“Thanks, um, for everything,” I said, patting her shoulder. “I don’t think I would’ve been able to get out of there without your help.”
“Will you let me know if you need anything else?” she asked, her blue eyes bright and anxious. It blew my mind that her face could make any emotion look beautiful. No wonder Devon wanted her on his movie. My life was so full of sadness that it would be painful for an audience to gaze on someone else being sad for two hours.
“I’ll … do that,” I said, fully intending to never speak to her or Devon again. I just wanted out, away, to be gone. But she held me by my arm just long enough to fish around inside of my purse, find my phone, and punch her number in.
“I’m serious,” she said. “Anything.” I pulled my hat down over my face as I nodded and left her car, intent on my escape.
Dallas was my destination. I didn’t care that it wasn’t home anymore — that it’d never be home without Nana. But as the wheels of the bus carried me closer and closer to the city, through the night, over hills and down mountains, I realized that there wasn’t anywhere else I could go.
I was a person without a home. Devon’s compound certainly wasn’t it. I just wasn’t sure where to find it, yet.
I rented a room in the same hotel where Devon and I had met. That much felt right — though it equally felt like punishment. Life had punished me enough for whatever failings or stupidities I might’ve had, but I was all too willing to continue to punish myself. I shouldn’t have trusted Devon. I shouldn’t have left everything I had in Dallas to be with him in Malibu. It had been an idiotic decision, a poor choice made by someone with stars in her eyes. It hadn’t been a choice that Nana would’ve thought was a good one. I knew that much. Nana had raised me to be pragmatic, to think things through. But the moment Devon had crashed into our lives, all of that had gone out the window.
I didn’t know how long I’d be in Dallas. I didn’t know what I was even going to do here. I left my backpack and all its contents on one of the two beds of my slightly threadbare room, and rented a car. I was flush with cash because of what remained of Nana’s savings and a life insurance payout. Devon hadn’t let me pay for a single thing, starting with the trip to Hawaii, extending to Nana’s funeral arrangements, and ending with staying in his Malibu palace.
I drove aimlessly, like I used to do when I lived here, trying to find answers in the streets and thoroughfares I knew like the lines on my own hands. I’d grown up driving these roads, grown to know them even better when I’d taken the best routes during my pizza delivery days. I wondered if the pizza place would take me back into the fold if I asked for my old position back. Maybe it was time to move on from that — just like it was probably past time to be rid of Devon Ray.
Even though I knew my way around the city, the arteries of roads felt different, as if just a few weeks’ absence was enough to be spat out of the folds of Dallas and left by myself again. I found myself caught in wretched traffic in areas I thought I knew better than to venture at this time of day. It was as if I’d forgotten everything I knew about this place. What was worse was the weather — the rain that had persisted during my bus trip across the country had hunched down and settled in Dallas. The roads were wet and treacherous, and I skidded several times thanks to my unfamiliar car.
I found myself in front of Nana’s old house without understanding what had brought me here. Her wheelchair ramp was still there, and the sidewalk I’d bemoaned so many times had been completely repaired. Even in the damp and encroaching fog, I could see the entire exterior shone with a new coat of bright white paint. It looked like it should’ve looked — lived in and cherished. I’d let too many things go when I was there with Nana, always thinking I was too busy to arrange for the upkeep of the place, that money was too tight. I should’ve taken more pride into the house’s appearance. People who passed by it should’ve known how much love those four walls contained.
I held my breath as the front door opened, not sure why I was hoping Nana would step out. Nana would never step out of that house again. She’d been bound to a wheelchair for more years than I cared to think about, and besides, she wasn’t coming back. Her ashes were washed away by the waves in Hawaii long ago. There wasn’t a single part of her that remained — no grave I could visit, no keepsakes I could touch, just a bottle of perfume I’d kept when Devon and I had cleaned this place out.
I should’ve been here. I never should have sold Nana’s house and moved in with Devon.
I watched a middle-aged man step out onto the porch and blink out into the rain. He held the door open wider and a young boy came out, perhaps to marvel at the weather. No, there was something else. A puppy, brand new, tumbled out to the porch, skittering across the concrete until it spun out onto the wheelchair ramp. I couldn’t hear what the man was saying, but the boy’s face lit up and he scampered out into the rain after the dog, both of them getting soaked, beads of moisture forming in their hair and fur, respectively.
A new family lived here, now. A family with a dog. And the family was honoring this house, taking care of it, showing the surrounding neighborhood just how much they cared for it.
They were doing a better job than I ever could’ve. I needed to move on. I had to find some other place to be.
The other place ended up being the storage facility Devon had been paying for as a reliquary for all the things I hadn’t been ready to part with during our whirlwind settling of Nana’s estate. I unlocked the door to the unit and was immediately hit by a faint but noticeable whiff of Nana’s perfume. It had permeated the surfaces of the furniture stacked in here, in the belongings I hadn’t been able to donate or trash.
I pulled an armchair away from a stack of books and sat in it, burying my nose in the upholstery. Devon had hired a moving company to shove the belongings into this unit, and I hadn’t been back since. I saw old things that had been present in Nana’s house as if I were seeing them for the first time — her wheelchair I hadn’t been able to pass on to someone else, my old texts from college, the Blu-Ray movies Devon had bought us when he’d been busy trying to win me over.
I wondered if that sweet scene was going to be in his movie. The hero tries to buy the heroine’s love. The sad part was that it worked, softening her dubious heart enough for him to wiggle his way in. There should probably be a scene, though, in the movie’s sad ending that showed the heroine crouched in her storage unit, weeping over an old smelly chair, realizing that none of these belongings mattered.
None of them was Nana. None of them would bring her back to me. None of them would make me feel loved. None of them would make me trust Devon ever again.
I dried my tears and tried to make a logical assessment of the things the storage unit contained. Did I really need to hang on to the chair I was sitting in? And wouldn’t Nana’s wheelchair become a better tribute to her memory by being donated to an assisted living facility, or a clinic somewhere in Dallas?
Steeling myself for the onslaught of memories and fresh tears, I dragged a couple of boxes over to the chair. Surely I could shed all of these possessions and be free for sadness and memories, free to stop taking handouts from Devon Ray and stop needing him altogether.
If only my heart would listen to my head.
In spite of Devon’s betrayal, in spite of everything, there was still love in my heart for him. It was the most irritating thing in the world. I wished I could hate him for the script, for the interview with Kelly Kane, for Chaz’s manipulations. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t hate him because I was still in love with him.
I tore through the boxes, eager to distract myself from my stupidity. Had I even packed these up? Nothing was familiar. There was a box of dishes that I had no idea what I’d been planning to do with. Another box contained baby clothes of mine that Nana had apparently saved. This was all trash, absolute junk. There was no reason I needed to maintain this storage unit. Part of me just wanted to drag everything outside the unit and put a sign on it telling people
it was all free and just to do whatever with it. Take it home. Love it forever. Break it apart with an ax and use it for firewood. I didn’t care.
But another box contained a folder I’d never seen before, nestled among some of the framed photos that Nana had so proudly displayed around the house. There was my graduation portrait that she’d insisted on buying from the price-gouging photographer who’d snapped shots during the ceremony. I opened the folder and my world shifted on its axis.
Inside of the folder was my birth certificate and a sheaf of papers identifying my parents. There were adoption papers signed by all parties — Nana’s bold cursive standing out most of all. That was something about myself I’d never known, that Nana had actually adopted me. Were my biological parents’ failings that serious? I wondered how painful it was for Nana to take me away from her own daughter.
For the first time, I wished I’d taken more of an interest in my own history. Nana had offered to tell me about it, the night before she’d died. If only I had taken her up on it. I’d lost the chance to ask her questions, to probe for insights about my parents.
Instead, I’d looked like an ass on national television, a glorified talk show host more knowledgable about my genealogy than I was.
I paused again. Within the folder were loose pictures, photos that should’ve been in frames but weren’t. There was a younger Nana seated beside the bed of a woman who didn’t look to be much more than a girl, her dark hair sweaty, clutching a tiny bundle almost defiantly. There was something in Nana’s eyes that I couldn’t quite place, a shimmering, dual-edged pride and despair. I slowly realized just what I was holding. It was a photo of my birth. I was that tiny bundle contained in my mother’s arms, and Nana was grimly making eye contact with whomever took the photo. Was it a kindly nurse or doctor? Was it my father?
I studied the photo even more closely. None of the three of us were smiling. My lips were curled downward in what must have been a piercing howl. My mother looked resigned more than anything, but rebellious, too. She was so young. I didn’t know how young — Nana had never shared that fact with me, and I’d never asked for it. I looked at her face. Could she have been the woman who’d appeared on the screen during my interview with Kelly Kane?
It was hard to tell. The photo wasn’t in perfect focus, and it had faded with time. I wondered what had possessed Nana to hide it away rather than have it out with the rest of her treasured frames, frozen memories of our happiest times.
Was my birth not a happy time for Nana?
I brushed over my birth certificate again. My parents’ names were on there, the same as the adoption papers — Amelia and Mike Clark.
Kelly Kane at least had the names right, but that was public knowledge, after all.
Public knowledge about myself that even I didn't know.
I took the folder from the box and stuffed it in my purse before locking up the storage unit again. The rest of the belongings in there were going to have to wait. I’d need to understand just what was in this folder — and what I was going to do about it — before I could march on any farther.
When I got out of the car in the hotel parking lot, however, the front entrance of the building was clogged with vehicles and people. There was even a police car at the scene, lights flashing, with a pair of officers looking confused and irritated. My first thought was that there had been a shooting or some other incident at the hotel. It wasn’t Dallas’ nicest, after all. But there were so many flashes from cameras going off that I realized it was something else. There was someone famous in there. I only wondered why Tony Romo was here instead of the nicer establishments.
“There she is!” someone cried.
“June! June Clark! Look here, June! Give us a big smile!”
“Where you been, June?” another hollered before I finally realized just what was happening.
Someone, somehow, had let the media know I was here. They’d amassed like parasites waiting for my arrival, looking to capture my image and sell it. I didn’t even have a baseball hat on.
“Come here, June!” someone yelled even as they surged toward me.
My first inclination was to turn and sprint away, but I knew exactly how that would play on the gossip websites. I imagined Kelly Kane doing a follow up piece of her dubious journalism on me, a loop of me running across the parking lot playing again and again on that giant screen behind her.
I set my shoulders, clutching my purse to my chest, and charged through the crowd, bumping into photographer after photographer, my face set with a dead determination that I hoped didn’t betray how frightened I was.
“Why the hurry, June?”
“Sweetheart, over here, please.”
“What’s in Dallas for you, June? A happy homecoming?”
“Are you and Trina best friends?”
“Is Devon here to ask you to marry him?”
“Are you carrying Devon Ray’s love child?”
“Is your secret ambition to ruin Devon’s career?”
The comments around me got more and more ridiculous, but I burst through the doors to the hotel and out of the fray, finally.
“Stay back, back,” the front desk staff chanted at the photographers surging outside, backed up by the pair of police officers.
I wanted to throw myself down on the couch in the lobby and weep, but the flashes were still going off, telling me that everyone could still see me. I took the elevator up to my floor, panting as I worked my keycard into my door. I slammed it shut and let my purse drop to the floor, sliding down with my back against the door as if it were in danger of being kicked down. I was fine now. I was safe. They weren’t letting anyone inside the hotel.
It struck me that I should check the window to see if the entire building was surrounded, planning my escape to some other location in town, but that’s when I realized I wasn’t alone inside of my hotel room.
“We need to talk,” Devon said.
Chapter 3
Devon sat on one of the beds in the dimly lit room, watching me, his face impossible to decipher. For someone who was paid to emote, he’d certainly mastered the emotionless gaze. He could’ve been amused or angry or devastated. That was how placid his face was, how inscrutable.
It struck me that I was the one who should be angry, if either of us was going to embrace that emotion. He was the one who’d somehow gotten into my hotel room.
“What are you doing here, Devon?” I asked, feeling suddenly so tired that I didn’t even have the urge to get up off the carpeting to avoid looking like an idiot in front of him.
“We have some things that we need to talk about immediately,” he said.
“That doesn’t explain why you’re here in Dallas,” I told him.
“Because you haven’t been answering my texts or calls.”
I resisted the urge to check my phone, which had been stowed away in my purse for the entirety of the bus trip and my short time in Dallas. I hadn’t so much as thought about it. How many times had he called? What had his text messages said? I would’ve felt guilty, but there were still some unanswered questions.
“That still doesn’t tell me anything about how you came to be in my hotel room,” I said.
“I told the front desk that we were staying here together,” he said. “And I took a selfie with all of them.”
He was as cool as a cucumber, but I was angry. Angrier than I realized before, when he’d surprised me with his very presence.
“We’re not staying here together,” I informed him. “You can’t just show up here, Devon. This is my own hotel room. I’d be within my rights to grab one of those cops downstairs and tell him that I have an intruder in my room.”
“If that’s your prerogative, that’s your prerogative,” he said. His dark eyebrows didn’t even quirk a little closer together. I’d just threatened to do something to harm his precious reputation, his stainless image. Why wasn’t he pissed at me?
“What is it that you want to talk about?” I asked, finall
y drawing myself up, crossing my arms on my chest. Devon remained seated on the bed.
“There are several things,” he said. “But I guess we should start with the movie.”
Had he really come all this way to apologize? Did I really mean that much to him?
“Why were you snooping through the study?” he asked. “I would’ve told you about it, in time. Any angst you have about it is of your own making. That script is an early draft.”
I scowled at him. “Really? Is this really why you came to Dallas? To tell me that me being angry about the movie is my own fault?”
“You shouldn’t have been snooping,” he repeated. “That’s my personal property, June. Why would you do that? Were you looking for dirty laundry? Something to feed to the paparazzi?”
“Why would I do that?” I demanded, the idea so distasteful to me that I laughed because there wasn’t anything else I could do. “That doesn’t make sense, Devon. Why would I think that would be a good idea? You know what I think about the paparazzi.”
His intense gaze flickered a moment, and I knew I’d seen the first break in his armor. I didn’t know who’d put that idea in his head, but based on what Trina had told me about Chaz, I had a pretty good prediction as to the identity.
“Why did you leave?” he asked. “Why didn’t you stay and talk to me about it, if it made you so upset in the first place?”
“I met Trina,” I said. “Did she tell you? She called you while we were having a beer, put you on speakerphone. You didn't have any intention of talking to me about the movie.”
Devon was quiet for a long time. “I think we just really need to be honest with each other right now,” he said. “There’s too much shit going on. Too much non-communication. Just lay it all out on the table right now, June. What are you upset about?”
“I’m upset that you would even think you have to ask that question,” I said, my face going hot with anger. “Why do you think I’m upset? You used me. You used Nana. You only got to know us for some stupid movie, not because you actually care.”
Pizza My Heart 3 Page 2
