Chapter 40
Emma
My heart has turned into an antelope and it is trying very hard to escape my chest.
Hitting the elk was fine.
I mean, not fine, but as fine as a minor accident involving a major animal can be.
Staring down Chandler was even fine enough. I’ve mostly tolerated him with bland kindness to his face since I broke up with him. It’s remarkable what a little apathy can do to his ego.
But walking into Begonia and Hayes’s house, knowing that Jonas’s mother, the formidable Giovanna Rutherford, is lurking somewhere beyond the cozy foyer?
Nope.
Nope nope nope.
Not fine.
The past few weeks, I’ve mentally split Jonas in my head between the Jonas I know, the man I met in Fiji and the man who’s reappeared here, and the man the world knows as a celebrity.
Here, he’s just a kind, happy, dependable, sexy man. While I’ve acknowledged that he comes with a public lifestyle, I’ve blocked those parts of him at a basic personality level.
Even when he showed up at Laney and Theo’s wedding, he wasn’t a celebrity to me. He was a normal man that I slept with once who abandoned me. It’s like, knowing the world knows who he is and him behaving like he knows that he’s world-famous are two different things.
But tonight?
Tonight I feel like I’m on the arm of the very most famous celebrity in the entire world, and I’m too small-town, too unworldly, too unsophisticated to be with him.
Even Begonia’s tight hug and warm, “Emma! I’m so glad you’re here,” isn’t enough to calm my nerves about the fact that I’m with a movie star and I’m about to meet his mother.
She and Jonas are the public faces of their family. His father occasionally does interviews about business topics, but for appearances, it’s Jonas and his mother.
And she’s Bash’s grandma.
“Maw-mawa!” Bash yells. He wriggles out of my arms and takes off as he spots the Shiloh Shepherd poking his head out of the living room.
Marshmallow barks once in greeting, then trots toward the kitchen, Bash trailing behind him.
“The doors are all locked and Marshmallow-proofed,” Begonia says. “We put those flippy thingies at the top, too high for either of them to reach. They’re not getting out.”
“Thank you.”
“After the stories I’ve heard about how Hayes and Jonas both escaped their parents’ watchful eyes as children, I assume it’s likely in his nature to be part Houdini.”
Jonas hugs her too. “This is why you’re my favorite,” he murmurs.
“I know,” she replies, but it’s drowned out by a tornado of a woman pushing into the foyer too.
“And what am I, chopped liver?” Keisha Kourtney, the freaking pop star , says.
She’s about as tall as Sabrina, but where Sabrina has curves, Keisha is stick thin. Her brown skin is glowing, probably because her eyes can’t contain all of her mischief, and her short, straight hair is neon green.
The last picture I saw of her, it was maroon.
“Apologies for not warning you. She just arrived,” Hayes says as he, too, joins us in the foyer.
Also, he doesn’t look the least bit sorry.
Keisha gives Jonas the shortest hug in the history of human hugs, then attaches to me, her head resting between my boobs just like Sabrina’s does.
I have a literal pop star’s head between my boobs.
“Oh my god, you’re Emma . It is the pleasure of my life to meet you.
I expect to see your little boy riding Marshmallow before you leave today, and if I don’t, I’m totally teaching him.
” She pulls back, winks at me, and drops her voice to a whisper.
“I’m on your side and I can hang out after Hayes and B leave. Aunt Giovanna doesn’t stand a chance.”
“I can hear you,” the matriarch of the Rutherford family says.
This foyer is getting entirely too crowded.
And I’m sweating.
My armpits are perspiring, and it will be approximately half a second before they sweat enough that the entire foyer can smell my armpit sweat.
This daydream that I can love my friend Jonas will come to an end as it’s determined that I’m not bright enough to use deodorant and therefore not refined enough to exist in the same world as these people.
And refined is not a word I use lightly.
Or frequently.
Or possibly ever before in my life.
But the size-two woman with a silver bob, on-point makeup, and ivory pantsuit that slays today and will slay for centuries to come is sophistication incarnate.
She’s about my height, but her impeccable posture makes her seem taller.
“Are we having a dinner party in a room built for two?” she says. “Or are all of you going to let our guests into the rest of the house?”
Has she seen Bash? Did he pass her on his way to wherever he and Marshmallow are playing?
Has she passed judgment on both of us already?
I know Jonas said he’d take my side if it came down to it, but I get the impression he respects his mother. Loves her, actually. And I don’t want to be the reason he severs an important relationship in his life.
“We’re playing clown car in the foyer,” Begonia says.
“And B counts for three,” Keisha says, “so I think that’s…
not as many as we need to break a record.
Dammit . Hayes, call the chef and your security team.
Where’s my security team? Why didn’t I bring Millie?
Oh, right. Elevation sickness. She’s getting here slower.
Emma. I heard you know the owners of Toothy Bee Booch. Is that true?”
“Security,” I blurt and look at Hayes. “Don’t let Robert quit. And don’t fire him. Please. The elk wasn’t his fault. That happens on that curve all the time.”
“Robert won’t get fired,” Begonia assures me while Jonas attempts to nudge us deeper into the house. “He’s one of my two favorites.”
“He would’ve had to intentionally murder you, and even then, if it was justified…” Hayes agrees as he also encourages the party to make its way into the formal living room.
The one with the view that I still miss from my old house.
“He’d get fired if he murdered you,” Jonas assures me.
“Possibly,” his mother agrees. She’s waiting just beyond the foyer. “Or possibly not. Emma. Lovely to meet you. I’m Giovanna.”
And this is it.
This is the moment when I find out if lovely to meet you secretly means I look forward to slowly poisoning you so that I can rid my family of the most awkward new part of it .
I take her offered hand and shake, reminding myself not to pull a Theo and grip too hard. He’s somehow mastered the art of gripping too hard while not gripping so hard that you think it’s on purpose. It’s both annoying and inspiring in the moments of my life when I wish I understood how he does it.
“Hi. Begonia’s told me all about you.”
Her lips wobble.
I swear they do.
Jonas, though—he outright laughs.
And then he does the very last thing I’d expect, and he pats my ass.
Right there.
In front of his mother.
“And doesn’t that say all there is to say?” he says to her.
“You’ve often been my favorite son, but you may not stay my favorite for long,” she replies.
But where I expect daggers and brimstone, she’s…amused?
“Not his fault he can’t be as fab as me,” Keisha says. “Also, whatever B didn’t tell her about you, I will happily fill in the blanks.”
Jonas moves his hand to the small of my back and steers me around his mom. He pauses long enough to greet her with a hug and a peck to the cheek, but then he’s directing me into the living room and to a seat with a view of the mountains.
Keisha and Giovanna follow.
And then comes Bash with something red all over his face, shirt, and hands.
And Marshmallow.
Who’s carrying a carton of strawberries that look like they came from the farmers market downtown yesterday.
“Mama!” Bash shrieks as he hurtles himself at me. “Maw-mawa get me teets !”
“Strawberry treats?” I guess as I catch him, holding him just right to keep the red bits coating him from getting onto my dress too.
I reach for the diaper bag, but Jonas is already handing me a wet wipe from inside.
“Sa-bewwy teets!” Bash agrees. “Go-na wan sa-bewwy teets?”
Begonia shakes her head. “I had three earlier, and it filled—oh. Yes. Thank you, Marshmallow.”
“Me and Maw-mawa fends,” Bash says.
“You and Marshmallow are good friends,” I agree.
“He really does look just like him,” Keisha whispers. “I thought you were exaggerating.”
“I’m old, but I’m not losing my ability to accurately see family resemblances,” Hayes murmurs back to her.
“You are not old,” Begonia says.
“How old are you, Bash?” Giovanna asks.
Bash freezes.
Turns.
Looks at her.
And then he cuddles closer into me, completely forgetting about his best friends Marshmallow and Begonia. “Mama?” he whispers. “Dicka bish?”
I gulp.
And not because I know that might sound like this a bitch?
More because I know what he’s actually saying.
Wicked Witch?
Okay. Close enough.
“Yes,” I manage to force out, “we got the chickens clean dishes before we left.”
“No, Mama, dicka bish ,” he says.
Keisha chokes on air.
Hayes grabs a book and buries his face in it.
Begonia’s doing math in the air like she’s trying to translate Bash-speak.
Jonas has gone completely blank-faced.
And Giovanna—technically my son’s grandmother, the woman who could disinherit Jonas with a flick of her wrist, who is widely regarded as the force behind the entertainment industry’s most influential family—smiles.
Smiles .
“He has quite the vocabulary, doesn’t he?”
“He probably won’t potty train until he’s seventeen but he’ll be reciting Shakespeare at four,” I blurt in response.
“Very perceptive too,” she says. “I’ve definitely been called worse.”
“That’s how he says wicked witch ,” I whisper.
“I’m telling you, Giovanna, you need to let your hair grow out,” Begonia says. “I know everyone thought it was funny how much the witch in last year’s Halloween movie looked like you, but you truly do scare small children. Oh! You could color it. You’d look fabulous in pink.”
“Or lavender ,” Keisha says. “Aunt G, you’d be so hot in lavender. Like, good thing you’re through menopause because these boys don’t need new siblings kind of hot.”
“Even Jonas didn’t do Shakespeare at four,” Hayes says dryly over his book, clearly done with thinking about his mother being hot.
I want to sink through this couch and never, ever, ever come back up.
But Jonas is silently shaking next to me, and I’m nearly certain he’s laughing.
I slide a quick look, and—yep.
The man is about to lose his shit with complete and absolute amusement.
He slips an arm behind me and squeezes my waist.
“Although he was almost five before he was potty-trained,” Giovanna muses.
“I had more important things to do,” Jonas says.
“And here we go.” Hayes sighs, but he, too, seems amused.
Jonas smiles bigger. “Like learning to run fast.”
“Mama, dicka bish,” Bash whispers again.
“Sometimes we have to give people a chance to prove our first impressions are wrong,” I whisper back.
He stares at me.
That’s probably a lesson too far above his cognitive skills right now.
“Do you think Marshmallow can find Mama a drink?” I ask.
He slips out of my grasp and runs to the dog, who keeps nudging the carton of strawberries closer to Hayes while Hayes occasionally reaches into the carton.
And I watch Giovanna watching him.
And as I take in the way her expression softens, and how her eyes even go a little shiny, I start to breathe.
Fully breathe.
She’s seeing her grandson for the first time.
And I don’t think she wants it to be the last.