Chapter Twenty-Five Maddie
Chapter Twenty-Five
Maddie
Junie: Happy Halloween!
Maddie: It’s the sluttiest day of the year! I saw you in your cat ears when I was walking over to Salih. So cute! I’m sorry I couldn’t make it in time for coffee this morning. Got caught up with my boss.
Junie: You mean Professor Bram Loe, who was ranked as Mount Astra’s third most eligible bachelor in last spring’s quarterly release of the Astra?
Maddie: Is that a real thing? I cannot wait to constantly refer to him as Bachelor #3. Do you know who took spots two and one?
Junie: I think—despite not even LIVING in Mount Astra—Leo Saint James bought his way to number one* and number two was John Stickney, the carpet king of Terrell County.* Anyway, big plans for Halloween?
Maddie: Nah. Just taking the twins trick-or-treating and then prepping for my lectures next week. What about you?
Junie: Would it surprise you if I said I haven’t dressed up for Halloween since I dressed as Joan of Arc in high school and then was relentlessly made fun of because, I guess, my costume didn’t lend itself to enough lingerie?
Maddie: Am I a bad friend if I say no?
Junie: No, no, you’re not a bad friend. It was all very on-brand for me. Well, I might have woken up this morning and chosen violence when I bought two wristbands for the Terrifyingly Tipsy Bar Crawl along the Snake Pit near campus?
Maddie: JUNIE. ELLIS. Are you getting drunk tonight?
Junie: Um. Not if I have to do it alone.
Maddie: Say no more.
Junie: Would you be interested in a slightly scandalous couples costume?
Maddie: Would I be interested in stumbling up and down a row of college bars with our barely covered asses on display on this chilly fall day with you? Yes. Yes, I would. It’s time for you to reclaim Halloween, my friend.
IF I COULDN’T tell Berry and Letty apart before today, then Halloween would be the ultimate test of their individuality.
Letty is dressed as a miniature Chappell Roan with a huge red wig and blue eyeshadow that I watched her diligently apply as she stood on the counter of Bram’s bathroom sink, because the only way to achieve her look was to have her nose pressed to the mirror.
As someone who values a strong wing eyeliner, I cannot agree more.
And Berry—sweet Berry—is dressed as an ant.
A fuzzy and startlingly accurate ant. Specifically, a sugar ant.
Since he was out of commission at a seminar last weekend—something about butterfly perverts—Bram and I spent the last four nights working on her costume until the wee hours of the morning and finally, today at breakfast, she deemed it a success.
“Did kids always go trick-or-treating this early in the day?” Joey asks as his wife—Riley—and Fern walk ahead of us and he pushes the stroller with his two toddlers, who are both dressed as little trees.
Riley is dressed as Bob Ross, their oldest is dressed as a paintbrush, and Joey is a giant easel.
The costume is incredibly unwieldy, and I think it might be some sort of punishment on Riley’s part.
“When we were kids, we went trick-or-treating after dark and took our candy to be x-rayed for razor blades,” says Bram, who is dressed exactly as he always is but with the insistence that today he is the Brawny paper towel man.
Hester Prynne’s leash dangles from his fingers as the dog walks unusually slowly as though the foam shark fin strapped to her back has somehow interfered with her legs.
I was unprepared, so the twins took to their dress-up wardrobe, and I am currently wearing a unicorn horn and have a red lightsaber tucked into the sash of my jumpsuit.
“What exactly are you supposed to be?” Joey asks. “There’s a vision here. I’m just not seeing it.”
I shrug. “A Force-sensitive unicorn?”
Beside me, Letty stomps her foot. “You are not a unicorn!”
Berry nods as she hands her bucket to Bram to carry. “She’s right. You’re a narwhal.”
Bram grins, nearly laughing at an outraged Letty. “Clearly a narwhal.”
Letty nods and then passes along her candy bucket to Bram as well, and the twins race off to Fern, who announced earlier this week that she is too old to dress up.
I watched Bram nod and attempt a smile as his heart broke in real time when she told us.
He was a little too pleased when she walked downstairs before we left this evening in a slouchy red sweatshirt with tiny little devil horns clipped into her hair.
When we both stared at her, she just rolled her eyes, a coy little smile curling along her lips, and said, “What?”
Bram’s neighborhood is the kind of place you see in movies.
The streets are shut down from nonresidential traffic and kids run freely up and down and across the neighborhood without having to pay too much mind to cars.
Parents are at ease, and while I always loved Halloween growing up, it is nothing like the street I grew up on, where nearly every porch was dark.
Mom always drove us to one of the richer neighborhoods or over to the Lieberman house, where we would join forces with Nolan’s best friend’s very large and very extended family as they prowled the streets of their HOA-controlled neighborhood.
As we turn the corner, Bram and Joey are intercepted by some other dads who they seem to know from high school, and I continue on, following behind the twins, who are now safely sandwiched directly in between me and then Riley and Fern.
I love watching them huddle together as they line up to approach a house. Both of them—even outspoken Letty—feeling clearly shy, but finding confidence in each other.
“What the fuck kind of AI-conceived Halloween costume is that?”
The voice on the other end of the scathingly good burn is Veronica Balentine in a historically accurate aubergine Edwardian gown with a matching feather hat and umbrella.
“Veronica? Are you— Do you even have a family? I thought you just pulled your body up to an electric car charger every night and then woke up the next morning fully charged and ready to take someone’s money.”
She laughs, like she is actually delighted by my admittedly rude question.
“You will be surprised to know that you do not need a family to celebrate Halloween, but since you’ve asked, yes, I do.
” She says it in a hushed tone, like she is not actually comfortable with anyone knowing any sort of concrete information about her outside of her life as a hired political gun.
“Mommy! That house had the big candy bars!” A young boy slightly older than Berry and Letty storms Veronica at the knees.
He’s dressed as . . . a Victorian urchin turned thief, perhaps?
I can’t tell between his cable knit sweater and the too big watch on his wrist, so rather than guess at what he might be and dash his little Halloween dreams, I simply smile and wave as he becomes suddenly shy when he realizes that there is a stranger in his midst.
“Paxton, this is Mommy’s friend Maddie,” Veronica tells him in an uncharacteristically soothing voice.
My jaw drops for just a second before I recover. “Nice to meet you, Paxton.”
“Come on, Pax,” another woman says as she strolls up behind Veronica wearing an absolutely dashing Edwardian tuxedo with tails. She pushes a stroller with a very chill cat inside who seems in no way troubled by the red wig and red-and-black satin and lace dress she has been dressed up in.
The woman nods to me, her hair slicked back into a low bun, and guides the boy to the next house while Veronica turns back to me.
She sighs. “Pax developed an obsession with both Twister and Titanic this summer but the cow costumes were on back order, so my wife, Holly, handmade that Rose costume for Giovani.”
“The cat’s name is Giovani?”
She doesn’t even entertain my question. “And she had luck sourcing the rest of the costumes from a rental shop in Kansas City.”
“Titanic is an interesting obsession for a kid Paxton’s age.”
“Well, he requested to see some of his namesake’s films.”
“You named your kid after Bill Paxton?”
Her expression is unflinching as I piece together that she is dressed as the Unsinkable Molly Brown and that her wife is dressed as Billy Zane. Amazing.
“Bill Paxton is an American treasure. He did for nineties movies what Churchill did for morale during the Blitz . . . and for whisky and soda as a breakfast-appropriate beverage.”
“It’s nice to see that you are an actual human,” I tell her. “A family man, even.”
Her eyes dart to her left and then her right before she takes me by the elbow and steers me across the street behind a tree.
“Ah, there she is,” I say. “That’s the clandestine Veronica Balentine I know and love.”
She pops her umbrella open and uses it to shield us from any remaining view. “Speaking of family men. Please tell me that you were just coincidentally walking alongside Dr. Bram Loe just now and that you do not actually have any connection to that eco-saboteur.”
“Bram?” I ask. “He teaches about moss at the university and has a pet frog named Porcupine.”
Her eyes widen. “Fucking hell, Maddie. Are you screwing him?”
My cheeks immediately burn red, and I’m thankful for the heavily shaded street shielding the sun as it dips lower and lower. “What? No. He’s my boss. Of course not.”
“Your boss?” she nearly shouts, then drops to a whisper. “That man is who you are nannying for? Do you have any clue whose roof you’re working under?”
“And living,” I add. “Technically, I’m a live-in nanny.” And a world-class good girl with a whole host of kinks I’m only just now discovering, thanks to said boss.
“Quit,” she demands. “Now.”
My head is shaking, and I’m telling her no before I can even consider what it might mean to tell Veronica Balentine no. “I just told him I’d stay on for a few more weeks. His ex-wife comes back at the end of next month and then I’m gone. It’ll be like it never happened.”
“Oh god,” she says. “Stay even further away from Sara. Trust me when I say that their divorce was a national holiday in the natural gas industry.”
“What the hell are you even talking about?”
“That man,” she says, pointing through her umbrella to the general direction where I left Bram, “is responsible for some of the most costly corporate property damage, vandalism, and data leaks in the last twenty years, all because he wanted to save the fucking trees or something.”
The thought of Bram—responsible, level-headed, even-tempered Bram—being a very bad, bad boy is making me way hornier than it should. And I doubt that was Veronica’s intention.
“What does that have to do with me?” I ask.
“Have you ever heard of Fasse Global?”
“You mean the gas stations? As in Fast Fasse Fill-ups?”
“Yes.” She leans in and through gritted teeth says, “As in the company I am currently working on behalf of, and the company that is very interested in a fresh, new candidate to support as they enter into the green tech and energy space after an absolutely devastating data leak twelve years ago that sunk stocks so low even James Cameron couldn’t find them if he tried. ”
My heart flutters at the thought, and I think I know, but I still ask. Why is the thought of Bram breaking so many rules such a turn-on? “A data leak orchestrated by Bram?”
“Ultimately, no one could prove anything, but everyone knew it was him. There’s bad blood there, Maddie, and getting caught in the middle would be political suicide. You’re sure the nanny gig is worth that?”
Everything I’ve dared to dream for the last few weeks is suddenly blurry, like it’s the goddamn Heart of the Ocean and it’s just—plopped—into the frigid sea at the hands of some old lady who has no concept of how many mouths that priceless jewel could have fed.
(I have Titanic FeelingsTM if that’s not clear.)
“It’s just for a few more weeks,” I assure her. “And if anyone even does find out, I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m not out here chaining myself to trees.” Though maybe I could be tempted if it involved Bram and limited clothing.
“No more social outings,” she says firmly. “If there is so much as an eyewitness account of you two even brushing shoulders, Fasse Global will hear about this and not only will they axe you, but they will mark you as unelectable.”
I scoff even though, yes, that sounds ominous and a little terrifying. “I know you’re involved in some back-channel blurred-lines business, but I hardly think a company can just blackball me altogether.”
“A, they can. And if you don’t believe me, you’re far more naive than I gave you credit for, and B, Fasse Global isn’t the only company with a vendetta against Bram Loe.
The man is a pariah as far as the big donors are concerned.
So keep your head down and get the hell out of there the moment your contract is up. Do you understand?”
My arms cross over my chest, and I look her up and down with one brow raised.
She has no idea how much more complicated the situation actually is.
But that doesn’t matter, because Bram and I are just sex.
It’s that simple. We’ve even discussed the fact because we are mature adults who communicate.
Plus, Bram was disgusted to hear that I was talking with Veronica Balentine, so even if I ever wanted us to be anything more, I doubt he could stomach the political games I’m willing to play to get the job done.
He is an amazing, incredible man and the kind of father who could be a blueprint for the ideal dad, but we’re not a match.
Not in the long term. And especially because I am in no way searching for the long term right now.
As much as it pains me to admit.
“Understood,” I finally say. Because I do understand. Even if I disagree.