Rusty Nailed (32 page)

“Jesus, Caroline, I’m so sorry,” he said.

I couldn’t look at him. I just couldn’t, because I knew I’d cave. And I was too angry to cave; too confused to cave.

I walked away, went downstairs, got my keys, and left.

•  •  •

I
went to a diner. It was the only place that was open, and I didn’t want to just drive around all night. And also, I wanted pie.

Was it fair to blame Simon for what happened with Clive? Two schools of thought on this one.

Technically, yes, I could blame him. He didn’t fix the window that I’d specifically asked him to fix. Had he fixed the window, Clive wouldn’t have run away. And right now? It felt good to blame him.

The other school of thought, the mature-adult school, said that there’s no way I should even dream of blaming Simon for this. He loved Clive almost as much as I did, and he already felt terrible for what happened. So the right thing to do would be to call him, invite him down for pie, apologize for blaming him, and then band together to find our boy.

I was pissed. And scared to death that I’d never see Clive again.

When it was nearly dawn and there was no more pie, I decided to head home. When I walked out to the parking lot, there was Simon, getting out of his Range Rover and heading straight for me. Turns out I wasn’t the only one who was pissed.

“What the hell, Caroline? I’ve been driving around for an hour looking for you!”

“Get back in the car, Simon. I can’t talk about this right now.”

“You wanna bet?” he warned, standing in front of my car door.

“I really don’t want to do this right now.”

“I really don’t care,” he said, angling his body as I tried to push past him.

“Let me
in
.” I could feel the tears beginning, and if I started I wouldn’t be able to stop. “It’s starting to rain.” Dammit, Clive was out in this rain.

“Then we’ll stand here in the rain until you tell me what the hell is going on,” he said, crossing his arms and planting his feet. Then the sky really opened up, and big fat drops began to splatter everywhere. Yeah, those were raindrops on my cheeks.

“Come on, Simon, let me in,” I protested, trying to slip past him again.

“That’s funny. I was going to say the same thing,” he said, staring down at me.

And that did it. The dam broke.

“It’s too much, okay? It’s all just too! Fucking! Much!” It was all coming out; I was going full pickle.

“What’s too much?” he asked, confused. “And what the hell does a pickle have to do with it?”

I was officially losing my mind. “
Ahhhh!
” I screamed, stamping my feet and punching one hand with the other. “Simon, I can’t
do
it all. I literally
can’t do
it all.”

“Who said you have to? And what exactly is all?”

“I’m not fucking ready to be a full-on grown-up! You want a nursery? Christ, I just want to get laid on a beach in Brazil! You want to stop being a photographer? I just got offered a partnership, and
I can’t turn it down
! Because that would be ludicrous.” I stalked in a tiny circle, firing every pickle in my arsenal. “You went to one reunion and partied with the apostles, and suddenly, poof! You quit your job. And we bought this incredible house. And now you and Ruth are making plans. And fucking James Brown called me a decorator! Again! And his wife’s name is Krissy, and she’s got a bun in the oven and I bet their fucking nursery is just precious, so I told him you fuck me on the counter and—”

“Stop. Just stop.” Simon grabbed my hands in his and held them down at my sides.

“How in hell can I
ever
be enough? How can I ever be the wife and the mother that your mother was? How can I ever make a home for you as wonderful as the one that you grew up in? How can I be designer of the century and still have time to bake pies?” I wailed, letting out the sheer terror that had been bottled up for months. “And my cat’s gone, and I want him back,” I sobbed.

“I know, babe,” Simon said, crushing me to his chest as I cried it out in the rain. “I know.”

•  •  •

F
ive minutes later we were stuffed into a booth, sitting across from one another. We each had coffee, and I had a wad of snotty paper
napkins in front of me. Simon had a face full of questions, but he was still here. So that was good.

“Okay, so . . . wow.” He dragged his hands through his hair. “You’ve got some things that you’ve been thinking about for a while, it sounds like.”

“Yep.” I sighed, stirring my coffee.

“I’ve got some thoughts now, if I may?” he asked.

“Yep,” I said, steeling myself for the worst.

“I realize that I might not have had many traditional relationships—but is what happened out there normal?”

I looked up from my fingernail study in surprise, to see the tiniest bit of a smile on his face.

“Caroline, I love the shit out of you. So calm down and just tell me what you need. No more holding back. And then I’ll tell you what I need, and we’ll figure out how to work it out.” He looked down, doubt now crowding out the tiny smile. “At least, I’m hoping we can work it out. If you want to.”

“I want to,” I said quietly.

“So let’s talk about it,” he answered.

And so we did.

I let every pickle fly, but without the yelling. It’s so much easier to talk when there’s no yelling.

It’s also easier to talk when you’re being brutally honest. And he was too, which I appreciated.

“I can’t believe you thought I was quitting my job. I could never stop doing what I do,” he said.

“But you canceled all those trips.”

“Yeah. But I was always going to head back out on the road.”

“But after the reunion, you—”

“You need to understand something. Going back east clarified some things for me, in a good way. I want a home again, and I want a family someday. That’s not going to change. And for the record, I’d never have a discussion with Ruth about something like that
without first talking about it with you,” he said, taking my hand. “There’s a lot of things we probably should have discussed before we jumped into this house thing. I just got excited, I suppose. It’s something I’ve missed for a long time.”

“I got excited too. And I love the house, don’t get me wrong. There are just all these expectations that come with a step like this, and I guess I just got overwhelmed. I knew how much this meant to you, how big a deal this was for you. I just didn’t know if I could measure up to what you wanted.”

“I ran away from my past for years because it was too hard for me to deal with. Now I’m letting some of the good stuff back in. But the
really
good stuff is all with you, babe. The rest of it is just a pile of bricks. You want to get rid of the house? Done. You want to live in a hut on the beach in Bali? Done.”

“I think I said get laid on a beach in Brazil —”

“Done,” he breathed, his eyes dancing.

I looked at him, my dream boyfriend.

“I love that house. We’re not getting rid of the house,” I said, and leaned in. “And I do want a nursery—just not now. Is that okay?” I asked, suddenly very very serious. Jesus, this was big-time stuff.

“It’s more than okay. Who said anything about now, anyway?”

When I started to answer, he squeezed my hand and whispered, “Please don’t drag poor Ruth back into this.”

“I owe her an apology.”

“Probably.”

“And I owe you an apology.”

“For what?”

“For not trusting you enough to tell you what was going on. I should have. I just didn’t want to ruin things. Who could complain when things look so perfect?”

“Better to complain than have a fight in a parking lot in the rain, don’t you think?”

He had me there.

“I owe you an apology,” he said, his brow wrinkling. “You were right, I should have fixed that window.”

“Simon, no. I was mad and I never should have said—”

“No, it’s my fault. But I’m going to find him, I promise.” I nodded, my eyes full again. “C’mere.”

I went around to his side of the booth and let him pull me onto his lap. He held me tight, and I kissed him. And then we left to go find our cat.

•  •  •

T
he next morning we called the Humane Society, the ASPCA, our vet in the city, and even the pet hotel. The word was out. My cat was lost.

Team Clive was out in force all day, traipsing all over the town. We talked to neighbors, made sure everyone knew whom to call if they caught sight of him.

Simon and I walked together as we searched on until dark, holding hands and flashlights and calling his name until we were hoarse. It wasn’t the only reason my voice was hoarse; I couldn’t stop crying. I tried not to let Simon see, because never had a man felt more terrible about forgetting to fix a window. And when he saw my sadness, it made it worse for him. So I limited my tears to gas station bathrooms and kneeling down to pretend to tie a shoelace over and over again. Stolen moments of panic to keep a strong face. We’d find him. Of course we’d find him.

But then it was the second day. And the third day. Then a week. I spent my nights lying awake listening for the
click click click
of that stupid hangnail, which would mean this was all just a silly nightmare and I’d wake up with Clive curled into my side. I’d listen for an angry caterwaul by the back door that was saying, “Hey, lady, you weren’t dreaming. I really did run away, but I’m home now, so let me the hell in—it’s freezing out here!”

I watched as the flyers got weatherworn and tattered. We put up new ones. And they got old too.

The worst part was that I kept imagining the worst possible outcomes; it was like my brain was trying to decide what it could handle by showing me phantom glimpses of what might have happened. To see if I could handle it, I suppose.

Clive cold and wet and trying to figure out how to get into a trash can to find something to eat.

Clive approaching a stranger and being chased away with a broom.

Clive flattened out underneath a tree while being circled by two or three other cats. He had no front claws to defend himself with; he was a pampered house cat that slept on a pillow and was served catnip on demand.

I was back at work; I had to. Because being busy helped; because I loved my job; and because the Claremont was finally ready to launch.

The house was really starting to take shape, and things with Simon and me were as well. We talked more than we had before—not just about the silly day-to-day things that made us laugh, but about the real things too. We cleared off more and more of our mental shelving, talking about what really matters and what kind of a life we wanted for ourselves. Don’t get me wrong, there was plenty of the laughing and the sexy, because that’s who we were. But we were evolving. Imagine that.

I told him I wanted to be the kind of couple that spent
some
of their holidays in some far-off fairy tale. He told me he wanted to be the kind of couple that had all their family and friends over for Christmas—
some
years. I told him I wanted to be the kind of girl who bought her own car. He told me he wanted to be the kind of man who bought his girlfriend a car.

For the record, I won this one. We took the car back and I bought myself a used Mercedes convertible. Silver this time. It
was old enough that I could afford the monthly payments, but new enough that Simon was excited to drive it.

We were dipping our toes into Grown-Up Lake, rather than barreling into it like a giant cannonball. I wasn’t giving up on Clive, but a resignation began to sink in after two weeks had passed, one that I had to acknowledge. I had to be practical here. In the grand scheme of things, I hadn’t suffered an actual tragedy. Only little girls cry themselves to sleep because their favorite pet is gone.

Sure.

chapter twenty-two

I stood in the lobby of the Claremont, my eyes taking in every detail: the check-in desk created entirely of reclaimed wood. The original marble floor restored, polished, and gleaming. The replacement art installation. And the view of the bay as the sun cast its last bit of light over the water, making everything sparkle and shine.

There was a flurry of last-minute activity, with waiters hurrying this way and that, champagne towers beginning to flow, and the earliest of guests starting to arrive. I took a final look around, pronounced it good, and tried to turn my brain from Plan This to Enjoy This. It was time to kick up my heels a bit and dance them across the marble floor.

This entire project had been overwhelming, stressful, gray-hair inducing even, but it had also been the most rewarding, the most fruitful, and the best example of what I could do. And I did it on my own. That’s saying something.

And what it was saying now was get a glass of bubbly, toast your damn self, and—holy shit, Max Camden was here! He was early!

I smoothed my dress, took a deep breath, and hurried down the steps to greet him.

“Mr. Camden, good evening.”

“Evening, Caroline. Are you ready to show off our little hotel?” he asked, shaking my hand. “I thought I’d come by early and walk the space again, before everything gets too hectic.”

“A wonderful idea, sir. Would you like some company?”

“No, thank you. I always do this alone right before we open a new property. It lets me breathe it in a bit.”

“Of course,” I said, watching as he walked past the reception area and down one of the corridors. It was always a bit tough, turning over a space once it was complete. But this job was done. What would be next?

“Caroline,” I heard from behind me, and turned to see Jillian, accompanied by Benjamin.

I greeted her with a kiss on each cheek. “I’m going to vomit. That’s normal, right?”

“Perfectly. I’d worry about you if you
didn’t
feel like that. Remind me to tell you about the first time I hosted a launch party like this. I’ll just say I never used a chafing dish again.”

I stifled a laugh, then turned to Benjamin. “Hi, Benjamin,” I said, blushing as he leaned in for his cheek kisses. He was just too fantastic looking.