Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 135847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 679(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 679(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
Grabbing my wrap, I headed out.
Hale was sitting in my cranberry chair, head bent to his phone, when I did.
He looked up at me, did another body scan, his lips quirked up, and his eyes found mine.
“You lied about the groceries.”
I felt my eyebrows snap together. “Did you snoop?”
“You told me to help myself. I went for water, and by the way, I filled up your LifeStraw.”
“I’m sure it comes as no surprise I don’t spend my weekends concocting gourmet meals in a miniscule galley kitchen,” I commented as I tossed my wide, wool wrap around my shoulders and snatched up my clutch, neglecting to tell him I barely knew how to cook at all, and didn’t want to know.
I lived in New York City. I could have anything I wanted from any area of the world at any time day or night.
So why bother?
He stood. “Which brings us to a crucial part of our evening, my crash course in all things Elsa Cohen.”
I froze, because…
Of course.
If he was going to be my fake boyfriend, important enough to spring on my family during a meal we were sharing because my brother was in town, he’d know about me.
Dammit.
“Okay, we’ll do it on the way,” I replied.
We headed out, I made sure the locks caught behind us, and I launched in as we walked down the stairs.
“Dad, his name is David, is third generation New Yorker. His grandparents escaped Hungary before Hitler offered them a different relocation package. He’s an accountant. He hates the Yankees, loves the Mets and could complain for an hour about designated hitters. And I think he realized way too late that he’d been blinded by my mother’s Scandinavian good looks, and he’d made a huge mistake.”
“Right,” Hale said quietly.
“Mom, her name is Inger, moved to New York from Norway when she was seventeen. She was a dancer and fancied herself a singer and actor too. She had dreams of being on Broadway. Though she made the line of the Rockettes, and kept that job for two years, that was as far as it went. My impression is, she hooked up with Dad so she could stop waitressing and busting her hump trying to land spots in chorus lines and constantly being rejected.”
By now, we were at the front door, and even though I caught Hale giving the brick an unhappy look, he didn’t do anything but hold the door open for me then exit behind me, putting his hand at the small of my back to guide me to the sidewalk.
Through this, I kept talking.
“Then there’s Oskar. Older brother by three years. He’s an attorney at a big law firm in Boston. He’s married to Anoushka. They have two children, a boy and a girl. My brother does the man spread. My sister-in-law curates photos in hues of cream and pale pink of her perfect home and children. These she puts on Instagram to share what a stellar mother and homemaker she is. And this she does in between bouts of leaving them with their nanny so she can shop, lunch with her friends, and go on long girls’ weekends and yoga retreats.”
The lights flashed on a black Jeep Wrangler parked on the street six cars up from where we were, and I heard the beep.
But other than that, Hale had no response.
So I kept talking.
“Sister is Emilie,” I carried on. “Two years younger. She’s dating a surgeon who practices at Lenox Hill. His name is Scott. I’m uncertain he’ll expect the likes of you to throw rose petals at his feet, but he’ll be disgruntled when I don’t.”
Hale was grinning at my quip as he opened the passenger side door for me. He also held my elbow to steady me as I climbed up into his car.
This being a car I was trying not to let affect me considering it wasn’t a Look at How Much Money I Have car, but instead an American-made classic that would get him from here to there in style, but not in-your-face style.
And it affected me because this choice said a great deal about him, all of it, in my estimation, good.
When he’d angled in his side and slammed his door, before he turned the ignition, he looked at me and asked, “What’s your sister do? Is she a nurse?”
The thought of Emilie doing something for someone else almost made me laugh out loud.
I managed to restrain myself and shared, “I’m hazy about what my sister does for a living. What she’s in pursuit of, though, is a husband that will land her Charlotte’s lifestyle from Sex and the City. Though she won’t fall in love with a good-natured, loving, but balding Jewish boy with foul habits, but instead a handsome Jewish boy who loves his mother more than his wife, which will give her something to bitch about, since otherwise, he’ll be perfect. And as far as I can tell, most of her time goes into this endeavor.”