Eliza Starts a Rumor(53)

Dean got right on the Bard bandwagon. “Word has cometh to me from the other players that your fair offspring, Pippa, is quite adept at the electric harp.”

Amanda laughed. “Methinks that is true, my fine gentleman.”

“Well, if it is so, why doth us not set her soliloquy to song?”

“Hark! No finer idea have I ever heard!”

They both laughed. When they stopped, Amanda made a mental note to have Carson ship Pippa’s electric guitar. Thinking of that interaction dampened her mood and the change registered on her face. Dean noticed.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing.” She paused. They had never spoken about much else than the play, but it felt odd not to be truthful with him.

“It’s just, as great as this has all been, sometimes my reality creeps back in. And it’s not pleasant to think about.”

“I’m sorry. It must be awful.”

They both sat back and took in the curtain of water enveloping the car. The lull in conversation filled with the sound of the rain pummeling the windows.

“Should we check the weather to see when it’s supposed to let up?” he asked.

Amanda looked on her phone.

“It should be stopping in ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes,” he repeated aimlessly. “It’s really coming down.”

“It is,” she responded.

“I’ve wanted to kiss you for weeks,” he admitted.

“I’ve wanted to kiss you for years,” she admitted back.

It was impossible to tell who made the first move. It was so different from kissing Carson. Even with Dean’s strong shoulders and squared jawline, it was somehow gentler, more sensuous. Carson was sloppy in the bedroom and selfish. She could tell if this were ever to go further Dean would be the opposite. She stopped herself from thinking about Carson and relished the sensation of kissing Dean Barr. She laughed inside at the memory of her naive eighteen-year-old self and the laugh surprised her as it exited her mouth. He laughed, too. He had never made out in the parking lot of the high school before.

They started up again and the water pounding down on the car in every direction seemed to encourage the frenzy of their kisses. At some point Amanda climbed on top of him, and while they were both very aware of what was stirring beneath, they stuck to only kissing. She thanked God and Norma Kamali for the jumpsuit she was wearing, its chastity-belt-like qualities keeping her from going too far. In a car. In the parking lot of her daughters’ school. Between the outside storm and the inside steam, the windows completely fogged over.

The rain finally stopped, and they took it as a sign that they should stop, too. Amanda climbed off Dean’s lap and blushed as she realized that she didn’t remember climbing on.

It was the most fun either of them had had in forever.

“I should get this phone home to Pippa,” Amanda said, scared to even glance at the time.

He looked at her and smiled before getting out. “Can we do this again?”

“I would like that very much.”

The eighteen-year-old girl inside her playfully drew a heart with her finger on the misted window as she watched him drive out of the high school parking lot, while her current self sadly acknowledged that she hadn’t felt that way in way too long. The wasted years registered in her brain just as Pippa’s phone rang. She grabbed it without much thought.

“Hello?” she said.

“Amanda?” Carson said in return.

Everything in her deflated, as though the sound of his voice were a pin, bursting her utopian bubble.

“Yes, Pippa left her phone at play rehearsal.”

“She’s in a play?”

“She is, the lead.” She said it in an accusatory way, as if Pippa’s past apathy toward the theater had been his fault. Which wasn’t really true. She reminded herself of her lawyer’s advice and changed her tone.

“She’s very excited about it. But she needs her electric guitar. Can you send it?”

“Maybe I should buy her a new one. She was vying for that Stratocaster, remember, Mandy?”

His two usual tells for guilty behavior revealed themselves in one sentence. Extravagant spending in exchange for forgiveness and calling her Mandy instead of Amanda. He was always going on about the importance of a strong name. Amanda Cole is a strong name, he would say, not Mandy Cole. He had made such a big deal when naming the girls. “My daughters need bold-faced names that will stand out in the press,” he’d insisted.

Amanda remembered the first time she had seen his theory in action:


PIPPA AND SADIE COLE SHINE

IN VERSACE ON THE RED CARPET

Now their good names had been dragged through the mud along with his. Her calm intentions left her, and she answered him with rage in her voice. “Just send her guitar, Carson!”

“When is the play?”

“Thanksgiving weekend, but she needs it to practice.”

“I was asking so that I could put it on my calendar.”

Amanda grabbed the steering wheel to steady herself. Put it on his calendar? She wanted to punch something. He responded to her silence.

“Of course I am coming if my child is in a play. How would it look if I didn’t?”

She couldn’t be sure if he was baiting her or not, but regardless, she took it.