I knew the lo mein was only buying me time. I would have to answer her questions eventually. I would have to offer a better explanation for why Daisy suddenly wasn’t around anymore.
And that’s not all I would have to explain.
“Emmy,” I said, setting my phone down. “There’s something we should talk about.”
Emmy blinked up at me.
“It’s about your mommy.”
In between my attempts to reach Daisy, my brain had been in overdrive trying to figure out the best way to tell Emmy the truth about her mother.
The day after the cafe fiasco, I got a call from the family attorney. He informed me that my sister had relapsed and left rehab. I believe ‘dropped out’ was the term that he used over the phone, but knowing my sister, I imagined that the truth was more dramatic than that.
I wasn’t shocked to hear that Calista’s latest attempt to get clean had failed. But I was shocked by what he revealed next. Apparently before she had left rehab, my sister had been in touch with the attorney. She had requested paperwork be drawn up, granting full custody of Emmy to me.
“She said you were a better parent to Emmy than she ever could be,” the lawyer had relayed.
I had gone through the spectrum of emotions. Shock, sadness, concern. And finally, I had settled on relief. I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to send Emmy back to an unstable home with my unstable sister. And, selfishly, I was relieved that I wouldn’t lose my niece.
While I was more than happy to accept the full responsibility of raising Emmy for the foreseeable future, I wasn’t sure how she would react. Would she be happy? Devastated? Confused?
“What about my mommy?” Emmy asked now, blinking up at me. She didn’t look afraid or forlorn, just curious.
“Well,” I took a deep breath, “She loves you very, very much, Emmy, but… sometimes love isn’t enough. Your mommy knows that you need more than love, and she knows that she can’t give you all of the things you need right now.”
“I know that, Uncle Caleb,” Emmy said bluntly. “I love my mommy too, but she’s a hot mess.”
I had to fight the urge to laugh at my niece’s sass.
“So,” I said. “How would you feel about living with me permanently?”
Emmy twisted her face into a thoughtful smirk, then the expression melted into a smile.
“I’d like that. A lot.”
“Good,” I smiled back, relieved. “I want this to feel like your home, Emmy. And I want us to be a family.”
“But...” Emmy said thoughtfully, her smile fading. “A family is supposed to have a mommy and a daddy.”
“Not all families are the same. Families are people who love and care about each other.”
“I want Daisy to be part of our family.”
“You and me both, kid,” I sighed before I could stop myself.
“So why don’t you just ask her?” Emmy asked as if it’s that simple.
“I wish it worked like that,” I said, “But it’s complicated.”
“You say that about everything,” Emmy rolled her eyes. “Maybe you should just grow a pair and apologize already.”
“Emmy!” I gasped. “Where did you learn to talk like that?”
She just rolled her eyes at me again.
“Please,” she said. “I’m a kid, not a dummy.”
I felt my heart swell with affection for my ridiculously sassy niece, and I grabbed her in a bear hug.
“You are wise beyond your years, you know that?” I ruffled her hair.
“Enough small talk,” she scoffed. “Let’s figure out how we’re going to get Daisy back!”
19
DAISY
“Come on,” Raven begged, making puppy dog eyes at me from the doorway of my bedroom. “Please come out, you need this!”
“The only thing I need right now is to grade all of these assignments,” I said, ruffling the stack of booklets at the edge of my bed. “And maybe a bottle of wine,” I added with a wink as I reached for the glass of pinot on my nightstand.
I was perched on my bed beside the mountain of homework that I needed to grade by tomorrow morning. They were turned in Friday, and I had already put them off all weekend, waiting until the last minute to grade them before Monday. I had got my red pen and my wine, now all I needed was some peace and quiet.
Unfortunately, ‘peace and quiet’ wasn’t on Raven’s itinerary for the night. Ever since the debacle with Caleb, she had been attempting to drag me to the bar for a ‘girl’s night out.’ It was easy to brush her off during the week, “it’s a school night!” I would protest, but she became more persistent when the weekend hit. Now, Sunday, her urgency was at an all-time high.
“Maybe next weekend,” I offered, even though I know I have no intention of leaving the comfort of my bed or my sweatpants then, either. I was not like Raven. I was not the type to process my grief on the dancefloor, or between shots of Fireball. I preferred sobbing into my pillow in between binge-watching episodes of Gilmore Girls.
“Fine,” Raven sighed in defeat. “But next weekend I’m not taking ‘no’ for an answer!”
“Uh-huh,” I nodded dismissively. I listened to the sound of her footsteps stomping down the hallway and, once I heard our apartment door slam behind her, I collapsed onto the bed.
I stared at my phone, waiting for it to ring even though I knew it wouldn’t. I blocked Caleb’s number. I had to. What happened in the cafe was a wakeup call. A reminder of why Caleb and I were always destined to fail.
He was the billionaire playboy and I was the girl from Brooklyn. He was the legal guardian of one of my students and I was the teacher. He was notorious for being unable to commit to women, and I was the girl with an inherent inability to trust. We couldn’t be more wrong for each other. And no matter how right things felt when our bodies touched, it was always going to end with someone getting hurt. Better for it to happen now, rather than later. Better for it to have been a clean break, without the school board or the tabloids getting involved.
I had gotten out most of the tears and fought through the anger and resentment phase of our unofficial ‘break up.’ Now I just felt empty. I pulled myself back up on the bed and took a sip of wine, then I reached for the first assignment in the stack of homework projects that I needed to grade.
Every week I assigned my class a take-home project that needed to be completed with the help of their parents. The idea was that the project forced parents to take an interest in what was going on at school and get involved. But the sad reality was that most of the time, the nannies just ended up working through the project themselves at the last minute.
For this past week’s project, I provided each of my students with a storybook. The pages inside each book had been pre-printed with the texts of different fairy tales. One book was Rapunzel, another told the story of Snow White. Besides the block of text printed at the bottom of each page, the book was blank. The assignment was for students to read the story with their parents, then work together to create illustrations that matched the passage of text on each page.
Flipping through the stack of completed books, I couldn’t help but wonder, cynically, how many nannies were up late the night before, racing to complete their illustrations.
It was times like these that I questioned whether I really belonged at a school like Bellamy Day. I wanted to help kids that fell between the cracks, but even my best efforts to build real connections seem to falter and fall short.
The truth was if it wasn’t for Emmy, I probably would have considered leaving Bellamy Day a long time ago. Helping Emmy gave me a reason to stay. But now that Emmy didn’t need me anymore, I was wondering if I really belonged at Bellamy. I felt like I was missing my real calling. That I should be doing more.
I flipped open the first assignment and immediately my suspicions were verified. The storybook Aladdin had been painstakingly illustrated with drawings far beyond the preschool level. I flipped through the pages, and felt my heart sink.
Then, knowing there was not a damn thing I could do about it, I marked the back cover with a passing grade and moved on to the next book in the stack.
I had made it through the first half of the stack by the time I needed to take a break to refill my wine glass. I checked my phone, then reminded myself again that I blocked Caleb’s number, and I reached for the next book.
Maybe it was because Caleb was still lingering on my mind, but when I see Emmy’s curly handwriting on the cover of the storybook, my heart instinctively leapt in my chest.
I considered moving the storybook to the bottom of the stack, but then I convinced myself that it was better to tear off the band aid and deal with it then. I took a deep breath and dropped the book onto my lap.
‘The Tale of the Lost Queen,’ the cover read, in squiggly magic market letters.
I don’t remember this fairytale… I thought, frowning as I flipped open the cover.
The first page was an elaborate colored pencil drawing of spindly grey buildings, stretched to comical proportions in front of a bright blue sky. In the center of the page, there was a girl with yellow crayon hair and a bright pink crown.
‘Once upon a time,’ the text began on the first page, ‘in the faraway kingdom of Manhattan, there lived a special princess named Emmy.’
I felt my heart thump. This wasn’t the storybook I assigned to Emmy. In fact, this wasn’t a storybook at all. This was a recreation. Someone reprinted their own story, painstakingly following the format of the storybooks I had assigned so that it would look identical to the other projects. Someone had written their own fairytale, replacing the one I had originally assigned to Emmy. And the flutter in my stomach told me that that someone was Caleb Preston.
I flipped the page and found another rendering of the girl in the crown, this time accompanied by an impossibly tall man wearing a matching pink crown and an impressive attempt at a grey suit.
‘One day Princess Emmy was sent to live with her uncle, King Caleb, in a strange place called Camden Castle.’
Flip.
‘King Caleb loved Princess Emmy very much, but he had never taken care of a special little princess before, and he needed a little bit of help.’
Flip.
‘Luckily there was a very kind and beautiful woman named Daisy who was willing to help him.’
Flip.
‘Princess Emmy adored Daisy, and soon King Caleb did, too. Camden Castle began to feel like a home for the first time.’
I flipped the page and my eyes froze on an illustration of the tall king in the grey suit and pink crown, Caleb, embracing a woman with flowing blonde hair and a blue Bellamy Day polo shirt, me.
‘The truth was, King Caleb had been living a dark and lonely life at Camden Castle. Princess Emmy and Daisy brought color and light into his life, and the king realized that he had finally found his Queen.’
Flip.
‘King Caleb hoped that Daisy would be his queen so they could be a family and live happily ever after… but then something terrible happened.’
Flip; the page was shaded entirely black with crayon, and in the center there was a gnarly depiction of a dragon exhaling glitter-paint plumes of fire.
‘King Caleb was confronted by a terrible monster.’
Flip.
‘The king knew that the monster would hurt the people that he loved the most. So, in order to protect his beloved queen, the king lied. He told the monster that Daisy was just a teacher.’
Flip.
‘The king had told the lie to protect his queen from the terrible monster, but Daisy was hurt. She ran away, before the king could explain himself.’
I flipped to the next page, where King Caleb was speared by his sword, his face twisted in agony.
‘King Caleb realized that he had lost the only woman he had ever loved. Without his queen, the family was incomplete…’
Flip.
‘King Caleb vowed to never stop searching for his lost queen.’
My eyes were already dripping with tears and I felt my entire body prickling with the rush of emotions. Both the reminder of sadness and the sudden exhilaration of renewed hope.
I flipped to the final page in the book, and this time there wasn’t a typed passage or illustration. There was just a note, penned in deep black ink.
‘Daisy, I can’t beg you to understand or forgive me… all I can do is beg that you’ll give me the chance to explain myself. I thought I was protecting you, but it’s obvious to me now that I only managed to hurt you. The truth is, I would have been proud to call you mine that day. I asked for your trust, and I hope you’ll give me the opportunity to earn it. If you’re willing to give me another chance, you can find me where we shared our first date. (That’s right… I called it a date).’
‘Sunday night. You pick the time… I’ll be there, waiting for you. If I don’t see you by midnight, I’ll accept that you’ve moved on and I won’t bother you again.’
I was staring at the words, and then the realization hit me. Sunday night. That’s tonight.
Caleb was waiting for me, right now, at the NoMad Hotel. I clicked on my phone, bringing the home screen to life. It was 11 pm. That meant that I had less than an hour, less than an hour to shimmy out of my sweatpants and make it from Brooklyn to midtown.
I felt a dose of panic added to the emotional stew brewing inside of me, and then I jumped from the bed, downed the rest of my wine, and reached for a pair of jeans and my MetroCard.
In this fairytale, the queen is taking the subway to find her king.
20
CALEB
I pushed up the sleeve of my suit jacket, revealing the face of my Rolex in the dim light of the NoMad Hotel bar.
It was11:59, and I knew she was not coming. I knew it at 6 pm, when I got here. I knew it at 7, when I finished the gin and tonic that I was sipping. I knew it at 8, when the bartender asked if I wanted a magazine and I slipped him a stack of hundreds to leave me the hell alone and keep my glass full. I knew it at 9, and at 10, and I became certain at 11… she wasn’t coming.
Still, I clung to my foolish hope that I’d be wrong. It got harder to hope as the night went on. And then, at 11:59, I had one minute of hope left; one final granule of sand in the hourglass that was tonight.
I pushed the gin and tonic away on its soggy coaster and I leaned forward on the bar, willing myself to stand up and accept defeat. I made an effort. That was all I could do. Maybe it had been wrong to involve Emmy and get her hopes up; watching how eagerly my niece had illustrated my rewritten ‘fairytale’ had only confirmed how much Emmy missed Daisy. I had no idea how I would fill the void left in my own life, let alone in Emmy’s.
12:00 my watch ticked. I slid forward off the barstool and threw a final hundred dollar bill onto the bar, then I turned towards the door and step straight into a black suit.
“I’m terribly sorry, sir,” the man bumbled, taking a step backwards, and I deduce from the gold name badge inscribed ‘concierge’ that he was hotel staff.
“Don’t worry about it,” I mumbled, stepping around him.
“Erm… are you Mr. Preston, by chance?” he called after me.
I glanced back, then I glanced around the rest of the bar. Besides a couple making a baby in a corner booth and a pair of Midwest thirty-something soccer mom tourists who came to New York hoping for their Sex and the City experience, the bar was empty. No other potential Mr. Preston’s there.
“Yes,” I admitted reluctantly.
“This is for you,” he said, handing me an envelope. Then, in a loud whisper, he added, “It’s urgent.”
He waited around for another few seconds, probably to see whether I opened it, before he nodded politely and scurried back towards the hotel’s reception area. I debated whether I should just stuff the envelope in my pocket or tear it open there, and in the end, it was the concierge’s emphasis on the word ‘urgent’ that made me curious enough to pry open the envelope and see what’s inside.
I find a note,
scrawled in red pen ink on hotel stationery:
‘Someone once said that there’s something sensual about hotels; the guests are like strangers exploring a foreign land, and should two of them meet and the mood strike, then pure bliss is just a room key away. Well, here’s to testing that theory. 615.’
I remembered that line, and I remembered who said it. I told Daisy that on our first date, right here at the Hotel NoMad. I glanced into the envelope and even though I already had a pretty good idea of what I’d find inside, I still felt a jolt of excitement when my eyes landed on the black rectangular room key.
Room 615.
It was her.
I slipped the note into my pocket and headed for the elevator. My pulse was like electricity, throbbing as it pulsed through my veins. I was hard as fucking steel by the time the elevator doors slid shut, and even though I had an entire script planned for tonight, the apology, the groveling, the explaining myself and revealing my feelings, I had a hunch that Daisy had other plans for the night.
But when the elevator dinged on floor 6 and the doors slid open, I hesitated. I told Daisy once before that things between us couldn’t be meaningless. And I meant it. If the past week has proven anything, it was that there was something real between us, something dangerous and fragile, but something real nonetheless.
And I was not fucking it up again.
I glided down the hall, my footsteps muted by the plush red carpet. I found room 615 and I slipped the key into the door, then I took a deep breath before I pushed it open.
Inside, the room was dark, dimly illuminated by the flicker of candles lining the narrow entryway. I found the room empty; the bed was made, the sheets undisturbed. My cock screamed through my pants and I wondered if I’ve missed her again.
Then I spotted the beam of light snaking out from under the bathroom door. I crossed the room, the weight of my steps creaking on the old hardwood floors, then I pressed the door open with my knuckles.
The bathroom lights were off, but the glow of candles was stronger in the small bathroom. The flickering flames reflected off the massive white cast iron tub, which was filled with a sea of bubbles and, more importantly, Daisy.
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