I drew in a sharp breath. “I…,” I said, and was horrified to hear that my voice was wobbling. “I didn’t—”
“Brett!” The actress was back, looking more aggrieved than ever. “Bob needs to go—”
“I’ll be there in a minute! For fuck’s sake!” he yelled. There was silence in the lobby that seemed to expand and reverberate, and I had no idea where I was supposed to be looking.
The actress shook her head and disappeared again, and I stood up. It was not that I’d never heard a teacher swear—we’d studied Mamet, after all—but this was different. This was making me feel like I was seeing a side of this person that I was never supposed to.
“I should go,” I whispered, hating that my voice was breaking. Hating that I’d come here at all.
“Yeah,” Mr. Campbell said, running his hand through his hair, clearly trying to get himself back under control, his voice dripping with contempt. “You should.”
I backed away toward the exit, pushed my way outside, then hurried up the stairs and out into the New York night. It was disorienting—after what had just happened, and the terrible play, to suddenly be back in the bustle of it all.
Tears were stinging my eyes, and I brushed my hand across my face as I walked to the curb.
It was now clear to me that at every turn tonight, I’d done absolutely everything wrong. Cary had wanted to hang out with me, and I’d chosen the play instead of him. I could have gone to the Village and tried to make things right with Stevie, but I’d stayed. And now it was too late—even if she was still at Josephine’s, me showing up this late would make everything worse. Which meant I’d missed my chance to try and make things right with her. I had put everything on the line—and for what? For that play? It would have been better if I’d never come here at all. I’d wrecked absolutely everything that mattered to me.
Through my haze of tears, I saw a cab coming. I put out my arm, and thankfully it saw me and pulled over.
I got into the backseat and pressed my lips together hard, trying to get my tears under control. I couldn’t stop thinking about the contempt on Mr. Campbell’s face. About the way those actors hadn’t seemed to like each other at all—and how they’d talked about him. About how wrong I’d been about so much…
“Where to?” the cabbie asked. I was about to say Grand Central. There was no point in staying in the city any longer—I’d wrecked everything here so thoroughly. I knew I should go there and catch a train.
But suddenly the thought of all that was just too much, and I found myself starting to cry for real, pressing my hand over my eyes. More than anything, in that moment, I just wanted to go home. “Hon,” the driver said, a little louder. “I need an address.”
“Right,” I said, blinking as I realized I could give him one. I dug in the pockets of my coat with shaking hands and pulled out the address that Grady’s babysitter had given me. I knew this would lead to me being in trouble, but right now, I no longer cared. “Um—18 Ninth Avenue.”
“Got it,” the cabbie said, swinging into traffic. He looked in the rearview mirror, and his eyes met mine for a second before they returned to the road. “What’s there?”
I took a big, shaky breath before I answered. “My parents.”
CHAPTER 23
Stevie
The problem with doormen was that they completely ruined the element of surprise. After we’d attacked the appetizers—and Beckett and I realized that the way to get truly great service was to almost cause the establishment to lose their liquor license—I’d headed out. Beckett had offered to go with me for moral support. But I knew that this conversation with my dad was long in coming. And I had to do it myself.
I did find myself wishing, though, as I collected my puffer from the coat check, that I could talk to Kat about all this. Not only because I needed, finally, to tell her the truth. But also because she was always there when important things happened. I always talked them through with her. I wasn’t mad anymore; now I was just wishing she was with me, and feeling that something was very off because she was not.
I’d taken a cab to the Upper West Side—Beckett had lent me twenty dollars. I’d promised to Venmo him as soon as I could, but he just gestured to the truffle mac and cheese incredulously and told me we were even.
My dad and Joy lived at Mayfair Towers, an apartment building on Central Park West, right next to the famed Dakota. The doorman on duty had called up to my dad, and from what I could tell of the one-sided conversation, my dad was surprised to hear that I was there, but he must have agreed to let me up, because the doorman put the phone down and nodded at me.
“Twenty-four C,” he said, and I wanted to tell him that I knew—that I’d been there before, that this was my dad—but instead, I just thanked him and walked to the elevators with my heart hammering.
I stepped off the elevator on the twenty-fourth floor and paused for a moment in the hallway—carpet, light fixtures every few feet, a table with a mirror right in front of the elevator. Was I really going to be able to do this?
There was a piece of me that was still telling me not to rock the boat. I didn’t have to, after all. Not tonight. I could just tell my dad I was in the neighborhood, that I wanted to stop by and tell him hello, and leave it at that.…
But I didn’t want to. Standing there in the hallway, I was aware that this was what I always did. I made things easier for people. I smoothed things over. I kept everything inside until I felt like I was going to explode. And where had it gotten me?
I was just tired of this—of not even letting myself feel what I was feeling, needing to push everything away.
I was done living my life that way. I’d been almost-mugged tonight and made friends with college students and taken care of a dog and been to a fancy photo shoot and could have shut down Manhattan’s hottest restaurant. I needed to say what I felt. I needed to take up some space.
It was time.
I glanced at my reflection in the hallway mirror, trying to prepare myself. I knew this was going to be more than a little scary—going against everything I’d done up until now, against the way I’d grown up. But it was going to be better this way, I somehow knew. Harder—but in the long run, better.
I exhaled and made myself keep walking down the hall until I got to the apartment at the end, 24C. I knocked, and a second later, the door swung open and there was my dad.
He looked the same as ever, his gray hair carefully parted. Everyone said I looked like my mom, so it was always a little startling when I saw my dad and remembered that I took after him much more—his nose, his ears. And I recognized his expression as one I’d seen on my own face—equal parts happy and guarded. He was wearing dress pants and a black cashmere sweater I didn’t recognize. “Hi, pumpkin,” he said, using what had always been my nickname. “What’s going on?” He leaned out into the hall and looked around. “Is… your mother here?”
“No,” I said, pushing past him into the apartment. It was so strange for me to see things that had been in our house in Connecticut, part of our lives there, in this two-bedroom on the twenty-fourth floor in Manhattan. Like it was one of those circle-what’s-out-of-place puzzles.