13. Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Thirteen
Maddie
The thing about a free day is that it's only free if you know what to do with yourself.
I'm two sips into my coffee and my brain is still buffering, so I'm not sure I've heard him right. I blink at him over my mug.
"You want to take Agatha to her appointment at Elven Mercy yourself," I repeat back to him like some sort of caffeine-addicted parrot.
"Yes." He looks at me with a small frown. "Why is that so surprising?"
"Do you have a few hours for me to list all the reasons?" I take another sip. "It's just surprising that you're taking time off work for something so mundane, that's all."
"Aren't you the one who insists that life is not all about work and that family is what's most important?" He picks up his keys and swings them in his palm. "So I'm going to spend time with my grandmother. I'll take her out to lunch afterwards and meet you here for dinner."
He says it like it's obvious. Like he didn't just spend the last few weeks in his study with three laptops open and his tie impeccably knotted at seven in the morning. I open my mouth to point this out, but he beats me to it.
"I can take time off work," he says, answering the question I hadn't asked yet. "I'm the boss, remember? Who's going to tell me I can't?"
He wiggles his brows at me and I chuckle, because he does have a point. Who's going to tell Demetrius Thornwood what to do, indeed?
"She'll try to walk to the car without the cane," I say, taking another long sip of caffeine. "Don't let her. She may not need the wheelchair anymore, but she'll need that cane for another few weeks."
"I know."
"I'm just saying..."
"I know my grandmother." His mouth does the thing where it almost becomes a smile and doesn't quite finish the job. "Go out with a friend. Enjoy your free day."
Then he crosses the kitchen to me, unhurried, and tips my chin up with two fingers. He kisses me, slow and long. The kind of kiss that knows exactly what it's doing and takes its time doing it, warm and sure. My free hand finds the lapel of his coat and holds on.
He pulls back just enough to look at me.
"I'll be back by six," he says, his voice low, and there's something in it that makes the words sound like a promise about more than dinner.
My brain does that extremely unhelpful thing where it turns to warm caramel and stops forming coherent thoughts. I manage something that is approximately a smile.
"I should probably tell my parents about us," I say. "Before someone else does it for me."
The almost-smile completes itself, just for a second. "I was planning to tell Agatha today."
"Of course you were." I release his lapel. "Very efficient of you."
"I thought so." He presses one more kiss to my forehead, brief and deliberate, then steps back and picks up his keys again. "Six o'clock."
"Six o'clock," I agree.
I nod and then he goes. A few minutes later I hear the Rolls back out of the drive, the sound of it so smooth and self-satisfied it's almost rude.
I finish my coffee and then I stand there for a moment and do absolutely nothing productive with it. The forehead kiss is still sitting somewhere on my skin like a warm handprint.
I pull out my phone.
Free day. Going to prep my house for the party.
Mom and Dad are out of town.
You in?
Jazz's reply comes before I've even put the phone down.
Uh, OBVIOUSLY. Also I'm bringing snacks because you're a terrible cook and I refuse to do manual labor on an empty stomach.
See you in twenty.
I look at the message for a second. I already ate a full breakfast.
Was it croissants?
No.
Then it doesn't count. I decide. I have twenty minutes to get ready and head to my parents' place.
I put the phone away, rinse my mug, and go get changed.
By nine-thirty I'm at my parents' house. Jazz is already there, her red car flashy in the driveway. As soon as I push through the front door, the smell of brown sugar and cinnamon rolls across my brain and my stomach rumbles.
Jazz is, in fact, at my parents' stove. This will not surprise anyone who knows Jazz.
"The door was unlocked," she says, without turning around, by way of explanation.
"It's always unlocked." I drop my bag on the kitchen table. "This is Saltford Bay."
"I know. I'm just establishing that I did not break in."
"Noted."
The tissue paper flowers are Jazz's idea and, as with most of Jazz's ideas, it arrived fully formed and non-negotiable.
A full garbage bag of white and pink crepe paper sits in the middle of the living room floor next to a box of floral wire and a printout from a craft website that Jazz has annotated in three different colors of pen.
She's made notes in the margins. There are arrows and, unless I'm reading this wrong, a small diagram.
"Sit," she says, pointing at the floor beside the bag.
I drop my jacket on the couch and sit. The morning light comes in through the yellow curtains and falls warm and golden across the floor, and it occurs to me, not for the first time, that I have missed this room every single day I've spent at Stronghold.
Jazz appears from the kitchen and drops onto the floor across from me before pulling a stack of paper toward herself. She assesses it with the expression she reserves for things she is about to completely dominate.
"The technique involves accordion-folding," she says, handing me the printout. "Then wire in the middle, fan, separate each layer. It's supposed to be simple and meditative."
I look at the printout. "It says that."
"I've made three hundred of these for Elena Reyes's quinceanera. It takes practice and it will absolutely try to make you bleed, but it looks awesome in the end."
"It's tissue paper. How can it make you bleed?"
"The wire, Maddie. The wire."
I pull a square of pink paper toward me and start folding. Accordion. Accordion. Accordion. Beside me, Jazz works with the quick, sure hands of a woman who knows exactly what the wire is capable of.
We work.
It takes maybe six minutes. Six minutes of just the sound of paper and the warm, lingering smell of whatever Jazz has on the stove drifting in from the kitchen and the distant sound of Mr. Prewitt's basset hound doing his usual morning commentary on the general state of the neighborhood.
Finally, Jazz breaks the silence without looking up from her flower.
"Okay. You're going to tell me right now or I'm going to grill you and then you'll tell me anyway. So let's save us both the time."
I separate a layer of pink paper with my thumbnail with probably more concentration than the task requires.
"Tell you what?"
I know I'm being coy. I could never get anything past my bestie. Still, it's fun to make her sweat for it.
"Whatever it is that's making you look like that."
She gestures to all of me.
"I look normal," I say with a prim pinch of my lips that doesn't fool her for a second.
"Maddie." Jazz sets her flower down and gives me the look.
The look is a specific and terrible thing.
It is the look of a woman who knows me inside and out and isn't afraid to exploit my many weaknesses to get what she wants.
"You look like someone who has either done something wonderful or something stupid.
Or something wonderfully stupid, which is even better. "
I snort, the air coming from my nostrils ruffling my newly finished paper flower.
"I hate you."
I put the finished flower in the pile with the others and grab another piece of tissue paper.
"No you don't." She picks her flower back up, then puts it down again. "Talk."
I fold my paper. Accordion. Accordion. Accordion.
"I slept with Demetrius," I let out in a resigned breath.
The living room air is suddenly thick enough to slice with a knife.
Jazz closes her eyes. She takes a breath through her nose, slow and measured, like she is doing a yoga exercise, then opens her eyes. Picks up her flower and puts it back down. Picks up her coffee. Puts that down too.
"Okay," she says.
"Okay? That's it? Just okay?"
"I'm processing." She holds up one finger. Her nail is painted a very cheerful coral, which feels appropriately festive for this specific moment. "Give me two seconds."
I give her the two seconds. She uses them to do something in her face that cycles through several distinct expressions and lands, eventually, on a very careful neutral. It's honestly impressive. Like watching someone manually reboot a system after a power surge.
"How was the sex?"
"Jazz." I chuckle and feel my entire face burning all of a sudden.
"What?" Jazz lifts her brows and shrugs. "I need all relevant data points. It's for science."
"It was..." I stop as the burning spreads from my cheeks all the way to the top of my head. "Let's just say it's something I want to do again."
Jazz looks at me like I just snatched an ice cream cone from her hands.
"That is simultaneously the most and least informative sentence you have ever produced," she says. "So, you rekindled the old flame of your first boyfriend. What now? Are you a couple or is this just a casual thing?"
I inhale deeply at the question and sip my coffee while I think of a satisfying answer. I should have known Jazz would not only see right through me, but straight to the heart of the situation.
What am I doing with Demetrius, indeed? Is this just a fling, a way to get closure? Just a casual hookup?
"I really don't know." I separate a layer of pink paper with my thumbnail. It tears a little at the edge and I wince. "I mean, it's so new. We didn't exactly lay out a five year plan."
"So it's just sex and that's all?"
Is it?
I think about this morning. The way we laughed and how comfortable it was. I think about that kiss he gave me.
"I don't think it's just sex," I say, when I find the word. "Not that we really talked about it, but it doesn't feel like it." I look down at the paper in my lap. "But I don't know what this means for the future. I just know it felt right. Still does."
Something warm is doing fragrant work in the kitchen, butter and sugar and something that smells like it's going to be unreasonably delicious.
"Maddie." Jazz's voice drops out of banter register and her expression goes serious. "You do know dating a billionaire isn't like dating a normal guy, don't you?"
The question lands between us on the faded blue carpet, plain as a nail.
"It's not simple, I know," I say. "I'm not going to pretend otherwise." I fold another layer of paper. "But Demetrius and I, we were never really done with each other, you know? So much was left unsaid, left undone. It's like we have a second chance now and I don't want to mess it up."
"So you're in trouble."
"That does appear to be the situation, yes."
Jazz hums and reaches over to hand me a piece of wire. I take it and twist it around the center of my flower. The wire is thin and it takes three tries to get it right.
"I want to say something," Jazz says, "and I want you to hear it as coming from someone who loves you and not from someone who wants to ruin your good mood."
Well, that's not good. And I can't stop it, either. When Jazz wants to say what's on her mind, she'll say what's on her mind.
"Just spill the beans, Jazz," I tell her. "It's not like you even know how to shut up, anyway."
"Fair." She pulls another square of pink paper toward her.
"He loved you before. Really loved you, I believe that, I've always believed that.
But the way he loved you was selfish. He didn't want to share you with your own ambitions.
He wanted everything or nothing, and when you said you wanted your own life too, he picked nothing and walked away. "
I know all that. It still hurts to hear Jazz lay it out this way.
She ties off her wire with a decisive snap and brings a perfect flower up toward her face. She stares at it, hard, then nods and puts it aside.
"What makes you think he'll want anything different from you this time around?"
The crepe paper is cool and soft in my fingers. Out the window, the Saltford Bay oaks are doing their late-spring thing, all new green and restless light, and I look at them instead of Jazz for a second.
"He's older now," I say. "We both are. He's different, just like I am."
"Maybe." She says it without sharpness, which is somehow worse than if she'd said it with some. "So what happens when he goes back to Boston? You're going to do long distance or are you going to follow him there?"
I pull another square of paper toward me. In that moment, I wish she wouldn't be so sharp-minded and that she would just leave well enough alone. But she wouldn't be Jazz if she did.
And she's right. I know this. I just wanted to live in denial for a little while longer.
"Honestly? I don't know where he's going, or when." I separate a layer of pink paper with my thumbnail. "That's the whole problem. His life is enormous, Jazz. Boston, the company, he's barricaded in his office most of the day."
A pause, during which she chews the inside of her cheek. "So what does that mean for the two of you?"
I don't have an answer ready for that one. I look at the pink paper in my lap and I fold it.
Accordion. Accordion.
"I don't know," I say. "We didn't talk about it yet."
Jazz nods, slow. "You'd better figure it out," she says. "Before it figures itself out without you."
The paper in my hands is soft and I'm being too slow with it now, separating each layer like I'm defusing a bomb.
Jazz is watching me. Not speaking. Not pushing, which should ring all the alarm bells in my brain.
"I'm taking it one day at a time," I say. "For now, I'm just enjoying things as they are. Is that so bad?"
Jazz smiles and shakes her head. "Nothing wrong with that. But girl, I've known you for a long time. You're not the type to separate feelings into neat little boxes. You get attached, you make plans. And you can't ignore the elephant in the room even if he rocks your world between the sheets."
I open my mouth to counter, but nothing comes out. I snap it shut when I realize that she's right. I hate her for it, but she is.
I fold my flower. Separate each layer. Pull the paper apart with care.
One day at a time, I tell myself, and press a layer of pink open with my thumb. I can take it one day at a time.
I almost believe it.