18. Erika
— ? —
Erika
Kai calls on a Tuesday.
I almost don’t answer. My finger hovers over the decline button, ready to send him to voicemail for the sixth time this week, and I don’t know why I pick up.
“What do you want, Kai?”
“I need your help.”
“With what?”
“Grandma’s birthday. Next month.” A pause. “She only trusts you with the planning.”
I close my eyes. “That’s transparent.”
“I know.” Another pause. “But it’s also true. You know how particular she is. Last year when I tried to do it myself, she didn’t speak to me for a week.”
I should say no, tell him to hire a party planner, to figure it out himself, to stop using his grandmother as an excuse to see me. But it’s Dora, and Dora has been more of a mother to me than my own mother ever was.
“One planning session,” I say. “That’s it.”
“That’s all I’m asking.”
“And no tricks. No ambushes. No showing up with jewelry or grand gestures or whatever else you think will fix this.”
“Just planning. I promise.”
“Fine. When?”
“Saturday? I’ll send a car.”
“I can drive myself.”
“I know you can.” His voice softens. “But let me do this one thing. Please.”
I sigh. “Fine. Saturday.”
Saturday arrives faster than I expected, and I spend the entire morning telling myself this is about Dora, not Kai, and that it has nothing to do with the way my stomach flips when I see the black car idling outside my building.
Albie is driving. He gets out to open my door, and his face creases into a genuine smile.
“Mrs. Channing. It’s good to see you.”
“Just Erika now, Albie.”
“Of course.” He doesn’t change it, and we both know why.
The car takes me not to Dora’s house but to Marchetti’s, the old room on the west side that’s been serving the same steak since studios had contract players, legendary old Hollywood glamour, and Dora loves it.
She and Kai’s grandfather used to come here on their anniversary every year until he died.
Kai is waiting outside.
He looks better than the last time I saw him.
The shadows under his eyes have faded slightly, and he’s put himself together with obvious care, navy suit, no tie, the collar of his white shirt open just enough to show the base of his throat, his hair pushed back from his face and still slightly damp like he just got out of the shower.
I notice the way the jacket stretches across his shoulders when he moves to open the door for me, and I tell myself to stop noticing.
“Thank you for coming,” he says.
“This is for Dora.”
“I know.” He opens the door for me. “After you.”
Inside, the restaurant is empty.
Not quiet. Empty. Every table bare, every chair tucked in, nobody but us and a handful of staff waiting at attention.
“You bought out the restaurant.”
“I reserved it for a private event.” He shrugs. “Dora deserves the best. I wanted us to be able to taste everything without interruption.”
“Kai, this is excessive. Even for you.”
“Probably.” He pulls out a chair for me, and his hand brushes my shoulder as I sit, brief and accidental, and heat blooms across my skin anyway. “But she’s turning eighty-three. How many more of these do we get?”
I sit, not because I agree with his methods but because he’s right about Dora. She’s not young, and every birthday is a gift.
The tasting is extraordinary, eight courses, each one more elaborate than the last, and the chef comes out personally to explain the dishes while Kai asks intelligent questions and I scribble notes about what Dora would like and what she’d merely tolerate.
I try to focus on the food, on the task at hand, and I keep getting distracted by his hands.
He has beautiful hands, I’ve always thought so, even when I was too angry to admit it, long fingers and broad palms and a scattering of dark hair across his knuckles, and he gestures when he talks, and I watch him wrap his fingers around the stem of his wine glass, and I remember those hands on my body, sliding up my thighs, gripping my hair, pressing into the small of my back while he moved inside me.
My face heats, and I take a long sip of wine.
“The beef,” I say after the fourth course, forcing myself to concentrate. “She’ll want the beef. But without the sauce. She thinks fancy sauces are a waste of good meat.”
“Noted.” Kai makes a mark on his own notepad. “What about the fish?”
“Only if it’s prepared simply. She grew up near the coast. She thinks overworked seafood is an insult to the ocean.”
“You know her better than I do.”
“I pay attention.”
He flinches, and the words land harder than I intended, and good.
The fifth course arrives, a pasta with truffle and a flavor I can’t identify, and it’s delicious, and I find myself eating more than I mean to.
“When did you learn to cook?” Kai asks, watching me.
“What?”
“You couldn’t boil water. Now you’re critiquing a Michelin-starred chef’s sauce ratios.”
“Dora taught me.” I set down my fork. “After we got married. She said every woman should know how to feed herself, in case the man in her life turns out to be useless.”
A pause. “She said that?”
“She said a lot of things.” I pick up my wine. “I should have listened to more of them.”
Kai is quiet for a moment, and then, “She was right. About me being useless.”
“She was right about a lot of things.”
“I know.” He meets my eyes, and the intensity there makes my breath catch. “I’m trying to be less useless.”
“Trying isn’t the same as succeeding.”
“I know that too.”
The sixth course arrives, and we eat in silence, not comfortable exactly, but not hostile either, just two people who used to know each other, picking their way through the wreckage.
After the tasting, there’s a jeweler.
Not a jewelry store, a man in a three-piece suit who arrives with a security guard and velvet trays that he spreads across our table like they’re nothing special, diamonds and sapphires and emeralds glittering under the restaurant’s soft lights.
“For Dora,” Kai explains. “I want her to have something special. But I don’t trust my own taste anymore.”
“Since when?”
“Since I realized I’ve been making the wrong choices for years.”
I look at him, and he’s not watching the jewels, he’s watching me, and the weight of it makes my skin prickle.
I turn back to the trays and pick up a necklace, art deco, vintage, dripping with diamonds in a pattern that looks like stars, exactly what Dora would choose for herself, elegant without being flashy.
“This one,” I say. “It’s perfect for her.”
Kai nods at the jeweler, who names a price that would buy a small house, and Kai doesn’t blink.
“Wrap it up.”
From Marchetti’s we drive to Rodeo Drive, Albie navigating the traffic while Kai and I sit in the back seat with the city sliding past outside the tinted windows, and the space feels smaller than it should.
His thigh is inches from mine, and if I shifted even slightly we’d be touching, and I don’t shift, but I think about it.
“You don’t have to do this next part,” Kai says as we pull up to a boutique I recognize from magazine spreads.
“What next part?”
“The fitting. For your dress. For the party.”
“I didn’t agree to a fitting.”
“I know. But Dora specifically requested that you be there. In something spectacular.” He pauses. “Her words, not mine.”
“Kai.”
“I swear I’m not lying. She called me three times about it. Said if you showed up in something off the rack she’d never forgive either of us.”
I want to argue, but I can picture Dora saying exactly that, her sharp eyes narrowed, her finger pointed at Kai’s chest.
“Fine,” I say. “But I’m picking my own dress.”
“I wouldn’t dream of interfering.”
Inside, a woman in head-to-toe black ushers me into a private room, and gowns appear on mannequins like magic, one after another, silk and satin and fabric that shimmers when it catches the light.
Kai stays in the waiting area, and I can see him through the gap in the curtain, pretending to look at his phone, glancing up every time someone moves, jacket off, rubbing the back of his neck the way he does, and I make myself look at the dresses instead.
I try on seven. The first is too fussy, the second too revealing, the third makes me look like I’m trying too hard, and the fourth, fifth, and sixth are close but not quite right.
The seventh is navy blue, floor-length, a neckline that’s elegant without being boring and a back that dips low enough to be interesting without being scandalous, and the fabric clings to me like it was made for me, and when I look in the mirror I don’t see Kai’s wife or Kai’s assistant. I see myself.
I step out of the dressing room.
Kai’s phone slips from his fingers and clatters to the floor, and he doesn’t pick it up.
He just stares at me, lips slightly parted, his eyes traveling from my face down to my bare shoulders, along the line of my collarbone, down to where the fabric skims my hips, and the heat in his gaze makes my skin flush.
“That one,” he says, and his voice is rough, lower than usual. “That’s the one.”
“I know.” I turn to look in the mirror, hyperaware of his eyes on my bare back. “How did you know I’d pick this?”
“I didn’t.” He stands, comes closer, and stops a few feet away, near enough that I can feel the warmth coming off him. “But I knew you’d find one that made you look like yourself. And you did.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you look beautiful.” His voice drops even lower. “It means you always look beautiful, and I was too busy to notice, and I’m noticing now.”
I meet his eyes in the mirror. He’s standing behind me, and I can see his jaw working and his hands curled into fists at his sides like he’s physically restraining himself from touching me, and I want him to touch me, and the thought comes unbidden and I shove it down.
He doesn’t argue and doesn’t try to defend himself. He just looks.
The saleswoman wraps the dress in tissue paper while I change back into my clothes, grateful for the dressing room door between us, my heart pounding, my skin still warm where his eyes were.
When I emerge, Kai is signing something at the counter.
“I’m paying for that myself.”
“It’s already done.”
“Kai.”
“Consider it a birthday gift. From Dora.” He meets my eyes. “She’d want you to have it.”
I want to argue, but I’m tired, and the dress is beautiful, and fighting about money feels petty when there are so many bigger things to fight about.
“Fine,” I say. “But this is the last thing you buy me.”
“Understood.”
We end the day at Dora’s favorite park, walking the paths she used to walk with Kai’s grandfather, and the sun is setting over Los Angeles, painting everything gold, and I realize I’ve been laughing, really laughing, for hours, not at him but with him, the way we used to before everything got complicated, before the company and the ambition and the endless cycle of broken promises.
“I had a good time today,” I say as we reach the car where Albie is waiting.
“So did I.”
“Don’t read anything into it.”
“I know.” He stops a few feet away, hands in his pockets, making no move to come closer. “Thank you. For today. For doing this for Grandma. Albie will take you home.”
“I’d do anything for Dora.”
“I know.” A pause. “She loves you. She always has.”
“I love her too.”
We stand there in the fading light, the city spread out below us, and I wait for him to do something stupid, to try to kiss me or take my hand or make some grand declaration that I’ll have to reject. He doesn’t.
“Goodnight, Erika.”
He turns and walks back down the path into the park, hands still in his pockets, and I stand by the open car door and watch him go, the breadth of his shoulders, the stride that used to make me feel safe, until the trees take him and there’s nothing to watch. Albie waits without a word.
I get in, and I hate that his restraint undoes me more than begging ever did, and I hate that I wanted him to close the distance between us, that I’m sitting here with my skin still flushed and my pulse still racing, wishing he had touched me when I should be relieved that he didn’t.
On the drive home, I realize the thirty days passed last week. The divorce could have gone through without him, and I never called my lawyer, and I don’t let myself examine why.