Fight or Flight

My parents liked to think of themselves as free spirits, but they liked their money a lot. I grew up in a nice house with nice cars and clothes. They didn’t believe in parenting me at all, so if I’d wanted to, I could have gotten away with murder. They gave me and Nick and Gem weed when we were sixteen, but I refused to smoke it—though Gem and Nick did. I didn’t like the idea of being out of control.

There were no rules in my house growing up. No boundaries. No checking in to see where I was or if I was okay.

And I guess that made me go the opposite way. I was responsible and conservative. It didn’t take a therapist to tell me that I liked being in control since everything had been so out of control with my parents.

“Honestly, I was just surprised my mom made me go to the dinner the night before Gem’s funeral. Very un-Mom-like to care about what people think.” I shrugged. “But she loved Gem, I guess.”

“Yeah.” Harper scowled. “Even when she screwed you over.”

“Let’s not go there.” I shook my head and squeezed her shoulder. “I’ve been going there for the past ten days and … I want to leave there behind and move on.”

My friend sighed heavily. “Okay. But I’m here if you need me.”

“I know.” I reached over and kissed her cheek. “Now you need to get home and get some sleep before work tomorrow.”

She nodded and walked over to the couch to grab her leather jacket and purse. “Back to work tomorrow?”

“Yes.” I grinned. “I can’t wait.”

“Even with the Shrew breathing down your neck every fifty seconds?”

Harper was referring to one of my current clients. I was redesigning her summer home in Nantucket and the woman drove me crazy with constant phone calls and demands for me to send her hourly updates. “Even then. I have a bajillion voice mails from her. Apparently, my attending a childhood friend’s funeral has seriously messed up her schedule.”

“Ugh, what a cow,” Harper said as I led her to the door. “Seriously, how do you work with these people?”

“Says she who works with Jason Luton, the most intimidating and scary man I ever met until I got to know him.” Jason was the English head chef of Canterbury, the restaurant Harper worked at. He opened it six months before Harper started working there as an apprentice chef. Two years after that he was awarded a Michelin star and had held on to it ever since. The man was exacting and ambitious.

“Yeah, but he’s not that scary now, right?”

“Not to me. But I’ve heard him yelling in the kitchen.”

Harper grinned, not at all intimidated by Jason’s yelling. She respected him, but she didn’t fear him, and I suspected that was why Jason liked her so much. He had invested his time in her and helped her become one of the finest pastry chefs in the state. Speaking of … “When you put those little chocolate tart things back on the menu, remember to sneak me one.”

“They’re seasonal,” she replied. “Winter only. But … if you play your cards right, I might make one especially for you.”

“Oh, like the Kylie and Jason song?”

“Huh?”

I winced. “Sometimes the four-year age gap between us feels like thirty.”

Harper laughed as I opened the apartment door. “That’s because you’re older than your years. Or, well … you were before you reverted to your early twenties and had a one-night stand with a hot Scottish guy.”

A throat cleared and we both jerked our heads around to see my neighbor Brent, from the apartment above me, hiding a smirk as he climbed the stairs with his King Charles spaniel. “Ladies.”

I blushed and gave him a wave.

As soon as he disappeared out of sight, Harper burst into laughter and I cut her a filthy look. “Thank you for that. You do know it’s the first thing he’ll tell his husband, and once Ian knows, everyone in the building will know.”

“So what?” Harper shrugged. “You don’t think anyone else in this building has ever had a one-night stand? Own it. You finally did something for yourself and there’s no reason to feel ashamed.”

“Even if he’s an asshole.”

“An asshole who found your G-spot.”

I chuckled. “Okay, then.”

She smiled, giving me those dimples. “I’ll call you, babe. Be good to yourself.”

“You too.” I watched her leave, not closing the door until she was out of sight. Then I turned and leaned against the door, staring around at my apartment.

A fireplace in the center of the wall. A coffee table set in front of it and between two chesterfield sofas in ivory velvet. Soft cream deep-pile carpet Harper told me I was crazy to put down. Crisp, Hessian-colored walls, lush oyster silk curtains that draped the bay window and pooled on the floor. A small country-modern kitchen of cream-colored cabinets with a Belfast sink and thick oak countertops. I had a few paintings on the wall, and the odd ornament. Scatter cushions on the sofas.

Everything precise, perfect, and in its place.

And for some inexplicable reason I wanted to take the half-opened bottle of wine on my kitchen counter and dump its contents all over the room.

Nerves shaken, feeling lonely when I never felt lonely, I decided it was jetlag. It was the only explanation, so I got ready for bed, despite the early hour, and willed sleep to come and take me away from thoughts of Arcadia and the intrusive stranger I’d met in an airport.

Nine

ARCADIA, ARIZONA 2002

Curled up on a small armchair beside the patio doors in my bedroom, I stared out at the pool lit up by the lights my dad had installed in fake rocks around it. Mom had told me our house was built back in the sixties. It was all on one level with lots of glass and gray brick curving around a huge backyard and ridiculous outdoor pool. And by ridiculous, I mean it had a mini waterfall rock feature.

Sounds of my parents’ party filtered down the hall to my bedroom and I squeezed my knees closer to my chest. My parents were social. To the point that they’d started throwing parties for their friends at our house nearly every month. Parties that went on into the early hours of the morning. Parties I was not invited to because that would mean my parents would actually have to spend time with me.

Nope. I was ushered into my bedroom and told to stay there.

The music and laughter made me feel resentful and I glared at my bedroom door.

My parents were not like other people’s parents.

The thing that really made them stand apart from my friends’ parents was the fact that they never bothered to hide the act of sex from me. Sure, they’d never openly started going at it in front of me, because that would have been traumatizing, but they also didn’t do sex quietly like my best friend Gemma’s parents. At least, Gem and I assumed they were doing it quietly. Either that or they never had sex. But Gem thought they got along too well for that to be the case.

And then she asked me to stop talking about it. Which was, like, totally fair enough.

My mom and dad lacked consideration for me, and these loud parties were just another way in which they didn’t seem to care how I felt. When I told Gem about the parties my parents were throwing, she felt bad for me. That didn’t bother me. What bothered me was Nick’s reaction.

He was worried about me, and Nick never worried about anything. However, at fifteen he was a year older than us, so maybe he knew something we didn’t. Whatever he knew, his unease made me anxious, creating horrible butterflies in my stomach as I listened to the party beyond my door.

“I want you to come to me if you ever feel scared,” Nick had said.

I’d nodded but wondered what I had to feel scared about. It was just a loud, annoying party.

Still, something made me get up out of bed that night. It made me stare at the door. And it wasn’t the dry, heady heat of a July in Arizona, because I had a separate air-conditioning system in my bedroom suite, and while my parents liked it tepid in the rest of the house, I liked it cold. Gem said she didn’t believe for a second I was born in Arizona. Surely, I should have acclimated years ago. I hadn’t. And when I was older and I didn’t have to live with my irresponsible parents, I was moving to a state that had all four seasons.