Twice in a Blue Moon - Christina Lauren Page 0,101
a few seconds to press the heels of my hands to my eyes. I don’t know what his support system looks like. His ex-wife is going to have her hands full. Roberta and Luther are gone. Does Sam even have a manager? This is going to be a pain in the ass for me, but it is going to be brutal for him, and he’s going to need all the help he can get.
I know this, and I keep repeating it over and over, but when we reach the Oakland airport almost three hours later and I still haven’t heard from him, my stomach feels like a hard, sour pit. Everything’s a mess. Between the last-minute flight, the stress of knowing this story is out there and the message is careening out of control, and the chaos of the press—there’s so much happening. Maybe his phone is being inundated. Maybe he just turned it off. Maybe he doesn’t have my number—why would he? Maybe it’s going to take a few calls to find me, and maybe he assumed, like I should, that we’ll figure it all out when the dust settles.
After the cabin at the farm, my house feels enormous and sterile. The art I used to see as minimalist and clean just looks lonely on the expansive, white walls. My living room—filled with white furniture I once thought of as inviting and cloud-like—just seems overly precious; not anything someone could actually collapse on at the end of a day.
Even my bedroom is too big, too empty, too impersonal.
Oddly, just imagining Sam here with me—stretching out long and muscular on my bed, reading on my couch in socks and sweats, whistling while he cooks dinner at my massive stove—makes this house feel incrementally warmer. For the first time in my life I get it: home isn’t always a space; it can be a person.
I turn and stare out the window while Mom folds laundry on my bed.
“Will you still see your dad for Christmas?” She smooths one my shirts on the bedspread, folds it into perfect thirds, and places it on top of the stack.
I pick at the hem of my sweatpants. “We left the farm as if everything was okay but . . . I don’t think so.”
She gives me a sad smile. “I’m sorry, hon.”
With a groan, I fall back against one of the pillows. The cotton is cool against the back of my neck. “I don’t really know why I’m surprised.”
“Because he’s your dad. He should be better than that.”
I shrug, feeling oddly numb. “Yeah, but he’s always shown me exactly who he is, and I just never want to believe it.” I give myself to the count of ten to feel sorry for myself before I sit up, crossing my legs. “I might have a shitty dad, but I have a fantastic freaking mom. Some people don’t even get that. I’m not complaining.”
Mom gives me a sweet little grin and leans forward to press a quick kiss to my forehead. “If I hadn’t met him, there wouldn’t be a you. It’s hard to regret it, but I’m sorry that you have to deal with the same egotistical jackass I left all those years ago. Heaven forbid he grow up a little.” Straightening again, she reaches for another shirt. “Have you talked to Nana?”
Oof. Guilt shimmers through me, and I shake my head. “I’m worried she’s going to give me a mountain of I-told-you-so’s and a prolonged silent treatment.”
“I don’t think so. I think she’s worried about you, but in typical Mom fashion, she hasn’t wanted to talk much about it because you know as well as I do that she isn’t one to relish the I-told-you-so’s.”
I know Mom is right that Nana doesn’t relish it, per se, but it would still be first thing on her tongue. She barely forgave me for London. Her disapproval was as quiet as Nana herself, but it’s always been there—in the slight angle away from me when my career comes up or the long exhale and slowly raised coffee cup to her lips when a trailer for one of Dad’s films comes on the television.
“This is going to make a mess for her, too,” I say, and then groan, falling back against the pillow again. “People are going to come into the café again and ask her for pictures. There’s nothing Nana hates more than covert iPhone pictures people take of her in the café.”