You are the Story (The Extra Series Book 7)

by Megan Walker

  I do, though. And I know that this fight was different somehow than fights we’ve had in the past. Josh and I are both passionate people, and we can both get exasperated, even furious. But that look on his face at the end . . . I’ve never seen him like that before. Like something inside him had broken, and I have a terrible feeling it’s all my fault—even if I’m not really sure why, or how.

  I have to make things better, or who am I?

  What good am I to you?

  That hopeless tone in his voice echoes in my head, and my heart aches. Josh is the best thing in my world, and I love him more than anything. I’m not even sure what that fight was actually about—he went from not wanting to have friends that know anything about me to thinking I’m going to leave him because he can’t fix things for me, all faster than I could keep up—but I’m pretty sure I screwed it up, big time.

  I wish I could call Gabby about this, get her opinion. I probably could, even if we haven’t been talking as much over the last year. If she’s not working some late shift at the hospital, I know she’d be happy to talk me down from my increasingly catastrophic fears. But I clearly need to make things up to her too, for being a crappy friend lately, and calling now because I need something doesn’t seem like the best way to do that. The same applies to Jenna, who is apparently struggling with something, though I never did hear what and I’m not about to push Josh on that now.

  I sigh. I should put my own shit aside and be there for my friends. It still feels pretty spoiled of me to be having such a hard time with the infertility thing, when I really have so much. And it’s not like we’ve been dealing with it as long as lots of other couples—though the increasing likelihood that we could go through years more of this is too crushing to think about.

  But Josh was right. There’s nothing I wouldn’t give up for us to have a baby. Nothing, that is, except him.

  The sound of the garage door filters back; Josh is home. I feel my pulse pick up, and I try to act casual. Because I should be. I reach in the nightstand for some of the cherry blossom lotion I put on my weirdly dry calves every night.

  I get the lotion, but find myself fiddling with the bottle before I twist the top off.

  What if we keep fighting? What if I make it—whatever the hell it is—worse? I’m not exactly known for my ability to not escalate dramatic situations.

  Of course, Josh knows this about me. And he loves me, all of me. Just like I do him.

  Does he really think I only love him for what he does for me?

  What does that mean about the kind of wife I am?

  And on that lovely jolt of insecurity, I grip the lotion too hard and it spurts out all over my hand and the sheets—just as Josh enters the room.

  He arches an eyebrow, his lips twitching up at the sides. “Happy to see me, huh?”

  I let out a shaky laugh. “Always.” Then I wrinkle my nose at the sheets. I guess my ass is going to be smelling like cherry blossom tonight, too—though I suppose there are worse things. I try to get most of the lotion off and onto my legs where it belongs. “How was your dinner?”

  He doesn’t answer for a moment, and I look up to see him watching me with a strange expression. Like wistfulness, except that doesn’t make any sense. He blinks, and then shakes his head. “Sorry, I just . . . you’re beautiful, you know that?” He smiles, but there’s a sadness there still—clinging on from yesterday, I think. “Especially wearing that.”

  My heart thuds uncertainly. “I do know how you love old-school video games. And I love reminding you I can kick your ass at most of them.”

  His smile widens, just a bit. Then he starts to the closet, loosening his tie as he goes. He keeps his suits in good condition, neatly hung up in the closet, rarely ever leaving them lying around like I have a tendency to do with my clothes. “Dinner was good,” he says, his voice filtering out from the closet. “Macy was happy about the offer details, though I think we might be able to push for more. She says hi, by the way. And thanks for the code?” This last bit a question.

  “Last time we had her and Greg over, she went nuts over my shoes and I told her where she could buy some online. And then last week I came across a freaking amazing coupon code and texted it to her.”

  He laughs, a sound that relieves a little of the twisting in my chest. “I should have guessed that would be shoe-related.”

  “She appreciates a good deal too. We’ve discussed it. The better price we get on the mid-range shoes, the more of the really spectacular ones we can afford.” I finish getting most of the lotion off my sheets and put the bottle on the nightstand.

  I remember back when Josh and I were dating, back when I was driving out to Wyoming and was so sure he was sleeping with this very same Macy—who’s now a friend of mine with clearly excellent taste in footwear—and Asia Phillips and possibly every other hot single female client he had. I was so jealous and trying so hard not be. And though I believed him when he said he’d never slept with any of his clients—a rule I am beyond happy to be the lone exception to—I still worried how my fear of being cheated on would affect us, especially given that his career requires him to spend a good deal of time with gorgeous actresses. I never thought I could fully trust a man, ever. Not after growing up with my dad.

  So it’s kind of incredible to me sometimes the extent to which I don’t even blink at him having lunch or dinner meetings with Macy, or Asia, or even Kim Watterson. Not that I don’t still have some insecurities that flare up every so often. But Josh goes out of his way to ensure I never have any reason not to trust him, and I do. I trust him more than I ever thought I’d be capable of trusting anyone.

  I hear him turn the water on in the bathroom to brush his teeth, and then a couple minutes later, he’s back in the bedroom, wearing nothing but his boxers and looking sexy as all hell, as per usual. But there’s still that sadness there, and he’s avoiding looking at me, which makes my lungs feel tight again.

  I open my mouth to blurt out the apology I’ve been mentally fine-tuning all day, when he says, “So did you get the revised script for that pilot? The PA said she had it sent by messenger today.”

  I smile, though I think I’m the one having to force it a little now. Which is ridiculous. I’m so excited about this pilot, so I shouldn’t have to force being eager to talk about it. “Yep, and read through it already. Pretty much the same, but they tightened the first scene with ex number three a lot.”

  He nods and pulls back the covers to crawl into bed. “Probably a good thing. It looked like it was going to run long. As long as they kept that scene with ex one intact. That’s funny stuff.”

  It really is. I know I shouldn’t get my hopes too high. But this one feels special, and not just because I’m the star. I play a girl named Britt who is kind of a hilariously terrible person—shallow, vain, and a small-time con-artist to boot. When she goes under anesthetic for a boob job (which she financed by creating a fake charity GoFundMe for AWGAF—Americans With Giant Anal Fissures), she hallucinates a future in which she dies alone and unloved in her apartment, crushed by a mountain of knock-off designer wallets she was selling online.

  After her terrible vision, she decides to enlist the help of three of her ex-boyfriends—all decent guys that she hardcore screwed over in various ways—to help her become a better person and right her wrongs, starting with trying to fix the ways she’s messed up their lives.

  A little high concept for a sitcom, but the writing is wickedly sharp, and there’s heart there, too. For all Britt’s flaws, she’s still so likable, and the exes are all great characters. The whole thing has a My Name is Earl meets New Girl feel, and I think it could really kill, if it gets a chance. Besides, I could do way worse than being the next Zooey Deschanel.

  “It must be funny. It actually got Agent Josh to laugh out loud. More than once,” I say, with no small amount of pride. “Which, unlike Husband Josh, takes freaking
comedy gold.” This is true, and we both know it. When Josh is evaluating a scene for professional reasons, he’s much harder to please. Which means I can trust his feedback a lot more, even when I don’t always love it.

  He raises an eyebrow, lying on his side now so he’s facing me. “Are you maligning Husband Josh’s excellent taste in comedy?”

  “Of course not. Husband Josh laughs at all my ‘That’s what she said’ jokes. And my Bane impressions.” I scoot down so I’m lying on my side too, not six inches away from him. I want to be pressed up against him with his arms around me, but that fight still hangs between us, and I hate it.

  I think Josh does too. He reaches his hand out, hesitant in a way we so rarely are with each other, and links his fingers through mine. “Yeah, well, Agent Josh and Husband Josh both think you’re incredible in this part.” His lips quirk up again. “They both think you’re incredible in general, actually.”

  I want to make a joke about how Agent Josh had better be careful or Husband Josh is going to kick his ass for comments like that, but that look in Josh’s warm brown eyes—full of love and yet still with this heavy sadness, like maybe after yesterday something is gone, in him or in us . . .

  “I’m sorry,” I blurt out instead. “I’m so sorry about yesterday.”

  His gaze drops to the mattress. “You don’t have to—”

  “Apologize? I do.” I find myself gripping his hand tightly, like I’m afraid he’s going to take it back. And maybe he is, because he’s not looking at me anymore, and maybe he doesn’t want to talk about this, but we have to, don’t we? To figure it out?

  What if he doesn’t want to figure it out?

  “I was overreacting about the whole spousal privilege thing,” I say. “I shouldn’t have insisted you tell me everything Felix told you about me and Gabby. I don’t actually want to know if you hate my clothes, because I remember what you said that one time about how the only people who should be wearing gladiator sandals are those fighting lions in the Colosseum and now I feel like whenever I wear them I look like Russell Crowe and—”

  “Stop, you really don’t need to—” he pauses and his brow furrows, but at least he’s looking back up at me. “You think you look like Russell Crowe?”

  “With better legs, obviously. But that’s not the point. The point is, I handled that badly. And I know you wanted to fix it, and that’s why you decided you couldn’t be friends with Felix anymore” —here I notice his eyes narrow, but he’s glaring at the foot of our bed and not me, so maybe that’s better?— “but maybe I just need time sometimes to freak out before I know if there’s a problem that actually needs fixing, or if I just need to vent my feelings, you know? And in that case, I made a big deal out of nothing. I trust that you’ll tell me things if I need to hear them.”

  While I pause to actually breathe, he sits up, pulling his hand away from me. Pulling himself away from me. And maybe I can’t breathe, after all. “It’s not your fault, Anna-Marie,” he says.

  “It is,” I say, and I can feel tears burning in my eyes. “I hurt you. I know I did. And when I said that thing about how you shouldn’t want to help people just out of fear, I didn’t mean that you do that, I just meant—”

  “I know what you meant,” he says flatly.

  “I don’t know that you do.” I sit up, but he still won’t look at me. “You do make things better for me. Just by being my husband. By being you, by just . . .” I’m choking on the words now, fear cutting through because he’s huddling in on himself. I can’t give my husband a baby, and now I can’t even give him a proper apology. The tears spill over. “I have all these issues that you always have to deal with, and I don’t deserve you, I know it, and—”

  “Fuck,” he says quietly, his eyes squeezed shut. His face pained.

  My mouth snaps shut. Josh almost never says that word. I think because pretty much everyone else in the industry uses it like it’s required for breathing.

  “Sorry,” he says, shaking his head. “That wasn’t directed at you. That was for me.”

  I’m not sure that’s any better. If anything, I’m even more scared.

  “Josh, please talk to me,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. “What’s going on?”

  He lets out a breath, lowers his hand from his face. “I realized something about myself today that I need to tell you.”

  “Okay,” I say. But my heart is still beating erratically.

  “I was talking with Felix at lunch.” His eyes cut over to me, waiting for me to say something about the Felix of that statement—which I certainly could, given his whole rant yesterday about not ever hanging out with Felix Mays again.

  My eyes widen, but I’m not about to push it.

  “And it occurred to me,” he continues, “that, yeah, I always want you to talk about your issues with me. But I don’t want to do the same about mine, partly because I don’t want to have issues—I don’t know that I really let myself think I did, which seems pretty idiotic now—but really . . .” He grimaces, his eyes closing again. “I don’t want you to know how messed up I am. I want to be the one who fixes things, the strong one. So you need me. And it’s so shitty to do that to you.”

  I blink. “I do need you, Josh. And it’s probably normal to—”

  “No,” he says, and he’s gripping his dark hair now. “Please, don’t make excuses for this.” He looks over at me, and there are tears in his eyes, the pain right there at the surface. “I make you feel like you’re the one with all the problems, because that makes me feel like you’re dependent on me. Like you’ll want to stay with me. Like you’ll need to.”

  My gut drops, and I find my mouth working with nothing to say. He wants me to feel dependent? I mean, I need him, I do. He’s my husband. But when he says it that way, it makes that need sound wrong and twisted.

  I know that’s not true, though. The way I need him is anything but wrong.

  His tears spill over, and he presses his palms against his eyes as if to stop them. “Please don’t tell me that isn’t a super shitty thing to do, because it is. It’s awful. I’m so sorry,” he says, his voice breaking. “I’m so sorry, Anna-Marie.”

  It takes me a moment to speak again, around the ache in my chest.

  “Yeah.” I swallow past the lump in my throat. “Yeah, that’s a pretty shitty thing to do.”

  He nods and the tears leak past his palms, and my heart is cracked apart, but mostly for the pain he’s huddled under. I reach for him, putting my hand on his arm.

  “But you said you just realized this. So you didn’t even know you were doing it? Like, it hasn’t been this purposeful thing.”

  “No,” he says. “But that doesn’t make it not true.”

  “But you didn’t mean to. And it’s something you can work on, and stop.”

  I can feel him lean into my touch, and even though it’s this small thing, it feels like a huge relief. “Felix said pretty much the same thing. And I want to. But I don’t—I don’t even know how, it’s all so . . . God, I just feel like an asshole.”

  There’s a pinch of hurt that he could say all this stuff to Felix, but not me. At least not without me prying it out of him with a heavy, guilt-propelled crowbar. “Do you . . . do you need me?” I can’t help but ask, my voice quavering.

  His head jerks up, and his expression softens. “Oh my god, yes,” he says, and he grips my hand again, pulling me in closer so we’re sitting side by side, our shoulders touching. “I need you so much, it—” He looks up at the ceiling, then back again. “I need you more than anything. I think that’s part of it, like I’m so scared to lose you, I—” He shakes his head again.

  Relief washes over me at hearing the depth of that emotion in his voice. He does need me. Which I shouldn’t have doubted, just because he needed someone to sort this shit out with who wasn’t directly involved.

  “I already told y
ou,” I say, squeezing his arm. “I’m not going anywhere. You’re not losing me, Rios.”

  He looks over at me, his eyes red and shiny. “Yeah? Do you think . . . is it possible you can forgive me for doing that to you?”

  I want to say there’s nothing to forgive, that he didn’t mean to make me feel like the only broken one in our relationship—something I’m now realizing I’ve often felt, even if it’s not like I think he’s some perfect emotional paragon. But just because the intent wasn’t there doesn’t make it not a shitty thing to do.

  And I feel like he needs me to acknowledge that, and not take it back by pretending it was nothing.

  “Yes,” I say after a moment. “I think I already do.”

  More tears run down his cheeks and I scoot closer, burrowing under his arm, up against his side. He presses his lips to the top of my head, and it feels so incredibly good to be cuddled up with him like this again.

  “I’m still sorry about yesterday,” I say. “But I think the truth is, I do sometimes just need time to react. And I know you want me to tell what I’m feeling, and I can share that reaction with you, but I don’t want you to make big life choices just because I’m upset about something, you know?” I give his side a light, teasing tickle. “Like declaring how you’re going to abandon newfound friendships, for instance.”

  He sighs. “Yeah, I can get that. I’m sorry. I’m sorry about all of this.”

  I pull back just enough so I can look him in the eyes. So I can make him understand, as much as possible. “You’re everything to me, you know that? I need you and I love you. So, so much.”

  I’m not sure if he really believes all that, if he’s in a place where he can, but I think he’s hearing me in a way he wasn’t yesterday. In a way he wasn’t even earlier in this conversation.

  “I need and love you,” he says back, his gaze soft and tear-filled. “So, so much.”

  I run my hand along his cheek, and pull his face down to mine, brush his lips with a soft kiss. Tasting the salt of tears on his lips. Feeling the stroke of his fingers along my wet cheek, down my jaw.