Balancing the Scales Read online

  “Now, now, you don’t need to be thinking about kissing boys just yet.” She lifts me to the ground. “We’ll let these set and have one later with a nice cup of tea.”

  I scrunch my nose. “I don’t like tea.”

  “You can have orange juice.”

  We go to the lounge and put on The Little Mermaid. I sit next to Nanna and she puts her arm around my shoulder. “I don’t like Ariel’s daddy; he’s mean to her,” I say. “I wonder if my daddy would have been like him or if he would have been nice.”

  “Your daddy was a lovely, lovely man, Rebecca.”

  “Mummy said that he left us and didn’t want to see me.”

  Nanna pulls me tighter into her side. “Maybe when you’re bigger I’ll tell you the truth about why your daddy left, but you should know that he loved you very, very much.”

  “Do you think I’ll ever see him one day?”

  Nanna’s eyes go wet. “Well, you’ll see him in heaven, with the angels, but hopefully not for a long time yet.”

  “Mummy said daddy isn’t in heaven.”

  Nanna seems to get very cross. “He most certainly is there, sweet pea, and he’s watching over you all the time. Even when you are sad at home with your brothers and sisters, your daddy is looking out for you. Okay?”

  I nod and tuck myself into her side. “If he is watching me, maybe he can make them all just disappear.”

  * * * *

  Nanna packs me a box with seven cakes inside: one for me, two for my half brothers, two for my stepsisters, one for Mummy, and one for Mummy’s new friend, Dave. “Can’t I just have them, Nanna? I don’t want the others to have our cakes.”

  She bends in front of me by the front door and kisses me on the head. “Maybe they’ll like your cakes so much they’ll be nicer to you.” She pulls me into a tight hug.

  It is dark outside and cold. Mummy must think so too because she stays in the car and shouts for me to hurry up. Maybe it’s because it’s so cold that I start to cry. “Nanna, let me stay with you. Please. I’ll be good. I’ll stay here and we can make cakes.”

  Nanna’s eyes are wet again. She tugs the sides of my coat closed. “I wish you could stay here, sweetpea. I wish for that more than anything.”

  “Rebecca, come on! I don’t have all night.”

  Nanna rubs her thumbs under my eyes and tells me, “Stop crying, darling. Don’t let them see you cry. And like I’ve told you before, you have my telephone number, and if anyone ever hurts you, you call me.” I nod. They don’t hurt me, Mummy, Dave and my brothers and sisters, they just aren’t nice to me either.

  “I love you, princess.”

  I sniff. “Love you too, Nanna.”

  She stands on the doorstep and watches me get into the car. Mummy pulls away before I have my seatbelt on or a chance to wave at Nanna. I reach in my bag and hold out the box of cakes between the front seats for Mummy. “I made everyone cakes today.”

  Mummy glances at the plastic box. “Rebecca, I’m driving.”

  I keep holding out the box. “Will you give them to the others, though? I don’t want to.”

  “Rebecca, you need to learn to be nice to your brothers and sisters.” She tuts. “For god’s sake, here.” She snatches the box from my hand and throws it onto the front seat.

  I hope the stickers didn’t come off the top, or she’ll have ruined them.

  Chapter 7

  Drew

  The intercom buzzes. I walk through my apartment in my jeans, towel drying my hair, which is still wet from my post-workout shower. When I pick up the intercom, the building concierge tells me Marty, Brooks and Kit are downstairs. I tell him to send them up and go to pull on a T-shirt. By the time I get back to my apartment door, my buddies are knocking.

  Brooks and I finished sparring at his gym less than an hour ago. I set the poker table and showered when I got home but Brooks has still made good time. Especially since the stacked, six-four, inked giant is holding four boxes of takeout pizza.

  “I bought it, you can serve it, man,” he says, dumping the pizza boxes into my arms.

  All three men head down the corridor to the open-plan kitchen-living space, all three carrying boxes of beers. I kick the door shut with my heel and follow.

  “Fuck, I forget how sweet this pad is every time,” Brooks says, walking to the floor-to-ceiling windows and looking out at the lights of the city against the black sky. I watch his reflection as he folds his arms across his chest. It’s subtle, but his shoulders sag.

  Marty and Kit are in conversation as they make their own way around my kitchen, finding large plates for the pizzas. I take the caps off of two bottles of Bud and walk over to Brooks.

  “Everything okay?” I ask, handing him a cold beer.

  He reaches for the bottle without looking at me, and I watch his reflection as he takes a swig. “Yeah, man. I’m good.”

  Brooks was one of the smartest kids I knew growing up. He wasn’t interested in studying, but he knew shit without having to study. Not academic stuff, so much as he could read people. Even when we were teenagers and everyone else just wanted to get laid and that was an emotion to the rest of us, Brooks was tuned in to the things people couldn’t see. He guessed Tom Harrison was getting a hard time from his old man when the rest of us believed the kid was just clumsy. He realized his parents were getting a divorce six months before they told him. For a man who looks like he should be hanging on a wall in the Louvre with all the art covering his body, Brooks is deep.

  “How’s work?” I ask, taking a shot at what he’s feeling and thinking.

  “Yeah, busy.” His city gym is thriving, but Brooks isn’t the type to brag.

  We swig our beers in unison. “Have you looked into franchising the gym anymore?”

  One side of his mouth curls into a smile that doesn’t reach his cheeks. “Someday, Drew. Someday.”

  He pats my shoulder to tell me we’re done talking, and I take the cue, heading into the kitchen where the pizzas are now on plates.

  Kit is leaning his head back, holding a slice of Meat Supreme in two hands, dropping the nose of the triangle into his mouth.

  “Christ, he’s like a five-year-old,” Marty says.

  I pat Kit’s increasingly chubby stomach and lean back against the kitchen island. He’s about forty pounds heavier than he ever was when we shared a house at Columbia. After majoring in mathematics, he got a desk job, and I can’t remember the last time the man did physical exercise beyond walking the pathetic excuse for a dog he and Madge have.

  “How are Madge and the kids?” I ask.

  He doesn’t bother to swallow before he speaks. “Jesus, Drew, I just got here. Give me a break. This is the one night a month I’m allowed Kit Time. I swear my kids are possessed, and for some reason, when I say that to Madge, she thinks I’m saying she’s a bad mother so she should get a job. She thinks I’m criticizing her for being a stay-at-home mother. I’m telling you, and I tell her, I would take a job as a janitor looking after those spawn of Satan every day.”

  Marty chortles. “I can’t imagine why Madge is pissed.”

  Kit looks at him, deadpan, and says, “Exactly.”

  Now I’m sharing in Marty’s amusement. “You should cherish it,” I tell him. “Time flies, buddy.”

  He rubs the back of his hand across his pizza-stained lips. “Right, like you’d give up the high life. Drew Clooney-Harrington, right there.”

  “Hey, I’m a godfather, aren’t I?”

  “Drew, you know I only chose you because you’re loaded.” With that, he picks up a beer and moves into the living room toward the round poker table.

  “He’s right though,” Marty says, clinking the head of his bottle against mine. “We wouldn’t give up our lives for a nagging wife and kids.”

  “Marty, I can fucking hear you. I can say what I like abo
ut my wife, but you can keep your thoughts to yourself.”

  Marty raises his arms from his sides in surrender. “I overstepped. Sorry, buddy.” He speaks quietly this time when he says, “Doesn’t make it untrue though.”

  We stand around the kitchen, eating pizza and drinking beers, waiting for Edmond to finish for the night at the restaurant. He usually takes off when all main courses are served and gets to us around ten thirty.

  By the time I tell the concierge to send him up, the rest of us have worked our way through a box of beers and two pizzas. We’re limbered up and ready to play some cards.

  Brooks answers the door while I take a leak. When I come back into the room, Edmond is flipping the top off a bottle of beer in the kitchen, talking to the others who are sitting around the poker table.

  “Drew, my friend,” he says, his French lilt coming through his American-accented English, showing his years spent between his signature restaurants in London, Paris and New York. Since his family moved to New York, he’s spent more and more time here. “This is for you.”

  I pick up a bottle and knock it against his in greeting. Then contemplate the white cardboard box he slides along the counter toward me. “What is it? Aw, have you brought me food, Ed? You know how I love when you treat me.”

  “Not me. Open it.”

  I do as he says and see what I know is Violet Passion and a handwritten note.

  I HAD A SPARE MEDIOCRE DESSERT.

  BB x

  BB. British Becky. I realize I’m grinning down at the box, and something flips in my stomach. Like when you drive too fast over a speed bump, an exhilarating kind of sickness.

  “What did you bring us, Ed?” Kit asks, pulling me from the image of Becky and me, by a fire, feeding each other desserts and drinking wine. We’d be naked. The heat of the fire keeping us warm. And we’d touch, kiss, have our limbs wrapped around each other, just because we could. Because we couldn’t get enough of each other. I would listen to her talk all night. That fucking gorgeous voice.

  Holy hell!

  I hold my fist to my mouth as I do something between coughing and choking. I take a step back from the box, as if it has a contagious disease. “Help yourselves,” I manage through my dry throat. I drag a hand through my hair and nail half my bottle of beer in the next gulp. All the while, Edmond’s eyes are fixed on me.

  Kit bounces like Tigger from Winnie the Pooh. He locates forks and takes the box to the poker table.

  “She’s a good person, Drew, and an even better patisserie chef.” Edmond speaks for my ears only. “She’s been squeaky clean since she came to the city. By all means, if you like her… But please don’t make me lose my best chef.”

  I don’t know what to say.

  Don’t worry, I don’t do relationships.

  You’ve got nothing to stress about, Edmond. I haven’t even thought about Becky like that.

  I haven’t thought about bending her ass over your kitchen worktops as she whispers everything she wants me to do to her in that damn British accent every time I’ve jacked off this week.

  “I hear you, Ed. She just wanted a friend in the city. That’s all I am.”

  “You’re being a friend?” Marty asks across my shoulder as he comes for another beer. “Is this from that chick you met at the bagel truck?”

  I just look from him to Edmond because I’m still trying to make sense of my spinning head and erratically beating heart.

  “Hold up! Is she the reason you didn’t change your clothes the other night?”

  “That wasn’t what you think.”

  “You did. You fucked her.”

  “Christ, Marty, are you twelve?” Who am I kidding, lays are quite often a topic of conversation between us. But Becky… I don’t want to talk about her like that. “I didn’t fuck her. I went… There was something I had to take care of, and I fell asleep.”

  “I can vouch for that,” Edmond says. “I’ve never opened my kitchen to find a grown man drooling on my benches.”

  Marty starts laughing. “You went to see her and fell asleep? Jesus, I’ve heard it all now, Drew. First you buy breakfast without getting the night-before screw. Then you fall asleep on her. You like this woman.”

  Growling, I tip my head back and drain what’s left of my beer. “I’ve got a lot bigger things to deal with than relationships, Marty. Like getting my name on the door of our firm.”

  “Damn right you do.”

  That’s the end of the conversation, but my problems aren’t over. I have to get British Becky out of my head. For my sake. For hers. I have to focus on my career. Edmond is right; I could hurt her if she falls for me.

  I hang back in the kitchen and open a new bottle of beer while the others sit around the poker table. I lean forward on the breakfast bar, my back to the others, my hands gripping the edge of the work surface. I contemplate canceling on her, maybe telling her I couldn’t get Yankees tickets after all. But I can’t do that to her. She has a list of things she wants to see in New York. And she wants some company in this city; that’s all.

  No. I’ll go. I’ll go and I’ll make it clear that there can’t be anything between us. I’m not that kind of guy, and I have a lot more important stuff to work on. I don’t have time for...for anyone. Not nagging wives or the devil’s kids. I’ll let her cross the Yankees off her list; then I’ll step out. Maybe leave friendship to Sarah and Becky. I’ll just be the guy she bumps into sometimes at the bagel truck.

  Why in God’s name does that thought bring a dull ache to my gut?

  I join the guys, and we finally play some poker. We talk, we laugh, we take the piss out of each other, we drink far too much beer.

  Four hours later, four grown men are making their way unsteadily out of my apartment.

  Brooks is last to leave. The booze is affecting him less than the others, but the hand he lays on my shoulder is still heavier than it needs to be. “I gotta tell you, man. I haven’t seen you smile like you smiled when you opened that box of cake since… Man, I don’t ever remember seeing you grin that big.”

  “Cake will do that to a man. Catch you later, Brooks.”

  He nods, then thumps the side of his fist into my chest. “You don’t even like desserts, man.”

  I never used to.

  When I’m left alone, I grab a final beer and drop back onto my sofa. I didn’t realize I was drunk until my mind wanders to British Becky. Her soft skin. Her pink lips. That ass when she leaned over the counter in the kitchen. Her silky blond locks. Her sweet scent. Her voice.

  I’ve had too much beer to fight it. I’ll find willpower tomorrow. Tonight… I unbuckle the belt of my jeans and undo the zipper. And I let myself indulge in the only dessert I’ve craved for days.

  * * * *

  I wake with a dry mouth and a heavy head. There’s only one thing to get rid of it, and that’s to sweat the beast. I pull on my workout clothes and head for a run.

  An hour and a half later, I’m showered, I have a full pot of coffee to go at, and I’m sitting on a stool in my kitchen making notes on a new case. The dial tone of Skype sings through my laptop speakers when I’m mid-sentence. Grumbling, I pull a hand back through my damp hair. Then I see it is my sister calling.

  The case can wait.

  I hit Connect, and Millie’s face shows on the screen. She’s sitting in the kitchen of Mom and Dad’s house. She lives in Jersey now with her husband and two kids, so she often stays over when she visits our parents. Free sitters and a better alternative than making her way home after a glass of wine or two.

  “Hey, handsome,” she says. Her smile is a mirror of my own. She’s four years younger than me, but you could be forgiven for thinking we’re twins. We have the same dark blond hair, although she has highlights. The same straight nose. Even the same blue eyes and red lips, when she isn’t wearing makeup.

  “H
ey, yourself.”

  Before we can get into conversation, the screen shakes, and the image of Millie blurs. I’m staring at the kitchen floor in Mom and Dad’s house, then the ceiling. I hear my niece and nephew arguing; then my sister grabs hold of the laptop, and she’s back on the screen.

  “Stamping down your authority there, Mill,” I tease.

  Ignoring me, she brings Annalise and Timmy into view, both propped on stools and looking as mischievous as ever in matching jeans. Poor kids.

  “Now, one at a time, say hello to Uncle Drew.”

  Annalise goes first, wiping her wispy white-blond hair from her baby blue eyes as she does. Cute as freakin’ hell. “Hi, Uncle Drew-bew.”

  “Hi, Uncle Drew-willy.” That’s Timmy. Two years older than Annalise, he’s six going on thirteen with that shitty little attitude. But I’m telling you: one flash of his big childish grin, and I’m putty.

  “You know that doesn’t rhyme, kiddo, right? Drew-bew rhymes. Drew-willy is just silly.” I force my eyes to turn in to look at the tip of my nose and rotate a finger around my temple to tell him he’s crazy. He laughs. He has this huge laugh for a kid, like it comes from his toes. It’s infectious.

  I talk half-sense to the kids for a few minutes; then they’re bored of me and running off to terrorize someone else. Maybe their grandad. The thought makes my lips curve up. Watching my dad play with the kids, watching them penetrate the grumpy façade he tries his best to maintain, is a secret indulgence of mine.

  I’ve just opened my mouth to pick up conversation with Millie when Skype tells us someone is joining the call. Jake, my younger brother, appears on screen, taking up half the shot, with Millie still on the other side. Next to Millie, I’m reminded how little he looks like us. He’s younger, twenty-five. But his hair is dark brown, almost black, and his eyes are deep brown with gold flecks. He looks more like Dad.

  “Hey, dickhead,” he says. I know that’s to me, not Mill.

  “Hey, accident.”

  “Fuck off.” Almost immediately after the words leave his mouth, a dish towel moves into view and slaps the side of the screen from Staten Island.