“What if she doesn’t like me?” Panic crept into Lydia’s voice but she looked remarkably calm.
“Mum will love you because I love you. Stop overthinking this.”
She scoffed and stopped a server as he went by, stealing a glass of champagne off the tray. “Have you even met me?”
I smirked and pulled her closer. “Unfortunately, I have.”
She glanced up at me for long enough for me to see her roll her eyes before shoving the glass into my hand. “Drink this, I need to live vicariously through you for the next six months.”
I happily obliged. Dia’s attention to me and Jon drinking had been averted by my family and hers deciding to shake our lives up, and to be honest I don’t think she really noticed how much we both still drank, but I was more than willing to let her live through us while she was restricted. Especially at a party where I was trying to tune out the whispering of our relationship.
My mothers threw a charity gala every year at their Hampton’s estate the weekend after Thanksgiving. This year it was for a cancer patient fund that helped those going through treatment pay their hospital bills, housing costs, and cover transportation.
Lydia had already met Lucy, my birth mother, but she hadn’t met her partner Nora yet, and I wasn’t quite sure that this was the best environment to meet.
Lydia nudged my arm and nodded towards the small group by the fountains. “There’s your mom…”
All the attention was directed towards her as she laughed loudly, tossing her head back to make herself heard. The invitation said no gold or silver dresses, the reason being that she and Nora couldn’t wear the same colour as their guests, and she certainly stood out in the room with her floor length gold ballgown. The centre of attention as always.
“Pat!” a low feminine voice called.
I turned and searched the crowd, there was a murmur that passed through as Nora shoved her way off the back porch and made her way toward us. Her silver gown billowed out around her and I heard Lydia’s soft gasp as the woman rushed to our side. She was on me in a flash, pulling me in for a determined hug in a cloud of Chanel perfume.
Nora Garnier had been a part of my life for as long as I could remember, always living with us, always mum’s partner, and consistently there to keep us grounded. If I believed mum then she met Nora while in Toulouse, France when I was about six months old, how she managed to convince a black libertine French woman in university to forsake her life and come with mum to the States, I would never understand but whatever she did, it worked.
Nora was everything mum needed and they balanced each other perfectly; mum’s scatterbrained eccentricism was countered by Nora’s ever-present calm and organized demeanour, mum was loud and rambunctious while Nora was quiet and cool, easily sliding into conversations and commanding the room with her natural ability to captivate an audience.
“Mum,” I greeted as we pulled apart. I gestured to very pale looking Lydia. “Lydia, this is my other mother, Nora.”
“It’s great to meet you,” Lydia gushed, shaking Nora’s hand excitedly.
Mum smirked and leaned in to kiss her cheek. “Don’t be so formal, love. Lord knows Luce and I aren’t.”
I snickered and shoved my hands in my pockets. “Don’t listen to her, Dia. They set the table with formal place settings even when no one else is coming over.”
Nora scoffed and reached up to pinch my cheek. “Listen you little brat, we have no other reason to use the nice silver and that’s hardly a reason to go scaring off the first girl you’ve brought home in years.”
“Years?” Lydia asked incredulously.
I felt warmth creeping up my neck around my collar, threatening to broadcast my embarrassment. “I’m selective,” I replied quietly. “Moving on. Is Nan here?”
“She is, I think she was with Luce earlier. Why don’t you go see if you can find her and bring us back some drinks?” Nora’s arm snaked through Lydia’s and she smiled affectionately at her. “Let me get to know la belle without your interference.”
I didn’t want to leave her there on her own, but I figured if we got it over with now then we could make up for it later. I gave Lydia a quick kiss and went off to find mum and get us some drinks. I glanced back at her, watching the way the light made her black gown sparkle, straining to listen to her laugh while Mum fawned over her.
Turning back, I made my way to my other mother, the crowd parted for me and I saw a murmur pass between two women off to the side. Natalie and Lee. I felt their eyes following me across the yard, threatening to pick me apart in front of the crowd for their own amusement. Vultures. They would say something to me sooner or later about Lydia and the tabloids, but for now I just had to put up with their withering gazes.
“Pat, darling,” Mum said, welcoming me to the group. She stepped away from the group and pulled me aside, leading us through the gardens. “You were supposed to come before the party started,” she scolded.
I slipped my arm through hers as we walked along. “I know, we were running late. I’m sorry.”
She sighed and leaned into me while she tsked disapprovingly. “Don’t apologize, just call next time to let me know. Did Jonathan come?”
Jonathan. It was just as weird as hearing Christine call him Jonny. “No, he stayed home with his daughter for the weekend.”
“Ah, well no matter, I’m still glad to have you home.” We came to a stop in front of the large stone fountain and she took a seat before patting the spot beside her for me. “I got the call.”
Just as I had sat down next to her, I was ready to jump out of my seat in surprise. My heart was pounding suddenly but I kept my face blank, not wanting to get ahead of myself. “Oh?”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t be so blasé about it, I know it’s important to you.” Mum paused and looked away, seeming to prepare herself before she continued. “Edward would be happy to pledge his support if you do decide run for congress, but for now he’s extending an offer for partnership if you can bring over enough clientele.”
Enough clientele meant the Nakamoto Electronics company I had met with in Tokyo and if I could play my cards right, the Hudson Manufacturing company since they were still able to void their contract with our law firm until the new year. Both were multi-million-dollar clients, both would benefit Edward’s company more than anyone else could bring him.
My heart refused to slow down, and I was vaguely aware that I was bouncing my foot as I stared off into the distance, trying to find Lydia in the crowd. I have a chance. I could come back from corporate exile, all I needed was to bribe or beg my way into the good graces of two companies that couldn’t give two shits about what happened to me.
“Is that what you want?” Mum asked quietly.
I realized that her hand was on my arm now and I jolted in surprise. Rubies and diamonds glittered on her hand from her cluster of rings to her arm full of bracelets. I wanted to be able to give Lydia this life, and to our children too, and the only way I could make sure this happened is if I had a career.
Yes, I had a savings, I had investments, but I also had substantial bills – horses, cars, now the houses from Aleksy, and then you add on however many kids we might have, private school, college, mum would inevitably expect any girls that we have also join the Swan Society and that just added gowns and jewellery for the debutante events.
Of course, this is what I wanted; it was also what I needed.
“It is,” I answered finally. “It’s what I want.”
Mum nodded and I heard her sigh. “Okay, I will call him in the morning and let him know.” She stood up abruptly and turned, holding out her hand for me. “Now let’s go, I have people to parade my affianced son off to.”
I laugh as I got up and took her hand. Nora brought Lydia over to us when we joined the rest of the party and the four of us made our rounds, greeting couples, politicians, and all manner of people that were way too interested in Lydia for my liking. I could feel it in the way they spoke to her, either intentionally or unintentionally using a condescending tone and asking questions about her parents specifically. They were out for blood tonight.
My arm constricted around her waist, pulling her to my side in the hope that I could shield her from the barrage of invasive questions and thinly veiled insults. Mum and Nora were quick to change the subject when the topic somehow always steered back to her position at Bower & Rosing’s, just not quick enough considering Senator Whitman still managed to joke about meeting his second wife when she was his secretary.
“The second one always lasts the longest,” he said with a conspiratorial wink.
I think I might vomit now. “Thank you, Stephen,” I said dryly. “That’s exactly what she wants to hear.”
Dia turned away smirking and I pressed my hand to her stomach, feeling the bump under my palm and quickly steered us away from the idiot.
“So, who’s your second wife going to be?” she asked casually.
I shrugged and tried to sound nonchalant, “I can’t marry two of my secretaries, but I could probably get away with one of your friends.”
She smacked my arm hard and I couldn’t not laugh at the instant reaction. “I’m gonna tell Jon that you plan to marry Maritza next,” she warned.
“Oh, I love Mari!” Mum cried. “She’s so sweet and she made such a gorgeous debutante.”
“Mum, I don’t think you’re helping my case here.”
Lydia snickered and Mum continued gushing about how much she loved Maritza and the Bower family. Nora rolled her eyes and shot me a sympathetic look but my attention was all on the sweet thing currently holding onto me for dear life.
Long blonde tendrils of hair framed her face and the floral clips holding her updo in place sparkled in constantly shifting light. She looked beautiful and perfectly fit into the landscape of ice sculptures, crystal glasses, and couture ballgowns. So why was she acting so shy?
Dia was so quiet, and that wasn’t like her at all. I had goad her into conversation and often found myself trying to keep her from fading into the background when she wasn’t the active topic of conversation. Nora seemed to notice as well and pulled her away several times to introduce her to family friends but all that did was set me on edge as I watched her quietly stand away from the crowds and fold in on herself.
“Patty,” Mum whispered. “You’re being rude to the guests.”
Oh god no. “Mum, please don’t call me that in front of her.”
She scoffed and took a long swig from her glass. “If calling you Patty in front of your fiancé is what makes her leave you, then I don’t think you’re meant to be.”
“I’d rather not have my fiancé calling me Patty whenever she feels like poking at me.” Fucking Patty. Jon and I had an unspoken agreement to never mention our horrible nicknames to Lydia, and I wanted to keep it that way and not have my cover blown by mother dearest.
“I wonder where she got off to…” Mum trailed off and her words gave me a start.
“What?” I spun around to see Nora chatting with the women that had been glaring at me and Lydia was nowhere in sight. “Where did she go?”
“Probably to find every embarrassing photo of you I ever took,” mum said dryly.
I huffed and took off to accost Nora for information. She was laughing loudly and tossed her braids back over her shoulder carelessly while the other women followed her lead. I touched her arm gently and leaned in, asking her where Dia had gotten off to.
“Upstairs,” she replied quietly. “She just needed a minute, I think she might be a little overwhelmed.”
“Thank you,” I replied with a quick kiss to her cheek. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Prends ton temps. Il n’y a pas d’urgence.” Take your time. There’s no hurry.
I waved to her and turned towards the house, ignoring the pleading to stay and chat from the others. People were making their way to their seats, eager for the auction to start, blocking my path and holding me up.
“Patrick,” a man in the most ill-fitting suit I’d ever seen said. “I wanted to speak to you about the office—”
“When I get back,” I promised. “I’m sorry, I have something to do right now.”
“It’s just a few legal questions,” he countered.
“Later, please.”
“But—”
I shoved past him, not wanting to listen to his questions. Besides, these people were all the same, they just wanted to know if someone had grounds to sue them. I bounded up the back porch steps and charged into the kitchen. Staff were preparing dinner with the cooks and servers running around with plates and platters to get ready.
“Upstairs,” the chef called to me. “She came through a few minutes ago and I sent her up the south staircase.”
“Thank you, Jason!”
I followed the staff’s directions to the back stairs the curved up over the pantry and kitchen to the landing. My bedroom door was slightly ajar and I felt a rush of relief when I pished it further and found Dia.
My room was the same as it had been when I moved out for university; pictures decorated the walls of old friends, of the millions of clubs I was in once upon a time, concert tickets, trophies, and if I looked under my mattress I was sure that I would find twenty-year-old weed and old cigarettes.
Lydia was looking at the photos I had left tacked to the wall, admiring a shot of me standing next to my Westphalian horse, Niko, grinning from the thrill of a win at a competition. I closed the door behind me and slowly made my way across the room to her. She glanced back at me and smiled.
“I didn’t know you rode horses.” She gestured to the picture.
“Oh yeah, I did that for years. We have a stable on the property, remind me to bring you over there and I’ll introduce you to my horses.”
The room was quiet for a minute, just enough that we could hear the laughter and cheering outside. Dia reached for the curtain, pulling it aside so that she could peek out at the party.
“It’s the auction, do you want to go downstairs and join it?” I doubted she would say yes, but I had to say something.
She shrugged and let the curtain drift shut. “Not yet…”
She was quiet again and I all I could do was just nod in acceptance. When she wouldn’t say anything else, I went and sat down on the edge of the bed, watching her toy with my trophies and collectables.
“It’s weird,” she said finally. “Like, Danielle went off and had another kid, started a whole new family in the suburbs, you come from this—” she gestured around the room. “—and I just… I guess I feel out of place.”
That was a start. I knew she must have been overwhelmed but I had assumed that by living with me and Jon for the past two months that she had adjusted to our lives. “You’ve never really talked about your life,” I remarked. “We don’t get to hear much about your childhood, maybe if we talked about it more we could help you adjust to our lifestyle.”
“The lifestyle of being disgustingly rich while other people suffer?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not dignifying that with a reply.”
Her cheeks pinkened. “I’m sorry,” Dia apologized sheepishly. “I don’t know how to react to all this stuff. Plaisir just seems so abstract and more like a cool tourist place than a mansion like this… Sometimes it just makes me feel like I’m playing pretend and I keep thinking that this is just a game.”
I leaned forward on my knees and gazed down at the floor. “I doubt that will get better once the baby is here.” It obviously wasn’t the most helpful thing to say, but it was truthful.
Lydia was entering into my life in a legal capacity as much as a spiritual one, and because I was a public figure with two well-known parents and grew up in the spotlight of society pages, my life was open for people to gawk at and hers would be to. I guess it was presumptive to assume she would fall into the spot beside me, taking up the title of Mrs. Patrick Rosing and becoming the next young woman to enter the scene. I assumed we would have a big house in the Hamptons, that Lydia would happily become one of the socialites, and that our kids would have a nanny that spoke multiple languages. Probably multiple nannies.
It wasn’t like this was completely unfounded; she loved designer clothes, she got excited about dressing up for events, and mum said she fit in perfectly with her club and that the women loved her. And Lydia had told me about wanting to have kids early, to be a mom and a wife and I just assumed that meant that she would fit perfectly into my world. How could she possibly feel like she was just an imposter when she ticked all the boxes?
She shrugged and took the spot next to me, smoothing out the black evening gown distractedly before she said anything. “Your mom, Lucy, wants to bring me to some sort of party – the swan party?”
The Swan Society. Mum brought me as a teen to meet the debutantes, Lydia would be too old to enter as a debutante now but that wouldn’t stop mum from having her join as a guest. “That’s where we sacrifice the poor,” I teased. “She’ll introduce you to women that will show you the best way to get drunk at lunch and still be just sober enough to still talk to me at dinner.”
Lydia looked away, smirking and clearly trying not to laugh. “I promise not to be drunk all the time if you promise not to cheat on me with the nanny.”
“You changed your mind on the nanny?” Instantly I was at attention, standing up straight and focusing all my attention on her. “French or Spanish ones are the best.”
“You mean the prettiest?”
My mouth twitched at the corner and I tried not to smile when she smacked my arm again. I pulled her to my side, pressing kisses into her hair while her arms wrapped around me. We sat like this for a while, just holding each other in the quiet solitude of my old room. I brushed my hand down her back, feeling the silky material of her dress. It was nice to have the weekend here with her like this, just us for the first time in a long time.
When I felt her draw in a shaky breath, I froze. “Sweetheart? What’s wrong?”
She shook her head against my shoulder and refused to meet my eyes. “I just feel like a liar pretending to all these people that it’s just us and having your moms talk about what a cute baby you were—” she broke off abruptly and yanked open her purse for a fistful of tissues. “I was a fucking idiot thinking that this would be easier now.”
“It will be easier,” I soothed, rubbing her back. “Yes, it would probably be easier if Jon wasn’t involved and if that wasn’t his baby but that’s not something we can change anymore.”
There were still days when I was resentful, others where I was grateful to have another person to lean on – it was a mixed bag. Just like any other relationship.
“I hate when you say that. It just makes me think you don’t want to be here.” Her voice shook and she stared resolutely down at her hands clutching the tissues.
Tears dripped down her cheeks onto her lap, I reached out to wipe them away, taking a moment to marvel at the warmth and softness of her skin. I love you. It’s just hard sometimes. “I want to, but you know how I feel.”
She shook her head and refused to look at me. I gently cupped her chin and forced her to meet my eyes, I wanted to be completely honest with each other about this and that was the first step. “I feel like I have to work harder than he does, that you forgive him quicker and it bothers me. And maybe it’s childish but I like knowing that everyone downstairs thinks it’s just you and me because that’s how I always wanted us.”
Watery grey eyes stared back at me in disbelief. “Jon loved me,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “He loved me openly and honestly and I never felt the same thing from you. I knew you cared but sometimes it just felt like a tug-of-war between you two and you just didn’t want to lose.”
“That’s not true; I always wanted to be with you but it hurt so, so fucking much that no matter what I did you still wanted him.”
“Of course, I still wanted him! I had a prior relationship with him, Pat. We had a foundation and you and I were still fighting over how to figure out what we meant to each other.”
I wished it could be just us, but I loved her regardless and I knew now that I needed Jon too, but that didn’t change how painful it was to know that she wanted him. And still wants him. She even had a physical tie to him now.
It wasn’t my baby. The life inside my beautiful, bubbly, excitable fiancée wasn’t created by me, but rather by the man who had admitted the tactics he used to lure her away from me. If I had been told several months ago, say back in June, that she would be carrying his child, my reaction wouldn’t have been so accepting. I wouldn’t have been nearly as gentle when I tackled him to the floor, and he certainly wouldn’t have gotten back up if I did. Back then I doubted I would have even gone with them to the Bahamas. I hadn’t even been sure that she and I would have a relationship when we came back.
But that was then and this was now, and I was willing to admit to that my jealousy amounted to little more than unresolved sexual tension and confusion over my sexuality. Jon loved Lydia, I loved Lydia, and Jon and I also loved each other. I just wasn’t saying that part out loud. And I also loved that baby, because even if it wasn’t part me, it was part her.
That didn’t mean that it wasn’t a lot to cope with, that I wasn’t struggling with seeing such a permanent, tangible connection between them.
“I can’t change how I felt, but love you now, for everything that my words are worth.”
The last time she looked this upset, she had been sobbing in my arms and explaining to me the process of the abortion. I wanted to reach for her, to explain away her despair but I didn’t know how. Jon was better with words than I was, all I could offer her was physical affection and a literal shoulder to cry on. Somehow, I didn’t think that would be much appreciated right now.
She gazed up at me and suddenly she was in my arms, clinging to me as her mouth sought mine and her fingers twisted into my hair. We fell back against the bed, my fingers dug into her hips and I felt her tearing at my jacket.
“I love you,” she whispered, her voice still thick. “I’m sorry if I haven’t shown that to you.”
“Kitten, you don’t have to show me like this.” I didn’t want her to ever think that sex was synonymous with love in our relationship, I didn’t need one to prove the other.
She froze and I suddenly realized that I had actually just rejected her for the first time. “I’m sorry,” she apologized as she pushed herself back up. “I should have asked—”
Her face was bright red but her reaction, her guilt, made me cut her off by dragging her back down to me for another kiss, my hand clutching the back of her neck. “I didn’t mean it like that. Just lay here with me for a minute.”
Lydia rolled off me and laid her head beside mine on the pillow, gazing at me curiously. Between us, our fingers brushed and I slowly took her hand in mine while I held her gaze. She smiled faintly and reached up with her other hand to touch my cheek.
“I think we should do this more often,” I said, breaking the quiet.
“Run away for a day or two?”
I nodded. “Just us. You could do that with Jon once in a while, he and I could too, just to get our own time.” Was that weird? Were there rules to this that I didn’t know about?
“I think that sounds nice.” She paused and her smile grew wider. “Are you and I taking a honeymoon?”
I smirked back at her as I squeezed her hand. “Well, that would be spoiling the surprise.”
Dia laughed against my shoulder and we stayed there for a while longer, just listening to the sound of people calling numbers and cheering from the auction. It was well past dinner before we made it downstairs again and I immediately steered her towards the dancefloor, eager to do all the small things we could together while we were here for the weekend. I was glad Jon encouraged us to come here by ourselves, I think we needed it.