A Week at the Lake (40 page)

“Before you toss me out, I want you to know something,” he said and she had the feeling that he, too, had been rehearsing his lines.

She nodded but held her features in check. She was, after all, a professional. She was paid large sums of money to do this.

“The choice was never Diana over you. It was what life I was brave enough to live,” he said, taking her by surprise. “I
handled it all so badly. Then and now. But I didn't start things up again in order to take advantage and I never meant to hurt you.”

She closed her eyes for a brief moment under the guise of putting the trimmed flower into the vase.
Too late for that
.

“The thing is I've always admired you, Serena. You're one of the bravest people I've ever known.” He spoke with an obvious sincerity that could not be shrugged off. She was grateful for the role she'd adopted. Because otherwise she might be launching herself into his arms and begging him to reconsider.

She picked up another stem and went about making it shorter.

“You've never let anything stop you,” he said. “And even when you get knocked down you get right back up. You've never let anyone, not even me, get in the way of your dreams. While I . . .” Brooks gave her a rueful smile. “I didn't have the guts to turn my back on what was expected of me. Or to see how I stacked up here in New York. I chose the safe and the familiar. I did it back all those years ago.” He shrugged, but not lightly. “And I'm doing it again now. I only wish I had half your courage.”

She put the flower she'd been sawing on in the water. And watched it practically disappear under the surface. “Well, I appreciate your honesty, Brooks. And your . . . admiration.” She reached for another stem to keep her hands busy and so she'd have something else to look at besides the regret that suffused his face and the way he was looking at her lips. As if he was trying to remember how they tasted.

She felt herself begin to weaken. Felt the first prick of tears.
No.
She raised her chin and made a firm cut into the sunflower. This script might call for flower mutilation, but it did not call for tears. If she deviated she'd be doomed. She would not cry. Not now in front of him. And not later, either.

Buck up
, she told herself. Then from what felt like nowhere, Maya Angelou's words floated into her head and filled her mind:
When someone shows you who they are, believe them
. The scissors slipped from her hands, clattering to the floor. As she bent to retrieve them it hit her: Brooks had shown her quite clearly who he was, not once but twice. Now he had come out and told her. How could she possibly ignore him?

“Are you all right?” he asked as she stood, frozen, trying to process this revelation.

Yes,” she said as she studied him. It was almost as if she were seeing him for the first time. Brooks had never been the man who could share her dreams or think any bigger than what he'd grown up with. How tightly he'd clung to the life she'd been so desperate to escape.

Serena grasped another stem and began to hack it to bits. She'd spent so many years looking at what she'd lost that she hadn't paid enough attention to what she'd gained. Then she'd been so grateful that he'd “come back to her” and “chosen her” that she hadn't asked herself whether she should choose him.

She took a deep breath, felt her lungs fill with air. She imagined the bonds that had held her in thrall to Brooks and stuck in an endless stream of dead-end relationships, breaking apart and falling away.

“Are you sure you're okay?” He reached out and took away her scissors as if unarming a possibly deranged individual. “You're, well, are you sure you want those flowers so short?” He held up the one she'd just trimmed. It no longer had a stem of any kind. It was just one big yellow flower face. “I'm afraid if you put this in the vase like that it'll . . . I don't know; can flowers drown?”

“Oops,” she said. But as she looked at him she felt freer and lighter than any flower, regardless of its height. For the first time, she saw what she'd never allowed herself to see. Brooks
Anderson was not the great love of her life that had been unfairly denied her. He was just a really good-looking man she'd wasted decades pining for, but whom she did not actually love and who could never have shared the life she'd chosen. Like her role tonight, she had played her version of Scarlett O'Hara dreaming of Ashley Wilkes, who had far too little backbone for Scarlett, when there were probably scores of potential, and unmarried, Rhett Butlers who might.

“I kind of hope there's no flower abuse hotline.” Serena felt almost giddy with relief as she shed all of the roles she'd been playing. She no longer had need of them. She did not understand how this had happened, but she was finally ready to escort Brooks Anderson out of her life, her heart, and her head.

“So,” she said almost gaily as she took him by the arm. “I really appreciate you coming by to explain things to me.” She brought them to a halt in the foyer then reached for the doorknob. “I hope you'll give my regards to your parents,” she said as she pulled open the door.

“Thank you. I will.” He blinked in surprise when he found himself out on the front stoop. Like someone who'd been watching a video he knew well but that suddenly fast-forwarded to a scene he'd never seen before and hadn't expected to watch. “Will you be all right?” he asked solicitously.

“Yes, I will,” she said with absolute certainty. “You shouldn't have any trouble catching a cab over on the corner.” She pointed him in the right direction.

She was careful not to smile too broadly at the relief that coursed through her. She still felt battered and bruised. But she was miraculously free of her obsession with Brooks Anderson.

She filled her lungs with another breath of heavy summer air and found it delightful. “You and Diana be sure and have yourselves a nice life, you hear?” she called after Brooks.

She stood on her stoop overlooking her neighborhood in
the city that she loved. She was going to have that glass of wine in the garden. And then maybe the ice cream for dinner. After that she'd get a good night's sleep.

She'd think about Emma and Mackenzie tomorrow. After all, as Margaret Mitchell had once famously pointed out, “Tomorrow is another day.”

T
he day was half gone, the air thick and sticky with humidity as Mackenzie emerged from the subway station at Sixth and Fourteenth and made her way toward Parsons The New School for Design. At the corner of Fifth she lingered in front of the University Center. At Thirteenth she peered into the lobby of the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center. New buildings dotted the historic Greenwich campus and she marveled at how much had changed. She'd attended her first classes weak kneed with fear and anticipation. To this day she did not understand how she'd not only made it into Parsons, but graduated from it. Graduates like Donna Karan, Marc Jacobs, and Tom Ford had left their marks on the fashion world. Mackenzie had spent the vast majority of her “career” designing shoestring costumes for a tiny theater in an even tinier town.

With no destination in mind, she wandered through Washington Square Park and the surrounding NYU campus, which was part and parcel of the historic neighborhoods it had been built within. She'd fallen in love with New York in those years and especially with the Village, which had been an intimate if grungier place back then filled with mom-and-pop stores, hole-in-the-wall restaurants, cafés, and clubs.

When they had the money they'd hit Cafe Wha?, the Village Gate, the Blue Note, the Bitter End. It had been a heady time. But as much as she'd loved living in the city that did not, in fact, ever sleep it had been the unlikely friendship with Emma—then Amelia—and Serena, both of whom were so much more
beautiful and self-assured than Mackenzie had ever dreamed of being, that had made her feel as if she belonged there.
And now that friendship had been trampled. They were both lost to her
.

Her steps slowed in front of a small triangular-shaped garden at the apex of two sharply angled streets. She leaned against a section of wrought iron gate remembering how she had felt as a part of their inner circle, how accepted, how unexpectedly validated. Adam had been the icing on her cake of happiness.

Even the years of struggling to find a way to try to break into the fashion world, while Adam acted and directed plays in tiny theaters so far off Broadway that they might as well have been on the moon, had been invigorating. For a time everything had seemed so bright and possible. Once she had not only welcomed change, she had sought it out, done everything in her power to initiate it. And then she'd gotten pregnant and gone scurrying back to the small town she'd fought so hard to get out of. And she'd dragged Adam with her.

The woman I fell in love with ran away from that kind of life. She even learned to trust in love at first sight. I'm not sure what's happened to that woman. I haven't seen her for a while.

She pushed off the fence and let her feet lead her where they would, Adam's words filling her mind.

The next thing she knew she was standing in front of the basement apartment on Jones Street, staring at the double window that had provided the only daylight in the tiny studio apartment. Her drawing board/dining room table/desk had been shoved up against that window. Her bed had been a double mattress that sat on the hardwood floor. It was on that mattress that she'd first made love with Adam, the first male who had not found her too tall, too big, too awkward. He'd claimed she was “just right” for him. Had always said their bodies fit together perfectly. And yet he'd made a child with Emma—who was small and curvy and as opposite to Mackenzie as a woman could possibly be.

She felt a burst of pain. A yawning chasm of loss. A pulsing anger.

She turned away from the tiny daylight apartment where the life she'd once imagined had loomed so large, where each day had held so much promise. Where she'd believed she had the strength and talent to achieve her dreams, the courage to become whatever and whomever she wanted.

But she had only been fooling herself. She had not been certain or courageous. Not on the inside where it mattered most. Her steps slowed even as her thoughts raced. Adam's certainty had never wavered. His self-confidence, which had drawn her just as surely as his earnest brown eyes and lean good looks, had remained absolute regardless of the situation in which he'd found himself. And he'd been right to hold on, hadn't he? While she'd done nothing but despair over her childlessness and stake out her spot in his shadow.

Adam had said he loved her, couldn't imagine his life without her. Could she believe him? Should she trust him? And how could she ever trust herself when she'd failed so miserably to become the woman she'd meant to be?

She spotted the subway station ahead and picked up her pace. She didn't want to be somebody's helper, not even Adam's. And she didn't want to blog or write a book about the things she wasn't and didn't have. So many things she knew she didn't want. And no idea what she did want or what she was willing to do to get it.

She was almost to the station when the text dinged in. It was from Zoe.
It's mom. We need you. Please come!
An Upper East Side address followed.

Y
our throat sounds practically back to normal,” Wes Harrison said to Serena when they'd completed the first take. “What did you do for it?”

“Thanks.” She cleared her throat noisily realizing that she'd
forgotten how close to laryngitis she'd played it when she'd called in sick. She studied Wes, fighting back the urge to name some completely gag-inducing concoction of, say, equal parts urine and chopped-up cactus spine. “Oh, you know, just the usual.” Which could be warm honey or hot tea with lemon or warm salt water or any number of fixes that people who relied on their voices for a living depended on. Even though in her case it actually involved shrugging off decades of ancient memories and wrongful yearnings, a cure she couldn't quite see Wes embracing. Lauri Strauss pouted over in a corner, an indication that Wes had already moved on.

Serena stretched happily while they waited for the next playback. She had, in fact, drunk wine in the garden and eaten ice cream for dinner then proceeded to have one of the best night's sleep she could remember. She felt light and untethered. Joyful. In fact, the only clouds on her lovely horizon were her former friends Emma and Mackenzie, who had once again ceased to be a part of her life.

“Let's try this one slightly bitchier,” Ethan's voice rang out in the studio. “Even though you're not giving him the fan, you are extremely ticked off.”

Ethan's concern over her health when she'd arrived that afternoon had made her feel slightly guilty. She'd seen his surprise when she'd accepted his hug and cheek kisses with a beatific smile. It was the first time since she'd known him that she hadn't been thinking about some other man in his presence.

Wes eyed her suspiciously. “Are you sure you're all right?”

“Right as rain.” She smiled. She was still smiling when she let Georgia tear into him with a comedic intensity that had everyone in the control room gasping with laughter. Even Lauri's pout had tipped up into a smile. The take was, in fact, golden. Serena took an exaggerated bow and blew faux kisses into her microphone. “Gee, can I try that again?” she asked sweetly. “I think I can go a shade or two nastier.”

Wes blanched but Ethan gave her the go-ahead. When
the session was over Ethan met her out in the hallway, where they watched Wes stalk off. Lauri, who had apparently learned how to cut her losses much earlier than Serena ever had, walked up to the board engineer and batted her eyelashes at him. If the girl behaved herself perhaps she'd teach her how to use the fan.

“You were in great form this afternoon, Serena,” Ethan said. His voice and eyes were admiring.

“Thanks, but I bet you say that to all your cartoon characters.”

He laughed. “Okay,” he said studying her. “What is it that's changed? You seem different somehow.”

“Different?” she asked. “How?”

“I don't know exactly,” Ethan said. “But I like it.”

“Thanks.” As they walked to the lobby she thought about the diversions he'd created when they'd needed to escape Mount Sinai and Le Cirque, the box of goodies he'd sent, his concern for others. He'd been great with Zoe, too. With a small sigh she shoved Zoe out of her mind along with her mother and Mackenzie. “I don't know if I've mentioned it lately, but I'm really glad to have you as a friend.”

He stopped, turned. “I'm not really interested in being your friend anymore,” he said.

Serena looked up wondering if he was teasing. But no, his expression was quite serious—especially for Ethan. “Is it something I said or did?” Maybe he knew she hadn't really been sick. Or more likely, he'd finally noticed that she'd never really been a friend in return. She'd just enjoyed the attention, somehow coming to expect it as her due.

“No, not really,” he replied.

Serena's good mood began to dissipate like an overfilled balloon that had sprung a small leak. Ethan was such a great guy, a real class act. Apparently his patience was not limitless. “I understand,” she said finally. “It's been an awfully one-sided friendship, hasn't it? You've been so giving and I . . .” That's
what she got for always being so distracted by men who weren't even half as interesting. She would have done better being friends with someone like Ethan than engaging in far too brief relationships with men who didn't give a flying fig about her. “I understand and I don't blame you one bit for . . .”

“Actually, I don't think you understand at all.” The dimple in his cheek creased. His eyes behind the glasses were extremely twinkly. “What I'm trying to say, and none too suavely I might add, is that I don't want to be your friend because I want to be your . . . date. Main squeeze. To put this in casting terms, ‘I'm tired of playing the funny, but geeky, guy friend. I want to audition for the lead male in your . . . life.'” He was smiling but there was no mistaking his sincerity.

“Oh.” For the second time in less than twenty-four hours relief flooded through her as his words, and the way he was looking at her, sank in. She might not deserve Ethan Miller or his interest, but in that moment she recognized how lucky she was that he had not written her off, as he undoubtedly should have. A world without Ethan in it would have been considerably colder. “Hmmm,” she said, as her lips twisted into a smile. “What kind of audition did you have in mind?”

“I'm not sure.” He linked his arm through hers. “I didn't really expect to get this far before you shut me down and smashed all my hopes.” He speared her with a look. “I'm not going to have to marry someone else to get my shot, am I?”

“Ouch! I totally deserved that. But, no.” Her smile grew. She could actually feel it stretching across her face. “I think I've finally moved on from that.”

“Thank God,” he said as they strolled through the reception area. “Can I get back to you on the audition thing?”

“Sure.” Her phone dinged. She glanced down at the screen then did an unintentional double take. “If you call me a cab you can skip right over the audition.”

“All right, you're a cab,” he said because it was expected of him, but he'd already moved to the reception desk. “Ask
Paul to bring the car around, will you?” He took Serena's arm and walked her outside to the curb. “What's wrong?”

“The text was from Zoe. Something's happened to Emma. They're at an address on the Upper East Side.” Her heart dropped. “Oh, God. I hope that address isn't Mount Sinai.” She should have learned her lesson the first time. “She can't die now when I'm so mad at her.”

“Do you want me to come with you?” Ethan asked.

She shook her head, began to refuse. “No, but . . .” Everything about him radiated concern for her and her well-being. She was finished pushing the right people away for all the wrong reasons. “Actually, if you don't mind riding along, I could use a little moral support.”

“Done.” He opened the limo door for her, handed her in, then slid in beside her. He took her hand as she gave the driver the address. For the first time she leaned against a strong male shoulder and knew that she could rely on it.