“You also said nothing was going to change, but that wasn’t true. Howcouldit be?”
“I… don’t know. Did we really say that to you?”
“You really did.”
Blair didn’t know how to explain that she was still learning that wanting something to be true wasn’t the same as it actually being true. “I guess we thought that since you were off to college, our split wouldn’t affect your day-to-day life.” That had been the whole point of waiting. But she couldn’t say it like that. She couldn’t make herself into a martyr.
“But it would affect my interior life,” Esme said. “Itdidaffect my interior life. How could it not?”
How could it not?Blair felt like a complete idiot. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s OK. It’s your life. You can’t live your life for me. I get that. And I want you to be happy. If you have a boyfriend, I want to be glad for you, and I want to get to know him and all that. That’s why I asked.”
I want to be glad for you.That wasn’t the same asI am glad for you.
“Do you want me to ask Dad if he wants to do Christmas together?” Blair was still disappointed that she wasn’t going to see Esme or Cal for Thanksgiving. Maybe doing a family Christmas was a good idea. The kids wouldn’t have to choose which house to be at, or have to house-hop and eat two dinners.
Esme’s face lit up. “Can we… do that?”
“Sure.” Did Blair want to spend Christmas with Reggie? And, potentially, his new “ladylove,” assuming she was still around next month? No. Was she willing to do so to make Esme happy? Absolutely. “What does Cal say about this?”
“I don’t think he has much of an interior life, so I don’t think he really cares.” Esme made a face that Blair interpreted as a sign that she was joking, but Blair resolved to find a way to bring up the divorce with Cal.
“Anyway, you have to go watch TV with your weird renter novelist man who is not your boyfriend, and I’m going to a concert, so I’ll talk to you later.”
Blair, who was supposedly in a hurry, went to the bathroom and stared at herself in the mirror. What was she doing? Hard to say. Maybe beating herself up for having thought that Esme would be unaffected by the divorce. Maybe dreading Christmas with Reggie.
Maybe wondering how this was her life now.
She didn’t let it go on too long—there was no point in brooding when she was late for her TV date—before she made her way across the backyard.
“I ordered soup.” Jack stepped back to let her in. “Is that weird?”
“Why would it be weird?”
“I don’t know. I was just thinking about how it’s mid-November. At home this would be soup season. I like soup. But soup doesn’t seem very LA.”
“Soup isveryLA because it is—or can be—low-cal.”
“This is not low-cal soup.” He led her to a counter on which sat four big containers of soup and a baguette. He made a game show hostess gesture that was amusingly incongruent coming from him. “Lobster bisque, beef stew, mulligatawny, and grilled cheese.”
“Grilled cheese soup? What does that even mean?”
“I think it’s just cheese soup with croutons.” He pointed at a small container near the large one. “They’re on the side.”
“I find myself really excited for soup. I don’t think there’s anything weird about this at all.”
“I ordered the soup, and then I didn’t know what to do about the gate, so I just went and stood outside it. So there I was standing in the hills waiting for my soup in my shorts in November. For me, it was weird. How could it not be?”
How could it not be?That was a variation on the question Esme had just asked her. Blair was still unsettled by that conversation, butshe ordered herself to get her act together. “What might be weird is if I have four bowls of soup. It smells amazing.”
“What’s the matter?”
“What?”
“You’re acting strange.”
What do you mean?
