I lean my head on his shoulder, much as Cara did to Graham. “Thanks, Dad.”
Forgiving him is easier now, so close to separation. We’ve found each other again, and feeling bitter won’t bring back the years we’ve wasted. The years I hadn’t verbalized my pain to him. The years he hadn’t seen it in my eyes. What’s done is done, and all that matters is where we go from here.
Chapter 46
REID
The premier of
School Pride
is next month, preceded by the inevitable red carpet events, talk show appearances and interviews. I’ve seen enough of the final product to know it’s good. In the date night genre, in the hopeless romantics genre, this movie will be hot.
It’s over with Emma. I
know
this, but my brain hasn’t completely accepted the fact. I keep running through everything I did wrong, looking for a way to repair the total clusterfuck of decisions I made that night. I shouldn’t have let her out of my sight. I shouldn’t have baited Brooke like that. And I sure as shit shouldn’t have taken that girl back to the hotel.
Is it possible that I was in love with Emma? I don’t know. Am I even capable of that emotion? I don’t know that, either.
What I told her last month wasn’t just a line to get her into bed. I’d be lying if I said the companionship was more urgent than the attraction between us, but I enjoyed the afternoons she spent in my room after the surgery, when we hung out and watched movies or I played video games while she studied. I liked the comfort of just having her near. We didn’t get a chance to discover what could have been, because in the end I treated her like every girl I’ve ever come across.
Most girls who want me want the Bad Boy. That persona isn’t just an act, it’s who I am. There was never any possibility of me being anyone other than who I’ve become, and maybe that’s what Emma finally saw.
She said she wants someone who’s already something better. Something better than me, obviously. She doesn’t want to have to read between the lines to see who he is, or how he feels about her. As much as I wanted to be that guy, I don’t have it in me. I am who I am.
*** *** ***
Emma
Graham: I’d like to talk to you. Alone. If you’re willing to talk to me. Can i come to your hotel, or can we meet somewhere?
Me: When?
Graham: Now, if you want. Later tonight. Tomorrow.
Me: Now is good. Dad is out with a friend. I was going to order room service and watch movies.
Graham: Where are you?
Me: Soho grand
Graham: Be there in thirty minutes
“Hey,” Graham says, for the second time today.
“Hi.” As I pull the door open, it occurs to me that I’m getting the wish Cara granted me.
He walks into the room as the door shuts with a snap and we pause feet apart. An old Switchfoot video plays in the background, the refrain flowing through the room like a private soundtrack. “You and your music videos,” he smiles, running his fingers over the information folders from college visits that we’ve left on top of the dresser. “Have you decided on a school?”
“I think so. It’s between those two.”
He nods. “Both have great programs. I guess you’ll be moving to New York?”
“Yes. We’ll go over everything when we get home. Make an informed decision.” He nods again, but I know he didn’t come to talk about my college plans, so I don’t elaborate.
“So… I thought you might want an explanation. I’m not sure where to begin.”
We’re both quiet then. Everything about Graham, everything I thought I knew, all of it has tilted. My vision of him, my feelings for him, all still the same and yet nothing the same. His hands are balled into loose fists at his sides.
“You have a daughter.” I have no right to the accusation in my voice. The last thing I want to do is make him feel interrogated, but he isn’t talking, and the questions are crowding into my skull, knocking around, every one of them wanting an answer
right now
. “I thought we were friends… so why didn’t you tell me?”
He spreads his hands, “I don’t… tell people. Outside of my family, only Brooke knows, and a handful of friends from way back.”
“Were you… are you…
married
?” The concept is so foreign that the word comes out like something distasteful.
“No. I’m not, I wasn’t. Cara’s mother… she’s never been in the picture. Not since Cara was born.”
I’m trying to process this. Failing. It’s like the puzzle box has the wrong illustration on the front, and as the pieces fit together, the image generated is something completely different than what I was expecting. “How did you… end up with her?”
He walks across the small room and faces the window, silent. I give him time to gather his thoughts. Finally, he turns with his hands in his pockets. “My relationship with Cara’s mother was over by the time she knew she was pregnant. She was considering her options, but she didn’t want to keep her. And I just… I
wanted
her. The possibility of claiming her, of raising her, it gave me a purpose. I
had
to do it.”
He takes a deep breath, runs a hand through his hair, staring at the carpet. “I talked to my family. I was sixteen at the time, so there was no going it alone.” When he raises his eyes, they’re ablaze with resolve, and it’s easy to picture the face his family had seen then. “If they hadn’t been supportive, I don’t know what would have happened. But I’d made my decision, and they could see there was no changing it.”
“So they agreed to help you?” He nods. “And then—?”
“And then I had to convince my
ex
-girlfriend to carry her to term, and give her to me.”
I sit down on the bed, in a semi-state of shock. “Wow. I don’t know what to say.”
He sits next to me. “Yeah. That’s the usual response.” His hands grasp each other and he stares at them. “The family emergency, when I disappeared during filming? Cara had an asthma attack, and was hospitalized. I’ve never been that scared.”
He’d disappeared hours, maybe minutes, after he kissed me on my bed. He could have told me then, but he didn’t trust me enough. “Wow, this is just… so awesome.” I’m grasping for words, wincing at my falsely joyful voice, but it’s like if I stop talking I might hyperventilate. “I mean, you’re, you know, a father. Somebody calls you
daddy
. And that’s just so…”
“Awesome?” He’s disappointed, or hurt, but at the same time, unsurprised. He’s used to this reaction. “Anyway, now you know everything.” He stands up. “Listen, I’ve got to, um, do a couple of errands. We can talk later, okay?” I don’t hear the likelihood of a later in his voice.
“Okay.” I follow him to the door, realizing that he just shared this really
intimate
thing with me, and I freaked out. He’s standing in my room, my wish in solid form. “Graham,” I say gently. He turns, and I lay my hands on his chest, feel his heart hammering the same accelerated rhythm as my own. His dark eyes are sad, staring down at me.
My hand shaking, I reach up and push my fingers through the hair at his temple, pulling his head down. I kiss him, softly, carefully, and for a moment, he doesn’t react at all, and I’m sure that I’ve read everything wrong… And then his mouth crushes into mine as his arms go all the way around me, pulling me to my toes.
I thought I’d idealized kissing him, but his lips against mine now make that first kiss a distant echo. His hands skim up my sides and lace through my hair, turning me until my back is pressed against the wall and his body is pressing into mine, his heartbeat pounding under my hand. Pulling him against me, my arms draw him closer still, fingers kneading the hard muscles of his back, up and over his shoulders, down his arms and back again. When we break for air we’re gasping, our chests rising and falling in unison as he leans into me and I arch into him, every physical indicator declaring
I want you, I want you, I want you
.
When he pushes away, I’m confused. When I start to follow, blinking, he holds up a hand to stop me. “Emma, I can’t. This isn’t—I can’t.”
He turns and yanks the door open. Three seconds and he’s gone. Lying back on the bed, I review every detail of what just happened, over and over, but it doesn’t get any clearer. I almost call Emily, but don’t. It’s a rare night that she and Derek both have off, and I don’t want to interrupt them with my problems. This is a riddle I need to figure out by myself. When Dad comes back later, clicking the television off and whispering my name as he pulls the comforter over me, I pretend to be asleep.
My puzzle is missing pieces. Not as many as it was missing earlier today, before we ran into Graham and Cara. But I know about her now; she’s one less secret between us. What made him pull away? There must be someone else. Brooke? They were obviously still close last month. By his earlier admission, she’s one of the few people who know about Cara. She could be the reason he withdrew after he kissed me in Austin, and again tonight.
The light-blocking draperies cloak the room in darkness, but I’ve been half-reclining against the cushioned headboard and wide awake for two hours. My adjusted eyes distinguish the outlines of each piece of furniture, the mirror across the room, the shape of my shadowy reflection in it. I raise my hand and wave, and the ghostly mirror image waves back.
The drapes can’t block the sounds of the city below. Unlike my periodic nights of insomnia in Sacramento, I’m not awake and
alone
here, in the city that never sleeps; I’m one of millions, like I already belong.
Dad snores softly in the other bed. I click the button on the side of my phone, the screen lighting up. 2:18 a.m. We’re flying home in ten hours. I pull up Graham’s number, click
send message
. The cursor blinks, waiting for me to type the message, and I sit there in the glow of the tiny screen. After thirty seconds, the display turns off. What do you say when the feelings don’t fit into words? Finally, I type the message and hit send:
Me: I’m leaving today. I want to see you. I’ll be in the lounge downstairs at 6 am.
There’s no answer, and I feel discouraged and a little bit pathetic as the minutes tick by. As my eyes grow heavy, my grip on the phone loosens and I snuggle down under the covers, my phone under my pillow, the alarm set to 5:30 a.m.
***
Unsurprisingly, there are few people in the lounge this early on a Saturday. I request a booth in the back and wait, somehow sure he’ll show, despite the fact that he never answered my text. Minutes later, he arrives, his hair falling over his forehead, still damp from a shower, a days’ growth on his face and wearing jeans, boots I might see on a guy working the construction site down the street, and a faded t-shirt featuring another band I recognize from Emily raving about them.
He slides in across from me, his hands clenched on the table top. His gaze is direct, unlike yesterday—when his eyes seemed to land anywhere rather than connect with mine.
A waitress steps up when he sits, and he orders coffee. At my nod he says, “Two, please.” He sighs, fingers splayed on the table. “Look. I’m sorry I never told you about Cara. I thought about telling you a hundred times, and the longer I didn’t, the harder it got to bring it up. I meant what I said about not really telling people about her. I’ve led two lives for so long that it’s habit, and until now I’ve escaped combining them.”
The waitress arrives with the coffee and he falls silent until she moves away.
“I’m sorry for freaking out on you like that last night…” he says.
“I freaked out first.” I stir a packet of sugar into my coffee as he pours cream into his.
“You had reason, I think.” He grimaces into his coffee cup. “Cara is the most important thing in my life, a defining part of me. It was unfair of me, not telling you. When I took on the father gig, I didn’t consider how it would affect future relationships. For years now, I’ve kept my family on one side, and… almost everyone else on the other.”
“That sounds hard.”
“Yeah…” He breathes out a sigh, rolling my empty sugar packet into a ball. “It is.”
I breathe in, breathe out, clenching and unclenching my hands under the table. “Graham. I’ll be living here in four months. Maybe we can meet up for a run now and then. Or take Cara to the park, or whatever. I could babysit, if, you know, your family’s busy and you want to go out. I’d love to get to know her. Because… you mean a lot to me. And I’ve missed you.” Staring at the table top, I run my fingers over tiny grooves in the glossy surface. “I miss our friendship.”
“So you want to be friends?” he asks, and I look up at him. His hands are still, his expression serious. “Friends, and that’s all?”
The kiss last night. “There’s no reason we can’t be friends. I was out of line last night. I understand how you feel about Brooke—”
“Wait. What about Brooke?” he interrupts.
I swallow, my throat tight. “Um. Your relationship with her.”
“My relationship with—? Emma, Brooke is my friend. I know everything that happened with her… and
him
. She knows about Cara. We bonded years ago over parts of our lives that no one else we knew could relate to. She’s a close friend. But a friend is all she’s ever
been
, and all she’ll ever
be
.”
“So you aren’t in love?”
He looks at me for a long moment. “I didn’t say that. I said I don’t love Brooke.”
“Okay...” There must be someone here in NYC. Someone else he’s never told me about. This is like being bitten by dozens of mosquitoes. Like a scratchy tag on the inside back of a shirt. Like bamboo shoots pushed under your fingernails.
Not that I know about that last one.
“Are you… over Reid?” he asks then. “That night at the club, you were so upset.”
Reid? I close my eyes and attempt to refocus. “No. I mean,
yes
, I’m over him, but… that night, I was mostly messed up over a terrible fight I’d had with Emily a week or so before.” I open my eyes, stare into his. Talking to him is so easy, even now. “We’ve been best friends since we were five, but we’ve never said things to each other like that. We weren’t speaking, and after everything happened with Brooke and Reid, I needed her. I wanted to call her, and I couldn’t. I was afraid I’d screwed up so bad that I’d lost her forever.”