“Yes, that they’d report it to the police. And they said they’d tell Ella I bribed her way into Amherst, which honestly concerns me a lot more. The police will eventually figure out the truth. But Ella? This will be the perfect excuse for her to be done with me.”
I knew that feeling, too. My own phone vibrated in my hand then.
Call me ASAP.Aidan, great.
Aidan loved to cryptically demand my immediate attention on weekend mornings when I might be indisposed. He knew it would work because I’d worry it had to do with Cleo. I was still Cleo’s official emergency contact. I’d spent twenty years filling out the camp forms, school forms, doctor’s forms, emergency forms for programs and classes and school outings that Aidan barely knew existed. So even now, if Cleo was sick or injured or incapacitated, it was my phone that would ring. But if she had some kind of crisis where she was able to pick up the phone herself? She’d call Aidan, no question. They were far closer. That had been true ever since Cleo was a teenager. But it was especially true since the whole Kyle situation.
“Nowyoulook worried,” Doug said, nodding toward my phone.
“I should probably go outside and take this,” I said. “It’s Aidan.”
This time Doug put his hand on my back. “I’m sorry.”
Doug got it, all of it. After only three weeks, I felt like he saw me in a way that Aidan never had.
“Can we get together again soon?” I asked as I stood.
Doug smiled. “I’m counting on it.”
I dialed Aidan from the sidewalk on West Street, the memory of Doug’s hands on me evaporating quickly in the chilly April air.
“Well, hello.” Aidan’s tone was sharp, theIt took you long enoughimplied. “Sorry to tear you away from … whoever.”
He did a convincing job of sounding wounded. Technically, it had been my idea to separate, though Aidan had essentially left me no choice. And Aidan did want to “work on things”—meaning he wanted me to forget what had happened and go back to pretending everything was fine.
But it was definitely my idea to keep our separation a secret from Cleo and to wait to do anything official, like divorce, untilafter NYU let out for the summer. She’d only recently dug herself out of the academic hole she’d fallen into during her time dating Kyle. I didn’t want to be responsible for yet another setback. But it was also true that I knew a divorce, even a separation, would probably be the final nail inmycoffin. Abandoning her beloved dad would be all the proof she needed that I was the awful, unfeeling monster she had cast me as during our most recent face-off.
“What’s up, Aidan?” Sirens blared around the corner, one of those never-ending parades of fire trucks headed up the West Side Highway. I pressed a finger to my ear.
“It’s about Cleo,” he said.
“Really?” It was neveractuallyabout Cleo. “Tell me.”
“Where are you? You sound like you’re standing in the middle of the BQE. If this guy has an apartment that close to the highway, I’d get a new boyfriend.”
“Aidan, what’s the matter with Cleo?”
“Look, I’m handling it,” he said.
“Handling what?”
“Don’t yell at me.”
“I’m not yelling.” But he was right: Iwaskind of yelling. “Don’t tell me this is about Kyle.”
“Kyle? This has nothing to do with him. I think you made sure of that.”
“Luckily.”
“Not sure Cleo sees it that way.”
Of course she didn’t. The mess with Kyle had pushed things between Cleo and me from dicey to outright hostile. I’d threatened not to pay for school unless she broke up with him—her deadbeat drug dealer boyfriend. Herrichdeadbeat drug dealer boyfriend. But every time I thought about how aggressive my threat had sounded, how angry and punitive, I felt worse. In my defense, Kyle had gotten Cleo mixed up in dealing drugs. Not using, luckily,justdealing. But still. Kyle, a trust-fund drugdealer, who was probably only doing it in the first place to piss off his rich parents.
Cleo had mentioned casually to Aidan that Kyle was doing “a little dealing” on campus. To Aidan’s credit, he’d told me right away. At which point, I’d muscled my way to the bottom of the situation. And I did what I do best: I made the problem go away.
First by forcing Cleo to break it off. Then by going directly to Kyle to drive my point home. Neither Cleo nor Aidan knew about that second piece, of course; nice corporate law partners don’t show up with cops, making illegal threats. And the threats I’d made to Cleo herself had given her more than enough reason to stop speaking to me. Still, I’d do it all again if I had to.
“Anyway, it’s not Kyle,” Aidan went on. “Cleo asked to borrow money.”
