Fake It 'til You Make It, page 22
I want her despite knowing I ought not to, not right now.
She’s just out of a long-term relationship and I can’t say for sure that she doesn’t still have feelings for her ex.
Feck.
I start walking back along the corridor to my bedroom.
But the one person I want to talk to about all of this is behind that door.
And I can’t talk to Abbey.
Not until I’m willing to tell her the truth. Take the risk.
She deserves as much.
I turn back toward her room. It’s time.
I raise my fist to knock on her door and—
‘Michael? What are you doing?’
I near jump out of my skin. ‘Mrs Mitchell.’
I don’t know what to do first: explain why I’m standing in the corridor outside of Abbey’s room wearing my boxer briefs and a T-shirt, or hold my hands over my crotch.
‘I was just—’
She smiles at me knowingly, or so she thinks. With a mischievous twinkle in her eye, she says, ‘Goodnight, Michael.’
She really has no idea. ‘Goodnight, Mrs Mitchell.’
Once she is safely behind her own bedroom door, I head back to mine.
Tomorrow. I’m telling Abbey tomorrow.
37
ABBEY
We come to a stop on the forecourt, to one of Banff’s finest hotels – a castle amongst mountains – and Mike turns off the engine of my Fiat 500, which he has once again managed to squish his long legs and big frame into.
My nerves have been building during the drive, but now that we’re here, they’re in overdrive. I don’t feel like the new me, the fake me, or even the New York version of me. Perhaps in part because I didn’t pack clothes from my new wardrobe expecting this lunch today – Mom typically sprang it on me, knowing it’s not my thing.
So what I am wearing is an old dress that I’ve probably had for a decade. It’s pale blue with daisies all over it. It has long sleeves and a high, square neck and it floats down over what would have been my flat chest at the time I bought it. Compared to my new wardrobe, it’s baggy and shapeless, which I might not have minded even a month ago, but today I’m acutely aware that this is not a flattering dress.
Last night, I went to bed feeling desired. It was surprising and strange and pretty incredible. But this morning, I’m just the same old Abbey, who isn’t being looked at the way Mike looked at me last night. In fact, we’ve barely spoken to each other so far today and when we have, there’s been an odd tension. As if he regrets our almost-nearly kiss.
Hardly surprising. Why would he want shapeless daisies when he could have Chanel?
I hate to admit that my mom has been right all these years; I’ve hidden my body and I don’t know why. In hiding my body, what am I trying to conceal about myself? I’m sure there’s a podcast that could help me answer that question but right now, I just need to accept that this lunch is happening. That last night was nothing more than a blip to Mike. That today, I’m going to be scrutinized and analyzed and picked apart by my mom’s old friends, including Andrew’s mom, and I need to haul my ass.
Mike has opened Mom’s door – nice touch, charming, she’ll like that – and as she gets out, he comes around to my side of the car and opens the door. I watch our hands as I place mine in his, and I see that my fingers have a tremor.
I try to get out and find that I haven’t undone my seatbelt. Mike watches me as I release myself from the seat and step onto the ground in front of him – at least my shoes are sexy, though extremely painful. And in these shoes, I don’t have to strain my neck to look up to Mike; he’s only a couple of inches taller than me.
Anxiety has stolen my words and seemingly my ability to close the car door behind me. Mike leans around me, nudging me back against the side of the car, and closes the door for me. He’s close, tantalizingly close, leaning into me, and I’m leaning further back into the car.
Unexpectedly, he brings his fingertips to my cheek, tucks my hair behind my ear and whispers, ‘I think that your mom would expect me to kiss you goodbye. Would that be okay, if I kiss you?’
He’s going to kiss me? I spent most of last night wondering what it would have felt like if we had kissed. This morning, I’ve thought I’ll never find out.
I really, really want to know.
I think I nod my head; I mean to.
Then his lips are pressed against my cheek where his fingers were just seconds ago. He feels safe and whatever else has been filling my head this morning is gone with his touch. Closing my eyes, I imagine that I’m really his for the first time. That he can kiss me any time he wants.
This crush is like a spaceship. It’s prepared and loaded, the burners have been switched on, and it’s being propelled out of the atmosphere to a place beyond the ordinary world.
I know, despite everything Andrew put me through, that this crush I have on Mike is going to come crashing down and when it does, it will be the crash to end all other crashes. I want to stay here just a little while longer before coming back down to earth and eating lunch with the bitchy doctors waiting to give me an all-over check.
‘Alright, Michael, that’s enough,’ Mom says.
At her words, I finally feel my eyes open. I don’t know if I expect to see him smiling but he isn’t; he’s just looking back at me.
‘I’ve watched you through the rearview mirror fidgeting and chewing your lip through the whole drive here,’ he says. ‘You are beautiful, Abbey. You’re clever and witty, and you’re worth a thousand of any person who wants to try to tear you down. Where’s the stubborn and vivacious actress I’ve seen plenty of, huh? You walk in there with your head held high, okay? Fuck Andrew and what he did to you. And screw whoever in there thinks you don’t deserve better than that dirt-bag.’
Angry Mike. I find him kind of… staggering and… hot. Sheesh, I find everything he does hot at the moment.
He’s right; what would gregarious, artiste Abbey do?
‘Good pep talk, buddy,’ I say, patting him on the upper arm as if he didn’t just rock my entire world with one kiss on my cheek.
I move out of his space and around the car toward my mom.
Before we head inside, I cast one last glance across my shoulder, and see that Mike is facing forward, his forearms resting on the roof of the car, his head bent as he blows out heavily. Maybe, just maybe, he has even the tiniest sense of what I’m feeling, what is stirring up my insides every time I’m near him.
Mom and I are shown through the grand hotel, abuzz with meandering guests, and out back to an alfresco dining space on the lawn. I take a beat to appreciate my native scenery. Towering mountains, tall trees and birds tweeting all around us.
The area is shaded by a canvas canopy and I spot a long table, already half full with familiar faces sitting on seven of the fourteen chairs. One such familiar face is the woman I thought would become my mother-in-law.
Victoria, Andrew’s mom, appears to be smiling at me through gritted teeth.
‘If it isn’t the lady of the hour,’ one of Mom’s friends says. She is up from her seat as we approach the table and engulfs first Mom, then me, in her copious bosom. ‘Little Abigail, let me see you. It must have been three, maybe four years since I’ve seen you. You haven’t changed a jot.’
She holds me at arm’s length and considers the dress I may well have been wearing the last time she saw me. I cringe inside, my momentary conviction stirred by Mike’s touch disappearing rapidly. All the while, I sense the gaze of Victoria on my back.
I’m embraced and petted like a child by another five of the women around the table and, somewhat unsurprisingly, the last woman to stand to greet me is Victoria. I have sought her approval, her love even, for most of my life. Now, the look on her face tells me unequivocally that I have neither and I hate to admit even to myself that I’m disappointed.
Another guest arrives as Victoria and I come face-to-face, meaning happily the watchful eyes of everyone else at the lunch are diverted when Victoria simply stands before me and says, ‘Abigail.’
I feel chastised. I’m the child outside of the principal’s office after a fallout.
I’ve never been the child outside the principal’s office and this agitated encounter is literally my worst nightmare.
‘Hi Victoria.’ My smile is meek but at least I try. ‘How are you?’
She leans her head to one side as if I’ve asked the dumbest question in the world. ‘Disappointed, Abbey. Very disappointed. I thought you and Andrew would be together forever.’
I shrug. What I want to say is: Me too, Victoria. And on the day I expected your son to propose to me, he told me he’d been screwing someone else behind my back. But don’t worry, he seems very happy now to be bedding half of the women on Tinder in New York.
What I actually say is: ‘Me too.’ And I say it annoyingly apologetically.
‘Now I find out that you’re dating some sportsman and you’ve brought him here, to Andrew’s home, where all of his friends and family are going to see him ridiculed by you.’
What I want to do is: laugh, so hard. And tell her how ridiculed I have felt by him.
What I actually do is say: ‘I’m sorry you feel that way, Victoria. But it has been weeks since we broke up and—’
‘And he hasn’t brought anyone with him, Abbey. Surely that tells you he’s still invested in what the two of you had. How could he not be? You’ve been together as long as anyone can remember.’
Actually, not true. We were together for a long time but I still remember when he would date anyone in school except me. I still remember how he took Maisie Daisy to prom instead of me. What did Victoria say about that back then? I’d bet Andrew didn’t get this treatment.
‘I guess sometimes people grow apart and not together,’ I tell her, hoping to put an end to the conversation.
‘Pfft. My Andrew clearly doesn’t see it that way.’ She leans closer to me and lowers her voice even further. ‘I had better not find out that this sportsman turned your head before you and Andrew were separated.’
I gasp. My mouth literally falls open. How dare she?
My mouth is still open as Victoria leaves my side, rounds the table and welcomes the latest guests to arrive. As if someone in the clouds is messing with me. As if this lunch couldn’t get any worse. The next people to arrive are Mom’s friend Francesca and her daughter, who happens to be responsible for my first ever heartbreak in junior high. The very same prom date I was just thinking about.
Maisie freaking Daisy.
I would rather stick pins in my eyes than be at this lunch.
38
ABBEY
I gave lunch my best effort. Mostly, for my mom’s sake. Also to put on a brave front because it was truly awful. The prodding and poking of me, the ‘ooh’s and ‘ahh’s and ‘that’s a shame’s about Andrew’ and I continued after the initial greetings and all through the meal.
Now, I’m heading outside ten minutes earlier than the time I asked Mike to collect Mom and I, under the guise of checking he isn’t early, because I can’t stand being amongst those women, especially Victoria and Maisie, for one second longer.
I feel proverbially beaten up.
But as the saying goes, when you think things can’t get any worse, they always can.
After firing an SOS message to my sister and Shernette on my way out of the hotel, I look up from my phone and run right smack into…
‘Andrew!’
His hair is slicked the way he wears it for work and he has one of his favorite Italian shirts tucked into cream chinos.
‘Abbey.’ He holds my arms to steady me but lets them linger longer than necessary, as if he has a right to touch me. ‘I’m here to pick up my mom but I was hoping we’d bump into each other.’
‘You were? Why?’
He titters, as if it’s a stupid question. Then he beams at me, the way he used to. As if nothing has changed between us. ‘I thought maybe we could grab a drink at the bar, like old times. I can’t remember the last time I was in this hotel without you.’
A drink? After the last two hours I just endured because of him? After everything he’s put me through?
I jerk my shoulders, forcing him to finally let go of me. He’s right, this hotel has always been special for us. We’ve celebrated graduations, anniversaries, even births here. And one lunch was all it took to obliterate those good memories.
‘Andrew, I can categorically say, I do not want to get a drink with you. Thanks to you, I’ve been picked over and interrogated, and even accused of cheating on you. The whole reason I’m here and playing stupid games is because of you.’
‘Abbey.’ His hands are back on my shoulders. ‘I’ve done a lot of thinking about us and I know we can move past this. I think maybe I just needed to get it out of my system, you know? We’ve been together since we were so young and you can’t blame me for wondering what else might be out there.’
What. The. Actual.
‘But I’m over it now, Abbey. Seeing you with that other guy, I’ve realized that there’s only one woman for me, and it’s you.’
Huh?
I’m silent. Speechless. And blinking over and over, wondering if I’m seeing and hearing things.
Andrew is pleading with me, asking me to take him back. For years, I’ve felt like it’s been me doing the chasing and now, it seems, the boot is on the other foot.
I’m waiting for my adrenaline to hit. That giddiness in my stomach because Andrew wants me. The feeling of warmth, contentedness, safety, knowing I can say yes and we’d head back in that lunch room and everyone would be ecstatic for us. Then we’d fly back to New York together and I’d get a job as an auditor and move back into our old apartment. And eventually, we’d get married and have the grandchildren our mothers so desperately want from us.
I wait for those feelings but they don’t come.
What do come are three thoughts simultaneously.
Firstly, I guess my fake relationship with Mike worked if the objective had been to make Andrew jealous.
Secondly, if I said yes now, I’d spend every moment of the rest of my life looking across my shoulder, waiting for the next transgression.
Thirdly, I really don’t love Andrew anymore.
What I’d like to say is: Go fuck yourself, Andrew.
But I’ve had all the confrontation I can handle for one day.
So what I actually say is: ‘Maybe next time, Andrew. I’m waiting for Mike to pick me up.’
And I just want to get the hell out of here.
39
TED
During Abbey’s lunch, whilst I was taking pictures, drinking coffee and intermittently dealing with work emails on my phone, my accountants called me. They’ve read the paper Abbey put together, the proposal for the new business structure and my plan to break my partnership with Roman, whilst not exactly giving him what he wants.
‘We’re onboard with the plan, Ted. Everything checks out. We’ll confirm by email and you can give us the formal go ahead when you’re ready.’
It’s happening. Thanks to Abbey, I have a way out. I feel relieved, as if a burden was lifted by the call.
Then my accountant said, ‘The woman who put this together for you, she’s clearly astute and commercial in her approach. Why don’t you give her my number and ask her to call me. I’d like to take her for lunch and chat about what we could offer her at the firm.’
‘Funnily enough, I had a similar thought about her working for me.’ But I think she’s set on being an actress, even if everyone else is questioning that shift. Regardless, after this week, I think I’d like her to be more than my colleague. Otherwise, and more likely, she’s going to hate me for doing exactly what her ex did and lying to her. ‘I’m at her home in Canada with her at the moment; I’ll chat to her. The thing is…’ Acting aside. ‘She lives in New York and I don’t know how she’d feel about a move to San Francisco.’
‘We have offices in New York, San Francisco, Toronto and Vancouver, Ted. She could take her pick.’
I ended the call ignoring the devil on my shoulder that was reminded that Abbey and I live an entire continent apart.
When I pull up at the hotel to collect her from lunch, I find her sitting on a wood swing by the entrance, alone.
All I want to do when I see her – head down, arms wrapped around her waist – is head inside the hotel and give every person at that lunch a piece of my mind. For a peaceful guy, the thought of someone hurting Abbey can sure get me riled.
Anna chats through the car ride – buoyed by wine – but Abbey is near silent in the back seat for the entire drive.
She thanks me for the ride when we get home but quickly heads inside, kicks off her heeled shoes, and practically runs upstairs to her bedroom.
Afraid of what I might say to her mom if I hang around downstairs, and wanting to make sure Abbey is okay, I follow her upstairs and find her face down on her bed, her head in her pillows, shouting into the soft stuffing to muffle the sound.
I quietly pad into the room, closing the door behind me, and sit on the edge of the bed next to her.
‘Was it that bad?’ I ask.
I reach out and rub her back, which she seems to accept. She wants someone to comfort her but I know her well enough to know she won’t ask.
‘Imagine the worst day of your life, multiply it by infinity, and you’ll come close to half as bad as that lunch was,’ she says, mumbling, but audible, into her bedding.
I chuckle. Not at the situation but at the ridiculousness of her statement. It’s not like Abbey to be dramatic… ‘Worse than the day Trump was elected?’
She rolls onto her back, bringing a pillow with her and holding it to her chest for comfort. ‘At least when Trump was elected I always had the option of bailing to Canada.’
I scoff. ‘True enough. Why didn’t you just tell them to stick lunch and leave?’
