Billionaire Neighbor

by Lulu Pratt

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  LARA

  Riley is napping in my bedroom, and I’m putting together dinner for her, myself and Ethan, who should be arriving to pick her up in less than an hour, while I’m making phone calls to different people we’ve sent invitations to, trying to see if everyone’s received theirs yet.

  We finally agreed on a ballpark budget, and on how we were going to split it, and what we were going to do for Riley’s second birthday. I’d taken on the job of taking care of the invitations, while Ethan insisted on calling the different contractors whose services we’re going to be using for the party — the face painter, the man with the pony, and a few others.

  “Hey, it’s Lara. Glad I could get a hold of you, Giselle. I was wondering if you’ve gotten your invitation to Riley’s second birthday party yet?”

  I haven’t spoken to Giselle in probably about three years. She was friends with Alexis, someone I knew from her circle but had never really been close to. Of course, she sided with my sister and with Ethan when the big drama exploded.

  “Hey, Lara. I just got it in the mail today! You and Ethan are throwing the party together?” I can hear the tone in Giselle’s voice, and I’m not sure if it’s because she doesn’t think that it’s right for Ethan and me to be working together, or perhaps something else.

  “Yeah, we figured it would be easiest that way,” I tell her.

  “Well, as long as it’s all right if I can bring Logan and Charlene, I’m happy to come,” Giselle says.

  I remember, fleetingly, that Giselle had twins sometime shortly after my sister gave birth. It had been in one of the phone calls Mom made to me, while I stayed away from my family.

  “Absolutely,” I tell her. It’ll be good to have some kids around who Riley can play with.

  “Are you planning anything in particular for the grownups? I could bring some wine with me,” Giselle says.

  I laugh. “I think I’ve got that covered. Not enough for anyone to get drunk, but some grown-up punch,” I say.

  “Good to know. I can tell you that everyone who’s going to be there with kids is going to need it, but then, you’re helping raise Riley now, right?”

  I nod, even though I know Giselle can’t see me, and stand up to stir the soup I’ve got going for dinner. It’s starting to get cooler, and I think it’s going to be a really cold winter this year, so soup and sandwiches sounded like a great meal for all of us.

  “Yeah, Alexis insisted on it in her will, so Ethan and I are working it out,” I say absently. I really just want to get off the phone and call the next person I need to check on, but I know that would be rude.

  “Must be stirring up a lot of feelings between the two of you… I mean… he did get with you first,” Giselle says. I stop in the middle of what I’m doing and stare at my phone for a moment.

  “I mean, we’re dealing with it,” I say once I have the ability to speak again.

  “It’d be easy for the two of you to get back together… I mean… you’re spending so much time with each other now… I guess,” Giselle points out.

  I thought I couldn’t be more stunned, but here I am.

  “I mean, we’re not planning on anything like that at all, we’re just kind of moving past our history and doing our best for Riley,” I say. I need to get Giselle off the phone quickly, and a knock at my door gives me the perfect excuse.

  “I just thought…. it would be good for everyone,” Giselle says, even as I start to try to get her off the phone.

  “Sorry, Giselle, that’s the door. It’s probably Ethan here to pick up Riley,” I tell her. “I need to make sure dinner’s done for all of us, too. But thanks! And send me the RSVP if you can.” I say goodbye and end the call, shoving my phone in my pocket to go get the door before Ethan can knock again and wake up Riley.

  “You look like you’re halfway out of your mind,” Ethan says as he comes in.

  “Sorry, just trying to do three things at once,” I tell him, turning back to the stove so he can’t tell how flustered I am. Surely Giselle is the only person in the world who thinks that Ethan and I have any shot of getting back together. Surely, she’s just being weird, or trying to dig for some good gossip.

  “I’ll go get Riley in a minute. Why don’t you sit down?” I stir the soup I’ve made and check on the sandwiches in their packets in the oven. I can’t help but feel a little guilty. Ethan and I did, after all, have sex. It’s the kind of thing that I should never have allowed to happen, and I’ve tried to steer clear of any kind of intimacy with him since then, even in my thoughts.

  Did Ethan tell anyone about it? Does Giselle know? Was that why she made that suggestion? I can’t believe that Ethan would go around talking about having sex with me. He wasn’t the type even when we were together, and I can’t imagine that he’d want to make himself look like he was getting over Alexis too quickly by admitting we’d hooked up. I’ll have to see if anyone else thinks that Ethan and I are in the process of getting back together.

  “I think everything’s just about done. Do you want a cup of coffee?” I turn off the oven and the stove and pull out the sandwiches to cool a bit before turning my attention onto Ethan, hopefully looking more composed.

  “Coffee would be great,” he says. I take a deep breath and try to focus on what’s going on around me, instead of Giselle.

  “I’ve been calling to make sure everyone’s getting their invitations,” I say absently, as I pour Ethan and myself both some coffee and get Riley’s dinnertime drink for her.

  “I actually booked the face painter and the pony guy during my break today,” Ethan tells me.

  I nod my appreciation. “So, this is coming together pretty well,” I say, finally sitting down. I need a few minutes to breathe before I deal with Riley and dinner.

  “What’s going on? You look like you’re just a couple of minutes away from panic,” Ethan says, looking me over.

  “Nothing big,” I say, shaking my head. I won’t — I can’t — tell him why I’m so on edge.

  “Just remember, it’s not going to ruin Riley’s life if her second birthday hits some snags,” Ethan tells me, grinning. He takes a sip of his coffee and rises to his feet.

  “She’s got another ten minutes or so on her nap,” I tell him.

  Ethan shrugs. “It won’t make a huge difference, besides, I can take ten minutes waking her up.” He leaves the room and I try to regain my composure, putting everything about what Giselle said out of my mind. There was some tiny part of my brain that heard her assertion that Ethan and I would get back together with a kind of joy. But that was the part of me that had never quite gotten over the breakup, that couldn’t stand the thought of being without him, surely. I can’t listen to that teeny part of myself.

  The much bigger part of me is glad that I laid down the boundary that I did after Ethan and I had sex. I need to keep my head clear. I need to keep my feelings what they should be, not just for Riley’s sake but for my own.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ETHAN

  Lara and I are out to dinner. Nathan has Riley for the night, as part of my parents’ and his insistence that Lara and I both get an occasional break from minding Riley. The party is still two weeks away, but it’s more or less prepared. As prepared as it’s going to get, anyway, until the day of.

  “I’ve gotten just about all the RSVPs,” Lara says, taking a sip of her sangria. We’ve both, maybe without thinking about it, avoided drinking alcohol since the time we had sex. Neither of us was drunk that night, but there’s something about drinking that sort of lowers inhibitions, and I don’t think either one of us is anxious to repeat that.

  “All the stuff is booked. I think I’ve got the final order for the cake to send,” I say.

  Lara wanted to do the cake herself, but I talked her out of it, saying that I’d foot the bill for the whole thing if I had to. Alexis had insisted on making the cake for Riley’s first birthday. I can still remember, all too clearly, how stresse
d out it made her when she couldn’t get it perfect, and how many tears she cried over it until she got it as right as it could be. That’s not an experience I want to repeat, even if I have my doubts that Lara would get that stressed, or that upset.

  “What flavor did you end up choosing?”

  I grin. The cake is a little nod to Alexis, not much of one, but enough that people who know her well will appreciate it.

  “Strawberry-vanilla,” I say.

  Lara’s eyes widen, and I know she’s caught it, but I hope she’s okay with it.

  “I think that’s great,” she says.

  I’d tasted the sample cake at the bakery, a simple vanilla cake with buttercream and strawberry preserves, and it reminded me of the wedding cake that Alexis and I had had. It was simple, and it was delicious, and it had given me one of the first really pleasant reminders that I’d had of Alexis since the terrible night she’d passed.

  “It’ll be good to have a little… not a tribute, but at least something,” I say. I feel awkward about it. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything at all. Lara sets aside her sangria and the waiter comes with our appetizer before she can say anything. We both thank the guy serving us, and Lara grabs a fried mushroom out of the basket.

  “That makes sense,” she says quietly.

  “If it bothers you, I can have them change it,” I say.

  Lara shakes her head.

  “No, I just wasn’t even thinking about it. People will think it’s weird if we don’t have any kind of reference to Alexis at the party,” Lara says.

  “Yeah,” I agree. I hadn’t even thought about that in the moment that I’d told the bakery what I wanted. I’d just wanted it, for my own reasons. I’d wanted something that I could have as a reminder of the mother to my daughter.

  “It should be a nice party,” Lara points out.

  I nod my agreement and pluck a fried pickle out of the appetizer basket, dip it in some horseradish ranch, and pop it in my mouth.

  “I don’t think Alexis could have planned anything better,” I suggest.

  Lara winces, it lasts less than a second, just long enough to make me wonder if I’ve imagined it, and then she smiles.

  “I’m glad that I’ll be around for it, that I won’t miss it the way I did her first birthday,” Lara says.

  “You know… Alexis was sure, when she had Riley, that you’d come around eventually,” I tell her cautiously.

  “She was?” Lara looks up and takes another quick sip of her sangria, following it with a longer sip of her water.

  “She was really…” I press my lips together. We’re getting into dangerous territory. No matter how things have changed, I can’t quite fight the lingering sense that all along, so much of the pain my wife, and I, went through could have been avoided.

  “If we’re going to talk about it, we might as well actually talk about it,” Lara says with a sigh.

  “She never stopped wanting to mend the breach,” I tell Lara.

  “She shouldn’t have caused one in the first place,” Lara says tartly. She sighs. “I know, I know.”

  “She didn’t intend to hurt your feelings, and neither did I,” I point out.

  “We’ve been over this,” Lara says, looking at me levelly.

  “The important thing is this, from pretty much the moment you cut her off, she wanted to be… she wanted to get close to you again. She said it was wrong for you to never be around the family.”

  Lara shrugs. “I didn’t want to be the cause of a bunch of drama,” she says.

  “You created drama by insisting on never coming to any family events,” I counter, and I can hear the bitterness in my own voice. How many nights did I have to deal with Alexis crying because her mother informed her over the phone that yet again, Lara wasn’t going to be there? Or that she’d called Lara and gotten no answer, not even voice mail?

  “I would have created much more drama if I’d made myself go,” Lara insists.

  “How?” I pop a fried mushroom into my mouth and ignore the stinging burn of it as the hot liquid squirts out.

  “Every time I would have seen the two of you together it would have ended up in a fight. Do you really think it would have been good for anyone, especially Riley, for that to happen?”

  I roll my eyes at that argument.

  “You managed not to start a fight with us at Thanksgiving or Christmas last year,” I point out.

  “Only because I was trying really hard, and only because I didn’t pay any attention to either of you,” Lara counters. She takes a deep breath and exhales on a sigh.

  “You could have done it before,” I say.

  Lara shakes her head.

  “I couldn’t have. It was because Mom was dead, and Dad was desperate, and all that,” she says. She sighs again and snags a deep-fried pickle.

  “So, you didn’t want to cause level-ten drama, and instead just caused constant level-seven drama,” I say bitterly.

  Lara scowls at me. “Do you have any idea how badly the two of you hurt me? Really and truly. You’re going on about how much Alexis was in pain, but do you even realize how bad it was for me?”

  “We went over this. You broke up with me. What I do after that isn’t anything to do with you,” I say firmly. “And it definitely doesn’t have to do with Alexis.”

  Lara sighs and shakes her head. “It was like being stabbed. It really felt that way. When I left the house that day… it felt as if I had two knives in my back. I wasn’t even sure I could breathe. Do you really think I should have been forced to go through that every time I went to a family gathering?”

  I try to imagine it. As much as Alexis’ pain over losing her sister got to me, I have to admit that neither of us, really, ever thought that Lara had really, truly been hurt. Or at least, I didn’t. I’d thought that Lara was just being petty, that she was bitter and resentful. That she was trying to make Alexis pay.

  Even now I can’t quite believe that it could have possibly hurt Lara that much to see her ex-boyfriend with her sister. I can’t imagine it, really. But obviously she believes it.

  “We wanted to reconnect with you all along. Alexis especially,” I say.

  “Well, want in one hand, spit in the other. I think you wanted the impossible…” Lara smiles wryly, and we both lapse into silence.

  “Let’s talk about something else for a while,” I suggest.

  Lara agrees, and we start talking about Riley’s new words, about the traffic on the expressway, about anything — anything, except the complicated mess that our relationships have become.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  LARA

  “You can set up your station right over there in the shade,” I tell the face-painter. I figure that since all her patrons, the guests at Riley’s party, are going to be sitting for a long time, the shade will be a better idea. It’s unseasonably warm for fall, and with the first spate of autumn rain thankfully behind us, it’s bright and sunny for Riley’s party.

  Ethan and I had booked a space at a park in our old town, central for everyone who would be coming to the party. Dad had tried to convince us to have the birthday in his backyard, the way Ethan and Alexis had her first birthday, but that seemed to me to be risking the accusation that we weren’t being impartial, or at least that I wasn’t.

  Dad is pushing Riley on one of the toddler swings, and Ethan is helping put up decorations around the little sheltered area we’ve taken. The party should be starting in about an hour, and between all the details, I’m feeling like it will either be a big success or a massive failure in some critical way. The cake is safely stowed in a cooler, and a caterer is setting up her hot and cold trays on a table.

  “How’s this, Lara?”

  I look up to see Ethan, perched on the top of the latter, gesturing to the bunting he’s been hanging around the shelter.

  “Looks good!” I call back. I take another glance around the spot we’ve reserved and decide that things are as prepared as they’re going to be be
fore people start arriving. I head back to my car to freshen up a bit, and start thinking about the oddness of the whole situation.

  After carefully asking around, I’ve found out that most of the people who went to the same school as Ethan and I believe that we’re in the process of reconciling. I’m not sure how to feel about that, especially since Ethan and I have been talking more and more about the whole sordid situation between him, me and Alexis. Part of me wonders if the people who knew us all in high school have something figured out that I don’t, while another part of me keeps screaming, every time I even think about getting back together with Ethan, even just as an intellectual thing, that Ethan will just break my heart again if I do.

  “You looking to pick someone up at this thing?”

  I glance away from my flip-down mirror to see Ethan standing a few feet away from my car, looking at me in amusement.

  “Oh please. I’m not so pathetic that I’m going to try to flirt with people at my niece’s birthday party,” I say tartly.

  “I’m just saying you look good, especially now that you’ve cleaned up a bit,” Ethan says, looking me up and down.

  I roll my eyes and finish touching up my lip color.

  “You’re not supposed to be looking at me,” I say. I can’t explain, even to myself, why I feel so irritable. Some combination of the pressure I’m putting on myself to make this happen, the knowledge that apparently a good dozen people think that Ethan and I are going to get back together, and worries that everyone is going to keep talking about my sister all day.

  “Why not? There’s nothing wrong with looking. I thought we’d just agreed not to get physical,” Ethan quietly says. I flip the mirror back up and turn around in the driver’s seat, putting my feet on the ground and staring at my brother-in-law.

  “I’m not going to set myself up to get hurt again,” I tell him.

  “What?” Ethan frowns. “What are you talking about?”