Chapter Fifteen #2
I could point out that I did know his dad has money.
This kitchen alone is proof of it. But I know now it’s a matter of scale.
Without impugning anyone’s motives, I understand that a 150-year-old, perfectly restored house in Grantham, Minnesota isn’t enough to turn some people’s heads, especially not when compared to a place on Central Park West. And a smart, cute-in-a-nerdy-kind-of-way computer guy isn’t the same kind of catch as the heir apparent to a multi-million-dollar investment firm.
He finishes chopping the celery and a couple of cloves of garlic, then slides all of the vegetables into the piping hot stockpot, where they hiss and sizzle so loudly that for a moment, all conversation is at a standstill.
He pushes them around with a wooden spoon, then adds salt and pepper and other seasonings.
“So you came to Grantham to get away from all the women throwing themselves at you,” I say when he turns away from the stove.
“I suppose that’s part of it,” he concedes with a little rumble of laughter.
I let him focus for a while on what he’s cooking so I can think about what he’s said. Did he really appreciate me for my authenticity? Or just my gullibility?
I’ve spent so much time searching online for Jane Austen. Why didn’t I take a minute to look up Fisher Davis? Was it possible I just didn’t want to know the truth?
I’m still chewing on those questions when he sets a deep stoneware bowl full of homemade chicken noodle soup in front of me.
“Did you ever cook for one of those women?” I ask.
“No.” His half-smile borders on incredulous.
I pick up my spoon. “Too real, I suppose.” Some of the soup he’s ladling into a second bowl goes splashing back into the pot.
I hope it’s a reminder of the mess he’s made.
“Right now, it’s hard for me not to feel like making out—or, hell, maybe just making alfredo sauce—with the daughter of a middle-school math teacher from St. Paul is your version of slumming it.
” His lips part with a little pop at that characterization of the situation, but I cut off his protest. “So what if you had valid reasons for wanting to get away from your fancy East Coast world? In the end, you’re going back to it—right? ”
Part of me wants him to deny it, to argue with me, or at least to explain.
Instead, he sinks down on the stool next to mine. “Right.”
A long silence follows, but eventually he says, more to the contents of his bowl than to me, “You probably assume I was spoiled, growing up.”
I only narrowly contain the scoffing noise that rises in my throat. Is he going to try to deny it? I’d willingly admit that my parents spoiled me, so maybe spoiled isn’t the word for the lifestyle you get to enjoy when you’re the eldest child and only son of a truly wealthy man.
“And I was,” he continues. “Don’t get me wrong. I guess what I’m trying to say is if you feel like you can’t even imagine the privileges of growing up as Fisher Davis the Third, maybe consider there are some drawbacks you can’t imagine either.”
Oh. My spoon slips from my grip and clatters against the side of the bowl. I scramble to pick it up again and down two quick mouthfuls. It’s delicious, but I’m really not hungry.
And neither, I sense, is he. He’s been dragging his spoon through his bowl since he sat down, but he hasn’t once lifted that spoon to his mouth.
“I’m not trying to make excuses. It was selfish of me not to tell you.
” Another circle with his spoon, another scrape of stainless steel over stoneware, and oddly, I’m thinking about what he said about recursion, going around and around trying to get back to some starting place you may or may not ever find. “How did you find out, anyway?”
“Geoff,” I say, pushing my bowl away.
His eyelids fall and his mouth curves into a bitter smile. “Of course.” And that quiet reaction, which looks to me an awful lot like guilt, makes me wonder whether I’ve misread all the others. Maybe he was never jealous of Geoff. Maybe he was just afraid of what Geoff could tell me.
Fisher nods once or twice before opening his eyes again. “So,” he says, tipping his head to look at me, “Does this mean you and I are back to being enemies?”
I consider for a moment. “Feels a little ‘underdeveloped Marvel cash-grab sequel,’ don’t you think?”
Wary hope flickers into his face. “Friends?”
“We were never really friends,” I point out.
“Elle …” My name exhales from him like a sigh. It’s not a hopeful sound exactly. More weary. Wary. Like a man who enjoys a challenge but finds himself out of moves.
“I don’t know what we are, Fisher. This is a lot to take in.” I slide down from the barstool. “I need time to think.”
He stands too. “I understand.” He insists on packing up chicken soup for me in a container that any normal person would want back, and I hate that I don’t know whether it means that he cares, or that he doesn’t. As he hands over a bag, he asks, “Do you, um, do you want me to walk you home?”
I shake my head, thinking of all those twinkling Christmas lights. Strolling down Elm Street side by side would feel entirely too much like one of those holiday rom-coms, and that’s definitely not the plot I’m in.
Nonetheless, I can’t help but spend the entire walk back to my apartment thinking about those stories where everything always worked out.
Which of course makes me think about Cassie.
By the time I enter our apartment, I can no longer avoid the full scope of the problem: the Cassie Lewis who left for Chicago last week is not the same person who went with me to Blush & Bloom two months past. We haven’t read the same books or watched the same shows.
Maybe we don’t even share the same belief in the possibility of happy endings.
Oh, God. Maybe that’s why this version of Cassie is settling for boorish Bill.
Because the old Cassie believed, as I believe, that romance is a celebration of human connection and the triumph of emotional justice. It’s stories about women getting what they need, as well as what they want. Romance is hope.
But if romance in those terms never existed, does that mean the world in which Cassie and I and millions of others now find ourselves is … hopeless?
If romance and the hope of a happy ending have disappeared, is that why my formerly too-cute parents can’t seem to stop squabbling?
Or why the Vanity Fair article about Fisher’s parents’ twenty-fifth anniversary gala flat-out described their marriage as a merger between her pedigree and his money—without even a single mention of how they fell in love?
Maybe a fling with a guy who superficially resembles Mr. Darcy is the best a girl like me can expect from a world without Pride and Prejudice.