He presses his teeth together again, gritting them behind his closed lips. This is gnawing away at him. I can tell by the way he holds everything in, the way he tries to be impervious. But the act of keeping it all together ties him in knots instead. Watching him, I am awash in guilt because of the lies I’ve told, the lies I tell.
Like mother, like daughter.
He shakes his head. “Kennedy, the man let you kiss him for three seconds. Do you have any idea how much I want to erase those three seconds from recorded history?” He slams a fist against the wood table. “But I shut my mouth then. For you. Because you begged me to. And now, he has the audacity to sue me? Me? To sue me?”
I want to tell my dad that I think Jay is horrible, that he is a backstabber. Because Jay is. But if I say the truth, I’ll look suspicious. So I weave more fables. “It was one tiny kiss and he pushed me away. I swear. It was nothing,” I say, and I wonder if my mom ever felt as awful as I do now when she lied to my dad. Because I feel disgusting. “And if you talk to him, you’re just going to get mad. And it’s going to inflame him. It’s going to set him off and things will be worse. You have to be cool. You have to be above it all. You have to handle this through a lawyer and not let on anything about”—I suck back in the gulp I feel as I spew a lie—“about one stupid three-second kiss.”
He eyes me suspiciously. “Was it only one kiss?”
“I’ve told you. That’s all it was; the rest was me making up stuff I thought I wanted,” I say, and to have to tell these fibs again tastes like gravel in my mouth, though I’m ever grateful he only saw pieces of the letter. “Just go through your lawyer and I am sure he can get Jay to back off.”
I reach out and pat my dad’s hand, then grasp it. He squeezes back, holding on tight, and I watch him for a moment, so unraveled, so rattled by this. I am responsible, I’ve brought him to this. I feel dirty, I feel tainted, but I also feel relieved. I’m getting my way, I’m getting what I want, and I’m keeping my own secret.
It’s worth it, right? This kind of love doesn’t come around often, and you have to seize it, fight for it, and protect it if need be. To finally return to a good love—well, I’ll gladly pay the price for it.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Noah
“And I can reserve the booth in the back?” I ask, tipping my forehead to the quiet table, tucked out of the way.
“Absolutely, sir,” the woman in the crisp black skirt and white blouse tells me, as she taps on the computer screen at the hostess stand. She studies the screen, then lifts her face to flash a smile. She rattles off the date – Kennedy’s birthday. “Eight p.m. that evening. It’s all yours.”
“Great,” I say, then give her my name for the reservation at Happy Cow, a vegetarian restaurant that Matthew’s wife, Jane, raved about as the best in the city since she, like Kennedy, doesn’t eat meat. I could have made the reservation online or on the phone, but I wanted to see the restaurant first, check out the tables, and make sure I secured the best one for her birthday night.
I have gifts for her too—a new addition to her necklace that I had specially made, and a night to ourselves at a quiet inn in a small town along the coast of Connecticut, far, far away from New York City.
As I leave and enter the details in my phone, I imagine a red circle around the date. The red circle would say “FREE.”
But does her eighteenth birthday really change a thing?
Yes. No. Maybe.
An arbitrary line in the sand, she’ll still be barely starting college. And I’ll still be here—a guy in a suit, owning an apartment, doing all the things I do on the other side of college.
The age difference doesn’t bother me, but I’d be an idiot to think it wouldn’t bother others. My only hope is that it won’t matter to the people I need in my life—my boss, my clients, my business. But then I remind myself that showbiz is the world where anything goes, where labels and judgment are reserved for critics and about content. Not about personal choices. Lifestyle choices. Romantic entanglements.
I click over to my playlist and turn on “There’s No Business like Show Business,” sending a wish to the panel of imaginary judges of my life and choices, that my chosen field will somehow give me some immunity.
My cell phone buzzes as I reach the crosswalk.
I grab it. I don’t recognize the number. For a split second, I flash back to the gardens, to Kennedy’s worries about Jay, to the unfounded fear that somehow Jewel has me by the balls now.
I tell the fear to screw off and answer it anyway.
“Hayes here.”
“Hey, it’s Tremaine. Want to get lunch and talk about The One That Got Away?”
“I do.”
Kennedy
A few days later I ride around the city in a town car with Noah after school. He has thirty minutes free before an early dinner with a client. We talk and make out, but mostly we make out. He drops me off two blocks from my mom’s house, and I cup his cheeks and plant a searing good-bye kiss on his lips.
“See you tomorrow. Somehow,” I whisper.
“Somehow,” he echoes and then I walk away.
I reach my block and stop short when I see another letter. It’s tacked up to the street sign a few feet away from our front steps. Unease runs through me. How many letters have I dropped? How many have fallen from my backpack? I look at the letter on the street sign. It’s the James Joyce we left for Bailey last week. Again. I see a note scrawled in pencil on the bottom.