“O-kaaay,” she says in this high-pitched, very amused-sounding voice, and I fight the urge to hurl myself out of the car Lady Bird style.
My mom and I don’t talk about things like this. We don’t talk about anything of substance.
There’s a weariness in her face I don’t usually notice in the midst of a wedding, a droopiness beneath her eyes, a sag to her mouth. She’s beautiful, she always has been—she just looks exhausted.
I wonder if it’s the way she looked before she moved out. The way she felt.
For the first time, I’d rather talk more about a wedding than about this. “I really like working with Victoria and Lincoln.”
“They’re great,” Mom says. “And this wedding could open up so many opportunities for us. We might even be able to do destination weddings. We’ve never had the budget or the bandwidth. But once you’re working full-time, it’ll be much easier for us to expand.”
Any warmth I felt after helping Victoria turns cold. My chest tightens, and my brain fills with images I can’t control: me at twenty, stuck in business classes, my weekends accounted for. Planning the weddings of all my classmates who stayed in Seattle. At thirty, still in the tower and working for my parents. At forty, when my parents retire and pass B+B off to the next generation of Berkowitzes, and I have to force a smile and tell them this was what I always wanted, to take over this thing they built.
“That sounds… wow,” I say, still trying to process it. “It wouldn’t be for a while, though, right?”
“Right.” Mom goes quiet for a moment, and then: “The attitude isn’t helping, Quinn.”
If she wanted a reaction from me, she’s getting one. “Attitude? Did I not just comfort Victoria in there?”
“You did. And I appreciated it,” she says. “But you’ve been so distracted lately. I’m not upset, but I have to ask—is Tarek the reason you missed the walk-through?”
“The pre-walk-through,” I correct. “Because of course we needed two walk-throughs. Nothing less than our best, right?”
“We needed two walk-throughs to avoid what happened today.” There’s an edge to her voice. My mother, the boss, chastising her employee.
I have to hold myself back from saying it’s not the relationship that’s distracting me. The relationship—the non-relationship—is the one thing that feels solid. Too solid, probably, but it’s a life raft right now.
“Maybe I should skip tonight’s rehearsal dinner.” I slouch low in my seat, feeling more like a child than I ever have. “Since I have such a bad attitude and all.”
“Maybe you should.” It’s an unexpected punch to the gut. “We’ll be fine without you.”
And I should want to hear that they’ll be fine without me, but that’s not the way it feels. It feels like my worst fear, my parents and Asher on one side, me alone on the other. Battle lines drawn. It tempts the lies to climb up my throat until my desires are on display for everyone to see.
“Great” is what I say instead, and we’re silent the rest of the drive.
23
Tarek smells like rain and chocolate.
I texted him as soon as I saw the MTRMNY-mobile leave our driveway from my tower window, and he told me he was just getting home from therapy but he’d be over as soon as he could. If his appearance doesn’t take away all my anxiety, at the very least, it makes me feel like maybe I won’t have a total breakdown tonight. But who knows, the night is young and panic is my brand.
“I’ve been doing some experimenting,” he says after I open the front door. He passes me a foil-covered mug, the ceramic still warm. “And I’m finally ready for you to try this.”
“Is this what I think it is?” I peel back the foil and gasp. “You made a mug cake!”
“I did. It should have cooled down enough at this point to eat it,” he says. “It sounded like you maybe needed some chocolate. And I’m not going to lie—part of me wanted to prove to you that this is better than the kind you microwave from a box.”
“I really did need chocolate. This looks incredible. Thank you.”
He peers past me into the house. He’s wearing a T-shirt again, and the sight of his bare forearms makes me wobbly. “Not that I don’t love and respect your parents, but I didn’t see the van in the driveway. Are they…?”
“Not here,” I confirm, pulling him inside and closing the door behind him. “They’re at a rehearsal dinner.”
“Good.” In one swift movement, he pins me against the door, trapping the mug between my chest and his. But instead of kissing me, he leans down, burying his face in my neck, his mouth fitting into the space where my neck meets my shoulder. There’s something deeply intimate about it, more so than a kiss. “You always smell like wood.”
“From the shop.” I reach out my free hand to stroke his hair, to pull him closer. When I got home from the museum, I changed into the T-shirt and jeans I wore to Maxine’s earlier in the week. “It’s impossible to get the sawdust out of my clothes. I think I’m seventy percent sawdust and thirty percent human at this point. I can shower if—”
“No.” He wraps my hair around his fist, a slight pressure as he pulls at it, breathing me in. “I love it.”
That L-word lands heavy in my chest, but I’m distracted by his mouth moving up my jaw, kissing me beneath my ear, then my earlobe, a gentle bite on the shell of my ear. When I shiver at that, he bites down harder.
In the depths of my mind, it occurs to me that I asked him over to comfort me the same way someone might seek comfort from a boyfriend or girlfriend. And the comfort he brought that’s warming my hands—that’s some kind
