CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I can’t wait around in this hotel room all morning for my sisters to get back from wherever they are—probably talking to the travel agent about a new ticket for me. I need to clear my head.
I leave the room with my bag over my shoulder and take the elevator down to the lobby. I wave at James and Jeremy on my way out and stop just outside the main doors. I look left and right, trying to figure out which direction I should take.
“May I help you find something? Would you like me to call you a cab?”
I smile at the older gentleman who works as a doorman for the hotel. “Actually, if you could tell me how to get to Central Park from here, that would be great.”
He points up the street. “Just head in that direction for two blocks. You can’t miss it.”
Now that I look in the direction he’s pointing, I think I can already see it. Duh. “Thank you very much.”
“Don’t mention it.”
I walk with purpose, glad to be out. The fresh air is bracing. My mood has shifted considerably; today’s a great day to be alive. A half hour ago it felt like everything was hopeless, that I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. But after talking to Carol, something inside me has changed. I don’t know what it is. Did I just become an adult instantaneously after one conversation? It kind of feels that way.
Before I arrived in New York, I never really questioned who I was or where I came from. It didn’t matter. I had the farm, I had my sisters, and I had my mothers. We also had the occasional housemate or people pitching tents on the farm, and they always kept life interesting. The farmers’ market is always fun. We have our regulars and new people who pass through. For me, that was almost enough; it wasn’t that difficult taking my dream of another life and locking it away in the dark recesses of my mind. But as I head down to Central Park amid the noise and the fumes and the smells of cooking food and brewing coffee, I wonder if it really is enough. Am I hibernating out there? Am I hiding from the real world and from what I really want to be doing?
I’m not sure that’s the case. It sounds a little melodramatic when I hear it echoing around inside my head. But I think it would be wrong to dismiss the idea that maybe I should get out more and try new things once in a while . . . just to be sure that the life I’m living is the one that I’m choosing to live and not the one that I ended up in by default.
My phone rings and I pick it up without looking at the number. “I am so glad you called.” I need to get Rose’s and Em’s opinion on all this stuff.
“Well . . . okay . . . that’s not the hello I was expecting, but I’ll take it.”
I stop immediately, causing someone behind me to bump into my back. A man dressed in leather pants and jacket, his hair teased with a few feathers hanging in it, apologizes and goes on his way. Wow. There are all kinds of people in this city.
“Where did you get my number?” I ask the troublesome man on the phone. I can’t believe Ty is calling me.
“Lister gave it to me. I just stopped by your hotel but you weren’t there.” He sounds funny.
“No, that’s right; I’m not there.” I cock my hip and rest my elbow against my ribs.
“Can I ask where you are?”
“Sure, you can ask . . .” I start walking again, more slowly this time.
“But you might not tell me?” he says, finishing my sentence for me.
“I don’t know. I’m really not sure what to say to you, Ty, I have to be honest.”
“Just tell me you’re not at the airport.”
“No, I’m not at the airport.” My stupid heart soars with the knowledge that he doesn’t want me to leave town.
“Good. So where are you?”
There’s no way I’m going to get out of this, but I’m not sure that I want to anyway, so . . . “I’m walking to Central Park.” It’s a half a block ahead.
“Oh. Are you there yet?”
“No, not quite.” I’m waiting for another light to cooperate. A crowd of tourists with cameras slung around their necks surrounds me. They’re speaking animatedly in a language I don’t know.
“Cool. Wait for me. I’ll catch up.”
I panic. “No. Don’t catch up.”
He laughs. “Why not?”
“Because. I’m taking a walk. Alone.” I’m not ready to see him. I have too many big life decisions to make right now, and seeing him is only going to make things more confusing.
“You can’t possibly be walking alone. This is New York City.”
He thinks he’s charming. I scowl. “You know what I mean.”
“Is it that you don’t want to take a walk with anyone or you just don’t want to take one with me?”
This man is so exasperating. “What difference does it make?” He made it perfectly clear how he feels about me last night when he threw me under the bus. Why is he trying to be cute with me now?
“I just thought we could have a little chat. A friendly conversation, no big deal.”
“I was going to Central Park to clear my head. That’s going to be pretty hard to do if I’m having a chat with you.”
“How about I escort you down to the park and we can chat on the way . . . and once we get there, I’ll leave you alone?”
“I’m almost there.”
“So? I can be short and sweet when I need to be.”
He’s being so reasonable, I’m finding it hard to deny him. At some point I’m just going to sound bitchy, and that’s not who I want to be with him. Besides . . . I’m only a half a block away . . .
“Fine. But I’m not stopping. If you can catch up to me, fine.” I hang up the phone without another word and slide it into my purse. The light hasn’t even turned green yet when I feel somebody tapping me on the shoulder. I turn around and find Ty there.
“Hey,” he says, completely out of breath, heaving and holding his chest.
He’s wearing a dirty baseball hat, big aviator sunglasses, and the same gross jeans he was wearing yesterday, with a really old, faded Red Hot T-shirt that has the band’s first album cover on it.
“Did you just run all the way from the hotel?”
“Yeah. As soon as you told me where you were headed, I started. Saw you from down the block.” He massages his chest and winces. “Man, am I out of shape or what?”
He could’ve fooled me. He may be out of breath, but the muscles in his arms make me think he goes to the gym every day. To distract myself from further evaluation of his hot body, I turn toward my destination and start walking with the tourists as they move out into the street. “Try to keep up.”
“I hear you had a meeting with Red this morning,” he says, easily keeping pace with me.
“I might have.” I want to know so badly how much he knows about that meeting and if he was included in their plan, but I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of having something over me.
“That’s cool. I hope you guys can work something out.”
Clearly, he wants to know more, and I would really love to share details of my life with this man, because it almost always feels good to have a conversation with somebody and get another opinion on it—but I don’t like the idea of becoming vulnerable to him. He’s already shown me that he’ll turn on me in a second. It makes me cranky to think of how well we get along sometimes and then how not well we get along when one of his moods strikes.
“You said some things that really got the band talking last night,” he says.
“Oh yeah? That’s great.” We reach the other side of the street and the entrance to Central Park.
“Are you mad about that?” he asks.
“No, I’m happy for you. I really am.” I need to calm my attitude down. He’s just trying to be nice, even though he’s also attempting to dig information out of me. He thinks he’s so sneaky, but he’s not at all.
“I think they’re ready to make some changes. I’m actually pretty surprised. I never thought I’d hear them say some of the things they said.”
He just keeps dangling carrot after carrot in front of me. How am I supposed to resist this? “Cool.” I’ll just try to keep the conversation going with as little commitment as possible until I reach the interior of the park.
“Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?” he says.
“Yes, I do mind.”
“Good, because I’m really curious.”
I pause to stare at him. “I just said I do mind.”
His grin is lopsided. “I know. But I’m going to ignore that part.”
I shake my head and continue walking. “You are so nosy.” And charming.
“I am. But only with you.”
My heart skips a beat. Even though I know he’s making a joke, for a split second, he made me feel special. “What do you want to know?” I ask, willing to at least hear him out. We’ve reached the park, but I’m not yet ready to tell him to leave me alone. Hopefully, he’ll push one of my buttons soon and make it easy on me.
“I don’t have all of the story, but from what I understand, you have two sisters, right?”
“Correct. Rose and Emerald.”
“Emerald. Cool name.”
“We call her Em.”
“Yeah, that’s probably more manageable than Emerald.”
If he could see my sister’s eyes, he might second-guess that idea. Our mothers call her Emerald almost all the time, and it suits her; I’m just lazy with names.
“And you guys all live together on a hippie commune, like you said, right?”
“Yes. In Maine.”
“And you all think that somebody in the band is your father?”
“No, that’s not correct.”
“See? I’m confused. Help me figure this out.”
I stop and put a hand on my hip. “Why? Why does it matter to you?”
He stands there looking at me for the longest time. All I can see is the reflection of my own face in the lens of his sunglasses.
“I wish to hell I knew,” he finally says.
“Curiosity killed the cat, you know.”
“I know.” He smiles. “What can I say? I like to live dangerously.”
I roll my eyes at his ability to be both charming and annoying at the same time. How does he do that? Am I the only one who notices this skill he has?
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing.” I shake my head to rid it of these silly thoughts and continue our walk. We’re moving farther into the park, but the idea of him leaving makes me sad, so I keep talking to keep him at my side. “We were told that our fathers are in the band. We are not saying anything about it.”
“Who told you? Was it Lister?”
“It started with Lister when he visited our house two weeks ago to tell us. But our mothers have since confirmed it.”
“So, before Lister came to your place, you had no idea?”
“No. No idea.” I shake my head. I still can’t believe it when I seriously think about it. Me? A daughter of someone in Red Hot? Naaahhhh . . .
“That is really hard to believe.”
My blood starts to heat up at the tone in his voice, and not in a good way. “Believe it if you want or not, I don’t care.”
He continues, oblivious to my rising temper, if his tone is anything to judge by. “I mean, how can you not know who your fathers are? Especially when they’re famous like that? Why would your mothers keep that from you?”
I try to walk faster, but hoping I’ll be able to leave him behind is pointless. He has longer legs than me and he definitely can’t take a hint.
“I mean, I’ve known who my father was since birth, but if I didn’t, I sure as hell would be looking for him until I found him. Did you look for them?”
“No, we did not.”
“Why not?” he asks.
I want to leap to my mothers’ defense and tell him we had no reason to look for men our mothers couldn’t even identify, but now I know better—they knew all along where to find the men who helped bring us into the world. Regardless, I’m not going to let Ty’s careless words cause me to be angry with my mothers. They did what they felt they had to do, and I do not doubt for one second how much they love my sisters and me. I don’t need to justify their actions to this guy.
“Because . . . we’re not like you, I guess,” I say. “We’re happy with our lives.” Sure, maybe that was an insult, but so what? He’s being rude, so I can be rude too. Carol’s mention of two wrongs not making a right burns in my brain. Shut up, conscience!
“What are you planning to do here in the park?”
“Be alone.”
I feel his hand on my arm and it slows me down.
“I’m pissing you off again, aren’t I?”
I pull my arm out of his grasp and take a step away to put more distance between us. “Yes, you are. You’re very good at it, and I don’t think you’re even trying this time.”
He hisses out his annoyance but doesn’t say anything. He shoves his hands into his pockets and starts walking again with his head down. I go too, not wanting him to wander off without me. Our business together isn’t finished yet, but I sense it’s about to come to a close very soon.
Every once in a while, somebody will stop and glance at us or do a double take, but so far we’ve managed to walk through this part of Central Park without being molested. But I’m pretty sure if we slow down too much or stop, people will start taking a closer look at him, and then my plans of having a calming walk will be over.
“I think you’d better leave me alone now,” I say, coming to terms with the idea that it’s for the best if he goes his way and I go mine.
“You’re that mad at me?”
“No, I just want a little bit of privacy, and I know if I walk through this park with you, people are going to start bothering us.”
“You don’t like that attention, do you?”
“No. Do you?”
“I don’t know. It’s not bad all the time. Before I was with the band, I thought it was what I wanted more than anything. I couldn’t wait for people to recognize me, so I’d no longer be a nobody.”
“I highly doubt you were ever a nobody.” Men like Ty don’t just walk through life unnoticed or unloved. He’s hot, he’s amazingly talented, and he’s charming . . . and he knows it. Guys like that get attention.
Out of the corner of my eye I catch him smiling sadly. “Maybe you’d be surprised,” he says. “But anyway, now I’ve got all the attention I ever wanted and then some; and sometimes, yeah, it’s a pain in the ass.”
“Like when you’re trying to harass a woman on a walk?” I smile so he knows I’m only kidding.
“No . . . when I’m trying to have a conversation with her and get to know her better.”
I halt immediately and face him. “And what is it you’re doing right now?” I’m not sure I can believe him. I want to . . . for sure it makes my heart go a little mushy to think that he wants to be with me because he finds me interesting . . . but there’s a risk in believing something that’s not true. Ty could easily hurt me.
He stands there with his shoulders hunched forward and his hands jammed deep into his front pockets. “What do you mean, what am I doing? I’m taking a walk. With you. Trying to talk to you.”
I shake my head. “No, you’re not. You’re interrogating me. There’s a difference between a conversation and an interrogation. You’re saying you want to get to know me, but why do I think you’re just doing that so that you can gather information for your own purposes or to use it against me in the future?”
“I don’t know . . .” He sounds annoyed and maybe a touch guilty. “Because you have a very negative outlook on life?”
“No, I really don’t. If you could see me outside of New York City, you would know that I am a very positive person. When people have problems, I find solutions. But every time I’m around you, things turn ugly and dark. Do you know why that is?”
“I could guess,” he mumbles.
“You don’t need to guess because I’m going to tell you. You have a crappy attitude. You’re moody and you’re suspicious of people you don’t have any reason to distrust.” People like me. I move closer to him and drop my voice, because I’m afraid some of the people looking at us are starting to recognize him. “I’m not the bad guy here, okay? I’m trying to help you out.”
He pulls his hands out of his pockets and stares at me. “You’re trying to help me out? How are you doing that?”
“Never mind.” He won’t understand. He’ll see it as me causing him problems when I’m actually solving them. I start walking again, but his hand on my arm stops me.
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything. You heard what I said to the band last night, though.” Now the idea of working for them as a consultant seems like a really bad idea. Ty doesn’t want my help; that much is clear. I can tell by the expression on his face. Distrust. Fear. Anger.
“What you said was nice. I was a little surprised you said it, actually.”
I wasn’t expecting this reaction. The weird expression on his face quickly disappears, making me wonder if I imagined it. “Why did it surprise you?”
“Because.” He shrugs. “I didn’t think you gave a shit about me being in the band or about how people treat me.”
I wish I could see his eyes behind those stupid glasses.
“What’s the matter?” he asks.
“I can’t see your damn eyes. It’s making me crazy.”
He pulls his glasses off. “Better?” His eyelids are swollen and his eyes red-rimmed. He didn’t put new eyeliner on, but there’s plenty of the old stuff smeared around.
“You look like hell,” I say before my manners have a chance to stop me.
He gives me half a grin. “Thanks. You don’t look so bad yourself.” He points at my face.
I sniff and lift my chin, resisting the urge to rub any errant mascara out from under my eyes. “I may have been crying earlier this morning, okay? I can’t help it if my eyes are puffy from that.”
He looks down at the ground, kicking at a small stone on the pathway. “Yeah, I get it. Things are kinda heavy right now.”
I let out a long sigh. “I feel like I’m riding a roller coaster whenever I’m standing next to you, Ty.”
His smile is sad as he looks up at me. “You too?”
We stand there staring at each other for the longest time. And then a few people stop near us, and then more people stop, and suddenly we’re being surrounded.
Ty grabs me by the hand and pulls me along the path. “Come on, let’s go. We’re gathering a crowd.” He starts to jog, and I run with him, gripping my bag against me so it doesn’t bang on my leg.
“Where’re we going?” I ask breathlessly. This is exciting in a way, running from strangers into the darker areas of the park.
“To my favorite spot.”
I give in to the moment and let Ty lead me. I don’t know where we’re going, but I’m looking forward to getting there. Something is happening between us, and it doesn’t feel all bad for a change.