The Redhead Series

by Alice Clayton

  “I got it, I got it!” I insisted. I finally wrenched the top off and spilled Milk Duds all over the place. I smiled to everyone sitting around us. “Sorry, I just thought you might all like some candy,” I joked, finding myself hilarious.

  “Funny, I thought you never shared candy,” Jack said, looking at me more carefully.

  “Nope, I just don’t share candy with you.” I laughed loudly, and Holly turned from talking to Jack’s father.

  “What the fuck?” she mouthed at me, and I dropped into my chair.

  I saw her and Nick exchange glances, and that pissed me off. I wasn’t going to be handled. I started to stand up and say something to Holly to that very effect when the lights dimmed. The film was about to start.

  “Are you okay?” Jack asked.

  “Fine, love. I’m fine,” I said, shoving a Milk Dud in my mouth.

  He glanced at Nick as well, and now I was really starting to get pissed. He sat down directly in front of me.

  I was sitting behind my boyfriend on the biggest night of his life. I couldn’t even hold his hand, whisper to him, or give him a congratulatory kiss—although apparently the entire entertainment news community now knew Jack Hamilton had a granny fetish.

  I sighed loudly and slipped off my shoes.

  Nick leaned over and whispered, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “The next person who asks me that will get their balls handed to them. I’m not kidding,” I whispered back through clenched, caramel-coated teeth.

  He backed off.

  The movie started.

  I watched the back of Jack’s head watch his movie.

  Ten minutes in, after fussing about in his seat the entire time, he took off. Literally. As soon as Jack saw himself on the screen, he bailed.

  I’d tentatively reached out with my fingertip to touch the back of his neck when I saw him begin to fidget, but Nick had slapped my hand down. He was well versed in Holly’s rules for the night.

  For fuck’s sake. I’d had about enough.

  When he stood to get up, I almost did too. I had to force myself to wait five whole minutes before I stole out of the theater. Nick tried to grab my arm to stop me, but I was the one slapping his hand now. I was going to follow my Brit.

  I found him by the bar. He was not alone. Marcia had already found him, and they looked to be sharing a cocktail. They were laughing. He looked calmer already. She was calming him. I saw a rogue photographer draw close but I no longer cared.

  I turned and walked swiftly toward the ladies’ room, the sounds of their mixed laughter following me.

  The lighting in the bathroom would have worked equally well for interrogation. The bags under my eyes were highlighted nicely, as were my laugh lines, which were suddenly not as funny as they used to be. My faced look haggard, tired, and sad.

  So sad.

  As I looked in the mirror, I saw a different image than earlier in the evening. My skin that I’d thought looked tanned and glowy now looked streaky and orange. My hair that I’d thought looked curly and wavy now looked frizzy and obnoxious. My eyes were puffy from the cocktails and had begun to resemble the cabbages they’d surely turn into tomorrow. They always did.

  My phone beeped. It was a text from Jack.

  Gracie

  Where are you?

  George

  I also had a text from earlier. I hadn’t heard it come through.

  Grace

  The Village Voice is raving about you! New York misses you. When are you coming home?

  Michael

  I smiled. It was the only thing that had made me smile in more than an hour. New York was a world away from where I was tonight. And New York was a world I understood. A world I was kind of rising to the top of, actually. Not this ridiculous charade. I smiled again in spite of myself, and the door to the ladies’ room opened. It was Marcia.

  “There you are. Jack’s looking for you,” she said, coming to stand next to me at the counter, under the same lighting.

  Her skin was perfect. Her hair was perfect. Her face was smooth and unlined. She was a star. My smile faded. I belonged in some kind of dietary fiber commercial.

  I turned to her. “Well, I saw him leave, so of course I went to follow him—you know, offer a little comfort to my one and only. But look at that, someone else beat me to the punch. I seemed a little unnecessary.” My voice was cutting and sarcastic.

  “Grace, I didn’t follow him out there. I saw him out in the lobby and we just—”

  I cut her off. “Enough. I’m too old for this crap. I don’t have the energy. Please tell Jack that I’m not feeling well, and I went home.” I barely managed to get the words out, the drunk tears starting to build. This was too much. I’d reached my limit. I was nearly out of control but wise enough to remove myself from the situation. I spun on my heel and made for the door.

  “Grace?” she called after me.

  My hand on the door, I turned wearily back toward her. She was still lovely.

  “There’s something on your dress, on the back. It looks like, well, it looks like you sat in something,” she said, her face bright red.

  I turned to look.

  Fucking Milk Dud.

  Right in the middle of my ass. It looked like I had a little turd stuck to me.

  Of course you do.

  You know when you just have one of those really shitty days? When nothing works, when it just gets worse and worse, and you think you’re going to burst into tears over and over again? But you keep it together. You don’t know how you do it, but you maintain. Then you do something stupid like stub your toe or drop your coffee, and that’s the last straw. And you lose your fucking mind.

  I saw it clearly now. This was not my world. This was never my world. Jack needed someone better suited for this life. And it was not me. I didn’t deserve someone as wonderful and amazing as Jack. It didn’t matter that I loved him more than anyone in my entire life.

  The writing was on the wall, the Milk Duds were on the chair. And I sat smack dab in the middle of them. I sighed heavily, my shoulders hunching over.

  “Please don’t take this personally, Marcia, because I can tell you are honestly a nice person. And I know Jack would never be friends with a jerk, so I know you’re not. But you strike me as the kind of girl who has never, and would never, sit on a motherfucking Milk Dud. And I really can’t be around that kind of girl right now. It was nice to meet you. Take care of him, please.” I left the ladies’ room.

  I walked straight through the lobby, not even bothering to hide my ass and the remnants of the Dud. I kept my head down as I made my way to the street, and, forgetting about trying to find my limo, I went through the line of fans, crossed the street, and hailed a cab.

  I went back to my house, took off my dress, and left it in a puddle on the kitchen floor. I threw my shoes at the wall. I stood under the shower for a solid hour while my phone rang and rang and rang on the bathroom counter. When I got out of the shower, I put it in the freezer without even checking messages, and I grabbed the Absolut.

  I sat on a lawn chair on the patio, drinking icy vodka from an “I Got Lei’d in Hawaii” shot glass shaped like a hula dancer.

  After a while I heard a car pull up. I heard keys in the door. I heard loud footsteps clunking through the house, and I heard him yelling for me.

  I didn’t answer.

  I heard his voice getting closer and angrier. He finally came to the French doors on the patio and looked out into the darkness. He couldn’t see me, and he clicked on the floodlights.

  They illuminated everything. My wet hair, the mascara all over, my vodka bottle. My tearstained face. My defeated face. My resigned and determined face.

  “What the fuck, Grace?” he asked, face angry.

  We stared at each other across the patio.

  I set down the bottle and stood to face him. I was shockingly sober, considering the amount of alcohol I’d consumed.

  “Jack, first let me apologize for leaving you
tonight. I had to get out of there—”

  “Why the hell did you leave?” he interrupted. “What—”

  I held up my hand. “I’m not finished. Please let me say this. I’m sorry I left you tonight,” I began again, my voice very low and controlled.

  He waited, then nodded for me to continue.

  “This isn’t going to work, Jack,” I said, and I felt my body tense.

  “What’s not going to work? What are you talking about?” He stepped out of the doorway and down onto the flagstone.

  “This. Us. This isn’t going to work. We need to cut our losses now, before either of us gets in any deeper.” I was amazed at the sound of my voice. I sounded so in control.

  A better word for it would be dead. You sound dead.

  I felt dead.

  “Are you kidding me with this shit? What the fuck is wrong with you, Grace?” he yelled. He actually yelled at me. He crossed the patio in three long strides and grabbed me by the arms. I flopped like a rag doll, lifeless.

  “We should never have started this in the first place. We want totally different things, and we should stop this now. This has to stop,” I heard myself say. It was like I was underwater and could hear myself talking. The words were murky and thick. It didn’t even sound like me.

  “You’re crazy, you know that? How in the world can you even think about ending things with me? You know we’re perfect together,” he said, his eyes pained. He knew I was serious.

  His eyes pierced my veil, and I began to feel some things. Hurt. Sickness. Panic. Anger.

  “Don’t say that. I see perfection, but I don’t see it here. Do you know how I felt, seeing you and her together tonight?” My voice began to rise.

  “Oh, please, Grace. Is that what this is about? How many times can I tell you there’s nothing going on between Marcia and me?” His voice matched mine in intensity.

  I ignored the way my stomach contracted when he said her name. “Oh, I believe you. I know you’re just friends. But that’s the kind of girl you should be with. A girl—not some geezery woman like me. And now that the press knows who I am, how old I am, they’ll fucking crucify me. We’ve been fooling ourselves to think this could work outside the little sex bubble we’ve been living in.”

  He was quiet. He was so angry. I’d never seen him so angry. When he let go of my arms, I had little Jack-prints on my skin.

  “I’ve never in my life seen someone deliberately run in the opposite direction of happiness more than you do,” he said, staring daggers into my eyes.

  “What?”

  “You heard me. You push it away as hard as you can. You and I both know there’s no one on the planet better suited for you than me, no one better equipped to handle all your shit, and yet here you are. Throwing it away like you don’t care.”

  “I do care! I love you! But I just know in my heart this is wrong. You don’t need all my shit. It isn’t fair to you. That doesn’t mean I don’t love you, but this just isn’t the right time for us. You don’t realize how they’re going to blow this up, you dating a much older woman—they’re going to crucify you,” I said, my voice beginning to crack.

  “Would you please let me decide what I can and can’t handle? Goddamn, Grace. You act like you’re so difficult. Did you ever stop to think that I need you, too? That you’re perfect for me? That you put up with my shit as well? You can’t just give me your love and then take it away without asking. It doesn’t work like that!” he snapped. He ran both hands through his hair, stopping with them on either side of his face.

  I softened when I saw him look so sad, and he saw me weaken. He moved in fast.

  He pressed his body into mine and kissed me hungrily, his hands finding their way inside my robe. I moaned in spite of myself, my body reacting the way it always did with his hands on me. It wasn’t enough, though.

  I pushed away.

  His face looked broken.

  I placed my own hands on either side of his face, cradling it. We both had tears now.

  “When you’re a little older, you’ll see this more clearly,” I said, and he closed his eyes.

  When he opened them, they were cold.

  “Don’t you dare bring my age into this when you’re the one acting like a child,” he glowered.

  That was what I needed. I backed away, closing my robe and my heart to him. “I need you to leave,” I said, my voice as cold as his eyes. I was back in control, and I was making the right choice.

  “Don’t do this, Gracie,” he pleaded, his voice softer now.

  I turned away. I couldn’t look at him. “I have to. I need some time. I’ll call you when I can,” I said, effectively ending the conversation.

  And us.

  He walked away without another word.

  I waited until I heard the car leave, and then I fell apart.

  Eventually, I went inside and packed up my shit. I couldn’t look at our bed. I got my phone out of the freezer. I barely saw the Post-it and the picture.

  I went to Holly’s. She took me in, fed me ice cream and aspirin, and didn’t yell at me for ruining her client’s big night.

  She put me on a plane back to New York the next day.

  Broken.

  What had I just done?

  fourteen

  It had been six days since I left L.A. Six days since I’d seen Jack. Six days since I’d talked to Jack. Six days since I broke both our hearts.

  I was miserable. I literally did not know what to do.

  I’d been through bad breakups before, and the first days are the worst. All you want to do is avoid reminders of the boy in question. But imagine you’ve just broken up with the new It Boy.

  The day after the premiere, the entertainment shows and online blogs were full of pictures of me and Jack. I scrutinized the images of me solo on the red carpet, and I looked better than I’d thought. Seeing myself without dirty-martini glasses (which were evidently the fancy girl’s beer goggles, but with a tragically opposite effect) certainly improved things. I still saw the flaws, though. The curves that maybe shouldn’t be quite so curvy. The hair that was a little too frizzy.

  The media also re-posted the pictures from last summer, including the one from our first date at Gladstones where I was pointing with a shrimp. That one tugged at my heart a lot. That was the day he kissed me for the first time. They brought back pictures from our outings in Los Angeles last summer and this fall in New York. Now there was a name with them: Grace Sheridan, age thirty-three.

  Holly had confirmed that I was a client, as well as her friend. She denied the rumor that Jack and I had been dating, explaining simply that we were good friends and had gotten to know each other when I was staying with her last summer.

  Conveniently, pictures of Jack and Marcia had surfaced as well, including a new batch of the two at lunch in L.A. Holly was a master at spin, and the Grace and Jack story was quickly dropped by the mainstream media when Jack refused to comment.

  On the fan websites, though? The story ran rampant and wouldn’t go away. My reviews were decidedly mixed. Rumors and speculation ran wild as to whether I was really his girlfriend. I was called Grace Sheridon’t, Grace McOldAss, and That Redheaded Hamilton Fucker. That last one was pretty funny, actually.

  And there was a small group who seemed to really like the idea that Jack was maybe, possibly dating an older woman. I had a feeling these women were all in their thirties . . .

  I allowed myself a peek that first day, and then I stopped looking. It was too hard to see the pictures, and it was too hard to see how happy Jack had been that night—his big night. Before I broke his heart.

  I was in the final weeks of rehearsal, as the first week of previews had been pushed up to the week after Thanksgiving. I was in a black funk most of the time and not looking forward to celebrating a holiday right now. Which was fine, because the rehearsal schedule left no time for cooking or cavorting, and Holly had ended up stuck in L.A. The entertainment industry never slows down, even for a holida
y. The cast had turkey sandwiches and cranberries from a can for lunch break on Thanksgiving Day, but otherwise the day slipped by unnoticed.

  Leslie knew I’d broken up with Jack, and while she looked at me like I was the most insane person on the planet, she didn’t ask me about it. Poor Michael didn’t know what to do with himself.

  He knew I was devastated, but I don’t think he quite understood what I’d done, or why I’d done it in such a dramatic, all-or-nothing fashion. I was questioning it myself, but my decision was based in self-preservation, and as much as I was in total and complete hell, I was pushing through it. I’d had to end it, before it ended us.

  Now I focused all my energy on the show and on Mabel, the aging beauty queen. She became the conduit through which my frustration flowed, and it all came out onstage. I was powerful. I was broken.

  Late at night after rehearsal, I roamed the streets of Manhattan, losing myself in the city. New York was beautiful and totally unlike any other city I’d lived in. It seemed to be enormous and untouchable, a giant. But it was really lovely and warm when you broke it down neighborhood by neighborhood, street by street. Because there were so many people there, I relished the anonymity. Everyone was bundled in coats and hats, and no one knew anyone. You could be anyone or no one in this town. I walked and walked, trying to beat back the voices in my head.

  Jack’s movie opened. I’d tried to avoid all things Time since the night of the premiere, but it was nearly impossible to do. I damn near stomped on my laptop when I saw his face on my Yahoo! homepage. I broke into tears when I walked past the posters on every street corner or saw the magazines on every newsstand.

  Women everywhere wanted him. I’d had him. Had been loved by him. And I pushed him away like it was my job. What the hell was wrong with me? I picked up the phone to call him a dozen times, but I just couldn’t.

  Holly was oddly silent on the matter, choosing to keep our conversations light and airy. We had only one discussion about Jack. She’d been telling me a story about another of her assistant’s celebrity freak-outs. Sara had tried so hard to play it cool, but it became too much for her and she cried, laughed, and damn near pissed herself when Lane came into the offices.