Page 25 of The Homemaker (The Chain of Lakes #1)
Chapter Twenty-Five
Murphy
Comparison kills confidence.
Not everything is about you.
“I’m flying to New York tomorrow to meet with the contractor who’s doing my studio renovations.
Dad’s loaning me his private jet. Come with me.
We can watch the Macy’s Fourth of July fireworks.
We can apartment shop too. Maybe see a show.
Dinner. What do you think?” Blair massages my shoulders while I sit at the desk and work on a project.
“I think I’ve fallen behind and you should take your mom so I can get some work done.”
She stops massaging me and plops down on the bed. “All you do is work. It’s a holiday weekend.”
I laugh. “I try to work. But it’s hard when everyone around me is not working. We’ll have lots of holidays to spend together. ”
“I’m planning a wedding. Our wedding. So don’t act like I’m not working.”
I sigh, leaning back in the desk chair and lacing my hands behind my head. “Yes. And you have time to do that because it’s your only job at the moment.”
“What do you think this trip to New York is for? Hello? It’s for my studio, which is where I’ll make and sell my art, which is my job .”
“Bingo. You’re proving my point. Tomorrow, you have to fly to New York for your job, and I need to keep my ass planted to this chair to do mine.”
Blair pouts. It’s an adorable pout, but I can’t give in.
“Take your mom. She’ll be thrilled to spend a few days in New York with you. Watch fireworks. Take her apartment shopping. I’ll live absolutely anywhere you choose, as long as we can afford it.”
She sighs, staring out the window. “Fine. But you have to keep an eye on my dad.”
“I’m sure he’ll be fine, but yeah, I’ll check on him.”
“I mean …” Blair returns her gaze to me. “Make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid with …” She widens her eyes like I’m supposed to finish that sentence.
He’s a fit guy in his fifties with an insane amount of money. The list of stupid things he could do is endless.
“Alice. Don’t let him get too cozy with the homemaker .”
“I’ll keep him on a tight leash. Happy?”
“No.” She pushes off the bed and straddles my lap. Her expensive perfume that Vera bought her bleeds notes of rose and saffron. “I’d be happy if you were coming with me. My first love was from New York.”
I nod. “Chance,” I say because she’s told me about her first love and her first broken engagement and her second love and second broken engagement.
“I want to make new memories in New York with you. Right now, all I have are memories of him there with me.”
“Good thing you’re making it down the aisle this time. Then we’ll move to New York, and make all new memories.” I smile with confidence.
Sometimes I feel like she’s searching for my insecurities, baiting me with her past lovers.
“Why don’t you ever talk about the women you loved before me?”
I lift a single eyebrow. “Because I value my life.”
“Stop.” She laughs while punching my shoulder.
“I’m serious. Give me something. A little jealousy is good in a relationship.
When you say I’m the first girl to steal your heart, I don’t believe you.
There has to be someone who took a little piece of it before me.
A high school crush? A sexy college professor with black-framed glasses and big breasts? ”
I chuckle, unsure if it’s specifically Blair who’s obsessed with this subject or if all women insist on obsessing over past lovers. Then again, it’s possible that my feelings for Alice border obsession.
“Come on, Murphy. Make me jealous. Make me want to get back here as soon as possible, because I can’t stop thinking about you and your first love.”
“Or you can want to get back to me because you think we’re each other’s last love and that’s all that matters.” I feel proud of my comment. It’s romantic. Right?
Blair deflates, proving my assumption is incorrect, so I give her something.
“The rental I owned?”
She nods .
“I had a guest. A woman. We formed an unusual bond. I was intrigued by so many things about her; but she was …” I shrug. “Elusive. And it felt like a mix of love and bad timing. Ultimately, it didn’t feel real.”
“A guest? How long did she stay?”
“Two weeks.”
Blair’s face wrinkles. “You fell in love with someone in two weeks?”
“Well, at the time, I would have said yes.”
“And now?”
“And now I’m in love with you. The end.”
“Murphy, there has to be more. Did she love you back? How did it end? Why did it end?”
“I don’t know if she loved me. And it ended”—I twist my lips and search for the answer that I still don’t know to this day—“tragically. But I don’t know why.”
“Tragically? Did she die?”
“No. She left and never came back. I waited, but she never returned.”
Blair squints. “Did you call or text her?”
“No. She said she couldn’t give me her number until she returned. Of course, I didn’t understand why, but she asked me to trust her. And I did. So the only contact I had was through the rental app. But she never replied.”
“So she could have died, right? Or she was married. Murphy, she was married.” Blair gasps.
“That’s it. That’s why she didn’t give you her number.
Maybe she planned on leaving her husband for you, but then she changed her mind.
Oh, babe, that’s so sad. Especially since you loved her and waited for her. ”
I force a smile. “I’m with you , so I think you should call it fate instead of feeling bad for me. ”
“I do think it’s fate.” She pecks at my lips. “But it’s also bizarre to think you fell in love in two weeks. It took more than six months for you to confess your love to me.” She teases the nape of my neck. “But maybe you loved me long before you said it. Did you fall in love with me in two weeks?”
I smile, interlacing my fingers behind her back.
“I mean,” she pauses with a nervous chuckle, “don’t respond so quickly.”
I lean forward to kiss her, but she pulls back. “Murphy, I’m serious. When did you know you loved me?”
“I don’t know. It just sort of happened. There wasn’t an exact moment that I knew.”
“Yet, you just said you fell for this woman in two weeks.”
“Blair,” I sigh, “why are we doing this?”
“Doing what? Talking? Opening up to each other?”
“Opening a can of worms.”
She frowns. “Why is it a can of worms? She’s gone, dead, or whatever. What’s wrong with knowing about your past?”
“Because you don’t just want to know about it. You want to compare everything to us. If I compared everything in your past to us, I probably wouldn’t marry you.”
She winces. “What’s that supposed to mean? Now you sound like my father. Do you think I’m going to break off the engagement?”
I rest my face in my hands and grumble. She pulls them away, forcing me to look at her.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I shouldn’t have asked. But now I can’t un-know that you loved another woman more than you love me. And if she wouldn’t have left you, we probably wouldn’t be together. ”
“That’s such a stretch, Blair. Why? What is the purpose? More than I love you? Why the sudden insecurity?”
She climbs off my lap. “Wow. That’s your response?”
I need to strangle something. Instead, I stretch an understanding smile across my face even though I don’t at all understand how we got on this topic. “What should my response be?”
“It should be something comforting, like how you were young and stupid, and what you thought was love was nothing more than bored infatuation with a stranger. And when you met me, that’s when you knew you had never really experienced love.” She crosses her arms over her chest.
“Blair, I have never asked you about your failed engagements. I fell in love with the person you are with me, not with them. But right now, I miss the self-assured artist I met at an art expo in San Francisco. The contagious smile. The flirty batting of your eyelashes, and your unassuming talent blended with just the right amount of confidence. I miss the way you giggled at everything and laughed at people who took life too seriously. That’s the woman I asked to marry me.
So I don’t know if it’s just the stress of planning this wedding or your studio or what, but maybe you could use a few days away to clear your mind. ”
“Yes, Murphy. Meeting with the contractor and apartment hunting without my fiancé seems like a great way to clear my mind.” She rolls her eyes and sulks out of the bedroom.