Parker 
ALL RIGHT
THE TATTERSALLS LIVED IN A historic Palm Beach stucco home that was completely invisible from the road, obscured by mature bougainvillea. They had been the McCanns’ best family friends since the beginning of time, it seemed, and when Greer lost her mother, she turned to Kathie Tattersall for comfort and advice. I think losing Greer had hit Kathie almost as hard as it had hit George and me. Or maybe it was that Greer’s death had compounded Karen’s death.
I thought back to those failed embryos, and I realized that I understood how that felt. That second loss had compounded the first.
Greer had loved this time in Palm Beach—“the season.” She loved the parties and dressing up, loved that the population doubled. Over the past three years, going out without Greer on my arm, where she had been for so many years, had felt impossible. But, little by little, my father in law had asked me to attend functions for some business purpose or another and I had agreed. He had lost his wife and his daughter, and his other daughter, who was not close to the rest of the family, was all the way in California. It wasn’t fair to make him face the world alone.
Kathie greeted me at the door. All the ladies in Palm Beach marveled at Kathie’s agelessness—although no one credited her good genes. Everyone had a half-dozen plastic surgeons on speed dial. But plastic surgery was like cologne: easily overdone. Kathie always stayed on the right side of that line, or so they said.
Greer always said that no one did Palm Beach chic decor better than Kathie. I never knew exactly what that meant, but I knew it was a very nice, colorful house with a great dock. As I pulled away from Kathie, a tall blonde caught my eye. When she turned, locked eyes with me, and smiled, I realized it was Lindsey.
George leaned in. “You’re right, son. Sea & Sky is the perfect move. I’ve made an offer, and I think they’ll accept.” He winked. “Or they will if they know what’s good for them.” He was wearing the ridiculous slippers.
“Great news.” This meant I was going to have to go to New York. I’d have to tell Amelia. I didn’t want her to be ambushed again.
But I couldn’t worry about that as Lindsey sashayed over to me, her heels so high I didn’t know how she walked in them, in a green dress. She put her arm in mine and said, “Let’s get you a drink, boss.”
“Not until Monday,” I quipped.
She smiled at me disarmingly. “Are you saying that you might change your mind?” She laughed like that was completely impossible, and I realized that she was right. I couldn’t wait to see what she could do.
She steered us to the bar and said, “I’ll have a glass of rosé, and Parker Thaysden always has an old-fashioned with one ice cube.”
I laughed. “How do you know that?”
She shrugged. “I do my research.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked, noticing that the crowd skewed decidedly older than me and certainly older than Lindsey.
“My parents and the Tattersalls have been friends forever.”
Oh. Of course. “So why didn’t you just have Kathie call George or me when you wanted the job?”
She shrugged. “Because I knew I didn’t need to cheat. Eventually you’d see how perfect I was for the job and make the right decision.”
I turned and caught my father-in-law’s eye. He winked at me. Could he think that I was interested in another woman? He raised his glass to me, and I raised mine back. I thought back to our embryo talk in his office, and I realized that George McCann, mogul, titan, and father-in-law, had just given me some sort of blessing to move on. But he was reading this one all wrong.
“So, do you enjoy these things?” I asked.
“Not usually,” she said breezily. “But I presume I will feel differently about this party.”
Because I was here? I wanted to jump in and save her feelings. I couldn’t count the number of times I had said, Look, I’m flattered, but Greer was the only woman for me, in the past three and a half years.
But then she said, “I have a thing for Tanner Prescott, and he’s here.” She smiled at me and said, “Your arm is a ploy to make him jealous.”
I laughed, suitably humbled. “You always have a plan, don’t you?”
She nodded and stepped away from me, handing me my old-fashioned and taking a sip of her rosé. “You have to stay a step ahead,” Lindsey said. “It’s a gorgeous night. Want to go out by the pool?”
“If we’re by the pool, Tanner won’t be able to see you.” I was very amused by this.
“Oh, he’ll follow me,” she whispered. “Just you wait and see.”
“We’re excited about your first day at McCann,” I said, following Lindsey outside and sitting down on the end of one of the chaises, pulling up my pants legs to accommodate the low position. Couples and small groups were scattered around the white pool deck, cocktails in hand.
“So am I!” she practically squealed.
“Tanner will be very impressed,” I joked.
She grinned. “So what about you?” she asked, sitting on the chaise beside me. “Any leads?”
“On stories?”
She sighed and looked at me, exasperated. “On women, Parker. Seriously?”
I shrugged but didn’t say anything.
“I have a girlfriend you would really like…” She trailed off.
“I don’t think I’m ready for all that.”
She looked into my eyes. “Forgive me if I’m overstepping. But she’ll always be there, won’t she? Do you think you’ll ever really be able to be with someone else without thinking of her?”
Before I could answer, Tanner Prescott, as promised, was heading in our direction. Lindsey did an above-average job of pretending she didn’t notice until he reached her.
Then she was gone. But her words lingered. My mind flipped immediately, out of habit, to Greer. But it terrified me to admit that Lindsey was right: I wasn’t thinking about tonight or this party or these people at all. My mind was up the coast, in the city that never sleeps, with the one that, I was now realizing, most certainly got away.
Three days later, I was on a plane to New York. I was going to sign paperwork and brief the office on the details of the new acquisition. But it could have waited. The papers could have been faxed; I could have sent someone else. I was going because I wanted to see Amelia.
I didn’t have a plan. I knew what I had always felt for her had resurfaced and I knew the loss of the babies would make things strained between us. And then there was a huge part of me terrified that if I tried to move on, I would only think of Greer.
Were it some other woman, we could date. We could say we’d tried. But if things went awry with Amelia, there was no coming back from that. We would be in each other’s lives forever.
And so, as I hailed a cab into the city, I decided that I wouldn’t tell her anything. Not yet. This meeting would be strictly professional. I looked at my watch, 7:13 a.m. I would be in the city before she left for work.
The cab smelled distinctly like eucalyptus. Maybe a little cinnamon. Peppermint? About halfway through the ride, caught up on email and tired of being inside my own head, my curiosity got the best of me. “What is that smell?” I asked.
I could see the driver’s smile in the rearview mirror. “Essential oils.”
“Why do you have them in the car?”
“Makes it smell better—and it’s supposed to promote good health.”
Good health. Those two simple words were all it took to catapult me backward, to staying up all night Googling Ayurvedic treatment centers, stem cell transplants, holistic therapy. When Greer opened her eyes that morning, I was filled with adrenaline. I was sure that one of these three packets I was about to present my wife held the cure. We would go to India or maybe just California or even the mountains of North Carolina. Three options. She could pick the best one.
But when I told her, she put her hands on my face. “My mother died of ovarian cancer, and now I am, too. It’s okay. It’s okay to just accept it, sweetheart. It doesn’t make you less of a man to admit when you have lost a fight.”
In the dark of night, I had been so sure this was the answer. This was going to save my wife. As I climbed in bed beside her, I realized that I hadn’t lost the fight, because it wasn’t my fight to win or lose. It was Greer’s. If this was what she wanted, then I had to take it like a man. Because it was her cancer. It was her choice.
Standing in front of the door to Amelia’s apartment that early morning, after that cab ride, I still wasn’t sure what I would say. But I guessed that, like Greer, I had a limited amount of time. And maybe I should get on with living.
One thing was for sure: I missed Amelia. I missed her face. I missed her smile. I missed the way she looked at me like she understood me even better than I understood myself. I was going to lead with my heart.
I was about to knock when the door opened, seemingly of its own accord. It wasn’t Amelia. And it wasn’t Martin.
I was getting ready to say that I must have the wrong apartment when Amelia appeared in her bathrobe.
“Parker?” she asked. She looked confused. “What are you doing here?”
Now I was racking my brain. Was this guy with Martin?
“Um,” I started. “I wanted to talk to you.”
She raised her eyebrows.
The man in the suit stood awkwardly in the doorway and then said, “Well, I’ll call you, Amelia.”
“Okay. I’ll look forward to it.” Amelia smiled giddily, and I wanted to punch this guy. He was definitely not with Martin.
He shook my hand and smacked me on the back. He had declared war.
Amelia tightened her robe string and put her hands up like What in the world? Then she gestured for me to come in.
She shut the door behind me and led me over to a Lucite table with a gold base and two chairs. Jesus, this place was gaudy. “I was just getting ready to make some coffee,” she said, ignoring the elephant in the room.
“Sure,” I said. “With—”
“Two sugars, Parker. I know.”
Her tone wasn’t angry exactly, but it wasn’t friendly, either. It was a tone I had never heard from her. Like a stranger.
“Did I just walk into something here?” I asked.
She turned to me, leaning on the small expanse of counter, and bit her lip almost guiltily. That was when I noticed how hot she was when she had just woken up. Bedhead suited her.
Before she could answer, Martin’s voice preceded him into the tiny kitchen. “Good morning, beautiful people!” he trilled.
He was already in his suit and perfectly coiffed. He stopped when he saw me. “Oh. Not the beautiful person I was expecting.”
I stood up and hugged him.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
I nodded my head toward Amelia. “Just came to talk to this one.”
“Ah,” he said, looking almost embarrassed for me. It was not my favorite look on him.
He kissed Amelia on the cheek and said, “Actually, I think I’m going to grab my coffee on the way.”
I saw him mouth, Call me, to her.
She poured boiling water over a funnel/strainer combination filled with grounds, which was way fancier than my Nespresso.
She stirred in my two sugars and said, “Not to be rude, Parker, but I need to get ready for work.”
I shook my head. “No, you don’t. I mean, you do, but it’s okay if you’re late.”
She raised her eyebrow and sat down.
“McCann acquired Sea & Sky.”
Her face went red, and she said, “If you are here to tell me I’m fired again, I swear to God, Parker—”
I laughed and then cut her off, taking her hand from midair, bringing it back down to the table and putting mine on top of it. “You’re not fired, Amelia. In fact, you’re promoted. To whatever you want. I was thinking executive editor this year, maybe managing editor in another year or two?” I paused. “Not that you aren’t clearly suited for managing editor. I just wasn’t sure if you wanted all the pressure right away.”
She visibly relaxed, and I moved my hand, feeling sorry as I did.
“So I don’t need to get ready because you’re my new boss.”
I shrugged. “No. Not really. But also yeah. I won’t be in the office day in and day out or anything, but I wanted you to hear it from me this time.”
She nodded resolutely. “Well, thank you. I appreciate that. And I’m excited to be working for a McCann company. Despite firing me, I think you guys make some really responsible, positive changes in your acquisitions.”
She was so robotic toward me now. The smiling, flirtatious Amelia of my past seemed to have been replaced by this other woman, whose hair was falling seductively out of her messy bun but who refused to reveal her real inner power.
“Is that why you got on a plane at four thirty in the morning? So you could tell me that?”
I took a beat before I responded.
“The thing with that guy. Is it serious?”
I could tell she was trying not to smile. My stomach sank all the way to the floor. “It’s new,” she responded shortly.
It was new. All the hairs on my body suddenly stood on end. I wanted to tell her that I couldn’t stop thinking about her. That she was the first woman in a long time who had made me feel alive.
“But we aren’t,” I said, getting up and walking to the door. I wanted her to confirm that my feelings weren’t one-sided, that this wasn’t all in my head. But I couldn’t sit there while I waited.
I noticed the article I had sent sitting on a small table by the door that housed a stack of mail. I wondered what it meant that she hadn’t responded.
“Parker…” she started. I turned, ashamed of how expectant I must have looked. She smiled and shrugged.
I picked up a copy of Southern Coast that was in her mail pile and held it up, attempting to cover my pain with a joke. “No non-McCann publications allowed, young lady.”
She smiled. “If you want me to quit reading non-McCann magazines, then you’re going to have to buy Southern Coast.”
Greer always used to say that, too. Greer and Amelia. Two very different women. One a product of the luxury, pomp, and circumstance of Palm Beach and New York, the other raised by the simplicity of a small slice of Southern shore. But they both loved Southern Coast. And, as was becoming clearer by the minute, I loved both of them.