20. Chapter Twenty
Aspen
My mother carries the brisket in. Plates pass. Wine pours. We start with appetizers. I drink my wine while the words of my fake boyfriend echo in my mind.
Smile.
I am smiling.
“You’re much more like your mother than I thought,” Aunt Lisa says, raising eyebrows toward Stanley across from us.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I say back.
Across the table, Stanley is doing better than he has any right to. He has Margaret laughing into her napkin. He has Robert nodding along at something. Twice in three minutes, he’s said yes, sir to Uncle Pete in a way that left Uncle Pete visibly pleased with himself.
I keep my eyes on Aunt Lisa.
“He’s a lot like your father,” she says, expanding her hands from her head.
She’s always disliked my father’s athleticism because it comes with a sense of arrogance.
Aunt Lisa has always been humble. She’s not like my mom, who is showy and happy to dance about it in public.
And she’s not wrong about Stanley’s confidence.
The man is named after the freaking trophy for crying out loud.
He was meant for greatness, and he knows it.
I sip my wine and keep my eyes locked on Aunt Lisa’s. I know she wants to say more because there’s always more.
She leans in and says, “I just hope you don’t turn into your mother.”
My eyes flick down the table to where my mom is sitting. She’s talking and eating.
“Did she tell you to say that?” I ask, swirling my wine. “Is that why I’m sitting next to you for Thanksgiving?”
That sounds much more like my mom than Lisa.
She stares into my eyes. “I requested to sit next to my favorite person.”
“What did my mom say about him?” I ask, sipping my wine. “Tell me all the things, Aunt.”
She whispers, “She told me on the phone that he reminds her of your father at that age.”
I look at Stanley then. Is that possible? I wouldn’t know. I only know the version of my father after the success, not the one reaching for it.
Just then, my father taps his glass with the edge of his knife while Aunt and I stare at each other. The table goes quiet in three seconds. I turn my head to look at him, ignoring the eyes that are on me.
My father stands. I set my wine glass down very carefully, because something in the way he’s standing is telling me to brace myself.
“I’m not going to make a thing of this,” he says. “I just want to say it out loud one time.”
He looks around the table.
“I’m grateful for the people in this room. Carolyn. My brother. My friends.” A glance down the table at Robert. “My oldest friend.”
Robert is nodding in the corner of my eye. Then Stanley grips his shoulders and slightly shakes him.
My dad pauses and looks at me. “And I’m grateful for my daughter.”
He stares at me for a moment.
“I’ve always been proud of her. I want her to hear me say I’ve been particularly proud of her this fall. The decisions she’s made.” He lifts his glass. “Cheers.”
The table lifts. The table says cheers. The table drinks.
He sits.
Twenty seconds, maybe, start to finish.
And the room moves on. Beth makes a soft aw. Uncle Pete pats my mother on the shoulder. Margaret laughs at something Stanley says to her. Inside ten seconds, the conversation has closed back over the top of it like water over a stone.
I don’t move.
I’m the only person at this table who knows what just happened.
No.
I’m one of two people at this table who know what just happened.
I look across the table.
Stanley is looking at me. His face is doing nothing at all.
I breathe in through my nose and pick my wine back up. I send my father, down the length of the table, the small, practiced smile I have been sending him my whole life.
He nods and smiles back.
He goes back to his brisket.
He didn’t mean my work. He didn’t mean the report. He didn’t mean the master’s I’m applying for. He meant the man across from me.
He stood up in front of fourteen people and said he was proud because of who he thinks I’m dating.
I knew he always loved hockey, but this just shows me how much the sport always comes first. The man is obsessed, and maybe this is what Aunt Lisa means.
If I become my mother, then I become second to the sport.
I waited so long to hear my father tell me those words, and I got it for a lie. Under the table, Aunt Lisa’s hand comes down on top of mine.
I look into her eyes.
“Your mother has said nothing but good things about the boy.” She leans in further. “I only speak for myself, Aspen. You should know this about me.”
I nod and squeeze her hand.
Uncle Pete starts telling another story while everyone makes their plates.
I add brisket, turkey, mashed potatoes, and every single side that I can reach in front of me.
I’m going to be stuffed after this. My mother is correcting Uncle Pete on a detail.
Beth is laughing at the correction. The room is a good time with my family.
I take my first bite, and my phone buzzes against my thigh in my lap.
I don’t look down right away, and then I can’t help it. Maybe it’s Kirra or Bree.
Ermington: You okay?
I don’t answer it or look up. I pick up my fork and take a small bite of turkey and cornbread.
It buzzes again.
Ermington: Don’t ignore me. I can see you.
And across the table, under the runner, his foot finds mine. It isn’t a kick. It’s the side of his shoe set against the side of my boot.
I don’t move my foot. But I also don’t look at him. I type with one hand in my lap, eyes on my plate.
Me: I’m okay.
Ermington: Smile.
I roll my eyes. His foot stays. After a moment, I press the side of my boot back against his shoe. I pick up my wine with the same hand that just typed I’m okay, and I drink.
I look up. He isn’t looking at me. He’s listening to something Robert is saying, nodding.
His foot is still against mine under the table. I hold it there for the rest of the meal. It eases the anxiety swimming in my chest, and I relax just a little knowing that he’s on my team.
My mom brings the pies out on a tray. Three of them. Hers. Aunt Lisa’s pecan. Stanley’s pumpkin.
“Stanley,” she says, in passing, “the lattice is beautiful. Did you do that yourself?”
“I had help on the lattice, ma’am.” Stanley, across the table. “The lattice is a team effort at our house.”
“Mm.” My mother, not looking up from the knife. “That’s how it should be.”
Beside me, Aunt Lisa says very dry, very low, “He didn’t bake that pie, sweetheart.”
“No, Aunt Lisa.”
“Mm.” She raises her eyebrows at me. “That’s fine.”
I look at my wine. I have eaten three bites of brisket, half a piece of cornbread, two green beans, and a small forkful of stuffing in ninety minutes, and the wine is landing harder than it has any business landing.
I push my chair back six inches. I fold my napkin and lay it on my plate.
“Mom. I’m going to run up for a minute.”
She looks up from the knife, mid-slice. She sees my face.
“Sure, sweetheart.”
I stand and don’t look at Stanley as I walk out.
I’m halfway down the upstairs hallway before I hear him on the stairs. I don’t turn around. I open my bedroom door and step inside. I cross to my bed and sit down on the edge of it.
There’s a soft knock at my door. “Linwood. Can I come in?”
I look over at him and nod.
He steps in and closes the door behind him with a very careful hand.
I put my face in my hands for one second, then realize what I’m doing. I shake myself from it and lift my head. I glance at him. “I’m fine.”
He doesn’t sit. He crosses to my vanity and leans against it, arms folded, back to the mirror. He looks at me.
“Talk to me.”
His voice is soft, and I let the breath out of me. I don’t know if I want to say it, but it’s all too much in my head right now.
“All I ever wanted was for my father to be proud of me.”
He doesn’t say anything.
I shake my head. “I organized my whole life around becoming the person he might, one day, be proud of.” My voice is even.
That’s the part I can’t stand. How even it sounds when I feel like I’ve completely lost myself.
“And tonight he said it. He said the decisions I’ve made.
And the only reason he said it is because he thinks I’m in love with you.
” I stare at my hands. “And I’m not, so it’s humiliating. ”
“Aspen—”
“It’s humiliating, Stanley.” I look at him.
“I’ve done everything that I could to make him proud, and I couldn’t get it out of him.
And…” I swallow the lump in my throat. “Now I get it because I’m with you?
An Ermington? Like I get it, you’re really good at hockey, but is that seriously all that matters? ”
He uncrosses his arms and says, “No, it’s not all that matters, Linwood. What matters is character, how someone treats you, whether you like them or not––”
“Yeah, well, I don’t like you, Ermington.”
The room falls quiet.
“Are you jealous of me, princess?” he says, probably to ease the tension before I cry. After all, one of his off-page rules was no tears.
I roll my eyes. “Jealous?”
He says, “I can get your dad to stop liking me in about two seconds flat. Say the word and I’ll have it done before they clear dessert.”
“Stanley—”
“Or do you need me to do something genuinely terrible, so you can earn his disapproval back the hard way and feel like a self-made woman again?”
I look at him leaning against my vanity in my father’s shirt with his tie hanging loose around his open collar.
“Or you can trade skins with me, Linwood. And know the weight of the family name on your back.”
It lands heavily on my chest the moment he says it like that. He acts so nonchalant that I didn’t even know it bothered him.
“Tell me which one you want, Linwood.”
I fall back onto my bed and stare up at the ceiling.
“I want to go back in time and let Gavin hit on me at that party.” I fold my fingers together on top of my stomach. “I want to politely decline, and then I want to walk away.”
“Why didn’t you do that?”
“It’s a long story.”
“It was bad,” he says after a moment. “Wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Come on, Aspen.” And there it is — my name, my actual name, in his mouth, with all the clowning gone out of it.
“I’ve known since we were kids that you’ve never liked me.
Tonight it’s very clear that you can’t fucking stand me.
So I’m asking you. What did Gavin do to you, to put you in a position with no way out except grabbing me? ”
I stare at the ceiling.
And all of it comes down on me at once — the wine, my father standing up, the word proud, the cornbread I couldn’t eat, the napkin folded on my plate, the three pies, the lattice, Aunt Lisa’s hand over mine under the table — all of it, at the same time, with nowhere to go.
Two slow tears slide back into my hair. I open my mouth. I close it. I open it again.
“Have you ever been in a situation where you were terrified of what was about to happen to your whole life?”
He doesn’t say anything.
I keep my eyes on the ceiling. “We’d been together for four months. I was late on my period.”
The room holds its breath.
“I took a test on the day I missed my period, and he asked me through the door if I was sure it was his.”
I don’t move.
“The test was negative. I broke up with him that day. I was a week late on my period, so I was never pregnant. It was just late.” I pause.
“He didn’t text me once that week. He never asked if I was okay.
He never said sorry. He didn’t even confirm that I wasn’t –– you know.
He just went on to play in the NHL. Like none of it had happened. ”
I breathe out.
“So when he turned up Saturday and talked to me like nothing had happened between us, like we were just old friends, I panicked. Seeing you felt like a saving grace. I’ve known you forever, and it felt believable, so that’s why I did what I did.”
I’m still staring at the ceiling. I don’t have the courage to look at him. I can feel the temperature of the room change. I can feel Stanley Ermington going perfectly, completely still against my vanity.
I’ve never told anyone that story, never admitted it aloud.
I close my eyes and wait for him to say something.