Chapter 2 #2
London chews the inside of her blushed cheek. “I guess, if I’m honest . . . the distance from Orange County is a slight concern for us.”
“It shouldn’t be,” I assure her quickly, but I hope not desperately. “It’s a forty-five-minute drive, and we will tailor our schedules to you.”
Her nod is tight. “Also,” she adds, “the other designer is . . . Well, she is a little . . . more on the cutting edge of things, maybe?” She looks sorry for voicing this. “I want something timeless, but also want someone who really knows what’s happening right now in design.”
I try to ignore the fact that I know she is decidedly influenced by Gigi’s TikTok fame, at one million followers and counting.
Heck, I’m influenced by it. But it’s difficult to tell clients that social media fame doesn’t necessarily translate to the best possible hands-on design service experience.
I have a measly-in-comparison one hundred thousand Instagram followers—and nothing more than a burner TikTok for spying on my rebel teen.
I know this hardly makes me the coolest, but I’ve still managed to insert myself as a growing force in the industry.
One that very much needs to keep growing.
And she will get the Ritz-Carlton treatment here. I’ll ensure it.
Ellie—twenty-eight—is much closer to London’s age. “You won’t find anyone more in-the-know than Sutton,” she chimes in. “Her experience is unmatched, and so is her style.”
Colton interjects, “The other woman also . . .” He scratches the nape of his neck. “She isn’t a mom.”
He said it. I can practically hear London kick him under the table, and he deserves it.
“He just means she’s a bit more . . .” London pauses. “Agile, perhaps.”
“Less encumbered,” Colton adds, garnering an additional elbow jab from his wife. “Less millennial.”
Did he just say less millennial? I try to inject warmth into my reply. “I can assure you, my kids are all in school now and they never hinder my business. I also started this firm when they were in diapers, and it’s never held me back.”
My smile is mannequin plastic. In some circles, believe it or not, I’m still the “young thing” in design.
Thirty-nine is not old! I want to shout.
Thirty-nine is just getting started! They’d see.
These babies would see. Maybe they need a snack.
I think I have some chocolate-covered raisins stashed here somewhere.
“We’re big fans of yours!” London insists. “We just . . . need some time to think about it. I am so in awe of the way you balance it all. And I’ve loved watching your family grow. Especially the twins.” She grins—and I wonder how exactly her skin sparkles like raindrops.
I smile back. The twins are fan favorites among my followers. How could they not be?
I clear my throat. “Like I said. Take your time. I printed the deck for you, so you can look through it while you consider us. I am so thankful for the opportunity to meet with you and present our vision.”
We somehow push past the awkwardness of them calling me a geriatric millennial mother and bid our cordial goodbyes.
Through grinding molars, I send Colton off with a coffee to go, and London with the latest issue of OC Style magazine, which casually features me on the cover with a four-page spread of our work inside. An old lady can try.
“I think they loved it,” Ellie says once they’re gone. “Forget Gigi McGowan. I mean, if London Paige wants lived-in and old, she should choose you!”
I let her realize what she just said.
“I mean—no.” She blushes. “Not that you’re old. Just . . . seasoned!”
“Ugh.” I release a truckload of angst with one stomp of my bootie. “I’m confused. Aren’t women supposed to do it all? Since when is it a knock against you to be a mom?”
Ellie hesitates. “Since . . . forever? I mean—it’s still an uphill climb when you least expect it, right? Usually not in our field, but yeah. Sorry.”
“Not to mention,” I continue, “that I’ve worked for over fifteen years to build the portfolio, experience, and vendor connections needed to make me legitimate. And now suddenly a little seasoning is a bad thing? Don’t people want just that? Flavor? Young is hot, until it’s bland.”
“That’s good.” Ellie nods. “I agree with you.”
I exhale. “I guess we just wait and see.”
I still don’t tell her how much we need this.
I look after the famous youngins and wish for their business—but feel like I might as well be wearing an expiration date like a scarlet letter. Best if used by March 15th of this year.
In a blessing after this day, all three kids retreat to their corners of the house after zoodles with pesto for dinner, with few-to-no-more fights against me or each other.
Homework complete, vegetables downed. Miracles happening!
I cover Reid’s plate with foil, setting it aside before meandering down the hall to our room.
Someday, I hope we have the chance to design our own dream home from scratch, using my imagination and resources.
But in the meantime, for several years now, we’ve been renovating our 1950s one-story ranch house—with zero insulation and plentiful charm—one literal inch at a time.
We most recently finished the master bathroom, and I’m obsessed.
I stare now at the concrete shower tiles, locked together in the form of Swiss crosses, enclosing me in this space that feels clean and holy, nightly washing my days away.
Until recently, I hadn’t given much existential thought to the approaching flip of the calendar.
Forty once seemed like a great idea. Just right.
In the correct light, fabulous, even. But lately, today, right now .
. . the culmination of pressures and fears seem to suck my hope of the future right down the drain.
As the hot water pummels my shoulders, though, I find myself singing alone in the shower for the first time in a long time. “Tomorrow, tomorrow. I love you, tomorrow. You’re always a day away.”
“Dusting off the old vocal pipes, huh?”
I startle and shriek at the male voice. Then I see him—my husband leaning against the doorjamb in black sweatpants and a cream hoodie, postflight stubble dotting his handsome chin.
He ambles toward me, his dark-blond hair and outfit messier than his usual clean-cut appearance.
I love him this way. But his expression is weary, eyes still far away.
“Hey,” he says.
“You scared me!” I smear the foggy glass clear. “Did you just get home?”
“Yep,” he confirms through a stiff grin. “Wasn’t sure you could hear me through that opera performance.”
He’s teasing, I guess, but the comment lands sideways, too sharp.
I groan, splashing my face. “My day was fine, sweetheart, thanks for asking.” I snatch my razor. “You know what I learned today?”
“What?” he asks. “That you missed me?”
“Ha!” I missed him earlier, yes, but he’s already digging into my nerves. “You wish.” Now I mean it playfully, but it’s too mean. I know it, clearing my throat. “I learned that I’m old. Did you know we’re officially old?”
“You’re just now realizing that?” He folds his arms. “My knees have been telling me that on every run since I turned thirty.”
I project my voice over the water flow. “I’m just—” I sigh. “We are officially over the peak. There’s no denying it anymore. Did you know millennials are considered ancient these days?”
He reaches under the sink, rustling for a fresh towel. For a moment, I think he’s going to loop it onto the towel bar for me like he used to, a sweet gesture of love and marital comfort, a habit he kept for years. Sometimes he’d even tumble it warm in the dryer first, the full spa treatment.
Instead, he tosses it onto the counter absently and turns on the sink, preparing to wash his face. The towel’s for him.
Reid shrugs, wetting his cheeks. “You look fine to me.” He barely begins to redeem himself by asking me a real question, even if it feels forced: “So, how are you doing? Besides, you know, ancient?”
“Hey.” I sigh. How am I? Well, I’m jealous, to start, if we’re being honest, but I won’t say it. Jealous he just spent four days in New York while I stayed here, endured tween hatred, and learned I have the shelf life of souring dairy.
“Not great,” I admit. “I don’t know if we’ll get the big Colton Montana project, because, you know, I’m practically deceased. I’m stressed about keeping the office space. Our son hates me. And I just feel . . . blah. In general.”
“Nobody hates you. Don’t be so dramatic.”
“Yes, he does,” I insist.
“He does not. Teens are beasts. You’re stressed about work.” He pauses. “And also . . . maybe about turning forty?”
I swallow. “Yeah.” Among other things. “I suppose.”
He scrubs his face with Neutrogena, and I hate him for aging like a fine oak tree using nothing but nine-dollar face wash. He doesn’t even moisturize yet grows more rakishly hot by the day. So unfair. “It’s not so bad up here in the middle ages,” he states, barely forty-two.
“I just—” I scan my own slippery body now, eyes down, tallying the myriad ways it has transformed over the decades. Hips wider (Max, ten pounds), C-section scar (the twins), and my sad little drooping pancake chest (breastfeeding, breastfeeding, breastfeeding).
I just don’t know.
“Well, I don’t think anyone hates you,” he says, blotting his face dry and quickly brushing his teeth. “I do have something to tell you, though, so come join me in bed when you’re ready.”
“Okay.” I shave. I rinse. I (barely) decide to be kind to myself.
In soft black pajamas, I climb into bed and roll to look at my husband.
I stare at his profile—the same profile I’ve been beholding for almost two decades.
He is genuinely more good-looking than the day we met.
My hand drifts lazily, boldly, to his bare stomach.
Then to his boxer briefs, on his hip, where a surfboard fin sliced his skin as a teenager, leaving a scar that’s always reminded me of a scorpion.
I haven’t seen that scar in a while, if you know what I mean.
“Remember the night we met?” I purr, trying for flirty.
His eyes stay closed. “Sure. Your twenty-first birthday. Lucky you.”
I slug him. Not exactly the answer I hoped for.
“Do you ever miss the old me?” I press, feeling suddenly vulnerable. “The . . . younger version?”
“What kind of question is that?” He tugs lightly on a strand of my wet hair but still doesn’t look at me. “Of course I don’t. I like you now.”
I sigh, trying to find his eyes. “You have to say that.”
“No, I don’t,” he replies. “We were kids when we met. And look at us now.” He looks at me, finally, and my shoulders relax. “I like the life we’ve built. Don’t you?”
“Of course. I . . .” I don’t finish the thought as I burrow deeper into the covers. “What did you need to tell me, by the way?”
As he props up onto one elbow, I see it: the wince.
“Uh-oh,” I say. “What is it?”
He gives a loud puff, like it’s preparation. “It’s about your birthday party.”
I shift. “Okay,” I say, tone cautious. “Did something happen?” Maybe he booked the wrong caterer.
Maybe he has a tough question about the guest list. Maybe he had to order SusieCakes instead of Sprinkles Cupcakes because sometimes, you know, that happens.
Whatever it is, we can handle it, surely—and if we can’t, there’s Sierra.
He nods before announcing, “I have to go back to New York on Friday.”
“Wait.” My ribs tighten. “What?”
“I know.” He pulls at the skin on his throat.
“You just walked off the runway.” I fake-check my watch. “Like an hour ago.”
He nods.
“Did you close the deal?”
“Yes!” he confirms. “But . . . they scheduled the closing dinner for Saturday night, and Sutt, I really have to be there. It’s the biggest deal of my career.”
“Biggest deal of your career? Since when?”
“Since forever! We’ve been working on it for months.”
“I didn’t know it was that big a deal.” He’s shut me out of this. I had no idea. I’m staring at a door in my face.
He drops his voice, speaking after a pause. “That’s because you never ask me about my work anymore. We only ever talk about yours.”
I hinge upright at this. “Excuse me?”
He expels a breath. “You’ve been busy. Distracted.”
No, he didn’t. I am not taking blame for this. “So,” I assert. “Because I didn’t ask you about your work enough lately, now I’m the bad guy in this conversation in which you’re canceling my fortieth birthday?”
“I didn’t say I’m canceling it,” he clarifies. “I’m just . . . no longer able to come.”
“No longer able to come.” I blink dumbly, reaching for strategies. “You can’t reschedule it? Tell them it’s your wife’s birthday? Send someone else?” If he’s not coming, am I supposed to host my own party?
“I wish I could. Thirty people are attending the dinner, from all over the country.”
Okay, then. He’s serious. Serious as a homicide case. Which we might have on our hands when this conversation is over.
“I’m sorry,” he adds. “I’ll be back on Sunday. I’ll make it up to you.”
I flick off my light and roll over, full back to him in the dark. “You don’t have to. It’s fine.”
He inches toward me, but I remain cold as a slab. The effect is repellent, successful. In minutes, I hear him snoring.
Asleep.
Just like that.
With tears burning hot in the blackout night—don’t cry, don’t cry—my mind loops again on the day.
I think of my job. Our kids and their needs and their so many moods.
My aging body. Quinn’s marriage, and mine, and briefly, of that Facebook message.
Holden remembered me. It was probably nothing.
So why did it feel like something? I ponder our long-ago past; the human capacity to heal and forget.
But also the weirdness of feeling heartbroken when you’re a married mom.
I breathe in and out. Three more days in my thirties. Hosting my very own party. Happy birthday to me. I remember Reid’s words, though, before his bad news, however flippantly spoken. I like you now.
I whisper them silently to myself in the dark, trying my best to mean them.