Chapter 18
I smile as I pull into the dirt driveway in front of my mom’s place Wednesday evening. It’s been a long few days since we returned to Atlanta. Catching up at work after a week away, plus being filmed every time I come home, and moving into a tiny apartment with Andie—I’m exhausted. I’m looking forward to a regular dinner where I don’t have to be Perfect Husband Kit for a couple of hours.
As I walk up the steps, I note that the landscapers I sent to clean up the yard did some great work. I’ll add them to the list of companies I can trust to take care of things when I’m halfway across the world. My steps slow as I approach the door. Living in a new country doesn’t sound as exciting as it used to, for some reason. Probably because I know my mom is still struggling with her health. Once she’s on the mend, I’ll want to travel for work again, I’m positive.
She answers almost as soon as I knock, a broad smile across her face, despite the exhaustion hovering just behind her eyes. “Welcome back, Kit.” She grips my arm as I cross the threshold. “I hope you’re okay with some casserole; I didn’t have the energy for much else.”
“Casserole is perfect.” I bow to kiss the top of her bald head and let her lean on me on our way to the couch. She seems so much frailer than I know her to be. The doctors warned me this wouldn’t be easy—for either of us—but I’m not sure what to do with this version of the woman who raised me.
I clear my throat and say, “I was thinking—what if we took that trip to Paris?” Talking about it with Andie has my mind spinning on all the things I haven’t done, even when they were right in front of me. It’s like she shook open the curtains on the periphery of my tunnel vision and asked me to look out the window, for fuck’s sake.
“I can’t travel right now.” Mom waves it off.
“But when you’re done with chemo and radiation,” I counter. “We’ll go. We’ll do everything we planned, and anything else you want. Spend the summer exploring Europe, maybe.”
She tilts her head to study me like a specimen. “You can’t take all that time off work, can you?”
“I—” I want to say that of course I can, but I don’t know if that’s true. I never ask for time off. Hell, I told my job I had a lead on a property in Costa Rica, so I wasn’t on my honeymoon, really. I was scouting the potential investment. And I’ve been at work since seven this morning, trying to catch up from the single week I was gone. Every email I missed was a notch on the vise strapped around my chest, cinching tighter every day. A simple reminder that if I fail at this job and they let me go, the life I’ve built is moot.
The oven timer beeps, and I gesture to my mom to sit while I take care of it. It only takes a few minutes to turn off the oven and serve us up a couple of plates of a noodle casserole where most of the ingredients probably came out of a can. It will taste like home, I’m sure of it. Mom refuses help to the small table, teetering into her seat with a heavy sigh.
I push some food on my plate, my mind back at my penthouse at the Colonnade. That large dining table I never use and never invite her to sit at. The world-renowned meals we have the option to eat, but for some reason I never thought of it until Andie was standing in my space, looking at it like it hurt her.
“What do you think?” I ask, spearing some green beans along with an egg noodle. “About Paris, I mean?”
She gives me a long look across the small table. “Is there a reason why you’re not telling me about your new wife?”
I choke on my food, reaching for my glass of water. A few gulps do the trick, and I take in a deep breath as I slouch in my chair. Thank God there are no cameras here to witness this conversation. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything, Kit.” She pushes her food around but doesn’t take a bite. “I want to know everything about the woman who’s stolen your heart.”
I bite my tongue to keep from correcting her—our hearts are definitely not involved. Andie has made that perfectly clear. I’m grateful I never told Mom about Andie when we dated the first time. Four fast and fiery months that went up in smoke; at least Mom didn’t have to witness that destruction too. After swallowing another bit of food, I try to answer. “Her name is Andie. Brown hair, hazel eyes, about your height.”
Mom snorts. “I mean who is she as a person?”
“She’s determined.” I scoop up another bite of casserole. “Proud. Stubborn.”
“Sounds like a good match for you, then.” Mom takes a sip of water, and I eye her shaking hand carefully as it returns the glass to the table.
“What does that mean?” I mumble around a mouthful of food.
“Kit, you and I both know how you get when you’re faced with a problem.”
I bide my time chewing, then chasing it all down with a swig of water. “How’s that?”
“You’ve never been able to sit with it.” She pins me with her stare. It’s too perceptive. Even now, despite how much I want to prove her wrong, my body revs like it needs to run. “You need someone stubborn to keep you in the room long enough to work it out.”
“I’m sorry.” The words tumble from my mouth, and still I want to flee the table. Will I ever feel okay with my decision to leave? “I should have stayed with you when you needed me.”
She waves it off. “You were young and didn’t know how to handle it.”
My foot bounces under the table and my eyes dart to the front door.
“You can stop running, Kit.” She reaches a hand across the small table and grips my wrist.
I don’t know how to explain the storm of emotions swirling in my chest, or the thoughts clattering in my head. How sitting here at this table without my dad still makes me feel so lost. Leaving was the only way to outrun the grief crushing me from all sides—my dad no longer with us and my mom slipping away in front of my eyes, grief eating away at her. Running was the only way I could breathe.
I frown at a pea that’s rolled to the edge of my plate, thinking of Andie yanking open those curtains again. My foot stills under the table.
“When do I get to meet her?” Mom asks, a smile tugging at her lips and a sparkle in her eyes. It’s a ray of sunlight peeking through the storm of drugs that rob her of her energy, and part of me is ready to call Andie right now and tell her to come over if it means it will make my mom feel better.
But that light in my Mom’s eyes will flicker out again if she sees Andie and me together and sees the truth—we’re not in love. And we won’t be falling, either.
I stuff another forkful of food into my mouth. “I don’t know. She’s really busy. Works late a lot.” It’s a half-truth. Andie is incredibly busy, but Cassidy already asked me to pick a date for the “meeting the parents” episode with my mom. She said she needs to scout locations and get filming releases beforehand. I told her I’d ask Mom, but I can’t bring myself to ask her to allow the chaos that is First Look at Forever into her life. Not when she needs peace and quiet.
“Doing what?” Mom puts down her fork and gives up the pretense of eating. My heart sustains a tiny, paper cut–thin tear.
“She runs her own business.” I set my fork down too. My appetite is evaporating by the second. “Making wedding dresses.”
“Can I see?” That spark in my mom’s eyes is impossible to say no to, so I pull out my phone and google Andie’s website. I haven’t looked at it yet, mostly because I haven’t had the time, but now that it’s in front of me, I’m greedy for it.
It’s not pink. I don’t know why I expected it to be pink. Andie isn’t a pink kind of person, anyway. Instead, the website is variations on sunshiny yellows with a clean, modern font and photos of some of her designs. I pass my phone to my mom and let her poke around.
“She’s showing at Atlanta Fashion Week,” I say, just to keep from snatching my phone back to look at the website again. It’s a piece of her, and I don’t know what to do with it.
“What does that mean?” Mom taps on the phone screen.
I scrub my knuckles along my five o’clock shadow and admit, “I’m not sure. She hasn’t told me much about it, but she’s always working on new designs after I’ve gone to bed.”
Mom makes a noncommittal noise, and I make a mental note to look up what it takes to show at Fashion Week.
“She’s beautiful, Kit.”
My eyes snap to Mom, who’s smiling at my phone screen. I know she hasn’t opened my photos, because I haven’t taken any of Andie. The only image I have of her is the one I drew on hotel paper and hung on our fridge.
Mom turns the screen toward me, and it’s like a kick to the chest. She’s pulled up the site’s About page, and right there is a picture of Andie at her workstation, focused on the task at hand.
She’s in a white T-shirt and long, electric blue pleated skirt. One she no doubt made for herself; is that skirt hanging in our closet at home? The spray of freckles across her face is gorgeous, even in a photo. Her hair is dangling over her shoulder in a haphazard braid, some glasses perched on top of her head. Her lips are in the shape of a round vowel as she’s pointing to her tablet, nested in a cloud of white, shimmery fabric, like she’s talking to someone just out of frame. A bride perhaps.
It’s Andie in her element, and it’s stunning to witness in this still. What would it be like to experience in person?
“Yes,” I croak, reaching for my water, “she is.”
Mom turns off the screen and sets my phone down in the middle of the table. “Is she good to you?”
I rest my hand on the table and stare at my wedding band. It’s not that Andie has been awful to me, it’s that she won’t let me be good to her. I swallow and admit to my mom, “She won’t let me in, and I don’t know what to do.”
Mom nods sagely, then slowly stands, leaning heavily on the table. She picks up her plate and gives me a determined look. “Don’t forget you need to let her in, too.”