Page 42 of Almost True
And it just happened that I was more excited to pretend Aidan was mine than I’d been about anything else in a long time, even if it was couched in mild embarrassment at putting us in this position in the first place. The giddy feeling welling in my throat and the desperate need to keep eyes on him at all times wouldn’t let me lie to myself: I wanted this.
* * *
Aidan found me talking to a small group about ten minutes later and sent fizz into my veins just by coming near me. Though I’d planned to keep the party small, it’d ballooned to nearly forty people, all of whom stood near high-top bistro tables planted in clusters around the beautiful yard. A bar with a very busy bartender had been erected on the deck, and waiters passed trays of hors d’oeuvres.
In seconds, my mother approached. “Is this him, Madeline?”
Aidan’s eyes flicked to me and my breath caught, his attention on me sending awareness through me like I was surprised by it. I’d arranged this, hadn’t I? And yet here he was, clearly playing the part.I should introduce him.
But he didn’t wait for me to find words. “Aidan Wallace. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Reynolds.”
She shook his hand, those shrewd eyes of hers taking in every detail. He’d cleaned up nicely for the evening—dark jeans and a plaid button-up. Not fancy, but we were in the mountains here. People didn’t get all dolled up for things like a garden party, nor should they. He looked heart-flutteringly handsome. In fact, I preferred all of Aidan’s attire to yet another suit. Seeing him here, like this, made me wonder if I’d ever truly enjoyed dating men in suits. They were the uniform to my other life, the life before, and this was…now.
But my mother could price the clothes on his back in seconds the same way I could. The difference? She cared and I couldn’t care less.
“You’ve known my Madeline for how long now?” She withdrew her hand and surveyed him again.
My stomach pitched, the sensation threatening to dim the gauzy glow of Aidan’s role as my date—myman. Not a surprise that she’d adopted this aloof tone, but I’d hoped for better. It took me right back to when Nate had brought Ariel to Rome and my mother had treated her like a peasant who shouldn’t deign to want him. Fortunately, neither one of them had been too fazed by the abrasive lecture we’d all received at dinner about dating “beneath” ourselves, and Nate and Ariel were now married with one child and one on the way.
“Just over eighteen months I believe, right?” Aidan turned his milk chocolate eyes to me.
Oh my. Even standing here next to the firebrand that was my mother, he made something in me wake up and another more anxious part melt away.
“That’s right. We met when I came before the wedding.” She’d know which wedding, as we’d only had the one in the family—a fact she never failed to remind me of when I wasn’t willingly dating one of her chosen suitors.
“Well, that’s quite a courtship, especially considering I just now heard about it.” Those brows raised and so many episodes of this exact expression aimed at me over the years flashed through my mind. It made me feel young and naïve, maybe even a little silly, like my not telling her about it meant it couldn’t be real. And yes, technically it was fake, but Aidan Wallace had been living rent-free in my head for that long, and that had been very real.
So her comment also sent a flair of frustration zipping through me, needing to counter it.
“We were friends for most of that time, Mother. We only recently started dating.” I tipped my head to the side to smile at Aidan. He put an arm around my shoulders in the closest contact we’d had since he’d hugged me. My whole body lit up at his touch, at his soliciting it. Of course, it was for my mother’s benefit, but I didn’t mind being on the receiving end of contact with him.
“I’m certainly glad we did,” he said, a fond smile beaming down at me.
Dang, this guy’s good.Aidan didn’t really strike me as someone who could pretend. I mean, I’d hoped he could be at least mildly convincing tonight, but as a towering, serious man, I didn’t need him to charm my mother. I just needed him not to deny or look horrified when she asked him if we were dating.
I smiled back at him, fully aware it might seem a little dreamy. But who could blame me? He had his arm around me and was gazing down at me with an expression I wished was genuine.Crap, I liked him. Even with the pressure of lying to my mother in a crowd of people, I liked him.
And I especially liked the feeling of his arm around me, his hand resting perfectly in the bend of my waist like it’d sat there, belonged there, countless times before. Butoh, it hadn’t. We had barely touched. In the history of our relationship, this contact was precious ground. I wanted to hoard it, memorize it, crawl into a corner and stroke the memory likethe precious, but regrettably, there was no time for such things.
“And you’re in the lawn maintenance business?”
“He’s a landscape architect,” I practically snapped, yanked from the exultations over his touch. I nearly rolled my eyes at myself for letting her get to me so quickly and wished Nate were here to distract from me. His adorable baby would woo her into sweetness in ways her adult children couldn’t. Sadly, I wasn’t surprised by my mother’s supercilious tone at the mention of his business. More like disappointed. She really wasn’t like this all the time, but something about me dating someone not “of our ilk”—shudder. The idea that we were dating beneath ourselves, and once we stopped we’d find happiness, seemed to be her operating thesis these last few years.
I didn’t think of humans like that—stacked up on a ladder or whatever it was she envisioned. She saw Aidan as a man I had nothing in common with who lived in a place where I’d purchased a vacation home. And on the surface, it could seem that way.
Underneath it, and what I couldn’t tell my mother, was a connection I’d never felt before. He understood the desire for freedom. The feeling that I was a little trapped, a little overwhelmed, and a little lost. He laughed at my jokes and seemed to enjoy who I was regardless of the number on my paycheck or the location of my apartment in New York. He understoodmein a way I’d only found with Juliet.
Too bad this was one-sided. Or if not one-sided, then certainly dead-ended. Or however you’d describe the fact that he’d clearly said he didn’t want to date me once he knew whomereally was.
Except… here we were. Standing close, shoulders brushing, his fingers splaying along my side with a kind of possessive spread I wouldn’t have imagined when I’d hauled him into the pantry minutes ago. The soft smile he gave me, the patience with my mom… it didn’t feel fake.
It felt like more. Another fantasy. Another chance to spin a reality where Aidan was mine, and everything was right with the world.
“And you designed Madeline’s back yard? It’s certainly lovely.”
She glanced out over the porch at the stone patio, the beds of drought-hardy bushes and sustainably sourcedeverything.He’d worked with the land in a way that felt kind of magical and made the whole outside of the house feel the same. I’d spent no small amount of time exploring the details of the space long after his guys had given me the tour yesterday afternoon. I’d been excited about seeing the finished product, but the more time I spent outside in my yard, breathing in the mountain air and relishing the determination of the things that grew here, the more I loved it.
Another version of myself might laugh at how cliché the thought was, but it rang true. Allowing myself to stop and smell the actual roses, to feel the velvet of a sage leaf on the pad of my finger, to stand under the shade of the towering aspens with their bleachy trunks and quaking leaves, had awakened me.
