The Real Thing

by Lizzie Shane

  “Changed your mind about that, have you?” he asked dryly, raising the beer bottle to his lips.

  “Yes!” his mother shouted. “Because you aren’t happy! You haven’t been happy in a long time. You’re going through the motions with everything except Sadie—and I love that little girl, but I want more for you. You got stuck when Scarlett left. You stopped putting yourself out there—not just with women, but with your music, with your, God, your ability to even let yourself care. You stopped dreaming things for yourself—and I know you would give up any dream for Sadie, but is that what you want her to see? That she has to sacrifice one happiness for another? That we don’t chase after what we want?”

  “That isn’t what’s happening.” Ian stalked toward the deck, not because he wanted to go outside, but just to get away from this conversation—but his mother followed.

  “You buried yourself in the sand and never came out—and I know something about burying your head in the sand. I know about pushing down how you feel because you can’t stand to feel it, but I hated to see you do it. I wanted you to live. To be happy. And when Maggie came I thought you were—”

  Ian whirled to face her at that. “You were the one who told me I should be careful. That she was too broken.”

  “I was worried about you! I was. Because she’s…Ian, she’s a whole lotta mess in her own right, but you two…you fit together and you made each other so happy. I saw that—and yes, it made me scared for a minute to think that it might blow up in your face, but are you really going to tell me you don’t love her? Do you really expect me to believe you don’t want her back?”

  He lifted the bottle with a shrug. “She put the house on the market. She’s gone.”

  “So? Go after her. Take a risk. Go after the woman you love! Your father was always the brave one. I know he was the one who encouraged you to go to Nashville in the first place. He always believed in you and I always worried—we have that in common, you and I. But he isn’t here now so we have to be brave for him. Be brave, Ian. Don’t let your life pass you by. This isn’t just Sadie’s life. It’s yours too. And you know she misses Maggie just as much as you do.”

  He shook his head. “She’s a movie star and I’m a handyman from Long Shores. It was never going to work.”

  “Why?” his mother all but shouted. “God, you can be so inflexible.”

  “You’re telling me that?”

  “Yes! I am! It isn’t all or nothing. There can be compromise too. You wouldn’t even consider that you could make a life in Nashville and be the kind of family man you wanted, you wouldn’t bend at all, so Scarlett left. Then you buried yourself here and made yourself the injured party—”

  “Are you seriously on Scarlett’s side now?”

  “I’m on your side. I am always on your side. But you are building these walls around yourself that are so high no one can get in. You and Sadie stay safe inside, protected from the rest of the world so no one else can ever hurt you, but life isn’t about avoiding the things that can hurt you. Because the things that can hurt you are the things that matter. Sure you can stay here and cut everything out of your life that you’re afraid of losing, but that isn’t living, Ian. You used to know how to live! I was scared for you because you threw yourself into things so fiercely. I want to be scared like that again. I want to worry about you because you’re flinging yourself into a hurricane and I can only watch and pray. You were so happy—and I know you love Sadie and I know you are a great dad, but you haven’t been happy like that in years.”

  “You don’t get to say whether or not I’m happy, Mom. This.” He waved around the room, taking in the beach, Sadie, his life here. “This is what I want. The kind of life Sadie knows she can always count on. The kind of life I can count on.”

  He opened the door, stepping out into the wind on the deck and moving quickly down to the beach. She didn’t follow him. He hadn’t put shoes on after his shower and his feet sank into the warm sand. Sadie raced up, Edgar galumping at her side, and Ian sent a little mental, See? in his mother’s direction. Sadie was perfectly happy. He wasn’t walling them off from the world. She was good, damn it.

  “Hey! Are you leaving?” she called as she approached, panting from her run.

  “No. No gig tonight. I’m hanging out with you guys.”

  She didn’t react, accepting a decision that had been so monumental for him without comment. “I think we should go on a road trip when school gets out,” she announced instead. “We could see the Mariners when they play their away games in Oakland and other places...” She wasn’t looking at him, her tone perfectly innocent. “They’re playing the Angels in two weeks. I’ve never been to LA. Wouldn’t it be great to go to like Disney and Harry Potter World—even if it isn’t as big as the one in Florida, I bet it’s still pretty cool. Kirpa even said I could borrow her wand.”

  “You’ve got this all planned out, don’t you?”

  Sadie shrugged. “It’s just an idea.” She flicked a glance at him beneath her cap. “We could visit Maggie…”

  And there it was. “I don’t know, hon. She’s pretty busy.”

  “She said I could always call her or write her letters no matter where she is.”

  Ian’s chest squeezed with sudden pressure. “Maybe you can write her a letter and we’ll figure out where to send it.”

  Sadie nodded, evidently satisfied with that suggestion, and raced ahead toward the house with Edgar, Ian following more slowly in their wake.

  Maybe he had shut down a part of himself. He hadn’t meant to. He wanted Sadie to want things, to reach for things in life, but it was like he’d forgotten how.

  After dinner, when Sadie had dashed upstairs to compose her letter with Edgar scrambling after her, Ian lingered at the dinner table and glanced at his mother over his wine glass. “Supposing I had gone into a defensive mode when Scarlett left…” His mother went still, all her attention focused on him though she said nothing. “I wouldn’t know how to get out of it. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

  “It’s easier to act your way into changing your thinking than to think your way into changing your actions.”

  Ian blinked, frowning. “What is that?”

  She shrugged. “I heard it on a podcast.”

  “Of course you did.”

  “It’s not bad advice. Take a few risks and maybe you’ll remember how to think like a risk-taker.”

  Take a few risks. Those words seemed to linger with him, echoing in his head later that night. Act your way… It sounded like fake it ’til you make it and he’d never really liked that phrase. Never liked the pretense of it, but acting his way into change…was that something he could do?

  Without stopping to talk himself out of it, he reached for his cell phone and dialed the number it had only taken him a few phone calls this week to dig up. There was noise in the background when she answered, her voice a little too loud, “Hello?”

  “Scarlett.” Just that. Just her name, but he knew in the long pause that followed that she recognized his voice.

  “Ian.” The noise in the background receded and he pictured her walking out of a bar, into the Nashville night. “Is everything okay? It’s late.”

  He glanced at the clock, doing the time zone math. It would be nearly one in Nashville. “I didn’t wake you.”

  “No, I just finished a shift.”

  A shift. Not a gig. “Still waiting tables?” An ugly part of him was pleased she was still struggling, taking vicious satisfaction in the knowledge that she hadn’t left them and immediately catapulted to success.

  “Did you want something?” she asked, defensiveness tightening her tone. They’d always been good at setting one another on edge.

  “I can’t just call to talk? Unless you’re all talked out from all the interviews you’re giving.” He was veering into asshole mode. He could feel it happening, but there had never been any reverse when he started down that slope with Scarlett.
“We haven’t heard from you for years, but I guess we just needed a major news outlet to reach out on our behalf.”

  “I didn’t think you wanted to hear from me.”

  “It isn’t about what I want. You’re Sadie’s mom.”

  “You certainly made me feel like shit every time I called—”

  “So it’s my fault you abandoned your child?”

  ”I didn’t abandon her,” Scarlett snapped. “I left her with you. Fucking Superdad. And yes, I know it was a shitty thing to do to you—you think I don’t know that? But you didn’t make it any easier, okay? You’re always right and I’m always wrong and that shit is exhausting, Ian. At some point I had to stop volunteering for the punishment. So yes, I’m a terrible human being, but you’re no fucking picnic.”

  Her words seemed to freeze the anger in his chest, echoing around with his mother’s from that afternoon. You buried yourself here and made yourself the injured party... You wouldn’t even consider… He swallowed thickly. “Okay.”

  “What?” Scarlett snapped.

  “I’m sorry.” Speechless silence met the words. “I didn’t want to hear that you didn’t want what I wanted, so I ignored you when you tried to tell me. And when you left, I was so angry at you for leaving Sadie and leaving me, so I made it shitty for you every time you reached out. I wanted to punish you. I—” He broke off, realization coming at the same time as the words coming out of his mouth. “I never stopped being mad at you. Furious at you. And I made you the villain so I didn’t have to accept that I’d played a part.” He swallowed, forcing the last words out. “And I’m sorry for my part.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “Don’t act so surprised. I can admit when I’m wrong.”

  “Can you?” Scarlett asked incredulously—and he had to admit he hadn’t done a very good job of it with her in the past. “Who are you and what have you done with Ian Summer?”

  “I’m trying to do better,” he said, pushing down the urge to get defensive again.

  “Man,” Scarlett marveled. “That Maggie Tate is good for you.”

  Something jerked inside him at the mention of her name. “This isn’t about her.”

  “If you say so. But those pictures… Damn, Ian, if you’d ever looked at me the way you were looking at her? I don’t know if I ever would have been able to leave.”

  But she had left. First Scarlett, and now Maggie.

  Though if he was honest, he’d done a pretty damn thorough job of driving them both away. He’d practically thrown Maggie’s feelings in her face. Was it too late to get her back?

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  “I’m sorry. I know I messed up. I know you don’t have to listen to me or forgive me. I don’t deserve your forgiveness.”

  Cecil barked, the sound echoing in the tight confines of the trailer, and Maggie made a face in the mirror.

  “I know,” she told her dog. “Too earnest. If I’m begging it’s just pathetic, isn’t it?”

  The character needed more bite. Like she really did believe she deserved his forgiveness. Was even entitled to it. This wasn’t the part of the movie where she’d learned her lesson yet.

  Maggie cleared her throat, skimming the lines to remind herself of them one more time before facing the mirror again. “I’m sorry. I know I messed up—”

  A knock at the trailer door interrupted her and Maggie tossed the script on her vanity as she crossed the three feet to the door. The trailer was a fraction of the size of her usual on-set accommodations, but the budget on this film was a fraction of the size of the ones she normally worked on so she would suck it up and handle the close confines.

  The next Alien Adventuress film wouldn’t start filming for months—big budget blockbusters like that always had a million moving parts to line up—but Maggie had been eager to get back to work and this little indie film had been perfect timing. The entire shoot would be only sixteen days—a mad dash of filming, as if the director was afraid the producers were going to yank the funding at any moment. The energy on the set was infectious, everyone pulling together to make something they believed in—long hours, small paychecks, and a sort of frantic stress to make it work in the time they had all contributed to the vibe on set. And made Maggie feel like she might be working on something that mattered.

  And if she still missed Sadie and Ian and Long Shores… Well. It hadn’t even been a month since she left. She was sure to get over them soon.

  “You ready for me?” she asked the production assistant waiting on the other side of the door when she opened it.

  “Not yet.” The PA grimaced and Maggie decided not to ask about whatever snafu on set was delaying filming. “Probably another half hour, at least.” She held up a manila envelope. “Your manager just sent this over.”

  “Thanks.” Maggie accepted the envelope and retreated back inside her on set refuge.

  She expected some rider she needed to review for the Alien Adventuress deal, but when she opened the flap, a single letter-sized envelope slid out into her hands, along with a hand-written note. A familiar sized envelope, in which she could feel the familiar thick stationary.

  This one was addressed, stamped and mailed—from Dolores Tully to Maggie Tate—but it was stamped “Insufficient Postage” and the handwritten note with it was in Mel’s handwriting, explaining that the courier who had picked up the car from Lolly’s place had also been instructed to collect the mail and this had been the only item which wasn’t junk mail.

  How many times had Maggie wondered why Lolly hadn’t mailed the letters? She’d mailed this one. Were the others just test runs? From the date stamp, it had been mailed months ago. The returned letter had probably been sitting in the mail box the entire time Maggie was in Long Shores and it hadn’t even occurred to her to look.

  With shaking hands, she pulled open the flap, sliding out several sheets of thick stationary, each covered in Lolly’s looping script. Her chest tight, Maggie sank onto the bench in front of her vanity and began to read.

  Dear Maggie,

  There is so much I know I should say to you and no matter how much I write here, I worry I will never be able to say enough. I have so many regrets, chief among them that I pushed you away by trying to force you to have a relationship with your father. No matter how I felt about you both, I should have respected your feelings.

  I’ve spent my life handing out advice, but I couldn’t take my own where you were concerned and I have always felt that I failed you. Failed you when you were small for not being part of your life. When you were a teen for not doing more. And when you were an adult by pushing you away. Maybe I only gave good advice because I made so many mistakes in my own life. Learning the lessons of what not to do. I missed out on love when I had the chance. I missed out on having children as I had always wanted. And I didn’t do enough for you when I should have.

  I have so many regrets. Which doesn’t mean that I didn’t love my life and love the people in it, but I have lived with so much regret, so many might have beens, and the one thing I want for you, above all others, is for you to live your life without that feeling. So that when you look back on what you are leaving to the world, you don’t wish you could do it all over again, and you don’t have a single letter you wish you had written years earlier.

  I’m leaving you the house, the cottage in Long Shores. I know it isn’t much for a movie star, but you were happy there once and if I can give you anything, it would be the memory of happy times and the wish that you make more there.

  I am so proud of you, Maggie May, though perhaps I have no right to be. You made yourself. And what you have made is extraordinary.

  I’m not sure when this letter will find you. Or if I will still be here when it does. My clock is winding down, but I don’t regret the end—only the opportunities lost. May you never feel you have missed what life offered you. Loving you was one of the best things I ever did. With all my love.

  Lolly

/>   Maggie stared at the letter for a long moment, then flipped to the first page and began reading again.

  A single phrase stuck out to her, again and again. Loving you was one of the best things I ever did.

  Loving you…

  Lolly had always seemed so sure of who she was, never questioning. It had never occurred to Maggie that she had regrets. That she felt like she’d let opportunities pass her by.

  Lolly had loved her. And she had loved Lolly. Maybe that was the key. Maybe it wasn’t about being worthy. Maybe it wasn’t about the right person loving her. Maybe the only way to fill the gaping hole inside her was to give love, not to receive. Maybe that was her esteem-able act. Hadn’t she been happiest when she was with Ian and Sadie, before she knew whether Ian cared for her or not, when she just threw herself into caring for him?

  She didn’t want to relive Lolly’s mistakes, missing out on love…but if Ian truly didn’t want her there…

  Her phone rang—if this were a movie, it would be Ian, but Mel’s name flashed on the caller ID. “Hello?”

  “Good news. We have an offer.”

  “For Alien Adventuress? I thought that was already done.”

  “No, sorry. The house. The one in Oregon. The realtor just called. Someone made an offer.”

  Maggie’s heart stuttered. “Already?”

  She wasn’t ready to give up.

  The realization shuddered through her, loud and clear. Ian lashed out when he felt threatened, throwing words to protect himself. She’d known that about him since they were eight years old. He’d told her it wasn’t real between them—and maybe it hadn’t been—but she wasn’t ready to believe that just yet.

  “Turn it down.”

  “What? Don’t you even want to know how much they offered?”

  “No. I’m not ready to sell. Not yet.”

  “All right,” Mel acknowledged. “You’re the boss.”

  And for the first time, she really felt like it. For once, in control of her life.