CHAPTER FORTY
My mom came back to Gavin’s apartment after I fell asleep last night, but now she’s up, dressed, and raring to go to brunch even before I’ve made coffee.
Who is this new Meredith and what has she done with my mother? In Eugene, Mom spent Sundays reading in her pajamas and often never got out of pajamas at all.
We walk Jasper through Central Park to an Upper East Side brunch spot. My mom gushes the whole walk about the view from Rockefeller Center, the late-night dessert spot Dan took her to, and everything she and Dan caught up on.
I’ll bet not everything. I ask her if she kissed him and she blushes crimson but furrows her brow at me.
“That’s not something I’m ready to talk about.”
I raise my brow and mentally save that line to parrot back to her when she grills me about my love life.
The morning is crisp and I tie up Jasper at the sidewalk table where Dan’s already waiting for us. He stands and wraps an arm around my mother’s waist to kiss her in greeting. She offers her cheek but he pulls her closer, giving her a good, hard kiss on the mouth.
Holy high-school sweethearts, Batman.
Mom frowns at me. “Don’t start.”
“I’m just here for the food.” I smirk but bury my nose in the menu. Mom sits and gives Jasper a lot of attention but I think she’s just self-conscious under Dan’s heated gaze.
I’m happy for them.
And totally, outrageously jealous. I wish Gavin were here. I wish he were kissing me at brunch after a spectacular night together.
“So what are your plans today, ladies?” Dan asks, and I mumble something about taking mom on a sightseeing bus tour before the spa appointment.
“Meredith, since Beryl’s busy this afternoon, I’d love to take you exploring. There’s a food tour of the Lower East Side’s ethnic restaurants that I think you’d enjoy. The green tea creampuffs and shrimp dumplings are fantastic, and there’s a pickle place that makes habanero pickled pineapple.”
Dumplings! Dan’s speaking my language. Mental note to find out where he goes.
Even though I know my mother’s rarely more adventurous than salad and casserole, I hear her accept with enthusiasm. I spend the rest of brunch watching their back-and-forth like a tennis match.
***
I feel like an impostor as I follow a beautiful girl through the hushed corridors of Bliss Spa. We’ve passed two waterfalls, a Japanese-style tea suite and dozens of treatment rooms.
She takes me to a locker room that looks like it belongs in a palace. Not that I’ve been to a palace, but I’ve seen my share of period movies. Marble and chrome are everywhere and my bare feet melt into the heated floors.
The girl takes my phone. “Spa policy!” she chirps and misses my scowl. She opens a slender closet door where a fluffy white robe waits for me to swap with my clothes.
“You have fifteen minutes before your first treatment in the mud room,” she tells me. “Once you’ve changed, take a seat in the tea lounge. Someone will escort you between each session.”
Gavin’s signed me up for the royal treatment—a mud wrap followed by a full-body scrub, then a ninety-minute massage, facial, mani/pedi and salon appointment.
I may never leave.
Then again, the spa folks have no idea what they’re up against. I’ve never done the spa thing—I get my hair cut at a place that charges twenty bucks. I’ve never even had a pedicure.
Will that be weird? I vow to go with the flow. Try new things.
I sip green tea in the lounge with a half-dozen “no talking” signs and more than a dozen women ignoring them. Even though everyone’s in identical robes and slippers, no jewelry and little makeup, gossip indicates the social status pecking order.
I eavesdrop, catching snippets about whether that bitch had more work done. One of the women catches my eye. “Do you have something to add to our conversation, or are you just along for the ride?”
I shake my head, trying to get off the hook with an apologetic smile.
“Then perhaps you should relax a bit further away,” another woman says, inclining her head toward an empty bench at the opposite side of the lounge.
Ouch. But I’m not about to lose a stupid spa turf war.
I stand, stretching to my full height, and lean in to their cluster with a whisper. “Ladies, you might want to keep your voices down. You don’t know who I am. But I know exactly who you are.”
I drift away, letting them chew on the possibilities of my threat. Now that I’ve seen behind the curtain of so many of New York’s elite, they no longer scare me. Everyone has secrets that could undermine their reputations.
The rude women are still staring at me when a tiny woman beckons me to follow her to a treatment room swirling with new age music, low light, and the scent of lavender. She tells me to start face down—naked!—on the vinyl-covered table and then she steps out of the room.
I hang my robe on a peg and arrange myself on the table under a thin sheet. I wiggle, adjusting my boobs so they’re not smashed beneath me. I wiggle some more, fidgeting to find the right way to position my legs as she reenters the room.
“You need a bolster.” She slips a half-cylinder pillow under my feet to elevate them. Instantly, the pressure on my lower back is gone. “I’m Iris. Is this your first time?”
I confess my spa-virgin status to Iris as she coats my body in thick, gooey mud. The fat paintbrush tickles as she applies the mud, explaining that it will “draw out impurities.”
My mind’s in the gutter with that comment and I snort. It’ll take a lot more than a mud wrap to relieve me of the impure thoughts I’ve been having about Gavin.
He’s coming home. I’m not sure when, but I’m excited and scared and lusty and nervous all at once.
I worry I’ll disappoint him. I’m just me—pretty, but not a stunner like Lulu. Talented? Hell, I don’t know.
I worry he’ll disappoint me. That he’ll be the cocky rock star I read about in Spin, instead of the confused, wrecked, passionate guy I’ve been chatting with.
I don’t want the rock star—I want the Gavin who wrapped me up in his favorite T-shirt after a very scary night. The Gavin who figured out how to send me passion fruit gelato on my birthday. That’s the Gavin I know.
Or think I know.
I worry that reality won’t work. That outside of a chat session, we won’t connect in real life the way we did online. Will we have chemistry? Will he still want to do the things he promised to do to me once he sees me in person?
Iris removes the mud from my back and helps me roll over so she can coat the other side of me. I sigh deeply and she mistakes it for relaxation—but mostly, it’s angst.
I’m crazy about him.
Truth.
And if Gavin takes one look at me and runs the other way, my heart will be shredded. Eugene-Beryl would grieve and move home. The budding New York-Beryl? I have no idea how I’d survive it.
Maybe I need a strategy. Maybe I should have my guard up in case things don’t go as planned. I try a few careless phrases in my mind, trying to be dismissive of too little feeling from Gavin. I try to be cool, aloof, disinterested.
But who am I kidding?
The very reason I’m so eager to see Gavin is the fact that he was real with me. He’s not the packaged product I imagined when I first saw him online. I’ve given him truth in return—secrets I haven’t shared with anyone. Feelings that run deeper than I ever thought possible, even after a year and a half with Jeff.
Iris finishes the mud and rinses me with a high-pressure showerhead that makes me squirm. She rubs a soapy lather all over my body and then pulls two coarse mittens over her hands. She scrubs furiously on my skin, up and down every limb, my back, my armpits, even—cringe—my butt.
“Pressure OK?” she asks brightly, not seeing me cringe.
“It’s fine,” I lie. I open my eyes and see rolls of dead skin being sloughed off my arms, the way it comes off after a sunburn and a shower.
Gross, yet strangely satisfying.
When that peculiar brand of torture is over, I’m transferred to another room with a carpeted floor instead of tile. The sound of a trickling fountain kind of makes me want to pee. Jared’s in charge of my massage and I’m blissed out in minutes under his long, sweeping strokes.
I’m snoring on the massage table when he’s through. No wonder rich people go to spas. If I had as much money as Gavin, I’d be here every weekend.
Or daily. I could handle daily.
In the salon, a stylist walks me to a treatment room where she instructs me to lie down on another table. “I just can’t let you out of here without fixing those brows,” she says sternly. “They’re all wrong for your eyes. Have you been threaded before?”
I shake my head and watch as the woman unwinds several lengths from a fat spool of white cotton thread.
“Don’t worry. It doesn’t hurt much.”
The “much” is what I’m worried about. I remember a failed brow-waxing experiment in college with Stella—it felt like she was tearing my skin off.
I exhale and chant “try new things” in my head as fast as possible, bracing myself.
I hear a high twang, like a tiny stringed instrument being plucked, and feel the thread run above my brow. Two strands twist together and rip lines of hair out of my face. It’s not nearly as bad as wax and when I finally inspect the finished product in a mirror, I have to admit it works.
Satisfied, the stylist takes me back to her chair where she does a treatment that turns my curls into luscious waves. Lea Michele can kiss my ass—now I have show-stopping hair.
I’m a million times more relaxed than when I started, silently thanking Gavin again for the birthday treat. But I’m no closer to figuring out what I need to do about Gavin. He could be home anytime, and I need a plan.