Chapter 28 Stalemate #2
I message Dad and Maisie to meet me at the coffee shop at my hotel.
I won’t be able to keep food down, and I won’t be able to sleep later.
Might as well go all out. At the counter, I tune out the overwhelming noise of happy coffee shop customers and order an espresso, to-go.
That way, if Maisie bolts, I can bring my drink while I follow her.
But surprisingly, they beat me here. Dad and Maisie are outside, seated in the coffee shop’s garden, and my heart gives a quick squeeze at the sight of them, here. Where I am. They’re finally, finally here.
And I’m going to hurt them so badly.
Dad stands when he sees me, worry all over his face. “Hi,” he says, then clears his throat. “Are you sure now’s a good time?”
A fair question, seeing as he thinks he just saw me leave my serious boyfriend, mid-proposal. “Yes, sorry.”
When I sit, Maisie scoots her chair closer to mine. “Hi, hi, hi.”
She goes to take my hand. I let her, squeeze her fingers, then drop it. “Hi, Mouse.”
“Hi, Cat. Your eyes?”
“What?”
Maisie sucks in one cheek. Then she points at my face, and I realize I must’ve smeared more mascara on my walk here. “Oh, sorry.” I unwind the coffee-stained napkin from around my drink; the paper cup is scalding without it, but that’s okay. “Better?” I ask once I’ve rubbed my skin dry again.
She doesn’t answer right away, just looks at me, swallowing. “What’s going on with you?”
That question, on its own, isn’t why a new knot forms in my throat.
It’s the worry in Maisie’s voice, her shiny blue eyes softened with concern.
I never wanted her to have to worry—about anything, and least of all me.
She might be in college now, on track to be the smartest designer ever, but to me she’s still my Mouse.
Cotton-candy blue eyes, a million freckles, fuzzy strawberry blonde curls undone by the summer heat.
She was supposed to have the best life I could give her, the kind of life I wasn’t able to have. College. Friends. Normalcy.
None of this.
“What you saw back there—with that guy?” I suck a breath in. “It wasn’t… I don’t really like him. He sort of just did that.”
Dad’s brow wrinkles. “Bernard, the driver? Do you know him?”
“Oh, I do.”
“And he just randomly proposed to you?” Maisie says, horrified.
“No. Not… completely by random. But we haven’t, I wasn’t—there are things I haven’t told you guys.”
Dad and Maisie go quiet. Cautiously, Maisie taps her short, lavender-painted fingernails against her coffee cup. Then she stops. “Are you pregnant?”
“No! No.” My heart is going so fast that it’s hurting my throat. “It’s my job. Or, I guess, what I do for work.”
“You do that phone thing. Influencing,” Dad says slowly, like he’s starting to notice the full extent of my secret-keeping. “Because you were a model. And with the team—here—you’re helping them with fashion stuff.”
I run my palm down my neck, trying to soothe the burning sensation building there.
I can’t cry. Not here, or in front of them.
“That isn’t the full truth. Modeling in New York, it…
it didn’t work. And influencing isn’t enough to, to support you guys.
And I know how this sounds, I know it sounds unbelievable and like I’m the worst person and, and we don’t even have to talk about it, but—I lied to Bernard.
That guy, the F1 driver. On purpose. I made him think I had feelings for him and I don’t, on purpose. ”
Dad’s face goes blank. “Why?”
Because he hurt someone. Because he represents the world that’s kept its boot against our family’s neck. Because I wanted to hurt him back.
“It’s just something I do,” I say, barely louder than a breath. “I know it’s not totally okay.”
“You make men think you’re in love with them?” Dad exhales. “Is he… paying you?”
“No. Someone else pays. But it’s like Robin Hood, or—”
“What?”
“Weren’t you mad, after Grandma died? After Mom?
” My words come out so much louder than I intend them.
“The whole world came for us. They tried to take your garage, Dad. Our house. The restaurant was the only thing we had left of them both, and they took it. Weren’t you furious? Aren’t you—aren’t you mad?”
I can’t read the emotion in Dad’s eyes. I can’t look at Maisie, either. I’m stuck, suddenly eighteen years old again and telling Dad that I’m moving to New York City. Shocking him into silence.
Then he gets up, just like he had that afternoon on the porch.
He shakes his head, pulls his Stark-Benzin hat off and then slips it back on, too distraught to decide.
When he takes it off again, he balls it into one fist and looks at me with an expression I haven’t seen before—not even when he was trying to explain how New York City was thirteen hours and eight minutes away from the house, by car.
Back then, he’d been scared of what could happen to his daughter, alone in the big city.
Now, he’s disappointed.
“I didn’t raise you to act like this,” he says quietly, and one by one, each word breaks my heart.
“Dad.”
But he’s already leaving, walking through the garden to the hotel doors, vanishing out of my life again. And I can’t follow. I can’t move.
There’s a fumbling brush of fingers on my shoulder, Maisie’s hand, gripping my arm and then holding me upright in my chair. Because it’s like the energy that’s been propelling me forward for years is gone. Coffee, determination, anger, excitement, pride. I’m falling, empty, into myself.
“Cat, hey, do you want to go inside? You have a room here, don’t you?” Maisie says softly. “Then we can go home. I think—I think it’s time for you to come home, okay?”
I stare down at my lap. Dark gray spots are blooming on the fabric of my pretty white dress, between the sequins.
I’m crying. I can’t even feel it, but I’m crying.
“Okay.”