by Stacey Kade
Suddenly, Karen’s position in front of the mini-bar makes sense. Too much sense. Cracking open everything in the fridge sounds like a much better idea than a likely doomed-from-the-start mission that I can’t even find the car keys to begin.
Except I had the hotel take out all the bottles before I even got here. My resolve was so strong then. Still, there are ways around that. Especially if I can find the stupid car keys.
Because even after Amanda learned exactly how I had lied to her, she was still watching out for me.
“You don’t deserve her anyway, Chase,” Karen says with a shrug, more a statement of fact than an insult toward me. “I can’t believe I encouraged her to trust you. I thought…” Her mouth thins into a line. “But I was wrong.”
“I know I don’t,” I choke out. “But what am I supposed to do?”
“You handed control over to someone else. Again. You sacrificed things that weren’t yours to give, all for your career.” She looks at me with distance in her expression, like she doesn’t know me anymore. Maybe she doesn’t. “But you got what you wanted, so I suggest you don’t blow it. Go to work. Or else it was all for nothing anyway. You did the shittiest thing I’ve ever known you, or pretty much anyone, to do.”
“Yeah, I know, but I—”
“Do you know?” Karen demands, folding her arms across her chest, the edges of her fish scales peeking out from the fake fur on her jacket cuffs. “You, the great actor, decided to throw just a little more icing on top of that shit cake that is her life. Why? Because you needed it. Because you wanted it.”
I want to protest that it wasn’t like that, but it was, maybe, a little.
“So you want to know what to do? Take some fucking responsibility. Go do your fucking job, the one that was supposedly worth all of this. If you throw away the results of what you did, then you’re throwing away the pain you caused her, too, making it nothing.”
I swallow hard over the lump in my throat. “Kare, I don’t know if I can—”
“Chase, for the record, I don’t care what you think you can or can’t do right now,” she says wearily. “I don’t care if they find you passed out in a steaming heap of vomit tomorrow morning. Just like old times. But I’ll tell you one thing you’re going to do. You’re going to leave that girl alone, the way you should have from the start.”
With that, she walks away from the mini-fridge and toward the door to the hall, pausing only once to lift a set of keys—the keys with the bright yellow rental tag, the keys I tore the room apart looking for—off the center of the dining table and pocket them.
Then the door slams shut behind her, and I’m alone.
33
Amanda
By early evening, it’s like I never left home. I’m camped out on my bed, with my class work spread out around me while my mom finishes cooking dinner downstairs and Mia complains loudly about setting the table.
Any reporters or photographers who might have been hovering in our front yard after those first pictures of Chase and me broke obviously decided Wescott was a richer hunting ground. They’re gone now, the only signs of their former presence a few discarded coffee cups in the matted-down grass.
My mom, upon her return from the grocery store to find me in the kitchen with Liza, dropped the bags on the floor immediately—with no care for the eggs, it turns out—and hugged me so hard I felt my ribs creak. Clearly, I was forgiven for what I’d said on the phone.
When she got a good look at me, though, she suspected something was wrong. It’s hard to hide from your mom, especially when your eyes are swollen and your nose is red from crying. But when I refused to answer her questions and she started to push, Liza jumped in with an amazing floor show of distraction, bringing up a series of my mom’s favorite hot-button issues—suspected unfair grading (in Liza’s civil procedure class), the dangerous chemicals in microwave popcorn (my dad’s favorite snack), and the decline of handwritten thank-you notes as a common courtesy (Mia’s THX texts to elderly relatives who barely know how to use their flip phones to make calls)—until I could escape to my room.
Mia, herself, though, was a harder sell.
After she returned from school, she walked past my room on the way to hers, stopping with an almost comedic lurch when she saw me.
“Why are you here?” she asked with narrowed eyes.
“I decided to come back,” I told her, forcing a shrug. “That’s all.”
“What happened?”
“It just … it wasn’t going to work,” I said, avoiding her gaze. “You know, the lure of Hollywood life. He was going back, and I’m staying here.”
Mia frowned at me, studying me for a long moment, until I was afraid I was going to break and either tell the whole awful story or cry or both.
“So you’re just done. With him. With all of it. Just like that?” she asked, suspicion heavy in her voice. “Even after you spent the night with him?”
“Yep,” I said, trying for casual. “Sad but true.”
Which is an unfortunately accurate descriptor for the entire course of events.
I don’t think Mia believed me, not entirely, but because I’m doing an okay job not being a total wreck, she and the rest of my family are willing to let it go. For the moment.
And really, I’m fine; I’m doing okay. It’s been a whole ten hours. Maybe Liza’s flip-them-off-and-scream technique really does work. Or maybe I just cried so hard earlier I’ve got nothing left. An empty tank until I rehydrate.
I’m going to be okay. I’ve survived worse than this. I’m going to be okay. I’m just going to keep repeating that to myself until it feels true again.
At the moment, I’m trying to focus on homework between loads of my laundry, which requires ignoring the smell of Chase on my clothes—his deodorant, his soap, him—until it’s obliterated by the fresh, nothing scent of our sensitive-skin laundry detergent and that teddy bear fabric softener that my mom started buying just because I liked the character on the box when I was five.
I haven’t showered yet. I should. I can still feel his touch, his mouth on me.
But Wescott and Chase Henry are miles away, just sixty, though it might as well be a million. When I wash him off me, he’ll be gone forever. And though it might make me the biggest doormat in the history of ever, I’m not ready to do that. Yet.
Even if his feelings weren’t real, mine were.
Are. Mine are.
And that’s an accomplishment I’m not ready to let go of at this exact moment. It’s not enough, of course. It doesn’t make up for what he did, the lies.
I shut my eyes, remembering the burn of humiliation. I think that’s the worst part. Before I loved him, I liked him. If Chase had explained it to me and told me what he needed, I would have been all over the chance to help. We could have been just friends. Maybe.
That’s what sets the rage to a slow, thick boil in my chest. All he had to do was ask. That’s it. But he didn’t. Why? Because it was more fun to trick me? Because he didn’t know me well enough to realize I would say yes? Because he’s completely brainless, spineless, and operated solely by Elise’s hand on his penis?
I don’t like any of those answers, and yet they might all very well be true.
Despair bubbles up in me, breaking up the contained broth of fury into something far less manageable. And it’s not just directed at Chase, but myself. How could I have fallen for it? How could I have decided to trust someone like that? Even worse, after all of it, how can I still ache to see him?
I’m such a sucker.
A knock sounds on my open door, startling me out of my thoughts.
I look up to see my dad in the doorway. I didn’t know he was home.
My shoulders tense automatically. If he’s seeking me out, that means he’s going to yell or demand answers I’m not ready to give.
That’s our pattern: when he’s not ignoring me, he’s radiating stern disapproval. Gone is the patient father who used to teach us about changing flat tires
and putting. This man looks like him but he’s been made sharper and harder by everything that happened.
But instead of shouting, my dad hesitates in the doorway, looking uncomfortable. “Your mother asked me to come tell you dinner is ready,” he says, rubbing at his beard with a faint roll of his eyes.
My mouth curves in a smile. For a brief moment, we’re united in the absurdity of this premise. My mom, if she wanted to, could just shout up the stairs as she has a million times before. Or, better yet, give Mia the excuse to turn it up to eleven and bellow for me.
But evidently, my unexpected arrival home has triggered in my mom the desire to bring my dad and me together.
Not that it’s going to work. “Liza has class, so we’re eating now instead of waiting,” my dad says, already turning away like I don’t exist. It is, I suppose, the better of the two options.
Still …
“Okay,” I say. Then before I can stop myself, I call after him, “Dad.”
He stops, his posture stiff.
“I need to ask you something.” I put my pencil down in the seam of my American government textbook, not sure how to formulate the question when I’m still afraid of the answer. “I know things have been hard the last couple of years, and I haven’t always made them easier. Especially this week.”
He doesn’t say anything, a silent, slightly darker shadow in the already dark hallway, but he hasn’t walked away. I have to take that as an encouraging sign.
“But someone … someone told me something recently, and I just want to know if it’s true.” Drawing my knees up to my chest, I swallow over the dryness in my throat and force the words out. “I’ve been thinking that you blame me for what happened, and that’s why you’re avoiding me. But then he … someone said maybe that wasn’t it. Maybe it was something else. And I just need to know.”
My dad is a statue, unmoving, on the edge of the hall. In the intervening silence, I lose my nerve and race to fill the gap with words. “It’s okay if you blame me. I do.”
He turns around slowly, a dumbstruck look on his face.
“Blame you? Why would I ever blame you?”
“Because it was a dumb mistake,” I say, surprised, the words pouring out from the dark, secret place where I’ve held them for so long that they’ve worn grooves into me. “Because I didn’t follow instructions.”
Don’t go anywhere with a stranger. Pretty basic kindergartner stuff, and I failed. Stranger danger was one of the first lessons we learned when we started walking to school. And I paid attention; I just didn’t understand that “stranger” meant more than someone you’d never met before.
“Because I should have known something was off about his story about a dog,” I continue, feeling the lump of unshed tears swell in my throat. “I walked by there every day, and I’d never seen one before.” Then, against my will and despite desperate blinking on my part, the tears roll free. “Because I should have screamed.”
“Amanda…”
“I didn’t scream,” I repeat, confessing the worst of my sins and unable to look at him while I do so. “I should have, but I didn’t know until it was—”
“Amanda, no.” My dad stalks toward me faster than I’ve seen him move in years, and I flinch automatically though he’s never raised a hand against me, ever.
He kneels next to the side of my bed, resting his hand carefully on my foot. “You were a child,” he says calmly and firmly, meeting my eyes without hesitation. “And we raised you to have a good heart. That’s what you were listening to. You did nothing wrong. Nothing at all.”
Then, I watch in shock as his face crumples.
“We should have looked harder. We knew you were taken somewhere on your way home, but we assumed there was a car. The police…” His voice breaks then, and he stops long enough to try to recover himself. “There were reports of a van and a man who no one recognized, parked near the high school.” He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand.
“But we didn’t know, and you were right there, the whole time, waiting for us.” He looks up at me with raw misery in his expression. “Volunteers knocked on doors, in the beginning. We knocked at every house on your route home.” He swallows hard.
“Daddy, it’s okay—”
“When we found you, I went back to the list, the spreadsheet I made to make sure we covered every house, every person on your way home. And it was me. I knocked on his door, baby. I knocked and I talked to him, and I had no idea you were there. I am so sorry.” My dad, the stern, distant figure I’ve learned to avoid, breaks into sobs, burying his face against the side of my bed. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. It was never your fault,” he says, his face muffled against my comforter, his big hand clinging to my foot.
But it’s not his fault, either. It seems maybe I’m not the only one blaming myself when I shouldn’t be. Jakes is really the only person to blame, and that’s clearer to me now more than ever.
I touch my dad’s hand lightly with mine but have to shift my gaze to the ceiling to try to get my tears under control.
Because Chase was right.
He was so, so wrong, in so many respects, but he was right about this.
I can feel my heart breaking again, into even smaller pieces.
Because it’s that contradiction in Chase, that mix of good and bad, that’s going to make it so much harder to let him go.
34
Chase
“That’s a wrap for Thursday,” Max shouts. “Well, Thurs-riday.” He glances up pointedly at the already brightening sky, and everyone else chuckles.
It’s almost dawn. I haven’t slept. Filming nights sucks.
It always does. But tonight is worse. And going back to my room, that won’t be any better.
“Good work, everybody,” Max says to a smattering of applause and some halfhearted cheers.
Shivering in Smitty’s hoodie, I shuffle to my chair, where my coat is waiting. It’s below freezing now, and there was a major discussion around 3:00 a.m. about our breath showing, clearly indicating it was colder than it should have been for late summer, when the events in the movie are supposed to be taking place. It would be taken out in post-production, but that’s another expense.
Max wasn’t happy. But I don’t care. I didn’t care when they were talking about it, didn’t care when they finally decided.
In the end, I did what Karen told me. I showed up on time and did my job. Everyone had heard the basics of what had happened by the time I arrived. A set is pretty much like a small town. Gossip travels at lightning speed. Even faster when it involves scandal. There were plenty of stares and whispers among the crew, especially from those who’d met Amanda. People liked her. I’m guessing whatever respect I’d earned by being a professional instead of a screwup this week is long gone now.
Karen ignored me other than to give me direction on how to tilt my head so she could finish her work. Ron, the van driver, wouldn’t look at me. Emily stayed quiet and made no attempt at conversation for the first time since I met her.
Now, my driving need to fix, to do, has vanished beneath a thick layer of despair and inevitability. I can’t do anything, can’t fix anything. This is just reality, and I have to live with choices I can’t unmake.
I feel like I’m drowning.
Even the surprise phone call from Rick, my agent, the first one from him in months, didn’t help. His voicemail was positive, excited, passing along word that everything—rumors that Amanda and I are being targeted by a stalker due to our new couple status—is generating highly visible attention in the media. And the casting agent for the Besson film contacted him to confirm I was coming next week because they “really want to see you.”
Most of the cynical people in the business, it seems, have assumed Amanda’s visit was a planned publicity stunt from the beginning—one she was in on. But the fact that it can’t be proved either way only generates more and more speculation and discussion.
No one who kn
ows the truth is talking, so I look savvier—if more heartless—than I am, which makes me ill. It hasn’t been announced yet if Elise has been charged with accessory status, but it probably won’t matter once the publicity agency’s lawyers get involved. The truth, as always, is less important than whatever legal maneuvering can be managed. My guess is that George, my former publicist, and whoever else Elise has called in for help will work to keep this sanitized version of events spinning. It’s better for them.
Nobody knows yet that Amanda’s gone home. That I made that haunted look appear on her face.
The crowd outside the hotel tonight was so out of control that we didn’t even try for a pickup out front.
I got what I wanted. My name is the one on everyone’s tongue and Twitter feed right now, in a good way.
And I go home day after tomorrow. Actually, if it’s Friday already, I’ve got a late flight tomorrow. Back to my life, the one I pulled from the wreckage of my previous mistakes. I won’t have to crawl back to my dad in Texas, begging for a place to stay.
I saved my career.
And now, with that newly bright future in front of me again, I find the shine is empty. Just a handful of glitter and carefully placed lights, nothing real.
Acting is the only thing that has ever meant anything to me, the only time I felt like I belonged. And I would have done anything to keep going, to keep feeling that way. But now I’ve apparently found a line I’m not willing to cross, only after I’ve crossed it.
Amanda loves me … loved me. The real me. And I didn’t, couldn’t, step up to accept it. Because I was too self-involved to tell the truth and too afraid of losing her.
Forget Elise, Sera, Max, everyone. That’s on me. I wasn’t who I should have been, who she deserves.
Amanda, I’m so sorry.
“So that was fun, huh?” Adam asks as he drops into his chair, which is, unfortunately, next to mine.
I ignore him, focusing on making my numb fingers line up the zipper on my coat and pull it up.
