Later, when I turn my phone back on I find a cherry with a heart-shaped stem. Instantly, a lump rises in my throat and tears rain down my cheeks.
*
The next day plays out in slow motion, in a painful, molasses slog through classes, until finally I have an hour between the end of school and the time I have to arrive at our final lacrosse game of the season. I unlock my bike and race to Lincoln Center, since it’s close to both of us. He’s standing in a quiet corner by Juilliard. Waiting for me.
There are no words. Only a crashing together. His lips meet mine, and we kiss in a mad frenzy, desperate, oh so desperate, to erase the last twenty-four hours, to unwind back to our safe cocoon. We are a tangle of lips and teeth. A chorus of sighs and gasps. I wrap my arms around him tighter, and he grasps my back.
We can’t get close enough.
When at last we separate, he breathes out hard, rest his chin atop my head, and whispers, “Thank God.”
His worry is only for me, none of it for himself. “Do you still have a job?” I ask.
He laughs lightly and we sit down on a stone bench. “Yes. I still have a job.”
“You’re still working with my mom?” There’s no way. My mother would never abide by the kind of deception he’s practiced. She is the only one who is allowed to deceive.
“No. She fired me last night. But that doesn’t mean I lost my job. K, I have other clients. I have other clients who do just fine as well. I’m not going to pretend it isn’t a blow, but the reality is when you’re an agent you have to operate under the assumption that clients come and go. You can’t put all your eggs in that basket.”
“Oh.” I’m surprised, and I feel strangely defeated. I mean, this is a good thing for him. But it also makes me wonder why we had to be so secretive in the first place if losing her as a client wasn’t that big a deal. Then again, that’s not the real reason we were a secret.
Eight years was the real reason.
He looks over at the doors to the Vivian Beaumont Theater; there’s a big poster promoting a revival of La Cage Aux Folles that’s opening soon there. In my mind, I can hear our favorite song from the show, “The Best of Times.” But it feels wrong to play the music in my head right now, the words about living and loving as hard as you know how. We did love hard. It worked, but it also didn’t.
“I’m sorry you lost an important client,” I say softly, doing my best to separate her from me. Their relationship was important to him. Her departure has to hurt.
He grasps my hand. “I’m not gonna lie though, K. I like your mom. She’s been a good friend. A great friend. I’m going to miss her like hell. She’s been good to me, and I don’t just mean financially.”
I shift away from him, my antennae up. “You don’t mean…?”
He shakes his head quickly. “No, I don’t mean like that. We were never involved, obviously. I wouldn’t do that. But she took a chance on me. She helped me build my career. Everything I am today is because your mom placed a bet on me when I was no one. I was just in college, only an intern at an agency when we started working together. And what did I do years later? I lied to her. She trusted me and I deceived her,” he says, shaking his head, disgusted with himself. But he sounds heartbroken too. I should feel sympathy, but I can’t muster any good feelings for my mom right now, not after seeing how cold she could be, how easily she could face off against my father like a gladiator in an arena. I keep my mouth shut and listen.
Then his voice veers to sadness. “She was there for me. She helped me get through my mom’s death. She went to her memorial service, and she made sure I was going to be okay. She was like a mom, in a weird way, to me too. That’s why I was there all the time, at your house. Before I even fell for you. I was there, because I guess I needed her to look out for me.”
And that’s when my world stops moving.
This is the moment.
The point in time around which everything rotates. His words are an epiphany. They are the crystal clear realization of one cold hard fact—my mother is the epicenter of us. We don’t exist because of us. We exist because of a reaction, a chemical, chain reaction to her. We could never have come to be without Jewel Stanza. But more so, if she wasn’t who she is, we wouldn’t have needed each other. Had she been a normal woman, a regular mom, any other TV writer client, Noah and I would not have become misfit puzzle pieces furiously seeking the missing one that fit.
She’s a mom to me, and she’s a surrogate mom to him. She is the force of our lives, the hurricane that threw us together, and we’ve been caught in the eye, fooled by the calm of our secret hideout.
We are too similar, too connected to her. Our love affair started in her shadow; it would always be shrouded in the half-light of my mother. I look at Noah, at those dark-blue eyes I’ve loved getting lost in, at his brown hair that’s so soft under my fingers. I am peering in a mirror, seeing myself reflected back. But he’s more than just my reflection, because I can finally see what he’s always been—an escape hatch. He’s been the tunnel I’ve been digging for years, he’s been the shield to protect me from her.
For the first time, I am faced with the truth of this great love. That I don’t even know the why of it.
I don’t know if I love him for him or because he’s the way I could get away with something finally, after all those years of her getting away with everything.