Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The rain pelts me like paintballs as I trudge across the elementary school lawn looking for the auditorium, cheap grocery store bouquet in hand.
I shouldn’t be out in the world. I should be drunk in my bathtub, hiding my grief so my tear-stained face doesn’t make anyone feel uncomfortable.
But it’s Emma’s debut as the Nursery Magic Fairy in her school’s rendition of The Velveteen Rabbit. Missing it is not an option.
Gracie was right. Danny’s attention was intoxicating until it became dangerous.
I only wish I’d listened sooner, before I put my job in danger and crossed every ethical rule I had for myself regarding conduct with clients.
I knew it would eventually all go to shit, but I didn’t expect it to happen so quickly—and that doesn’t make it hurt any less.
Who was I kidding? Men like Danny Kekoa don’t fall for women like me.
I open the auditorium doors and peer around the darkened room, where everyone is seated and waiting for the play to begin. I spy Casey and Zoe, a coat lying sideways across an empty seat. Grateful to have found them, I pick my way through the closely packed chairs over to them.
“It’s a full house. Thank goodness you guys saved me a seat,” I say, leaning in to kiss Zoe on her cheek. She peers anxiously up at her dad, and realization hits me.
The coat I’m sitting on isn’t Casey’s—it’s Helena’s. Emerald green with a silk tie at the waist.
“Oh,” I say, popping up as if it burned me.
“Sorry, Lauren. We only saw three together, and we figured you’d have your client with you. Helena is just backstage giving Emma a pep talk, but I think they’re adding another row of seats in the back.”
“I can come sit with you,” Zoe offers.
I find her hand and squeeze it. “No, love. Stay here so you can see. I don’t mind standing—my Apple Watch keeps harassing me to get up and move.” I smile, handing her the bouquet. “In case I don’t catch up with you guys after the play, can you give these to Emma for me?”
“Sure,” she says, taking them and putting them down by her feet, next to the monstrous orchid bouquet under Helena’s chair. “Don’t worry,” she says, misreading my emotions. “She and Helena have been practicing around the clock. Emma is going to nail this part.”
And she does. On stage, my goddaughter transforms into the perfect Nursery Magic Fairy, all sparkly curls and a bold voice commanding the audience’s attention.
But my attention slips anyway, over to the middle row in the auditorium where Casey’s arm is loosely draped across the back of Helena’s chair, their heads tipped ever so slightly toward each other.
Zoe every so often cups her hand and whispers something in Helena’s ear, and Helena whispers back.
It’s probably for the best I’m relegated to standing room only.
If I sat with Casey, he’d surely notice my tear-stained face and question why I was so worked up over a client falling off the wagon.
He’s just a client; it’s in their nature to face setbacks.
Smoking cessation clients start smoking again.
Overeater clients overeat. And, apparently, sex-addicted bad boys seduce their life coaches and score drugs in back alleys.
Helena’s head rests gently on Casey’s shoulder now, and he kisses her crown. It’s all too much. Tears stream down my face in the darkness, hot and wet on my cheeks. After Emma’s last line, I slip out into the rain, her sweet voice still ringing in my ears.
You were Real to the Boy because he loved you. Now you shall be Real to everyone.
“Jesus, Lauren, come in.” Maya wraps her arms around me, ushering me inside. “Corinne, hand me a towel.”
“I couldn’t find parking,” I manage. “Had to walk several blocks.”
Corinne, wearing cozy pajama bottoms and a crop top I recognize as Maya’s, rushes to the laundry room for a bath towel. I give Maya a questioning look, and she shrugs.
“May have accidentally erranded my way into a new relationship,” she whispers, smiling sheepishly. “Turns out love is really easy when you aren’t the only one doing the loving. Come and sit. She’ll make us some adaptogen tea, and you can tell me what happened.”
She leads me to her couch. Minutes later, we’ve ordered Thai, and I’m sipping some terrible bitter elixir as I tell them the whole story, a fluffy cat stretching and purring in my lap and making my nose itch.
“So, the whole time I was just meant to distract him from bad behavior, like handing a child an iPad in a restaurant,” I wrap up. “But clearly, I did a terrible job, because not only did he seduce me, he also tested positive for drugs. They’ve kicked him from the card.”
“Don’t blame yourself. If people want to use drugs, they’ll find a way,” Maya says quietly.
I squeeze her hand. Her last relationship ended with a failed ultimatum—Maya said it was opioids or her.
Her ex packed up their other cat and her toiletry case of rattling prescriptions and moved back to the East Coast.
“I just don’t know how I could be so stupid. He literally charmed the pants off me. Like, three times.”
“That part doesn’t sound so bad,” Maya says, snuggling under the blanket. “You were due for some action.”
“But he had me totally convinced he was different,” I say.
“Maybe he is,” Corinne says, coming out of the kitchen with three wine glasses.
“He’s not,” I say definitively. “I have actual, medical documentation that he isn’t.”
She tilts her head. “But what did he test positive for?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “One of the fun designer drugs?”
“It is odd you didn’t notice,” Maya says. “I mean, after seeing what I went through in my last relationship, surely you would have recognized some of the signs.”
Corinne pours and distributes the wine. “There aren’t many signs if he was juicing.”
“I just wish there was a way we could know what he tested positive for, so we can decide how mad to be at him,” Maya says, accepting her glass.
“What do you mean? We are incandescently mad at him,” I say, frowning, “if not for taking drugs, than for seducing me like I’m just some girl he met in a bar.”
“You did meet in a bar! And it’s not like you didn’t seduce him too,” Maya says, curling up with her wine.
“Following him home with bananas? Unzipping your hoodie in the boathouse? Don’t pretend you weren’t aching for this man to figure you out.
And he did a bang-up job, honey, because even sad and miserable tonight, your skin is fucking glowing. Right, Corinne?”
Corinne nods. “I wanted to ask about your skincare routine, but I was waiting for the appropriate time.”
“Orgasms,” Maya says. “It’s the orgasms.”
I sigh, shaking my head. “Fine. So he unlocked me sexually and that was … helpful. But that doesn’t change the fact that illegal substances showed up in his drug test, and we have no way of knowing which substance it was. He could be into something really hardcore, like … quaaludes.”
“Quaaludes? You are so adorably lame, I love you,” Maya says, rubbing my leg.
“There is a way to know for sure,” Corinne says.
“Whenever someone pops positive in my parent’s cutthroat pickleball league, they petition the testing agency for results so they know what they’re dealing with.
” She leans back into the triangle of Maya’s shoulder.
Maya shifts subtly to make more room for her.
“All you need is someone with legal letterhead and a shitload of free time who won’t mind writing up a demand letter. ”
Maya’s eyes light up.
“No,” I say, knowing where she is going with this. “Don’t even think about it.”
“Road trip!” She hops up, clapping her hands together. “We’ll bring your dad some Thai too. Does he still like spicy larb?”
“No way in hell is anyone going to my dad’s house without notice,” I say, my heartbeat pulsing higher in my neck. Maya went to his office once, back in the day, and that was after I’d spent a week cleaning it. “And I don’t care what Danny did or didn’t take. He’s not my problem anymore.”
“Lauren, it’s OK,” Maya says, her hands on the outsides of my arms. “We won’t judge your dad or you. Because you don’t judge the ones you love. And if there is even the slightest chance Danny is innocent, then he needs his life coach now more than ever.”
Dad pecks away on an ancient typewriter the color of pea soup, pipe in teeth, while the three of us peer over his shoulder.
“You nailed it, Gerry,” Maya says, hitting her knee. “Still a legal genius.”
“It’s so aggressive,” I say, frowning. “Shouldn’t we make it nicer? Catch more bees with honey, and all that?”
“Fuck honey,” Dad says. “Honey never works when you’re dealing with the man.”
Dad talks about the man a lot. When I was little, I thought the man was an actual person, wearing a Dick Tracy trench coat and hell-bent on hurting people. All of life’s misfortunes could be attributed to him.
Once, after waiting for Dad to counsel a client, I asked why the vending machines were so expensive at the county jail.
“Because the man knows that when an inmate’s kid comes to visit him, he’d sell his very soul for a Snickers bar,” Dad replied, tipping his head toward a boy waiting for his dad at another visitation table. Then he took out a twenty-dollar bill from his tattered leather wallet.
“Wait, why are you using letterhead from the DA’s office?” I say, alarmed. “This reads like you’re requesting information on behalf of the state.”
“Must have sent it to the wrong air printer,” he says, winking at Corinne.
“You’re using a typewriter.”
“Do you want to hear from them in three business days or not?” He pulls out the paper and raps at it with his knuckles.
“But … it’s breaking the rules.”
“Rules,” Dad snorts. “Honey, let me explain something to you. If an arbitrary rule gets in the way of righting an injustice, isn’t breaking it justified?”
I look down at my hands, unsure.
“Excuse us,” Dad says, rising and steering me toward my old bedroom by my shoulders. “I need to have a quick word with my daughter.”