The Standout (29 page)

After her hair and makeup are finally done, I fit Zelda into a dress that is all black, with an empire waist and lace sleeves that end at her elbows. Lace also covers her neck and part of her chest, and the solid, beaded material plunges into a deep-V neck that ends just below her bosom. Zelda stares at herself in the mirror as if she’s never seen her reflection before.

“I think it works,” I say, but I’m more confident than I sound.

I know it works.

Amos, Kyla, and I are the three contestants who make it to the end. That means we get to show at Fashion Week, which is like the Holy Grail for designers. We’re given eight weeks back home to create our collections, and then we’ll return to show at Fashion Week, where the winner of this season’s
The Standout
will be announced. I know everyone will be rooting for Amos. Heck, I’m practically rooting for Amos. He doesn’t pulse with negativity like Kyla, and he isn’t a drama magnet, like me. Plus, he’s super-talented and he really wants to win.

But I want to win, too.

Ted offers to let me stay in his basement, saying I could set up a studio and just focus on my work. I’m probably stupid not to take him up on it, but I have to go home. I text Nick with my flight information, and I say we should wait to talk in person. He responds right away with,
Okay. I’m excited to see you.

When I emerge out of the ticketed area and into baggage claim, I see him instantly, his hands shoved into his jeans pockets and his eyes darting nervously around. When his gaze lands on me, his face breaks into a hesitant smile and I can’t breathe.

We walk towards each other and my body is already flushed in anticipation of his touch. We’re at a high-traffic, crowded spot in the middle of the room when we meet and I drop my purse to my feet as he clutches me in a ferocious hug. “No,” he says into the side of my head.

I pull away. “No, what?”

“No, I reject your idea of not being engaged. I still want to marry you.”

I tilt my head down and he kisses my hairline. All these weeks of not knowing he felt this way, of crying in my sleep, of thinking we were done. He could have just told me. “Why didn’t you ever pick up when I called?”

“I had no idea you’d called. I lost my phone and by the time I found it you were back on the show and I couldn’t get ahold of you.”

“I don’t understand,” I reply. “You lost your phone? But. . .”

“I know it sounds lame, but I swear it’s true. I looked everywhere and I tried calling myself a dozen times, but my battery was completely drained. I was just about to report it missing, when I found it in the pocket of these jeans I haven’t worn in months.”

I don’t say anything because I don’t have to. Nick knows what I’m thinking. “Maybe,” he says carefully, “but I really don’t think Andrea hid it. She felt so bad for me, like she always does when I’m miserable. Andrea wants me to be happy, Rocky. You have to believe that.”

“I do.” I kiss him and he kisses me back, with a combination of gentleness and passion that makes me wish we were alone so I could rip his clothes off. But I’m aware that we’re surrounded so I break away and compose myself. “Hey,” I smile broadly because I can finally share my success with the person who matters most. But I lean in and whisper in his ear, cognizant of the confidentiality agreement I signed. “I’m going to Fashion Week!”

“There was never a doubt in my mind that you would!” Nick’s laugh is joyous. “I’m getting married to a winner!”

“Yeah, Nick, but about that. . .”

He wrinkles his eyebrows together. “Come on; tell me you weren’t serious about calling off our engagement.”

“I want to marry you. I just think we have a lot to talk about.”

“Like?” Nick crosses his arms and broadens his stance, unconcerned with all the people who are stepping around us.

“Maybe we should wait until we’re in the car to discuss it.”

“Just tell me. I’ve been waiting weeks for this conversation and I can’t take it anymore.”

I sigh. “I did well on the show. What if I’m offered some fabulous job in New York?”

He shrugs. “We’ll move to New York. I just need to finish school and then I can teach music anywhere.”

“What about Andrea?”

“Andrea’s almost as old as I was when I took her in. She’ll figure it out.” He pauses, thinking carefully. “But I’d like to always offer her a bed to sleep in. If that bed is in New York, so be it.”

I scuff my foot along the linoleum floor. “And the cyber-stalking? If we get engaged again, it will start back up.”

“Look,” he says, “I get that you’re the one being hurt by all this . . .”

“No, that’s not it,” I interject. “Whoever’s behind it knows that the best way to hurt me is by hurting you. If we get married, you’re setting yourself up for more.”

Nick raises one eyebrow and the side of his mouth at once, arching his face in irreverence. “What can I say, Rocky? Bring it on.”

His laugh is sweet music that goes right to the softest, most vulnerable spot in my heart. I reach for him and Nick lifts and twirls me around. The happiness I feel in that moment, the surety that we fit, that we’re right, that we’re meant to grow old together, doesn’t go away after he puts me down and the world stops spinning. It stays with me that night as we have the house to ourselves and enjoy a sweet reunion, and even the next morning when I wake up and find Andrea in the kitchen, scrambling eggs before she leaves for her job at the rec center.

“Is Nick still asleep?” she asks.

“Yeah.” I am dressed for a morning run, in shorts, my Hoyt College T-shirt, and sneakers, and I pull my hair back as I head toward the kitchen cabinet. I grab a water glass and fill it up at the sink. As I take a sip I can feel her watching me, so after my last swallow I place my glass down and face her. “It’s good to see you.”

“Good to see you too,” she says, her back now to me as she cooks eggs over the stove.

“Andrea. . .”

Keeping her eyes averted, she turns off the burner and uses a spatula to scrape her eggs into a dish. “Nick has been going crazy, so seriously, it’s great that you're back.”

“Thanks.” The coffee she put on to brew gurgles, and the aroma of French Roast is like a courage injection. “Look, I know how much you love your brother, and I also know he’d do anything for you. That’s how Nick is built; he protects the people he loves. And I expect that if he was forced to choose, he’d choose you over me, because all he’s ever done is take care of you and he doesn’t even know how to stop.” I pause, giving her a chance to disagree, but I realize she’s waiting for me to finish the thought. “Plus, he loves you more than anything. So please, Andrea, for Nick’s sake, don’t make it a choice. Let him have both of us.”

Andrea places her dish of eggs on the table as if she can longer stomach them, and then she meets my gaze. “You still think I’m involved in. . .whatever is going on with you?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. But I do know that it’s not over, and I know that once Nick and I re-announce our engagement, whoever has been harassing me will start back up. But it won’t change anything. As long as he’ll still take me, I’m going to marry Nick.”

Andrea crosses her arms over her chest. “You broke up with him.”

“To protect him, but that was stupid.” I can’t look at her anymore; it’s just too tight, those brown eyes that are exactly like Nick’s boring into me. The faucet is dripping and I place my thumb against the spigot, letting the water pressure build and leak out from behind my skin. “I know what’s it’s like to lose someone, you know. We have that in common. And I also know what it’s like to live in fear, that feeling that once you finally find the love and happiness you’ve been looking for, it could all disappear in a second, because life is dangerous and only naïve people believe in happily ever after.” I sigh. “But after a while you’re faced with a choice. You either take the gamble or you protect yourself from the inevitable, which is just as fruitless, because bad stuff will happen no matter what. Protecting yourself will only keep the good stuff from happening too.”

I take my thumb from the faucet and wipe it against my shorts. When I look back at Andrea I see her lip is trembling. “Yeah,” she whispers. “Protecting Nick from you
is
stupid. You’re, like, the best thing that’s ever happened to him.”

Tears of gratitude prick at the corners of my eyes. “You really think so?”

Andrea nods, her face squished with emotion. “You make him so happy. And you probably won’t believe me, but I really want that for Nick. Even if it means I have to go away.”

I step towards her. “Andrea, can’t we just be a family? I want you to stay, so we can be sisters.”

Now she’s crying. “You won’t feel that way once I tell you the truth.”

An alarm bell clangs inside my ears as I realize how much I was hoping to be wrong. “Just tell me.” My mouth is suddenly dry.

Her chest rises and falls. “You have to promise that you won’t tell Nick.”

“I can’t promise you that.”

“Then I’m not going to tell you!” She slaps her hands against the counter and pushes off, propelling herself out of the kitchen, taking with her any last spec of good will between us.

“Andrea, please don’t leave like this!”

“I’m going to be late for work!” Andrea cries.

“What’s going on?” We’re both startled by Nick’s voice and we turn, finding him standing in our hallway, wearing his morning sweatpants and undershirt, his hair disheveled and his face in need of a shave.

I say nothing.

Nick looks imploringly at Andrea. “What don’t you want me to know, Andi?”

Just the hint of kindness and sympathy in Nick’s question makes his sister dissolve into tears. Blubbering, with her hands over her face, she says, “I am so, so sorry!”

Nick and I exchange a look: disbelief on his part, horror on mine. “So it was you who posted all that stuff about Robin: the bribe, and the website, and the. . . the sex tape?”

Andrea lowers her hands from her face and collects herself. “No, Nick. It wasn’t me. It was Dad.”

Andrea calls her work and tells them she’ll be late, and then we sit down and she tells us the whole story.

“At first I didn’t realize, I swear.” Andrea picks at her cuticles while she talks and I try to look away from her. Then maybe she won’t feel the intense, burning gaze that this situation actually calls for. “He’d take me out for dinner and ask me all this stuff, like what I’d overheard you guys talking about, so I told him because I pretty much overhear everything. And it felt like gossiping with a girlfriend, you know? Like, ‘Oh my God, can you believe that Robin had an affair with a married man?’ And he’d be so interested, wanting details, and it was like, the closest we’d been in forever.”

“When did you realize what he was doing?” Nick asks.

“After the first handwritten note showed up at our house. I snuck down into the basement and read it while Robin was upstairs. Later I called Dad and told him what I knew, and. . .”

“And that night he texted and said that he was disowning you?” I ask.

“Right,” Andrea answers. “So I didn’t say anything but I tried to stop helping him. I told him he couldn’t come over and mess with your computer any more. And I found the first note and taped it back together.” She looks at me eagerly. “I kept it, in case you wanted it as evidence some time, and that’s why I tried to keep the second one too. I swear it was to protect you.” Her large brown eyes shift towards Nick; then to me; then back to Nick. “You have to believe me; I knew nothing about the spyware or the phone spoofing or your bank account stuff. And by the time he told me about it, Robin had been kicked off the show. That was the weekend he spent all day over here, watching TV. I’m pretty sure he hid your phone, Nick, but I didn’t know where.”

“Andrea, you still should have said something.” Nick stares at the floor, clearly horrified. “You had a million opportunities and yet you just stayed quiet.”

She nods, tearfully. “I know. But he convinced me that if you and Robin got married you’d lose interest in me, that once you have a family of your own, you wouldn’t be there for me anymore. And it made sense! Plus, all the stuff he was digging up about Robin, made me think, that, well, you could do better.” She inhales sharply and throws her gaze at me, only for a second. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I tell her.

“No!” Nick cries. “Not okay! It’s definitely not okay!” He gets up and circles our small living room, pacing. “My father was sabotaging you, out of selfishness and greed and just general craziness, and you—” he spins towards Andrea, pointing a finger like he could shove it down her throat, “you
helped
him!”

“Nick,” I start, but he waves me off, still addressing Andrea.

“You and Dad should just kill me now. I mean, heaven forbid I have a life of my own, or some small morsel of happiness. God, no! I’ll probably die taking care of the two of you.”

“Dad thought he was doing you a favor. ‘Robin’s too pretty for him. She’s been with too many men. She’ll steal his soul for sure.’” Andrea glances toward me. “Those were his words, obviously.” She redirects her words to Nick. “He thought he was helping you.”

“That is not an excuse! Do not EVER defend him to me again!”

Andrea is shaking like her world is about to collapse. I have to step in.

“Nick, calm down. None of this is fatal.”

Nick looks at me like he’d forgotten I was in the room. “You should run, Robin. Go now! You definitely don’t want to marry into this.”

“I can make that decision for myself, thank you.”

He shakes his head in incredulity. “You should hate me! I doubted our relationship when you accused Andrea, and you were right! I’m serious, Robin! Go while the going is good!”

Now Andrea sobs while she curls up on the couch, like if she just scrunches her body up enough she might disappear. Meanwhile, I’ve never seen Nick angrier; his hands are literally shaking with the urge to smash something. “I’m not going anywhere,” I say, my voice as level as I can muster. “Yes, your dad is crazy and he can consider himself disinvited to the wedding, but there’s still going to be a wedding.”