29. Sunny #2
I settle for both. “Are you serious, Jeremy? I haven’t slept at my place in months.
Are you really going to send me away because I’m drained from working my ass off and need a night in?
” My eyes are stinging and I wipe at them with shaking fingers.
“I feel like you’re punishing me for trying to take care of myself. ”
He’s looking through his closet for something to wear and doesn’t turn to face me. “Don’t be ridiculous, Sunny. I’m not punishing you, I’m being considerate.” His tone is icy and sends shivers down my spine.
“Do you even hear yourself?” I ask him, my voice quavering. “Do you realize how cold you sound? It’s like a switch flips, and you turn from Jekyll into Hyde sometimes.”
He’s silent.
Now I’m just pissed. “You know what? I am going to go back to my place tonight.”
I start gathering some things I need from the bathroom when I feel his hands on my waist. He turns me to him.
His brow’s still furrowed, but the ice caps in his eyes have melted, and now his gaze is soft and warm. He’s back—the Jeremy who looks at me like I’m his entire world. Who makes me feel safe and loved. I’m so relieved to see him that I allow myself to melt too, into his arms.
“Forgive me,” he says into my ear. Then he kisses my tear-streaked cheek. “Work has me on edge. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I promise I’ll do better.”
I sigh and look into his eyes. “Why are you so stressed?” The high-stakes world of litigation is where Jeremy thrives, unlike me. Work doesn’t usually get to him at all.
He looks down at the floor. “I fucked something up earlier this week,” he says, squinting his eyes shut and pinching the bridge of his nose.
“I got lazy doing some legal research—something I’m well aware you would never do, which is why you’re a much better lawyer than I’ll ever be—but I missed something big that could have been a disaster for us in court.
Luckily the senior associate who gave me the assignment knew enough to catch my mistake before it was too late.
” He lets out a heaving breath. “I’m just so fucking mad at myself.
I feel like I’m walking on eggshells at work right now.
That’s why tonight’s such a big deal for me. ”
I’ve never heard Jeremy admit to making a mistake at work before.
But as attracted as I am to his confidence, it’s actually a relief to see him this vulnerable.
Considering his strained relationship with his parents, Jeremy doesn’t trust easily.
I know he wouldn’t dare show me this side of him if he didn’t really fucking love me .
It feels good to be reminded of that. When he’s cold and withdrawn, I sometimes question it.
“I’ll go with you,” I say.
He shakes his head. “No, babe, you’re tired…
and I was being an asshole. I don’t want you to feel obligated to go.
I never should have cut corners on that assignment—this is my mess to clean up.
” He gives me a sweet, gentle kiss on the lips.
“Please forget what I said. You stay here and get some rest. If I get home late, I’ll sleep on the couch. ”
I bite my lip. A wave of guilt pours over me. If I’d known this dinner was so important to Jeremy, I would’ve said yes from the beginning.
I probably should’ve said yes, regardless. I mean, here’s this wildly intelligent, broodingly sexy man who believes he looks better with me by his side. Who’s chosen me as his partner to take on the world. How could I say no to that?
“I’m going with you,” I tell him. “You don’t have to do this alone. We’re a team, just like you always say.”
Jeremy lets out a sigh of relief and gives me a tight squeeze. “God, I love you,” he says. “Thank you. I’ll make it up to you, I swear.”
He takes my face in his palms and plants a kiss on my forehead. With Jeremy’s resting expression being pretty firmly rooted in snark, it’s not often I see him look this happy.
As he heads into the bathroom to freshen up, I’m still kicking myself for upsetting him.
“Do you know what you’re wearing yet?” Through the cracked-open bathroom door, I hear Jeremy gargle mouthwash and spit in the sink. “Dress sharp,” he tells me.
When I wake up the following morning, Jeremy’s not in bed. I rub my eyes and sit up, yawning. The smell of coffee hits my nose. I hear the clinking of plates, and the opening and shutting of kitchen cabinets. A minute later, he walks in with a tray.
He’s brought me breakfast in bed. There are scrambled eggs, toast, berries, and yogurt—all of my favorite things.
He even put a fresh rose in a bud vase I didn’t know he had.
Not to mention, he brewed espresso in his exorbitantly expensive coffee maker that we never use because it’s gratuitously complicated, and a bitch to clean.
“What’s all this?” I ask, beaming at him.
“You were tired, so I let you sleep in. We have to hit the road soon, but this is my way of saying thank you for coming with me last night.”
He’s practically ebullient. The dinner was a success, and Jeremy’s firm gained a new client.
Not only that, my boyfriend stole the show.
He’d done his research earlier in the day and knew everything there was to know about the client’s business.
He laid out defense strategies as clearly and concisely as a law professor, but with the confident swagger that makes Jeremy irresistibly sexy.
By the time we were onto our third course, I was buzzed from all the wine we’d drunk and hardly felt tired anymore.
I sat and listened to my brilliant boyfriend in awe, as he waxed eloquent about property easements.
I was so incredibly turned on that I had to have him the second we got home.
Jeremy’s not typically a big breakfast guy, so he makes himself a smoothie while I eat and, forty-five minutes later, we’re on the road to Beachwood.
It usually takes me a little over five hours to get there from Chicago, but Jeremy makes it in record time because he’s a born and bred New Yorker, and drives like one.
It reminds me a little bit of Mia, whom I haven’t talked to in a while now.
She and Evan have been married about two-and-a-half years.
Last summer, they welcomed their first child—a beautiful baby girl named Avery.
I haven’t met her yet, but Mia sends me pictures every now and then, when we email.
In December, she sent a Christmas card addressed to me and Jeremy, which was thoughtful of her.
It was a photo of baby Avery, sobbing on Santa’s lap, while Mia and Evan made silly faces from the sidelines in an attempt to calm her.
I thought it was adorable and showed Jeremy as soon as he got home from work.
Maybe he was tired from a long day, but he had the audacity to call the picture “tacky,” then said he didn’t know which was worse on a holiday greeting—crying babies or matching pajamas.
I didn’t have the energy to flip over the card and show him the snapshot of Mia, Evan, and Avery in identical buffalo plaid onesies.
I didn’t want to add fuel to the fire, particularly because I was about to take him home for the holidays to meet my mom and Luis for the first time. But Jeremy charmed them both, and my mom was so thrilled that she was actually pleasant to be around, so I couldn’t stay mad at him for long.
This is our first time back in Beachwood since then. When my mom opens the door to greet us, she wraps her arms around Jeremy first. Naturally.
We’re here to celebrate Luis’s sixty-fifth birthday.
His daughters couldn’t make it, sadly. Elena, the fashion photographer, is on a shoot in Milan that she couldn’t get out of.
And her sister, Lily, the doctor, is eight months pregnant and restricted from flying.
The three of them agreed to celebrate together after the baby’s born but, in the meantime, Jeremy and I wanted to be here for the occasion.
We have a lovely meal at Luis’s favorite Italian restaurant, and Jeremy surprises us by footing the bill. He must have given his credit card to our waitress when he left the table to use the restroom because, when my mom asks for the check, she’s told that everything has already been taken care of.
“This is on us,” Jeremy says, and he puts his arm around me even though I had no clue he’d planned to pay.
When we get back home, Luis tells us he has a “belly full of spaghetti” and is going to call it a night.
He is such a treasure, I honestly don’t know how he ended up with my mom.
He brings out the best in her, certainly—she’s never as surly with him as she is around me, but she still has her moments.
I guess they balance each other out. She’s brilliant and beautiful, so she does have that going for her.
I suppose what attracts Luis to my mom isn’t so different than what attracts me to Jeremy.
While Luis makes his way upstairs, Jeremy suggests that the rest of us have a nightcap. When my mom agrees, he squeezes my hand and nods encouragingly .
This is it. Our chance to ask my mom about the man who fathered me.
We sit in the living room—Jeremy and I next to each other on the couch, and my mom in the armchair opposite us.
I wait until she’s halfway through her glass of sherry, hoping that will loosen her up a bit.
I myself am so anxious, I’ve already downed my very generous pour of wine.
And that’s on top of the two glasses I had with dinner.
Finally, I work up the nerve to steer the conversation away from the riveting topic of my mom’s fruitless search for an “adequate” landscaper. “While we’re here, Mom…Jeremy and I were hoping to ask you a few questions,” I say. “About my biological father.”
My mom’s gaze shifts between the two of us, her face expressionless. “Oh?” she asks, taking another sip of her drink.
I look to Jeremy for guidance.