Page 72 of Faking the Heat

I look at them, really look at them, and see the cracks in the facade I’ve spent my life trying to emulate. My mother’s sweater is slightly pilled at the cuff, a detail she would usually obsess over. My father’s hair is thinner than it was last Christmas, and there’s a tiredness in his slouch that he never used to allow. They aren’t the monolithic judges of my life. They’re just two people who tried to love me with the only language they knew, the language of protection, even if it was a language I couldn’t speak without a translator.

“I ruined it,” I whisper, and the admission finally breaks me. A tear slides down my cheek, landing on the white tablecloth like a dark stain. “I think I loved him for six years without saying it, and then we finally had it, and I turned it into a performance. I made him lie for me. I made him pretend until he couldn’t tell what was real anymore. I treated his heart like a prop in a play, and now... now I don’t know how to fix it. He’s pulled away, and he has every right to.”

“You’re a Peterson,” my mother says, and for the first time, it doesn’t sound like a threat or a burden. It sounds like a reminder of my own strength. “We’re stubborn, and we’re difficult, and we over- think, over-complicate everything. We think too much and we feel too little until it’s almost too late. But we don’t give up on the things that matter. We find a way to make it right.”

She pulls a tissue from her sleeve and hands it to me, her expression softening into a genuine smile. “Sterling isn’t Derek. He doesn’t want you to be a trophy on his arm or a box to check. He wants you to be the woman who draws in the middle of the night and wears llama socks apparently. I saw the way he looked at you when he thought we weren’t watching, it was the look of a man who found water in a desert. That man was never performing, Mandy. He was just waiting for you to stop.”

My father reaches out, his large hand covering both of ours. “The first two years your mother and I were married, I lost my job at the first agency. I was too proud to tell her. I was terrified she’d think she’d made a mistake marrying a man who couldn’t hold down a desk. I spent three months pretending to go to work every morning, wearing a suit and sitting in a park until five o’clock, reading the classifieds. I almost destroyed us because I was afraid of not being the provider she expected.”

He smiles, a small, sad movement of his lips that makes him look younger. “She found out because she saw me at the park while she was grocery shopping. She didn’t yell. She just sat down on the bench next to me, took my hand, and asked what we were going to do next. That was the day we actually started being married. Not the day of the wedding, but the day the lie died.”

I look at my father, the man who measures risk for a living, and realize he’s telling me that love is the only risk worth failing at. The ’Peterson Pressure’ wasn’t a trap. It was a misguided attempt to build a wall around me so high that nothing could hurt me. They just forgot to leave a door, and I’d been trying to tunnel out when all I had to do was ask for the key.

“There’s something else,” I say. “There’s a job. In New York. A real one, a big one, with a deadline on it, and I have let it sit in my inbox for two weeks because I could not work out which of you I would be disappointing whichever way I went.”

My father looks at my mother. An entire conversation happens between them in under a second, the way it does with people who have been married thirty-five years.

“Do you want it?” he says.

“I don’t know.”

“That is a better answer than yes.” He puts his glasses back on. “Mandy. Take it or don’t take it. Move there or stay here. Marry the man or don’t marry anybody at all. I would like to be very clear about this, because I have apparently spent three decades being unclear about it. He holds my eyes and does not blink. “There is no version of this where you lose us. There is no audit. There never was one. And I am sorry it took a fake boyfriend for you to find that out.”

“We would like to be told, though,” my mother adds, dabbing under one eye with her tissue. “That is all. We would like to hear from you and not off a Christmas card.”

“I have to go,” I say, the clarity hitting me like a physical blow. It isn’t panic; it’s a decision. It’s the feeling of a logo finally clicking into place, the kerning perfect, the lines straight, the color palette finally balanced. “I have to tell him. Without the script. Without the blue notebook. Without the fear of what you’ll think if it doesn’t work out.”

“Eat your pasta first,” my mother says, but she’s already reaching for her purse, her eyes sparkling with something that looks like pride. “Actually, don’t. Go. Life is too short for cold linguine and unsaid words. He’s at the station?”

“He’s on shift,” I say, standing up. My chair scrapes loudly against the tile floor, drawing looks from the couple at the next table, but I don’t care. I don’t care about the quiet restaurant or the stiff napkins or the performance. “I don’t care if I’m walking into a fire. I just need to be there.”

My father stands too, pulling a few bills from his wallet to leave on the table as a tip and for the dinner we haven’t touched. He walks me to the door, the Chicago night air rushing in as he opens it. The wind is cold, smelling of lake water and exhaust and the city I’ve finally decided to claim as my own, but it feels wonderful against my heated face.

He stops me on the sidewalk, the streetlights reflecting in his glasses. For a second, he doesn’t look like a retired insurance adjuster or a man obsessed with stability. He looks like a man who understands that some things can’t be insured, they can only be lived.

“Mandy,” he says, his voice low and steady, cutting through the sound of a passing bus. “I spent my life telling you to be safe. I was wrong. Safe is boring. Safe is small. A man like Sterling... a man who stays in the building when everyone else is running out? He’s the kind of man you take a leap for.”

He squeezes my hand one last time, his grip firm. “He’s worth the risk of being wrong, honey. Go tell him that.”

I hug him, a real hug that lasts longer than the polite, stiff ones we usually exchange at holidays. I hug my mother, smelling her expensive perfume and the faint scent of hairspray, and I feel the twenty-six-year gap between us finally close. I don’t need their approval anymore, because for the first time, I have their honesty, and it’s a much better place to start.

“Go,” my mother whispers in my ear, pulling back to tuck a stray hair behind my ear. “Don’t let him get away because you’re afraid of a little smoke. You’ve always been a firecracker, Mandy. It’s time for you to sparkle.”

I turn and start walking toward my car, my heels clicking rhythmically on the pavement. My heart isn’t hammering with the frantic beat of anxiety; it’s pulsing with a steady, rhythmic heat. I’m not Mandy Peterson, the girl who needs to pass an audit. I’m Mandy Peterson, the woman who is going to fight for the only person who ever truly saw her.

In the rearview mirror they are still standing together on the sidewalk, my father’s hand around my mother’s, not judges anymore but something closer to allies. The ball started a half hour ago at the Hilton, and I have the perfect dress waiting for me.

Chapter thirty-two

Dancing with Fire

Sterling

The silver buttons of my dress uniform are too bright, reflecting the headache-inducing glare of the grand ballroom’s chandeliers an unfortunate reminder of the woman who isn’t here. I adjust the high collar of the navy jacket, feeling the familiar, restrictive tug of the fabric against my throat. It’s a formal cage, one I’ve inhabited every year since I joined the department, but tonight it feels smaller. Tighter. Like the air in the Hilton’s banquet hall is being pumped out by a slow-leak vacuum. The scent of floor wax and thousands of imported lilies cloys in my nose, a sterile substitute for the rough, honest smells of the station.

“Hayes, look alive,” Jake says, nudging my shoulder with the subtlety of a falling rafter. He’s already on his second scotch, his own dress uniform looking remarkably less stifled than mine feels. “You look like you’re waiting for a backdraft to hit. Or a court-martial. Or both.”

“I’m fine,” I lie, my voice sounding flat even to my own ears. I take a sip of a lukewarm bourbon, the burn in my throat failing to distract me from the hollow ache in my chest. It’s been three days since the loft went quiet. Three days since the smell of her shampoo stopped lingering in my bathroom. Three days since I watched her walk out with a box of books, a half-finished layout for a client, and a cat that looked at me like I was the one who had set the fire.