Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
Jess
When Caleb walks through the door, solo, my heart breaks again. It’s in a less severe way than it was earlier, but it’s there.
I walk over to him, noting for the second day in a row, he’s come correct, aka not dressed like a Gen Z wannabe. He’s got on black jeans and a gray sweater and sneakers. Completely normal, respectable Thanksgiving Day outfit.
“Hey,” I say, offering him a cranberry Aperol spritz. (Carly’s making, not mine.)
“Hey,” he says a bit bashfully, if not sadly.
“I can’t take the job.”
“I know,” is all he says back.
“Have you talked to him?” I ask. Why did you ask, Jess?
“Nope.”
I nod, and without another word I walk away with my knit dress from Dissh (b orrowed from Brit) flowing behind me and my head held high as I head towards the kitchen.
“Carly?” She’s finishing off a batch of sugared rosemary, but otherwise seems to have the kitchen under complete control.
“Yeah?” she asks me with a smile.
“Have you ever given a haircut before?” I don’t know what compels me to ask her, except that she just seems like the type who knows how to do anything. Also, I equate good knife skills with good cutting skills. Meat and hair can't be that different, right?
“I cut James’ hair all the time…and on occasion, my own.”
“Great. Can you cut my hair?”
“What?! No!” Elodie walks in on the conversation. “Why?!” she exclaims, sliding on to a stool at the island.
“Just feels like dead weight. And I’m ready to shed what’s holding me back.” It’s the most honest answer I can give that’s not because your uncle may have loved me, but he hates me more, and we’re too fucked up to ever work, but I’m quite sure I’ll never meet another man like him, nor do I want to.
“Fine, but I love your hair. Caroline!” Elodie yells for her sister. “Caroline cuts all the girls’ hair in the dormitory.”
“Really?” I ask, surprised.
“Yeah, says it's her act of defiance…a lot of the girls at my school don’t have good parents like us.” Oh, that’s sad.
“Oh, sweetheart. Are they okay?” I ask about the girls.
“They all have killer bobs now, so I’d say they’re doing fine.”
“Yeah?” Caroline asks then grabs a piece of goat cheese toast off a tray.
“Let’s cut my hair.” I pose i t to her.
“Right now?” she asks with surprise.
“Yeah, why not? Come on.” I reach for a pair of scissors from the junk drawer where there’s a whole mess of condoms. Eww . I grab the scissors quickly and slam the drawer shut, hoping no one else saw that.
“That’s my least favorite drawer in this whole house.” Elodie cringes, and both Caroline and Carly agree.
“Oh my god,” I laugh then reopen the drawer and move the condoms into the trash. “They clearly don’t even need them, people.”
Right on cue, my excessively pregnant best friend waddles into the kitchen to see me throw out a handful of magnums. She starts laughing. “I was wondering who would finally get the nerve to trash those. You know, those are the ones with the holes?” We all kind of laugh, but I notice Caroline not laughing quite as hard. I don’t know if it’s because it’s not funny…or something else.
Though, to be honest, it isn’t funny. Someone poking a hole in a condom is sexual assault. Brit should have filed charges against that crazy bitch.
“I have my own scissors, Jess. Let me get them.” Caroline takes off towards the stairs.
“I’m cutting all my hair off,” I tell Brit before she gets a chance to ask.
“Love that!” she says. And this feels good. Being here with her, with my people. It’s not my person, but maybe I’m not a one-person type gal. Maybe I’m just a people person.
The mudroom door opens, and everyone in the kitchen collectively looks over to see Damian stroll in with a bottle of Dom Perignon tucked under his arm .
“Hey!” he calls out through the open entryway.
Brit pats me on the shoulder as she walks over to him. From the corner of my eye, I can see her go on her tiptoes to embrace him for a long hug. A really long hug. That’s good, he must have told her about Summer.
They walk back in the kitchen and I do something I’ve never done before. I walk up to Damian, and in front of his ex-wife and his daughters, I give him a hug.
“Really happy to see you,” I say quietly.
“Same,” he says back, giving me a quick squeeze, then releasing me.
“E!” he calls out to Elodie.
“Hi, Dad,” she replies but doesn’t even bother to get up off her stool.
“Great to see you, too,” Damian deadpans. Carly passes him a drink and a sympathetic smile, and he drifts off to the living room where the rest of the men are. Well, almost all the men. I’d be remiss not to mention Max who’s been sulking about the kitchen silently while the rest of us talk.
“Got 'em’!” Caroline says, holding a pair of shears in her hand. Oh good, glad we won’t be cutting my hair with crafting scissors, not that I would’ve minded if that’s all we had.
“Perfect!” I down the rest of my spritz and waltz to the back deck where I sit for the next 45 minutes as a type-A, 15-year-old cuts my hair with the precision of an expert neurosurgeon.
“Who is that, Eden?” The grandmother of all grandmas walks out to the deck carrying Eden. She basically hasn’t left her side since our epic meltdown at The Grounds earlier. And I do mean our meltdowns. We both lost it there for a bit .
“Maaa!” she exclaims, though doesn’t make any move to rid herself of Sandy’s arms.
“Your momma looks so pretty with her fresh cut, huh?” Brit asks Eden. Brit has barely left my side since it all went down, too. She kicked Liam out of their bedroom so we could get dressed. She’s made me at least three cocktails. She even had Niko and Constantine pick up In-N-Out for us on their way over, which she insisted we eat in bed.
It’s been simultaneously the worst and the best day.
“Almostttttt…done!” Caroline exclaims, circling me, examining the lines of my cut from different angles.
“Oh my gawd, you have never looked hotter,” Brit says while standing and coming over to run her fingers against the blunt edges. “Eee!” She even lets out a little squeal of excitement. I look at the faces of the women on the deck. My best friend, her daughters, Sandy, my daughter, and each has a look of utter love plastered on their face. (See, who needs men, my friends?)
My sweet potato casserole would have been a joke stacked against the meal laid out before us. Carly already has sweet potatoes done two other ways. I mean, really. It’s like she’s got sixteen hands or something.
The table in the dining room has been extended and believe it or not, it actually sits everyone here. (“Everyone” being Liam, Brit, Caroline, Elodie, Damian, Sandy and her husband Jim, Carly and her brother James, Constantine and his sons Max, Niko, and Silas. Then there’s Blanks, Eden, and me.) (Probably could have squeezed a few more people in, too, if I’m totally honest.)
“Hair looks good,” Damian says, then bumps his shoulder against mine.
“Thanks, bud.”
Under his breath, he asks, “Where’s your fiancé?”
Under my breath, I say back, “Long story. Not enough alcohol and too many people.” He nods in understanding and goes back to talking to Jim who is sitting on his other side.
“Well, it’s not every day we get to have Thanksgiving with a billionaire!” I hear Sandy exclaim defiantly to Liam. Caleb blushes.
“Mom, inappropriate,” Liam gently scolds her.
“Why?!” she asks honestly.
“Well, I mean you do sort of have a billionaire at the table…all the time.” Caleb looks around at Liam, Sandy, and the rest of the table that has now clued into the conversation. He clears his throat. “Alex was, um, just here yesterday.” This time it’s me choking on my spritz. Damian pats me on the back to clear the passage.
“Sorry,” I apologize and dab my mouth with a napkin. I just used a secret credit card my ex-husband gave me to buy airline tickets. I mean, the disparity between me and everyone else at this table feels even more vast.
No one else seems surprised by this except maybe Sandy and me. Everyone else just knew? Is being a billionaire like Fight Club? We just don’t talk about it? Cool.
“You didn’t know?” Damian asks out of the corner of his mouth.
“I hardly know him at all,” is all I say, staring at my mashed potatoes still swimming with gravy .
It wouldn’t have mattered. It doesn’t matter. But I guess it all sort of makes sense. But it’s also pretty clear that money isn’t important to him in the same way it is to others. (When you have a lot of it, it rarely is.)
I shrug, then just give Damian a closed-lip smile. He pats my leg under the table and while I zone out and focus on feeding Eden, the rest of the table’s talk resumes. The Scala boys are arguing over their latest golf scores. Constantine is telling Brit a story about her mom. Liam is just watching Brit, and attempting to force feed her every time there’s a break in conversation. And Sandy is cutting up bits of food for Eden in tandem as I pick them up.
And then there’s Caleb, who is just looking at me. I give him a genuine (looking) smile, one that I hope says, “See? I’m fine. This is fine. Everything is fine.”
Things aren’t exactly fine. But each day I wake up. I put one foot in front of the other. And each step takes me further away from the fantasyland that was my 40 hours with Alex. That’s all it was. From the time I landed to the time I left his house. That’s .006% of my life. A blip. (Yes, I did the math.)
My days all look pretty much the same lately, but right now, I’m grateful for the steadiness of it. I wake up when Eden does. We eat breakfast in our own apartment, then get ready and head to The Grounds where we get coffee. (I drive Brit’s old car now.) (The Volvo sat parked outside The Grounds for about a week, until one day it was just…gone.) No one said anything about it and I didn’t ask. But I wanted to. I wanted to ask Sandy if she’d seen Alex. Did he come get it? Did Caleb? But then so me things are better left alone, too.
Sometimes Brit comes with us for coffee, sometimes we just pick it up and bring it back, and sometimes Eden and I sit and chat with the “rents” as Elodie and Caroline have lovingly dubbed Sandy and Jim. And then I go to work. Eden comes with me, and we sit in Liam’s office while he doles out the day’s to-do list. And then he leaves me to it to manage how it all gets done.
At first I pushed back on Brit because I didn’t want her pity job that didn’t actually include any work, but upon further inspection, there was actually a shit ton of work. It turns out Liam has started a custom build/remodel business, and is a bit crap at paperwork, just like most creatives are.
Paperwork? On it. Logistics? No problem. Arguing with customer service over steel beams that have been delayed another 3 weeks? I’m your gal. Maintaining a healthy relationship? Better look somewhere else.
Inevitably, we end up eating lunch at Brit’s house and then I bring Eden back to the apartment to nap while I bang out the rest of my work. Once she’s up from her nap, we do a FaceTime call with Tommy and Jamie that lasts 15 minutes, and then Eden and I get ready for dinner.
Dinner is, again, a mixed bag. Sometimes we just stay in. Sometimes we head to Colton’s or pick up Maggio’s, and then a lot of times, we find ourselves sitting down for a family dinner with Brit and Liam, a Scala brother or two, and “the rents.” (The girls are back at boarding school now.)
Then it’s the bedtime routine. You know the drill. Bath, lotion, two books, and a song. I put Eden to sleep in the Pack ‘n Play in our room, and then I sit in the living room in my Target pjs and watch The Parent Trap on an endless loop in the background while I try to get lost in the world of Pinterest. (This is on nights when I don’t have an email from my lawyer that needs attention, because D-Day is coming.)
I don’t actually get lost. I think about him under the pretense that I can’t actually be thinking about him when I’m literally doing these other things. (But I can, and I do.)
Some day, when I’m old and gray, hopefully I’ll be laughing at this weird time in my life. Or maybe I even use it as a cautionary tale in 20 or so years when Eden wants to get married, and I beg her not to do it. Who knows? But each day that passes brings me closer to that end goal. And that’s the goal: Turn the recent past into a distant memory.
“What do you want for Christmas?” Brit has asked no less than 25 times in the last week or so.
“Honestly, nothing.”
“Well, I can’t get you nothing.”
“You can, and you should.”
“I can’t and I won’t”
“Some nice face cream,” I finally say, still pouring over a spreadsheet on the laptop in my lap. (Expensive cosmetics are the one thing I refuse to spend money on anymore.) (Okay, not just the one thing. My new wardrobe is entirely made up of vintage or Target.)
Brit rolls her eyes. “Cop out.” And I smile.
“Really, please don’t get me anything. I’m so close to busting out of this joint (her house) and also, lawyer bills, so the only gifts I’m giving are ones that don’t cost a lot.” Like five nights of newborn b abysitting to give Brit a break the first month. Or like me organizing Liam’s entire office so it resembles something The Home Edit would do.
For the girls, I got lucky and thrifted the most amazing vintage bags and furs. (Mob wife style. I’m telling you, it’s coming.) And for Damian, honestly nothing. My presence is his present.
Eden still doesn’t care or comprehend Christmas, and I’m sure between her dads and the rest of the extended family, we’ll have more shit than one kid could ever need. So from me, it’s just a tea set. (Also thrifted.) (Look at me go!)
Sometimes, I get the strangest feeling. It’s that hair raising on the back of my neck, it’s a tingling awareness. And sometimes I can’t shake it. And sometimes I don’t want to, because it’s the feeling I’d get when Alex was around and I’d know before I knew.
It unsettles me, and I shift on the sofa.
The front door opens, and I’m expecting to see Liam traipse in, but I don’t. Alex walks in and he looks…different. He looks great. Honestly, better than ever. And it pisses me off. (Cue every shitty feeling.) His hair is slightly longer, his short beard has returned and is neatly trimmed, and he’s wearing black slacks and a knit polo and…Ferragamo shoes(?) with a long black winter overcoat.
(And I’m sitting here in my thrifted Cal Poly Aquatics circa 1982 hoodie, a pair of $6 black leggings, and chipped toenail polish.) (I have to remedy that ASAP.)
This , it’s just so not like him. And then I get irrationally jealous, because he looks like he’s met someone and they made him over and maybe he has. I can just picture a skinny blonde, waif-like thing holding on to his arm as they walk down the streets of Vien na shopping the Christmas markets. Because he’s carrying about 5 boxes and 10 bags of expensive-looking Christmas presents. Bright orange boxes and yellow bags. Good for him.
He freezes when he eventually notices me. (Still a nobody. Check. )
I’ve been frozen. I don’t get up. I just turn my head and refocus on the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet that is now just a blurring of lines and numbers that have no rational meaning to me.
“What are you doing here?” Brit asks him sharply.
“Dropping off Christmas presents. Don’t worry, I’m not staying.” He says curtly, walking straight to the 12-foot Christmas tree where he quickly drops the boxes and bags and then is out the door again, never sparing me a second look. (I am nobody, it’s officially confirmed.)
Maybe he’s done the math too and realized I barely make up .006% of his life (maybe less) and maybe he has met someone else and he’s already turned me into that distant memory. Again, good for him. (Shitty for me.)
The water floods my vision, making it quite impossible to read whatever it is this computer screen says. Then Brit is off the sofa and moving faster than she has in weeks. I hear the front door slam shut and then there’s the muffled sound of arguing.
Of course I want to know what’s being said, desperately, but it’s best for my sanity if I don’t. So I sit stiffly on the sofa, forcing my ass to stay put until Brit huffs back in and slams the door.
“Fucking idiot,” she curses under her breath. It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask. But I don’t because in all likelihood there’s a chance whate ver that was about would kill me. If it was about me, that would fucking suck. If it wasn’t about me, well, I’d be fucking obliterated. (You get what I’m saying?)
I’m still in that ‘one is too many, 1000 would never be enough’ thing with him. Or maybe it’s more like if you give a mouse a cookie. If I ask about this one thing, I’ll ask about more. And if I ask about more, I’m sure to get answers that will hurt. And if I get answers that’ll hurt, I’ll probably experience a setback. So no. Don’t think I will.