The Perfect Marriage(8)

He watched her walk away, feeling the ache that he sometimes did when things weren’t the way he wanted them to be. The party had now joined the ever-growing list of things his father had ruined for him.



“You look stunning, Jessica,” Reid Warwick said.

He kissed Jessica on both cheeks, European-style.

“Thank you. I’m so glad that you could make it.”

He didn’t expect Jessica to return the compliment. Not because he didn’t look stunning too. Jessica wasn’t blind, after all. But Reid knew that he had yet to win her over. He would, eventually. He always did. Especially when it came to the fairer sex.

“Wouldn’t have missed it for the world. It’s like every major player in the New York art scene is here. If there was a fire in the apartment and everybody died, the value of the art market would triple.”

“Isn’t that a lovely thought.”

Reid laughed. “But mainly I’m here to pay homage to my best friend being the luckiest sonofabitch in New York City.”

“Is that right?”

“It is from where I’m standing,” Reid said, looking hard at Jessica.

Even with the mood lighting, Reid thought he saw the slightest flush color Jessica’s cheeks. A pregnant pause hung between them. Reid was leaning in closer, about to comment on Jessica’s dress, when she said, “My son has apparently decided to grace us all with his presence.”

This pushed Reid back a step. He turned to take a look.

“He’s getting big.”

“Tall, yeah. Still skinny as a rail, though.”

“How’s he doing?”

“Okay, all things considered. I think sometimes he can’t wait to go to college just to get away from the circus of a life I’ve thrown him into.”

Reid looked around the space. “It doesn’t seem like such a bad life.”

“You don’t remember being seventeen, do you?”

Reid turned back to Owen, and Jessica followed his sight line. Owen was now speaking to a younger attractive woman, one of the caterers. She appeared to be enjoying the conversation.

“I remember seventeen all too well,” Reid said.

Jessica shook her head. “I can only imagine what you were like at that age, but I assure you that Owen is about a million miles away from being that kid.”

“Trust me. All seventeen-year-old boys are the same.”

“Trust me, they’re not. Not at seventeen. Not at forty. There are good ones and bad ones.”

Reid held his tongue. He had little doubt on which side of the divide Jessica believed he fell.

“If you’ll excuse me, I need to mingle a bit,” she said.

Reid returned to the bar, where he got himself another Johnnie Walker Black, neat. Drink in hand, he surveyed the crowd. He had decided to come stag with the fleeting thought that he might not leave alone. Based on the attendees, that seemed unlikely. Most of the women were coupled up and about his age, which was a good ten years older than he favored. The caterer chatting up Owen had caught his eye, though. Maybe later.

He reminded himself to focus. Tonight was about business, not pleasure.



Wayne and Owen had reached that awkward stage in a father-son relationship where neither knew how to express affection. Owen was too old to hug, and Wayne felt ridiculous shaking hands with his son like they were about to close a business deal.

“You look really good, O,” Wayne said, placing his hand on Owen’s shoulder.

Stephanie kissed Owen on the cheek, which Wayne noticed made his son wince a bit.

Wayne scanned the room, looking for Jessica or James, but he couldn’t spot either in the crowd. “Not too shabby,” he said, taking in the room.

Owen didn’t answer, which was nothing new. In fact, it surprised Wayne when his son actually responded to something he’d said.

“You having fun so far?”

“Not too much. Mom said I could go back in my room after the toasts.”

“I suspect we won’t stay much longer than that either. I mainly came to see you.”

Owen had just finished his sophomore year of high school when Wayne and Jessica told him that they were getting a divorce. Like so many things with his son, Wayne couldn’t decipher how Owen actually felt about what was undoubtedly a sea change in his life. At the time, Owen was two years removed from his cancer diagnosis and it had been a year since he was told he was in remission. Perhaps compared to such an existential threat, his parents’ divorce was of lesser importance. On the other hand, Owen could often be a black box. Teenagers keeping their emotions hidden from their parents was nothing new, of course, but Owen seemed to elevate it to an art form. Wayne almost could never tell how Owen felt about anything, good or bad. But the one thing Wayne was near certain about was that Owen had not been surprised by the news that his parents were no longer in love, as if his son had somehow seen coming what had so blindsided him.

Wayne originally resisted Jessica’s request that Owen live with her in Manhattan and visit Wayne only on Wednesdays and alternating weekends. He claimed he was thinking about Owen’s best interests, but that hadn’t been his true motivation. He’d simply wanted to push back about something. Make Jessica pay some price for destroying him. The way he saw it, even though he couldn’t stop Jessica from leaving him for James, he could at least deprive her of Owen for as many nights as possible.