Happily Ever After: A Novel (9 page)

Chapter 15

A
idan and I sit in my office. He breathes erratically, a prelude to hyperventilation. The heat from the day pushes in on us despite the drawn curtains. We have finished reading the first three, and only, chapters of
Stolen Secrets
.

“I don’t understand,” Aidan says flatly.

“Me neither,” I say.

“How could you have let that crazy lady follow us?” Aidan asks. He has plot issues, which I can understand, but somehow I feel he’s missing the larger point here.

“I didn’t write that part,” I say.

“But you said this was your book, so you either wrote it or you didn’t write it,” Aidan fumes. “You can’t have it both ways. This is turning out to be a very bad day.”

“Listen,” I say. “I wrote the beginning of that third chapter, but I didn’t write the end.”

“So who did?”

“I think Clarissa did.” I can’t believe I said that out loud.

“But who the hell is Clarissa?” Aidan yells. His fury creates more heat than this tiny room can possibly hold. I’m in a full sweat. “And why is she fucking with me?”

I have no idea. There is no Clarissa in his backstory.

But before I can lay that unsatisfying answer on him, Greta appears in the doorway. She wears a neutral expression and says nothing, just focuses on furious Aidan. If she’s scared for me and ready to call for help, she shows no sign of it.

“Greta?”

She clears her throat.

“You have the Holt fund-raiser in ninety minutes,” she says after a long silence. “Your dress is in the closet, and I took the liberty of dusting off the appropriate shoes.”

There’s something about the mention of the fund-raiser, an ordinary event in what I used to consider an ordinary world, that leaves me feeling stunned. Greta interprets this to mean I’m lurching around for an excuse not to attend in favor of staying home and playing footsie with the man I kidnapped from the hospital. And there is no way she will stand by for that sort of shirking of one’s duties.

“You’re part of the organizing committee,” she reminds me. “You have three minutes at the microphone at exactly nine o’clock to encourage people to donate large sums of money to the school. During dessert and coffee.”

Goddamn it.

“I really thought tuition was going to be it,” I say, almost to myself.

“But it’s not,” Greta answers. “It’s never as you think.” For a split second, I wonder if we are talking about the same thing. Greta plants her hands on her big hips and fills the doorway. She won’t shove off until she sees some action on my part.

“Right,” I say. “I’ll go get dressed.”

Greta gives me a curt nod and leaves. Aidan rests his forehead on my desk. His body shakes all over, and I can’t tell if it is because his anger has turned to fear.

“Keep it together,” I say. “We’ll make a plan. We’ll figure out what to do.”

“We’re all going to die,” he says matter-of-factly.

This is not something I would ever have him say. It shows weakness, vulnerability, and possibly, good common sense, none of which is an acceptable emotion in an erotic male lead.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Aidan, snap out of it!” I say. It takes me just a moment to realize I have called him Aidan as opposed to Harry. I have gone down the rabbit hole. I push on.

“What would Lily think to see you like this? Be brave.”

He reacts as if I’ve just slapped him across the face. His eyes go cold and dark with some inner turmoil. He clenches his fists, releases them, just as he was doing in Target earlier. He seems capable of violence, but so do most men if backed into a corner.

“We’ll find Lily,” I say again, slowly, calmly. “We’ll deal with this.” He begins to relax.

“You’re right,” he says. “We will. I’m overreacting.”

Well, not really, but why mince words?

Aidan follows me to my bedroom and sits on the bed as I paw through my drawers looking for a full-length Spanx suit that will compress me enough so I can fit into my dress but not so much that I pass out from lack of oxygen. It’s a fine line, and I’m already sweating.

As Aidan makes himself perfectly comfortable on my bed, he spins scenarios about who Clarissa might be, one more preposterous than the next, until he gets a glimpse of the Spanx. I always say there’s nothing like your first encounter with Spanx to get your mind off your troubles.

“Is that something you wear?” he asks in disbelief.

“It’s a compression garment,” I say, as if that explains all. I guess I’d be more mortified if we hadn’t already broken ground with the skort exchange earlier. “What’re you doing in here anyway?”

“Thinking out loud. Waiting for you to tell me the plan.” He takes the Spanx from me. He pulls it end to end. “If I was banished last night, does that mean we only have twenty-four hours to find Lily and get out of here? Or did the clock start when you found me this morning in that store? In either case, it’s not a lot of time.”

This is perhaps one of the stranger conversations I’ve had in my bedroom. Aidan stretches the Spanx very thin and tries to look through it. It covers his face, like the updated version of the hockey-mask-wearing psycho killer.

“Stop that right now,” I say. “And I’m aware of the time. Really. But I have to show up at the fund-raiser tonight.” Sadie Fuller, mom, does not blow off obligatory school functions, as appealing as the idea often is.

He throws the Spanx aside, puts his hands behind his head, and settles down on my pillows to wait for me to tell him what is going to happen next. The muscles in his arms bulge, and I swear he’s flexing them for my benefit.

He looks good lying on my bed. He looks male and young and alive. I gather my Spanx and my not-so-little black dress and head into the bathroom, thinking I might still have time to drown myself in the toilet before things get much worse.

“Can I come with you?” Aidan shouts through the closed door.

What? Are you mad? Out in public? I’d be torn to shreds on the school quad come Monday morning. Inside the bathroom, I struggle into the Spanx, panting from the exertion. I pull and push and rearrange my flesh under the skintight garment, striving for a smooth surface. I push my gigantic breasts up so they spill fetchingly, I hope, over the top of the bodice. It’s so hot. The Spanx makes it worse. This must be what it feels like to be a St. Bernard living in Boca Raton.

“It might be a good place to gather clues about where to find Lily,” Aidan adds.

“That’s ridiculous,” I say flatly. I hear him in my bedroom rummaging through the junk on my night table. I pull on my dress, struggling with the zipper as single women do. “Plus, I don’t do mysteries.”

“I think you do now,” he says. And he does have a point. Recent events register pretty high on the mysterious scale. They also register pretty high on the “are you out of your mind?” scale, but there seems little point in traveling that road.

I open the bathroom door.

“Well?” Aidan asks. “Am I in?”

I think about him working the crowd. Belinda, the moms from school, a handful of bored fathers, Roger and Fred, or the man who has already replaced Fred. My gay ex-husband always brings a date to these events. I never do. We laugh about it. Or Roger does. I feel bad about myself, but I can’t admit that to Roger because it would hurt his feelings. So what if I show up with the gorgeous, young, virile babe lying on my bed right now? What happens if
that
happens?

I put my mascara down. I can’t actually be considering this. But he does have a really nice suit. Sure, there’s a tear in the leg, but we can fix that easily enough. I stare at my reflection in the mirror. There are plenty of lines now where there used to be smooth skin and spots that no amount of expensive fading serums can banish. My lips are less full than they once were, and I feel dishonest blaming the bags under my eyes on poor sleep. They are part of my face now, pulling everything else down with them. But age happens only if you are lucky, so I try to go easy on my face and body. They are doing the best they can with the materials at hand.

My mind, however, is another topic completely. It has always been tight as a wire and flexible as a Cirque du Soleil performer. It is my crown jewel even if I generally keep that to myself. But now there is a fictional character sitting on my bed, expressing a desire to attend a Holt Hall fund-raiser as my date. Nobody wants to go to a fund-raiser unless they have to, so right there, things are not as they should be.

Let’s look at the specifics. First, the man on my bed does not exist solely in my head because a dozen other people have seen him. He was examined by a doctor, and last time I checked, doctors don’t examine mental hallucinations. Second, the possibility of it being an elaborate hoax seems remote. There are too many details, like the scar, that no one but me knows. Third, he’s total eye candy. I should bring him to the fund-raiser. I mean, if I’m having a nervous breakdown, I might as well enjoy the ride, right?

“Sadie,” I tell myself. “You’re an idiot.”

“What?” Aidan calls from the bedroom.

“Nothing,” I say.

“So? Can I come?”

Downstairs I announce that Cousin Harry likes to go by his middle name, Aidan, and that’s what we should call him. But Allison doesn’t care if we call him late for dinner; she’s just pissed I’m not leaving him here for her to play with.

“I wanted him to watch
Glee
with me,“ she says. “I recorded it!”

“Greta will be here,” I say.

“She hates
Glee,
” Allison says. “She thinks it’s silly and unrealistic. That’s what she said.”

“Then pick something else to watch,” I say. “
Dancing with the Star
s
? Greta likes that one.”

There’s intense pouting from my daughter. She scowls at me. But before she can move on to something louder and more dramatic, Aidan appears. We both stare, jaws dropped.

“Will this work?” he asks with a wink. His hair is tousled just so, his face clean shaven and smooth. The hole in his pant leg has been expertly mended, and the suit and shirt both pressed into tip-top shape. I see Greta’s handiwork behind the mending and the pressing. The idea of inhabiting the same house as a wrinkly or otherwise compromised garment, even briefly, is offensive to her. Aidan’s fingers play with the knot in his tie, nestled at his throat.

“You look nice,” Allison stammers.

Even his shoes are buffed to a shine.

“Yeah,” I say.

From behind his back, Aidan produces a single blooming rose, plucked from the backyard garden.

“For you,” he says with a slight bow. “You look very beautiful.”

Allison blushes on my behalf. I take the rose and hand it to her. She scampers away, her nose buried in the silky petals.

“Thank you,” I say. But I don’t believe the line about being beautiful, because how beautiful can I look when I’m slowly asphyxiating in my dress? And I have real concerns about what will happen when I try to sit down. Exactly how much pressure can be brought to bear on your average zipper anyway?

“Bye, Allison,” I shout. “Good-bye, Greta.”

No one answers me, so I head out the door on the arm of my fabulously gorgeous, twenty-nine-year-old stud.

Chapter 16

A
idan is quiet as we drive toward the Lake House Restaurant, which is neither by a lake nor in a house. It’s in a strip mall, with all the charm that implies. As Aidan looks out the window into the fading light of the day, I wonder what he could possibly be thinking. I touch him on the leg. He startles.

“Hey,” I say. “How are you?”

He sighs. It’s long and drawn out so I’m sure not to miss it.

“I miss Lily,” he says.

How can you miss someone you barely know? I mean, they only had a couple of chapters together. And I don’t care how good the author is, a couple of chapters does not make a relationship.

“But you two weren’t exactly an item,” I point out.

He turns toward me, pulling aside the shoulder harness of the seat belt so he can get a better angle.

“No,” he says. “But I felt like I knew her. She struck me like a hammer when I first saw her at that marketing reception. I hadn’t intended to go, but fate intervened. And then I made sure she was given the Hathaway account so I could see her again.”

“Wow,” I say. “That’s interesting.” But really, you don’t have to tell me this. This part I already know.

“I just knew it was something special,” he continues, warming to his topic. “Lily and I, we connect. My best friend, Erin, always says that love will find a way in. It may be tricky and it may surprise you, but it will find a way. And it turns out she is exactly right.”

“You have a best friend named Erin?” I ask.

“Yes. So?”

I grip the steering wheel a little harder. There’s no best friend named Erin. But then again, there was no witch named Clarissa either.

“Right,” I say. “Your best friend, Erin. She has a way with words.”

“You’ve never had this happen,” Aidan says bluntly. He pulls at a long strand of hair and twirls it around his finger, just as he did in Target.

“If you keep doing that, you’re going to end up with a bald spot,” I say. He looks aghast but releases the hair. He regroups.

“So?” he asks.

“Are you talking about love at first sight? Soul mates? No thank you. Those are just dangerous ideas that build expectations. Unreasonable expectations.”

“No, Sadie,” he says. “They’re magical words.” He sounds moony, dopey. It doesn’t at all fit what he is supposed to be. “I felt so awake all of a sudden when I met Lily. But it was like I didn’t know I was sleeping. Magical.”

“You said that already,” I say.

“I don’t think you can understand until it happens to you,” he says dismissively.

“I guess.”

I can’t believe I’m wearing a fancy dress, driving a minivan, and discussing true love with a man I made up. I couldn’t get anyone to take those odds, even in Vegas.

“So Lily,” I say.

“Lily. My God,” Aidan says, smashing the dashboard with a closed fist and making me jump in the driver’s seat. “She must be terrified. I should be out there looking for her right now!”

The way Aidan moves seamlessly from calm and serene to dramatically emotive is remarkable. I’ve written more finely nuanced characters in my time.

“The New York metropolitan area has almost twenty million people,” I say. “You ever hear the one about the needle in a haystack? But in the dark this time. No. We need to think about where exactly to look for her.”

“She’s a delicate flower,” Aidan says. Did he even hear me? “So fragile, so gentle, so trusting and giving.”

“Stop that right now,” I command.

He shuts his mouth.

“So?”

“So what?”

“Any ideas?”

“Not one,” he says.

Not helpful.

“Well, it wouldn’t make sense for Clarissa to drop you both in the same place,” I say. “She wants to make the task of finding Lily almost impossible, right? She wants to enjoy the show while you stumble around in the dark and ultimately fail.” I feel like I’m running lines for a low-budget paranormal cable TV show. It causes me some pain.

“The way you put it, Sadie, it sounds like I’m on a quest.”

Books with quests do really well. Especially young adult. Maybe if I wrote more quests I’d be sitting here with a half-god, half-mortal ten-year-old armed with clairvoyance and the ability to explain to me just what the hell is going on. That would be easier in some ways.

“Clarissa dropped you in a totally foreign place,” I say. “A place where you would have difficulty orienting yourself. Just as she said she would in the manuscript.”

“That horrible store with the horrible lighting.” Aidan shudders at the memory of Target.

“And she said she was sending Lily to a dark New York City,” I say. “A place she’d be alone. Does that mean anything to you?”

“Not really. You can see New York City from the moon.”

He’s right of course. New York is as bright as a Christmas tree star. Even the dark bars and empty alleys are bathed in ambient light. But now we have step one of our plan.

“We need to think of dark places in New York where Clarissa could have sent Lily, where she’d be alone. We need a list.”

Aidan nods his head. “Yes,” he says. “A list. Great.”

“By the time we leave the dinner tonight, I want you to have five things on your list. Five places we can look for Lily. Got it?”

“You’re bossy,” Aidan says. It’s more an observation than a criticism. I remind myself erotic heroes rarely encounter women like me.

“You don’t know the half of it,” I say.

We pull into the restaurant parking lot. My fellow fund-raisers are visible through the large plate-glass windows. They hold glasses of wine and wear unnatural, tight smiles. I glance at Aidan. This is a bad idea. A man like Aidan requires an explanation, and the truth is simply not an option.

“Oh, and if anyone asks,” I say, gingerly climbing out of the minivan, trying not to burst my dress, “you’re my second cousin once removed.”

“Huh?” He manages his exit gracefully, but then again, he’s not asphyxiating.

“The people here are going to want to know who you are and why you’re with me. Plus I told the quad moms that you were visiting, so just go with it, okay?”

“What’s a quad mom?” he asks.

“Nothing to be afraid of,” I say. “They usually don’t bite.”

I’ve never been one to make an entrance. When I come into a room, people do not pause midconversation to collectively acknowledge my fabulousness. They go on talking or laughing or drinking or eating finger food or whatever, and that’s fine. I’m happy sliding in at the edges, circling cautiously until I find the place in the crowd where I might best fit. At most school functions, I behave like bad sex: I’m in and I’m out and I’m done.

But lurking on the sidelines and pretending I’m invisible won’t work tonight, as my “date” is the human equivalent of a disco ball. Aidan extends me his elbow, I take it, and we walk into the crowded restaurant, already abuzz with cocktails and gossip. As we cross the threshold, a complete and total silence engulfs the room. I can hear the background music clearly, some pop country stuff that will get stuck in my head and stay there forever.

The silence lasts for three seconds, which is an eternity if you think about it. All eyes are on Aidan. The women lick their lips and the men instinctively flex their biceps. The whole scene is completely absurd. The president of the PTA, a taut, fit woman named Felicity, glides up to me on strappy silver heels.

“Sadie,” she purrs. “So
nice
to see you. Who’s your
frien
d
?” She flashes her remarkably white teeth in my direction, but her eyes remain on Aidan. I know what she’s thinking. This man is above my pay grade, a fancy accessory I cannot possibly afford.

“Aidan Hathaway,” I say. “This is Felicity Harrington.” Felicity cocks her head coyly to one side and extends a manicured hand in his direction.

“My pleasure,” she says. And she really means it.

Aidan takes Felicity’s hand in both of his and stares deep into her eyes. Her shoulders go limp, her posture collapses, and she lets go with a guttural sigh, which is probably more noise than she made the last time she and her husband, Chip the investment banker, had sex. And that could have been five years ago. You never can tell around here. I tap her shoulder to bring her back to reality.

“Oh my,” she says, still not looking at me.

“Yeah,” I say, taking Aidan by the arm and steering him toward the bar.

“Nice to meet you!” Felicity calls out after us.

“Don’t do that again,” I whisper to Aidan.

“Do what?”

“Put the girls in a trance or whatever it is you do,” I say.

“I was just being friendly,” he says.

“Well, be less friendly then. I don’t want them following us home like cats in heat.”

“You have a lot of rules.”

“Rules are important,” I say.

But that’s only part of the problem. The other part is that in the flesh, Aidan has many more dimensions than he does on the page. For example, I describe certain attributes and you, the reader, fill in the rest. Maybe in your head Aidan Hathaway looks like a young Pierce Brosnan or that guy in college who would never give you the time of day. Whatever it is, the image belongs to you and you alone. Now, with the man standing before me, I see how his nose is slightly off center or how his lopsided smile makes him less intimidating. I never mentioned those things. I never thought them. Aidan is expanding to fill his own space. To be honest, it’s throwing me off balance, which considering where I started, is dangerous territory indeed.

The bartender, an attractive gay man from a local restaurant, flirts openly with Aidan, and Aidan flirts back. My drink is so strong I almost spit it out. When was the last time I got a heavy pour at a fund-raising event? I’ll tell you. Never. Good looking gets a stiff drink; middle aged gets a pitying smile.

I’m enjoying the wallop of the drink when Roger appears at my side. He’s dressed to kill, in a dark suit and a bright blue tie. He tries to pinch my ass, but that’s a no-go on account of the Spanx.

“Good lord, Sadie, can you breathe?” he asks.

“Only a little,” I admit.

“Honey, I don’t understand why you do it,” he says, shaking his head.

“Because otherwise I would have to come to these things in my pajamas,” I say. “And that would be embarrassing. Is that Fred?”

Roger rolls his eyes. The resemblance to his eleven-year-old daughter is striking.

“Yes,” he whispers, “but before you go off, I did not want to come to this thing alone, and if I dumped Fred last night after I talked to you, even I would not have had time to round up another suitable date.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Roger. You might have pulled it off.”

He laughs because he kind of knows I’m right, but the sound evaporates when Aidan turns his attention from the bartender back to us.

“Aidan Hathaway,” I announce. Aidan flashes one of his knee-bending smiles. “I’d like you to meet Allison’s father, Roger Evanston.”

“I thought you said his name was Harry,” Roger whispers.

“I was wrong,” I say. Really wrong.

Suddenly, Fred appears.

“Oh my,” he gasps. “I’m Fred.
Who
are you?”

Everyone shakes hands. There is grinning and slobbering and fawning, and Fred whisks Aidan away in search of the cheese display. Roger stares after them.

“Is that really the hospital guy?” he asks, unable to hide his astonishment.

Affirmative.

“Well, no wonder you brought him home.”

“Yeah,” I say. I take a big swig of my toxic gin and tonic. It’s wonderful.

“So are you, you know, taking advantage of him?” Roger asks. I’m very liberal. In fact, in a town like Billsford, I’m so far to the left I’ve almost disappeared over the edge. But I’m still not comfortable discussing my sex life with my gay ex-husband. He knows nothing about Jason, and that’s the way I plan to keep it. I couldn’t stomach the scrutiny.

“No,” I sniff. “I’m old enough to be his mother. It’s gross.” Plus Aidan is packed full of sharp, hard muscles. I might hurt myself on one of his angles.

“I guess you’re right,” Roger says finally. “Ashton did end up dumping Demi in the end.”

I agree, as if the foibles of the rich and deranged have any bearing on my life. We watch Aidan sharing cheese with Fred. Although he promised he would stop, Aidan has clearly put Fred in a trance.

“So?” Roger asks.

“What?”

“How’s Allison?”

“Great. You’re still taking her tomorrow night?”

“Of course,” he says. “I promised her a shopping expedition.”

The translation of that statement is: Please send her with your credit card. Fred and Aidan reappear. Fred whispers in Roger’s ear, and they excuse themselves. I have no doubt they are headed for a stall in the men’s room or Fred’s car in the parking lot.

“Fred asked me if I ever thought I might be gay,” Aidan says, a sly smile on his face. “I think I disappointed him when I told him no.”

“Fred’s a bit of an optimist,” I said.

“So how did you end up married to a man who doesn’t like women?”

Oh, if I had a dollar for every time someone asked me that question, I’d be kicking back poolside in Aruba right now.

“Roger likes women,” I sniff. “Just not in that way.”