The Difference Between Us Read online

  Getting our nails done now was mainly me forcing her to do it in a desperate effort to get my mother to relax. Because I was terrified she was going to give herself a heart attack, or an ulcer, or a wart on the tip of her nose or something.

  One of the great things about Vera being my best friend was that she was a constant reminder of how grateful I should be to have a mom. And I was. But there were parts to my mother that drove me absolutely crazy.

  I already knew family dinner tomorrow night would be one of those things.

  Stretching my fingers, I ignored the urge to head to my studio to paint. My mother’s voice still lingered in the air and I didn’t want to taint my sacred space by inviting her negative energy. I would likely lose some fingers as they sporadically fell off my body thanks to her intense hatred for all things creative.

  No, instead, I abandoned my bed and my phone and did the honorable, mature thing. I took a shower and scrubbed all the booze bleeding from my pores.

  God, I smelled like tequila.

  I blamed Wyatt, the shot master.

  When I got out of the shower, my phone was alight with notifications. It was like a buzzing Christmas tree. I sprawled on my bed again, wrapped in a towel, my still drying hair dripping onto my shoulders and the comforter.

  I checked all my socials first, liking the silly pictures from last night that I had been tagged in and smiling at the fun that had been had. Then I switched over to my emails, deleting shopping coupons and car maintenance ads in favor of checking in on work just to prove my mother wrong.

  After responding to two emails from Henry, one about the Black Soul project and another vague one about hearing about an exciting opportunity for me on Monday, I declared my mother officially wrong. I’d taken advantage of Saturday afternoon and managed to respond to not just one, but two work emails. Booya.

  That’s when I noticed the email that I should have seen first. I had been so curious to find out what Henry’s “secret project” was, and then ultimately so disappointed to discover he hadn’t actually told me that I’d skimmed right over email from the [email protected].

  Now that I looked at it, there was a string of three of them grouped together on my Gmail app.

  The first one read,

  Subject: You know you want to…

  Take the job, Maverick. I’ll make it worth your while.

  ~EFB

  P.S. I promise to stay out of your way.

  I pondered what the F could possibly stand for while my stubborn will fought career-obsessed butterflies in a battle for power.

  Francis?

  Frederick?

  Fitzgerald?

  Ferret?

  Ezra Fucking Baptiste? I wouldn’t put it past him.

  Moving onto the second email, I opened it with more trepidation.

  Subject: About last night.

  Molly,

  Forgive my late email. I was wired after the party and couldn’t sleep. The truth is, I’ve looked up your profile on your company website, and while I’m impressed with your work, you’re still green. I’m offering you a job that I believe will build your portfolio and credibility. Working for me will help you land better clients. And, you should know that I’m willing to pay whatever your fees are. This is a win-win for both of us.

  ~EFB

  One more thought. I see that you are drawn to grey and yellow, but I’d rather not.

  Was he serious?

  Grey and yellow?!

  What did he know about design? Nothing! Nada!!! Zilch! He should stick to what he was good at— being an asshole—and leave me and my favorite the trending colors alone.

  And. AND! He’d spelled grey with an E when everybody knew that gray with an A was the American-English spelling.

  And it was romantic.

  It was the romantic way to spell gray.

  I mean for that reason alone it was obvious this man was a sociopath. Or worse. A realist.

  Gross!

  Fury convinced me to open the third email. Well, fury and morbid curiosity.

  Subject: This will be good for you.

  I’ll see you Monday. We can discuss the details then.

  ~EFB

  Also, I don’t know if I said it already, but I just wanted to thank you again for your work on the engagement party. I appreciate all that you did.

  One final thought, since she’s a pain in my ass and reading over my shoulder, I’m forced to tell you that Dillon says hello. And that she enjoyed meeting you.

  That’s all, Molly. Talk to you soon.

  For half a second, I pondered all of his post scripts and how he seemed to say more at the end of his emails than at the beginning. But then I pushed away that adorable weird quirk to make room for the justifiable outrage boiling in my blood.

  He’d insulted me on so many different levels. It was hard to decide which one should be the most upsetting.

  From assuming I was more interested in money than integrity to insulting my design style again to assuming I would take the job simply because he demanded it. The man was intolerable.

  He clearly wasn’t used to hearing the word “no.” Or “no, thank you.” Or “not a chance in hell, buddy.”

  I had the strongest urge to paint again, but only so I could create something vaguely in his image and then turn it into a dart board.

  Sitting cross-legged in the middle of my bed, I repressed the flattered preening of my ego. Okay, for like a hot second I could admit that it was nice to be considered for Ezra’s website revamp. And not just considered, but aggressively sought after.

  I had no doubt he would pay well. And somehow I knew that if I demanded more money, he would pay that too.

  Not that I would. I wasn’t totally greedy.

  But not for one second did I really believe that he would keep his nose out of my business. In fact, for hardly knowing him or seeing him or wanting anything to do with him, he was perpetually in my business.

  I held my phone with both hands and tapped out the quickest reply I could. There was no reason to prolong whatever was happening here. The emails needed to stop. The unsolicited advice needed to end. And Ezra Baptiste just needed to disappear from my life altogether.

  Subject: Let me stop you right there.

  Dear Ezra Franklin Baptiste…

  Hello, Ezra Fenwick Baptiste…

  What up EFB…

  Ezra,

  There’s no need to call me Monday since we’ll have nothing to discuss. I apologize that you’re so set on the idea of us working together when I am super set on us not working together. If you’re really that interested in SixTwentySix though, I’m happy to refer you to another designer that I trust.

  Best,

  MM.

  P.S. Tell, Dillon I say hello back and that I enjoyed meeting her too. And that she’s hands down my favorite Baptiste.

  I pressed send with a feeling of complete satisfaction. I’d remained professional, polite and persistent. All the right P’s. Now he would get the message loud and clear and move on.

  He was a successful business owner with restaurants to run and empires to build. His attention span was probably the equivalent to a chipmunk on crack. Monday would come and go and so would his thoughts about me or what I could do for his business or my penchant toward gray and yellow and all things green.

  And I would be more vigilant to avoid Ezra as often as possible. Now that the engagement party was over, I wouldn’t need to seek him out again, and the chances of me ever running into him on accident were very slim.

  It wasn’t like we ran in the same circles or shopped at the same organic, uppity grocery stores or vacationed on the same private tropical islands. I would stay on my side of the city and he could stay on his.

  There was only Vera’s wedding to worry about, but we would be back to being strangers by then. Like divorced strangers. We could share joint custody of Vera and Killian, alternating weekends and Wednesdays.

  We would pass each other coming and going
or at the occasional party hosted by our mutual friends, but he had his world and I had mine and ne’er would they ever meet.

  I stared at my phone, refusing to close my eyes and conjure his eyes, his nose, or the breadth of his strong hands. I ignored the tingle in my fingers begging me to paint and draw and create something that could capture that unnamed thing in him I found so obnoxiously fascinating. As I finished my hair and put my makeup on, I stubbornly refused to head back to my studio and examine what I’d done the night before.

  As I made lunch and took two Tylenol, two Advil and an Alka-Seltzer, I chose to forget about the advice Ezra had given last night and the way he’d focused so intently on me.

  And then I proceeded to erase from my mind the three emails today, the emails from before that, and every interactions I’d had with him since I met him.

  He had his life. And I had mine. And everything about us was too different to even consider working together or near each other or in a general vicinity of each other. We were too different and too set in our own ways.

  Good luck, Ezra Fezziwig Baptiste. Godspeed.

  Chapter Ten

  Nobody had turned the porch light on at my parents’ house. It looked foreboding from the street, like the house you wanted to avoid when you went trick-or-treating as a kid because you knew they would hand out pennies instead of candy.

  That basically summed up my childhood. Always pennies. Never anything sweet.

  The front room was dark as I stepped inside, even though the still winter sun had started to set an hour ago. Typical. My mom wasn’t concerned with making me feel welcome. She’d already invited me over for supper, so her obligation had been fulfilled.

  Light from the kitchen situated at the back of the house glowed burnished orange on the dated carpet, spreading a long rectangle to the edge of a scuffed coffee table. I could hear my mom knocking around in the kitchen, putting the final touches on supper. Pots clinked and water boiled, drawers opened and spoons stirred, but no radio or TV could be heard. Just her huffing at our supper and my dad’s distant cough from their bedroom.

  I stood there for a minute, invisible and unnoticed. Taking a deep breath, I inhaled a bouquet of memories and emotions. My chest tightened and I couldn’t tell if it was from regret for agreeing to this or nostalgic longing for when I was a kid and hadn’t had any responsibilities. Whatever the feeling that settled so heavily on my heart, it made me want to purge it from my body, get it out of me and eternalize it on something else. I wanted to paint this exact moment, somehow move it from reality to canvas.

  I would focus on that stretched rectangle of light, make it the very center of the portrait. The carpet would need to be just the right, faded shade of brown. I would need to spend hours detailing the grains of wood from the coffee table. The doorway would need to be the right proportion.

  And then in the background I would add my mom at the stove, her peppered black hair pulled in a low ponytail. I would bow her head over her pot, taking care to detail her curled fingers around a wooden spoon and the black sweatpants and t-shirt she would no doubt be wearing. But I would leave her face hidden, unseen.

  Somehow I would bring in the master bedroom. Maybe just a sliver of the doorway with the corner of a bed and a pair of large socked feet hanging off the edge.

  I would put it all together in grays and blacks and woodsy browns. I would reserve all the color for that one window of light. And then I would let the viewer read into the story whatever they wished. I would let them look at this secret picture of my family and infer whatever story it told them.

  Because it would depend on them, on their view of the world. This could be a story of resilience and loyalty, of people sticking it out no matter what, a happily ever after. Or this could very easily be a tragedy. I still hadn’t made up my mind.

  I jingled my keys and cleared my throat. Dropping my purse on the recliner near the window, I made as much noise as possible and headed toward the kitchen.

  “I’m here!” I called so everyone in the house would know I arrived.

  My mother turned from her spot at the counter and looked over me in her hawk-like way. She never wore makeup so her eyes had a beady quality that was unsettling when they were critical. “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi.” The pressure in my chest tightened. I subtly worried over my choice of clothes and shoes and every single life choice I’d ever made.

  She turned back to supper and tilted her head. “I need you to set the table. I asked your father to, but he has a very important obligation in the other room.”

  “By that, you mean taking a nap,” I teased. “No worries, Mama. What’s the point of coming home if I don’t get to do chores?”

  Without turning around or acknowledging my upbeat candor, she snorted at her simmering dishes. “He’s had a very rough day of napping. His afternoon nap apparently wasn’t enough. And you know, I interrupted him with the vacuuming, so he had to start over once I was finished. The man has no stamina.”

  “He has stamina, Mom. He’s been married to you for over thirty years.” I had long since stopped trying to stay out of things between my parents. That might sound crazy to the normal, non-confrontational person, but for me, I’d learned my lesson the hard way too many times. If I stayed out of it, it never ended. If I jumped in and started reminding my parents of how much they loved each other, they stopped just to get me to stop.

  It was how I kept the peace.

  One might think that this would make me brave enough to jump into any kind of conflict or throw myself into volatile situations or maybe, even simply stand up for myself. But the truth was, having to handle my parents all of my life made any kind of conflict extremely uncomfortable for me.

  I even congratulated myself for the great relationship Vann and Vera had. I took full responsibility for them loving each other so much.

  I couldn’t stand them fighting when we were kids. I burst into hysterical tears the minute they started after each other. It wasn’t so much that Vann cared so very deeply for me, rather he has always hated when girls cried. It’s one of his biggest fears—weepy females. So he would do anything to get me to stop—even get along with his annoying kid sister.

  As we got older, Vann started treating me less like a girl and more like a sister which meant my tears had less and less effect on him. So, during our teenage years, I stopped crying and resorted to simply leaving. We could have been in the middle of a homework assignment or a Vera-inspired cooking experiment, but if the atmosphere felt even slightly tense, I would pack up my things and leave.

  Not for their sake, but for mine.

  Fighting drove me crazy. And after having listened to a pretty constant soundtrack of it for my entire life at home, I had gotten decently good at stopping it, fixing it, or running away from it.

  “He can’t afford the divorce,” my mom grumbled.

  “Mom, he knows I’ll set the table for you. I always do. And I always will.”

  She snarled something under her breath and threw potholders at the table like Frisbees. My mom was this interesting mix of plucky, tell-it-like-it-is ballbuster, and pearl-clutching church lady. In one breath, she’d give my dad hell or toss potholders at the table like she was a frolfing superstar, and the next she’d lecture me for complaining about my boss or putting my elbows on the table.

  When the potholders were set, she spun back to her stove and mumbled angrily about my dad’s grotesque use of his napping privileges. I already knew what kind of night it was going to be before my dad ever made an appearance. If my dad was on his second nap today, there was a reason.

  Because in this house, if Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody gonna be happy until the very, very end of time. Like the way end. Like after the epilogue and acknowledgments and sequel preview.

  I picked up three napkins and started folding them into origami cranes, placing each one in the center of our ancient Corel plates. The eat-in kitchen was small and dated, but it did something to ease the achin
g in my hollow chest.

  My parents were difficult and angry and deeply bitter, but they also cared about me above everything else. And I knew they loved each other. Even if they had a hard time admitting it. But it always made my memories an interesting mix of longing and loved, of bad memories mingled with great ones.

  “You know he lost his job again,” my mother said in a harsh whisper. “Again, Molly.”

  I stared at my mom’s back and lost the ability to form words. Her stiff shoulders and robotic movements said words she would never say out loud. What are we going to do now?

  She never asked that question aloud, because she’d always had the answer. She would figure it out. On her own. Without help and without my dad. She would scrimp enough money to get by and continue to do whatever it took to pay the bills and put food on the table. She would do what she always did—clean up my dad’s mess.

  My dad had never been able to keep a steady job. Which was kind of funny considering how many times he had been hired. That was the thing about my dad, he had no trouble finding work. He just couldn’t keep it. People loved him. His bosses always started out loving him. I loved him. He was boisterous and charming and completely irresponsible.

  And he was a salesman. When I was very little, he sold cars. And knives, and cookware, and even life insurance policies at one point. In middle school, he’d moved to canvassing neighborhoods to sell roofs and then fences and finally gutters. When I got to high school, he had a steady job of selling medical equipment out of an office.

  My mom and I had sincerely hoped that the office job would be a turning point for him. He even wore a tie to work and came home every day whistling.

  But whatever it was that afflicted my dad when it came to finally pulling it together, had reared its ugly head and come back with a vengeance. When he lost the office job, he didn’t find another one until after I’d graduated and left the house.