The reception was held in a ballroom at the Venetian, in a glittering room full of crystal chandeliers and champagne. A small, skilled orchestra played in the corner. Our wedding was small, just very close friends and family, so we probably could have had the reception at a restaurant, except for all the cameras. At least this way they were free to spread out a bit.
Cindy and I danced our first dance. The orchestra played ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ and Cindy laughed when she heard it. It was our song now. It would always be our song.
After the dance, everyone sat down for dinner.
“You know,” Derek said as we got settled, “I could have sung that for you. It would have been even more touching.”
“I wanted it to be a happy memory,” I teased. “Your horrible caterwauling would have ruined it.”
“My horrible caterwauling won a Tony this year,” he groused.
“Yeah, but it didn’t win an Oscar, did it?”
“You’re really not going to give that a rest, are you?”
“Nope.”
We grinned at one another.
My plate had just arrived, and I was hungry, but now I had work to do. Dinner was Meg’s cue to come up and start the drama. She had Quincy in tow, looking like she wished she could kill everyone with her mind. Even though I knew exactly what was coming, I was on the edge of my seat. Quincy Wilson had better deliver.
“Cindy, Tommy,” Quincy said, spitting out the words like they were raw Brussel sprouts. “Can I talk to you?”
Cindy looked over at her. “Sure Quincy, what’s up?”
Meg, hardly an amazing writer, had penned this scene herself. Reality TV is always semi-scripted, but this was actually scripted. Fully scripted. It read like something that a non-native English speaker might write as a result. The stilted dialogue was so bad that I almost smirked, but somehow, I managed to keep a straight face. This was important, after all.
“I owe you both an apology,” Quincy said, staring straight ahead and not looking at Cindy.
“Okay Quincy. Is this about the lies you told?” Cindy asked. “You really made our lives difficult over these past few weeks. I almost didn’t invite you to the wedding because I was so hurt.” Her delivery was entirely deadpan. “But I wanted my sister at my wedding.” That was laughably untrue. It had taken some real convincing to get her to agree to this plan. “What did you want to say?”
Quincy squirmed and Meg glared at her. Finally, she sighed. “I’m sorry.”
Elaine was seated on the other side of Derek at our round table, and I could feel her watching the scene unfold with keen interest. Derek had been right. She came to the wedding. And she had the script with her and was making sure that every single negotiated word was delivered. Even now, she was protecting me. She felt personally responsible for making sure that this night played out exactly as we intended. I had no doubt that it would.
“You should be sorry, Quincy. We’re sisters.” At my side, Cindy was replying to her stepsister in a flat, robotic voice. She wasn’t an actress at all, so she didn’t pretend she was emoting, and I thought, in hindsight, that it really added something to scene. “You didn’t treat me like your sister.”
Quincy wasn’t acting much either. She was just insolent. “You’re right. I’m sorry that I said that Tommy was my boyfriend. Obviously, that wasn’t true.” Quincy stared at me hungrily, and I stared back impassively. “I hope you both can forgive me.”
“Why did you lie to everyone?” I asked. Meg insisted that I speak at least once. So, I was speaking exactly once, to ask this question. Consequently, it was the only question I actually wanted an answer to.
Quincy cringed and shifted from foot to foot like her shoes were hurting her. She shoved her hair back behind her shoulders and gritted her teeth. “I wanted to be famous,” she said. “I wanted everyone to think that I was special.” She took a deep breath. “I was selfish and jealous of Cindy, so I lied.”
Cindy smiled and a little muscle in Quincy’s forehead spasmed. She looked like she was about to have a stroke. Like this was costing her everything. I wondered if Quincy had ever apologized to Cindy for anything before. Or to anyone. I kind of doubted it. The way it seemed to me; Marigold had raised her daughters to be totally unrepentant in their cruelty.
“I appreciate you saying that, Quincy,” Cindy replied, holding her head high. “It hurt us both that you lied to so many people.”
Cindy didn’t advertise it, but I knew this apology meant a lot to her. Her stepfamily had been manipulating her forever. They’d held her emotionally hostage for years, making her think she wasn’t worth anything. They almost had her convinced that she deserved their treatment. Now, maybe, she could start to heal from that trauma. It wouldn’t be overnight, but at least now she had a foundation to build on.
“What about what you told people about the baby?” Cindy asked next.
Quincy glared daggers at her.
“I also lied about the baby,” Quincy continued in a hiss. The fact that she was reading off her lines with all the pathos of someone reading a phone book hardly mattered. The words were the words, and the cameras were getting them. “There is no baby, obviously. There never was. I was just jealous of you, Cindy.”
Finally. I was delighted that this was all on camera. It had been quite the monumental lift to make it happen, but now that didn’t matter. I took my first free breath since sitting down for dinner. Now, maybe, I’d finally have a chance to eat. Then, I wanted to dance the night away with my beautiful, wonderful wife.
Cindy nodded and looked over at me. When she looked back at her sister, her smile was real. “I’m glad you came to talk to me, Quincy,” she said. “I accept your apology. I hope you have fun at the party.”
The two women then hugged. That was, according to Meg, a very important part of the reality show apology sequence, but Cindy looked uncomfortable and Quincy looked angry. Then Quincy stomped off, presumably to give the world’s least convincing confessional to Meg’s cameras. I took my first clean breath in about ten minutes.
At my side, Derek leaned over. “Your stepsister-in-law over there asked me out on a date,” he told me. I looked at him and he laughed. “I told her I was busy. Permanently.”
“You’ll find someone eventually,” I promised him. “But not Quincy Wilson. She’s poison.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m perfectly happy being single, thank you very much.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “That’s what I was saying too, not that long ago.”
“I actually have two stepsisters,” Cindy offered from my side. Derek looked at her with wide eyes. “There’s always Greenlee if Quincy doesn’t strike your fancy.”
I glanced over to see the other Wilson girl nibbling on and then spitting out the parsley garnish on her chicken. She then, improbably, used her fork to comb her hair. Derek saw it too and laughed.
“No thanks,” he said. “Hard pass.”
58
Cindy
Greenlee danced at the wedding and seemed to have fun as the night went on, but Quincy sulked nearly the entire time except when she was trying unsuccessfully to get Tommy’s friends or brothers to pay attention to her. Marigold seemed pensive when I caught sight of her. She cornered me in the bathroom toward the end of the night.
“So, what will you do now?” she asked me. She wanted something. It was obvious. She only ever came to talk to me when she wanted something.
I looked around for cameras, but I hadn’t seen them for a while.
“They’re done for the night,” she told me. “They got all the footage they needed.”
I nodded, checking under the stalls just to be sure. I’d been made a fool of before. I couldn’t be too careful. “I’m glad you got the footage you needed.”
Marigold frowned at me. “Well?”
I blinked. “What will I do now?” I shook my head. “I have no idea. Tommy says he wants to finish his degree. If I can get into college with him, maybe I’ll go to
o.”
“To college?” she asked, looking disgusted at the idea. “Ugh. Why?”
You would have thought I said I wanted to become a garbage collector or an undertaker. Education, how revolting.
I took a deep breath. “Because it interests me. I’ve always wanted to go to college, you know that.”
Not that she’d ever cared. She had spent my college fund to serve her interests. I wasn’t sure I’d ever really be able to forgive her for that, either. My dad might not have been the greatest guy, but he set up his death benefit to go to me, not her. And she’d stolen it anyway.
“But why?” she asked. “College won’t do anything for you. You don’t need to make money. It can’t give you anything you don’t already have.”
I fluffed my hair in the mirror uncomfortably. There was more to life than money or fame. At least, there was to me. I wasn’t sure the same was true for Marigold. “What does it matter to you?” I asked.
I knew better than to try to explain to her that I wanted the freedom to figure out what I wanted for myself. College could give me the space, the time, and the opportunity to figure out what I was good at. I’d never had anything like that before. Marigold had always told me what I was, who I was, and what I was capable of. It turned out she was wrong. But I still didn’t know what was right.
“You could help us,” Marigold said. “I know you don’t want to, but you could.”
“Help you?” I repeated. Was she asking me for money? Already? That didn’t take long. I bristled.
“I’m not asking for money,” Marigold snapped. “I know you wouldn’t give it to me.”
Well, that was a relief. Although it begged the question.
“What are you asking me for?” I asked.
Marigold took a deep breath. “Access.”
“Access to Tommy?” I shook my head. “I can’t give you that.”
“Access to you,” she said. It must have cost her pride a lot to make the request because her face fell when she did it. Her shoulders slumped and her expression was bleak. “I know you won’t give us access to Tommy, but if we had access to you, we might be able to keep this going.”
I blinked at her. “Why would anyone want to watch me?”
Marigold laughed and it was bitter. “You don’t get it, do you?”
I rolled my eyes at her. “Get what? That you’re wrong? Nobody wants to watch me on TV.”
“Yes, they do,” Marigold said grudgingly. “You’re special, remember? You’re the girl that the movie star fell in love with and whisked away to an amazing new life where you can do whatever you want. You’re freakin’ Cinderella.”
My mouth was hanging open. Was this a joke? Cinderella might have swept some floors, but I don’t think she ever cleaned semen out of werewolf suits or put up with media harassment from her evil stepsisters.
“Did Meg put you up to this?”
This was a weird joke. It sounded like something that might come out of Meg’s mouth.
“Not in so many words,” Marigold said. “She didn’t think you would do it. There probably won’t be a second season of ‘Beauty Queens Out West.’ Unless you help us, we’ll be working at the dry cleaners, right back where we were before.”
“I already helped you.”
I couldn’t believe this was happening.
“You helped us avoid disaster, yes,” Marigold admitted. She fiddled with her earring, still looking at me like I was her savior. “But you could help us more if you would just agree to participate on the show once in a while.”
I shook my head. “Why?”
“Because we’re your family,” she said. “I know we’re not the family you wanted to have, but we’re the family you’ve got. And we’re asking you for help.”
I thought about it for a minute. I could cut them off now, once and for all. I could have a clean break and probably never see them again if I didn’t want to.
Tommy would probably prefer that. Part of me would too. But another part, a tiny, needy, vocal part that still wanted to be loved, hesitated. Maybe if I had some healthy boundaries, I could do what they were asking.
I swallowed. I had to make a choice. I could give them what they deserved, which was nothing. Or I could give them more than they deserved, because I wanted to. If I’d learned anything over the past couple of weeks, it was that the world wasn’t fair. Sometimes people didn’t get what they deserved in a bad way. Sometimes bad things happened to good people. And that wasn’t fair.
But maybe I could do something to balance out that karmic scale. Maybe if I could do something good for people who didn’t deserve it, they might pass it on one day. Marigold and Quincy might be lost causes. But Greenlee? She was just a kid. There was still hope for her. If I was willing to go out of my way to help my stepfamily, to stay involved in their lives, maybe I could help them against their best efforts to suck as human beings.
“Tommy would never agree to be involved in anything, and I won’t even ask him to,” I ventured. “If I agreed to this, and I’m not agreeing right now, but if I did, then it would only be me. Not him. And not any other members of his family, either. Do you understand?”
Marigold’s eyes were wide and hopeful. She inhaled deeply and gripped the bathroom counter like it was the only thing keeping her upright. “Are you serious?”
“I don’t know. I’d want to see everything in writing.” Tommy had taught me how important that was. And I knew he had lawyers and smart people like Elaine who could make sure the agreements were ironclad. “But I’m open to the idea if we can come to an arrangement. I’m not going to have a camera crew following me around all the time though. It would be a rare guest appearance only.”
Marigold swallowed. “That’s fine.” I could see the wheels turning in her head. “Anything you’d be willing to do would help us.”
Seeing her grateful to me was strange. But it felt good. I knew I was going to hate being on camera, I could already tell I had all the on-camera charisma of a sliced watermelon, but apparently talent wasn’t all that important. They put Greenlee on TV and people watched it. I couldn’t possibly be worse than her.
“Quincy is going to hate this idea,” I warned Marigold. “I don’t think she likes me much anymore.”
Marigold shrugged. “She never liked you. None of us do.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m glad we’re being honest with each other now. Because I don’t like you either. I’m doing this out of charity.”
“And I’m taking it,” Marigold said. “We don’t have to like each other to be family. But that’s still what we are.”
I shook my head. This entire situation was so dysfunctional, but Marigold was right. They were my family, and I loved them, even though I didn’t want to. I turned around and walked back to the man and the family that I did love. I’d figure out the rest later.
Tommy
Cindy and I were on our honeymoon in Milan when the season finale of ‘Beauty Queens Go West’ aired. We watched it on her laptop from the hot tub. I wanted to do other, sexier things in the hot tub, but Cindy was curious. So, reluctantly, we fired up the machine and drank champagne while we watched it.
The opening had been modified for the series finale. Instead of gems falling out of a stiletto into a martini glass, they were falling out of a wedding bell and into a champagne flute. Cute. Plus, there were more gems. A white gem had been added for Cindy. I was represented by a purple one.
“They didn’t give me the amethyst,” Cindy whined, laughing. “How rude. They’re my favorite.”
“We’ll email the producer and complain,” I said, dragging Cindy closer to me. She giggled and splashed at me, but I won, settling her on my lap. She sighed when I got ahold of her, obviously perfectly contented to be caught.
We watched the remainder of the theme song together. Cindy was tense but I knew what was going to happen. Elaine had signed off on the final cut, so I knew it wouldn’t be too horrible. Still… watching this was show was a bit like
watching one of my movies. I’d always hated seeing myself on film. Cindy, who had no experience with this type of thing, probably hated it even more. She put her arms over mine on her midsection, holding me closer.
“Last time on Beauty Queens Go West,” the announcer began, “Quincy had just announced her pregnancy.”
The clip of her dramatic reveal played. Cindy and I exchanged a disgusted glance. It was nearly as bad the second time around. I’d nearly fallen over and fainted the first time I’d seen her tell the world that I was the father of her fake baby. This time it wasn’t quite that bad, but I still hated watching it.
The announcer’s voice came back. “Ashton Radley had also just proposed to Quincy.”
Another clip, this one consisted of my stepsister-in-law and a future convicted felon embracing.
“But no one could anticipate what happened at the Academy Awards,” the announcer crowed. They didn’t have the rights to reuse the footage, so instead, Greenlee appeared to recap it.
She appeared on the camera and took an awkwardly long time to start talking. “It was so romantic,” she said, cocking her head to the side. “Like something out of a movie. Tommy Prince won his Oscar for best actor and then he announced his undying love for Cindy right there on stage. And then he left, giving up acting forever.”
She left out the part where I said that Hollywood was corrupt and had created the same reality TV phenomenon that its elites simultaneously endorsed and rejected as they saw fit. That was probably a bit deep for this type of programming.
And God, that woman’s delivery was rough. I wondered how many takes they’d had to do for that four-sentence sequence. When the announcer came back on, I almost thought he sounded relieved.
“Now,” the announcer said, “Greenlee, Quincy and Marigold have received an invitation they never thought would arrive.”
“Look,” Greenlee said, holding out a gold embossed envelope. She was speaking to the camera instead of her family. “Cindy has invited us to her surprise wedding to Tommy Prince.”
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