Chapter 4

Liv

Chase comes downstairs after putting Katie to bed and we settle in to watch our movies. He’s sitting on the couch with his iPad and Jason Bourne, and I’m curled up in the armchair with my iPad and Bridget Jones’s Baby.

Odd, right? How did this parallel movie-watching ritual ever come into existence? Excellent question.

The first ever Liv-and-Chase consolation party happened after our own ill-fated blind date.

Eve and Chase’s friend Jesse, who’s a Realtor like Eve, set the two of us up right after I moved here three years ago. It wasn’t too long after a really craptastic breakup, and I was feeling…brittle.

We met at a restaurant, Chase’s choice. Before I even got my napkin on my lap, Chase said, “I can tell already this isn’t going to work.”

I raised both my eyebrows. What kind of arrogant jerk judges a blind date that fast? “Oh, really?”

I knew he wasn’t saying it because he wasn’t attracted to me, because I’d already watched him give me an approving once-over.

“How tall are you?” he demanded.

“Five eight,” I said, grudgingly. “You?”

“I’m five ten.”

“Is that a problem for you?” I asked innocently. Honestly, it was a bit of a problem for me, because I liked wearing heels. In fact, that night, I was wearing five-inch heels, and when he’d stood from the table to greet me (points for that), I’d towered over him. But I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of saying so. I’d let him be the asshole, since he was already embracing the role.

“No. Do you always dress like that?”

Half of me wanted to get up and leave, and the other half was fascinated by his sheer nerve. And I suck with fractions, but the rest of me was relieved that he was a jerk so I didn’t have to worry about actually liking him. There was a big part of me that wasn’t ready to go there again after what had happened with Zeke.

“I don’t always wear dresses and heels.”

“Makeup?”

I hid a smile. “Yeah.”

“Your hair all—curled like that?”

That night it had been a particularly difficult battle to put the ringlet curls in my hair—but I was pleased with the results. “I wear it a lot of different ways. Sometimes I straighten it, sometimes I curl it.”

“But you always, you know, style it.”

He said style like it was a dirty word. Which irked me. For me, style is everything. It’s hair, it’s clothes, yeah, but it’s also putting your stamp on a home or a room or a table setting or a greeting card—it’s making the world beautiful, one small act at a time. It’s taking your time with everything you do, because the littlest things can be works of art.

Regardless, I wasn’t going to pretend to be someone I wasn’t for the sake of this date. Especially not if he wasn’t going to even try to make nice. “Yeah. I always style my hair.”

“Not low maintenance, then?”

It’s funny how once you’ve decided you don’t care, you can be yourself. With another guy, I might have tried to pretend to be lower maintenance than I am, but since this wasn’t happening, I told the truth. “Nope. I’m not one of those girls who can go from shower to out the door in ten. Never have been, never will be.”

“Hundred bucks says you hate camping.”

“Look at you with the assumptions and stereotypes.”

He squinted at me.

I folded like a cheap table. “Hate it.”

“Sports?”

“What—do you, like, have a checklist?”

“Pretty much. What, you don’t?”

“I might have a mental checklist, but I don’t trot it out first thing on a blind date!”

“There’s your first mistake. Why not? It takes all the guessing out of the process.”

“You mean all the fun?”

He glares. “If by ‘fun’ you mean the part where after you’ve had sex for the first time, you ask if she wants to go to a baseball game and she says, ‘I hate sports,’ then yes. It takes all the ‘fun’ out. So. Spill. Do you like sports?”

As much as I wanted him to be wrong about something, I couldn’t lie. I shook my head. “I watch the Super Bowl, for the commercials, and the World Series if I’ve heard of the teams.”

He shook his head too, giving me a look of disgust that was only half in jest. “Okay, so shoot. What’s on your checklist?”

At least he was fair. “How do you feel about art museums?”

I probably wouldn’t have normally led with that, but he’d turned this into a tennis match and it was kind of entertaining, so what the hell.

He winced.

“Modern dance?” I was amping it up for effect.

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Knickknacks and throw pillows?”

He shook his head. Then he threw me a doozy:

“How do you feel about kids?”

“Um, is that a first date question?”

He laughed. “I have a two-year-old daughter. She’s mostly with her mom. We never got married, long story. But yeah, I have a daughter.”

“I love kids. But I grew up in foster care and between that and nannying, I’ve already raised, like, six babies. So—I don’t know. Not anytime soon. I need to do life, career.”

He nodded at that. “Also.” He tapped the table. “I hate this restaurant.”

“Oh,” I said, surprised. “Me, too.”

“We could—get out of here. Go someplace else.”

“Like?”

“There’s a burger place—”

He didn’t have to finish the sentence. I was already laughing.

“Why, where would you want to go?”

“There’s this vegan bistro—”

His eyes got really wide.

“I’m messing with you,” I admitted. “I’m totally not vegan. But maybe something like Il Capriccio? You know, gourmet food, candlelight?”

“That’s two more strikes against you.”

But he was grinning, and I couldn’t help grinning back. It was so absurd it was starting to be fun.

It was too bad it wasn’t going to happen, because he had a great smile, hair so rumpled it made my fingers itch, and the perfect amount of scruff on a strong jaw. Not to mention a gray T-shirt clinging to broad shoulders and sculpted pecs. But Zeke had been good-looking too, and look where that had gotten me.

That night, we managed to agree on a few things: that blind dating—really, all dating—sucked, that it was important to know the points on which you couldn’t compromise, and that people overall spent way too much time beating around the bush about important stuff when they could lay it all out up front.

Also that we wouldn’t ever be a couple.

We parted ways after dessert, and I figured that would be the last I heard of Chase.

A couple of weeks later, I went out on the worst date of my life (still), with this guy who wouldn’t even make eye contact with me over dinner and could barely stammer out answers to my questions, let alone pose one of his own. I’m sure he wasn’t a bad guy, just painfully socially awkward, but it was brutal. And he’d successfully checked every box on my mental checklist, so I texted Chase to say that I’d added one more criterion to the list, the ability to carry on a conversation, and he texted back to say that he’d just been on a date with a woman who’d brought her cats with her in their carriers, one in each hand.

That was a waste of an evening, he texted.

Amen to that.

I would have been a lot happier at home with an action flick, a six-pack, and a large pepperoni.

Me, too, except chick flick, chocolate, and wine.

Let’s do it.

Do what?

Let’s have a consolation party. My place, 45 minutes, bring your own movie-playing device and snack and drink of choice.

I hesitated.

I texted back: Just to be clear, I’m not interested in hooking up. I didn’t want to be a jerk, but I also didn’t want there to be any misunderstandings. He was so not my type, and I was so not his. And he’d been so straightforward with me the night we’d gone out—surely he wouldn’t begrudge the same from me.

I am all for being clear. No hookup. Just movie. I swear on the Mariners’ prospects for this year.

It made me smile. Maybe because dating was so exhausting—the hope, the preparation, the anticipation, the burst bubble, the putting on the best face you could while the minutes crawled by.

Chase was offering me the opposite.

Just like that, we were friends. And we have been, for three years. I don’t know what I’d do without Chase to make me laugh, especially after bad dates. We have a tradition now: If either of us has a bad date, the other one has to come over afterward so we can debrief. We mock the bad dates relentlessly, laugh like fools, and toast our continuing single status (Chase stocks wine for me; I stock scotch for him; and we bring our own snacks, because we can’t agree on them). Afterward, if it’s not too late, we watch movies—sitting side by side with our iPads, earbuds in, watching our respective genres.

We get together other times, too, but for me at least, my favorite times are still those post-date bitch sessions.

I’m going to miss our get-togethers when I go. Earlier today, I was hoping Chase would say he’d miss me after I left, but let’s be real: He’s not good with emotions. He’s never going to say that.

Maybe we can move our consolation parties to FaceTime, but it won’t be the same…

Anyway, tonight, we’re midway through our cocktail of Jason Bourne and Bridget Jones’s Baby when Bridget Jones’s baby starts crying. Only Bridget hasn’t actually given birth yet, so I pause my movie and tug out my earbuds. Katie.

I look over at Chase, and he’s asleep in his chair. Poor dude. I hate to wake him, not when he’s been getting up with Katie so many nights, so I push myself out of my chair and head up the stairs. I push her door open and kneel beside her bed. I put my hand out to touch her hair in the dark.

“Mommy.”

My heart wrings.

“It’s Liv, baby. It’s Liv.”

Even though I know I’m not who she wants, she shushes. Thank God, because I could feel her sobs in my gut.

“You okay, Katie girl?”

“I had a bad dream.”

“You’re okay now.” I stroke her forehead, and she settles back down. Her hair is wet from tears.

My own mother died when I was seven. I don’t remember her very well. But one thing I remember vividly is that sometimes, when she left me with a babysitter she would come in late to say good night, and I would rise through the layers of sleep to the comforting feel of her cheek against mine and the scent of her shampoo in my nose.

I’m not sure if the sharp grief I feel right now is Katie’s or mine.

“Had a bad dream.”

“I know, Katie girl. It’s okay, it was just a dream. Go back to sleep. I’ll sit with you a minute.” I brush Katie’s hair back.

I hesitate a moment, then lie down beside her and rest my cheek against hers. She smells clean and salty-sweet. Not a baby smell, but a healthy-kid smell.

I wonder if it’s how I smelled to my mother.

In the first foster home I lived in, the mom used to sit up with me when I woke from nightmares, stroking my hair or my back, telling me I’d be okay.

She smelled like nutmeg and cinnamon, whereas my real mom had smelled like vanilla. Her hands were big—hefty and reassuring—whereas my own mom’s had tripped lightly. But she was there, and most nights, that was enough.

The first time I woke my second foster mom in the middle of the night, she told me for Christ’s sake not to be such a baby, it was just a dream.

I never woke my third foster mom up. By then—age ten—I’d learned to do everything I could to be hassle free. The less trouble you caused, the more likely you’d get to stay. So I got up in the middle of the night to comfort the younger kids who woke with nightmares, not expecting anyone to comfort me.

Until Zeke, of course. Zeke comforted me when I had nightmares.

With promises he didn’t keep.

Katie has turned over onto her stomach and is settling down now, hiccupping occasionally. I rub her back, listening to her breathing. Her body warms as she slips toward sleep.

She shudders once and the last bit of tension ebbs away. Her breath sighs out in sleep. I stay with her a few minutes longer, then slowly draw back my hand, willing her not to wake.

I slip out of her room and tiptoe downstairs, where I almost knock Chase over, coming up.