It never felt like an even playing field. For every man Emma was interested in, there were at least three tall, skinny, leggy model-types who flung their Keratin’d hair around and smiled their perfect, white-toothed piranha smiles while elbowing Emma out of the way.
She couldn’t compete with such high-maintenance gorgeousness, nor did she want to. At work, she put on her uniform—the designer uniform that all the female bankers were expected to wear: the Givenchy, the Dior, the Jimmy Choos, the Manolo Blahniks. She blew out her hair and expertly applied makeup every morning before leaving her apartment for work. But as soon as she got home she tore everything off and slipped into jeans and a T-shirt, scrubbing her face, pulling her hair back into a messy bun. On the weekends she let her curls burst free.
But every time she went out for dinner with one of the men she had met when she was done up for work, or at a client meeting, she knew she had to maintain the image or they would lose interest. After a while, she didn’t want to pretend anymore. After a while, it just seemed easier to not date. And even though all of her work colleagues thought she was crazy moving out to the suburbs as a single, childless woman—Westport! But you’re not married! You’re never going to meet anyone in Westport! What are you going to do in Westport?—she knew she stood a better chance of meeting a real person there, someone who wasn’t obsessed with a perfect trophy girlfriend hanging off his arm. More than that, she realized that in the life she wanted to live, meeting a man just wasn’t the most important thing.
There were other things that Emma wanted to accomplish, things other than a picture-perfect relationship that may have been hollow beneath all the flash and charm. A business of her own that fueled her creativity. A peaceful life. She dreamed of sitting in her own garden surrounded by hydrangeas, sipping a glass of wine and breathing in the salty air; going for daily walks along the beach; renting a kayak and taking it out on the water. She wanted to be living her life, finding friends, and if someone happened to come along whom she found interesting, then great. She wasn’t going to go looking for him.
She was perfectly happy building a new life by herself.
In fact, the last thing she needed was a man to complicate things. Although, with a couple of drinks under her belt, there was nothing wrong with the tiniest bit of flirting. Was there?
• • •
Later in the evening, a girl comes into the Hen and Emma sees every man in the bar appraise her as she sashays through the crowd with a very plain friend. She walks right through the crowd, stopping several stools down from where Emma and Sophie are sitting.
“Dom!” She leans over the bar, pulls Dominic in with a proprietorial hand around the back of his neck, and gives him a long kiss on the lips.
“Wow.” Sophie leans toward Emma with a frown. “That’s the girlfriend? How disappointing.”
She is pretty, Emma thinks, pretty beneath all the makeup. Her hair is very blond, and very hair-sprayed. Her eyelashes are false, her T-shirt tight and low-cut. She’s sexy as hell.
“Why? She’s a bombshell,” says Emma.
“She looks like she just walked out of Ruby’s Two.”
“What the hell is Ruby’s Two?”
“It’s where the girls are.”
Emma continues to look bemused.
“A strip club! It’s where all our hedge-fund husbands go for their boys’ nights out. And trust me, it’s not exactly . . . not exactly sophisticated.”
“Are you calling his girlfriend cheap?”
“Yes!” slurs Sophie delightedly. “That’s exactly what I’m calling her. She’s nothing compared to you. And without the makeup she’s probably as rough as anything.”
“You’re mean when you’re drunk.” Emma sits back, looking at her friend in astonishment, narrowing her eyes to try to focus more clearly.
“I’m not mean. I’m just more honest. Seriously.”
Before Emma can respond, Dominic comes over with the blond girl. “Ladies, I’d like you to meet Gina.”
Sophie puts on her most gracious smile. “So nice to meet you,” she says, as Emma admires her capacity to switch gears so quickly. “I’m Sophie.”
“How do you do?” Emma extends a hand to Gina. “I’m Emma.”
Gina’s smile is polite, if not warm. “Which one of you is the tenant?”
“Me.” Emma raises a hand. “I just moved in this morning.”
“I guess we’ll be seeing a lot of each other,” she says eventually. “I stay over a lot next door.”
“Great,” says Emma. “You’ll have to pop in for a cup of tea.”
“Right,” says Gina, who mumbles vaguely—something along the lines of how nice it is to have met her—then walks off to the other end of the bar.
“Not exactly warm and fuzzy.” Sophie pretends to whisper this, but she is within earshot of Dominic.
“I’m sorry.” He turns to face them. “She’s a nice girl underneath, but not much of a woman’s woman. It’s just insecurity.”
“Why is she insecure?” Emma is perplexed. “She’s gorgeous.”
Dominic shrugs. “Isn’t it a female thing?”
They all turn to see Gina, at the other end of the bar, who smiles at them before beckoning Dominic over. It’s clear he has no choice.
“Gotta go,” he mutters.
“Wuss,” mutters Sophie, as Emma just shakes her head and laughs. “You know why she just did that, right? Claimed her territory?” says Sophie, as Gina slides her arms around Dominic again, from the other side of the bar, and kisses him deeply. “She’s threatened by you.”
“Why on earth would she be threatened by me?”
“Because . . . I don’t know. There’s something. I think he might like you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” says Emma. “Never have there been two people less compatible than my landlord and myself. Just because neither of us is married doesn’t mean we’re going to jump into bed together.” She doesn’t know why she feels the sudden need to defend herself, to insist that there is no possibility of anything happening, when she is beginning to notice she feels happy whenever he is around.
“It might be fun.”
“I’m not planning on finding out. Don’t you think it’s time we made a move to go home?”
SIX
It takes a while for Emma to open her eyes. She isn’t sure where she is at first. The room is brighter than she is used to, and it smells different. Her head is pounding. As she swims up to consciousness, she cracks open one eye to see the light flooding in through the French doors in the bedroom.
Ah. It comes back to her. She is in the rental house. There are boxes everywhere. The light is flooding in through the sheer white Ikea panels on either side of the windows. She hadn’t drawn them last night, not that it would have made a difference—they wouldn’t keep out the brightness of this summer’s day.
Last night. Oh God. The drinking. She makes her way to the bathroom, ripping open a box and digging through it until she finds a bottle of painkillers. Tipping two tablets into her hand, she leans over and puts her mouth to the faucet, swallowing the pills with a mouthful of lukewarm water before walking back to bed and sinking into the covers with a moan.
Emma doesn’t remember the last time she had a hangover. However bad she is feeling, though, Sophie must surely be feeling worse. Sophie didn’t drink any water, and Sophie was hammered. Emma pats the bedcovers for her phone, and, squinting at the screen, she taps out a text.
You alive?
The dots appear, before one word. No.
Emma grins and puts the phone down, closing her eyes to wait for the painkillers to take effect, trying to remember what happened last night. Dominic had been sweet and solicitous, looking after them at the bar, pouring them drinks on the house far longer than he should have. His girlfriend, Gina. Bitchy. Probably not who she would see him w
ith only because he seems so nice, and she seemed . . . insecure and rude.
Nothing terrible happened, she is sure. And it was fun, even though it’s not something she wants to do on a regular basis. Someone asked for her number; she can’t remember who. She only remembers giving it to him, with one digit off.
An hour later, having dozed off again, Emma wakes, this time feeling guilty. There is so much to do today, so many boxes to unpack, so much organizing. She pads into the kitchen to dig out a jar of instant coffee from one of the boxes. (She hates instant coffee but always has some on hand in case of emergencies.) As she hauls the boxes from the high pile in the corner, there is a knock on the door. She’s not as alarmed as she was the first time this happened, but she still can’t help but wonder who could be knocking on the door?
“Hello?” Emma calls from the kitchen.
“It’s Dominic,” comes the voice. “I’ve come to start working on the shelves.”
Emma catches sight of herself in the door of the microwave. She’s in men’s boxer shorts and an oversized T-shirt, with her hair a tangled, frizzy mess. Shit. She doesn’t particularly want to be seen like this, but she is stuck. She runs to the bedroom, grabs an elastic off the nightstand, and scrapes her hair back into a bun, then goes to the door, opening it a crack and peeking her head through.
“I’m not even dressed,” she says. “Can you give me five minutes? I had no idea you’d be here so early.”
“It’s eleven o’clock,” says Dominic. “Bit too much drinking last night?”
She blushes, but laughs. “Thanks to you constantly refilling, yes.”
“Here.” He hands her a cup of coffee through the door. “I thought you might need this.”
“Good God! Are you the greatest landlord ever?”
“I aim to please,” he says.
“Thank you. This is amazing. Can I just put some clothes on? Give me five minutes. Is that okay?”
“See you in five minutes.”
Emma runs to the bathroom and looks at her face in the mirror. Her eyes are puffy, her skin grayish. She washes her face and splashes it several times with icy cold water, pinching her cheeks to bring some color back into them. Her makeup bag sits on the dresser; she looks at it, but no. It would be ridiculous to put makeup on. Maybe just the tiniest bit of concealer to hide the shadows under her eyes.
Her clothes are still packed, but she finds a clean T-shirt and denim shorts. A roll of deodorant—the shower will have to wait—a spritz of perfume, and a shakeout of her hair before gathering it back again, and she is, if not her best self, at least presentable.
Not that it should matter in the slightest, she tells herself. But she wants to redeem herself after last night.
She’s soon back to open the door again. But when she does so, she’s greeted by a surprise.
“Hello.”
There is a small person next to Dominic, holding a toolbox. Emma crouches down to look him in the eye. She isn’t very used to small people. Most of the women she worked with in New York were single, and those who were married tended to keep their families and work lives separate. Emma hasn’t spent very much time with children at all. She sees Sophie’s son, Jackson, from time to time but he is so young, and her time with him sporadic.
It’s not that she doesn’t like children; it’s that she never feels entirely comfortable around them. She wonders whether it’s better to talk to them the way she hears other adults talk to them—in a singsong voice, like a child herself—or to talk to them as if they were adults themselves.
Because she is never sure who to be or how to act, she is convinced this awkwardness makes her someone whom children will dislike. She once read that it is good to crouch down to look children in the eye so they see you as being on their same level. Hence her crouching now.
“I’m Emma,” she says, holding out her hand to shake his. “You must be Jesse.”
Jesse doesn’t say anything, but he takes her hand, even though he doesn’t look her in the eye. Emma wishes she had something fun to tempt him out of his shell. A dog! A cat! Any kind of small animal. But she has nothing other than herself to offer. “I like your haircut,” she says lamely. “Is it a Mohican?”
Jesse looks at her then. “Mohawk. It’s called a Mohawk,” he says gravely, as if he were the teacher and she the student.
Emma nods. “In England, where I come from, I think we used to call them Mohicans, but Mohawk it is.” She’s aware that she is babbling and worries that she’s sounding stupid, so she stands up, gesturing them both inside. “I guess you’re going to help your dad?” she says eventually, as Jesse nods and marches past her, lugging the toolbox with him and setting it down in the little room that will be a library, before opening it and extracting a tape measure.
Emma leaves them to it. They are measuring, and sawing, and sanding. It all seems very professional. Every now and then she hears Dominic talking to his son, as if he were a colleague and not his child. He asks Jesse’s opinion, and waits to hear what he has to say, appearing to seriously consider everything the child offers.
“Should I put this shelf here or here?” she hears.
“Put it higher so she can fit big picture books on it, too,” says Jesse.
“Great idea,” says Dominic. “I bet she has a lot of picture books.”
Emma experiences a slight pang when she hears this. She doesn’t actually have many picture books, but she does have an awful lot of hardcover novels, and more than a few coffee-table books. She is tempted to go in and check on their progress but doesn’t want to interfere. Perhaps she should make them some fresh lemonade.
Emma busies herself in the kitchen, squeezing lemons, adding sugar, then unpacking her pots and pans, the pantry items, putting everything away. Halfway through one of the boxes, she finds her wireless speaker and sets up her playlist on her phone to play the sounds of summer.
Seconds later the voice of Jack Johnson fills the air. Emma sings along, moving through the tiny galley kitchen. For the first time in a long time, she feels the burdens of work, of banking, the stresses and pressures of the career treadmill, beginning to lift. As she continues to unpack, she swells with the thought that this is her life now. That she has a future filled with all kinds of possibilities. A wave of excitement builds deep inside.
Dominic comes out of the library and stands in the doorway. It takes Emma a little while to sense that she is being watched; she flushes a bright shade of red when she sees him.
“You look happy,” he says.
“It must be this house. I think it’s having a magical effect on me.”
“It’s living by the beach. It has a magical effect on everyone. It’s why I would never leave. I think it’s the light, but it feels different from anywhere else in town. Living down here reminds me of growing up. Kids are out on bikes, free-range. Like time has stood still.” He pauses. “Want to come see the shelves? We’re almost done.”
“Sure. I made you lemonade.” Emma puts down the dishcloth, picks up a pitcher and glasses, and follows him into the library. She takes a deep breath before looking at what he has built. The shelves are ever so slightly sloping to the right. Not all of them, but at least two. There are giant seams at the top, and although they will clearly do the job of holding books, they are hardly a thing of beauty.
“Fantastic,” says Emma, mustering every dramatic skill she has ever possessed. “I can’t believe you’ve done this in just a few hours. Wow! These are brilliant.”
“I’m pretty good at making things,” says Dominic, proudly.
“My dad can build anything,” says Jesse, proudly.
“You are clearly a man of many talents,” says Emma, as her brain furiously ticks, figuring out how she’s going to fix the sloping shelves and seams.
“Want me to start loading the books on them?” says Dominic, good-naturedly. “I can put th
e carpet back, too, if you’d like.”
“No, no, it’s fine,” says Emma quickly. “I’m going to paint the shelves and I haven’t decided what color, so I’ll put the carpet back after I’ve painted. Thank you so much for this. It’s amazing.”
“No problem,” says Dominic. “I’m going to run over to the deli and grab something to eat for Jesse and me. Can I get you something?”
“I’m fine,” says Emma. Actually, she’s starving but she doesn’t want to ask anything more of Dominic. “But thank you. For everything. Maybe you guys can come over for dinner one night this week so I can thank you properly.”
“That would be great,” says Dominic, although Jesse narrows his eyes slightly and says nothing. Emma notices, realizing that Jesse may like her as a neighbor, but he may not feel the same way about a friend who might get in the way of his time with his father. “Speaking of dinner,” Dominic continues, “I’m having some friends over on Wednesday for a barbecue. Good people. You should come. You can bring your friend Sophie if you’d like.” With that, Dominic and Jesse gather up their tools and say good-bye.
Two hours later, Emma returns from the hardware store with moldings, molding pins, filler, sanding blocks, primer, and paint. The boxes left to unpack will have to wait. The shelves are only a few millimeters off, but Emma knows it will be all she focuses on every time she looks at them. She can nail pins into the back and lift the shelves to straighten them; put the molding onto the fronts of the shelves to disguise everything else. She will fill the gaps with caulking, prime them, and paint them a glossy pale greige. All subtly done, so they are perfect and it won’t look like she went back to “fix” Dominic’s hard work.
She will turn them into something beautiful. This is what she does. This is what she is good at. And there is nothing she loves more than a challenge.