The Bride (The Boss)

by Barnette, Abigail

  Valerie waved her hand. “You know what? It’s not important. Let’s just leave it where it is. I’m over-thinking things, as always.”

  We said goodnight and she stepped into the vestibule to wait for the elevator. I turned and headed for the bedroom, grateful to have an empty house finally.

  “That was rather obvious,” Neil said as he followed behind me. “What did she really say to you?”

  His wary tone was, I knew, due to some need to defend and protect me from Valerie. During his illness, we’d had a major blow up about her involvement in his life, and her constant critique of our relationship.

  I was relieved that, for once, his concern was misplaced. “She wanted me to intervene on Emma’s behalf. You’re being a dick about Michael.”

  “A dick?” His eyebrows rose. “That’s a bit strong.”

  “Is it, though?” I put my hands on my hips. We stood close enough that I had to tilt my head to look up at him. “How long have they been together now? Three years?”

  “Good lord, don’t remind me,” he grumbled. He took a step as though he would move past me, and I stopped him with a gentle hand against his chest.

  “This isn’t a joke, baby. Your daughter is so happy with Michael. And he treats her good. You should love him for loving her.” I sighed through my nose. “Or, you know, if you can’t bring yourself to love him, at least pretend to not hate him. Because Michael isn’t the one you’re hurting with this bullshit.”

  Neil reached up and covered my hand with his own, pressing my palm over his heart. “I know. And I do realize that there are scores of other men out there I’d hate much more. It’s just…” He trailed off in frustration.

  “It’s hard for you to let go, because you want to protect her. I get it. It’s because you’re a good father.” Every now and then, I had an odd pang of envy over Neil’s good relationship with Emma. It wasn’t that I wanted Neil to be my father, but I did feel a “what if?” sort of longing toward the man who should have filled that role. What if Joey Tangen had stepped up to the plate? What if I had tried to make some kind of contact with him? But deep down I knew that if a man were willing to miss out on the first twenty-five years of his child’s life, he didn’t really have anything to offer in the second twenty-five.

  Still, being present in Emma’s life didn’t make up for Neil’s tired overprotective father commentary.

  “If I start being nice to him, Emma will think I’ve had a stroke,” Neil argued half-heartedly.

  “You don’t have to be nice to him. You can keep on barely tolerating him. But stop saying mean things about him in front of Emma.”

  He frowned. “All right. Though it will be difficult to stop calling him Horrible Michael.”

  “You can still call him that in front of me, if you want,” I consoled him.

  Neil wrapped his arms around me and gave me a squeeze. “Thank you. For loving my daughter as much as I do, and telling me when I’m being an utter prat.”

  “That’s what I’m here for.” I didn’t need to tell him that no one on Earth would ever love Emma as much as he did; he already knew.

  “I was thinking,” he said, dipping his head to rub noses with me. “You’ve had a rough day. Why don’t you invite Holli ‘round for one of your ‘veg outs.’”

  “Really?” I’d never invited Holli over before. When we hung out, it was always at her place. She’d stayed with me in London, when Neil had been going through the high dose chemo. But at that point, I’d been living there for months, and it had felt like my home. The apartment in New York still felt like Neil’s place, and I guess it had never occurred to me to have people over.

  Neil frowned. “Certainly. I have work to do tonight, and I’ll feel much better knowing that you aren’t brooding in rejection all alone. And there’s some very expensive grass in my nightstand. I’m sure the two of you could think of some way to entertain yourselves.”

  “You know us so well.” I leaned my face up for a kiss. “I’ll give her a call.”

  I went into the bedroom, grabbed my phone, and dialed up Holli’s number.

  “What do you want, bitch?” she answered.

  “You sound bored.”

  “Totally bored. Deja is at some bullshit thing with Rudy.”

  “How soon can you get here?” It was awful and hypocritical of me, because I hated when Neil was away, but I loved it when Deja had to work and I got Holli all to myself.

  “Well, it depends on where ‘here’ is,” she said with snort. “I mean, I’ve never gotten the invitation to Fifth Avenue.”

  I ignored the hoity-toity accent she sometimes affected when talking about my new lifestyle. For a while, it had seemed funny and I’d rolled with it out of a healthy sense of self-deprecation, but now I was beginning to wonder if she really did dislike the way I lived with Neil. I gave Holli the address and asked, “So, how long, do you think?”

  “I don’t know. Give me an hour.” She perked up at the prospect. “Should I bring anything?”

  I thought of the lovely, light dinner we’d just had. I wanted to be conscious of what I was putting into my body, and the impact it would have on my health later in life, I really did. “A pizza. Bring a pizza.”

  After I hung up with her, I went looking for Neil. I found him in the library, his laptop open in front of him. Whatever he was working on, there were a lot of numbers involved, and I looked away from the screen out of pure math-phobia. He’d changed into a t-shirt and sleep pants. There’s something about the way a t-shirt stretches across a man’s upper back that makes me just ache to touch… Or maybe it was just because it was Neil’s back.

  He looked up, distracted. “Is Holli coming?”

  “Mmhm.” I trailed my fingers across the back of his neck. “But she won’t be here for like, an hour…”

  A smile touched the corners of his mouth, but his eyes never moved from the screen. “Unfortunately, I am quite busy.”

  I dropped to my knees beside his chair and rested my chin on my forearms on the armrest. I batted my eyes up at him. “Too busy to get your dick sucked, Sir?”

  He turned in his chair, but when my hands went to the button fly of his pajama pants, he brushed them away gently. “I can’t.”

  I sat back on my heels. He hardly ever turned me down.

  “Not because of anything you’ve done,” he hurried to console me. Then he uttered a resigned, “damn,” under his breath and said, “It takes around thirty minutes for a pill to kick in, and that’s on an empty stomach.”

  I frowned and tilted my head.

  “Remember when we first started having sex again after the chemotherapy? The, er, difficulties I had?” Neil rarely blushed, but his face was furious, ashamed red now. “They didn’t magically clear up.”

  His meaning became fully clear. “Oh. You’re… Are you taking boner pills?”

  “And of course you pick the most charming possible way to phrase it.” He covered his face with his hands and pulled the skin out of shape. “I am a walking cliché.”

  “No, baby.” I put my own feelings aside for later examination. Right now, Neil was hemorrhaging dignity. “It’s not a big deal. I just can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”

  “I don’t even want to take the damn things.” He shook his head. “Of course I didn’t want to tell you. You’re twenty-five. Men your age—”

  “Are not marrying me,” I reminded him.

  “I know.” Defeat clung to those words. “It’s a matter of vanity.”

  I leaned my elbows on his knees. “I know it makes about zero difference to you, but if it helps…I don’t think it makes you any less sexy.”

  His closed mouth smile told me my words had helped, a little. “They must not interfere with my appeal too badly.”

  “And it’s not vanity. You were a healthy, in-shape guy before.”

  “As healthy as someone can be with secret leukemia for four years,” he reminded me.

  “True. But you couldn’t see the l
eukemia.” I paused, considering. “Maybe that’s your problem. This is the first time you’re carrying around real, physical reminders of your illness.”

  He frowned down at his stomach. “Too true.”

  “Stop.” I slapped his hand where it rested on his knee. “Look, you might never get back into the shape you were in before the chemotherapy and the transplant. And that’s fine. I would much rather have a living, slightly doughy Neil with erectile dysfunction than a dead Neil I can remember as having a tight tummy. It’s all a matter of perspective.”

  “I should have been recording this conversation, for the next time you gain three pounds,” he said with a smirk.

  I got up, shaking my head at him.

  “Where are you going?” he called after me.

  I turned and put my hands on my hips, physically exaggerating my outrage so he would know I was joking. “After that remark, I am not remotely interested in your penis. Good night, sir.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Wow,” Holli said, flicking a few more buttons on the remote. “There really is a lot of porn on here.”

  “Told ya,” I squeaked out around a lungful of smoke. I choked and coughed and passed the joint to Holli. “Holy shit, this stuff is…”

  “Yeah, I got that.” Her eyes were already red. “You should always be engaged to a rich dude.”

  We lounged in the media room, a home theatre set-up of the kind I’d fantasized about as a child. Crushed burgundy velour seats, like out of a grand old movie house, surrounded a big bed with a matching duvet. I’d thought it was pretty cool when I’d first seen it, but since moving back to New York, I realized I couldn’t get through an entire movie in the room without falling asleep on the comfy bed. The thing the theatre was really good for was fooling around while watching dirty movies.

  And BFF sleepovers, of course.

  “I still don’t get it,” Holli said with a shake of her head. “You’re cute. That one nail thing you did went viral, it had like six million hits the other day… Are you just not good enough for the lofty standards of Wake Up! America? I swear the hosts of their fourth hour are drunk as hell every morning.”

  I shrugged. Somehow, talking about it so many times today had worn out some of the sad, or just plain wore me out. It was hard to feel rejected anymore. I just felt tired. “India thinks this is a blessing in disguise. Without this job, I’ll be free to stop doing the beauty tips stuff and just write.”

  “But you love the beauty tip stuff,” Holli whined, her mouth dropping open in shock.

  “I do. And I would definitely miss it. But I like writing, too.” At least I hoped I would. The first book had been more like a form of therapy than a career prospect. But I’d be able to write something less challenging the second time. “India wants me to write about what it was like working for Gabriella at Porteras.”

  Holli made a face. “I think there’s already a book like that.”

  We fell silent a moment.

  Holli was right. Someone had already written a book about Gabriella Winters. It was apparently the fate of any member of the wealthy New York media elite to have a tell-all written about them. When I’d been working on my own book, Neil had told me there were no less than three unauthorized biographies about him, which seemed excessive for a man whose idea of a hobby was doing more work.

  So, what could I write about? My life hadn’t gotten interesting until I’d graduated college. And the only thing people would want to hear about in my Gabriella story would be the part where she’d been ousted. Since I’d stayed at Porteras, all the juicy details were restricted by a company standard non-disclosure agreement, not to mention my fiancé’s ire.

  “So,” Holli said after my thoughtful pause. “Porn?”

  We found a cheesy French one filmed as a medieval epic, and we were having a lot of fun supplying our own lines for the evil wizard and fair maiden on screen when Holli said, “I know what you should write about.”

  “Bangdalf’s withered staff?” I snickered.

  “No, seriously, I have an idea.” She frowned in concentration. “How many women end up getting married at the same time as their best friend and their stepdaughter-to-be?”

  “You think I should write about the wedding?” I thought about it for two seconds, then dismissed it out of hand. “My first book was about cancer. I don’t think a frantic couple of years of wedding preparations are quite up to that level.”

  “Who says your second book has to be a downer?” Holli reached for the rolling tray—a silver platter thing from Tiffany’s that neither Neil nor Elizabeth had wanted custody of after the divorce—and scooped up the roach clip.

  She had a point. Who did say I had to be as serious as cancer all the time? “I could compare my experience marrying someone my mother doesn’t like with Emma’s experience marrying someone her father doesn’t like.”

  “People are going to ask questions about ‘how does this all work’ for ages. They’re gonna make the same old jokes and you’re gonna be expected to laugh at them. Why not make some money off that?”

  “Hey, yeah…”

  “Not that you need the money,” she added.

  That soured the air. I wanted to ask her why she kept referring to me not needing money. Okay, so I didn’t need it—I believe Valerie snidely referred to it as landing on my feet once before—but that didn’t mean I wanted to just give up and do nothing forever. That would be so boring.

  And I wanted to ask her if she and Deja were okay, financially. Because it wasn’t like Holli to be so focused on money. My annoyance came second to my worry. But how did you ask your best friend if she was broke?

  I didn’t want to come off as the lofty savior who could sweep in and fix everything for the poor, impoverished waif. Holli hated it when her parents did that. I just stared at her, like a deer gazing frozen into the headlights of an oncoming car, unable to do anything but let the moment hit me.

  And that was when Emma arrived.

  I heard her footsteps, her disgusted, likely exaggerated cough, and realized that the blue haze surrounding Holli and I had spilled into the hallway. “You have got to be joking!” she shrieked, and I scrambled for the remote, aware too late of the loud grunts and moans issuing from the speakers.

  “It’s me!” I called out to her. “Just me and Holli, watching porn!”

  Emma stepped in warily, as if her brain believed me, but her eyes were still scared. “And smoking all the marijuana in New York City, apparently.”

  “Join us?” I patted the bed. “Room for one more.”

  Her gaze flicked to the screen. “Perhaps another time.” She pointed to the tray. “Does Dad know about that?”

  “Uh,” was all I could say, and I nodded, unsure how to proceed.

  Holli piped up, “Who do you think gave it to us?”

  “No, of course he did. That’s bloody perfect.” Emma pressed a hand to her temple. “Just keep it down, okay? I have to work in the morning.”

  “Quiet as church mice,” I swore, holding up three fingers in a Girl Scout salute. When she’d left, and we’d heard her door close down the hall, Holli lit up, inhaled deeply, and said on an exhale, “Tell me you can’t get material out of that.”

  I unmuted the television and lowered my voice. “I really, really like Emma. But I am going to be so glad once she’s married and living with Michael. Neil and I are never alone anymore.”

  “Hey, you’re the one who hooked up with a single dad,” Holli reminded me.

  “I know I did. I just thought that since she was in her mid-twenties…” I was glad the grunts of the dude on the screen would cover up our conversation. I’d never want to make Emma feel like I was pushing her away from her father. Neil lived for the time he spent with her, and I found myself missing her when she was gone for a few days. But we did have difficulties, living as a couple with another adult in the house.

  “Why isn’t she staying with Michael?” Holli passed the joint to me.

 
I shook my head to decline it. “I’m good, thanks. It gets too hot when it’s little like that. But yeah, Michael has a roommate situation. Tere are like, four of them living in this loft. It would be a little too New Girl for her.”

  “Whereas we were more Don’t Trust The B,” Holli supplied in a pinched voice.

  “Exactly. And it’s not like Michael could live here.” The strangest feeling of dread crept over me. “Oh god. You know, they don’t have a house yet. I was expecting her to move out when they got married, but where are they going to go?”

  Holli lifted her eyebrows and tilted her head, as if to say, “glad I’m not you.”

  They didn’t have a place to live. Were they even looking? What if they didn’t find anything? “You don’t think they’d actually want to come live here with us?”

  She shrugged and stubbed out the roach. “There’s more book material for you.”

  * * * *

  We’d been meeting our therapist, Dr. Ashley Kenner, at seven p.m. on Thursdays since November. It was a preemptive move we’d made when we’d realized that coming back to real life was going to be more difficult than anticipated. Her office was on West 59th street, near Columbus Circle.

  Our first appointment after the holiday was also our first appointment after Neil had returned to work, so I wasn’t surprised when it seemed he would show up late. I was waiting in one of the stylish lime-green leather armchairs when he arrived. The waiting room was done up with stark white walls and spotlighted stills of ripe Bartlett pears. The floor was gray marble tile, with a huge white area rug. A receptionist sat at a very mod white metal desk at one side of the room. It was her, “Good evening, Mr. Elwood,” that made me look up from my magazine.

  Just from the office, Neil looked tired, harried, and in a hurry—as he should have been, since he’d made it with just three minutes to spare. Still, seeing him was the best part of my day, and today was no exception.

  “I’m so sorry, darling, I’ve done it again.” He hated being on time anywhere; he considered five minutes early late.