Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Spencer
“So, did Beverly ever try to set you up with anyone?”
The bite of salad I just shoved in my mouth gets lodged in my throat. I cough before replying. “Oh, yes.”
She wipes her mouth with a napkin and then settles it back in her lap. “That’s surprising.”
“Why surprising?”
She shrugs. “You’re still single. She was pretty good at it.”
I stall, taking a sip of water. Absolutely no alcohol tonight. And no engaging in intimate conversations in front of a cozy fire. Instead, we’re in the dining room, keeping it formal and businesslike with a giant stack of boxes on the table next to us. Very unromantic.
The conversation has been light and casual, and I’ve been avoiding delving into anything too personal. I can’t get involved. We can’t get involved.
“She tried,” I say finally. “The single women she set me up with inevitably found their perfect match immediately after we went on our date.”
She chuckles. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope. I think she was just using me to make the real match jealous.” Actually, I’m sure of it.
“First, there was Eliza Draper. She was only here for the summer. Beverly sat me next to her during a showing of The Philadelphia Story. Now she’s back in Minnesota, with Pete, who used to own the sandwich shop down on the corner.
” I wave a hand in the general direction.
“Oh, yeah, the grinder shop. I remember. They had good Italian subs.” She sets her fork down.
I shift my empty plate to the side. “They did. I’m still pissed he closed the shop and moved away.
Then there was Betsy Collins. I’ve known her since we were six, and I knew it wouldn’t go anywhere, because she’s more like a sister than anything else.
But Beverly insisted, so we go for coffee one day.
Now she’s married and their son turned one last month. ”
Her brows lift. “Beverly was truly a mastermind. I hope they at least broke it to you easy.”
I lean back in my seat. “Oh yeah. The breakups were extremely mutual. Much easier than my last long-term relationship. She ended our three-year relationship via text.”
“Ouch.”
“Don’t worry, she also cc’d the message to my personal email, professional email, and sent it through the contact page on the website.”
“What did you do, cheat on her with her best friend? Leave her at the altar?”
“Nothing so dramatic. She wanted to stay in Boston. I had to be here for my parents. I couldn’t move back. It was nonnegotiable. We thought we could do long distance, but it just didn’t work out. She said I was too difficult to reach.”
Her head tilts. “Hence the messaging overkill?”
“She thought I still wouldn’t see it or respond for a while.
” I rub my chin. “To be fair, I was going through it with my parents, and I tend to close off instead of reaching out. I should have been more open with her. We stayed together for about nine months after I moved back, doing the long-distance thing. But it was hard to manage a relationship while helping my parents. Mom was sick. Dad was exhausted. I helped them and helped my dad run the business. I didn’t have bandwidth for anything else.
Then Mom died. Patricia broke up with me a few months after that. ”
Her mouth pops open. “Right after your mother died?”
I nod. “I’m making it sound worse than it was. I don’t blame her. I was a terrible communicator, and she couldn’t move here. There were zero opportunities for her in Surrender.” She never would have been satisfied doing the type of work I’ve been doing. She loved the hustle and high stakes.
“What did she do?”
“We both worked for a corporate estate firm. It was so different from what I do now. I used to negotiate contracts worth more than this whole town. She wanted to be a partner. We both did, once upon a time, but my goals shifted when I moved here.”
“You like working here better than at a big fancy firm in Boston?”
“Actually, I do. It feels like it matters more. People need me.”
“What about you? What do you need?”
I blow out a breath. “I’m not sure anymore.
After my parents and then the breakup, any time someone else needed something, I just found myself stepping in.
I was already used to being busy, working sixty-plus hours a week.
It was like if I ever stopped to do something just for myself, I might fall apart.
Being useful kept me glued together. I couldn’t fall apart if people relied on me. ”
She sets her fork down on her empty plate.
“I get that. I’ve had my own struggles trying to .
. . I don’t know, stop letting other people dictate the terms of my life.
Figuring out where agency starts and obligation ends.
But you are worthy, whether you do all these things for other people or you don’t. ”
I stare at her, struck by her words.
What happened to keeping this conversation light? How did we get here?
She’s right though. She has the same struggle, but in an entirely different context. You can’t build your life while disappearing, like she did, or by carrying everyone else’s problems, like I do. She went into isolation, I went into busy-do-everything mode.
But she’s reclaiming her life, fixing the theater, putting herself out there, and taking a chance by going through all of Beverly’s final wishes.
What am I doing? How can I choose myself, even if it disappoints others? I shake the thoughts away.
“Okay.” I point at her. I need to steer the topic off myself. “Your turn to share a relationship horror story.”
Her brows shoot up. “My turn?”
“Oh.” Realization smacks me upside the head. This is different for her, being in the limelight all the time. “I’m sorry.” Warmth fills my face. “You don’t have to tell me anything, I wasn’t thinking—”
She reaches across the table and rests her fingers on mine for a split second, but it’s enough to zap all the words out of my mouth.
“It’s fine. I trust you. Besides, I’m sure you heard the story. It was all over social media, hard to miss.”
“I’m not on social media much. Quinn handles all that for the office.”
She chuckles, and our eyes lock. “I dated another actor. Chris Stewart. You know who that is?”
“Yeah, I think so. Wasn’t he in that one movie, the one that’s like Princess Bride, but in space?”
“Yep. That was my longest relationship. Six months. Pathetic, right?”
I shake my head. “Not at all.”
She sighs. “We never had privacy. We couldn’t go on vacation without being followed by the press.
They loved to take photos, posting articles judging me in a bikini.
You can’t win, really. You’re either too thin and on drugs or too fat and pregnant and on drugs.
” She takes a gulp of water. “It was worse because Mom would tell them where I was.”
“What?” She’s told me how her mother is, but it’s still so hard to believe a parent could be that way to her child.
“Oh, yeah.” She shakes her head. “Anyway, the whole thing was . . . stupid, really. I was na?ve. I thought we were serious or would be serious. But in hindsight, we never talked about anything real. It was all surface. We never went anywhere we wouldn’t be seen and photographed.
I found out later it was for publicity, promoting his movie.
I wish I had understood all that before the press released all the photos of him with that model.
Six months, and even that wasn’t real. He thought I knew because my mom knew. ”
I wince. “That’s a terrible thing to have to go through, so publicly.”
“It kind of turned me off of dating . . . forever. Then there was that whole thing with the reporter, I’m sure you heard about it.”
“No, I don’t think I have.”
“Right after that, I had to do a press junket for the release of the show on a new streamer. I didn’t want to, but I was under contract.
One of the reporters kept asking about Chris and what happened, and I kept trying to get back to questions about the show.
Eventually, I was on the verge of a panic attack so I got up and walked out mid-interview and refused to go back.
It was a whole thing, people calling me a diva and a brat.
Mom freaked out on me, my publicist tried to control the spin, but it was all just too much.
That was kind of my breaking point. I moved to Boston and hid away until the furor died down.
Then I just didn’t really want to emerge. ”
“Until now.”
“Until now. It was nice at first, being alone and only interacting with people on my own terms, through text or FaceTime or whatever. I relished not having to deal with people. But over time, it got lonely.”
“I get it. I mean, I can’t possibly understand what you went through, living under a microscope your whole life, because I’ve never experienced it. But it can’t have been easy.” Especially not with her mother working against her.
Her eyes scan my face, and her lips curve up. Then she glances over at the windows lining the wall, the darkness reflecting our images. “It’s getting late. I should probably get out of your hair. I know you’re up early.”
She’s right. I do get up early. She should leave. But I don’t want her to. I shove that thought down and push myself to my feet instead. “Right. I’ll walk you to the door.”
“I can help clean up?”
I wave her off. “It’s nothing. Just a couple plates. Besides, you cooked this time.”
She laughs. “Reheating chicken and mixing a prebagged salad is not cooking. It’s hardly an accomplishment.”
I follow her out of the dining room to the door. I glance down the hall into the office. The curtains are closed, so the path is pitch-black.
“I’ll go with you to the light switch.”
“My hero.” She presses a hand to her chest. “The hallway is so dangerous.”
“It really can be. Slippery wood floor. Uneven boards. Walls.”
She laughs. “Walls? Those are the scariest parts. They’re all large and immovable.”
“Until you run into one. Trust me, they move.”
I feel for the light switch on the wall near the stairs and flick it on, illuminating the rest of her path.
She stops. “Thank you for the walk to my . . . to the stairs.” Without warning, she reaches up, rests a warm hand on my shoulder, and brushes a kiss against my cheek.
I’m too shocked to move. The press of her lips on my flesh, as fleeting and gentle as it is, stops my heart in my chest.
She pulls back, and our eyes lock.
My brain short-circuits, my body taken over by impulse and reflex and desire and instinct. I can’t blame the wine. We didn’t have any. I can only blame my own lack of restraint and the fact that she is clearly irresistible.
I lean down and press my lips against hers.
The world shifts under my feet and then disappears.
Everything distills down into the pressure of her lips against mine, the warmth of her fingers clutching my shoulder, the smell of her perfume, light and bright and floral.
I lose all sense of time, of my limbs. My arms have a will of their own, one hand sliding down her back to the curve at the base, the other lifting and cupping around the soft skin of her neck.
Her tongue brushes mine, and her grip on my shoulders tightens and then runs down my chest. “I love these sweater vests,” she murmurs.
“What?”
But instead of answering, she kisses me again. What were we talking about?
She tastes like violets in spring.
She moans into my mouth, and a rush of pure lust shoots through my veins.
A loud knock breaks through the fog of desire, like jumping out of a sauna and into an ice bath.
We release each other at the same moment.
I glance around. What happened?
There’s another knock.
We both turn toward the sound. Someone is outside, peering through the glass of the door.
The surprise visitor is young. Early twenties, maybe. She has golden brown hair, and is wearing a long, cream-colored, thick coat.
She waves frantically.
My mind is too frayed to grasp what is happening.
“Oh, shit.” Vivien’s eyes meet mine. “It’s my sister.”