Lydia
Danielle Plumber had stood straight-faced in front of some shitty gossip “reporter” and told them that I had a history of targeting men for their money. She’d also told them that I had multiple relationships with older men. I hadn’t spoken to her since sophomore year of college when I told her to never contact me again, because no matter how hard I had tried to fix it my own mother hated me.
The ‘gold-digging past’ she referred to were three guys I had dated at Berkeley – all three came from extremely wealthy families, and those relationships all ended in under six months. Obviously, that meant I was after money. However, the other ‘relationships’ she referred to was when I snuck into a frat party with friends and lost my virginity to a guy that turned out to be twenty-one, I was seventeen and had told him I was a college freshman. The other was a short-term foster parent who tried to sexually assault me while home alone.
None of these things made me a villain, or a gold-digger with daddy issues, I just had a turbulent past that I had gone through extensive treatment for. And quite fucking frankly if someone had told me last year that I would be dating a man twice my age, or even just fourteen years older as with Patrick, then I would have laughed in their face. But theoretical situations didn’t compare to my mother standing there lying about me and taking my past out of context for five minutes of internet fame. I almost had to wonder if they offered her money. No matter why she chose to do it didn’t matter right then, I was just a puddle of tears on the couch that couldn’t speak.
I heard the men talking, vague little snippets of conversations that I couldn’t process at that second. The tears blinded me and I was quickly running out of tissues, eventually I just buried my face in the blanket over my knees. I felt worse knowing that Patrick had just gotten information that could potentially change his life, and yet I was the centre of attention for a scandal that was already dying out.
“Lydia,” Jon whispered, touching my shoulder gently. “I’m going to gather up your things, we’re leaving in an hour. Alright?”
Leaving? “Where are we going?” I asked between sniffles.
“Home, baby. We’ll be back in New York soon.” He stroked my hair as he spoke, his eyes a dark blue and heavy with circles under them.
I nodded wordlessly and leaned against the back of the couch. I needed to help them pack, to be useful, to not wallow for once. It took several minutes but I managed to get my depressed ass off the couch with the blanket wrapped around my shoulders and wandered down the hall. The least I could do was pack my own stuff.
As I passed Patrick’s room, I stopped in my tracks. The door was closed but I could hear their voices coming through muffled.
“I told you she wasn’t okay.” That sounded like Jon.
“I know that, I never said she was fine—”
“Yes, you did! I don’t want any more of this bullshit when we get back, you need to start putting her first.” I could almost see Jon getting into standoff position in my minds-eye, all crossed arms and icy glare.
“Well, that’s pretty fucking hard to do right now,” Patrick snapped, his voice rising. “I’m going through my own problems here; in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Your sperm donor is dying, a person you’ve never even met, her mother just said some of the most awful shit I’ve ever read. This isn’t the same.”
Their voices were getting quieter and I assumed they were moving around the room, I tried to press my ear to the door, not realizing it wasn’t shut all the way and stumbling forward into Patrick’s bedroom. Oh, fuck me. I managed to catch myself on the bedpost before hitting the floor, but my face burned with embarrassment as I quickly straightened up.
“I wasn’t eavesdropping,” I lied immediately.
The men stood next to each other, surprisingly close, with their eyes locked on me – Patrick’s face a mix of shock and amusement, Jon looked like he was absolutely done with my shit.
“You were just checking to make sure the door still worked?” Pat asked.
“Works great, very thin,” I agreed. “I’m gonna go pack now…”
“Jesus Christ,” Jon muttered, rubbing his face.
The younger man just snickered and tossed his suitcase on the bed as I backed out of the room and shut the door behind me. I liked that I could get them to stop bickering, it just wasn’t so great that I had to embarrass myself to do it.
Less than an hour later we were boarding the company jet and leaving the Bahamas. Pretty much just as quickly as we got here if I was honest. The jet was just as nice as I remembered but I was confused as to why it was here at all – it should have been stationed in the States, and there until we called it to us. And Jon was about to be officially out of the company, it made no sense for him to be allowed to use it.
I wanted to ask him, and I could see the purposely blank look he kept as we boarded the plane, completely avoiding meeting my gaze. Maybe he thought I didn’t know about his little rendezvous with Christine, but I wasn’t an idiot and my phone still got his calendar updates. I knew more about his visits with her than he thought I did, I just wanted him to be the one to admit it to me.
They both went off to play with their computers after take-off and I wandered the cabin for a bit, sipping away at my cocktail as I mulled over what was going to happen when I got back home. I already knew I was confronting Danielle; I just didn’t think I could tell the guys. They’d probably want to go with me. Or try and talk me out of it. Ugh. I sank down into the plush beige captain’s chair beside the window. I wonder what she would say right now… My mother had talked endlessly about her desire to travel when I was little, when I still lived with her. She was never able to do any to my knowledge, and I couldn’t help but compare the tiny two bedroom house I grew up in to the fact that I was sitting in a multimillion-dollar jet looking out on the ocean and returning to the States with my richer-than-god boyfriends, plural.
Maybe she hated me because I had something better now, or maybe I was just cynical and being unfair out of anger. It sure felt like she hated me for having things she didn’t. I glanced down at myself and smirked, I really hadn’t come that far – my sweatpants and cropped tank top were Walmart couture and my phone bill was overdue. Jet or no, I still had my own mundane problems.
I watched the sky darken as I finished my drink before I finally got up and found my way to the back bedroom. Inside, the guys were stretched out on the bed and playing on their phones – again, sitting so close that they were arm to arm. I flopped down on the side of the bed face down, watching them from behind a wall of my hair.
“Do I have to be the big spoon now?” I asked, feigning a pout.
“You want to learn to top, being a big spoon shouldn’t be a problem,” Jon answered without looking up.
“Pat,” I whined. “He’s picking on me.”
“I’m not taking sides, Lydia.”
“Will you take this side of the bed at least. So that I can feel special in the middle?”
The snort that came from him as he lolled his head to the side and stared down at me was so indignant that I couldn’t stop laughing. Patrick shifted suddenly and Jon grabbed my arm to pull me between them. They barricaded me in on either side and I snuggled up happily, my fingers laced with Pat’s and holding onto Jon’s bicep with my other hand.
“Is that special enough for you?” Patrick asked as he kissed my hand.
“Listen, I only need a few things in this world, one of them is to be the centre of attention at all times.”
“Oh, to have the unfaltering confidence of a twenty-three-year-old,” Jon muttered.
“Oh, to have the bitterness of a middle-aged man,” I retorted, poking him in the ribs.
“Both of you are children and I’m trying to read here,” Patrick jutted in. “Go flirt in the cabin before you start going at it.”
“Bitterness of two middle-aged men,” I corrected. He just shook his head and I frowned before rolling over kiss his shoulder. “Do you want to talk about the email?”
He shrugged. “Not particularly.”
“Okay. Are you going to Poland?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you want to meet your father?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do—”
“Dia,” he interrupted exasperatedly. “I don’t know. Please, baby, just leave it alone for now.”
Ouch. I sat back against the headboard and chewed my thumbnail, trying not to draw attention to my watering eyes. I just wanted him to talk to me, I wanted to be there for him. Why did he have to push me away? Jon rubbed my thigh reassuringly and I risked a glance at him; he was watching me just as the first tear rolled down my cheek. He glanced at Patrick, clearly unsure what to say and not wanting to step on toes.
I stayed there for a minute longer before crawling down the foot of the bed and heading back to the main cabin. Having him talk to me about the important things would go a long way to making me feel better about being ignored for two months, and I knew he wanted to talk about it since the first thing he did was go to Jon.
“Lydia…”
I glanced over my shoulder from the chair to see Patrick standing just behind me, hands in the pockets of his shorts and slouching against the seat beside him. “What?”
“I’m not trying to be a dick,” he explained. “This isn’t how I talk to people, sweetheart. I can’t talk about everything like this, not with everyone.”
“You should be able to do it with me, Pat. How am I supposed to just trust you and live with you and not want to be a part of your life…” I stared straight ahead at the cockpit doors, scratching my nails on the leather seat.
“That isn’t at all what I said, and you know it. I’m not as open as you’d like me to be, I get that, it’s pretty clear, but that isn’t going to change at the drop of a hat.”
“But you’re not even trying.” Frustration was getting the better of me and fighting with him like this made me feel like a child. “You talk to Jon, I know you do. So, why not me too?”
Patrick came around to stand in front of me. “It’s different—”
“What’s different? I’ve bent over backward for you, literally taken it up the ass, and you can’t even talk to me.”
“My relationship with Jon is different, he’s a man, he understands.”
Wow talk about a punch to the gut. “You can’t talk to me because I have a vagina? Should I go get a strap-on and try to talk to you again later?”
A muscle in his jaw twitched and he had to look away to fight the smile spreading across his face. “That would be an interesting sight, I gotta admit, but it would probably take more than that.” He sat down in the chair opposite me and reached for my hand, I refused to take the offer. “You’re picking a fight with me about this either because you don’t want to focus on what your mother said, or because you don’t want us to start asking about her.”
“That’s not true,” I said adamantly, shaking my head at him.
“Alright, then how do you feel about her coming back into your life like this?”
It was on the very tip of my tongue to say ‘I don’t want to talk about it’, but it died out as I clued in that Patrick was right and I was picking a fight over nothing. “I don’t like you right now,” I complained haughtily. “You’re not allowed to be reasonable, that’s supposed to be Jon’s role.”
“I’ll let you in on a secret; I’m usually pretty reasonable but I feel like I’m a teenager again when I’m with you. You make me argumentative,” he teased.
I finally met his gaze; he was smirking, and his amber eyes had that amused glint I remembered all too well. “I swear that arguing with you has become a daily event.”
He reached out a hand again and this time I took it as I got up to sit in his lap instead. Patrick held me close while pulling my legs up over the armrest of his seat. “I like arguing with you,” he murmured against my hair.
I laughed and tucked my head under his chin, just enjoying the closeness and scent of his bodywash. “I’m going back to my place when we land,” I told him quietly.
“Like, tomorrow morning when things are a little more normal – right?”
“No, like as soon as we land…” I trailed off and toyed with the soft cotton of his shirt, trying not to make him panic with my next words, “I’m going to go see her.”
“We can come with you—”
“I want to go alone,” I interrupted. “You’ve got a lot to deal with, Jon too, you guys need to stay in New York.” I’m going to see if Allie wants to come with me. I didn’t tell him that, I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
“Where is your mother? Is she in California, or did she leave? How do even know where she is?” he asked quickly, clearly trying to poke holes in my plan.
“She wouldn’t have gone far, I know where she is.” It wasn’t entirely a lie; I knew she stayed in Monterey, and I was pretty sure I could remember how to get to her house.
“Dia, think this through, don’t just rush off to confront her,” Patrick cautioned. His tone told me he thought this was a terrible idea.
“I’ll think about it,” I answered noncommittally. “I’m still going back to my place, being locked up with you two for so long has fried me and I would like to remember what a quiet apartment is like.”
He laughed and I felt him shake under me from the force. “Thank you, just think on it for a little while.”
I didn’t reply, just nodded and leaned against him, already formulating my plan. A short while later, Jon came to sit with us in the cabin. It felt nice to have them near me, even better for none of us to be arguing and me not to be crying. Two hours later, when we finally landed in New York the Pullman was waiting to pick us all up. Jon wasn’t too enthused about my going home, but neither of the men got a say in that.
When I saw the tall redbrick building come into view my heart started to pound; I hadn’t been home in what felt like eternity and I couldn’t wait just to feel like I was in the right place again. Stepping into the apartment was like walking into a field after a battle; it was surprisingly cold, my shit was everywhere, and it was deathly quiet. I didn’t stay long, I just changed into a pair of shorts and stuffed some more clothing from my luggage into a duffle bag. Once I had the necessities I was tossing it in the trunk of the older Toyota Corolla.
As I slid into the driver’s seat I pulled out my phone to text Allie.
7:04 PM Me
Back in NY and I’m going to see her. Are you coming?
7:04 PM Allie
You know it, I’ll be out front in twenty minutes.