He hung his long black coat on the gleaming steel coat rack by the door, then came to where I sat. He wore a slate-blue suit of raw silk with a one-button jacket closed over a classic white shirt with an open collar. I could have sworn he’d left the house with a tie.
“Bad day then?” I asked, tugging on his collar when he bent down to kiss me.
“Not a wonderful day. Valerie let five Porteras staffers go after emails to one of Gabriella Winters’s assistants were found on the company server.” He unbuttoned his jacket as he took the chair beside mine.
“What was it this time? Or can’t you tell me?” I was still very cautious where Porteras was concerned. I never wanted to sound like I was pressing for information, but I couldn’t believe that Gabriella would care about Porteras after a year—and since she’d started her monumentally successful new digital magazine.
“As far as I can tell, these were all friendly correspondences. But Rudy issued multiple warnings against fraternization and confidentiality over the past year, and our position on this sort of thing is very clear. To be honest, I’ll be glad when I’m shot of the whole place after Valerie scoops it up this weekend.”
Since Neil had been working out of the New York offices of Elwood & Stern at the time they’d acquired Porteras, he’d stepped in as interim editorial director, a title he’d passed on to Rudy, and which would now be given to Valerie. Well, Valerie wouldn’t be interim. It had been her idea to buy the magazine because she’d wanted to run it herself. After she got entirely moved to New York—and only three blocks from us, sarcastic hooray—Neil would be able to turn his focus back to Auto Watch and the general operations of his company.
“Wait a minute… weekend?” Disappointment curled up behind my ribs, and I sighed, accepting and dispelling it at once.
He grimaced. “I have to fly to London. We’re selling print and distribution rights to Porteras in six more countries. But I’ll be back on Monday. Do you want to come with me?”
“No.” As much as I would miss him, I wasn’t getting on another plane again for a while. I still wasn’t fully recovered from our holiday. “I’m trying to get over my homesickness now that we’re back in New York for good. It would be like running into an ex.”
“My fiancée used to date London,” he said with a tired laugh. “That’s a bit disappointing. Emir was going to be in town. He wanted to see us. But I’m sure he’ll understand.”
Before I had to argue with my body to stop throbbing at the mention of hot three-way sex, the frosted glass door to Ashley’s office opened and she stepped out. “Hey, you guys, come on in.”
Ashley—she preferred for us to use her first name—was young, in her early thirties, with shoulder-length blonde hair and blue eyes that reminded me of a Disney princess’s. When we’d first met with her, Neil had deemed her too young to be a capable counselor. I think he’d been looking for another gruff, middle-aged man like his therapist in London. But I’d asked him to reconsider, and though we’d only had a few sessions,, he’d grown to like the no-nonsense approach that made Ashley such a sought after doctor in Manhattan.
Ashley’s office had the same white walls and gray floor, and the same huge plate glass with a gorgeous view of the park. Black shelves held a few books and her credentials, and a small desk was tucked against one wall. A comfortable stuffed black sofa sat in the middle of the room, across from her own black armchair and small, glass-topped table. She motioned to us to have a seat and picked up her iPad as she sat down and smoothly crossed her flawless legs. She tapped something on the screen and looked up with a pleasant smile. “Well, don’t keep me in suspense. How did the holidays go?”
“Wonderfully,” Neil said, looking to me with a smile he couldn’t contain, no matter how many times we’d told people the news. “We’re getting married.”
It didn’t look like it came as a shock to her. She smiled and nodded. “I’m happy to hear it.”
So, they had talked about this in his one-on-one time. Very sneaky.
“And congratulations,” Ashley went on. “Have you set a date?”
Neil looked to me, hesitating before he spoke. “W-well, not exactly. We’re very distracted right now with my daughter’s wedding, so planning anything is…”
“We probably won’t even want to go to our own wedding, once this one is done.” I was trying to laugh it off, but I saw a tell-tale twitch at the corner of Ashley’s eye.
But she didn’t say anything, yet. “How did meeting the families go? I know there was some concern there.”
“My mom hates him,” I said with a shrug. “It is what it is, I guess. She’s not going to cut me off, so…”
Neil reached for my hand and squeezed it. I knew he perceived himself the cause of a wedge between my mother and me, but I didn’t. Mom had done the wedging, and I’d helped.
“A lot of her dislike was totally avoidable,” I admitted. “Perhaps I did not adequately prepare Mom for meeting Neil—”
“The age difference was an issue. Sophie’s mother was expecting a twenty-five-year-old.” Neil sounded as uncomfortable as he had when it had been happening.
“Okay.” Ashley’s eyes went wide. “We’ll be talking about that today. Maybe Sophie should go first?”
“I think that’s a wonderful idea,” Neil said, standing. “I’ll show myself out.”
Our sessions were ninety minutes long, with thirty spent in individual counseling, and thirty spent together at the end. Dr. Ashley never divulged what one partner talked about to the other partner, which was as much a relief as it was maddening. It was very easy to imagine that Neil went into his sessions and complained ceaselessly about me, even though logically I knew that was absurd. He’d already admitted that he talked more about himself in his sessions than about me, and I found the same to be true on my side.
As the door closed behind him, I sighed and faced Ashley. “Okay. I didn’t do what we talked about.”
“And you were so ready to!” she said with a little laugh to disguise her frustration. “What went wrong?”
“I chickened out. But I went to plan B.”
“Good!” she encouraged me. Plan B had been to confess to Neil and prepare him for my mother’s expectations before he met her.
But I was supposed to have done that before we left New York, so he’d have a chance to decline the visit. “But not until we were already in Michigan.”
“Okay. Let’s just take the good out of all that bad and focus on that. You did tell him. That’s a big improvement from where you were when you first came in.” Ashley had a way of framing things to seem way more positive than they were. I wondered if that was a normal therapy technique, or just something she used with her most deeply fucked up patients.
“Thanks,” I said, not feeling particularly worthy of the praise.
“I’m assuming you learned something from the experience?”
I had. I’d been dreading admitting it. “Obviously, I learned that it’s far easier to tell the truth immediately, rather than hide it. But I also learned…ugh.”
Ashley didn’t say anything, but waited with an interested expression.
“Maybe I’m not as comfortable with our age difference as I thought I was. And I’m not saying I’m uncomfortable with Neil’s age. I’m just uncomfortable with everyone’s reactions. We’re adults, and we love each other, but I feel like we have to keep having the same conversation every time we meet someone new.” I sighed. “I feel like I have to constantly prove that I love him.”
“Because of his age, or because of his money?” she asked gently.
“Both,” I admitted.
“You just got engaged. I assume that means you love him,” Ashley said with a tilt of her head. “Why?”
“Why? Why do I love him?” Was she supposed to ask me something like that? Was I supposed to answer it?
It didn’t seem to matter, because when I opened my mouth, all I could manage was, “Well…um…I…” before my stomach dropped
into my toes and I felt lightheaded with panic. Of course I loved Neil. We’d just been to hell and back together. I was never happier in my life than when I was with him. But why did I love him? Why couldn’t I think of an answer?
“You can’t tell me why you love him,” Ashley began, a slow smile forming on her mouth, “because you’re in love with him. Love isn’t rational, and you are. That’s why you’re having such a difficult time. If you were sitting here and saying that his age was a problem for you because you wished he was younger, I might advise you to reconsider your engagement. But it’s only a problem because other people are making it an issue. Should other people’s opinion of your happiness be detracting from your happiness?”
I was about to argue that my relationship with my mother was very important, and that it did affect my happiness, but it sounded so stupid in my head already that I probably didn’t need to say it out loud. “You’re right. It shouldn’t.”
Seriously, I should have been doing therapy years ago.
After my thirty was up, it was Neil’s turn. I sat in the waiting room, sucking up the free wifi to look at wedding dresses on my phone, and tried to think about what I would say to him when we met at the end. The time passed quickly, as it usually did when my mind was roiling through everything I’d just talked about. When Ashley invited me into the office, I sprang up and hurried in.
Neil looked up almost guiltily when I came back. I’d only just sat down when he reached for my hand and covered it with his own against the sofa cushion. “I am so sorry.”
“Way to jump the gun, Neil,” Ashley said wryly.
“Wait, what are you apologizing for?” I looked uncertainly from Neil to Ashley. “Was I supposed to be thinking of something to apologize for?”
“No, it’s me. It is entirely me.” He squeezed my hand. “I have been letting my feelings about my previous marriage interfere with my feelings toward you. That isn’t fair.”
“Oh.” I frowned. This was one of the parts of couple’s therapy that I didn’t like. Hearing stuff you sort of expected, but had convinced yourself you were being paranoid over, confirmed in front of another person.
“Don’t act surprised. You’ve noticed. That’s what all the talk about setting a date was, wasn’t it?”
I wished he hadn’t noticed. “Look, I don’t want you to do the weird thing you do where you ignore your emotional needs in order to protect what you perceive to be my feelings. Remember when you did that and you had no idea what my feelings were, and we broke up?”
“Neil isn’t going to do that this time,” Ashley said with her characteristic no-bullshit tone. “The two of you are coming into this marriage with your own past baggage and some reasonable fears. You’ve just been through an incredibly turbulent year, and you’re both emotionally raw. But the very last thing you can do in this situation is assume that your feelings and your partner’s feelings are the same, or that you know what’s going on inside their head without asking.”
“It’s kind of good that you mentioned that, because I am dying to know what Neil thinks of something.” I’d been working up the nerve to broach the subject with him, and it was a relief to know how to start the conversation. “How do you feel about Emma living with us?”
Neil sat up straighter, adjusting his shoulders against the back of the couch. “I, um. Well, it feels normal to me, I suppose. Though Valerie and I tried to keep our custody arrangement as equal as possible, I always somehow ended up with Emma more than I was without her. And she doesn’t have anywhere else to live right now.”
“Where does her fiancé live?” Ashley asked, her fingers poised above her iPad to type a note.
“He has roommates, so it’s not an ideal situation for a couple starting out.” Neil said this as though it was an apology to me, but he couldn’t have worded it more perfectly.
“Yeah,” I said with an arched brow. “I know.”
He hung his head in good-natured shame. “Ah.”
I put a hand on his knee and gave it a little squeeze. “It isn’t that I don’t love Emma. I do. But it’s a little weird having to worry, in my own house, that I’m going to do or say something in front of her that makes her uncomfortable. Like the other morning, when we were in the kitchen.”
It had been a blissfully lazy Sunday, and I’d thought the coast was clear because Emma had stayed the night with Michael. Neil and I had just had fantastic morning sex, and we’d gone to the kitchen to put on some coffee. So, of course Emma would come home exactly when I was standing in the kitchen in one of her father’s t-shirts and nothing else, punching buttons on the needlessly complicated coffee maker. The fact that Neil had been standing behind me, his arms around my waist, clad in just his boxers and a smile was the icing on the uncomfortable cake. It wasn’t an abnormal interaction for a couple to have, but Emma had walked into the kitchen and right back out again, and disappeared for most of the day.
“I feel so guilty about touching you or kissing you in front of her, because I feel like it gives her the massive creep outs,” I finished, my frustration obvious in my tone. “I’m making her totally uncomfortable just by being your girlfriend, whether she admits that or not.”
Ashley nodded, her lips pursed. “Weren’t you two looking for a new place to live?”
“We were… I don’t know if we put that on hold…” Neil said, looking uncertainly to me.
“What happens if you do find a place to live?” Ashley went on. “Is the expectation that Emma will move in with you there? Or her and Michael both?”
“That’s not something I would be comfortable with,” I stated firmly, but I know my expression was totally apologetic as I shrugged. “That’s just how I feel, I’m sorry.”
“No, I would never have expected you to agree to that.” The fact that he even had to say that meant he’d thought about it. Yikes. “When we were looking for a new place, I’d assumed Emma would stay in the apartment after we moved. At least until she and Michael found a place of their own. That way, we would have some privacy, and so would they. But after our discussion at the lake…”
“What discussion was this?” Ashley prodded.
“We said no big life changes.” It sounded silly that we were sticking to that, considering he’d proposed to me just a few days later. “I guess that went out the window.”
“Marriage to each other will be a huge life change for both of you. Getting married is very high on the list of major life stressors. So is moving house. Unfortunately, if you want to do the former, and do it successfully, you might have to do the latter.” Ashley set her iPad aside, a signal that it was time to wrap up. “Before our next session, I’d like the two of you to brainstorm alternate living arrangements that everyone will be comfortable with. And Neil, talk to Emma about this privately. She may have concerns she feels she can’t share in front of Sophie.”
After our session, Neil dropped a check on the receptionist’s desk and we exited to the elevators. The doors had no sooner closed than he said, cautiously, “I haven’t been looking, I should make that clear. But when I called the agent to tell him we were no longer looking, he mentioned a listing in Sagaponack, and I said I would talk to you about it.”
“Wow. That far?” I knew we’d talked about not staying in the city permanently, but this came as a shock.
“I’d prefer something in Connecticut, but it does sound like an ideal home for us. We could fly out and look at it on Monday.” He straightened the cuffs of his jacket, eyes fixed on the numbers above the door. He hated elevators. “If we don’t care for it, nothing has to come of it. And you can pretend you’re on that wretched television program you so enjoy.”
Using House Hunters against me. The man knew my every weakness. “I do like looking at the insides of other people’s houses.” I paused. “Don’t you think flying is overkill?”
“We can charter a helicopter, it won’t be any trouble.”
You live in a world where chartering a helicopter isn’t any troub
le. And you’re taking that helicopter out to the house you’re looking at. In the Hamptons.
“Okay.” The realization had numbed me enough to agree. “Let’s go look at a house, then.”
I don’t know if talking through our issues and confronting them in a productive way gets us turned way the fuck on, or if we’re just so relieved that therapy is over for another week, but we were as giddy as two teenagers as we left the building. Some nights, we’d head straight back to the apartment to go at it like animals—very quiet animals, if Emma was home—but this time, we decided to make it a date night.
We went out to dinner at our new favorite restaurant, an experimental vegan place that was partially our favorite due to its proximity to our apartment. The atmosphere was upscale casual. Booths, but no decimals on the menu prices.
“You know, I was thinking,” I said during a lull in the conversation as we waited for our meals to arrive. “I wouldn’t mind if you saw Emir while you were in London.”
Neil’s half-smile flirted with his mouth, and he raised his water glass to disguise it. “Wouldn’t mind if I saw him, or…”
“Or.” I laughed and had to break eye contact. “Oh, please. It’s not like it’s any different than what we did before. And you like him.”
“Not in the romantic sense.” He was suddenly very serious. “I worry that an arrangement like this might lead to some…jealousy.”
I shook my head. “First of all, if I thought something more was going to go on, I wouldn’t have suggested it. And I wouldn’t have gotten engaged to you if I thought you were going to cheat on me.”
That answer seemed to satisfy him. “I know all this, of course; I don’t know why I’m worried.”
Maybe the gurgling in my stomach was hunger, but at the moment it felt like dread. “You were comparing me to Elizabeth again, weren’t you?”
“It’s not an easy mechanism to turn off, I’m afraid.” He sat back in his chair. “That’s the problem, I think. I am afraid. But only because I want this to be a successful marriage, Sophie. I don’t ever want to lose you.”
The Bride (The Boss) Page 14
