Chapter 32
“F
inally!” Rachel says, handing me a glass of white wine and flopping into the big armchair opposite me in her freshly completed guesthouse. “Peace and quiet. Just you and me.”
It’s been a hectic time wrangling us out of the Dashwoods’ home, flying us and all our worldly goods to California, spending a couple days in a hotel, moving into this stunning two-bedroom cottage, and getting Dylan settled into his new school.
The upset, stress, and exhaustion have been overwhelming at times—on the first night at the hotel I sneaked out into the hallway after Dylan was asleep to cry a bit.
This would all be hard enough under the best of circumstances, but to do it against the background of walking away from Tom, with the taste of what might have been still fresh on my lips, and with Dylan sulking about moving away from his friends, it’s all been a lot to bear.
Maggie shed a few tears when we left. She said Tom had gone to New York to see his brother—I assume that was to avoid the awkward goodbyes. And she’s texted me a few times since to check in on us. If I were looking for a mother figure for me and a grandma substitute for Dylan, I couldn’t hope to find a better one.
But the move will all be worth it in the end. Things are already looking up. Rachel and her husband, Dev, took us down to the beach this weekend. Dylan’s face when he dipped his toes in the chilly Pacific for the first time was a picture. And he’s already making friends—one of the kids at school invited him around to play Overlord Hybrids this evening.
So now, with Dev out at a work function, it’s the first time Rachel and I have had the chance to sit down quietly with no one else around.
“To a fresh start,” Rachel says, holding her glass out to me.
I clink mine against it. “Fresh starts.”
“One more month, and we’ll be just over there.” She points in the direction of her huge new house that looks finished on the outside but isn’t quite ready yet on the inside. “Desperate to get out of that hotel.”
“I can’t thank you enough for letting us stay.” I stretch my legs out along the brand-new sofa. I can’t believe how beautifully she’s furnished it for us. “This place is the stuff of dreams.”
And it is. We’re sitting in the open-plan kitchen/living area with a wall of glass that folds back to open the whole place up to the patio and the lawn leading to the pool. There are two bedrooms, each with their own bathroom. And then there’s the view over the city to the ocean beyond.
“The Dashwoods’ place was nice though, right?” Rachel says.
“Beautiful, yeah. Totally different. It’s a historic building that the guys completely restored for them.”
“Speaking of the Dashwoods…” She raises her eyebrows over the top of her glass as she lifts it to her mouth. “Have you heard from Tom?”
“Stop it. That name’s banned, remember?”
“Yeah. But you love him.”
“Rachel!”
“So…have you?”
My heart flutters at the mere memory of seeing his name in my inbox a few days ago. “Only when he sent me the reference.”
“And did he say anything?”
“No.”
“There must have been a note in the email. You know”—she waves her hand around as she creates—“‘Dear, Miss. Hepburn. Here’s your reference. Thanks for the brief bout of monumentally mind-blowing sex. Goodbye forever. Tom’?”
I pull my knees up to my chest and wrap my arms around them, cradling the glass in both hands. “He just thanked me for my genius suggestion of how to smooth things over at his office in London. To organize a day-long staff kayaking trip along the Thames followed by drinks, dinner, and pub games to get everyone out of the building and talking to an executive who’d thrown a Grammy at someone. Apparently it worked, and they ended up all laughing together.”
“And he said…” I swallow hard and sniff past the rising emotions. “Whoever gets me as their assistant will be lucky.”
I’d learned, while I was wrapping up my work for Tom, that his managing director, Desmond—the guy who’d texted while we were putting our clothes back on in the car—had successfully handled getting Gareth to sign the commitment to anger management and making a written apology. It was a relief to know that solving the Gareth issue hadn’t been affected by Tom dashing back to the States with me right before that crucial meeting.
The suggestion of an activity day to encourage everyone to move past it had been my final contribution as Tom’s temp assistant. And it was gratifying to learn it was a success.
I draw a line through the condensation on the outside of my glass, debating whether to tell Rachel the other thing. I wasn’t going to mention it to anyone. But this is Rachel. She’ll get it. “There’s something else too.”
“Oh, yes.” Rachel leans forward, hopeful.
I turn to look at her and rest the side of my head on my knees. “The school emailed to say an anonymous donor has given them enough money to repair the fire damage in the library.”
“Ha. Obviously him. Right?”
I shrug. It has to be.
Rachel drops back in the squishy chair and throws one arm into the air. “See. He’s as in love with you as you are with him.” She declares it as if it’s as much of a fact as blood flows through veins.
A flash of heat takes hold of my cheeks. “He’s not. And I’m not.”
“Riiight.”
I lift my head and stare into my glass. “Makes no difference. He’ll be on his way back to London soon. And I’m here. I’m not moving Dylan to another country. And Tom would rather have his eyeballs stabbed with hot forks than be in LA.”
“Why does he hate LA?” Rachel is stunned that anyone couldn’t love her adopted home as much as she does. “Does he hate sunshine and beaches? Urgh. Okay, maybe you’re right. There’s definitely something wrong with him.”
“The main thing wrong with him is that he’s a man. And men don’t stick around. At least not with me. Tom left, then Shithead left, then Nicholas turned out to be a dirtbag, and Tom will leave again.”
A long sip of wine cools my throat, then warms my stomach. “History has taught me that it’s best to stick to just the one male in my life—the one I gave birth to. And concentrate on building a future for us here and on whatever I need to do to give the clinical trial its best chance of working.”
“I bet Tom’s as sad as you are.”
She thinks I’m sad. And she doesn’t even know how much my whole body hurts, how sometimes my heart feels like it’s trying to crawl out from between my ribs to escape the pain, and how much I’ve sobbed into her new fluffy pillows and Egyptian cotton sheets.
“I’m not sad. I’m just tired. Moving is stressful. Moving a kid is even more stressful. But look at all this. I’m so lucky and so grateful for everything you’re doing for us.” I gesture to the room and force a wide smile that belies my inner ache, which is showing no sign of fading. “And Dylan’s new school seems great. He already has a new friend. We’ve got a meeting at the hospital next month. And you’ve helped me line up two job interviews for next week. And I can go outside without a parka in February. Everything’s great. How could I be sad?”
And all those things are true. Factually correct. They’re things that any other human would be jumping with joy to have. And the fact I’m not makes me feel hugely unappreciative.
My phone vibrates on the table beside me. “That’ll be Dylan asking for a ride home.” I pick up the phone. “Oh, no, it’s not. It’s an email.” I open the message. “From the bride at the chocolate dick-making party.”
“The what?” Rachel’s face is screwed up in seven kinds of puzzlement.
When I don’t reply, I think she repeats the question, but I’m not entirely sure because every pore in my body is concentrating on the contents of this message. Katie’s emailed Tom and CCed me.
Have I understood this correctly? I scan the words again. And release a long, slow, breathy “Fuuuck.”
“What?” Rachel asks again. “You look like you might be about to pass out.” She gets up and walks around to perch on the arm of the sofa and strains to look at the phone over my shoulder. “Is it bad news? What’s happened, Han? I can’t see from here.”
My heart bounces around my chest as my trembling hands drop the phone into my lap and I turn to look up at Rachel. The scrambled mush that used to be my brain doesn’t even know how to start summarizing what, I only now realize, is a bit of an odd story.
“The bride at the chocolate dick-making bachelorette we went to, had her honeymoon canceled.”
Rachel’s mouth says nothing, but her expression asks whether I’ve lost my marbles.
“Tom asked me to get her contact info. But I didn’t know why. Turns out he lent her his house in the South of France, the one that’s next door to Elton John’s, for her honeymoon. And flew them there first class.”
“I’m sorry. What?” Rachel grabs my shoulder. “You made chocolate dicks with Tom? At a stranger’s bachelorette? And he has a house in France next to Elton John?”
I nod.
She reaches for the wine bottle. “That is a lot of very strange information to process all at once.”
“It’s a nice thing to do, isn’t it? Like, really nice?”
She tops up both our glasses. “Seriously? Elton John?”
“Yeah, look.” I reopen the thank-you message and show her the photo of Katie and her new husband standing on either side of a beaming Sir Elt.
“Holy fuck. I thought you were on something.” She takes the phone from me and tips it toward the light to scrutinize it. “That really is him.”
“Yes. But how great is it that Tom did that for them?” There’s a tremor in my voice that I can’t control. “He came up with that idea all by himself. And organized it. He didn’t have to do any of it. Or the school donation thing. But he did.”
The generosity, the thoughtfulness, the heart behind both those things says everything about who Tom is. Yes, he’s swimming in enough cash to throw at private jets, fancy cars, and lavish vacations. But he chose to give a complete stranger a honeymoon beyond her dreams and to fix up the scorched corner of a small-town high school.
Things like that wouldn’t even be on the radar of most men who can call the biggest music stars in the world and they’ll pick up. But not only did Tom notice them, he cared enough to actually do something about them.
And he didn’t say a word.
He didn’t do these things to show off or make himself look good or impress me or anyone else—there’s no way he’d even expect me to find out.
He did them because they were good things to do, right things to do, things that made life better for other people.
I have thrown away the most amazing man I’ve ever known. And that’s what my life will miss out on. A man no one else could ever live up to. A man who knows me as well as I know him. A man with whom I still have a unique and magical spark even after seventeen years apart.
But I made the only choice I could. My son.
So Tom and I can’t be together. I have no choice but to miss out on him.
Rachel looks from Elton to me, then tips her head to one side. “You’re about to cry, aren’t you?”
“No.” I rub my nose and look away.
“Yes, you are. And it’s because you love him.”
Of course I do. Of course I fucking do.
I clear my throat to try to shift the knot in it. “I do not.”
“You need to get in touch with that guy and tell him you’ve made a terri—” My phone buzzes in her hand. “It’s Dylan. He says Carlos’s dad will drive him back.”
“Can I see it?”
She hands me the phone.
DYLAN (08:24 PM)
Carlos’s dad is about to give me a ride home.
Home. Dylan said “home.” And look at him texting me to let me know he’s on his way, just like I asked.
Being here is exactly the right thing for him. The right thing to set him up for his very best future. And the right thing for him is the right thing for me.
We’re home. And I intend to do everything I can to make it the best one Dylan could ever dream of.
The soul-crushing pain in my chest and the constant churning in my stomach will go away eventually. It always does.