Chapter 30 #2
“It’s cheap, grocery store shit,” Emily said. “In a few years we’ll take you out and buy you something better.”
“Or… you could take me out now.” Veronica took another sip, then laughed. “I look exactly like Aunt Nora. I could borrow your ID.”
She had clearly already thought this through and had come up with a solid plan. Nora saw a glimmer of Julia in Veronica. The solid-plan part. The breaking-the-law part, not so much.
“Maybe later in the week,” Emily said. “The first night we drink cheap grocery store wine on the back patio and divulge our secrets. It’s a ritual. Nora,” Emily commanded. “You first.”
Nora swallowed a gulp of wine and then sighed. “Fine. I just got offered this amazing show, like a life-changing opportunity I haven’t come close to having since Hera. But…” She paused.
“But?” Emily raised her eyebrow.
“I think I’m gonna turn it down.”
“And why would you do that?” Emily said.
“Because Dev is the male lead.” She gulped down the rest of her wine too fast and it burned the back of her throat.
“So, you’re gonna what? Throw this amazing opportunity away because of some asshole you dated for five minutes? I can’t believe no one has MeToo’ed him by now.”
Nora shook her head, feeling Emily’s words pierce her skin, like tiny little knives.
Each one hurting. Dev wasn’t actually an asshole.
At least not completely. But Nora didn’t say that.
Nora also didn’t want to mention the embarrassing night they’d spent together in 2016, or the fact that she’d since then been carefully following the details of his extremely short marriage and subsequent divorce from Jade.
“I don’t know,” she said instead. “I just don’t think I can work with him. ”
“It would be pretty badass if you did, though,” Veronica chimed in.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.” Emily turned and high-fived her niece.
Nora shook her head. How could she possibly see him every day? Work side by side for hours? Kiss him in the final scene of the first act, eight times a week? “You go,” she said to Emily.
“I don’t want to,” Emily said. Nora was already upset, she didn’t want to make it worse. And besides, Veronica was here. She couldn’t say anything about the letters. And if she said anything about Cara out loud, well, then suddenly it would be real.
“No fair!” Nora exclaimed. “I went first.”
Emily shook her head and gulped her wine. “There’s nothing to tell this year,” she lied.
“I’ll go,” Veronica said. “But don’t tell my mom.”
Nora and Emily exchanged a look that basically said, Well, shit, Julia is really going to murder us now.
Emily was struggling enough trying to figure out how the hell to be a stepparent to two preteen boys.
She definitely could not suddenly take on the responsibility of a teenage-girl secret.
Worst-case scenarios flooded her mind: sex, drugs. Oh God, could she be pregnant?
“I just got off the waitlist at Adley,” Veronica said.
“I’m confused,” Emily said. “Why is that a secret? That sounds like great news!”
“You know my mom,” Veronica said. “She’s married to her stupid plans.
And we have this whole plan already in place.
I’m supposed to go to college thirty minutes away from home, to Maryland.
Adley is a six-hour drive. And they offered me a spot as a spring start, so I’d have a gap semester in the fall.
I wouldn’t even start college until next January. Which has never been the plan!”
“Sweetie.” Nora put her empty wineglass down and leaned over to rub Veronica’s shoulders. “If this is what you want, you have to tell her.”
“But I feel like she’s gonna be really mad about me not starting until January. And she’ll want me to turn it down. She even has this calendar on her desk where she has been marking off ‘months until college’ ever since I started high school.”
Emily laughed into her wine. “That’s the most Julia thing I’ve ever heard.”
Nora shook her head. “Just make her a new calendar and she’ll readjust her plan. She’ll survive it. More than any plan, your mom wants you to be happy.”
But Veronica frowned, like maybe she wasn’t sure. And then she quickly finished off her glass of wine.
“Nora’s right,” Emily said. “I’ve been fucking with your mom’s plans for over forty years. She always gets over it.”
“It is my dream school,” Veronica said. “You really think she’ll understand?”
Nora and Emily exchanged a brief sisterly look, wherein they both communicated their tacit understanding as to how much this was going to freak Julia out. But then they both turned to Veronica, smiled, and said, “Yes.”
That week, they checked things off Julia’s schedule one by one: walks on the beach, breakfast at the Del, dinner at the Brigantine.
A crab roast with Nate and Mallory. The ferry downtown to shop.
The zoo. Buying romance novels at Bay Books, and celebrity magazines at Walgreens, and then reading on the beach and gossiping over the glossy pictures of Meghan and Harry’s wedding inside the pages.
By the end of the week, Veronica still hadn’t told Julia about her change of college plans. Nora still hadn’t found the courage to call Stella and tell her what she’d decided about starring opposite Dev. And Emily and Cara had exchanged exactly five texts.
On their last night, after they got back from their dinner at the boathouse, Julia went up to bed, and Emily and Nora decided to walk to the Irish pub for one last drink. Veronica begged her aunts to bring her along.
Nora opened her wallet, pulled out her license, slipped it into Veronica’s hand. “One drink,” she whispered. “And if you get caught, I say you stole this.”
“Because she really looks almost forty.” Emily rolled her eyes.
“Well, I don’t look almost forty either!” Nora insisted, shaking her curls against her back as all three of them walked outside into the cool night.
Emily choked back a laugh as her phone buzzed in her pocket. She told herself she wouldn’t check it. She shouldn’t.
And then the three of them headed up Isabella to Orange and took a table on the large outside patio at the Irish pub.
The Padres-Dodgers game was playing up on the big TVs in front of them, and as Emily sipped her glass of wine, she pulled her phone out, just to check what the buzz had been: I hate knowing you’re so close right now and I can’t see you.
Emily shoved her phone in her pocket and quickly ordered another glass of wine, while Nora and Veronica followed suit.
Later, Nora had lost count of how many glasses of wine she (and Veronica and Emily) had had.
Later, Nora would barely remember what they talked about while they drank, or how it made her giggle when everyone on the patio cheered after the Padres won, or even the fact that Emily kept checking her phone.
Later, Nora would barely remember most of this night, except for how it would end.
Nora was finally drunk enough to feel light. Untethered.
When the bar closed down after midnight, Emily ordered them an Uber, because walking all the way back to Ocean Boulevard felt too arduous a task with bodies that light. The three of them tumbled into the back seat, Nora and Veronica both giggling for most of the five-minute ride.
Then, as Emily helped Veronica out of the car on Ocean Boulevard, up the walk to the house, Nora turned toward next door, where Nate was sitting out on his own porch, drinking what looked like an extremely late-night whiskey.
Emily checked her phone again once she was back alone in her bedroom. I took the ferry to Coronado after the game, Cara texted. I’m at the ferry landing right now. Where are you in Coronado exactly?
If she hadn’t drunk so much, she never would’ve done what she did next, which was to text Cara the address of the house on Ocean Boulevard.
She never would’ve walked back down the stairs, grabbed a bottle of wine from the fridge, walked back outside, crossed the street, and waited for Cara on the beach. She never would’ve sat in the sand and talked and drank wine with Cara all night, until the sun rose the next morning.
She never would’ve hugged her goodbye either. Or held on tightly as Cara whispered in her ear: “I hope I see you again soon.”
But what she couldn’t quite explain, when Cee would read all her texts six months later, was exactly why she’d texted Cara the next evening once she got home to Florida, once she was long sober: It was so great to see you. I hope I see you again soon too.
After she got out of the Uber, instead of walking into the house behind Emily and Veronica, Nora wobbled up the front path to Nate’s porch.
“Oooh,” Nora exclaimed loudly, pointing to Nate’s whiskey. “I want one!”
Nate let out a dry laugh. “Noradora, you look like you’ve already had enough.”
“I haven’t, Nate.” She held up her hand. “I solemnly swear.”
But somehow holding up her whole hand caused her to lose her balance, and next thing she knew, she was tumbling, straight into Nate’s lap. He put his arms around her, trying to steady her. Then he patted her thigh gently. “Come on, I’ll help you get back next door. Why don’t you stand up slowly.”
“What if I don’t want to,” she protested, wrapping her arms around his neck instead. “You know I was in love with you forever,” she blurted out. “Until I met Dev. But Emily said he’s an asshole.”
Nate let out an uncomfortable laugh. “Come on, Nora,” he said, gently tugging at her arms, but she continued to hold on tight. “You’ll thank me in the morning if you let me help you walk home.”
“Or,” Nora said, still refusing to let go of him, pulling her body in closer to his. “You could let me stay right here with you, like I did when Mal was a baby.”
Nate bit his bottom lip, and Nora suddenly remembered all the years in her late teens and early twenties she’d wanted him, she’d loved him.
Everything had been perfectly platonic when she’d stayed here years ago, when Mal was a baby, of course.
Nate always kept her at arm’s length. And Nora hadn’t ever been brave enough to push.
But now, all these years later… now that she was this light, the only thought she had was how sexy he still looked, even in his forties, a single dad.
He was definitely a hot dad. Was there such a thing as a dilf or did she just invent it right now?
Because that’s exactly what Nate was. She lifted her forefinger and traced his bottom lip with it slowly.
“Nora.” She felt the warmth of his breath on her finger as he spoke her name. She couldn’t tell if his voice was imbued with annoyance or desire.
“Yes, Nate?” she said.
“You’re really drunk.”
Even in her really drunk state, that much registered to her as true. And she nodded.
But then she leaned in closer and put her lips on his, like she had wanted to do so many times in her life. Sixteen-year-old Nora, twenty-six-year-old Nora had never been brave enough to do it. But thirty-nine-year-old Nora? She finally, actually kissed him!
He tasted like whiskey and his lips were just as warm, as soft as she had once imagined they would be.
But they didn’t feel at all electric, like Dev’s.
They just felt… comfortable. Nate was a warm woolen coat, a cup of hot chocolate on a snowy day.
God, she could really use some hot chocolate to sober up right now—
Nora suddenly heard a small, high-pitched noise. A bird sound she didn’t quite recognize. Dammit, this was the moment Grandma Vera had chosen to come watch over her?
Then Nate pushed her back and she tumbled a little, landing softly on the porch, her hand hitting a flip-flopped foot with a perfect rose-colored pedicure.
Julia?
“How could you, Nora?” Julia was saying. But the words felt as if they were buzzing straight through her head, in one ear, out the other. Julia was close but her voice felt so far away.
Nora wanted to explain about the kiss, that she hadn’t really meant it. She had just been light enough to try it after all this time. That she at least owed that much to teenage Nora. But suddenly, she couldn’t remember how to string a coherent thought into words.
“She’s seventeen!” Julia yelled at her. “I should call the police right now and have you arrested.”
Nora shook her head. Nope. Nora was almost forty. She wasn’t the baby anymore. She and Nate were both adults now.
Nate stood, lifted Nora by the elbows gently, and was trying to ease her body up to stand. “Come on, no one’s calling the police. I’ll help you next door. And hopefully you’ll forget all this in the morning.”
“Well, you know who is never going to forget this?” Julia yelled. “Me!”
And then Nora noticed Julia was waving her license in the air. Nora held out her hand to take it back, but Julia threw it down and then stomped back across the yard.
Unfortunately, that was the first thing Nora remembered when she woke up the next morning with a screaming headache, having both slept through her alarm and missed her flight.
Julia, Veronica, and Emily were gone. The house was empty. All that was left behind was Julia’s annual reminder note about running all the bedding through the wash for the next renters.
All that replayed in Nora’s head, again and again, was that stupid kiss. And Julia yelling that she was never going to forget it.