21. Chapter Sixteen Georgia Philips
Chapter Sixteen: Georgia Philips
“ M om, I’m home!” I flung my bag onto the hook by the door, kicking off my too-tight boots before walking into the kitchen, following the scent of herbs and spices. “What’s for dinner?”
“I thought we’d have some spaghetti carbonara, just like the old days,” Mom said, referencing the Chef Boyardee’s we used to eat when I was a kid. “Does that sound good?”
“It sounds amazing. Do you want help with anything?” Ever since we'd taken our cooking class together, she had been making food more often. She'd done breakfast, lunch, and made little snacks. But this was the first time I'd seen her make dinner in a long time.
She pointed at the leather barstool across from the island. “Why don’t you sit down there, pour yourself some lemonade, and tell me about your day? I feel like we’ve been missing each other too much lately. There’s so much I don’t know about my only daughter’s life.”
“Sure.” I crossed the room to sit across from her while she added some spices to the ground pork in a mixing bowl. As I poured myself a lemonade, I filled her in on my week, from art history class to my photoshoot the other day with La Mode. “What made you want to cook dinner tonight?”
Usually, we’d order from one of our favourite restaurants if we ate together: California rolls or Pad Thai from the corner Asian restaurant that sold everything, from sushi to pho to ginger beef. I wasn’t sure it was particularly authentic, but it was good.
“Oh, I just felt… guilty, I suppose, for never being able to cook for you growing up, especially after our cooking class together. I was thinking about it the other day, when you and the girls were over making brownies, that I’m not sure I ever gave you the childhood you deserved.” Her eyes were faraway, her tone wistful. “Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had been less reluctant to accept help from my parents or even from your uncle.”
I reached out to squeeze my mom’s free hand, the one that wasn’t gripping the wooden spoon. “Mom, it’s okay. We did our best. We’re here now. Besides, you always told me your parents didn’t like Dad.”
Dad . After all these years, it still felt strange to use that word, an epithet for a man I’d never met but who had given me life.
“Your father never got along with my parents, it’s true, and they certainly didn’t approve of our elopement. But who knows? Perhaps if they had seen you more often, they might have come around.”
I had scant memories of my now-deceased grandparents. What little I did remember was wearing a stiff dress and going to see the Nutcracker ballet with them at Christmas, or going to the Steeles’ Christmas party with my cousins, where children were expected to be seen but not heard.
“We’ll never know that now. ”
“Perhaps. But I still feel guilty that you were made to take on so many adult responsibilities when you were still a child, Georgia. I should have… You shouldn’t have had to do that.”
“It was modelling, not child labour in the mines,” I said, trying to make light of it. After all, the last thing I wanted was to add to her guilt and tell her that I had mixed feelings about modelling. I couldn’t tell her about all the harm that modelling had brought into my life, from Sergio Cavalli to how it affected the way I saw myself. She had never known that my relationship was Sergio was fake. Telling her that now would only make her feel worse.
“Children should be outside playing, not getting dressed up and having their makeup done so they can parade around in front of a camera.”
“Mom, it’s fine!” I wasn’t sure when my voice had risen to such a defensive tone as she turned on the stove to boil water for the pasta. “Can we stop talking about this?”
My mother, unfortunately, was as stubborn as I was, and she dug in her teeth further when I asked her to drop something. Like a dog who’d been asked to give up a favourite toy. “No, Georgia. I want to—no, I need to say this.”
I folded my arms across my chest and waited. What I had hoped would be a fun, nostalgic dinner had clearly morphed into something else.
“Georgia, I fear I may have been an absent mother. Growing up, I never looked out for you the way I should have, and I want to make that up to you now. I want you to know how much I love you, and that… you shouldn’t have been made to feel like you were on the hook to provide for our family from such a young age. If you love modelling now, that’s wonderful, but it shouldn’t have been such a source of pressure for you growing up. ”
My muscles tensed as I listened to her apology. It should have been a relief. I should have spilled my guts to her then and there, and told her the truth about how I felt about modelling. But the thought of disappointing her further, of taking more from her than she’d already lost… It was too much. I didn’t want her to endure the thought that she’d ruined my childhood and my life.
“Thanks, Mom,” I said, a pitiful excuse for a response. “But I really am fine, and I love you too. I love our life, even if it is unconventional.”
She squeezed my hand back. “Oh, Georgia, I’m so relieved to hear that. You have no idea how worried I was that I’d, oh, I don’t know, screwed up horribly with you.”
“Nope.” So why did my heart feel like it was breaking from the weight of my lies?
***
Later that night, after dinner—I ate about half a normal portion and told my mother I was full because I’d eaten a heavy lunch—we curled up on the couch and watched a movie we’d seen a thousand times before, Roman Holiday .
The story’s Italian setting, along with the secret identity of Audrey Hepburn’s character, reminded me of my first meeting with George.
“Georgia,” my mother said abruptly as we watched Audrey Hepburn walk around Italy, “when are you going to find a nice man to settle down with?”
I turned to her. We spoke about each other’s dating lives with the kind of tactful avoidance that most families reserved for sensitive subjects like politics or religion. My mom had never moved on after my dad’s passing, and I hadn’t told her about any guys I was seeing since Sergio dumped me. So why was she bringing it up now?
“Mom, is there something I need to be worried about? You weren’t diagnosed with a medical condition or something, were you? What’s with the heavy topics?”
“Oh, I guess I was thinking about what you told me the other day, about George,” she said. “Even if he isn’t the one for you, I’d still love to see you married and have some grandchildren—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I put up both hands, feeling like a crossing guard. All I needed was a whistle to halt the speeding car of her conversation. “I’ve never even been in a committed relationship in my life, and you suddenly want grandchildren? I thought you were enjoying retirement and living an easy life. Grandchildren wouldn’t be easy for me or you to deal with. And when have I even shown an ounce of interest in getting married and having kids?”
She gave me a firmly exasperated expression that suggested she was tired of having this conversation with me. Ever since I’d come home in eighth grade with a bruise on my knuckles because I’d broken a boy’s nose after he’d tried to kiss me on Valentine’s Day, she’d heard my stern declaration of “I will never date! Boys are gross!”
So why was she bringing this up now? Yes, men weren’t all like Sergio Cavalli or Aaron Sanderson who’d tried to kiss me over ten years ago, but they weren’t great, either. There was a short supply of men. At least men I wanted to date, who cared about me beyond the ego boost of being seen with a model at some ritzy nightclub.
“Georgia,” she said slowly, like she was approaching a wild animal. “I’m not dying of a medical condition, at least not one that I know of. Unless you count being alive. However, I worry that you may never find the kind of love that I shared with your father. Even though we may not have always seen eye to eye on everything, and even though he passed at such a young age, I will always be glad I met him and had you. Always . No matter how hard things were over the years, I never regretted marrying him and giving birth to you. Love is what carries us through the darkest days of our lives, Georgia, and it isn’t always sunshine and rainbows. You know that.”
“Yes, and when things weren’t sunshine and rainbows, I’ve always had my family to lean on.” The words sounded false to me even when I said them with overcompensating fervour. My life didn’t feel like sunshine and rainbows right now. And the only person I was leaning on and telling the whole truth to was myself.
“Of course your family will always be there for you.” She squeezed me into her side. “But everyone’s growing up and forming their own families. Even Alex, bless his heart. I never thought he’d find anyone, but he has a wife and a son now. And Abby has her prince. I don’t want you to feel left out or left behind.”
“I don’t feel that way.” I pushed my shoulders back, sitting up straight. “I’m twenty-three, not forty-three. I love my life. I love being single. I mean, I live in New York. If I wanted to find a man, I could throw a brick through our apartment window and it’d come back an hour later with a note attached to it.”
She chuckled at my turn of phrase. “Yes, and the note would be an invoice for his broken window.”
“You know what I mean, Mom. If I really wanted to date someone and get married, I’d do it.”
“Then what’s holding you back from wanting it?” she challenged. “Because I knew you’d make a wonderful wife to the right—”
“Mom, I just don’t have room in my life for a relationship.” Or maybe I’ve purposely filled out to the brim so that there’s no room for thoughts of George Devereaux to get in.
“Okay, honey. I just want you to consider that I’m not going to be around forever,” she said. “And you are my only child.”
“Mom, are you trying to guilt-trip me into a relationship with the next man I meet?”
“Absolutely not. When you meet a man and bring him home to me, I want him to be a man you’re in love with, not any random man you’ve picked up off the street.” She looked affronted by the idea. “I want you to be with a man who’s good enough for you. Who’s perfect for you.”
“There are no perfect men,” I grumbled.
“I don’t expect him to be perfect. Lord knows your father wasn’t. But I want you to find the man who’s perfect for you .”
How could I tell her the man who was perfect for me had already broken my heart? Because obviously, George Devereaux didn’t feel the same way about me.
Not after how our fake engagement had ended.
***
One Year Ago
“I know this sounds crazy, but… What if we got married?” The words rushed out of my lips before I could stop them.
George and I were in the screening room of the penthouse, after everyone else had already finished watching the movie—some cheesy action thriller. We’d been having a Steele family get-together with brunch and a movie that day. “Excuse me? ”
I took a deep breath; it was too late to take my words back. Not that I was usually one for backtracking and mealy-mouthed words anyway. “I think that it would solve our problems.”
He blinked at me. “You’ll have to be more specific than that.”
Ever since we’d kissed in the guest room at the penthouse, we had kept a healthy amount of distance from each other. Which was easy when I lived with my mom and he was staying in the penthouse, since New York was so big that we could easily go days without seeing one another. But on family occasions, it was impossible to avoid him. He was Katerina’s brother, after all.
He'd told me, after we kissed, that he didn’t want to be with me unless we didn’t have to sneak around. He definitely hadn’t wanted to be with me while I was “dating” Sergio.
I wasn’t sure I was ready to be with any man in a real, vulnerable way. After all, I’d spent so many years of my life building my career and being independent that sharing that with someone felt like I’d become the very thing I’d always feared. Dependent on someone else. A burden.
“You need a visa to stay in the States. I need to get back at Sergio.”
“Sergio?” His brows rose. I hadn’t told anyone about how Sergio had cruelly dumped me over text and then DMed me an invitation to his engagement party. I explained what had happened and how Sergio had ended our contract so he could be with a younger woman.
I could have sworn I saw his hazel eyes darken with anger, one of his hands—the one not clutching an empty bowl of popcorn—tightening into a fist. As if he wanted to punch Sergio on my behalf. The thought made me smile, but it was over before it began, his features smoothing out into calm again.
“Are you proposing to me?” He arched an eyebrow. “Because I think we’ll have to set some ground rules here if that’s the case.”
“So you’re agreeing?” I said hopefully. The last thing I wanted was the humiliation of going to Sergio’s party alone—or worse, not going at all, since that would send a signal to him that I was devastated by our ‘breakup’.
“Yes.” His eyes held mine for a long, imperceptible second. “Anything for you, my darling fiancée.”
I rolled my eyes. “What are the ground rules, then?”
“Don’t fall in love with me.”
“As if.” My heart clenched in my chest, spasming like George’s words were a fist around it. He was closer to the truth than he could know. But there was no way we could be together for real.
After all, he was a nomadic wanderer, even if his sister did have roots here. I wasn’t looking for anything genuine. Not now, or ever.
A convenient fake relationship was the perfect way for us to solve our problems.
“We’re off to the right start.” He paused, and I wanted to ask him whether he’d fall in love with me . But I couldn’t let myself probe that possibility, because then I’d have to deal with the part of me that wanted him to. Wanted this to be real.
“No man can ever meet my exacting standards, remember?” I tried to say lightly.
A flash of hurt crossed his face, but it flickered out of existence before I could question it. “Right.”
“Well, um, I guess, thanks for agreeing. I’ll see you at Sergio’s engagement party, then?”
“Of course.”
I got up to leave, feeling more weighed down with worries than before.
It didn’t make sense for me to feel that way. Love was a weakness I couldn’t afford. I was doing the convenient, practical thing, by providing a solution to both our problems.
So why did my heart say otherwise?