It comes again.Bang. Bang. Bang.
“I’ll get it,” I say, untangling my legs.
“What if it’s the police?” Marcus’s eyes are wide. “Or your scorned fiancé with a guitar serenade?”
“Daniel doesn’t know how to play the guitar!”
“A man scorned learns quickly.”
I pad to the door, the floorboards cold under my socks. I lean in, my eye to the peephole and the world narrows to a fishbowldistortion of the hallway. In its center, standing with the poised impatience of a queen whose carriage has broken down in a dubious neighborhood, is my mother.
She is, inexplicably, perfectly put together. It’s as if she’s been beamed from her sunroom, bypassing the indignity of commercial air travel altogether. A silk scarf is at her throat and a single, perfect leather weekend bag at her feet—Louis Vuitton, the hard-sided one that implies she is visiting, not staying.
I almost wish it was the police instead.
I open the door and my brain just…shorts out. No words will come. My mouth opens a little, but there’s nothing. This is probably why I haven’t called in almost three months—because every time I think about it, my mind goes blank like this, a white noise of panic and guilt.
Her eyes—the exact same shade of hazel as mine, but colder, like polished stone—do a slow, agonizingly thorough descent down my body. I can almost hear the internal tally of my failures as she takes in Marcus’s ancient NYU sweatshirt—pilfered from the lost-and-found pile by the couch with a salsa stain near the hem—and my rattiest flannel pajama pants that have a tiny hole in the knee. I’m barefoot, my toes curling against the cold, peeling linoleum of the entryway.
My mother closes her eyes for one brief, pained second, as if seeking divine patience.
I try to make my mouth work. “Mo—”
“Do not,” she says, her voice a cool, sharp blade. “Do not say one word, Annemarie.”
I swallow hard, the familiar sting of my full name hitting me like a slap in the face. She looks past me into the apartment, her nose wrinkling as if the air itself is repulsive—which, to be fair, between the trash that needs to go out, the mystery meat and Marcus’s lingering incense, it probably is.
“I cannotbelieve,” she says, her tone vibrating with a repressed, high-octane fury, “that my daughter has dragged me out to this godforsaken bohemian flophouse to retrieve her.”
I try to swallow the lump in my throat, but she’s already moving on.
“You will be at The Carlyle at five o’clock sharp tomorrow evening. Not five-oh-one. Not five-ten.Five.Your father and Daniel will be waiting, and their patience is significantly thinner than mine.”
“Daniel is here?” I manage to squeak out, my voice sounding like it belongs to a much smaller, much more intimidated version of myself.
“I said no speaking,” she snaps. Her eyes flash to my hair—my so-called tragic bangs. A small tremor of genuine horror crosses her face. “You will be showered. You will be composed. You will not make this any harder than you’ve already made it for all of us. And for the love of everything holy, you willnotlook…like this. I’ve left a garment bag at the front desk for you. Wear it. Fix…whatever is happening with your forehead.”
She gives the apartment one last, withering glance, and turns on her heel. She sharply tosses back, “Five o’clock, Annemarie. Do not make me come back here again.”
Before I can even catch my breath, she’s stomping off toward the stairs, her posture ramrod straight, her shoulders set. Every clack of her heels against the hallway floor sounds like a gavel hitting a bench.Clack. Clack. Clack. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.
The harbor, it seems, was only a temporary port after all. The real storm has just walked in, wearing a pair of Jimmy Choos.
Chapter 20
LEO
“You’re sure you don’t want to come?”
Annie is at the counter, meticulously assembling a turkey sandwich for Emma. She’s spreading mayo on wheat bread, the carefulscrape-scrapeof the knife filling the kitchen. In the living room, Emma is narrating a Barbie drama that involves a plastic convertible and what sounds like grand theft auto.
“I’m sure,” Annie says, her eyes fixed on the crusts. “Call me crazy, but I think your current girlfriend—or whatever we’re calling this precarious little thing we’re doing—tagging along to watch you meet up with the woman who left your life almost nine months ago is sort of a recipe for disaster.”
I smirk, leaning against the counter, watching the sunlight catch the faint streaks of gold in her hair. “I don’t know. It could be entertaining. Like a really awkward episode of Jerry Springer.”
“Hard pass.”
I step closer, invading her personal space until the smell of her coconut shampoo fills my lungs. I wrap my hands around her waist and turn her away from the wheat bread. She barely has time to set down the butter knife before I’m kissing her.
