Chapter One
Alexis
It’s dark outside by the time I finally look up from my computer—so much for being home early. I check my phone to see just how late it is: 11:10. So close to the lucky minute I’ve been wishing on since I was old enough to tell time. I wait for it, keeping my unblinking eyes on the screen until it hits 11:11.
Even though it’s silly to waste a wish on something I get to do every night, I wish I were home in bed with Tommy, not sitting in the ergonomic chair designed to be so comfortable that I forget I’m going on fourteen hours at my desk. I love my job, I remind myself.
My eyes find Tommy’s smiling face in the silver frame on my cluttered desk, his arms wrapped around our daughter at her eighth-grade graduation last summer. I linger on CeCe’s face, a younger version of my own, partially hidden by the thick black glasses she insists are “totally on-trend.” I missed seeing her cross the stage in her cap and gown by minutes thanks to a creative presentation that ran late, but I made it in time to take the picture.
An incoming email dings and my focus shifts back to my computer like one of Pavlov’s dogs. Another Google Alert, their frequency increasing at the speed of Monica’s fame, which unfortunately has been gaining momentum in the past year.
Setting up a Google Alert for Tommy’s ex-wife wasn’t exactly my proudest moment, but I couldn’t know she was out there and not know what she was up to. With CeCe’s acting obsession, it’s a small miracle she hasn’t figured out that it isn’t a coincidence the semifamous actress shares her last name.
The information is out there if she’d ever google it. Or asked. But CeCe would never think to ask if either of us had been married before. The only conversation about marriage in our house is centered around the fact that her dad and I never took that “till death do us part” step.
I’m the one who’s resisted all these years; we’d be an old married couple by now if it were up to Tommy. But he didn’t grow up in a house like mine, with parents that were married in name alone. There was no love between them, and that was not the kind of relationship I wanted to model ours after.
I glance back at the email and consider deleting it unread, but curiosity gets the best of me. Lately the alerts have been full of sightings around L.A., pictures of Monica on the arm of a dozen different celebrity bachelors. I keep hoping one of them will stick so she can take someone else’s name, but no such luck yet. I open the email to see what the devil is up to now.
“Netflix’s The Seasiders adds Monica Whistler to its cast.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I accidentally say out loud.
Becky, my best friend and business partner, peers over the giant monitor where she’s making the fourth round of revisions to an ad for Dox Pharmacy, our biggest client. “What’s up, buttercup?”
“Nothing,” I mutter, too tired to explain that not only did Monica land another big role, but she’ll be filming all summer in Destin, Florida.
Of all the beaches in all the world, Destin is our beach. It’s where Tommy grew up, where he and I first met as kids, spending every summer together until the year I turned twelve and stopped going to my grandmother’s beach house. It’s where we reconnected twenty years later, fell in love, and had the oops that turned into CeCe. We still go down there as often as we can, just not as often as Tommy would like.
It’s a small miracle we don’t have a trip planned this summer—CeCe’s too excited about a theater camp here in Atlanta, and I pretty much had to say goodbye to that much time off when I opened my own ad agency three years ago. But still. I cringe at the thought of Monica going back to the beach where she left Tommy with a broken heart and a condo full of modern furniture that was as hideous as it was uncomfortable.
I stand to stretch and start gathering my things. Now that my concentration has been broken, I might as well get some sleep.
“You going home?” Becky asks, running a hand through her signature pink hair. She looks as tired as I feel.
“Yeah, I should have left hours ago—Tommy had something he wanted to talk to me about.”
“Everything okay?”
I shrug through a yawn. “Probably just something about CeCe.”
“She still upset about that party?”
“And a million other things,” I say, yawning again. “See you tomorrow.”
My shoes echo on the industrial floor as I drag myself through our trendy office space. I doubt Tommy will be awake when I get home, which is probably for the best since I’m too tired to talk about anything tonight.
Some days it’s harder than others to remind myself that this is the life I fought to live. The reward for standing up against every chauvinist who told me that women don’t make it far in the advertising industry because they have kids. They probably would have been right about me if it hadn’t been for Tommy.
“DADDY, HAVE YOU seen my purple tank?”
I step into the hallway between our bedrooms and answer CeCe. “I think it’s down in the laundry room.”
“Daddy?” she asks again, and I wonder if I said the words out loud or just thought them.
“It’s in the laundry room,” Tommy echoes. “Still in the dryer, I bet.”
He coughs the deep cough he’s had for a few weeks now. The long hours I’ve been putting in are taking a toll on him, too. I’m about to remind him he should make an appointment to get a Z-Pak or something, when CeCe steps between us, scowling in my direction before making a dramatic exit.
As much as I want to remind her she has me to thank for buying her the tank top in the first place, I don’t. And not just because I can feel Tommy watching, waiting to critique my reaction. Sometimes it stinks living with a shrink.
“If you say it’s just a stage I’ll scream,” I tell him.
“You came in late last night,” he says, wisely changing the subject.
I yawn, as if realizing just how little I slept could make me even more tired. “This project will be over soon.”
“And then the next one will start,” Tommy says. I want to defend myself and say that’s not fair, but he’s right. “Don’t forget CeCe is making a special dinner for us tonight.”
“I won’t forget,” I promise.
Tommy smiles and kisses the bridge of my nose before pulling me in for a hug. I love the way we still fit perfectly together after all these years. I wrap my arms around him, breathing in the scent of the herbal shampoo he uses even though there hasn’t been any hair on his head in more than two decades.
Sometimes it’s hard to reconcile this strong and sturdy forty-eight-year-old man with little Tommy Whistler, the chubby boy from my childhood who stuttered when he spoke, quietly observing the world with one blue eye and one brown.
I tilt my head to give him a kiss, a silent thank-you for being everything he is. He’s the one who holds our family, and our life, together. If it weren’t for him always being there for CeCe, my guilt over putting in the hours it takes to run an agency would be crippling.
“Get a room.” CeCe squeezes past us into her bedroom, purple tank top in hand, and slams the door in our faces.
I parrot her tone: “We don’t need a room, we got a house.”