The Kiss Plot by Nicole French

Eighteen

We trudged back to the main house in silence, no longer touching, not even looking at each other. If those crazed minutes in Brandon’s lab had let out something important, Eric had shoved it back in and locked it up with ten more padlocks.

His head hung as he walked, like a despondent Charlie Brown.

My hands clenched and unclenched, more like a caged animal than ever.

When we entered the kitchen, Skylar took one look at my disheveled appearance, made excuses to her grandmother, and dragged me upstairs to change. All Eric had to do was pat his hair in a few places to look like a catalog model again, but apparently, I resembled Courtney Love after a serious bender.

“I’m not even going to ask,” she said as we entered the giant walk-in closet she and Brandon shared.

I shrugged. I was pissed at Eric all over again, and all sorts of confused, but I felt absolutely no shame about getting my rocks off. I did need to fix myself up, though.

“Your hem is torn,” Skylar remarked wryly, pointing to the wide rent in my skirt. “And your shirt is missing some buttons.”

“That asshole,” I said as I fingered the frayed edge of the limp fabric. Apparently, he really had ripped the clothes from my body. The bias cut on this shirt had taken me weeks to get right. I scowled. I wanted to march downstairs and ram the ruined silk down Eric’s stupid, stubborn throat.

Skylar shook her head. She clearly thought Eric and I were no better than a couple of bonobo chimps.

“Just grab a dress,” she said, gesturing at her side of the closet. “You’re too tall for any of my pants anyway. Or else there are leggings in the bureau on the right if you want to borrow some.”

“This is basically the wardrobe department of The Good Wife,” I remarked as I leafed through the single rack of clothes that didn’t include suits. She had a taste for pencil skirts—the woman must have had at least twenty—but they were definitely not my cup of tea. “Do you own anything without shoulder pads, Mrs. Florrick?”

“Very funny,” Skylar called out from the bed, where she was taking a much-needed load off. “It’s just work clothes. You know how dress code works in court.”

I popped my head out. “Seriously, though. You’re a zillionaire. Where are all the good duds?”

Skylar shrugged. “I like my sweaters and jeans when I’m at home. Brandon and I aren’t like you and Eric. All the furniture in this house doubles as a jungle gym, we prefer upholstery that can hide stains, and no one dresses up unless we absolutely have to.”

I smiled at the idea that there was actually some similarity between Eric and me. I had always considered us such opposites, but we both did like clothes. And our apartment filled with art and fine furnishings. We both liked beauty for beauty’s sake. Always had.

As quickly as it had buoyed me, the idea immediately brought me back down. Because, as Eric had so emphatically said through his actions, there was no future there. No matter how slyly compatible we were.

Fuck him.

“Hey, can you decide already? I feel bad abandoning Bubbe in the kitchen, and I don’t want to be MIA when Zola gets here too. He should arrive any minute.”

I popped back out of a row of blouses. “Zola’s coming?”

“He sometimes does,” Skylar said absently. “You know that.”

I knew that Zola was a good guy and had remained a friend of the family. I also knew that sometimes, yes, he had shown up at random holiday events. We’d even flirted a few times—hey, you would too if a handsome Italian was sitting across the sweet potatoes from you. But nothing ever happened. What’s the saying? Don’t shit where you eat turkey?

And more importantly, why hadn’t he mentioned it when we met this week?

“It was a last-minute thing,” Skylar answered my unspoken question. “Actually, he was wondering if you would be here.” She gave me a pointed look. “I almost thought he still had a thing for you. Remember when you met back in the day?”

I wrinkled my nose, choosing not to mention that Zola was probably taking the opportunity to call my bluff about Eric’s and my behavior.

Or maybe, I considered as I remembered Eric's reaction to the man, that was exactly what I needed.

I turned back to the dresses and chose a slinky red knit number—one I happened to know Skylar almost never wore because she thought it was too revealing for a mother of two. I, however, had no such qualms. It would look hot with the boots I was wearing and just might drive a certain blond shipping heir crazy.

“Red,” I said as I pulled the dress out. “Red is the order of the day.”

* * *

We returned downstairs to a familiar,warm scene: Sarah and Susan bustling dishes out of the kitchen to the spacious dining room; Luis and Jenny running around underfoot with telltale bits of sweet potato and cranberry sauce peeking from the sides of their mouths; and Ray, Eric, Brandon, and Matthew Zola making their way to the table from where they had been watching football. Almost everyone had a drink in hand and was eagerly eyeing the big table full of food. It was idyllic and warm, exactly the way Thanksgiving should be. Full of family, friends, and loved ones.

A pang lodged in my gut as my mother’s face flashed through my mind. Multiple expressions, actually.

That’s because you know she should be here, Jane Brain.

There was my dad—my real dad—twisting my insides even more. I could be mad at her. But, I realized, keeping us apart was exactly what a man like Carson wanted.

“I just need to make a call,” I said to Skylar, ignoring Eric’s concerned look as I ducked out.

I found my coat and purse in the kitchen and pulled out my new phone, dialing as I went outside. She answered on the second ring.

“Jane?”

I took a deep breath, but before I could even get out “Hi, Eomma,” I burst into tears—loud, noisy tears that truly ached with every breath.

“Jane?” she asked again, her voice rising. “Jane, is that you? What is the matter?”

“E-e-omma,” I stuttered. “I j-just wanted to say Happy Thanksg-giving.”

I could barely manage the words. Less than two years ago, I had been sitting at the table with her, my dad, some of his buddies from the VA, plus a bunch of other cousins and aunties in Chicago. The table was covered with a diverse mix. There was the more traditional American Thanksgiving foods—Dad loved a roasted turkey and usually made the fixings to go with it. His coworkers (and sometimes patients) could be counted on to bring a grocery store pumpkin pie or cranberry sauce in a can. Meanwhile, my mother and her family would fill in the gaps with a bunch of Korean food: japchae noodles, maybe a potato dish or dumplings. Three types of homemade kimchi, and probably at least two different desserts. It was eclectic and weird, but it was ours.

“I miss you,” I blurted out, only just understanding how true the words were. “Eomma, everything is a mess. Eric, the wedding, we—”

“Hush.”

The word was spoken kindly, quietly, but was still effective. My mother wasn’t the type to use nicknames. Unlike my dad, who had a backpack full of monikers for me, my mom was like a lot of Koreans who didn’t readily call their children by anything less formal than their given name.

Ironically, the only other person I really knew whose family treated him that way was Eric. Yet another random thing we had in common.

“You should be here,” I said. “Or I…I should be there. Holidays are for family, Eomma. I’m sorry about how I’ve treated mine.”

Suddenly, there was nowhere else I’d rather be than my parents’ house in Evanston, wrapped in one of the old seventies afghans my dad insisted on keeping. My mother would jabber away in Korean with her cousins, and Dad and I would make small talk with his coworkers and try to decipher whatever sporting event was on the TV. I felt harsh, nasty pangs of regret for every holiday I’d spent without them, for every time I’d avoided my mother’s calls, for the three years I’d spent in Boston instead of around my dad while I could. The house in Evanston might be gone along with him, but that didn’t mean the soul of our family wasn’t alive and well.

It didn’t matter that I’d found a new family of two over the last six months only to lose it again. It only mattered that I’d squandered the one I’d always had.

“Christmas,” I started to promise before I realized it wasn’t possible.

I had to stay with Eric until after the New Year to meet that sixty-day requirement. I wanted to promise the lunar new year, but realized again I had to stay here to take the bar a week after that. No, as much as I wanted to run home to squeeze my mother right this minute, I wouldn’t be able to do it until the spring.

My heart ached that much more.

“Jane?”

I cleared my throat. “Yes, Eomma?”

“I love you,” she said.

I blinked my tears away in surprise. She rarely said that sort of thing. Our closeness was more bound up in bickering, shopping, harping on daily life. She showed she cared by caring. Open displays of affection usually made her very uncomfortable.

“We don’t say it enough,” she said quietly. “And today, we are thankful, right? I am thankful for you.”

I opened and closed my mouth, unsure of how to reply to this uncharacteristic compliment. I was overflowing with regret and the desire to fix something, anything, in this mess of my life.

Maybe my next move wasn’t to hold on to a relationship that was clearly doomed from the start. Eric might have felt like home more than anywhere else I’d known. But in six weeks, we’d be completely free of each other, and I’d be worth fifty million dollars. I could buy my mother back her house in Evanston. Give up men for good. Maybe we could live there together, two bickering old maids. She could teach me how to make her dumplings and kimchi. All the things I’d resolutely refused my whole life. I’d finally learn Korean, sew blankets, spend my spare time playing godori and be the good daughter she always wanted me to be…

“I am thankful,” she continued, “I have a strong daughter that can make her own life. Much better than I ever could.”

And just like that, the house, the life of two old crones squabbling at each other on the porch—it all disappeared. I blinked, and I was back on this porch, back in this life. But lifted, somehow, by my mother’s faith and my own determination to make it right.

Whatever that meant.

“Thanks, Eomma,” I said. “I love you too.”

There was a shout behind her, and before she could reply to me, my mother rattled off something indecipherable in Korean, something I couldn’t understand. Would never really understand.

I had never felt so clearly that we lived different lives. Or understood better that it was the way it was meant to be.

“Call me soon,” she ordered.

“Okay,” I said, still swiping at tears. “I will.”

“Okay,” she said, and in that strange, yet familiarly abrupt way of hers, she hung up the phone, leaving no room for sweet goodbyes or kind words made of nothing but reassurance. The conversation was over. The important things had already been said.

“Everything all right?”

I put my phone in my coat pocket, then turned around to find Zola stepping onto the porch. He was a bit more dressed up than I’d seen him last weekend, in a gray button-down shirt and black pants. With his dark hair and olive skin, he looked a bit roguish. But his eyes were open and friendly. There was no mask at all.

He gestured with his half-full wine glass. “They sent me to find you. Ray’s carving the turkey, and they’re dishing up.”

I offered a small smile and ran my finger under my glasses. “Yeah. Yeah, everything is okay. I’ll be right in.”

But instead of leaving me to gather myself, Zola took one look at me, set his glass on the railing, and crossed the deck to gather me into his arms. He left no space for refusal, and while I stiffened at first, once it was clear there was no ulterior motive, I allowed myself to enjoy the comfort.

Because in my mind, it wasn’t him who was hugging me. It was another solid, lean body. Another pair of arms that were wiry, but strong. It was the subtle hint of Tom Ford I was smelling, and it was a gold-stubbled cheek pressed against my forehead.

When I closed my eyes, I could pretend it was Eric offering me solace, not this kind man who barely knew me at all.

I allowed myself exactly three long breaths before I stepped out of Zola’s embrace. My eyes were dry again, and I felt like I could eat pie with everyone.

“Thanks,” I said. “I—I needed that.”

Zola smiled kindly. “You looked like it. The holidays are hard when you’re not getting along with family. I’ve been there.”

“Yeah?” I pulled off my glasses to check my eyes in my window reflection. “Why aren’t you with yours now, by the way? I thought you had a big Italian family.”

“Well, my ma would kill me if she knew I was here instead of in Belmont. I’d never get away with it at Christmas, but sometimes I feel like a little white lie doesn’t hurt for the sake of my sanity.”

He reached out and squeezed my hand, and I squeezed back, grateful in this moment to have a friend.

But before I could reply, I spotted a shape lurking behind the sliding glass door. Because of the way the afternoon light bounced off the window, it was hard to spot him at first, but as soon as I did, his gray eyes cut through every distracting flash. Eric, watching me with an expression full of hurt, but also anger. And I realized that he had seen the entire thing.