Cold Feet

by Amy FitzHenry

Genres: Family Life; Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

Pre-wedding jitters turn into serious doubts in this fresh and funny debut about tying the knot and untethering from the past...

Everyone’s expecting her to walk down the aisle.
But something is telling her to run.

Emma Moon's mother thinks it's acceptable to miss her only daughter's wedding rehearsal dinner for a work obligation. Her father left when she was six months old. Emma hasn't exactly been raised to be a happily-ever-after kind of girl.

So when her anxieties get out of hand, Emma and her best friend, Liv, decide to take a road trip to San Francisco, find her long-lost father, and put her family issues to rest.

But her quest for the truth stirs up events and emotions she didn’t expect. The urge to run away may just be a part of Emma’s genetic makeup, because she’s growing more and more tempted to do just that…

Release date: September 1, 2015

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 304

Sample

PROLOGUE

I’m not a particularly nervous flier, but like most people, I’m scared of turbulence. As soon as it begins I’m ready for it to end, urgently praying I’m not that one-in-a-million statistic. That morning, however, when sharp pockets of wind caused my hour-long flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles to morph from uneventful to hairy, I glanced up from my airport-purchased paperback. I took note of the tattooed woman on my right, who was violently gripping our supposedly shared armrest and staring out the window in fear. The plane rocked and rolled.

As the seat belt light pinged repeatedly and the captain urged the flight attendants to take their seats, I closed my eyes, ready for the adrenaline rush of fear to kick in, the inner bargaining to be a better person and the flat-out begging with any higher power to get us out of this alive.

My inner monologue, however, was silent. Was I braver? Probably not. More composed? Unlikely. More rational and thus less fearful of statistically improbable events? Not a chance. Then I figured it out. Near-death experiences are only scary if you have something to lose. My wedding was off, my family nonexistent, and my best friend in the world never wanted to speak to me again. Plane crash, schplane crash. Who cared?

CHAPTER 1

One week earlier

I groped for the snooze button, but when I managed to reach my phone on the bedside table and bring it closer, I realized with a jolt that it wasn’t my alarm at all. Sitting up and attempting to clear my throat in order to sound as awake as possible, I braced myself and pressed accept.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Hello, Emma. Are you still in bed?”

“No. Well, kinda. I was asleep when you called but I’m basically up.”

She didn’t linger on the inconsistency.

“I’m calling about your wedding. I have a slight change but I hope it won’t throw too much of a wrench in your plans.”

“I’m sure it’s fine. Did you want to switch to the vegetarian meal?” My mom, a lobbyist in Washington, becomes an herbivore every once in a while, usually when her anti-tobacco lobby makes a deal with a congressman to support his vegan outreach initiative in exchange for a cigarette packaging vote.

“Actually, it’s about the rehearsal dinner.”

“Oh, we’re having pasta, so you’ll be okay,” I answered, still half-asleep.

“No, Emma,” she said, clearly frustrated. “It’s not about the food.”

My mother, Caroline Moon, who most people call Caro, is one of those brilliant people who can’t understand why everyone else isn’t automatically keeping up with her hopscotching thoughts. I wanted to remind her that I was on West Coast time and still in bed, thus at an unfair disadvantage. I looked over at Sam, my fiancé, who was somehow managing to sleep through the passive aggression emanating through the airwaves.

“It’s the scheduling of the rehearsal dinner on a Friday night,” she said, as if referring to a peculiar Samoan wedding ritual, rather than what everyone in the world who was getting married on a Saturday did, ever. “I don’t think I’ll be able to make it.”

I was silent, not sure how I was supposed to feel about this, although like I’d been punched in the stomach jumped to mind.

“I’ll be at the wedding, of course,” she added in a rush, with the first note of something like guilt creeping in. “Unfortunately, a congressional hearing was scheduled for Friday and I have to be there. I can fly out Friday evening, directly to Santa Barbara, and I’ll get in around midnight. I’ll be there for the whole day on Saturday.”

Wow, you’ll be there the whole day of my wedding, Mom? Let’s not get carried away.

I pushed away the sarcastic responses that popped to mind. “Sure, well . . . okay. I understand. The rehearsal dinner is kind of a joke anyway, right? I mean, why do we need to practice eating dinner?” I sounded like a bad stand-up act from the ’90s. I had the tendency to act awkward and unnatural around my mother, like a robot programmed with lame one-liners and pointless observations.

“Seriously, it’s fine,” I added.

“Great. I’m glad we cleared that up. I’ll see you in a week.” Caro hung up without passing Sam a hello or asking for a single detail on the wedding, which I gather is something the mother of the bride usually cares a bit about. In fact, our only substantial communications about the wedding specifics thus far were my phone call to ask her if the date worked, my formal invite, and her postcard RSVP, which she returned in the prestamped envelope, with a careful checkmark next to: Yes, see you there!

To be fair, I’d set the precedent. When we decided to have the wedding in California, I e-mailed her the details. When I picked my dress, she wasn’t consulted. She had no idea whether or not we were writing our own vows (absolutely not). But honestly, getting her input at this point would have just been strange. I wasn’t trying to be mean, but I wasn’t going to be fake and pretend we were best friends either. For most of my life, my mother and I have behaved like two mothers in a playgroup who don’t really like each other, but whose kids are friends—stilted, slightly uncomfortable, but for the most part polite.

“What’s up with your mom?” Sam asked, coming to life.

“Oh, no big deal. She can’t come to the rehearsal dinner. It’s not a big deal.”

Shoot. It’s a universal truth that the second time you state something isn’t a big deal, it automatically is.

“Oh no,” he said, sitting up with concern. “Are you okay?”

“Sure.” I pushed off the covers. “It’s fine. But let’s not talk about it right now. I should get going.”

He looked concerned, but didn’t press it. Sam’s like that. He likes to let things sink in, to consider all the options, before he decides how to act. Whereas I enjoy jumping to conclusions, behaving impulsively, and making snap judgments. I like to think this is a result of our chosen professions. I’m a lawyer, which requires me to think fast on my feet and be ready to respond within seconds to any argument from opposing counsel. I try not to advertise the lawyer thing too much, since after meter maids they are the number one most hated group in America. This strategy works pretty well in Los Angeles. Since I’m not in the entertainment industry, no one really cares what my job is. People usually end up discovering my chosen career path when someone we know gets a DUI. A mutual friend will suggest, Why don’t you ask Emma for advice; she’s a lawyer. This is usually followed by a look of disgust, a few bad jokes, and thirty questions about the best place to hide drugs. The trunk, people, the trunk!

Sam, on the other hand, is a screenwriter. He spends days thoughtfully crafting the perfect dialogue for a scene, or pondering the best way to tie the end of a movie together. It’s a job he loves, despite having struggled to sell a movie in the last couple of years and his constant frustration with the industry. But besides having normal job stress, he’s one of the most stable, optimistic people I’ve ever met.

Sam was out of bed, heading toward the kitchen. “Get ready for work, but I’m cooking you breakfast, so save time to eat. I’m making breakfast for my almost wife.”

Climbing into the shower, I considered his sweet words. I was an almost wife. He was an almost husband. I repeated these variations silently, attempting to wrap my head around them. I felt weird, weirder than normal, probably due to Caro’s unexpected wake-up call. It’s only a rehearsal dinner, I reminded myself. Her presence probably would have stressed me out anyway, wondering if she was having fun and making a futile attempt to connect over the bruschetta. But she was supposed to sit next to me, I thought involuntarily. She was supposed to represent the entirety of the Moons. Well, technically, I reminded myself, taking a deep breath and attempting to untwist the knot in my chest, this behavior was a perfect representation of the Moons.

If I could use one word to describe my family, it would be absent. My parents weren’t that bad. They didn’t withhold food or lock me in a closet. They just weren’t there. My mother, emotionally, and my father, physically. In fact, I’d never even met the guy. All I knew about him was that his name was Hunter Moon, he was from San Francisco, and he’d left when I was a baby. Also, that he sounded like he could be a werewolf with that name.

My mom and I aren’t close, so logically it shouldn’t have mattered if she was there on Friday, but there’s just something about your mom. Do you know the first thing Albert Einstein did in 1919, when his theory of relativity was proven? He wrote a postcard to his mom telling her about it. And I’m pretty sure she didn’t respond, Sounds nice, dear, but I’m too busy with work to deal with you right now. But Caro wasn’t rejecting my first space-time discovery. It was just a dinner, albeit a relatively important one. I halfheartedly congratulated myself on the pun.

Funnily enough, Sam, who should have been experiencing the traditional male commitment-phobe freak-out and making unfunny ball-and-chain jokes, seemed perfectly comfortable with our plan to be together for the rest of our lives. He never seemed to question it, whereas I worried endlessly how two people could possibly stay together forever and be happy.

Standing in the hot shower, already embarrassed about explaining my mother’s absence to Sam’s family on Friday, I realized how much more likely I was to fail at this marriage than Sam. I wasn’t being hard on myself. It was a perfectly logical assumption based on one of my favorite things—the Law. Specifically, a very famous case from the 1920s in which plaintiff Mrs. Helen Palsgraf sued the Long Island Railroad. The case that introduced the American justice system to a concept vital to all lawsuits today: foreseeability.

You see, in 1924, Mrs. Palsgraf was waiting on a train platform in New York minding her own business, when out of nowhere, fireworks struck the tracks. This, understandably, caused a panic, and a few scales fell off the overhang of the platform, right on top of poor Mrs. P. Who carries fireworks on a train, you ask? Furthermore, who drops them? I don’t know, some moron. That’s not the point. The point is, when poor innocent Mrs. Palsgraf sued the railroad for her pain, suffering, and other damages, the court said, Sorry, you don’t get a dime. Why? Because, the judges wrote, who could have predicted such an occurrence? Who could have known a bonehead with a box of fireworks would be boarding the train and they would accidentally go off? It wasn’t even the Fourth of July.

In a much-quoted opinion, the New York Court of Appeals explained that Mrs. Palsgraf could not be compensated by the railroad, and that it wasn’t their fault, because her injuries were not foreseeable, which established the rule that in order for a defendant to be held liable for damages, the plaintiff’s injuries had to be somewhat predictable. Someone can only be held responsible for injuries that could have been foreseen and prevented. This was hugely important in the law because it placed a great limit on liability, and hugely important to my morning shower because I was beginning to realize how likely it was that I was about to drop a box of explosive pyrotechnics into my relationship.

Based on circumstances and history, it was completely foreseeable that I was going to fail at this marriage. I was a by-product of the two emotional car wrecks Caroline Moon and Hunter Moon. I was a marriage liability waiting to happen. After all I had the Moon gene, accompanied by characteristics that include a tendency to leave, an inability to maintain emotional connection, and a dash of self-destruction. Bailing on marriage, or screwing up to the point where Sam left me, was completely foreseeable. If I ruined this, I would have no one to blame but myself. And, of course, my parents for making me this way.

After pondering Sam and my future for what felt like hours, the water started to get chilly and I realized that a cold shower would not be a positive addition to my mood.

Getting out and reaching for the one fluffy guest towel I owned as a special treat to myself, I tried to shake off a lurking feeling of doom and reclassify the foreshadowing of marital failure as morning fog. After all, weren’t thoughts like these normal the week before your wedding?

CHAPTER 2

In the kitchen the air smelled of coffee and eggs sizzled on the burner. I was momentarily cheered. Sam is an excellent cook of breakfast meals, but once it gets to be about noon, he’s out. Presumably this has something to do with the first love of his life, bacon.

“Sugar?” Sam asked, stirring my embarrassing choice of two sugar cubes, along with a drop of milk, into a steaming mug. With his springy blond hair and startlingly blue eyes he constantly looks like he’s auditioning for the role of a cherub. As always, when I looked directly into his eyes I was surprised at how cute he was. It was like unwrapping a present each time I saw him. I smoothed down my dark blond hair (I prefer this description to “dirty”), and tried to look like a sexy librarian rather than the nerd I felt like in my suit, or as I called it, my lawyer costume.

“Thanks, buddy.” I went over to the stove where he was pushing the eggs around with a spatula and meticulously adding shakes of salt and pepper. I hugged him from behind, resting my head on his back. I didn’t know what I was so worried about in the shower. I definitely wanted to be with Sam. Maybe the problem was that we didn’t live together yet, so I wasn’t used to the idea of joining our lives, and subsequently, I was still a little scared of the concept of marriage. Maybe once he moved himself and all of his stuff in, it would feel more real. I looked around my little house, imagining it getting even smaller.

After Venice Beach went from gang-ridden and grimy to artsy and hip—the most complete of coincidences to my residential status—it became incredibly difficult to find an affordable place to live in my neighborhood. I was lucky to find a tiny studio bungalow that I could afford, five blocks from the beach, on a tiny tree-lined street. Contrary to popular belief, just because I was a corporate lawyer didn’t mean I had a whole lot of spare cash. Nope, that bitch Sallie Mae took care of that.

My little house was extremely compact, but beautifully made. It had built-in shelves, large French windows, and a gorgeous ceramic kitchen sink. But the outside was the real selling point. The gate to the house led you into a secret garden–esque front yard, stuffed with thick palm trees, thick succulents, and lush flowers. All of this vegetation provided a filter for the constant Los Angeles sunlight, which shone through the palm fronds and created a lovely pattern throughout my house every afternoon. It’s a fact of life that all girls have been longing for a secret garden ever since they read the book. Finally, at the age of twenty-nine, I had one. Although in reality I had nothing to do with the sprawling vines or the delicately blooming flowers (my neighbors, landscape architects who loved to experiment on my yard, took care of that), I tried to keep the myth alive by smiling humbly when someone complimented my garden, and changing the subject when they asked me what kind of flowers I grew. Um, pink?

I loved it, but the place was pretty small. Because of this, when we got engaged, it seemed like a good idea to push back the move-in date. Frankly, I had no idea where to put Sam’s stuff, and as an extremely tidy person—I can’t concentrate all day if I don’t make my bed in the morning—I wasn’t about to throw it all in the corner willy-nilly. Besides, we spent almost every night together anyway. What was the difference?

Sam lived about a mile away, in a creaky dark-wooded beach house in Santa Monica, with an unmistakable shiplike vibe. At times, the sound of not-so-distant crashing waves could make you positively seasick. Or maybe that was just his cleaning habits. Sam was about as messy as I was clean. I’d actually seen him finish a bag of chips, drop it on the counter, and walk away. I was shocked, but at the same time, intrigued. When Sam has trash (at home at least, it’s not like he littered or anything evil like that) he doesn’t throw it away, he drops it and . . . leaves it. What must it be like to have such fascinatingly disgusting impulses? In order to avoid a full-blown panic attack, I tried not to think about what this inherent difference in personality meant for our future. It’ll work itself out, I told myself. He’ll get cleaner, or I’ll loosen up. I can be chill, I assured myself, with the certain knowledge that this was a lie.

The big move was loosely scheduled for “right after” we returned from our honeymoon. The wedding was being held at a gorgeous, rambling Spanish hacienda I’d found in Santa Barbara, in what should be perfect Southern California September weather. The house was on a high bluff, one hundred years old, and steps from the beach, with a huge backyard framed by the ocean and the mountains. We would be married right at sunset, at what they called the “pink moment” when the fading sunlight creates a shade of pink in the air, which bounces off the mountains in the Ojai Valley to the east. I even drove up to Santa Barbara on a Saturday once, all by myself—since I was surprising Sam with that particular detail—to test it out. I found that standing with the ocean at your back, facing the pink hues in the distance, was truly magical.

The ceremony and the reception would both be held there, first, high on the bluff overlooking the mountain range in the distance, and then down to a party on the beach. The day after, we planned to leave for what Sam called the mystery honeymoon, which sounded like a prize on a game show but was really just because he was, supposedly, planning it alone.

That was the deal we’d made when we got engaged ten months earlier: I would plan the wedding, for the most part—I’d cleared the location and cocktail options with Sam—if he would organize the honeymoon. As I’ve mentioned, my mother isn’t exactly a Say Yes to the Dress fan, so I was left to plan freely on my own, without going back and forth ten thousand times about the seating chart. It was kind of like when you’re over at people’s houses and they insist on loading the dishwasher alone. “It’s easier that way,” they claim. And of course it isn’t, really, but it makes sense.

The question of when Sam was going to move in his stuff, and where we were going to put it all, was coming up with increasing frequency, and every time it did, it stressed me out more. I vocalized these thoughts over breakfast, hoping he would have some sort of magical solution.

“Well, have you ever thought about adding on to this house?” Sam suggested. “We could fit everything in here a lot better if we added another bedroom.”

“Are you kidding? We can’t even afford patio furniture. Do you have a secret pile of money I don’t know about?” I tried to make a joke, despite the fact that Sam’s suggestion gave me heart palpitations. He laughed lightly and went back to the paper.

Despite the fact that we’d experienced a recent major economic crisis and the movie industry was constantly in flux, which definitely hadn’t helped Sam’s career, or anyone in Hollywood’s really, he didn’t worry about money the same way I did. For me, money was a subject that was always, if not in the front of my mind, floating somewhere in the back. In the single-mother home I grew up in, we weren’t exactly destitute, but—how should I put it?—cash challenged.

“Are you sure you don’t want to talk about what happened with Caro?” Sam asked, noticing my anxiety or perhaps exercising some previously dormant psychic abilities. I made a mental note to cut down on dirty thoughts about Bradley Cooper. “You must be upset she isn’t coming.”

“Honestly, it’s fine. I’m okay with it.”

Sam reached out to cover my hand with his. I gave him my best imitation of a carefree smile, practically pulling a muscle in the attempt.

“Okay, so I care a little. But I’ll have you, and your amazing family. Plus, Liv will be with me every step of the way.”

“What time is she coming in tonight?” Sam stood and reached for the coffeepot, pouring us both fresh cups.

“Around six,” I answered, feeling pure happiness for the first time all day.

That evening my best friend, Olivia, was flying into town from New York City to treat me to a toned-down version of a bachelorette party. A trip to a luxury spa in Napa Valley, from Saturday to Wednesday, when we would leisurely travel back from Northern California. Then on Thursday we would repack, double-check that I had my wedding dress, and get a good night’s sleep before we all headed to Santa Barbara on Friday morning. Friday night was the (crazily scheduled, by Caro’s standards) rehearsal dinner, and then, on Saturday, Sam and I would get married.

This was all part of the plan to keep the wedding simple, in the hope that it could be a drama-free affair. I dreaded turning into the kind of Bridezilla I’d seen my girlfriends become. Perfectly normal, well-adjusted women suddenly screaming about the length of their veil five minutes before walking down the aisle, or making you participate in a wedding talent show in place of a rehearsal dinner. Thanks to these women, I have learned both that there is a vast difference between shoulder- and chin-length and that brides do not appreciate Beat poetry read aloud the night before their nuptials, based on your junior-year spring break trip to Cabo. (“Seven tequila shots did she scarf / causing Katie later to barf.” I thought it was pretty good myself.)

The obsession with weddings was a mystery to me. The first time I even pictured anything wedding-related was in college, when my roommate’s sister got married and she left for the weekend to help her prepare. When she got back she described cake sampling over our standard Monday night dinner of curly fries at the dining hall.

“First, we tried red velvet,” she explained dreamily, “then mocha butter cream, and we rounded it off with chocolate devil’s food cake.” I sighed in satisfaction and the idea of weddings took on a lovely buttery hue for about a year, until a friend from high school asked me to be her bridesmaid, and I had to drop a class in order to fit in all my assigned tasks.

The only person who really seemed to get it was Liv. Growing up, Liv was the only one of my friends who, when I questioned if I even wanted to get married someday, wouldn’t look away in discomfort or murmur supportively that I would change my mind when I met the right guy. This, and the fact that it saved me from having to pick bridesmaids, was why I’d decided to make Liv my entire wedding party. She was my maid of honor, flower girl, and guest book officiate, all rolled into one.

“And what’s the plan for tonight?” Sam asked, piling scrambled eggs on top of his bagel.

“Liv lands around six,” I repeated, mentally viewing the schedule. “I’m going to sneak out of work early to stock up on snacks, then pick her up at LAX. Are you and Dante still meeting us for dinner?”

“Yep, can’t wait. I’ll remind him.” Dante is Sam’s oldest friend and one of his current roommates in the dirty ship house. Sam and Dante met in high school in London when both of their fathers were transferred there, from New York and Rome, respectively. Sam’s family eventually moved back to the States, but the years he and Dante spent drinking pints and watching footie were enough to make them best mates for life.

Dante must be the person for whom the term Italian Stallion was invented, or at least a direct descendant of same. He’s quite proud of his heritage and embraces it fully, especially when he’s trying to get ass. Then it’s all, My family’s villa in Tuscany this, and I’ll make you homemade penne arrabbiata that. If for some crazy reason she hates villas or she’s gluten-free, he throws out a British accent, picked up from his high school years, in a last-ditch effort to close the deal. As Dante always says, if one aspect of your foreign background isn’t helping you get laid, try another.

“Think Liv and Dante will finally hook up at the wedding?” Sam asked, creepily following my train of thought yet again. Put some pants on, Mr. Cooper!

“I wouldn’t get your hopes up. We’ve been waiting for years. Most likely Liv will be dating three guys in New York, Dante will bring an underage girl to the rehearsal dinner, and we’ll get arrested for serving alcohol to a minor.”

“Well, I’m rooting for them,” Sam said loyally.

I checked the clock and realized I had to leave in the next five minutes if I wanted to beat traffic on the freeway and make it to work on time. I grabbed my bag and hustled Sam out the door. I watched him glide down the street on his road bike, his typical vehicle of choice, before climbing in my L.A.-mandated black Prius.

Driving through the quiet, cool streets of Venice on a perfect September morning, I pictured Sam and me at breakfast. Him, reading about movie deals; me, obsessing about not obsessing about our marriage; both of us gossiping about our best friends’ sex lives. We were the classic tableau of a normal couple in love, but I couldn’t help but feel like an imposter. Caro’s call, and the reminder that my failure at a long-term relationship was highly foreseeable, was still lurking in the back of my head. What was I doing with this guy for whom good things always happened, if for no other reason than because he intrinsically knew they would? And why in the world did he want to marry someone like me?

CHAPTER 3

Picking up Liv from LAX is one of my very favorite things to do. For one thing, I score major friend points by actually meeting her at the airport instead of making her take a cab, which is easy when you live in Venice, twenty minutes away. But mainly it’s because it means my best friend is in town. I don’t know how to explain it, but when Liv is around I feel like a more real version of myself. It’s like everything I put on for other people is filtered out and I’m just me.

Liv and I met in high school in Arlington, Virginia, where we became instant best friends. We were both at peak stages in our awkward years and didn’t even notice each other’s braces and frizzy hair, probably because they matched. The popular crowd didn’t know our names, the average kids were too busy trying to be cool, and the dorks had their own problems to worry about, so Liv and I didn’t join any group. The only problem was we weren’t sure which lunch table was ours. Instead we sat in the auditorium lobby by the gym every day with our turkey sandwiches. This area was commonly known as the aud-lob, although after we started sitting there, some of the mean girls starting referring to it as the odd-lob. I had to give it to them: It was clever.

Honestly, I didn’t really care, because, as I discovered then, and continue to believe to this day, as long as you have one real friend, you’re okay. Liv and I were perfectly happy to sit in the odd-lob day after day in our mom jeans, drinking regular Cokes and laughing until our stomachs hurt. Even after Liv discovered her incredible singing voice, grew size-C boobs, and learned how to scrunch her strawberry-blond hair, shot with natural strands of gold, into soft curls, and I remained in my awkward years (which lasted roughly from age twelve to twenty-five), our dynamic never changed.

After high school, Liv attended Rice in Texas and I went to the University of Virginia, mostly due to the fact that I could get in-state tuition and also because I harbored a strange affinity for Thomas Jefferson. There I halfheartedly joined a sorority and floated around various clubs and activities. College was fun, of course,