Chapter 26
Twenty-Six
Addie might be the first kid I’m not related to who I like. Really like, even. But for someone who quotes the hell out of the movie Overboard and swears she wants to be an actress, she can’t memorize the lines of Dorothy for shit.
I’ve tried everything.
Note cards.
Cutting the lines into strips.
Recording the lines so she can listen to them before saying them.
She is both sweet as sugar and ruthlessly defiant.
We’re running out of time until auditions, and as of right now, there’s no way in hell she’ll get the part. She knows one line. One.
I’m doing everything I can to accommodate her needs and meet her where she’s at—her speech is less refined, and academically, she’s a little behind other third graders—but . . . one line? It’s like she doesn’t even want the part.
So, once again, we’re at Mom’s kitchen table, unmemorized lines in front of us. As much as I like our time together, I’m at my wit’s end. I’m failing, and I hate failing.
“Should we try again?” I ask with my biggest smile. “And choose excellence?”
She fidgets with her glasses. “Uncle Gav told me you’re going on a date.”
“I bet he did.” My stomach twists. “But we have to do this first,” I remind her. “Because next week’s the big day, and we have a lot of lines to learn before you’re Dorothy ready.” Like all of them.
Her bright face dims. “I could be Toto.”
My attempt at schooling my disgust results in a scoff. “Toto isn’t the role for future stars.”
She frowns.
I sigh. “Addie, listen—” Her wide eyes meet mine. “If you want to be an actress, you have to memorize lines. Goldie Hawn did it for Overboard. That was all practiced, just like this.” I tap the script. “It’s part of it. You have to work hard. Really hard. Every day.”
She nods but a silence swells.
“Why do you want to be an actress?”
Her smile lights the room up. “To marry Kurt Russell.”
“What?” I can’t bring myself to tell her that there is absolutely no way that is happening. “Is there anything else?”
She pushes the bridge of her glasses. “Play mini golf.”
“Mini golf?” I parrot. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“They play it in the movie.”
Is there mini golf? Other than Goldie Hawn swimming in a dress, I don’t remember a single thing from the movie.
Addie doesn’t care about being an actress, she wants to be in the movie Overboard. Because she’s a kid. With a celebrity crush.
And wants to play miniature golf.
I thumb through the script to do a quick scan of the lines then drop it on the table and stand. “I want to show you something.”
She follows me to my bedroom where we both lie on my bed and look at the poster on the ceiling.
“That’s Joshua Jackson,” I explain. “He was Pacey Witter in my favorite TV show called Dawson’s Creek when I was a teenager.
” I roll my head to look at Addie. “Your mom watched it too.” I smile a little, so does she, and I let myself get swept into a riptide of nostalgia.
Amanda and I watched the show every week then called each other from house phones when it was over to dissect every minute, scandalized by it all.
I’m pretty sure Pacey had sex with a teacher at one point. Whose age difference was similar to mine and Gavin’s.
Except Gavin isn’t seventeen.
And we aren’t having sex.
I clear my throat and look back at the poster. “Anyway, I thought maybe you’d like to see it.”
Addie says, “I like Kurt Russell better.”
I laugh.
“Fair. And Pacey didn’t play mini golf. He got into trouble.” Near the end, he might have been an unethical stockbroker, if my memory’s right.
Addie looks at the poster as I look at her. Her soft profile and light hair. Her glasses snug to her face and freckles dotting her cheeks. I bet Amanda could have stared at her forever and never felt like it was long enough.
“Have you ever played miniature golf?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Have you?”
I think of Matt’s invitation to Big Mini Putt Club on my last day of work. Before my vacation, as that dickface put it, then all the other invitations there that I never accepted because I was too busy.
Addie would love that place; I’d love to take her.
“Sure,” I tell her. “When I was a kid.”
All people change—kids change to adults—but right now I wish I wouldn’t have.
I’ve always been driven, and it’s never been hard for me to skip out on fun in the name of getting ahead—but I didn’t always skip out on it.
I’m pissed I missed that happy hour and don’t have a fun story about a rogue hole in one to tell Addie about.
“Should we watch Overboard?” I ask, pulling her gaze to mine.
Her eager nod sends us to the living room.
My mom, who has been pretending to be busy but hovering like a fly on shit, magically appears with a declaration of the need for popcorn.
The three of us sit on the couch and my mom laughs as Addie recites every line of the movie.
In it, Goldie Hawn is a wealthy brat who gets amnesia and is then tricked by Kurt Russell—a blue-collared widower with grubby kids—into believing she’s his wife.
We quickly learn that he’s one thing on the surface but, beneath the grime and rough edges, has a dream to own a crazy miniature golf course.
Addie, of course, fully supports this.
By the end, Goldie Hawn becomes exactly the wife and mom she was tricked into being, even after her memory comes back.
Why I get choked up when Kurt Russell’s character says, “Baby, we like you,” I’ll never know.
The credits roll and Addie and my mom recap the movie while I pack up her backpack.
Out the window, Gavin’s truck pulls into the driveway.
I’d usually send her home and watch as she runs across the yard and gets safely inside, but as I listen to her voice and look at the script in my hand and something annoyingly gooey happens in my chest, I offer to walk her the whole way.
“I was thinking,” I tell her, as we climb the steps to their front door. “Dorothy isn’t that great of a role.”
She stares up at me. “Really?”
“Really. And Toto kind of makes the whole story, right?”
There’s that smile. “Toto pulls back the curtain on the Wizard,” she says.
“Right?” I throw my hands up. “I forgot about that. You should definitely be Toto. Dorothy can’t see what’s in front of her own face, you know? Kind of an idiot.”
Her smile falls, just a little. “Will you be mad?”
The fact she asks shrinks me down to two inches. “Never.”
Gavin greets us at the door, mid-scrub of a towel over his head. Freshly showered, his wet hair has a slight curl to it. He’s in a T-shirt—just as fitted as the rest of them—and athletic shorts. No jeans, no boots. His feet are bare. He’s casual Gavin.
I like this version too.
“Hi,” I say, awkward as he gestures for me to come inside.
We step into the living room, and he drapes the towel over his shoulder. To Addie, he says, “I was about to come looking for you.” He knuckles the top of her head. “Worried you were over there getting into trouble, you little glass bubble.”
Addie grins. “We watched Overboard.” Something dawns on her. “I have something for Miss Reese.” She runs into the kitchen, leaving Gavin and I alone. It’s a strange place to be after nearly a week of avoiding him.
I do a quick scan of the room. The house is small—half the size of my condo—and the opposite of updated. Wood paneling covers the walls, and the light fixtures would be deemed criminal by any designer worth their salt.
And yet.
The old bookcases and mismatched furniture and pictures on the walls make it charming. Cozy, even.
Gavin leans against the entryway, arms folded over his chest and one ankle hooked around the other. “You avoiding me?”
I click my tongue. “That doesn’t sound like something I would do.”
It doesn’t.
It also doesn’t change the fact that it’s exactly what I’ve been doing.
“Is it because of the kiss?”
My neck warms but my tone stays blasé. “You called that a kiss?”
“An im-peck-able one, actually.”
He grins—idiot—and I snort a laugh despite myself.
“Well.” He sighs. “If you aren’t avoiding me but you aren’t answering any of my calls or texts, is this your way of getting out of our date?”
I step to a bookcase, slingshotting a challenging look his way. “Did I say that?”
“Haven’t said much of anything.”
I hum but say nothing; there’s nothing to say.
He kissed me, I liked it, I saw his name on a mental balloon then pictured us living in a barndo surrounded by babies belonging to him and not a sperm donor he doesn’t know about.
I refocus on a shelf and skim over a few family photos, pausing at an out-of-place glass sculpture of birds. Most of it’s clear, but when I look close enough, there’s a subtle swirl of colors.
Next to it sits a bright blue vase—almost tulip shaped—mottled with large blobs of clear. It doesn’t fit the aesthetic of the rest of the house. If anything, it’s the opposite.
I glance over my shoulder at Gavin. His face gives nothing away.
The next piece makes me fully stop. It mimics stones, river rocks really, stacked on top of one another, making it nearly a foot tall.
The base stone is a cream-colored flat oval shape, speckled with dark red.
The next a burnt orange swirled with grey.
The earth-toned and glossy elements range from egg shaped to discs.
Carefully, I pick it up, not that surprised when I see HS stamped on the bottom. The same artist who made the glasses at the vineyard.
“Greg loved that one,” Gavin says as he steps next to me. “We stacked rocks like that as kids.”
I set the piece down.
“It’s stunning.” The glass doesn’t add up.
It has to be expensive, but it’s everywhere.
Here, Nancy’s, the tasting room. If I didn’t know Gavin didn’t make it, I’d wonder if Gavin made it simply because he has so much of it.
But it’s Greg’s name that comes up every time the glass is mentioned.
Even the glass-inspired names of the wine were picked by him.
But HS? “What’s your connection to the artist again? ”
“My dad knew him,” Gavin says.
“Could I meet him?”
He saws his teeth across his bottom lip. “Why?”
I shrug. “Curiosity.”
A pause hangs.
“Maybe.”
That’s a nonanswer if there ever was one.
“Why do—”
Addie steps into the room and shouts, “Surprise!”
She’s holding a frozen pizza with a can of pineapple dumped in the middle of it and a proud smile on her face.
Gavin doesn’t hide his amusement; I don’t hide my disgust. I may like pineapple on pizza, but there are some lines I won’t cross, starting with canned pineapple and a pizza sitting on a pan that’s filled with juice.
“Uncle Gav can cook this for you,” she offers.
“Oh.” I look at Gavin, waiting for him to say no. Praying he will.
His lips lift on one side and his bright eyes hold tight on to mine. “I’d make anything for Miss Reese if she asked me to.”
That pizza is going to be gross, I know that, but that’s not what twists around my insides.
It’s how much I want to say yes. I want to sit with them in this small, outdated house and eat gross food, and when I leave, I want Gavin to kiss me—longer and deeper than the first time—and say, Baby, we like you.
I want it so bad it makes my chest ache.
“I have to work,” I tell Addie, making her face fall. “Get ready for this weekend—” I lift my gaze to Gavin’s. “And my date tomorrow night.”
I don’t know if he’s disappointed or if I want him to be disappointed, but I don’t give him time to say anything before I tell them goodbye and slip out the door.
When I get to Mom’s house, I’m too stuck in my head to acknowledge her standing in the kitchen. I chug water I wish was whiskey.
“You know it dawned on me as we were watching that movie,” Mom says from the stove in a tone I hate. “Isn’t it something how Goldie Hawn had all that money and wasn’t happy but then had no money and found true joy?”
“Really?” I refill my glass and slam the faucet off. “Because I think she looked pretty miserable when she was covered in poison oak and living in that shack.”
She dumps pasta into a pot, humming as she does. I flip her off behind her back.
“I saw that.”
Damn her.