Page 96 of Try Me
I wanted to walk into the party fearless and dominating, but it just wasn’t me. I wasn’t my dad, and I didn’t want to be.
“Farrow.” Chet’s whisper was a soothing puff of warmth across my neck. His lips touched down lightly on my pulse. “You’re ready. I promise.” He turned me around and looked me up and down critically, then sighed. “Goddamn, you’re gorgeous. It’s really fucking annoying sometimes. Tilt your chin up.”
I did so with a grin as he finished knotting my tie, then smoothed it down my chest. “Does it make you want to punch me in the face?”
“We already tried that. Look where it got us.” He chuckled and ticked his head toward the door. “C’mon, let’s do this.”
As we stepped past the hired security guard and into the foyer of my parent’s house, Chet stopped and stared. “God, talk about a blast from the past. Everything looks exactly the same.Wow.Even Creepy Cupid is still guarding the door,” he said of the hideous porcelain figurine we’d been convinced was watching us when we were kids.
“Mom acquired his brother on a trip to Germany junior year. He hangs out in the library. You should see the balls on him. I thought she’d gotten it as a joke at first. But nope. He sits right on the mantel. Pride of place,” I babbled, then got ahold of myself. “Okay, let’s get a drink. I need a drink.”
Expensive perfumes mingled in the muggy air outside on the veranda. A string quartet played softly in one corner of the garden near my mom’s hydrangeas. I guided Chet toward the bar and ordered us both gin and tonics, handing his off just as I spied my mom waving me over to where she stood with my dad, who was so deeply engrossed in conversation I figured the man he was talking to must have hundred dollar bills coming out of his ass.
Chet trailed behind, and my mom’s eyes lit up as I drew in close. “You look so handsome, honey,” she murmured, brushing a kiss over my cheek. She squeezed my shoulders as she took me in.
Then her gaze moved sideways.
Her smile never faltered, but the change in her eyes was unmistakable, the question in them lingering as she looked back at me.
“I brought a date.”
Chet stepped to my side, a guileless smile tilting his lips. “Hi, Mrs. Farrow. The house looks great. And the centerpieces are…wow. They’re stunning.”
There were centerpieces? I glanced around. So there were. I had fuck-all awareness of my surroundings at the moment.
To my mom’s credit, she barely missed a beat, reaching out and squeezing Chet’s shoulder lightly after a discombobulated pause. “I’m so glad you could come, and I see you’ve got a drink, which is fantastic. There are passed hors d’oeuvres and also some appetizer tables scattered around. In fact, I wonder if you’d mind getting me a—”
“Markus.” My dad’s low baritone rang out as he disengaged from his conversation partner and stepped toward us.
For as much as he was a quintessential politician and smooth operator, the shift in his expression was far from subtle. It was like a swan dive from the cliffs of society bliss into a sulfurous bog of eternal middle class. His nostrils flared like we reeked, and he swore under his breath.
This time, it was my hand that went to Chet’s lower back.
“Gordon,” my mom said, her tone low and warning.
They exchanged a look, and whatever my dad was about to say was lost to the chipper woman who cut in next to my mom. “Is this the whole family?Perfecttiming. Let’s go ahead and get a photo before things really get swinging.” I kinda wondered if she meant my dad’s fists. His face was getting redder by the second. “Are you a friend of the family, or….?” The woman let the question hang in the air as she spoke to Chet.
“He’s my date.” I draped my arm around his shoulder protectively.
Her eyes lit up. “Oh wonderful. Then you come, too, Mr.…?”
“Pynchon,” my dad grated out, jaw clenched.
“Oh, lovely. Err, would you mind spelling that for me, just so I make sure I get it right?” She whipped out a notebook and pen and instead of turning to Chet, prompted my dad with a lift of her brows.
I imagined each letter he spoke as a blood vessel exploding inside him. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen someone literally speak through clenched teeth before. It looked painful.
When he finished, the lady whisked us over to one of the garden benches and then fussed over us, rearranging us several times before she was happy and prompting my mom to hiss more than once, “Your blood pressure, Gordon.”
Immediately after the photographer snapped the shot, a man bustled to her side with a recorder and whisked my father deeper into the garden. “Markus, don’t you dare leave this party without talking to me,” my dad demanded and kept shooting withering looks back at us as he walked away.
My mom smoothed a hair from her forehead. “Chet, would you mind getting me a glass of champagne?”
“Not at all, Mrs. Farrow.”
We both watched him walk away. Then she sat down and patted the bench beside her.
“I had a fiancé when I met your father. Did I ever tell you that?” I shook my head. “Mm-hmm. He was wealthy. Successful. All the things your father wasn’t at the time. Gordon was just getting started. He was young. Hungry. So passionate. It kind of swept me up, how enthusiastic he was, how driven. I loved working for him. He worked late—nights and weekends. I stayed, too, a lot of times. Not because I had to, but because I wanted to. And because I was falling in love with him.” She smiled gently. “I struggled. It didn’t make sense. Robert, my fiancé, was a very nice man. We made sense together. But I didn’t feel the same pull I did with your father. Robert told me I was making a ridiculous decision, that I’d regret it. My parents said the same. I never did.” She squeezed my knee. “Your father is a tough man, and we disagree often. We always have. When Alan Pynchon left the company, it hurt your dad deeply. It was as if he’d been staging a coup behind Gordon’s back for years. It was a betrayal in every sense of the word, but I think it was the betrayal of their friendship that hurt the most.”