by Maggie Marr
“Does it?” I wanted to believe Lane. I did. But the one difference she didn’t mention was that Dillon was in L.A. The man she was madly in love with. She was with him. She’d built a life around Dillon in Los Angeles. They were planning their wedding. Whenever she missed Kansas, she need only look at Dillon to understand the choice she’d made.
I had no one. No one here. The man I loved was in Los Angeles and I hadn’t spoken to him in nearly a month.
“How’s Ryan?” I asked. My voice was soft and Lane was quiet for a moment.
“Not so good,” Lane said.
My heart thumped hard in my chest. “What does ‘not so good’ mean?”
Lane paused. There was something she didn’t want to tell me. My guts churned with fear.
“Please, Lane, don’t make me call Sterling to find out.”
Lane pushed out a long breath of air. “A couple weeks ago, Dillon and Webber found Ryan at that motel in Malibu he used to go to to get drunk. He’d been there for, like, four days.”
“When was this?” I asked.
“He checked in the day the film finished.”
I let out a deep sigh.
“Honey, this is not your fault. You can’t save him. No one can. He has to want to do that for himself.”
“I know,” I said. I knew that any addict had to make a choice. But they didn’t make the choice just once. They made the choice over and over and over and over—each day they chose to remain sober and strong. What a tough fight. A lonely fight. A fight worth fighting, but a battle waged forever in their soul.
“Where is he now?” I asked.
“He went back to Clarity.”
Relief poured through me. “Thank God,” I said.
“Yeah,” Lane said. “He reserved his spot at Clarity before he went to the motel. He said he planned it like that. Wanted to get completely knocked out and then get sober again.”
“I don’t care how he does it,” I said. “I just hope he does it.” For his sake and for mine.
“Dillon goes to see him, and so do I,” Lane said.
I wanted to ask, I wanted to know, if he ever mentioned me. If he ever asked about how I was doing, or what I was doing, but I couldn’t. I didn’t have a right. Not now. Not with Ryan back in rehab and fighting for his life.
“He looks better,” Lane said. “It’s only been a couple weeks, but already he looks better. He wants this for himself, now,” Lane said. “Not just for his career or for"—Lane paused again, searching for words—"for someone else. He seems to really want his sobriety for himself.”
“That’s great.” My bottom lip trembled. I closed my eyes and fought to keep my voice solid and firm. I missed Lane. I missed Choo. I missed Dillon. I even missed that pack of hounds they kept at the house. But most of all, I missed Ryan.
“If you think it would help”—I pressed my fingertips into my forehead—“will you tell him that I’m thinking of him? That I want him to do it. That I know he can.” Big hot tears formed. I grabbed a napkin and dotted the corner of my eyes. My heart broke for Ryan and his pain.
“He’s doing that film with your dad and Dillon when he gets out,” Lane said. Her voice was happier. “Your dad pushed the start date for him.”
I smiled. “Daddy can be a great guy when he wants to be.”
“He’s actually been to Clarity to visit Ryan a couple times.”
I pressed my lips into a thin line. “Wow,” I said. Daddy understood addiction. He also understood Hollywood. He understood the constant fight and the temptations. “That makes me happy,” I said.
“So, subject change,” Lane said.
I pulled the corner of my mouth up into a tiny smile and swiped away my tears.
“When are you coming back for the wedding? You need to get your final fitting.”
Lane’s wedding to Dillon was a much happier conversation than me missing Ryan and him having to return to rehab a second time. “I did it before I left,” I said. “I love that color. The periwinkle blue is gorgeous and will look amazing.”
“And when are you coming home?” Lane asked.
Home. L.A. was home. L.A. would always be my home.
“Not soon enough,” I said. “Not soon enough.”
Chapter 27
Ryan
Rehab this time was different. I went because I knew I needed to go. I went because I wanted to get well. I wanted to get strong. I wanted to stop turning to the booze and the drugs. But I felt like shit. The booze and drugs would make me feel awesome for a while and then after they wore off, when I woke up on the bathroom floor, or some bedroom floor, or passed out in a bed that I didn’t know, not only did I still feel like shit, but I felt worse than before. I felt like the dirty rug under the shit—all stained and soiled.
Clarity, this time, was a choice I made for myself, not a choice someone forced me to make.
“Ryan, man, you are looking better every day.” Barrett slapped my back and sat beside me in the dining room. “How long you been here now?” he asked.
“Almost eighty-five days,” I said. I closed my Big Book and focused on Barrett. Each day I got stronger, both physically and mentally. My desire strengthened my resolve.
“Okay, okay. That’s good. Man, that’s really good.” He leaned back in his chair. “What you thinking—another five days?”
A cold shiver pulsed up my spine.
“Out in the real world in another five days? Last time the real world chewed me up and spit me the fuck out.”
“You got that movie with Steve Legend that’s going to shoot,” Barrett said.
“Not until December.”
“Right, right,” Barrett said. “And Dillon’s wedding?”
“January.” I set my Big Book on the table in front of me. “I was thinking maybe I’d stay here a couple more months. Even through the wedding. Maybe while I film I could do a kind of a inpatient/outpatient thing. Like a work release?”
Barrett nodded, then he leaned forward and put both his beefy arms on the table. “I know this place feels safe,” he said. “And the outside world feels like it’s the problem. But it’s not. Man, I am telling you, you are getting strong on the inside and you will be fine.”
I shook my head. “I’m not so sure.”
“And that’s why I know,” Barrett said. “Last time you were here, you told me you were ready. That you were sure. You were so certain that you went ahead put yourself into some tight spots. Now. This time, you got that uncertainty, you got the knowledge that the disease, it doesn’t go away. The disease sits there like the bad fucker it is in the back of your mind, and it waits. It waits and does push-ups. That mean-ass disease waits for the right time, the right place, the right scenario to raise its mean-ass ugly head. Then it grabs you again and shakes you onto your ass. Why you think we got people here who have twenty or thirty years sober and then, bam, one day they walk into a liquor store and buy a bottle?” Barrett asked. “That day isn’t so different than any one of those other eight thousand days they got stacked up sober. But for some reason that day is the day the disease broke through and caught them.”
I nodded. I totally understood. I totally got it. I wasn’t ever going to be done being an addict. I was always going to be an addict, but it was simply whether I chose to be a sober addict or a drunk one.
“Man, this thing is a bitch,” I said.
“Yes, yes, it is my man. But I tell you every person on this planet got something they have to carry up the mountain. Some kind of shit they are working on, or taking care of. Don’t let them ‘put together’ people fool ya.”
I cracked a smile.
“So your team here at Clarity, we’re thinking another five days, and it’s time for you to fly.”
My belly tightened. I nodded, but I wasn’t sure that ninety days at Clarity was even close to being enough time.
Amanda
New York wasn’t the love fest I’d wanted. I pulled open the door to Simbian Gallery. I shook off the cold and pul
led my heavy winter coat and hat and gloves and scarf from my body. I smiled at Brooke. She sat at the reception desk, a spot that I wanted. Her smile, to me, was more of a tight pout. She rarely spoke. In fact, none of the interns at the Simbian Gallery were very friendly. Smart. But not friendly. I walked down the long hallway toward the back stairs. After months at Simbian I was still relegated to the archives.
“Amanda, darling, good morning!” Willohmena called. I stopped and ducked into her office. She smiled from behind her glass desk. “I have a job for you today.”
My heart pitter-pattered faster in my chest. Perhaps I was being released from the gallery basement. I raised my eyebrow and my lips quirked upward in a smile.
“I need for you to go into the archives and find the Pensky lithographs.”
My heart dropped to my toes, but my smile remained plastered to my face.
“I’m afraid, darling, that our last intern did not do a very good job maintaining the archives. It’s a mess.”
Yes, the gallery’s archives were an absolute mess. I’d been in the dust and the dirt of the archives for months now, instead of sitting where I’d expected to be working, at least by now, at the front desk.
Over my shoulder, I glanced down the hall toward Brooke. She was east coast Smith Girl perfection. Her job at the front desk of the gallery, greeting patrons and welcoming artists, was the job that I’d expected, the one that I wanted. Not to be down on my hands and knees in the dusty bowels of the archives searching for lithographs that might or might not exist. I’d even heard a rumor from the other interns that Brooke was getting paid.
“So, darling.” Willohmena folded her hands into a tight knot on top of her desk. “Tell me what you’re thinking. Have you had much luck with a job?”
My eyes widened. I turned back to Willohmena. I walked further into her office. I didn’t know exactly what to say or how to say it. A job? I thought that my internship here, in Willohmena’s gallery, would lead to a job.
“I … I thought maybe that a job would happen here,” I said. Wasn’t she pleased with my work? I’d been responsive to her every need. I was always on time and responsible and …
“Oh, no, darling,” Willohmena said. “I simply don’t have it in the budget. Brooke has a job but you, darling, you do not.” Willohmena leaned back in her chair. “I will, of course, be helpful any way that I can, and you’re welcome to stay here and work for as long as you want,” Willohmena added.
For free. The words traipsed through my mind. I could stay with Willohmena and work for free for as long as I wanted, but I would not be offered a paid position because, well, it would seem that Brooke was worthy of a paid position at Willohmena’s gallery, but I was not.
Willohmena leaned toward me. “You know, darling, Brooke’s family is very well-known. They’ve supported the gallery for years. I simply must do right by them.”
I swallowed a lump in my throat. I’d always been the girl from the family that was well known. I’d been the person who people needed to do right by—at least in Hollywood. This was what it felt like not to have a leg up. Not to have the family connection. Not to have someone watching out for you.
“Thank you, Willohmena,” I said. “For the opportunity. I’ve just started to look. I’ll let you know how it goes.”
“Oh, yes, darling, of course!” Willohmena said. “Any way I can be helpful.” She grasped her coffee cup. “Aren’t you traveling home soon?”
“In two weeks,” I said. “It’s my best friend’s wedding.”
“Well, darling, that starts to happen, too. Everyone starts to get married and settle down. Lucky for you that you have friends on both coasts, no?”
The friends from USC that returned to New York after graduation were so busy. Most had lived here as kids and had friends and family here, and the others were caught up in investment banking careers or high-pressure time-consuming jobs.
I shifted my coat, hat, gloves, and scarf to my other arm. I missed the full-on days of sunshine. The weather in L.A. today was sunny with a low of seventy. In New York I needed enough paraphernalia to stay warm that I could fill a suitcase. I missed Daddy. I missed Sterling. I missed Lane, Dillon, and Choo.
And then there was Ryan.
“Well, darling, the archives await,” Willohmena said, in what I knew from working with her was a polite dismissal.
I nodded and carried my gargantuan coat toward the back stairs. The back stairs that led into the grubby, lightless hole filled with dust and old paintings created by artists about whom I didn’t really care.
*
I refused to believe that New York wasn’t the place for me. This was where I was meant to create my own life with ultra-hip fab friends, and fab arts, and fab plays, and fab restaurants. I pulled my coat tighter around my body. The wind whipped against my face and stole my breath.
Today the temperature was eighty-two and sunny in Beverly Hills. The high in New York would be twenty-two. My heart plummeted. Lane would be sitting by the pool reading scripts. Or she might be hiking Runyon Canyon with the pack—I would even take the company of the pack if it meant that I didn’t have to be so cold that I couldn’t feel my toes.
I yanked open the door of Cafe Joe. Bibi had forced me to go on this coffee date. She kept calling and saying that I had to meet this guy named Jasper. That he was from the best family. That he was the absolute greatest. That he had a fantastic job with a giant Wall Street firm that his father had started.
The hot air from inside Cafe Joe blasted me. The skin on my lips had begun to crack from the cold air/hot air rotation constant in a New York winter. New York City was doing horrible things to my skin and my hair. I did a quick sweep of the room.
My heart wasn’t in this. I had no desire to see anyone. Or to date anyone. The person I kept thinking about was Ryan. His blue eyes, and his strong jaw. The way he smiled, the way he’d touched me, the way he—
“Hey, are you Amanda?”
Jasper was tall with sandy blond hair and blue eyes. He looked well kept, like he’d just walked off a Ralph Lauren ad. Maybe a little too well kept for me.
“I am. Are you Jasper?”
He nodded and smiled, showing off a row of überwhite teeth. “I got us a table.” He ushered me to the table on the far side of the room and even pulled out my seat. I removed my coat and sat down.
We each ordered a coffee. We did the mandatory small talk about the weather, the city, and college. Jasper ordered rice pudding to go with his coffee.
“Your family is in entertainment,” Jasper said. He cocked his head to the side as though he’d just mentioned that my family were circus performers.
“That’s right,” I said.
“What’s that like?” Jasper asked.
I took a deep breath. What was that like? “It’s our family business,” I said. “Like what you and your dad do.”
Jasper’s eyebrows creased closer and he shoved a spoon full of pudding into his mouth. “I hardly think what your family does can be compared to my father’s firm.” He wore a heavy-lidded smug look.
Irritation cascaded through my chest. His look and attitude minimized the work that my family did. Heat pulsed in my chest with the need to defend my family and our family business.
“Really? How much income did your father’s firm generate last year?” I asked. If this guy was going to believe he was something special, perhaps I should put it into perspective for him.
“A quarter of a billion dollars,” Jasper said. He cocked an eyebrow, obviously impressed by the size of his father’s firm.
“My father’s films generate double that in one year.”
Jasper choked on his last bite of pudding.
“Not the same,” he said. He coughed and slid his napkin over his face.
Maybe. Maybe not. I wasn’t going to spend my Saturday afternoon informing this over-educated snob on the intricacies of film finance and the entertainment industry. I knew too much about one of the biggest American exports
to waste my time on Jasper.
“It was nice meeting you, Jasper,” I said. I stood. His eyes followed me as though he was completely unfamiliar with the concept of a woman ditching him.
“Amanda?” He stood and reached over the table and gave my hand a limp shake. Jasper’s empty rice pudding bowl and coffee cup sat on the table. I would find my own coffee to drink today, preferably somewhere much warmer and much nicer than New York City.
Chapter 28
Ryan
My sobriety was back and I worked my program even harder than before. The latest film, Running Legend, had started shooting. This was a studio film with a giant budget, a giant crew, and giant stars. Across the street Zymar, the director, spoke to Steve about the next shot. They leaned toward one another. There was a crane shot today of Steve bolting down an L.A. city street.
“I can’t believe the old man can still run that fast,” Dillon said. He stood beside me in a tank top with fake grease and burn scorches up and down his arms. They’d just filmed Dillon emerging from an "explosion". The actual explosion wouldn’t take place until the end of the shoot.
“He can.”
I turned toward the now-familiar voice of Sterling Legend. Sterling stood between us. He was a good guy. Not nearly as tortured as you’d expect the son of the world’s biggest action star to be. “Runs every day. Works out every day. The man is a fucking machine, guys. A machine.”
“Lucky you,” Dillon said. He wisecracked and a smile curved over his lips.
“Lucky me,” Sterling said. “Hey, how are those wedding plans going, man? I heard from my sister the whole damn thing is still on for January.”
My chest tightened with Sterling’s mention of Amanda and I hadn’t spoken since she left for New York. I hadn’t texted or attempted to call her. She wanted New York. She wanted out of the Industry. She didn’t deserve someone with all my troubles weighing her down. Dillon’s gaze flicked from me back to Sterling.