Chapter 19
Graham
“Bronte told me to ask if you wanted to meet us for a walk sometime,” I texted Lior the evening I got back from Seattle.
I then immediately wondered if I could unsend it. Was she even home yet? Would she even want to? But I realized if she’d seen it, and was thinking about it, it would be embarrassing to then unsend. And I didn’t want to be embarrassing.
“I suppose I could tell her I meant to send it to someone else,” I said to Bronte, who stared up at me from her bed next to mine and gave two thumps of her tail.
“It’s a bad idea, right? I should not engage.
We could be friends though. Who doesn’t want a supermodel for a bestie?
All that free fashion advice and birthday gifts from Prada? ”
My text alert went off.
“Please tell her I’d be honored,” Lior said. “Tomorrow too soon?”
We agreed on a time and then I sent her a landmark for a meeting spot, set my phone face down on my bedside table, and turned out the light.
“Fuck,” I whispered in the dark. “What am I doing?”
Bronte’s tail thumped twice on her bed beside mine.
I woke in the morning after spending half the night going over everything I knew about Lior from the internet, and that which I knew from our in-person encounters.
Every word, every look, every joke, every smile.
Every on purpose and accidental touch. Every sweet moment with my sister this past weekend in Seattle.
Maybe the drama of her life didn’t actually matter? Maybe I could handle it after all?
“And the constant barrage of strangers feeling they have the right to do whatever they want because she’s in the public eye?” I’d thought. “No thanks.”
While I definitely felt empathy for her, having been faced with that kind of attention myself when I was on book tours and having been married to Nadia, that part of her life repelled me.
I was glad to see she was not enamored by it, and that she actually seemed to hate it, but it didn’t change the fact that it existed. And probably always would.
“So why did I ask her to walk with us?” I moaned loudly as I lay in bed this morning, the sun peeking through the blinds.
I rolled over and gazed at Bronte.
“I even used to you to lure her in,” I said. “What a cad! Forgive me?”
She stared up at me with her big brown eyes and I reached out to give her a pet before rolling onto my back again and resuming my emotional self-flagellation.
I was sure it wasn’t a big deal. Positive she wouldn’t think it wasn’t anything more than what it was – a walk. But even I wasn’t buying that. There had been something between us the other night at the bar. An electricity. A tension.
Of course, we’d also been drinking. But then there had been our little tour of the U District in Seattle, our eyes meeting time and time again over Marley’s head.
Fucking hell. I just needed to get laid. That’s all this was.
Except… was it all this was? Was I making something out of nothing? It had certainly been a while. Maybe I needed to let Fran set me up again.
“For fuck’s sake,” I said to the ceiling. “I am a glutton for punishment, aren’t I.”
I knew this wasn’t just about sex though. True, it had been months since I’d had any, but the women I’d been set up with or had met on my own in the park, in bookstores, and at bars, had done nothing for me. There was no spark. No visceral or romantic need.
But with Lior…
I pulled the pillow from behind my head and pressed it to my face, letting out a groan of frustration before tossing it to the foot of the bed and getting up and heading to the bathroom for a shower.
I had two hours before I was to meet her at our agreed upon meeting place and I was in desperate need of three things: coffee, a shower, and some self-gratification.
Fresh from the shower, I stood at the espresso machine watching Bronte nose at her food while I foamed the milk for my cappuccino.
We had an hour now before we had to leave to meet Lior.
A little tremor of anticipation eked up my spine.
I shook it off, poured the milk in my cup, and was about to take a seat at the kitchen table when someone knocked on the front door.
I glanced down at Bronte, but she had moved to her bed and hadn’t seemed to notice.
Running a hand through my damp hair, I loped down the hall to the entryway, wondering if I’d forgotten I’d ordered something, and opened the door with an expectant smile.
“Grammy!” exclaimed a voice, as two spindly tan arms wrapped around my neck.
I tried not to choke on the tsunami of perfume that overtook me, nor at the panic of realizing it was the familiar ‘Dirty Violet’, a lovely scent when worn as intended, rather having been bathed in.
Nadia.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, untangling myself and not even pretending a little bit to be happy to see her.
She brushed past me into the house, a whirlwind of movement and noise.
Somehow I’d forgotten how heavily she walked for such a small human.
How she picked things up, studied them, and then slammed them back down.
She’d set my nerves alight a dozen time a day when she’d lived here – slamming doors, toilet seats, plates.
For such a diminutive person, she was chaos personified.
She stopped and stared at the living room, wrinkling her nose when she caught sight of Bronte’s new blue bed in front of the tacky white patent leather sofa she’d picked out.
“I’m in town for a bit and my hotel has the worst lighting. I knew you’d be home. You never leave. I need to do a promo spot for a new lipstick.” She spun and gave me her signature pout. “What do you think?”
“I don’t.”
She rolled her eyes and took a step toward the stairs.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“To my office. It has the best natural lighting. It’ll be perfect.”
“It’s not your office anymore.”
She gave me one of her overdramatic sighs, her entire body lifting and falling.
“Don’t be a baby, Graham. Just because we broke up doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.”
“We didn’t just break up. We got divorced. And I don’t want to be friends with the woman who cheated on me.”
She started to slink toward me but when I took a step back she stopped.
“Fine,” she said. “Whatever. I just need the room for a few minutes.”
“Your new boyfriend can’t get you a better hotel room to shoot in?”
Her bright demeanor faltered for a moment before she righted the ship and slid her smile back in place.
“We’re having a few issues at the moment.
Nothing that can’t be worked out as soon as he stops pouting,” she said, smoothing the skirt of what looked to be some sort of outlandish tennis outfit.
She was always repurposing clothing. It was part of what had made her so popular on social media.
“He’s back in L.A. I had to come out here for another client.
” She took a step in my direction again.
“Actually, if you want, we could go get dinner tonight. It’s my only night free. ”
I stared at her, wondering what was wrong with her that she would actually think I’d be interested in sharing a meal with her after I’d just told her point blank that I didn’t want to be friends.
“Nah, I’m good. Me and B have a hot date tonight,” I said, stepping around her as I headed for the kitchen. “You know where your office used to be. Please be quick. I need to leave soon.”
I heard her stomp up the staircase and then the clatter of her moving furniture around, the walls and ceiling shuddering.
“Christ,” I said to Bronte. “She’s a goddamn cyclone.”
I had hoped to get in a few minutes of work before I left, but I was on edge now, the appearance of Nadia putting a pall over the atmosphere of the house, my anxiety level somewhere around my ears.
I reached under the table and gave Bronte a pet, taking deep breaths and checking the time.
I’d give her three more minutes and then I was going up.
I found Nadia sitting in her old office chair, which she’d unearthed from the pile of taupe throw blankets and set in front of the window. Leaning in the doorway, I watched as she didn’t even pause her video at my appearance in the background. She just kept talking, preening, selling.
When she was done, she clicked the stop button with one of her cream-painted talons and spun to face me.
“You gonna reshoot that?” I asked.
“Nah. It was a perfect take. I’ll just edit you out.”
“Great. I have to go so… you have to go.”
She hopped out of the chair and strode toward me. Slowing as she passed me, she reached up and put a hand on my arm.
“You look good,” she said, her voice lowered. “Sure you have to go? I have a few minutes. We could…” Her eyes moved to the staircase leading to the master bedroom.
“Jesus. What?” I said, backing away from her. “I definitely have to go.” I gestured to the staircase leading to the downstairs. “After you.”
Her laugh echoed off the walls as she headed to the lower floor. “You were always such a prude, Graham. Have a little fun once in a while!”
“Don’t you have a serious boyfriend?”
“Yep,” she said, turning to face me in the bright entryway of my home that she’d ruined. “And having a little extracurricular action on the side is what makes our relationship more fun.”
“Does he know that?”
But she didn’t answer. At that moment both of our phones chirped with alerts. I pulled mine from my pocket a second after she swiped a manicured finger across the face of hers. I was still trying to make sense of what I was reading when she exclaimed and held up her phone toward me.
“You’re dating Lior Flynn?” she asked, her baby blues wide with shock.
I was actually more surprised by her shock than by the picture of me, Lior, and Marley none of us had noticed being taken when we were at lunch.
But little shocked Nadia. One of her best traits (her only one?) was that she took everything in stride, always able to spin something bad into something less bad and even great.
As I was about to answer her, more or less, three things happened in quick succession. First my text alert went off. Lior.
“I’m here!” she said, including a picture of the flower shop on the corner we’d agreed to meet at.
Then Nadia screamed because Bronte, who’d entered the foyer without me seeing, had peed on the floor… and also Nadia’s shoe. Which caused the beautiful chaos demon to jump into me, loosening my grip on my phone, which then landed in the puddle of urine.
Fuck.
Ignoring Nadia’s shrieks of outrage and disgust, I calmly led Bronte to the back door and let her outside.
“I know you just went,” I told her. “I’m just trying to spare you from that.” I pointed in the direction of my ex. “I’ll be back soon.”
I shut the door, took a breath, and headed back to where Nadia had left her one soiled shoe in the puddle, the other kicked toward the corner of the entryway.
“I’m taking a shower,” she shouted from the second story.
“What? No! Goddammit, I have to go!” But the water was already running. And by the sound of it, she was in my bathroom rather than the second-floor guest bathroom. Because of course.
Fuming, I stared down at my phone resting in a puddle of Bronte’s pee. She had never gone in the house before and I wondered if she’d done it out of fear of Nadia, or on purpose because she hated her. I wanted to believe it was the latter.
The issue now was that I couldn’t text Lior back. Because, much as I loved my dog, her pee was not so precious that I was willing to put my hands in it just to save a phone. I’d have to run out and get a new one as soon as Nadia got out of my damn shower.
The phone went off again with another text alert. I leaned over and looked at the screen.
“You still coming?”
Lior.
Shit.
With a long sigh, I picked my phone up out of the puddle just as the screen blurred and then went blank. Awesome. Suddenly very tired, I set the phone on the side of the sink, washed my hands, and sat down at the kitchen table.
Nadia appeared in my kitchen nearly an hour later with damp hair and wearing the same jeans she’d had on, but with one of my t-shirts, which she was practically drowning in.
“I don’t recall B peeing on your shirt,” I said.
“It got wet when I turned on the shower.”
“How?”
She shrugged and I exhaled slowly, silently counting to ten.
“Are you leaving now?” I asked.
“I am.”
I got to my feet.
“So are you going to tell me about you and Lior Flynn?” she asked as we headed to the front door.
“I am not.”
“I’ve met her before, you know.”
“That’s great.”
“I can’t believe you’re not having a fit about Marley being photographed.”
She was leaning against the wall, still as pretty as ever on the outside. But I’d seen her for who she was, and all the outward beauty in the world couldn’t make up for the ugly that was inside her.
“I really have to get going,” I said, ushering her toward the front door. “I’ll have your shoe cleaned and sent to you.”
She stopped and waited for me to open the door for her. She was holding the clean shoe in her hand.
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll just buy a new pair.”
“Super. I’m assuming you have a ride?” I asked.
She pointed to the black sedan waiting by the curb.
“Cool. See ya.”
But rather than hurry off, she lingered on the front porch and then seemingly accidentally dropped the shoe.
Being the gentleman I’d been trained to be, I stepped outside, picked it up, and held it out to her.
She smiled coyly and moved in close, her fingers overlapping mine as she took it and looked up at me.
Before I had a chance to move away, I heard the click of a camera nearby.