Chapter 6
Six
Public Debut
Xerses
By Friday afternoon, my mother had transformed the compound into a campaign. But there was another current moving underneath this weekend now, and every person in the family felt it whether they admitted it or not. Kelly.
Or more specifically, Kelly arriving with me.
I stepped into the main hall and saw my mother halfway up a ladder directing floral arrangements like the future of Persian hospitality depended on exact placement.
“It looks fine,” I said.
She didn’t look down. “It does not.”
“It does.”
“It’s flowers.”
“To you.” She adjusted a branch by hand and finally glanced down at me. “You’re early.”
She meant more than arrival time.
“You look pleased with yourself,” I said.
My mother descended the ladder with help she did not need and handed off the arrangement notes to a staff member before coming toward me. She kissed my cheek once, then the other, and smoothed an invisible flaw from my shirt.
“You look handsome.”
“I always look handsome.”
“That’s true.” Her smile sharpened. “Kelly will be here at six.”
I kept my expression still.
Her brows lifted. “Where is your smile to see your lady soon?”
I inched my cheeks up into an exaggerated smile no one would ever believe. Then asked, “What exactly would you like me to say?”
“That you’re excited to see her.”
“You won’t believe me if I lied.”
My mother noticed when I looked away.
“She likes the ocean,” she said.
I turned my head. “That information feels conspiratorial. Most people like the ocean.”
“True, she told me herself when she moved a few months ago to her small beach apartment after all her friends left Manhattan.”
Of course.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that Kelly had survived a lunch with my mother. Or that my mother had gathered personal information from her like she assembled her precious jewelry in a vault. The image unsettled me in ways I had no interest in examining too closely.
“How did that go?”
My mother gave me the kind of innocent look that meant the opposite. “Very well.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Yes.”
My mother’s hand tightened once around my forearm. Not hard. enough to pull my attention fully back to her.
“Do not make this difficult.”
I looked down at her. “What exactly is ‘this’?”
She held my gaze for a beat. She took a breath and said, “Kelly is a good woman. Her parents dying in a car accident when she was twenty-one is tragic but she has a good spirit about her.”
Absolutely true and that became clear a few days ago in that moment I’d watched my mother use her to make a point at the dinner table and seen Kelly absorb it with that bright smile she used like armor.
What was still less clean was why the thought had hit me so hard. The moment was still in vivid color in my mind.
Before I could say another word to my mother, footsteps sounded behind us and Charlie’s voice carried through the open doors.
“Ah. There he is. The unmarried brother and mom’s last project.”
I closed my eyes for one very brief second.
Then opened them and turned.
Charlie came onto the terrace grinning, Hope tucked under his arm with the deeply irritating calm of a woman who had somehow figured out how to be in love without becoming boring.
Behind them came Roman, Isabel at his side, and farther back Jeff and Miley, already mid-conversation about something dense and legal-sounding enough that I knew better than to ask.
Charlie pointed at me dramatically. “I would like the record to reflect that I knew you liked her the day you met.”
“No, you didn’t,” Hope said.
“You think everyone fell in love the same night you brought your now wife to meet your family.”
“Everyone knows I have the best taste and so does my wife which means friends and family naturally mingle.”
My mother sighed. “Charlie.”
Charlie crossed the terrace to clap me on the shoulder, still grinning.
“What time is she getting here?”
“Six.” Mother said and waved everyone to the foyer.
The next ten minutes were a useful reminder of why the arrangement had been necessary in the first place. The second a possible romance entered the room, everyone invested in each others lives, like it might either bloom or explode.
Kelly would feel every inch of that. And I tensed. She was vulnerable when it came to my family. Minutes ticked past and I’d decided two things.
One: I was not leaving her alone with the first wave of family reception.
Two: if Charlie said one stupid thing before she got her feet under her, I was throwing him into the Atlantic.
At 6:02, one of the staff crossed the terrace doors and said, “Kelly khanom is here.”
I jumped to be first at the door.
Kelly stood just inside, one hand on her bag strap, wearing a dress that made me forget about the idiots behind me.
Charlie appeared beside me. “You want to fu-claim her right now.”
“Charlie.”
He laughed and urged me closer to the door. “Go. I’ll distract maman.”
I shook my head. “You can’t distract maman.”
He patted my back. “No, but I can be loud enough that she chooses to manage me instead of you.”
I glanced behind my shoulder. “That is the most useful thing you’ve ever said.”
He shook his head. “I know. I’m saving it for the speech at your wedding.”
“There is no wedding.” I said and reached for the door.
“Not yet,” Charlie said, and vanished into the crowd.
Her eyes widened the second she saw me. And I felt the impact of it in my spine, clean and immediate.
Across the foyer, Hope and Avril had appeared from the dining room side hall and were clearly one badly timed comment away from ruining what little calm Kelly was carrying.
Britney was behind them, thank God, looking like a woman fully prepared to body-check anyone who got too sentimental.
Hope opened her mouth first. Kelly cut her off without even looking at her. “No.”
One word. Hope blinked.
Kelly turned her head enough to include all of them in a sweep of cool warning. “Nobody is making this a conversation in front of him or his family.”
My mouth nearly moved.
Britney’s gaze slid to me, caught that almost-smile, and flattened with immediate suspicion. Then she looked back at Kelly and gave one tiny nod.
There.
“Hi,” I said to her. “You survived the drive.”
“Barely. I was at a showing and your mother texted me four times about appetizers.”
“Only four?”
“And sent a photograph of the table setting asking me my favorite flowers.”
Clearly gathering information for wedding planning. Maman was never subtle but I shrugged, “That sounds restrained. Guess we should both give in and for me to say welcome to the family.”
“Don’t say that. Not even as a joke.” I should have kept it simple. Something light. Easy.
Instead I lifted a hand and touched two fingers very briefly under her elbow. “You look beautiful tonight.”
A blush grew on her face.
God. A zip rushed through me as I realized that one reaction alone was going to make the weekend unbearable.
“So do you,” she said.
“Did you just compliment me back?” I asked and stood taller.
“I made a factual observation.”
“About my appearance.”
“About reality.”
Her face pinkened even more. “You’re blushing.”
“I am not blushing. It’s the lighting.”
“The lighting is behind you.”
“Then it’s the wine.”
“You haven’t had wine yet.”
She let out a sigh. “I’m pre-blushing. It’s anticipatory.”
That interested me too much as I imagined her entire body pinkening.
From the side, Charlie made a low sound of delight. I didn’t turn my head.
“Charlie,” I said. “You had one job.”
“He has a job?” Kelly asked as her eyes widened.
“Distract maman from making us her project.”
She nodded like she approved of the plan.
The group converged on us, and Kelly visibly shifted into performance mode.
She was fast and her smile settled into place.
A second later, her whole body made the adjustment I was beginning to recognize, the one where she took whatever she felt inside and immediately restructured any conversation to a joke, long before anyone else could say a word.
It was her daily operation mode in a crowd.
Hope hugged her first because Hope did everything emotionally and at speed. “You didn’t text me back.”
“I was avoiding joy.”
“You can’t avoid being happy.”
Avril squeezed Kelly’s hand, quieter in her warmth. “We are all glad you’re here.”
“Me too. You’re the only people who matter to me.”
Britney stepped in then, crossing the last distance with that peculiar authority she had when she’d decided to approve a thing only provisionally. She kissed Kelly’s cheek once, then the other, and murmured something too low for anyone else to catch.
Kelly answered with a minute incline of her head.
Not warmth exactly. Permission.
That told me more than the words would have.
It hit me then, unexpectedly, as I watched her with her friends that Kelly was not simply entering my family’s world this weekend. I was being allowed into hers too. That was a more dangerous thing than it should have been.
My mother appeared in the foyer like the final stroke in a painting she had already decided was successful.
“Kelly joon.”
Roxanne crossed the room in a sweep of silk and diamonds and impossible maternal force and took Kelly into a kiss on each cheek that was warm to look real because it was. The women around us all stepped back a fraction.
My mother’s affection, when directed at someone, could make a room rearrange itself.
Kelly’s lashes lowered and her mouth softened, but sweetness grew in her face.
A moment later, maman slid one arm through Kelly’s and turned to me. “Take her drink order Xerses. Kelly was getting crowded.”
She said it lightly, but I heard the command under it as did everyone.
I held out my hand to Kelly. Because now that the moment had arrived, it mattered what we looked like in it.
Her gaze dropped to my hand for half a second. Then she put her fingers into mine. A rush raced through me from the small contact.