Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
She’s petite, but curvy in that aggressively feminine way, with glossy brunette hair lobbed just short of her plump lips. Her dark green dress was clearly purchased to match her eyes. It’s high-necked and modest, except for that slit clear up her thigh.
She’s smiling quizzically at me now, as if I’m the one who’s unexpected.
“Sorry,” she says, dropping her phone into a snakeskin clutch. “Just had to take that.”
“Auntie Lauren,” Zoe says, looping her arm through mine, “this is Dad’s friend, Helena.” She emphasizes the word friend with a sassy little eyebrow raise, as if to remind the room that eleven-year-olds can read subtext.
I force a pleasant smile. Behind it, I’m tearing through my mental rolodex. Helena. Helena. The only Helena that rings a bell is the antitrust lawyer who was assigned to Casey’s gaming division at Microsoft last month, but she was not supposed to look like this.
He’d sprinkled her name into conversation with the same cool detachment he reserves for all his colleagues. I’d visualized her with overplucked, spermy eyebrows and visible panty lines. This woman has gorgeously full microbladed eyebrows and probably no panties at all.
But why is a sexy antitrust lawyer drinking wine in Casey’s kitchen?
I’m aware of Casey moving away from me, cool air filling the vacuum. Everything is happening a half-second behind, like after I eat one of Maya’s special gummies.
“Casey has mentioned you,” Helena says, an unfairly seductive rasp to her voice. She offers her hand. It’s tiny and cold, with perfectly manicured taupe nails and whisper-thin gold rings.
“Casey has mentioned you, as well.” My voice sounds weird. Muted, like my head is stuffed with cotton.
Casey grins as we release our hands, as if this is a moment he’s been anticipating with optimism. I turn to him, waiting for an explanation. But Casey is looking past me, interested in Helena’s reaction, watching her face, and—oh my fucking god.
This is a date.
My chest tightens. I unloop my arm from Zoe, needing both hands on the cool stone island to steady me. Calm down. This is not an emergency. Nothing is chasing you.
But it is a fucking emergency! My heart hammers in my chest. I take small, inconspicuous sips of air and force a pleasant facial expression. You can do hard things. Don’t cry. Do. Not. Cry.
Casey offers me a glass of wine, oblivious to the turmoil beneath my neutral mask. I inhale a vapory gulp.
“Casey said you two met in college,” Helena says, taking a dainty sip of her own wine. It’s a subject I imagine she’s keen to address: how a single attractive widower has a female bestie hanging around, and perhaps how she might change that.
“Yes,” I say, blood roaring in my ears. Keep talking. You can tell this story on autopilot. “We met junior year, when I answered an ad on the community corkboard looking for a carpool to San Francisco over winter break.”
“But when I picked her up, she refused to get in the car.” Casey smiles, shaking his head. “Insisted on three references and a background check.”
“I was expecting a female student because the ad said ‘Casey,’ but then this tall guy with broad shoulders showed up. And there’s way too many places to hide a body along I-5, so I wasn’t taking any chances.”
“Taking chances isn’t Lauren’s thing.” He says it with affection, but Helena laughs as if it were a dig. “We got all the way to Portland before she put away her pepper spray. Long story short, we left as strangers and came back best friends.” Casey smiles at me, his eyes soft.
Helena is obviously thinking it. There is practically a cartoonist’s question mark hovering over her head. A beat passes and she smiles. No, she won’t ask if we’ve ever slept together. But surely she’ll ask Casey privately.
And what will he say when she does?
“Hey, Zoe. Don’t eat that,” Casey says, distracted by Zoe raising the corner of the pizza box on the counter. “We’re making Helena’s Neapolitan recipe tonight, remember?”
“But it’s taking forever,” Zoe says, dangerously removing a slice. “And I like Lauren’s pizza better.”
“You haven’t tasted Helena’s pizza yet, so you don’t know which you’d like better. Put it down.”
“It’s fine.” Helena places a hand on Casey’s shoulder. “My pizza is taking a long time.”
“See? Helena says it’s fine.”
“We’re eating the Neapolitan. Put it down now.”
Zoe’s lip curls as she slowly brings the triangle of pizza to her mouth and takes a dainty, almost invisible bite of the sharp corner. Everyone, even little Emma, watches in silent shock.
Casey searches for his diplomat voice, but all he finds is a dictator’s bark.
“That’s it, Zoe! Go to your room.”
“Gladly.” Zoe grabs another slice on her way out of the kitchen. Her bedroom door slams upstairs shortly after. Emma quietly follows her.
“I’m sorry, Helena. She gets like this sometimes.” Casey rubs his forehead, his cheeks red.
“It’s fine,” she says, putting that petite, taupe-nailed hand on his chest. On his chest! “I was a preteen girl once, too, and I hate to tell you this, but it’s only going to get worse.”
Oh god, so she’s one of those. Definitely not a girl’s girl.
Anyone who stereotypes adolescent girls as overly emotional only rolls out the patriarchal red carpet for their treatment in adulthood.
It’s the invasive seedling of, “I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something I don’t like about insert female political candidate here. ”
But Casey seems to find her comment soothing, because the redness in his cheeks visibly recedes from Nars Panic Attack back down to Nars Orgasm. He looks appreciatively into Helena’s eyes.
My heart is hammering in my chest now. It vibrates in my throat, nearly gagging me. I may actually be sick.
Don’t you dare throw up. That would be even worse than crying.
The oven alarm dings, and Casey drags his eyes from Helena’s with maximum effort, the kind needed to get out of a warm bed on a cold morning.
He pulls out the first bubbling pizza Margherita.
It is a thing of culinary beauty, fully worthy of the Williams Sonoma catalogue that is Casey’s life.
The slices in my pizza box look embarrassingly oily in comparison.
“I’ll just go check on Zoe,” I say, discreetly closing the box.
“No, I should go and apologize,” Casey says. “She needed a firm boundary and a consequence, not for her dad to shout. But I’m going to need this.” He tops off his wine, and Helena pats his back encouragingly as he heads up to Zoe’s room.
“She’s quite formidable,” Helena says once we’re alone.
“She’s direct,” I say, the familiar ache stirring. “Takes after her mother.”
“Were you two close?”
I bristle. It’s a reasonable question, but that doesn’t make it feel any less intrusive. This woman is a stranger. An interloper. And my relationship with Ally is none of her damn business. But I can’t just say nothing, so I aim for something that hopefully ends this line of questioning.
“Like sisters.”
I bite the inner lining of my cheek hard.
This is all wrong. I’m supposed to be sitting under a blanket with Casey, his foot slowly rocking us on the porch swing, while I carefully explain that I’ve fallen for him.
He’s supposed to reassure me that, no, I’m not a terrible person and, yes, Ally would totally understand.
Maybe even approve? We are supposed to be leaning in for our second ever first kiss.
Instead, I’m being cross-examined by his pantyless, microbladed date.
“Casey said she died of cancer,” Helena says, looking at me expectantly.
The awakened ache in my chest stretches luxuriously now, pressing against my ribcage. I lift my eyes to the ceiling. Please come back, Casey.
“Left alone with a newborn and a kindergartener,” she continues, her hand gliding to her cleavage. “How did he ever manage?”
“But he wasn’t alone,” I say quickly, finding it necessary to correct her.
“His parents came to help, and I moved to a loft down the street. It was hard, but we made it work.” I can almost hear those early days of crying in stereo, two tiny girls both needing so much.
Needing the one thing we couldn’t give them.
I shake my head, clearing it. “Sometimes it still doesn’t feel real.
I can’t believe she’s been gone six years already. ”
“When did Casey’s parents leave?”
“They moved back to Florida once Emma started elementary school.”
“And you?” she asks, all false innocence, her head tilted as she takes a sip of her wine.
“I’m still at my loft, less than a mile away.”
“Pretty girl like you.” She smiles conspiratorially, like we’re women hyping each other up in a club bathroom. “I’d think you’d want to be in the middle of it all. Not up here in the boring old suburbs.”
I hold her emerald eyes in mine so hard they might shatter.
“I am exactly where I belong.”
Helena’s expression flickers, but she recovers fast. A courtroom trick. We stand there, sizing each other up, polite smiles plastered on our faces, glasses of wine against our breasts like armor.
I could stay. Ruin their date. Dominate the conversation and tamp down any romance before it starts.
But I don’t trust myself not to cry. It’s a miracle I’ve lasted this long.
“I should go,” I say. “I didn’t know Casey had a date. He’s terrible about updating his social calendar when he invites women over.” Not that Casey has ever had a woman over. But Miss Sexy Voice Taupe Nails doesn’t need to know that.
Helena gives me a tight smile and makes a mild protest, but also gathers my purse and delicately slips it on my arm.
“It was lovely to meet you, Lauren,” she says, so close I can smell her perfume, floral and expensive. “I’m so thankful Casey had you by his side when he needed you most.”
She pushes the door closed.
I stand on the outside of it, thankful my tears don’t fall until it clicks firmly shut.