by DD Prince
“Yeah. Quick meeting at the CC New York office. A bit of family shit. Touched base with Jude, too. It was the security asshole. Caught him goin’ in your room with the surveillance this morning. The cops are gonna be executing a search warrant of the guy’s apartment any time. How’s everything so far?”
My mouth drops open. I hope they find Grams’ tiara and I get it back. “What about your phone cloning thing?”
“Jude’s still on that case.”
“I hope he figures it out.”
“He will,” he tells me, with a smile. “He’ll do his best to find your jewelry, too. Now, I’m all yours. What are we doing next?”
I then excitedly babble about my morning and start to show him stuff as we walk through the convention center, and then I narrowly avoiding bumping into two different people, I’m so excitable, telling him about panels I want to attend that afternoon. I’m giggling when he saves me from the second collision by grabbing two of my beltloops and steering me over to a group of tables near a coffee booth.
“You’re a hazard,” he says, with humor.
I giggle. “I’m a marketing nerd. I get excited.”
He’s smiling, shaking his head. “Been to so many of these. Not a big deal to me anymore.”
“This is my cherry poppin’ so it’s a huge deal to me,” I say.
He blinks and then shakes off what I’m guessing was the temptation to make a joke at what I just said. “Coffee, cold drink?” he asks.
“Yes, coffee please,” I nod enthusiastically and put all my convention booty on the table and reach into my bag to check my phone.
Two missed calls from my mother and a text from her.
“Call my cell ASAP. Urgent.”
34
AIDEN
I grab drinks for us and move back to the table and she’s sitting there, staring at her phone, looking like she’s seen a ghost.
“Carly?”
“My D-dad. My Dad collapsed at work. He’s in the hospital. They think it was a heart attack.”
“Oh shit.”
“It’s because my sister g-got hit by a car. My Mom is at the hospital with both of them. With both of them! They got the call about Caitlin and Dad collapsed. And now she’s there with them both.”
I put the drinks down and put my hand on her shoulder. “Hey.” She looks up at me. She’s got tears in her eyes.
“What can I do?” I ask.
“Can you get me to the airport? I have to… I have to go home.”
“Let’s go.” I’m helping her up. She’s shaky. I grab her tote bag and loop it over my shoulder, grab our drinks tray in one hand and put my free arm around her and lead her to the closest exit. When we get out there, I pass her a drink, take mine and dump the tray into a recycling bin. I call Joshua to get here and get us to the airport. He tells me he’ll be here in ten minutes. We stand outside while I call Alice and ask her to get us flights as fast as possible to Buffalo.
Carly’s staring off into space, holding herself, leaning against the wall.
“Hey. We’re gonna get you home as quick as we can, okay?”
She nods, and her chin starts trembling.
“Hey?” I open my arms. “Need a hug?”
She falls into me and starts crying into my shirt.
Hm. Shoulda tried this move days ago.
I’m careful not to spill coffee on her. She’s holding hers behind my back.
I swallow past a weird lump and hold her, feeling bad that she’s going through this and thinking that no other woman has ever felt so right in my arms.
Her head tucks under my chin; she molds to me. And though she’s drenching my shirt with tears, holding my leather jacket in her fists, she’s warm and soft against me.
And fuck me, but I don’t want her to let go.
***
She protested against me going with her. But for some reason, I insisted and now I’m here, in Buffalo. We took a cab from the airport to the hospital.
For some reason, I had to get her here myself. I also held her hand for the last hour of the plane ride. She was quiet, but she didn’t pull away. I’ve never been a hand-holder.
Now, we’re at the hospital and Carly’s father is gonna be okay. It was a mild heart attack. Her sister, however, is in bad shape. Broken leg, broken nose. Broken ribs. But, Carly’s sister’s problems don’t truly stem from getting hit by a car. When it happened, she was in the middle of a drug-induced flip out, running through the streets screaming, according to witnesses.
Carly’s mother is an older rounder version of Carly with kind eyes and the type of maternal attitude I am not accustomed to.
She’s weepy. She hugged me already, despite Carly introducing me as her boss. And then she started to babble about Caitlin getting hit by a car and the cops calling Carly’s father at work and as his father was telling an employee why he had to leave early, he started hyperventilating and clutched his chest and then went down.
I sit there in the waiting room while Carly’s in with her father.
I’ve texted Kieran and I’ve sent a text to my father, telling him Carly’s father and sister got rushed to the hospital and so we’re in Buffalo.
He answers my text and invites me to stop in to Chancellor tomorrow since I’m here to tell the current management team in person the news that they’re being absorbed into CC and that they’ll all be getting severance packages.
I phone him to reply.
“Aiden. Hello.”
“Fuck, Dad. Have some goddamn sensitivity!”
Coming from me, this is saying something. I let him have it after that meeting on Carly’s first day about this same fuckin’ thing.
“S-son.”
“Damn it.” I rub my forehead in frustration.
“Okay, why don’t we table any work stuff. Just take care of our girl there and call me tomorrow. Let me know what’s happening.”
“Yeah, alright.” I end the call and that’s when Carly and her mother are coming toward me.
That morning, Dad told me he’s having part of his prostate removed. He reiterated that they’ve caught it early and that the prognosis is good.
He also tells me that my mother is refusing to speak to him over the fiasco surrounding Adele’s labor. She’s found a way to blame him, insisting he didn’t try very hard to wake her to come to the hospital and that she wasn’t drunk; it had been her sleep medication only that made her so difficult to rouse.
Bullshit, but whatever.
Mrs. Adler sits down in the waiting area beside me. “Thank you so much for getting Carly to us so fast, Aiden.”
“Of course I’d get her home. How is everything?”
“Well, my husband, they’re keeping overnight for observation and running some more tests in the morning. Caitlin, they’ve got sedated. She is in a bit of legal trouble, though, so she’s not going to leave from here other than to go to the…” she lowers her voice, “police station.”
Carly tightens her lips.
“My older daughter is not nearly as together as my younger one,” she adds.
I say nothing, because what is there to say?
I look to Carly, but can’t get a read on her expression. She’s chewing her thumbnail and staring at me.
Carly’s mother starts talking again. “So, I’ve already said good night to Darryl and stopped in to see Cait. But, she’s medicated so she’s asleep. We should go home and get some sleep. I have my van. Aiden, would you be so kind as to drive?” She passes me the keys.
35
CARLY
My mom is trying to get Aiden to drive her twenty-year-old Smurf-blue Plymouth Voyager minivan back to her house.
Talk about horror!
“Mom, I think we’ll let Aiden get back to the airport from here. Call him a taxi, and---”
“It’s late. He should get some sleep,” Mom says.
She’s already given me starry-eyed looks about my boss as well as whispers when we were alone.
“I
s he single? He’s really handsome, isn’t he? Did you say he was single? What do you mean meh; are you blind? Does he know you’re freshly single?” She did this not five minutes after she got me alone.
To be fair to her, she’s been at the hospital for hours, waiting on me, and the stress about Dad is simmering down. The stress about Cait…well, Mom has been accustomed to that for more than a half a decade.
Truthfully, Aiden has been really wonderful all day. It’s like Aiden has been snatched by aliens and this nice alien inhabiting Aiden’s body has been looking after me mid-crisis. Mid-crisis squared, actually, because not only Dad but Cait are both here.
Here comes Stephiedearest. Great. She’s heading toward us in her navy-blue scrubs, her dark ponytail bouncing. Her eyes are aimed right at me.
“Oh my God, Carly.” She grabs me and hugs me. “I’m so, so sorry about your Dad. I heard he’s gonna be okay, though.”
“Hi, Mrs. Adler.” She lets go of me when she realizes I’m not hugging her back. She’s about to reach for my mom.
I’m not sure how I feel about her being here right now.
“Stephanie,” Mom says curtly and Steph freezes before she gets Mom into an embrace, so it winds up with Steph awkwardly wobbling. “You heard Caitlin is here also?”
Steph’s face looks like it’s about to crumble at Mom’s reaction to her. Steph loves my mother. Mom has never been curt with her. Well, maybe that one time we got in trouble for pool hopping after dark and the police brought us home. But, she thinks of Mom as a mother-figure.
And then Steph’s eyes hit Aiden and the way they land on him, I can see she’s in shock that it took her so long to notice him.
To her credit, she actually noticed me before Aiden so that’s something at least.
“Oh,” she says, taking him in from head to toe. And then she looks at me and her eyes bounce back to Aiden. “What about Cait?”
“Caitlin got hit by a car,” I mutter.
Steph’s eyes go wide. “I heard about that. That was her? She gave a paramedic a black eye. She went rangy in the ambulance. Didn’t know it was Caitlin.”
Oh God, Cait.
“She’s now under police guard,” Steph adds. “Things were real bad with her after you left, Car. She was a nightmare. You look great, though. Love the new look.”
And Steph’s looking at Aiden again. With envy. She thinks he’s with me. With me, with me.
And, it almost feels like she’s getting a dig in about Cait to try to embarrass me. And that makes me angry, because she doesn’t know what Aiden knows or does not know about Cait. It dawns that she’s always done things like this. Disparaging my sister in front of other people. Volunteering my personal family information to others.
Seriously, though: I’m getting angry as I mull it over.
If I hadn’t left for San Diego and hadn’t heard her talking trash about me, we’d be out in public running into some old friend of hers or some work colleague I didn’t know, and she’d say something like, “Oh, this is Carly. She just got dumped.”
I dig deep and find my own inner bitch somehow. I move to Aiden’s side and put my arm around his waist.
“This is Aiden,” I say. “Hot Sauce, this is Steph. My former best friend. I think I told you about her.” I say it with contempt and look up at him.
He’s never heard of Steph.
Aiden’s arm loops around my neck and he kisses my temple. “Yeah, baby, you did.” He gives her the barest look of distaste without missing a beat. It’s just enough, too. Not too much.
Steph looks like she wants to shrivel up and simultaneously have a Veruca Salt style temper tantrum.
And I wanna kiss him for going along with this. He obviously got an instant read on her. I don’t look great, either. I’ve been stressed and on a flight after a half day at a busy conference, plus I’m a bit jetlagged and over-caffeinated, and she’s pointing out that I don’t look great by saying that I do.
“Well, I, uh… I hope Mr. Adler is gonna be okay. I have to get back …” She jerks her thumb behind her. “You staying in town a bit?” she asks.
“Not sure.” I give her nothing. In other words, none of your beeswax, bitch.
“I’m moved in with Tammy. She had a spare room, so … the apartment is all emptied out and cleaned. I didn’t leave it a mess so … you should get your security deposit back.”
“Thanks,” I say, still plastered to Aiden’s side.
Mom is standing there with her mouth wide open, watching this exchange.
“Mrs. Adler? Can you come sign these papers?” A nurse calls out from the desk. Mom dashes off. Stephanie’s giving Aiden another peruse from head to toe.
He’s in black chinos and a chocolate brown button down under a black leather jacket, with black shoes. He exudes money and power. His body language. The way his clothes hang on his body. His confidence. His looks.
“Bye,” I dismiss her.
She swallows. “Bye, Car.”
She scurries awkwardly away.
I would’ve maybe felt guilty if it hadn’t been for the way she looked at Aiden and then at me with jealousy and then tried, in her usual Stephanie style, to make me feel small. I don’t feel guilty at all. This is progress for me.
It takes a minute to realize I’m still standing here with my arm around his middle and he’s still got his arm around my neck. When it hits, I go to break away, but he tightens his grip.
“Thanks for that. She fucked me over,” I whisper. “She fucked me over for ten years straight, only, I just realized it just before I left for San Diego. She was looking at you and me with envy and I… it was petty, I know, but thank you. I could kiss you right now.”
“Yeah?” he asks.
“I mean… I…” I stammer.
“Not a hardship,” he whispers back and gives me an affectionate squeeze.
I side-step away from him. “So, are you gonna head back, or…”
“What do you plan to do?” he asks.
“Um. I’m thinking of staying and then maybe catching a flight back Thursday morning as planned. I won’t be able to do any of the stuff you guys wanted me to do for the rest of the conference, but I can do a video call with that guy that your Dad wanted me to meet with and…”
“No. Don’t worry about work. Take until Thursday. If you need longer, just let me know. Kieran can report to us on the rest of the conference. Geller can come see us in San Diego if he wants to pitch us that badly.”
I swallow. “Thank you. I really wanted to do more for this conference. This timing sucked.”
“Never a good time for what happened today, peaches.”
My shoulders droop. “Nope.”
“In six months, there’s Westmark. We’ll go to that. Just as good as Eastmark. They even have a beach party. Don’t have a beach party during Eastmark.”
Oh. Six months. Will I have a full-time job with CC by then?
He glances at his phone. “I have some stuff to do in the office tomorrow, so I think I’ll head back there and do that and then see you back in San Diego Thursday.”
“Oh. Okay. Um, thanks for everything today,” I say. “Sincerely. Oh, and about the plane fare…”
He shakes his head. “Stop.”
“But…”
He puts his index finger to my lips to halt me.
I’m still for a second, sort of shocked, but then I pretend to bite his finger. He gives me look. That sex potion look.
Mom is back, breaking the spell with, “So, are you driving us, Aiden?”
I smirk and take a step back from him and look at her.
“Mom, Aiden’s going to head back.”
“Oh. You should get a good night’s sleep first. Fly out in the morning. We have the sofa bed in the rec room. Carly will sleep in her old room.”
“Mom, Aiden’s not gonna sleep on the sofa bed in the basement…”
As if.
“Actually, I’m pretty tired,” Aiden admits. “I could fly out tomorrow.
He twirls Mom’s keys with her ‘Bingo Nut’ keychain in his hand.
This is ridiculous. All of it. No. Aiden Carmichael is not going to sleep in my parent’s basement on the lumpy green sofa bed in front of the old floor model television. There’s another television on top. A modern one. The floor model serves as the TV stand. Dad watches sports down there. It’s a typical Dad-basement TV room. In other words, hideous.
But, apparently, he is planning on sleeping in my parent’s basement, because he winks at me and then holds out his arm and mom slips her hand into the crook. He holds out his other arm for me and gives me a wink.
My God, he’s handsome. That he just put that smile on my Mom’s face after tonight? I’m kind of awestruck.
***
Ten minutes later, we’re pulling into my parent’s driveway. Mom insisted I sit up front with Aiden and then I navigated as she updated Aunt Susan on the phone on the way home.
Mom was sparse with details, thankfully, and likely because my boss is in the van, though he’s heard way more tonight than I’d have wanted him to hear about my family life. As we pull into my parents’ driveway, she tells Aunt Susan she’ll call back in an hour because she has to get “the kids settled.”
I see a smile tugging at Aiden’s mouth when she says that.
My parents’ raised bungalow is an ordinary family house. Lots of knickknacks and photos on the walls. They haven’t decorated in ten years on the main floor, and the basement looks like it came straight outta the 70s, but my mother is a clean freak, so everything, though outdated, is tidy. We take our shoes off at the door, like we’ve always done. Aiden looks a bit thrown by that, but then he takes his off, also.
We’ve come in through the kitchen door and Mom offers to make food.
“You don’t have to cook, Mom, not after the long day we all had. I’ll make some grilled cheese sandwiches and open a tin of soup. Is that okay?” I look at Aiden.
“Yeah,” He sits down at the big old farm-style kitchen table with the painted white chairs and the small houseplant in the middle. “Sounds great.”
