Jon
Days after Patrick’s proposal passed by in a haze of excitement; Lydia was positively over the moon and was thrilled to meet Pat’s parents over a surprise dinner. Maritza congratulated her and even extended the kindness of planning an engagement party, Lydia turned her down since she wanted to plan one with Allison, but she’d barely stopped talking about it even more a second.
The only thing she talked about more was how she wanted to get in shape for her dress, she desperately wanted to go down a size to look “perfect”. I had no clue where got the idea that she didn’t look amazing already, but either way, it was already off to a bad start.
“Lydia, hold still!” I snapped.
“Work faster, it hurts!”
“I told you not to be playing with my equipment, it’s not my fault you hurt yourself.” Trusting her alone in my weights room was a mistake, I was wary of leaving her alone in there after witnessing her mindlessly touch the bottom of a hot pan – more than once – and at one point almost leaned on a stove element. It didn’t happen that often, but she would distract herself and grab things without thinking. God only knew how she pinched her fingers in the weight rack, but it was definitely in line with the dozen or so times she’d accidentally hurt herself.
“I wasn’t playing with anything; I was working out—”
I rolled my eyes and finished fastening the gauze on her hand. “You were fiddling with it and decided not to ask for help. Weights don’t just magically fall on fingers.” Turing her hand over in mine, I gave it one last once over; her fingers were red and trembling pretty badly. “Alright, keep icing it for now, I’ll see what I can do to get a doctor to see you tonight.”
Her head jerked up in surprise. “Why?” she asked sharply.
I blinked and was momentarily at a loss for words. Why wouldn’t she want to see a doctor? She clearly hadn’t broken anything but I’d rather have someone else double check just in case. “So that you still have working fingers in the morning?” I offered. “We don’t have to go out, I can call one in.”
“I don’t like doctors,” she said quietly.
“And I don’t like seeing you permanently lose control of one hand, so one us is going to have to cave here.” I caught her chin and leaned in to kiss her cheek. “I’ll be right there, and Patrick will be back in a little bit, there’s nothing to worry about.”
She didn’t say anything but I could see the fear etched into her features. She folded her hands into her lap, being careful with the bandaged one but didn’t say anything else. Lydia didn’t talk about her past, I could tell her dozens of stories that she was more than happy to listen to but she was quick to change the subject when it came to questions about her life. She would answer somethings; stuff about her dating life prior to us, questions about her schooling and how she managed to get into both Berkeley and NYU, but everything else was avoided.
Patrick and I pieced things together from the fragments of information we had; her parent’s divorce, her father’s death, never being official adopted by the Montgomery’s, and a history of being on different anti-depressants and anti-anxieties. Children that grew up in the system often ended up being poorly documented, Patrick had dug up a bunch of records from her early childhood but there was a large gap, spanning from ages eleven to sixteen that just weren’t there anymore. In cases like this, where she became quiet and withdrawn, it was easy to remember that we barely knew anything about her.
“Lydia,” I continued, crouching down to be at eye level. “Talk to me, dove, that’s what I’m here for.”
She shook her head and got up off the chair. “Do you want something for lunch?” She headed for the stairs and bounded down them, not even glancing back. “I’m making pizza if you want some.”
I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. So, this was the kind of day we were going to have. Lovely. Grabbing my phone off the bedside table, I followed Lydia down to the kitchen. She was carting different ingredients out of the pantry and setting out two cutting boards. Her hand shook as she grabbed things and I could tell from the look of intense concentration on her face that she was in pain and trying to hide it.
“I have a cook, and I pay her pretty well,” I pointed out, leaning against the island as she started to make the dough. “And I’m sure I have frozen dough in the upper freezer.”
“Making it is relaxing,” she said, still not looking at me. “And I don’t get why you even have a cook, she’s not here most of the week.”
“She doesn’t need to be, or she didn’t anyway. I was ordering in at the office most of the week, you know that.” Having the cooks on Fridays through to Mondays meant that I didn’t have to cook on the worst days of the week, and I both started and ended it on a good note. “But she’s here right now, and you’re stealing her job,” I said, trying to ease the tension between us.
“This is what Pat wanted for my job,” she said quietly.
“Patrick wanted a fulltime sub, for him that included you cooking and cleaning. You never said that was what you wanted.”
“I want to know why you have to grill me, like, I don’t know what I did wrong.” With a huff, Lydia turned around to start cutting peppers.
If you want me to treat you like an adult, you need to act like it. Biting my tongue on a snide comment, I came up behind her and wrapped my arms around her waist, resting my head on her shoulder. “Dove, I didn’t mean to piss you off.”
“I’m not pissed.”
“Alright then, irritated. I didn’t mean to irritate you.”
“I’ve got a lot going on, okay?” she demanded, slamming her knife down. “And now you’re pushing me to do things I don’t want to do, and it’s annoying.”
“I’m terribly sorry for caring about your wellbeing, I don’t have to call the doctor, but you can’t blame me later if you lose feeling in your hand.”
She was quiet for a minute before I finally felt the tension in her shoulders melt away. “You can call the doctor,” she half-mumbled.
I never got my nose checked after Danielle decided to deck me in the streets, but I hadn’t needed to; I’d broken it before and there wasn’t anything a doctor could have done. Hell, her mom had pretty much given me a free nose-job, I’d have to thank her for knocking it back into place one day. This, on the other hand, was something that I wanted to have checked out because unlike a nose job, Lydia couldn’t magically have her fingers reset if there was a fracture and she let it go for too long.
“Thank you,” I said as kissed her temple and straightened back up. “Are you sure you don’t want me to have Anne make us something instead?”
Lydia shrugged and turned around, letting me see just how tired she looked. “No, but I’ll let you help me. Grab the other cutting board.”
Snickering to myself about being allowed to “help” in my own damn kitchen, I grabbed the meats out of the fridge and set to work. “You’ve been off since you came back,” I said casually. “Is everything alright with you, dove? Have you heard from Allie yet?” I wasn’t telling her what I knew about Allison and Maritza, it wasn’t my place, and I didn’t have any answers beyond knowing they were in some sort of relationship.
“No,” she answered sadly. The defeat in her tone made my chest ache. “I’ll give her another day or so, but I’ll call Michelin, and see if she knows what’s up if I don’t hear back.”
I’d heard a little bit about the fight they had in Monterey, one that wasn’t entirely resolved when Lydia got back to New York. I didn’t blame Allison for her stance on our relationship, if anything, I liked her more for wanting to protect her best friend, but I also wished she trusted Lydia to make her own choices.
“Anything else?” I asked, hopeful. “I know you had a bunch of projects going on with your blog, but you’ve barely talked about it lately.”
I watched her as I said it, waiting to see the small shift that I knew was coming; she turned away slightly. It was the smallest change in her posture, but one that spoke volumes and one that I looked for once-upon-a-time to exploit in court. I let the silence overwhelm us, moving slowly and making it clear that I knew something was going on even if she hadn’t told me.
“I didn’t want to talk about it yet,” she began reluctantly. “Promise you won’t be mad.”
“I won’t be mad,” I assured her without pause. She always asked us not to be mad, at first I found it confusing, but after meeting Danielle, I assumed it was a genuine fear that we would just suddenly become upset with her.
She turned to me, leaning against the counter and reaching up to brush her hair back. “I might be getting a publishing deal if you and Patrick are alright with it…”
“And why would we need to be alright with it?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.
“Because it’s about us. I’ve written some stuff on my blog, but I keep you guys out of it, now they want me to write a whole thing about what it was like to go through this, including details about our relationship.”
I took a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling, trying to will myself not to say no right off the bat. “I’ll have to think about it,” I told her slowly. “Have you spoken to Pat?”
“No, I kind of wanted to do this with both of you but it’s been eating at me because they want a response sooner rather than later.”
Of course, they did – they wanted to get the story out probably within the next six months so that they could cash in. “I can’t say yes, and I can’t say no, and I can’t speak for Pat either. Can you let me sleep on it for a few days?”
She nodded eagerly. “Of course!”
She looked so excited that I couldn’t help but smile in return and let her tell me all about the experience of being contacted by the agent. I’m happy for you, baby, you deserve this. I didn’t know how much I really wanted to be in the story, but Lydia had been devastated by the idea that she might not be able to have a career in family law eventually. She even told us that she had turned down her acceptance for completing law school at Berkeley that was supposed to start this month.
I didn’t want her to think that we weren’t supportive of her endeavours, or that we need her to be some 50s housewife that only cooked and cleaned and catered to our sexual needs, but at the same time – I didn’t know how to support her. She was right, a career in law was basically impossible in the Western world now, but she showed no interest in anything else and giving her the go-ahead on this book would expose us completely to the world. Worse, this was the only thing I could think of recently that she had even been remotely interested in. It was a little funny though, the idea that so many people had been scandalized by our trysts and in the end Patrick and I were both black-listed, unemployed, social pariahs, while she was being offered a publishing deal and the only one with any hope of getting a job.
I gazed down at her ring as she talked, listening to her tell me about how her blog had become a hit from the first day she posted. How did we get here? I felt so guilty about coming between her and Patrick, I’d tried to keep my distance, but the night at Plaisir – when she called me to her room – had really solidified that I couldn’t stay away anymore even if I wanted to. How had I managed to alter my relationship with them so drastically in what, six, maybe seven months?
I jolted when she touched my hand, coming back to reality and realizing that I had rudely zoned out. “I’m sorry,” I apologized, feeling heat creep up my neck. “You were talking and that was rude of me.”
She rolled her eyes but offered a ghost of a smile. “I’m used to it. What were you thinking about?”
“You, what else?”
Laughing, she reached up to thread her fingers into my hair and I leaned down to meet her in a soft, chaste kiss. I let my hand rest on her lower back, wondering just what exactly I had done right in my life to deserve these little moments.
“Everything’s coming together for you,” I murmured into her hair. “You really couldn’t have come out of this any better and I’m incredibly proud of you.”
She laughed breathlessly and wiped at rogue tear with her thumb. “Even though I fucked up my hand with your equipment?”
I had to roll my eyes. “Even though you fucked up your hand,” I promised.
She reached for me and kissed my cheek, pressing her bandaged hand against my chest, cradling it between us. We were rudely interrupted a few minutes later by her phone loudly buzzing its way across the counter, threatening to fall off the edge when she caught it.
Lydia hit the speaker and answered, “Hello?”
“Hey, are you with Jon?”
“Where else would she be?” I asked, smirking while she narrowed her eyes at me.
Patrick laughed but it sounded strained through the receiver. “Alright, that’s good at least – I figured I would just call to let you both know that I don’t know when I’m going to be back. I got a call from the office, and Charles needs me to stop in for a minute.”
Charles needs you? “What?”
“Um…” He trailed off and I could hear him sigh. “Yeah, he just called me—”
“Did he have trouble getting a hold of me?” I demanded sharply.
“Jon,” Lydia cautioned, touching my arm. “Don’t, okay? You guys can talk about it later, don’t fight about it over the phone.”
I glanced at her and was torn; that was my company, I was the reason it existed as this giant dominating force, Patrick was barely out of college when we merged them, Charles didn’t even know Pat’s name for the longest time. How could he not call me?
“I just wanted to warn you beforehand,” Patrick said, interrupting my thoughts. “I’ve gotta go, I’ll text you guys when I’m on my way back. Love you.”
“Love you too,” Lydia replied automatically. “Bye.”
She disconnected the call and I just stared blankly at the screen on her phone. That was my company. I hadn’t felt like this since Mari moved out for school; just empty and wishing I just had some more time.
“Jon, it’s going to be okay.” Lydia wrapped her arm around my waist and leaned in close. “Come on, come help me with lunch and then we’ll find something fun to do later.”
“I’m still calling the doctor, you’re not getting out that one, Miss Lydia.” One good punch to the gut wasn’t going to make me forget that she’d hurt herself earlier, and I wasn’t letting that slide.
She groaned and threw her hands up before turning on her heel back to the cutting board. At least she and I could spend the day together; she could distract me from whatever the fuck was going on with Pat and I could harass her about her hand until she agreed to ask for help when she needed it. I didn’t think that was going to happen today, but I’d still try.