Finding peace, p.24
Finding Peace, page 24
“I have a jet,” I say. “Or my dad does. I’ll be fine, and I’ll sleep better in my own bed.”
Even though I can’t see Harrison, I know exactly which vein in his forehead is throbbing at this very moment. “Leave early. Seven.”
“Fine,” I say. “I will.”
“Don’t stay up late tonight,” he says. “Do you hear me, son?”
If I had a nickel for every time a guy who isn’t my dad calls me son. . . “I do.”
I have to call my dad next, and he’s not pleased either. “I’m almost to the airport,” he says. “The pilot is there, ready to go.”
“Isn’t this why we have a jet in the first place?” I ask. “So that we can go whenever it works for us?”
“It’s my jet,” he says. “You should go at a time that works for me.”
“Only for six more weeks,” I say. “And I’m the one fighting.” Geez, you’d think I was four years old and asking to stay up late to catch Santa Claus. “Look, I told you that I can’t get out of this commitment. I’ll be there, and everything will be fine. I told Harrison we’d leave at seven.”
“Make sure you’re asleep by ten p.m. at the latest,” he says.
“Only if you promise to come over and tuck me in,” I say.
He hangs up.
And I swing right and pull up across the street from Luke and Mary’s house. I haven’t been this nervous since my last fight. Actually, that wasn’t anywhere near this bad. I’m sweating under my arms like a teenager about to ask the head cheerleader to prom. If I hadn’t stopped to get a ring, I’d have been here sooner, but I felt like I needed to show her that this wasn’t just some random thing. I’ve thought this through. I want to be with her. I’ll do anything—all the work, all the hard stuff. Whatever it takes.
But what if she thinks offering her a ring is just another way to control her? I pull out the box and look at the diamond. I looked at a hundred different rocks today, and most of them looked the same as all the others. This one stood out—this one reminded me of Anica.
It sparkles like the sun.
And it’s got five sides.
There were a million squares, emerald cuts, and round diamonds. Quite a few ovals, and plenty of weird marquise cut ones.
This was the only one that had five sides—and I knew I had to have it. She can pick out a setting she likes for herself later. I had it set in a simple platinum band, modified to have five prongs. But somehow, showing up after all this time, it feels wrong to walk in with a ring. Grand gestures aren’t the right move—it’s the small and consistent things that will show her that I’m changing.
I slide the ring back in the box and stuff it into the dash.
I’m going to marry her—or at least, I hope someday I am. But maybe I’ll wait until I’m pretty sure what her answer will be before I ask.
I square my shoulders, inhale and exhale a few times, and then get out of the car. I focus on taking one step at a time as I walk to the front door. Will she be happy to see me? Upset? I’m half an hour early, just like I was that first time. There are a few more cars than usual—Paisley’s for one, and a LaFerrari, which must be Trig’s—but hopefully I can sneak in under the radar.
I knock on the door and wait.
Amy answers.
“Mister Ethan,” she says. “I didn’t know you were coming.”
I squat down so we’re at eye level. “No one did. It’s a surprise. Can you sneak me in?”
She bobs her head. “Sure. Good idea. That’ll really shock them.”
I follow her around the corner, and then she leaps around the edge of the wall and shouts, “Boo!”
Not exactly what I was thinking, but alright. I follow her around and wave. . .
At Paisley, James, Geo, Trig, and some guy I’ve never seen before—but judging by his build and confusion, I’m guessing he’s the pitcher Geo’s setting Anica up with. Amy throws me a thumbs up and heads down the hall where I hear Jack crying. I’m guessing Luke and Mary are dealing with some kind of kid-related emergency.
“Ethan.” Geo frowns. “Hi.”
I meet Trig’s gaze. I texted him and told him I was coming—I told him to come up with an excuse to get rid of the ball player. He shrugs.
Thanks a lot, dude.
“Ethan Trainor. Long time no see.” Paisley lifts one eyebrow pointedly. “But it’s always good to see you.” She shakes my hand and turns back toward the other guy. “Ethan and I went to college together. We’ve been friends for a long time. Ethan, this is Francisco Guerrera, star pitcher for the Braves.”
“Great to meet you.” I force a smile.
“You too,” he says. “Looks like these game nights are a lot of fun.”
“Eh.” I shrug. “They’ll probably be pretty boring for you.” Something connects in my brain. “Hey, is that your car outside?” Because Anica’s going to hate a flashy Ferrari.
“It is,” he says. “I figure there’s no reason you can’t go hybrid when you want speed, right?”
Could I hate him any more than I do right now? “Sure.”
“Ethan drives a Bronco,” Trig says with a smile. “I wonder how many miles it gets to the gallon.”
I should have punched him before I had all these witnesses. “It gets pretty decent fuel economy.” I scowl at him. “It’s brand new—not one of the old classics.”
“That’s too bad,” Francisco says. “Those classics are pretty great, too.”
Does he like the environment or not? “Has anyone seen Anica?” I ask. “I needed to ask her something.” As if they don’t all know I want to see her. Why else would I be here?
“Ah, Anica.” Francisco winks at me. “That’s why I’m here. I haven’t met her yet—we’re being set up. It seems like everyone knows her but me.”
My nostrils flare. “You don’t say.” Paisley and James and Trig and Geo stare at us eagerly. They could throw me a bone here, or they could leave the room so this isn’t so awkward. But no, I’m the entertainment, clearly.
“It’s actually my first setup,” Francisco continues. “I’ve never agreed to one before, but when Geo told me she had a friend, well. I doubt I’d have survived all the dumb parties and media events last season if it wasn’t for her assistance.”
Trig doesn’t look super thrilled about Francisco, either, which makes sense. Who would want a suave, athletic pitcher gushing about their wife? “Yeah, Geo set me up not too long ago, too.” Her head whips back toward me, and I stop short of saying anything more. I’m certainly not feeling like the crew has my back.
Although I suppose that’s on me.
“Wait, no one said,” I say. “Where is Anica?”
Mary breezes into the room, and then does a double take. “Ethan?”
“Yep, still my name.” I need to dial the snark down. I’m the usurper here. “Sorry, long day. How have you been?”
She blinks. “You were asking about Anica?”
I nod.
“She’s on her way.” She glances from Francisco to me and then back again, then she smiles broadly. “She’s just flying back home today. She had to go to New York City.”
“For what?” Francisco asks.
I want to strangle him. “Yeah, I’d like to know too.” I hate that I’m reduced to asking Mary—alongside a complete stranger—why she went to New York City.
“She just sold her fifth book, and this one went to auction.”
Francisco perks up right away. “Which imprint bought it?”
“Ballantine,” Mary says. “That’s right, your mother works for a publisher, right?”
He swears under his breath. “Wait, is this Anica, Anica Maggard?”
Mary nods. “Geo didn’t tell you her name?”
Geo walks past me and straight ahead into the kitchen. “I think I need a drink.”
“She mentioned her friend Anica, but she said nothing about books or publishing. I can’t believe I’m meeting Anica Maggard. My mom’s pretty upset right now, actually.”
“Who does your mother work for?” Mary asks.
“St. Martin. She put in a pretty big bid on her next book . . . and lost.”
Something is finally going right. “That’s too bad.” I shove my smile down as far as I can, but I worry it makes me look constipated. I drop it and frown instead.
“She’ll be furious I didn’t meet her last week,” Francisco says, “but I had other plans. There’s always her next book, right? With someone as brilliant as Anica, they’re never done writing.”
It’s hard to disagree with him when he’s so ridiculously agreeable. Paul and Trudy arrive, which is great. I could use some more people to make this even more awkward. Paisley and James finally come all the way inside and hang their coats. Without a voluminous coat as cover, Paisley looks ready to pop.
“When is your baby due?” I ask.
Paisley beams. “Soon, thankfully.”
“Why don’t we get started?” Luke asks.
“Maybe I’ll wait in the kitchen,” I offer.
“No! Don’t do that. You can be my partner,” Francisco says. “I’ll be all alone until Anica gets here.”
Fabulous.
And it turns out, he’s ridiculously good at Pictionary. “You draw really well,” Paisley says as he sits down from his turn. “Like, really, really well.”
Francisco shrugs. “I had to choose, sadly, between art and baseball.” He leans a little closer, like he’s sharing a secret. “Baseball pays better.”
I can’t even with this guy, but I’m beginning to think I hate him because he’s so perfect. That’s unlikely to bother Anica in the same way it does me. Of course, it’s right after this realization that I hear a key turn in the lock at the front door.
Inexplicably, I wish I could go back in time—because now that she’s here, for the first time in my life, I don’t want to fight—for her or with her. I just want to run away. Who would pick the tempestuous, controlling, angry mess over the polished, environment-loving warrior poet who’s probably fluent in four languages? I bet he owns a pet seal he saved from being clubbed, and lovingly tends in a custom designed icebox room.
Shake it off, Trainor.
Anica said she loved me. That’s got to count for something. When she walks through the entry way and into the edge of the family room, Anica’s face is puffy and her coat is askew. When she looks up at all of us staring, her eyes widen in alarm. “Oh, game night.” She swallows. “I forgot.”
“I just called you.” Mary glances at her watch. “Although that was more than an hour ago. Did you have car trouble? Where have you been?”
She drops her purse and coat on the floor near the door. “I was—” Her eyes reach mine and she cuts off, her jaw dangling open.
Francisco stands up right next to me. “Anica Maggard. Can I just say what an honor it is to meet you! I had no idea who you were when I agreed to come over, which is probably a good thing.” He shakes his head. “Because my mom is a huge fan of yours, and I’d have been hugely nervous if I knew before a few moments ago.”
Anica blinks. “Wait, who are you?”
“She’s just exhausted from her trip to New York,” Geo says. “I told her about you, but I didn’t realize what a crazy week she had when I set this up.”
“I’m a friend of Geo’s,” Francisco says. “She told me many great things about you—just not that you write amazing books on top of all of the rest.”
“Oh.” Anica looks at me again.
“Ah, Ethan,” Francisco says. “He did say he needed to ask you something. As excited as I am to get to know you, I’m sure we can all soldier on without you a bit longer, if you two need to talk.”
He’s a really hard guy to hate. He must realize that, as the only other single guy here, and as someone who’s asking to speak to Anica, I must be something to her, and he’s sending me off to talk to her gracefully anyway.
I stand up, because I’ll take any win I can muster right now. “That would be great. Anica, do you have a minute?”
She blinks. “Uh, sure.”
I walk toward the library right around the corner.
“Um.” She shakes her head and points down the hall instead.
To her bedroom.
My heartrate picks up. If she was going to kick me out, she could do that in the library, right? For the first time since I came face-to-face with Mr. Francisco Fabulous himself, hope rises inside of me. I trot after her like a lovesick puppy, and I can’t even summon the will to care.
She ducks into her room and holds her hand out. “Give me two minutes.”
I hear her tossing things and rummaging around with stuff. She’s cleaning up. I want to hug her and kiss her and smell her—I don’t care what her room looks like. But it bodes well for me that she does.
Unless she’s disposing of some kind of voodoo doll. . . I tap on the doorframe and peek around. “Ready or not. . . ”
“You can come in.” She’s standing in the center of the room holding a stack of papers, completely still.
I freeze too.
“I was at your house,” she whispers.
My brain fills with so many things I want to tell her that none of them can squeeze through. “I. . . ”
“If I’d known you were here.” She drops the papers and they fly every which way.
“Congrats on your book deal,” I say. “That’s amazing.”
“You have a fight tomorrow.” Her eyes widen. “Don’t you?”
She’s paying attention—following the media coverage, I hope. I nod. “But I had to come over tonight. I had to see you.”
“Why?”
“Trig came by,” I say. “He said Geo was setting you up.”
She frowns. “You’re here because of Francisco?”
Okay, that sounds bad. “No. I mean, yes, but not like you think. Or maybe like you think, I’m not sure. But Trig—this is coming out all wrong.”
She points at the chair next to her bed. “Sit.”
I do.
“If I had found you at your house.” She sits on the bed and folds her hands on her lap. “Can I tell you what I went over there to say?”
I nod, dumbly.
“I came down on you pretty hard,” she says. “And I still think that what I said was essentially true, that you can’t force people you love to do things, but I also think that maybe I handled it all wrong. When I was—before—with Patrick, I stayed with him a lot longer than I should have.”
“Okay.” She seems a little lost. “I’m listening.”
“Um, well, the thing was, I guess since I did that all wrong, I didn’t want to sit and wait and hope and watch everything fall apart.” She looks down at her hands, twisting her fingers together. “So I kind of yelled at you and, I don’t know. I was hoping you’d come and tell me that you’d thought about it, and that you were wrong, and that you still loved me.”
My heart contracts. “I do still love you.”
Her face flies up and her eyes meet mine. “You do?” She blinks.
I nod.
“I love you, too.”
I smile then. “I did think about what you said that night. I’m ashamed how long it took me to process all of it, but I did finally work through it. It took me a while to process all of it—and I was doing that, the introspection. I wanted to come and tell you what you wanted to hear when it was all done, when I was finally repaired.”
Her head tilts and her eyes are sad.
“But Trig came by to tell me that I was being an idiot. He said that telling you I understood and agreed with you would be enough. He said—” My voice cracks, and I clear my throat. “He said you were moving on.”
She laughs, but it’s a broken-ish sound. “I went to your house today. Does that sound like someone who’s moving on?”
“But Francisco—”
“I’m sure he’s great,” she says.
“He drives a Ferrari,” I blurt out.
She laughs and stands up. “You should have called me the next day.”
“I couldn’t call him, you know.” I shake my head. “I knew you were right, but I couldn’t do it. It took me weeks and weeks and a psychologist to call my—to call Phillip—and to tell him that I took it all back.”
Her eyes widen and she steps closer. “But you did it?”
“Not until today.”
“After Trig came to see you?”
I nod, numbly. It’s too late. She’ll think it’s an act.
But the corners of her mouth turn upward in a ghost of a smile, and I react without thinking. I stand up and reach for her, and she falls into my arms. My head drops toward hers and our lips meet and it’s like heaven has met the earth and angels walk among us. I swing her around in a circle, knocking over a stack of small boxes.
“I really need to get my own place,” she says. “One little room isn’t big enough to contain all my junk.”
I want to do it. I want to propose. I want to tell her I’ll buy her any house she wants with plenty of room for all our junk, but it doesn’t feel right. Everything between us is still too new and too unsure. There’s a guy who’s here to meet her right outside.
So I kiss her again instead. And for now, that’s enough.
My phone rings with an incoming call, but I ignore it. The idiot calls back.
Anica pulls back. “Do you need to get that?”
I groan and pull it out of my pocket. It’s my dad. “What?”
“It’s nine-thirty. Are you headed to bed?”
I hang up.
He calls me again.
“You have a fight tomorrow,” Anica says. “You need to sleep.”
I grit my teeth. “I don’t even care about that.”
“You need to go.” She goes on tiptoe to kiss me again, but she pulls away too soon. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Stupid Francisco—”
She puts a finger over my mouth. “Isn’t the man I love.”
My heart does a backflip. “Okay.”
“I’ll be here when you get back,” she says. “Waiting.”
“Oh no you won’t,” Trig says from the hallway.
Anica’s eyes fly wide. “What the—”
Trig and Geo, followed by Luke and Mary, and then Trudy and Paul step into the doorway. “When he gets back?” Trig asks. “Are you kidding me?” He glances from Anica to me, and then behind him at Geo. “Absolutely not. If you two are back together, we’re going to Vegas, baby!”
