Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
I WANT TO HEAR EVERYTHING
LOUISA
My arms are practically screaming for help as I fiddle with the doorknob trying to get my key in without putting down the bags of groceries I just carried in from the car. My phone is wedged between my cheek and my shoulder, which is making the grocery-bag front-door one-handed act even harder.
My father booms through the phone, the kind of fully British voice they would assign to a bulldog in a kids movie.
“The recklessness of it, Louisa,” he continues, as he has, and I just “mhmm” every so often like I have since I was fifteen.
(Even before.) We’ve never seen eye to eye, I don't think we’ve even seen face to face.
But the incredible irony is the reason I’m even here is him.
We moved to California when I was a child, for him.
I could have grown up with the accent, the wellies, become the version of a daughter he imagined.
(Not really.) Even though I can’t imagine any version of myself being that for him, knowing I’m not Theo.
Instead, he gets this. “I always knew you were out of control, but to hear you’ve tied yourself to a stranger, for a bloody passport?”
Theo texted me as soon as it happened with just three words.
‘They know. Sorry.’ Which is the most efficient possible warning and also arrived only seconds before my father called, which is not enough time to prepare for anything but is very on brand for the way my life has been going lately.
Apparently the name change on Instagram (which I did months ago), finally made its way through a game of telephone that apparently involves no less than four of my mother's mahjong friends, one of whom follows me for reasons I suspect has more to do with the why-choose romance series that I put out last year. (But she’d never admit that, definitely not to my mother.) They called Theo first. (Obviously.) He tried to calm them, even mentioned the status, trying to find a practical argument, one that requires no emotional investment and simply asks them to consider the logistics of their daughter not being deported.
My mother, I'm told, had feelings about finding out from Instagram.
My father just said he ‘has been waiting for something like this.’
I doubt I’ve ever existed a day in this world, whether it was the tattoo I got at seventeen or my choice of career at twenty-five, that didn't come with a postscript from my parents about what they would have chosen instead, and was then passed through the filter of what it said about them.
“You’ve made a mockery of things,” he continues.
“Dad, please,” I say as I finally manage to push the door open, shuffling quickly into the kitchen and hurriedly dropping the grocery bags on the counter, the bag of cherries rolling out.
All the while the tears he always triggers build behind my eyes, begging to be released. I pull the phone from my ear, switching to speaker and laying my cheek and arms across the cool marble while he continues to prattle on.
“You’ve always had your head in the clouds, and this is where it gets you. You, and your choices, continue to disappoint me.”
I can tell when he enters a space I’m in, because his body always shifts the air around me, it did long before now, and I don’t think that will ever change.
But I can hear him, taking direct and predatory steps towards me, where my face is splayed flat on the cool counter while my father hangs there, waiting for me to respond.
But instead, Hudson picks the phone up off the counter.
“This is Hudson Ellis,” he says in a deeply authoritative tone. His eyes staring into mine in a way that has me peeling my skin from where it has been. And I can hear the scoff on the receiving end, my father, annoyed.
“I don’t know what you both are playing at,” my father begins before Hudson cuts him off. He made it about as far as understanding that his daughter got married, and wasn't clever enough to find out who she married.
“She’s not playing at anything, and so long as she is my wife, her choices aren’t your concern.
” There’s a stunned silence on the other line, a silence in all the years of my life I’ve never heard my father succumb to.
He’s not a bad man, he just would have been better without a daughter.
He likes things in a certain way, people to behave a certain way, and no matter how much I tried when I was young, I never could.
“You can call back when you can say something nice, or to congratulate your daughter on her very real and extremely happy marriage.”
He hangs up, sets the phone back down, and just begins to move about the kitchen putting the groceries away. As if it didn’t happen.
It’s not what I was expecting him to say.
The room feels ten degrees hotter, and I don’t stop the tears that rim my eyes from falling.
Hudson has become the person consistently coming to my rescue, and I have spent the last few years on my own, and in all the messy parts of myself, I didn’t need rescuing.
Hudson doesn’t say anything to make it better, he just acts.
His broad back is to me as he unpacks the groceries, washing fruit and putting it away, but I think I can see the smallest relaxing of his shoulders when he retrieves the bag of Nerds Clusters.
I can almost feel the way his smile is broadening across his face, despite it facing away from me.
As he just tucks the bag of Nerds into his everything drawer, and continues on.
“Tell me about your day, Louisa,” he says, commandingly but wrapped in compassion.
“You don’t want to hear about my day,” I say through a small sniffle left over from the call with my dad.
“Yes, I do, I want to hear everything.” He means it, somehow.
“I spoke to Roma today,” I start. It’s a strange conversation, one I don’t actually think he cares about, except for the fact that it feels like he does. He tucks a loose strand of hair behind my ear, a prompt to continue.
“What else?”
“I went to the grocery store, then the farmer’s market,” I say, the words spilling out because he was right (like fucking always.) I need to talk. I need to drown out the sound of my father’s disappointment. (And my own doubt because of it.)
“Did you get your cherries?” Each small question is a gentle nudge.
“No,” I say as I cry. “Ramon, he wasn’t there. There was a new kid. He didn't know about the type of banana I like for baking banana bread, he didn’t know that I like the extra-dark cherries. He didn't know anything.”
The soft ‘mmm’ as confirmation he’s listening while moving about the kitchen, encouraging me to continue.
“I got an audition request for a new book,” I whisper, shifting my head so I can see the sharp line of his throat.
“What’s this one about,” he asks.
“Historical romance. You might like it, if it weren’t for all the romance. Grams will though.”
I can feel his chest let out a few short laughs. “Right,” he says.
I have fallen, deeply, tripped foot over foot and went right into his chest, literally and figuratively, ever since that first kiss.
It was supposed to be for the cameras, for paperwork, but felt like it was for my soul.
But I know better. To Hudson, I am a project.
Someone he consistently can save, while getting what he wants.
And all of this is a liability he is managing to avoid with precision, extracting only what we each need, except that we keep finding ourselves in situations like this where there’s too much in the air that isn’t logistics of a normal life and feels a lot more like lo—(DON'T think about it.) In a handful of months, the paperwork will be finalized. My visa will be secure. He will go back to his quiet without-me life, and I will go back to my apartment. Maybe this time, though, we won’t be enemies.
Maybe we could be the kind of friends who share coffee and talk about the time we were married.
Even though the longer this goes on, the harder it’s becoming for me to imagine that. When I see him walk from the bathroom to his bedroom, towel wrapped around his waist, I imagine what it would be like stepping in to join him.
“I have something for you,” he says, pulling me from my thoughts, as he pushes off from the counter and holds out his hand. I look at it, but I take it without any real pause, like it's simply the most natural thing, and he pulls me toward the door.
“I don’t have shoes on,” I say, as the front door opens.
“You won't need them.”
We are standing in front of 7B, he has a key in his other hand, the spare he had cut when we started this arrangement. He puts it in the lock, and takes his large hand to cover my eyes. I reach for it to pull it down, so I can see what I’m walking into.
“Would you trust me, please?” It sounds annoyed, but the plea at the end is sincere. And I do trust him. Increasingly more than anyone else I know. (It’s me I don’t trust.)
The door swings open and the lights come on, I can tell through the cracks of his fingers. His body pushes mine into the space, each foot behind mine. Shuffling my steps forward. My back to his front as he moves us, together.
“Ready?” he asks. I don’t know what has him like this, but he sounds almost giddy. I don’t think I can ask. It’s not the first time we’ve been closer. It happens more frequently now. But he’s building to a surprise, and it’s something that’s got his blood pumping.
(He’s not the only one.)
He pulls his hand back, and my eyes adjust to the freedom. I see it and I stop breathing.
My apartment has been entirely redesigned to make way for the newest addition. There, in the corner where my table used to be, is a recording booth. (A real one.)