Sophie: I didn’t realize you were headed there.
* * *
Liam: Spur of the moment.
* * *
No response. We both knew were verging on new territory. I clearly wasn’t texting her about her flooring.
* * *
Liam: Are you in tonight?
* * *
Sophie: Yes
* * *
Liam: Can I call you?
* * *
Sophie: Yes
* * *
And just like that, the sun rose on my evening.
9
Sophie
When I say I spent the entire holiday weekend wondering where Liam was, I knew it sounded pathetic. But it wasn’t as if I sat alone in my bedroom every day, chin resting in hand while I stared moodily out the window. I was busy, flitting here and there, meeting with people taking a look at my studio, attending a luncheon my mother had arranged, taking Eloise to a Fourth of July parade, plus meeting up with Whitney and Theo at a party. I couldn’t help it that no matter how busy I got, how much I had going on around me, my brain kept returning to him like a magnet pointing to true north.
Some of my business was due to regular obligations. But part of it sprang from my own determination to not sit alone staring moodily out the window dreaming about my long lost love returning to me. I knew myself far too well. If I didn’t watch it, I could lose it hard over Liam all over again. I was already well on my way. That was the last thing I needed.
I was finally getting my own feet firmly on the ground, setting my own rules, figuring out what really made me happy. I needed to get secure with my own voice before I invited in his. Honestly, I probably should set myself on a strict and fixed timeline regarding all men. A solid 12 months of celibacy would do me a world of good. I was already well into month number two. That meant 10 more…which meant my birthday, getting through the holidays alone, hmm…
Anyway, I’d figure out the exact calculations at a later date. The point was I didn’t need to start obsessing again over Liam Connolly. No matter how gorgeous he was, like larger-than-life gorgeous, with all his strapping muscles and those piercing blue eyes and the intensity with which he held me. And the way he talked to me, holy shit. Men tended to treat me like a porcelain figurine, to be displayed and coddled. Liam had told me he wouldn’t be gentle.
Why did that make me so wet? I’d thought of it so many times in the intervening days and especially nights. I didn’t want him to be gentle with me. The feel of his calloused hand holding my wrist against the wall, it had gotten me so wet. I didn’t understand it, other than to recognize it must tap into something primal in me. There was something between us that got expressed in an honest, stripped-down way, raw and real.
That was why I needed to keep busy, really busy, if I had any chance at staying on my own gravitational axis. I’d only just found it, and already I was getting pulled off. I’d spent too many years dancing to other people’s rhythms. Now it was time to move to the beat of my own drum.
The day after the Fourth, I got some good news about plumbing. Apparently the pipes in the second floor had been updated more recently. Whoever had done it had done it on the sly, without procuring approval from the historical society, but what they didn’t know they never needed to find out. It meant that I had clear running water in the unit I wanted to move into. I figured I might just go ahead and do that, sooner rather than later.
Fixing myself a salad in the kitchen, humming and smiling as I worked, my mother rounded the corner, instantly suspicious.
“What has you in such a good mood?” she asked, sounding as if she were accusing me of a crime. Professor Plum in the ballroom with the wrench.
“Things are going well with the studio,” I ventured. The topic almost always provoked conflict, but soon we wouldn’t be living under the same roof anyway.
“You’ve got a long way to go with that building.” She shook her head and poured herself some tonic water with lime. “And good luck finding people to help you with it over the summer.”
“Liam’s helping me.” The words tripped out of my mouth before I’d thought about saying them. Instantly, it felt as if the air had been sucked out of the room.
“Liam?” she asked, her voice quiet but deadly. “Liam Connolly?”
“Yes,” I replied firmly, refusing to back down in any way. “He’s given me a list of names, and they’ve all been really helpful. And he’s helping me with the flooring himself.”
“Oh, I bet he is.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, you’re still the gravy train you were back at 18. He knows a paycheck when he sees one.”
“You are way out of line.” I could feel my temperature rising with every second we spent in that kitchen.
“I’ve seen a lot more of this world than you have.”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m a child.”
“While you’re living under my roof, you’ll respect me as a child does her parent.”
“Speaking of that,” I took a deep breath, “I’m moving out.” I reminded her about the second story of the building I’d purchased and the apartment I planned on living in.
“This is crazy!” she declared as if I’d just told her I was joining the Marines.
“Mom, you need to get some perspective. This is a perfectly normal, sane thing for me to be doing.”
“Did that Connolly boy put you up to this? That sneaky Irish—”
“Oh really? Like we’re so different with our Scottish heritage?”
“Half Scotch, half English.” She drew herself stiffly up to her full height.
“Seriously, I can not have a conversation about this with you.” If my mother wanted to see crazy, she should look in the mirror and keep talking about the superiority of her British ancestry to my father’s Scotch or, God forbid, Liam’s Irish background.
“He’s always had a hold over you,” she continued. “He nearly persuaded you to ruin your dance career before it even began—”
“Mom—”
“And now you’re doing it again, leaving the stage in favor of what? A crumbling studio where you’ll teach fat, snotty kids how to twirl around?”
“Maybe that’s what I want to do with my life.”
“Such a waste. All my children, they’re all wasting their lives.”
“Thanks, Mom. I know I can speak for all of us when I say we really appreciate your support.” I didn’t mean to revert to sarcasm, the language of adolescence, but honestly she cut so deep it was a reflexive defense mechanism. What else was I supposed to do, stand there in the kitchen with tears streaming down my face? I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.
As I started to leave the room, she got in
one, last parting shot. “If your brother knew you were back together with that boy he’d never forgive you.”
I turned around, white hot with fury. “The only one who never forgives anyone, mother, is you. Ian never blamed Liam for what happened.”
“So you tell yourself. But we all know he’s to blame.”
“Stop it!” I screamed, hands up over my ears as if I could fight off the poison she poured out with every word. “How are you still so angry?”
“He crippled my baby. See how you’d feel if that ever happened to you. I bet you’d fall apart. You’d never get out of bed again.” She spat out her words with venom, glaring at me with pure hatred in her eyes.
“I’ve got to get out of here.” I spoke more to myself than to her. It was pointless trying to reason with my mother, brimming over as she was with bitterness and blame. Instead I ran upstairs and started shoving clothing into a suitcase. I could grab enough to spend the night, then come back some time when she wasn’t there to get the rest.
I couldn’t believe she still hadn’t let go of her hatred of Liam. After the accident, we’d all given her a wide berth, accepting if not necessarily understanding the deep pain she felt as she helplessly watched her son struggle with second and third degree burns covering 70 percent of his body. It was something no one should have to go through, not Ian, not his mother.
It had twisted her up inside, and she’d latched onto the idea that Liam was somehow to blame. He was a firefighter’s son. In her eyes, that meant he should have known how to handle the accident. She’d fixated on her version of events. According to her, Liam had abandoned Ian on a burning boat, leaving him lying trapped under a fallen mast in the flames.