Chapter Thirty-Four
thirty-four
Lanie
■ 24-DEC ■ Trans-Continental Airways ■ Flight: 8716 ■
LHR-London, Heathrow KEF-Keflavík International Airport ? JFK-John F. Kennedy Int’l Airport
Seat Assignment: 10J/10K
The next morning, Lanie and Ridley had luckily been booked on an a.m. flight direct to New York. Ridley had an almost eighteen-hour stopover, but would still be in Denver by Christmas Day. They spent most of the flight sharing silent glances, but Lanie could feel it wasn’t the same as last night. When they disembarked, though only a step behind Ridley, she felt miles away.
Mixed emotions dogged her, effectively ruining the flight home. On the one hand, there was the ever-present relief that she always experienced when she first spotted the New York City skyline rising above the Atlantic through the airplane window. But on the other hand, was this persistent nagging that had gripped her throughout the flight. It whispered that her bubble was about to burst jarringly. That this frangible thing they’d newly created would not have the strength to last past the arrivals terminal at Kennedy.
Ridley hadn’t, of course, done anything to encourage the feeling. But his quiet also felt heavy and ominous, like a harbinger of something ruinous. She’d experienced it before, how the lust in a partner’s eyes curdled the next day, or with the better ones, within subsequent weeks when she inevitably grew tiresome. When what seemed doting and adorable before became “clingy” and “unattractive.” She was by no means awash in lovers but the few she’d had previously had the exact same MO—fickle men with the staying power of tissue paper.
She didn’t regret sleeping with him, even if it was a onetime thing. Besides, it wasn’t Ridley’s fault she felt this way. She was the one who dreamed of the beginnings of a happily-ever-after before last names were even exchanged. And had indulged her imagination with fantasies of some romantic Icelandic holiday—or maybe even joining Ridley in Vail. But Lanie could admit that was pushing things too far, even for her.
Still, it couldn’t help but feel like a one-night stand that somehow morphed into an extended, uncomfortable few more hours stuck together postcoitus. Or more realistically and worse yet, two friends who had let a moment’s sexual tension get away from them and now didn’t know how to live in the aftermath. She’d learned the hard way what came of that.
So, they didn’t talk about it, for which Lanie was both grateful and somewhat unsettled. Ridley didn’t appear worried, but for his part, he also seemed to have come to his own answer to the unspoken question of what was next.
“This is where we part ways...”
“What?” Her attention shot to him.
“I said, this is where we part ways.”
“Why?” She reflexively held his hand tighter as he tried to let go.
He smiled but a flush rose to her face. She let him go immediately, embarrassed.
She was already beginning to do it. The clinginess again .
“Um, because I surrendered my American passport five years ago. So, I have to go get in the foreign nationals line.” She looked up. They were standing at Immigration.
That’s why she’d always lost him when they deplaned separately. She was looking at the wrong line. Her cheeks rose in anticipation of a smile before it faltered again.
“So...?”
That didn’t mean this wasn’t the end. It just meant he had a perfectly good reason to leave.
“I’ll see you on the other side. I’m here for the night.” He frowned at her and pushed his glasses up his nose. “Unless you’ve already got plans? I thought maybe we could get something to eat and then I’d take you home?”
Take me home? Lanie’s heart galloped but she maintained her composure, only barely. Not to his hotel?
A smile broke across his face that emphasized that strong jawline and infinitesimal dimple.
Another one. Lanie was impressed. That was two in two days.
“Yes? No?” He paused, tapping his passport in one hand against the other.
Her honest first impulse was to say no. To try to at least feign some restraint, but those soulful bourbon-brown eyes magnified by his prescription lenses were always so expressive when he wanted them to be. Right now, they seemed to transmit a genuine interest in this idea as opposed to it being a polite and perfunctory invitation.
“Sure.” She shrugged, fighting her own smile as if he hadn’t handed her the moon and stars.
“You do understand you don’t have to do this, right? We can turn back whenever you want.”
Ridley nodded. “Yes, but I think it might be nice.”
On the cab ride from the airport, Ridley had proposed going to The Bronx first instead of taking her to dinner. Lanie’s stomach clenched at the prospect. Lanie knew this might not be the best time. Exacerbated by tales of the mechanical problems of the plane and then the unexpected layover in Iceland, her mother’s anxiety had skyrocketed to the point that nothing short of laying eyes and hands on Lanie would calm her. She might not be up to entertaining company. And regardless, it would hardly be Ryan as her best self.
A quick bite and then immediately home to present herself for Ryan Turner’s inspection was the best plan. But Ridley had other ideas.
“How about you both join me for dinner?”
“What?”
“You and your mom. Let me take you both to dinner.”
Even as the cab pulled up to the curb in front of her building, Lanie still wanted to skip this. But she braced herself for it anyway, stepping out of the car.
After feeding bills to the driver, Ridley followed her. Lanie tried to remain composed, but knew Ryan would read into Ridley joining them at home. Lanie took a deep breath.
Ridley gave her a wide berth as she entered the building negotiating her luggage. She’d rejected his offer of help, wishing to put a little distance between them. She didn’t explain herself but he was understanding. She could do without more of her mother’s disapproval where Ridley was concerned. And as of last night, being anywhere within ten feet of him meant possibly revealing things she didn’t mean to.
Lanie knocked rather than letting herself in. Since she’d already texted her mother to extend Ridley’s invitation, Ryan surprised her by answering the door ready to go. She wore a smart navy sweater dress and knee-high boots. Her locs were tied up in a matching cloth and she wore hammered bronze earrings shaped like the African continent. Her coat was already on. It had been so long since Ryan had a date that Lanie forgot how well her mom cleaned up outside of her work scrubs or housecoat.
“Lanie?” Her mom pulled her into a fierce hug. “Oh, honey!”
“I’m here, Mommy. Safe and sound. See?” She stepped aside to present Ridley. “Meet Ridley Aronsen. Ridley, this is my mom, Ryan Turner.”
While her heart crawled slowly up her esophagus, Ryan and Ridley exchanged cordial greetings and holiday tidings.
Lanie exhaled. So far so good.
Two hours later, the three sat sated and comfortable in Zero Otto Nove, a small family style Italian trattoria on Arthur Avenue, The Bronx’s small but authentic Little Italy.
Ridley stared around the restaurant at the vaulted ceilings and Southern Italian piazza-inspired décor. Then he leaned back in his chair, stuffed, rubbing a nonexistent food belly. “That was delicious. If I didn’t have a connecting flight to catch tomorrow, I’d have all this wrapped up to take home.”
The servings had been generous, and their eyes had far exceeded their stomachs’ capacities. As a result, there was enough food for a few additional dinners.
“What’s your final destination?” Ryan asked.
“Beaver Creek, Colorado.” He wrinkled his nose as if he couldn’t believe it himself.
“Never heard of it,” Ryan said with a sympathetic smile, folding her napkin and placing it carefully on the table.
“Me neither,” Ridley responded with a grimace. “But my daughter is spending Christmas up there with her grandparents and her friends.”
Lanie was unsurprised but intrigued by Ridley’s omission of Gavin. He didn’t owe her mother—or even her, frankly—an explanation, but he did need to learn to say the man’s name without physical pain.
“And you’re headed up there to meet them. Is it a surprise or are you a straggler?”
“Bit of both, honestly. It’s a surprise because I’m a straggler,” he admitted. “It’s largely thanks to your daughter that I’m even going at all.”
Lanie’s face flushed at the unexpected compliment. There was a disarming warmth in his eyes. Lanie pushed a mushroom from her boscaiola sauce around on her plate to avoid his gaze. This was exactly what she was afraid of her mother witnessing.
“Oh yes?” Her mother’s faded accent resurfaced with those words.
“And despite the delay...” Ridley’s normally inscrutable poker face betrayed him for a moment. He smiled—a small, blink-and-you’d-miss-it smile, but a meaningful one. “I think it was worth it.”
Then he winked right at her... In front of her mother. Lanie’s eyes widened and he seemed to catch himself belatedly.
“Uh, I mean, will be worth it.”
She wanted to sink into her chair, her face going beet red.
It was possible that her mother, despite her Sherlock Holmesian powers of deduction, honed by years of reading mysteries and watching true crime, had missed his underlying sentiment. But Lanie doubted it and she knew her reaction probably wasn’t helping.
Her mother glanced from Ridley to Lanie as the guilt radiated off Lanie in waves. She was a grown woman and yet she felt like a child caught up past her bedtime.
Normally, Ridley was a stone, as impassive and inscrutable as the Sphinx. But now he might as well have come to dinner in a T-shirt that had “I fucked your daughter in Iceland” written across the chest. Lanie couldn’t believe it.
Her mother leaned forward then, eyes narrowing. “So, remind me again, Dr. Aronsen, you met my daughter on a plane?”
Oh no.
Ridley nodded, blissfully unaware of the temperature change as Lanie’s stomach churned.
Her mother’s assumed posture—elbow on the table, three fingers cradling the side of her face in concentration—boded poorly for the rest of Lanie’s night.
“What would you say intrigued you enough to stay in touch?”
“Mom!” Lanie worried the small stud in her left ear nervously.
“What? I’m curious. You talk about the man. I see you texting all the time, I know you now fly together on occasion. I want to know what was so remarkable about my daughter that it made him want to keep in touch.”
Ridley’s impenetrable visage again dropped like a steel curtain. Lanie didn’t even think that he knew when he was doing it. And it wasn’t necessarily hostile; it just seemed like Ridley refused to give anyone any part of himself that he didn’t explicitly intend for them to have. Up to and including any insight into his emotions at any given moment. So, he didn’t look shocked or flustered or even angered by her mother’s impertinence. He just looked blank, then pensive.
Still, to Lanie’s surprise, as he opened his mouth to speak, he did look at her and smirk. It was a delighted little movement of his lips like he was reassuring her that he had this, before returning his attention to her mother very seriously. “I think Lanie is a fascinating young woman. And I saw that from our first meeting. She’s smart and feisty. I was being a real jerk when we met. I believe you were there, in fact, Mrs. Turner. On the phone, right?”
“ Ms. Turner.” Ryan gave him a tiny smile and a nod of acknowledgment. “And I guess I was.”
“Well, if you recall, I was in the midst of throwing a wobbly. That is, until your daughter put me right in my place. She was unexpected. I liked that.”
“It did not happen like that! You were flipping out on Dash and I was sitting very quietly next to you, hoping you wouldn’t notice me there,” Lanie corrected.
“Absolutely not.” His Vulcan eyebrow went up. “You gave me the full schoolteacher dressing-down. You got on me for my language and you told me I was being a jerk.”
“I didn’t!”
“That was the gist. I was being a bit much, I admit.”
“You are so lucky that nice man still talks to you...” She laughed until she noticed her mom following them both, going back and forth, with keen interest.
Well, shit. Lanie realized she was apparently as bad as Ridley at being discreet.
“He was very nice,” Ryan said, coming back into the apartment later, as Lanie followed, stripping off her winter coat.
“I’m glad you think so.” Lanie was genuinely pleased that Ridley and her mother had gotten along so well.
“What happened to his daughter’s mother? He didn’t mention her.”
“He’s a widower,” Lanie answered pointedly, already annoyed by the question. “His wife passed away a few years ago.”
Her mother took in that information with a frown.
Here it comes . Lanie braced herself.
“Is that why the grandparents take care of her now?”
“They help him take care of her,” Lanie nearly snapped. It was not her job to defend Ridley but she felt compelled to.
Ryan gave her a look. “No, they take care of her. They’re with her instead of him at Christmas. And with the number of times you’ve told me he was in town in the last few months...”
“Mom, what does it matter?”
Ryan slouched out of her coat and sat on the couch heavily. “I’m just trying to figure out what this man with a practically grown daughter of his own wants with mine.”
“Bea is fourteen. I am an adult. What he wants with me is my business.”
Her mother sighed, sounding very weary. “So, you have already slept with him, then?”
Lanie covered her face, shaking her head. It was very technically not a lie and her mother was being obscenely intrusive. “Mom, respectfully, my sex life is not your concern.”
“Oh, I don’t care about your sex life, Melanie! I care about my daughter being used and cast aside when the man she’s seeing finds a woman more...suitable.”
Lanie collapsed in the chair diagonally across from her mother. “That’s quite the vote of confidence in me.”
“Melanie. You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t.”
“What happened to me with your father—”
“I’m not you and Ridley is definitely not Dad.”
Ryan snorted. “I thought your father was special too. Men like your father, successful men, are good at making women like us feel important to them. But that’s only until they get what they want.”
Lanie bit her lip. She loved her mother, and Lanie knew how badly her ex-husband had treated her until he ultimately left Ryan alone with a toddler and an unfinished musicology degree. But Lanie also knew she’d never allow a man to treat her the way her father had treated Ryan. The cheating and gaslighting. Not even to save their relationship.
“Ridley has been entirely honorable,” she insisted.
“For now.” Her mother’s mouth set.
“No, period.” Lanie got up, heading into her bedroom, tired of the various stanzas of this same old song her mother had been singing forever. She stood by the bed and began unpacking her bag.
“They don’t choose us, baby. Not in the end,” her mother said from her doorway. “He’ll make you love him, give up your life for him, maybe even leave your home, then he’ll leave you and just pick someone else. You know I’m right.”
And there it was. Leave your home. Her mother’s real fear. The words were like spiked spider legs painfully crawling up her spine. Lanie shuddered.
“Look at Jonah, after all those years with you right there.” Her resentment suffused her words. “What does he do? He chooses Gem. Gem! God knows I love my sister’s child, but she’s as unchallenging and uncomplicated as they come.”
Lanie recognized the ugliness of her own thoughts in her mother’s words.
“That’s who they’ll pick, honey. Ornaments, pleasing women they can control.” Lanie had a hard time holding her tongue, not defending Gem or Ridley or even herself as Ryan pushed on. “Or they’ll pick women they believe are their equal. They never choose women like us.”
Lanie spun on her mother, enraged. “‘Women like us,’ who? Who are we, Mom?”
Her mother shrank a little at Lanie’s raised voice. “No one special.”
Lanie was too stunned to speak.
She grabbed her bag and ran from her mother’s words, as far and fast as her legs could carry her, out of the apartment, down the stairs and into the cold night.