough to see it for myself. I didn’t need to hash and rehash it constantly.
He plows along as if he didn’t hear me. He’s focused enough he might not have. “Your mother has been jealous of you her whole life.”
I didn’t realize he’d noticed that, too.
“Today I’m here to beg your forgiveness.” He drops to his knees in front of me, tugging his ball cap off his head. Bowed like that, I’m just staring at his shiny, round head.
“Dad, get up.”
He shakes his head. “I knew she was, and I should have fought her on it. I should have protected you better, but I didn’t. I failed you, because I’m a coward.”
I stand and pull him upright. “Dad, sit down. You did just fine. I’m safe, believe me.”
He doesn’t meet my eye, but he does sit. “From the moment you started singing, as early as three years old, it was clear you were special. I wanted to put you in piano and voice lessons. You loved it too, but your mom got angry. She wanted them for herself instead, and she said she’d always been denied as a kid. She was angry her child would have what she never got.”
She really is a pretty lousy mother, but that doesn’t mean her life wasn’t hard.
“Like a petulant child, she cried and complained until I gave in. I’d come home from work early so I could watch you while she got the lessons I wanted for you.”
“Dad, I don’t care.” I touch his wrist. “I really don’t.”
“It gets worse,” he says. “Just listen for a minute.”
I think about how hard it was for Jake to tell his parents things they already knew, and I nod and wait.
“As you got older, it got worse. You’d go to auditions and they’d turn her down, but they’d ask about you when you hadn’t even tried out. You were such a beautiful child and so gifted. The more it happened, the more she resented you for living her dream.”
I knew that part, too, maybe better than my dad did.
“I think she was relieved when you got burned.”
“Dad.” I shake my head. “That’s too harsh. She was there at the hospital.” Off and on. “I remember her distress. She didn’t fake that.”
“You didn’t hear her at home,” he mutters. “But regardless, you know we did surgeries at the start, but do you remember when we went back? It was a few years after the initial attempts, when your doc said they had a new technique.”
I remembered meeting with someone. “But they said I wasn’t a candidate. I was a little disappointed, but I didn’t have high hopes to begin with, and the idea of more painful surgery wasn’t ever a good one.”
“That’s the thing, though. You were a candidate, a perfect candidate, and we meant to tell you as your sixteenth birthday. . .” Dad squishes his hat into a very small ball, and I worry the brim won’t ever recover.
Distracted by the hat, it takes a few seconds for his words to register. “What? You never told me that.”
“Because your mom put the money we had in savings down on that three month acting camp in California when she realized we’d need it all for your surgeries. That was the last straw for me. Her selfish decision caused our divorce. I’d been looking the other way with her affairs for years. They never lasted long, but her selfishness never changed. She wanted your party to be perfect because she’d stolen your surgery money for herself. Again.”
My parents hid their dysfunction way better than I realized. “But that means I really did break you up.”
He shakes his head. “Not at all. I was staying with her for you. I’d have left her way earlier if you hadn’t been born. The only reason I’m telling you now is to warn you. As you find happiness, expect her to become uglier to you. She’s not someone who can overcome her jealousy. She’ll never be the mother you deserve.”
I tell him about how Jake cut her off and threatened her. Dad actually starts to bawl, and he says, “I’m glad you’ve found someone who can be the man I wasn’t able to be for you.”
It takes me half an hour to compose myself after all that, but when Jake shows up, I’m as ready as I’ll be. I’m wearing a strappy black sheath dress that really hugs my figure.
I honored Bea’s one request: no sleeves. The burn on my arm’s bare.
Other than the album photoshoot, I’ve never gone out in public like this. I expect Jake to comment on it, but he doesn’t even seem to notice.
“You’re not wearing the dress.” Jake frowns.
I can’t help rolling my eyes. “I told you, that’s not a dress you wear on someone else’s wedding day.”
“But no matter what day it is, when you’re with me, it’s your day.”
I slap him playfully but he uses it as an excuse to grab my hand. Then he lowers his face to my level. “I mean that,” he says softly.
He really does seem to. Every single day he shows up, and he never looks at me with anything but adoration, even today with my bare shoulder exposed.
“Yes, well, that can be true every day but today,” I say. “I love Bea, and nothing’s going to happen today that’s going to take the attention off her.”
“Shoot, but what about Easton?” he asks.
“Huh?”
“How’s he going to feel when I show up with a way prettier girlfriend, looking so much better than he does?”
“I swear, the biggest risk in dating you is that my eyes will get stuck up inside my head one of these days.”
When we get to the Serendipity Inn, it’s transformed. I’ve been to Dave and Seren’s a few times now, and the old house always looks gorgeous. But this is next level. It’s clear that someone paid a lot for the fresh flowers. It’s December tenth, and the place still looks like a hothouse.
“You know,” I say, “I was pretty worried about a mostly outdoor wedding in December.”
“You shouldn’t have been,” Jake says. “My parents know how to entertain.”
It warms my soul to hear him call Dave and Seren his parents. “Alright.” I walk up to Seren. “I’m ready to be put to work. Give me any task.”
Seren frowns. “We don’t need help. Everything’s ready. We’re all here early to watch the full-length trailer for you, Bea, and Jake’s movie.”
“What?” I turn toward Jake. “You said we had to come early to help get last-minute things ready.”
“We have all our employees doing that stuff,” Seren says. “Weddings should be magical days, not grueling and miserable.”
“Are we going to stand around, or are we going to watch the new trailer?” Jake asks. “It drops tomorrow.”
“I have it set up in the wedding hall.” Bea’s not in her dress yet, but that makes sense. It’s several hours before the wedding starts. She still looks every inch the bride, with her hair already curled, and a little A-line white sheath dress. “Let’s go.”
Bea jogs over to where I’m walking. “Are you excited? The movie comes out in a few days.”
“Should you really be worried about that?” I ask. “It’s your wedding .”
She shrugs. “It’s important, yes, but I’m not Bridezilla. The most important thing is celebrating the love Easton and I share, and you and Jake got together because of Easton investing in the movie and us doing the music.” She opens the door and gestures us inside. “I’m almost as excited about the movie as the wedding, but don’t tell Easton that.”
I suppress what would have been a very unladylike laugh.
Jake’s fiddling with some kind of electronic thing, but Bea ushers us all into seats. When Killian tries to sit next to me, Ardath makes a buzzer noise. “No way, kid. That’s Jake’s seat.”
He tries to sit on the other side, and she acts like she’s going to kick him.
“And that one’s mine.” Ardath drops into the chair next to me. “Other than knowing you have great skills with board games, I feel like I don’t know you yet.” She smiles. “But I have a feeling I’ll be getting to know you much better soon.”
Is she saying I’ll get sick? Gosh, I hope not.
“Okay, we’re ready.” Jake glares at Ardath. “Hush up everyone, until this is done.”
Seren glances right at me before finally dropping into the seat on the other side of Ardath.
“Have you guys all seen this already?” I ask. “Did they use a clip from the music video or something?”
Jake’s smiling. “Just watch.”
It does actually start with a scene from the music video, and then it cuts to still shots from the album shoot. But that’s where it starts to fall apart. Instead of clips from the movie, it starts showing clips of me and Jake.
In one, he’s defending me from Patrice. In another he’s tucking hair behind my ear—on the left side of my face. Then it’s our kiss from the set. And then it cuts off, and I’m very confused. “That’s a terrible movie trailer,” I say lamely.
Seren, Ardath, and Bea laugh.
“I mean, she’s kinda right,” Killian says. “I wouldn’t go see that movie if they paid me.”
“Well, I liked it,” Easton says.
“Shut up,” Jake says. “All of you.” He walks toward me, and he crouches down on the chair in front of me, so he’s on level with me, or close enough. “I didn’t realize it for a long time, but for most of my life, I’ve acted based on fear. I didn’t really commit to the Fansee family, because I was afraid it would fall apart. Then I dumped you, Octavia, because I was afraid I’d hurt you, or that the closer I got to you, the worse it would hurt if you left me.”
He stands, and he pulls something out from under the chair in front of me. At first, I think maybe he’s proposing, because it’s a box. But it’s a large one. When he removes the lid, what he pulls out is a tall, thin vase. “This is the very first piece of raku pottery that I ever fired in America. I gave it to Seren, but when I was talking to her yesterday, she agreed you should have it.” He offers it to me.
I take it, and the closer it gets, the more breathtaking it is. “This was your first?”
He laughs. “Sadly, yes. The very first attempt I ever made has by far been my best, because with raku, you can know everything, and you can have perfect technique, but you can fail more than you succeed. Similarly, sometimes everything comes together perfectly when you have no idea what you’re doing. That’s what happened there, and I believe it’s what happened when you were born. You are, in every single way that matters, my perfect woman. You’re bright, caring, generous, forgiving?—”
“That’s an important one if you want to be with Jake,” Killian mutters. “Get ready to forgive a lot.”
Everyone laughs.
Jake glares, but then he smiles and tilts his head. “The kid’s right.” He kneels on the chair in front of me, and he leans closer. “Octavia Rothschild, you are the most divine, the most gorgeous woman I have ever seen in my entire life. You bring me nothing but joy and peace.”
“And anxiety, fear, and stress,” Dave says. Then he pats Seren’s arms. “All the best ones do.”
“I knew I should’ve done this without the audience,” Jake mutters.
I can’t help my smile. “No, this is perfect.”
“I only invited them because you told me that my family was the most perfect thing you could imagine—what you’d always wanted. Since my biggest fear is that you’ll one day wake up and realize what a loser I am, I figured I should go ahead and face that fear right away. I’m such a coward, I wanted to do everything I could to show you that betting on me isn’t a bad call. See the family you get if you say yes when I ask you. . .” He snatches the vase out of my hands, inverts it, and catches the ring that drops out of the interior. “Will you marry me, Octavia?”
Before I can even respond, Bea says, “Please say yes. It would be a real bummer if you said no.”
I laugh. “You people have to give me the chance.”
“So that’s a no?” Killian asks. “Because if you’ve realized what an idiot my brother is, I’ll just mention that I graduate in a few short months.”
Jake actually lunges for him.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Yes, Jake Priest Fansee, I will marry you.”
My fiancé freezes, and then he changes direction and plows through the chairs to yank me to my feet.
Everyone’s chanting, “Kiss her, kiss her, kiss her” and he finally does.
Oh, he does.