Page 49 of Thank you, Next
“You look beautiful,” he said. He knew the words weren’t adequate. When she’d walked in, he’d been tempted to say “I love you,” but he didn’t know for sure that she felt the same way. He didn’t know if she’d had enough of him and was ready to say that they were out of each other’s systems. Maybe she’d dressed up to trample all over his heart.
He felt a moment of sympathy for the stand-up who had ghosted her. Even though he’d been out of order when Alex had gone to see him, Will was beginning to understand the particular category of hurt that he’d felt.
Before they’d gotten involved, he’d been able to read Alex like a book. But after they slept together, it was as though a wall had come down between them. He couldn’t see through the good face that she was putting on—he finally understood what it was like when someone’s smile didn’t reach their eyes.
“Is everything okay?” he asked her, and she dipped her head.
“Everything’s great.” She put her hair behind her ear. They stared at each other for a long moment before he moved closer to her and grabbed her jacket. “It’s chilly outside.”
Great. They were now reduced to talking about the weather. “How did your depositions go?”
She stopped smiling at him then, and he knew he’d said the wrong thing.
•••
Alex froze when he asked about the depositions. She hated working cases where child custody was contentious, but she wouldn’t have many clients if she turned those cases down. This one made her particularly sad, because the divorcing couple’s daughters had tried to parent trap them into getting back together, and it had backfired spectacularly into a domestic violence incident.
The couple and their children lived—separately now—in Los Angeles. But she’d had to go to San Francisco because the incident had happened while they were traveling. She’d needed to depose members of the hotel staff where the incident had occurred. Alex represented the mother, who was now seeking sole physical and legal custody. Since the father was famous, and the incident had been all over the papers, it was highly sensationalized.
Alex’s father had always been either absent or hypercritical, but he’d never gotten violent. Whenever Alex came home proud of accomplishing something—straight As, making the dance team at school, beating a class track record—her father had done his best to belittle her.
When she’d gotten into her first-choice law school, he’d said, “I’m sure there are some interesting things that you can do in the law,” which heavily implied that he found her boring. And whenever she’d stood up to him and told him about how his absence made her feel, he hung up the phone or disappeared for weeks or months on end.
Eventually she spoke to him as little as possible. As hurt as she’d been when her parents had split up suddenly, she was grateful that they hadn’t stayed together for her or her sister’s sake.
She’d realized this week that she’d never let herself entertain the idea of having children because she didn’t want to open herself up to be hurt through another person. It was a kind of enviable courage that she didn’t believe she had in her.
But Alex certainly did not envy her client, who was trying her best to keep her daughters out of the press and away from reports that their father was a monster. He would probably mess up as a parent on his own enough during visitation and when they were adults that their mother wouldn’t need to tell them that she’d saved them from spending time with an asshole who would tear them down and ruin their adult relationships.
She’d wanted to forget all about her work when she saw Will tonight. His arms were a solace to her. The only time she wasn’t thinking about running was when he was touching her in a way that made it impossible to think.
When she wasn’t with him, it was so easy for her to think about how she’d messed up all her previous relationships because she hadn’t trusted anyone to really see her. They were all so superficial. Because she’d known Will for so long, it felt so much deeper so much sooner.
She was afraid that she didn’t have it in her to stay, and she could feel herself pulling away from him. But she knew, based on her work with the therapist she’d started talking to immediately after brunch with Lexi and her friends, that she needed to fight the urge to keep things at the surface with Will. She could trust him not to tear her down if she let him in. Even though they’d bickered over the years, they both respected each other.
Instead of reiterating that she was fine, telling him that the depositions had been fine when they’d opened a wound that she thought had closed up long ago, she said, “It was really rough on me, to be honest.”
The tenderness in Will’s expression almost wrecked her again. “What happened?” He’d been pouring them both wine, but he crossed the kitchen to hug her. He rubbed his hand up and down her back, and she shivered.
She fought tears and refused to start sobbing. Even though they’d known each other for a long time, it was too soon for her to just lay all her shit on him. He had enough to worry about. Opening a restaurant was a big, difficult thing. Most of them failed. That was just a fact. And the last thing Will needed to be thinking about right now, mere days before they opened, was that she was going to fall apart on him. It wasn’t fair.
Still, he didn’t rush her. “Shhhhhh. It’s okay.”
“I should be used to this by now. I handle custody cases all the time.” Now that she was speaking in full sentences, he led her over to the prep table where he’d put place settings. They were still finishing setting up the dining room, according to his texts, and she liked that they were eating in the kitchen. Empty and lit by candles, it was intimate and romantic.
“Tell me.” He pushed her glass of wine toward her and waited until she took a sip to plate their first course.
“It was just that the girls remind me of myself and my sister when we were their age. My sister was little, so I don’t think it was quite as hard on Francesca, but I remember wanting so much for my parents to get back together and feeling like I was a failure because they didn’t.
“I had no idea why they broke up, and I didn’t understand what kind of person my father was until much later. I was just so angry at my mom for making it impossible for him to stay close to us. I even blamed her for when she left me with Lexi that first summer. I had no idea that it was because my father no longer had any use for us once he could no longer use us to manipulate my mother.”
“None of that was your fault, Alex. None of it.” Alex’s whole nervous system calmed down after he said that. He seemed to sense it, because he moved her to a stool near the counter and left her for a brief moment.
It gave her a few moments to collect her thoughts, which she needed. She appreciated him for giving her that.
Will was back with a gorgeous, perfect caprese salad with watermelon and balsamic vinegar that he’d sourced himself from a farm in the Central Valley. Even though Will made simple dishes, he did it with intention and such careful precision that they sang.
He was such a great chef. He didn’t get all that viral social media fame just because of his good looks. She really hoped that he went through with the reality show. From what he’d said on FaceTime this week, it sounded like he was pushing to be able to teach simple principles in the kitchen and how they could be iterated through more complicated dishes.