She pressed the button to open the gate.
She let out a controlled exhalation, counting down from seven. She was pretty sure she’d forestalled the cyclone, but she was paranoid enough to keep doing the breathing. “You should go,” she said to Jack as she smoothed her hair in a mirror by the front door.
He did not go. Of course he didn’t.
“Don’t let them in. You don’t need this right now.”
“Oh, andyouknow what I need?” she said, abandoning her breath control.
“Well, I can tell you’re not happy about this.”
She turned and shot him what she intended to be a withering look. “You can tell I’m not happy when I haven’t said a word?” She was being so bitchy, but she couldn’t seem to stop. She didn’twantto stop. Being bitchy, in this moment, made her feel powerful. Like she had some control.
“Yes, I can. You look the opposite of the way you did when Esme showed up. Your response then was… expansive.”
“My response wasexpansive?” she echoed. The nerve of him. He sounded like he was describing one of his characters.
“Yes. This is the opposite of that. I’m seeing a… curling in. A bracing.”
Since she couldn’t get rid of him, she decided to ignore him.She opened the front door and… there they were. Kitty and Carson Kellermoon. Her mother wore a yellow shirtdress with a white cardigan and her ever-present strand of pearls. Her father, with his sparkling-eyed Southern-gentleman charm, was wearing his travel uniform of dark jeans and a baby-blue seersucker sport coat.
“Surprise,” Kitty said dryly. “Judging by your face, anyway.”
Blair stepped back to let them in. “It certainly is.” She resumed her breath counting—on the sly—just in case.
“Well, if you would check your texts, you’d have known we were coming,” Kitty said, her tone taking on an edge that probably only Blair could hear.
“You think we’re going to let our daughter the new divorcée spend Christmas alone?” her dad asked, and bless him, he probably thought he was doing a good deed. He just didn’t understand that he was merely a pawn in the Kitty Kellermoon chess game.
“I’m not alone,” Blair said. She glanced at Jack, who was watching the proceedings from the kitchen. She still wished he would leave—didn’t she? “And it’s not Christmas for another week and a half,” she added. As if arguing semantics were at all helpful.
Kitty eyed Jack. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”
Jack came over with his hand extended. Look at him with some actual manners. “Jack Branksome.”
“The novelist?”
“Jack is staying in the pool house,” Blair said. The last thing she needed was her parents thinking she was sleeping with Jack—or anyone—so soon after the divorce. Of course, the fact that he was shirtless and in pajama pants wasn’t helping on that front. At least she was still in her party dress.
“I’ll get out of your hair,” Jack said.Finally.Blair would have laughed if she wasn’t still so annoyed. Jack had been so determined to stay, earlier, but a few seconds in the presence of Kitty Kellermoon and he’d changed his tune.
“Oh, goodness, don’t let us drive you off, Mr. Branksome,” her mother said. “We’re checked into the Beverly Hilton. We were just intending to say hello, but clearly we’re…” Her eyes darted back and forth between Blair and Jack. “Better off waiting until morning.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” Blair said.Why didn’t youaskme?
“We did,” Kitty said. “We texted several times.”
Oh no. She knew what was happening here.
“Did you text me or Reggie?” Her parents had their numbers mixed up, had since they’d joined the cell phone era, and no matter how many times over how many years Blair had pleaded with them to flip them in their contacts, they never did. It hadn’t been a huge problem, before, because Reggie had been around.
She looked at her own phone, at the several unread texts she had from Reggie. Reggie had gotten the hang of the co-parenting app, and in an effort to keep him from intruding too much on her life and her mental space, she had taken to ignoring his texts. They were almost always links to articles about inside-baseball Hollywood stuff Blair had already read.
She feared she had made a strategic error. She clicked open the thread, and… yep.
Reggie:Your parents have been texting me. I’m forwarding this latest one. Sounds like they’re inviting themselves for Christmas. Have fun with that.
Reggie:And can you tell them to finally fix their damn contacts? One of the perks of being divorced should be that I don’t have to communicate with your parents anymore.
