Waking Up With You (11 page)

He picks up the tray and I open the sliding door on the side of the dining room for him to pass through. The exterior lights are on and the courtyard seems perfect for al fresco dining. We awkwardly eat in silence, passing the boxes to one another. I feel distinctly uncomfortable, so I begin the conversation to ease the tension.

“ I didn’t know you were a big fan of Mr. Chang’s.” Boring, but good enough.

“Don’t you remember when Charlie and I would come home after a game with boxes of chow mein?” he asks.

I do remember now. “Oh God, that’s right. Then you would get into an argument about which players sucked the most and noodles would fly in the air every now and then.” I can’t help but chuckle and he joins in. My brother is always a part of the conversation.

“Do you remember what we used to bring for you?”

“How can I forget? You charmed the server to give you a dozen fortune cookies.”

“Are you over them?”

“Not quite. To this day, I still crack open my fortune cookie, hoping for good fortune.” It’s true. I’m addicted to the little slips of paper. I get very upset when I get a bad saying, and then hedge my bets by getting a second one.

“I’m almost afraid to hand you your fortune cookie,” he says teasingly.

“Fork it up,” I say with a hand gesture. He grins and hands me one.

I eagerly break the cookie and reach for the slip of paper inside.

“What does it say?” he inquires.

“I don’t wanna say.”

“Em, it’s just for fun, you know. Is it really that bad?” He frowns.

“No, it’s actually really good.”

He raises his eyebrows. “A tall, good-looking man will invite you for dinner this week,” I say triumphantly. A frown mars his expression briefly.

Huh! Bet you didn’t see that coming.
“Your turn,” I say.

He breaks his cookie and reads the slip silently. His demeanor is impassive.

“Well?”

“Curiosity killed the cat, Em,” he says with humor.

“Oh, c’mon. I showed you mine. You show me yours,” I say without thinking.

“Here,” he says, as he passes me the paper.

On the paper is written: ‘Someone has googled you recently.’ I drop the slip as I start to choke on my orange chicken.

Jake hands me my glass of water and eyes me curiously.

“Chili pepper,” I lie in a raspy voice. Damn Mr. Chang’s fortune cookie supplier.

It’s Monday, the first day of the fall session. Despite the swimming pool fiasco, Jake and I actually had a pleasant meal. I did my best to shift the conversation away from the fortune cookie thing, and we ended up laughing about incidents in the distant past. Charlie’s ghost was probably helping us out. It was a perplexing turn of events, to be sure. We were virtually like strangers before last night. I would have thought that the kissing and groping episode would worsen matters. Instead, the dinner that followed reduced our discomfort and made us almost chummy again. I think something inside me just snapped and said, “Enough. It is what it is. Get over it.”

This morning, believe it or not, Jake is preparing Oeufs en Cocotte, which is just a fancy name for baked eggs. His version is heavy on the herbs and served on brioche, which he got from the French Bakery at Kenneth Village.

Nothing feels better than being served breakfast by one’s pretend-husband. He makes espresso on the Breville Oracle machine, something I’ve never bothered to learn to operate. I put my nose close to the cup and inhale the deep, rich aroma. I take a gentle sip and delight in the subtle woody, spicy flavors. It’s an amazing way to begin the day, and I give an audible sigh of satisfaction.

“I should have made you espresso a long time ago,” he mutters and I snicker like a kid.

“If I had known you were this good at making espresso…” I raise one eyebrow and smile in an indeterminate way, letting him complete the sentence on his own. Now he lets out a guffaw.

The eggs are cooked to perfection, with the whites set and the yolks still runny.

“How are they?” he casually inquires.

“Perfect, as you very well know. Cooking is my thing, so stop trying to take it away from me.” I’m teasing him, but I do feel just a little bit threatened by his skill in the kitchen.

“I would never dream of taking anything away from you,” he says in an almost serious tone. I try to ascertain the meaning behind his words, but his face is unreadable.

The rest of the meal is a blur since I can’t help but examine my daily planner for the day’s activities and he immerses himself in his phone’s reminder and notes apps.

Finally, I get up to clear the table and he touches my hand and says, “Good luck on your first day of school, Em.”

“Thanks,” I say with a grateful smile. He then exits through the front door with nary a glance.

I get the dishes done, put on my chain inside my top, strap on the watch, and slip into a light sweater. I turn on the security system like I always do. I grab my shoulder bag from the room and rush to the car. It’s a twenty minute drive to Davidson University. Founded in 1870, it’s a small, non-profit private institution located in Sun Valley, just a few miles away from Burbank. I chose to enroll here because Davidson’s strength is in its undergraduate science courses. I also wanted to be close to home so I could stay with my brother.

The average class size at Davidson is twenty. It’s a very small community of 1500 students. I’ve scheduled a full load of eighteen units in order to make up for the courses I dropped last semester. I park by the shaded area and immediately come into contact with Tim Atkinson and Katie Styles. I know them from my Statistics class last year.

“Emma! You’re back.” They welcome me with hugs and I’m happy that I haven't been forgotten.

“I missed you guys,” I say with great sincerity. Tim and Katie have been going steady since their senior year in high school, and they chose the same college to be together. A sweet couple. They’ll probably end up getting married right after they graduate.

“Guys, you gotta fill me in on what happened when I was gone,” I beg them.

“Join us for lunch later and we’ll tell you everything,” Katie promises. I nod, quickly wave goodbye, and run to the Math Building since I’m almost late for my Math 265 Calculus class. I enter just in time to see Professor Herman begin with a run-down of the syllabus. She drones on and on about the grading system, course requirements, attendance and more. Most teachers just pass out the syllabus and dismiss the class on the first day of school, but Professor Herman wants to use the full two hours to discuss a self-explanatory document.

Dr. Gibbs is my teacher in Humanities. He is also reluctant to let us go until he has exhausted at least an hour of our time. But at least I’m seated next to Paul Smith, my chemistry lab partner from last year. We communicate through text messages on our silenced cell phones and, as before, he cracks me up with his jokes. I walk to the cafeteria where Tim and Katie are already sharing a southwestern salad for lunch. Katie motions for me to sit next to her.

“What did I miss?” I ask both of them. “Lulu Stevens got pregnant and left school,” Katie announces with malicious glee. Since Lulu always acted holier-than-thou, I can relate to the schadenfreude.

“You ladies are being so judgmental,” Tim says to both of us.

“Why not? It’s hard to sympathize with someone who was a first-rate bitch to everyone,” Katie disagrees.

“Moving on,” I declare.

“Professor Warren James has moved back to the East Coast,” Tim says in a sad tone.

“No, I had him for Economics 1 last year and he was the best!” I cry out.

Katie nods in agreement. “He was always rated the best professor here. Fifty reviews on ratemyprofessors.com and rated 4.9. What a loss!” We all shake our heads in unison.

Tim adds ”I think his fiancé is a teacher at Columbia, so he’s accepted an offer from NYU.”

Time was when students hardly knew anything about their teachers or classmates. Now, everyone’s lives are fodder for the rumor mill. Social media has certainly caused the walls of privacy to crumble. I do feel a tad hypocritical thinking this way, considering that my part-time job involves the use of social media. But I genuinely yearn for the past when boundaries were respected. So when I suddenly remember what I was doing with Paige just last week, I feel quite guilty.

Tim and Katie continue to regale me with their entertaining stories about our schoolmates and the faculty. They also inform me about some minor changes in the school procedures. We exchange notes on what classes we are attending and I’m happy to find out that I share one class with them —Communication Studies 105, later this afternoon.

As we stand up to go to our separate classes, Tim quickly asks, “What about you? What happened to you while you were away from school?”

I smile slightly and say, “Nothing much. Just took some time off to relax.” Since I kept a low profile in the campus, no one knew about my brother’s illness.

They both look at me with raised eyebrows, but I don’t say anything else. Really. Nothing much. Buried my brother five weeks ago, married three weeks after that, rejected last night for the third time, back in school today. See? Nothing much at all.

By the beginning of October, I’m used to the daily grind. Jake and I are on easy terms. Right after breakfast, I go to school and he goes to work. He comes home around ten at night, though once in a while, he comes home earlier. We sometimes have food delivered or I just whip us up a simple dinner.

We indulge in casual banter. No serious conversation. I take a dip in the pool late in the afternoons, always dressed in a swimsuit. He swims in the mornings when he doesn’t work out at the home gym. No surprises in our routine. We’ve never had a repeat of that fateful night. We know now how to navigate the minefields.

Between school and the social media work, I’m exhausted at the end of the day. I talk to Paige every day, but we see each other only on the weekends since she’s back at school and commuting to Pepperdine is a challenge for her. She really should be staying in that area during the weekdays, but Paige can never be far from her family (and me) for long, so every morning she gets up at 5 and begins the long journey to Malibu.

She happily conveyed the news to me that her dad just had a transient ischemic attack. It’s not a good thing, but it’s not what everyone was dreading. None of the family knew that he had hypertension. He kept it a secret from them. Now Paige’s mom is vigilantly watching over the good doctor’s diet and activities.

It’s Thursday night and I’m on my laptop, researching for the paper I need to submit next Tuesday. Jake comes in, flings his jacket on the sofa, and sits with his legs nesting on the coffee table.

I give him a questioning look. “You’re home early.” I look at my computer clock and it says 7:30.

“There’s this architectural conference in San Francisco and one of the keynote speakers cancelled. They asked me on short notice to fill in. I couldn’t say no,” he says shortly.

“How long will you be gone?”

“My speech is tomorrow night, but I guess I should be attending the weekend sessions anyway since there will be a lot of networking, and I can catch up with my friends who are coming from other parts of the country.” He looks at me in a contrite manner. “Will you be okay by yourself?”

“Of course. It’s just three days.”

“I really didn’t want to go, but then, since I’m going to be there anyway, I thought two additional days won’t hurt.”

“Do you need help with your packing?” I offer.

“No, no, that’s the easy part. I was in a closed door meeting with my staff all afternoon, working on my presentation, so the difficult part is over.”

“Hungry? I made some ugnspannkaka” I’m referring to batter pudding, a Swedish dish that’s super easy to prepare. “Are you okay with that?” I inquire. Since he’s had it before, he readily nods his head.

“Let me take off my suit and I’ll be back in a jiffy,” he tells me, already walking to his room to change.

I am sort of afraid to be in such a big house by myself, but I chide myself for being a baby. It’s just three days, Emma, I say to myself. And we do have a state-of-the-art security system in one of the quietest cities in L.A. County.

He comes back to join me for dinner. I ask him about the theme of his presentation and he talks a little about it. It seems like an interesting topic and I wish I could see him on the platform before his colleagues.

He then asks, “Can you bring me to the airport at seven in the morning?”

“Burbank or LAX?” I ask.

“Burbank,” he replies. I say yes and then he stands up and tells me, “I have to pack now, Em. I”ll see you in the morning.”

“Good night,” I answer back.
I’ll miss you, Jake.

As I go to sleep, I reach for Caramel. My eyes close and I find myself riding a white horse on the old-fashioned San Francisco carousel at Pier 39. I admire the landmarks intricately handpainted all over the ride. The organ music plays as the riders go on the animals and spinning tubs. Over a thousand twinkling LED lights illuminate the carousel, making it visible on the harbor. I see Jake from afar and wave to him enthusiastically, but he’s looking somewhere else. The blonde woman in a red dress approaches him and he kisses her hard, molding her pliant body to his. Every time the carousel turns, I see them, but he never bothers to turn my way.

We’re on our way to the airport after a quick breakfast of coffee, bagels and cream cheese. After my dream-nightmare, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I haven’t dreamed like that in weeks. Perhaps his trip is causing me some uneasiness. Or my hormones and over-active imagination need some form of outlet. I’m yawning constantly, and I see Jake give me a speculative look.

“Didn’t sleep well?” he inquires in abbreviated fashion.

“No, not really. How about you?” I politely ask back.

I’m surprised to hear him say, “Two to three hours, tops.”

“How can you function?” I quickly ask, afraid he’ll keel over from the lack of rest.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says with a brief smile.