Page 89 of If the Stars Align
Jeremy lets out a sigh of relief and gives me a tight squeeze. “God, I love you,” he says. “Thank you. I’ll make it up to you, I swear.”
He takes my face in his palms and plants a kiss on my forehead. With Jeremy’s resting expression being pretty firmly rooted in snark, it’s not often I see him look this happy.
As he heads into the bathroom to freshen up, I’m still kicking myself for upsetting him.
“Do you know what you’re wearing yet?” Through the cracked-open bathroom door, I hear Jeremy gargle mouthwashand spit in the sink. “Dress sharp,” he tells me.
When I wake up the following morning, Jeremy’s not in bed. I rub my eyes and sit up, yawning. The smell of coffee hits my nose. I hear the clinking of plates, and the opening and shutting of kitchen cabinets. A minute later, he walks in with a tray.
He’s brought me breakfast in bed. There are scrambled eggs, toast, berries, and yogurt—all of my favorite things. He even put a fresh rose in a bud vase I didn’t know he had. Not to mention, he brewed espresso in his exorbitantly expensive coffee maker that we never use because it’s gratuitously complicated, and a bitch to clean.
“What’s all this?” I ask, beaming at him.
“You were tired, so I let you sleep in. We have to hit the road soon, but this is my way of saying thank you for coming with me last night.”
He’s practically ebullient. The dinner was a success, and Jeremy’s firm gained a new client. Not only that, my boyfriend stole the show. He’d done his research earlier in the day and knew everything there was to know about the client’s business. He laid out defense strategies as clearly and concisely as a law professor, but with the confident swagger that makes Jeremy irresistibly sexy. By the time we were onto our third course, I was buzzed from all the wine we’d drunk and hardly felt tired anymore. I sat and listened to my brilliant boyfriend in awe, as he waxed eloquent about property easements. I was soincredibly turned on that I had to have him the second we got home.
Jeremy’s not typically a big breakfast guy, so he makes himself a smoothie while I eat and, forty-five minutes later, we’re on the road to Beachwood. It usually takes me a little over five hours to get there from Chicago, but Jeremy makes it in record time because he’s a born and bred New Yorker, and drives like one. It reminds me a little bit of Mia, whom I haven’t talked to in a while now.
She and Evan have been married about two-and-a-half years. Last summer, they welcomed their first child—a beautiful baby girl named Avery. I haven’t met her yet, but Mia sends me pictures every now and then, when we email. In December, she sent a Christmas card addressed to meandJeremy, which was thoughtful of her. It was a photo of baby Avery, sobbing on Santa’s lap, while Mia and Evan made silly faces from the sidelines in an attempt to calm her. I thought it was adorable and showed Jeremy as soon as he got home from work. Maybe he was tired from a long day, but he had the audacity to call the picture “tacky,” then said he didn’t know which was worse on a holiday greeting—crying babies or matching pajamas.
I didn’t have the energy to flip over the card and show him the snapshot of Mia, Evan, and Avery in identical buffalo plaid onesies.
I didn’t want to add fuel to the fire, particularly because I was about to take him home for the holidays to meet my mom and Luis for the first time. But Jeremy charmed them both, and my mom was so thrilled that she was actually pleasant to be around, so I couldn’t staymad at him for long.
This is our first time back in Beachwood since then. When my mom opens the door to greet us, she wraps her arms around Jeremy first. Naturally.
We’re here to celebrate Luis’s sixty-fifth birthday. His daughters couldn’t make it, sadly. Elena, the fashion photographer, is on a shoot in Milan that she couldn’t get out of. And her sister, Lily, the doctor, is eight months pregnant and restricted from flying. The three of them agreed to celebrate together after the baby’s born but, in the meantime, Jeremy and I wanted to be here for the occasion.
We have a lovely meal at Luis’s favorite Italian restaurant, and Jeremy surprises us by footing the bill. He must have given his credit card to our waitress when he left the table to use the restroom because, when my mom asks for the check, she’s told that everything has already been taken care of.
“This is on us,” Jeremy says, and he puts his arm around me even though I had no clue he’d planned to pay.
When we get back home, Luis tells us he has a “belly full of spaghetti” and is going to call it a night. He is such a treasure, I honestly don’t know how he ended up with my mom. He brings out the best in her, certainly—she’s never as surly with him as she is around me, but she still has her moments. I guess they balance each other out. She’s brilliant and beautiful, so she does havethatgoing for her. I suppose what attracts Luis to my mom isn’t so different than what attracts me to Jeremy.
While Luis makes his way upstairs, Jeremy suggests that the rest of us have a nightcap. When my mom agrees, he squeezes my hand and nods encouragingly.
This is it. Our chance to ask my mom about the man who fathered me.
We sit in the living room—Jeremy and I next to each other on the couch, and my mom in the armchair opposite us. I wait until she’s halfway through her glass of sherry, hoping that will loosen her up a bit. I myself am so anxious, I’ve already downed my very generous pour of wine. And that’son topof the two glasses I had with dinner.
Finally, I work up the nerve to steer the conversation away from the riveting topic of my mom’s fruitless search for an “adequate” landscaper. “While we’re here, Mom…Jeremy and I were hoping to ask you a few questions,” I say. “About my biological father.”
My mom’s gaze shifts between the two of us, her face expressionless. “Oh?” she asks, taking another sip of her drink.
I look to Jeremy for guidance.
“I’m very serious about your daughter,” he tells my mom. “I see a bright future together—marriage, and children. And to that end, I’ve been thinking about the fact that Sunny doesn’t know about the other half of her DNA. From a medical perspective, I’m wondering if there are any genetic concerns we need to be aware of down the road, when we’re ready to start a family.”
My god, he’s good.
My mom looks impressed too. She’s nearly smiling—at Jeremy, of course. “Well, thatisa valid question,” she concedes with a tilt of her head. “But I don’t recall there being anything concerning in his family history.” She turns to me. “He was half-French on his mother’s side, and half-Lebanese on hisfather’s. When you do prenatal genetic testing, they’ll ask about your religious background. He was Catholic.”
She’s acting like she’s reading notes off a patient’s medical chart—like it’s just another day at work—but every word she says feels like a knife going through my heart.
And the way she phrased things…
Hewas…hewas…
