18. Oscar Worthy
OSCAR WORTHY
LUCY
Icome clean to Dina four weeks after I come home, on the first morning Fox actually leaves for the office—because I insisted I needed space, and Percy, at my quiet request, insisted that Fox was needed at work.
It also helped that Dr. Reyes, at our appointment two days ago, suggested I have normal human interaction without my husband hovering, which Fox took not as a directive but as a personal challenge to hover more efficiently, until I put my wobbly foot down.
“All good on the marital front?” Dina asks, setting tea in front of me.
I love coffee, but these days it makes my stomach raw—probably from the pills. Broken ribs are the worst. There’s nothing to do but wait for them to heal and manage the pain in the meantime.
“Hmm.” I lean back into the cushions.
Dina sits on the coffee table across from me. “Talk to me.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“Something is up,” she says, before I can deflect. “I can feel it coming off you like radio waves.”
I wrinkle my nose. Sigh. “I didn’t lose my memory.”
Dina stares at me. “What?”
I shrug.
She looks around the house, then back at me. “You mean—you remember him.”
I grimace.
She blinks.
I wait for her judgment. Dina is honest to her core, and this is going to rub her the wrong way.
She stares at me for a long moment. “Lucy Vidal, you are a fantastic actress and a very good liar.”
A choked laugh escapes me and pulls at my ribs. I wince.
“How—when—why?” She shakes her head. “Start from the beginning.”
So I do.
“He’s saying I love you at the hospital, and I’m thinking, why on earth is he saying this now and...I don’t know. I hear myself ask him who he is.” I rub a hand over my face. “What’s wrong with me?”
Dina purses her lips for a moment and then bursts out laughing.
“What?”
“Oh God, Lucy! You’re priceless. The man was…is so wrecked that you don’t remember him, and I know this isn’t revenge, but damn it’s sweet.”
I shoot her an unimpressed stare. “It’s not sweet. I’ve turned into a petty bitch. Open the blinds. Close the blinds. The tea is too hot. This is too cold. I want water. No, I want juice. I’m making the man run around.”
“The good news is that he wants to run around,” Dina points out. “He told me he fucked up with you, but he loves you and considering he’s lying his ass off just as you are....”
“Who would have thunk we’d both be such efficient liars?” I am a little disgusted with myself...both of us, actually. “How on earth can we have a decent marriage if we’re lying to one another?”
“I’m just impressed you’ve been able to hold on for this long.”
“Tell me about it.” I glance at her, a flush of guilt creeping up my neck. “I’m a little ashamed of myself.”
“As long as it’s just a little.” Dina leans back on the coffee table, planting her palms behind her for support. “Do you want me to give you an assessment of what’s going on?”
I groan. “I’m not sure.”
She shoots me a flat, unimpressed glare.
“I think Fox found out he loves you and decided he’s going to just pretend the bad stuff never happened—and hopes that by the time you get your memory back, you’ll be convinced of his love thanks to all his acts of service, which by the way is his love language. ”
“And why am I doing this?”
Her eyes are gentle and filled with compassion. “You want to be convinced of his love.”
My breath hitches, which is a good thing because a gasp would’ve hurt my messed-up ribs. “So, I’m not just being a petty bitch?”
She lets out a soft laugh. “Oh, you’re being that, too, but he’s earned it.”
“What if I am convinced and he finds out I lied and...leaves me?”
Dina leans forward and rests her elbows on her knees. “Lucy, that man will walk on broken glass for you.”
I hold up a hand. “Please. He told Percy he doesn’t love me and never will.”
“He didn’t know then that he loved you.” Dina stands and rolls her neck, working the tension out of her shoulders. “Fox is…not one of the good guys, Lucy. He’s good to the people he cares about—but if you cross him, you know he can be a complete asshole.”
I think about how he spoke to his mother, to Reina. But I also have other evidence.
The contractor who cut corners on a client’s event. Fox didn’t just fire him; he made sure every contact in Nashville knew why.
The investor who tried to go around him to David, thinking Fox wouldn’t find out. Well, he found out. The man hasn’t worked with anyone in Fox’s circle since.
The business partner who tried to undercut Percy got removed from every deal he wanted, professionally and socially, so efficiently that it looked accidental.
But, he also spent an entire Saturday helping his assistant, Haley, move furniture because she had no one else to ask.
I look at the kitchen counter. At the herbs in the window—the ones I planted last spring, that Fox has been watering, that I have watched him water with the careful attention of a man who has been given instructions and is following them like a religion.
“I don’t know how to stop this.”
“You just tell the truth to him like you just did to me.”
I flick my gaze toward her, humor tugging at my mouth. “Fox isn’t you, Dina.”
“No shit!”
“And”—I tilt my head—“I like it. I like his attention. I like how he’s taking care of me.”
I sigh because I know what I’m doing is loathsome, lying to the poor man the way I am, hurting him the way I am by making him think that I forgot him because of emotional distress caused by him.
He blames himself for the accident. I blame him, too, even though it’s that idiot truck driver’s fault and mine for not driving more carefully.
“Am I a bad person, Dina?”
She leans down and hugs me.
“Ouch,” I whimper.
She kisses both my cheeks, Persian style. “Lucy, my love, you’re one of the best people I know.”
“But—“
“Our imperfections are what make life interesting,” Dina declares, rising and walking to the café windows that open onto the porch.
She turns and smiles at me. “He lied to you for the entire time you were married, Lucy. He let you love him without loving you back—or without knowing that he did, which amounts to the same thing when you’re the one on the receiving end.
The moron had to almost lose you, body and soul, before he figured himself out. ”
Dina considers me for a moment. “But that doesn’t mean you owe him a clean slate before he’s earned one. You’re allowed to want proof, the irrefutable kind, before you give yourself to him again.” She pauses. “And that includes your memories.”
“It’s getting complicated, though,” I confess.
“Because?”
“Because he’s—” I search for the word. “He’s different.
He’s doing things he never used to do, and I don’t know if it’s guilt, or if something actually shifted, or if he’s just a better liar than I thought, and I can’t—” I press my fingers to my eyes briefly, carefully, my head still occasionally reminding me of its recent adventures. “I can’t tell anymore what’s real.”
“What does your gut say?”
“My gut”—I groan—“has historically been terrible about Fox Bennett. I would like my gut to recuse itself from this situation.”
Dina chuckles. “I think he’s in love with you.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” I counter.
She rolls her eyes at me.
“I need to tell him.” I feel miserable just thinking about that conversation. “I know that. I know I need to come clean. I just—” I throw my hands up in exasperation and wince because I’ve moved in a way that hurts.
“There’s no rush. He’s not going anywhere. And considering you have four broken ribs and you’re still concussed, you aren’t going anywhere either. So enjoy your husband catering to your every need. Get foot rubs, and I don’t know, ask him to go down on you…”
“With my broken ribs?”
Dina gives me a crooked grin. “Why not?”
I shoot her a flat, unimpressed stare.
“Whatever he’s doing, Lucy, out of guilt or love or both—you deserve it. Every bit of it. You deserve someone running around after you.” She meets my eyes. “You’ve been taking care of everyone else your whole life. Let someone take care of you.”
“He is doing that, better than I could’ve ever imagined,” I admit. “He remembers things, Dina.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, he waters the fig tree with the exactitude of a man who has been given a task and treats it as a covenant.”
Dina chuckles. “That’s an image.”
“He remembers that I take my tea with the bag in for four minutes exactly and not five. He remembers that I cannot sleep on my right side since the ribs, so he has moved to the left side of the bed without discussing it, simply shifted, and stayed there. He remembers that I find the local morning news aggressively cheerful, and he mutes it when I come downstairs, without being asked.”
“I don’t know what to say, Lucy.” Dina beams at me like a kid on Christmas morning. “I can see how this is distressing for y’all, but for me…sheer entertainment!”