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Billie glowers when she notices Elodie crossing the restaurant toward us. Deep in my gut, I’m both proud and sick at once watching her walk toward the hardest table she’ll ever sit down at. She’s terrified and is determined to look like she isn’t.
I’m the only one who can tell, because she’s stunning.
My love wears a plain, dark dress. No jewelry. Nothing a tabloid could turn into a caption if they managed to sneak past security.
Elodie agonized over her outfit. Spent the whole afternoon mixing and matching everything she brought on this trip, trying to find the perfect outfit. Wouldn’t let me take her shopping on Rodeo drive because she wants my children to accept her as she is. It would kill her to show up in a designer dress and rub our relationship in their face.
As she gets nearer, I stand. Theo stands too, because his mother raised him right. Billie stays down one beat too long, making the point, then gets up like it costs her every ounce of dignity she possesses.
“Hi.” Elodie offers her hand to Theo first, reading the room, going for the potential ally. “Theo. It’s nice to meet you at this deeply weird dinner.”
Theo grips it tightly and uses the contact to pull her into a hug. I watch her nearly buckle at the small mercy of his acceptance.
“Nice weird or bad weird?” He lets her go. “I’m still deciding. Grab a breadstick, my sister’s been executing them one at a time.”
Elodie laughs, and turns to Billie.
“Billie. Hi again.” No hand this time. “Thank you for coming.”
Billie smiles. It’s her mother’s gorgeous smile, but with every degree of warmth drained out of it. “Of course I came. Wouldn’t miss it.” She tips her head to the side. “It’s not every day you get to grill the chick who’s destroying your family.”
Elodie takes it on the chin. She told me she would. An hour ago, upstairs, she held my face in both hands and said, “If I were your daughter I’d want to scratch my eyes out too. Let her hate me, I can handle the heat. Don’t you dare defend me and make it worse.”
So, despite my instinct to protect her, I force myself to let Elodie absorb the impact of my daughter’s vitriol. It’s my own private hell. I wish we’d postponed this face off. It’s too soon. I can’t have the two women I love most in the world at odds because of me.
Luckily, Billie settles down and opts to sulk instead of sass. Though awkward, we talk about neutral subjects. My tour. The weather. Theo’s thesis. It nearly passes for a normal dinner, although I deliberately keep my hands to myself. No arm around Elodie’s shoulder or other affection to shove down their throat.
Peace holds until the entrees come and I forget myself for one second. Elodie says something dry and witty about the festival tomorrow along the lines of how men our age will be crowd-surfing on replaced hips. It’s so acerbically funny, a real chortle bursts out of me. Probably the first true laugh Theo and Billie have seen since Yolanda got sick.
Without thought, I lay my hand over Elodie’s on the tablecloth and squeeze her fingers between mine.
Billie watches the whole thing and goes still.
“I can’t.” She looks down at her plate. Stands. Her chair barks against the floor. “I’m sorry. Dad, but no. No. Thank. You. I’m out. I’ll call you, Theo.”
She lifts her bag and storms out of the restaurant, past the Ficus and the host who exists to protect her from this very moment, through the doors into the flashbulbs she’ll hate herself all night for feeding.
The three of us go quiet. Theo blows out a breath. Elodie turns her hand up under mine grasping for dear life, eyes down on the linen, trying not to cry.
“That went well.” Theo shrugs and refills his wine.
It’s the wrong thing and it’s the only right thing about tonight.
Elodie lets out a wet, exhausted little giggle and I shake my head at the ruins of a dinner I planned for weeks.
Unable to fix a single thing.
nineteen
A Few Months Later
It’s the first night in the remodeled master bedroom.
Beau hangs me from the ceiling.
He’s been smug about some surprise he had in store. Told me he was installing it while the room was still torn up. Silly me, I’d assumed he meant a light fixture or some rockstar art piece.
What he actually meant was a sex swing. In his complete remodel of the master bedroom, where he could do anything he wanted, Beau opted for kinky. The wide, padded harness of black straps is suspended by a discreet set of anchor points in a beam over the bed. When it’s not in use, it’s hidden in a panel in the wall with one press of a button. Like it was never there.
