by L. A. Witt
Leigh turned to me, and the hostility melted out of her expression. “Okay. That’s fine.” As she faced Anna, she actually smiled, if tentatively. “I’ll cook something. We can have dinner at home. Just the two of us.”
Anna returned the smile with equal uncertainty. “That sounds great.”
“Lunch first, though?”
“Of course.”
Good. Good for them. They’d already cooled down a little bit, and hopefully they could talk things through in the sliver of time they had before Anna would inevitably be called away for something.
I followed them toward the cantina, wondering what the caterers had to offer today. On the way, I texted Scott to let him know my evening was clear, barring anything unforeseen.
He immediately shot back, Looking forward to it.
I grinned.
All I had to do now was count down the hours.
On one of those rare days when I was off work before Scott, I went home first to kill a little time before he was freed up. As I was putting my pistol in the safe, Jackie’s ringtone made my stomach lurch.
I shut the safe and picked up my phone. “Hey, what’s up?”
“Take a guess.”
Mouthing a curse, I double-checked the safe was latched, then shut the closet door as I said, “Haley’s upset about something?”
“Yep.”
I sank onto my bed. “So what did I do?”
“Well, nothing. Yet.” She sighed. “I was talking to Zach this afternoon about coming to visit you this summer, and she walked in.” Jackie paused. Then she exhaled hard. “Listen, I think we’re just going to have to let this summer go,” she said. “It’s stressing her out because she’s convinced we really will force her, and . . . I don’t know. Maybe it would take some pressure off her if she knew it really was off the table.”
I rubbed my eyes with my thumb and forefinger. “You’re probably right.”
“I’m sorry, Jeremy. You know I’d never try to keep them away from—”
“No, no, I know.” I lowered my hand and tried to keep the frustration out of my voice. “I get it. I really do. And it probably will make things easier for her.” I paused. “Maybe it’ll do me and Zach some good to just have some father-son time anyway.”
“True. He has been warming up to you a little bit.”
And wasn’t that my life’s ambition? To have my own son “warming up to me a little bit” after we’d been so close throughout his childhood?
“Go ahead and tell her she doesn’t have to come,” I said. “If she changes her mind, we’ll deal with that when it happens. And I’ll get Zach’s plane ticket as we get a little closer to the end of the school year.”
“Okay.” She paused. “You know, even if she doesn’t come visit you for the whole summer, I do think we need to sit down with both of them. In person. It might do them some good to see you too.”
I gnawed my lip. “I’m not sure how much it would help. I mean, what good does it do any of us if I fly down there so Haley can tell me to fuck off to my face?”
“You have any better ideas?”
I thought for a moment. “Listen, there’s a convention coming up in a few weeks. In Vegas. I can pay for gas and a hotel if you’re willing to bring them out for a day.”
Jackie didn’t respond right away. “Okay. Send me the details, and I’ll bring them out. I’m sure I can find something else to do while we’re there that they’ll enjoy.”
I winced. She hadn’t said that whatever fun things they did wouldn’t include me, but she didn’t need to. The kids deserved to have a good time. The days of family vacations—road trips, more visits to Disneyland than any of us could count, hikes through Yosemite, that one trip to Hawaii that Jackie and I had saved for a year to afford—were well behind us.
“Send me the dates,” she said, “and I’ll make arrangements.”
“All right. I’ll forward you the email with my itinerary. My, uh, schedule’s going to be a little tight while I’m there. I’m working, after all.”
“I know. And I’ll make sure the kids understand that.”
“Thanks.”
“Well, I should let you go. Haley’s got some calculus homework she needs help with.”
I flinched like she’d kicked me in the balls. She knew as well as I did that calculus was my strong point—she’d always helped the kids with science and English while I helped with history and math—but Haley would take a failing grade over assistance from me.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Talk to you soon. Take care, Jeremy.”
“You too.”
Once I was sure the call had disconnected, I let fly a string of profanity. I didn’t know which was worse—accepting that Haley wouldn’t be coming this summer or facing them in Vegas in a few weeks.
What the hell happened to us?
And what the hell would happen when I saw them?
We’d sit down in person for the first time in a year. And we’d talk. And . . .
God, please don’t let this blow up in our faces.
“Jeremy?”
“Hmm? What?”
Lying beside me in his bed, Scott pushed himself up on his elbow and faced me. “What’s wrong?” The corners of his eyes crinkled slightly as he studied me. “You’ve been somewhere else all night.”
God, he was right. I could barely remember getting here or what we’d done. Only the vague aches in my muscles let me know we’d had sex at all. For all my mind could process anything, we may as well have just materialized, naked beneath the sheets.
I ran my hand through his sweaty hair. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” He trailed his fingertips up and down my forearm. “I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
“Just distracted. The shit with my kids, it’s . . .”
He raised his eyebrows. “You want to talk about it?”
“Doesn’t this . . . Aren’t we crossing lines here? We’re in bed, and you’re—”
“I’m not asking as a counselor.” He offered a playful smirk. “Even counselors are allowed to be concerned about friends when we’re off the clock.”
Friends. Why doesn’t that seem to fit anymore?
And why is it so easy to tell you all of this?
Maybe I should’ve questioned it more, and maybe I should’ve reined it all back in, but God, I needed to talk to someone before this ate me alive. And casual lover or not, counselor by day or not . . .
I swallowed. “Well, I’m going to a convention with Anna in a few weeks.” A ball of lead slowly formed in the pit of my stomach. “My ex-wife is going to meet me there. And she’s bringing the kids.”
“That’s . . .” He cocked his head. “That’s a good thing, right? That they’re willing to come see you?”
“I’m not sure how willing they are, to be honest. And . . .” Just thinking about this, never mind talking about it, made my chest hurt. “I feel like the worst father in the world, but . . . I’m dreading seeing them.”
“Why?”
“My son tolerates me. My daughter can’t stand me.” I wiped a hand over my face. “It’s been a year since I’ve seen them in person, and I’m not sure I can deal with that anymore, you know?”
I thought he’d tell me I was being an idiot, but Scott nodded.
“Yeah,” he said. “You don’t have a tolerance for it anymore. It’s just like when someone grows up in a toxic environment, but then moves away from it. When they come back, they wonder how they ever put up with it.”
“This isn’t a set of abusive parents or asshole siblings, though. These are my kids.”
“And from the sound of it, you and your kids have developed a highly toxic relationship.” He must’ve seen the What the fuck? in my eyes, because he quickly added, “It doesn’t mean it’s irreparable or that anyone involved is a toxic person. It just means the relationship is in a bad place, and naturally, it’s not going to be easy to experience tha
t relationship face-to-face.”
“You don’t say.” I sighed. “Part of me thinks Jackie and I need to just tell Haley to stop this shit. Maybe there needs to be consequences for the way she talks to us.” I swallowed hard. “But this isn’t mouthing off over homework or loading the dishwasher, you know? Any way I slice it, she’s got a right to be angry. So where’s the line between giving her room to have and express her feelings and tolerating disrespect? Like, at what point does she stop being justifiably angry and start being a brat?”
Scott nodded. “Yeah, I can understand that. And she’s got the added stress of being a teenager, which never helps anything.”
“No, it doesn’t. And I just . . . I have no idea what to do.”
He clasped my hand in his. “Just listen to them. Hear them out.”
“Except the only thing they ever really want to say to me—well, Haley, anyway—is that I can go fuck myself.”
“Maybe that’s what they need to say.”
I arched an eyebrow.
He shrugged. “Sometimes people, especially kids, just need to let it out and vent. And once they realize you’re willing to hear them, and that you’re not trying to shut them down and invalidate their feelings, they can start getting into the deeper stuff. Like why exactly they’re angry.”
“I guess we’ll see how it plays out. All I know is I’m dreading this. And at the same time—” My voice tried to crack, and I cleared my throat. “I miss my kids.”
“I know.” He smoothed my hair. “I can’t even imagine what it’s like.” Neither of us spoke for a good minute or so, until Scott finally whispered, “Have you considered counseling?”
I shook my head. “No. Jackie and I tried that for our marriage, but . . .”
“You’ve said yourself that your marriage was already over, though,” he said cautiously, as if he were stepping into a verbal minefield. “You were just staying together for the kids.”
“I know. But the counseling, it . . . didn’t help. It just gave me something to make myself sick over. Instead of encouraging us to walk away like we should’ve done, he insisted on trying to help us resuscitate something that was long dead.” I scowled. “And for the last year, I’ve been watching Anna and Leigh. Hasn’t done a whole lot for my faith in counseling, you know?”
Scott pursed his lips.
“We’ll be fine,” I said. “We can do this as a family. It’ll just take time.”
“Well, if you ever need to talk—to a friend, not a counselor—you know where to find me.”
I smiled halfheartedly and kissed him. “Thanks.”
“Good luck.” He squeezed my hand. “I really hope you can get back in a good place with your kids.”
“Me too.”
With Anna actively working on an episode, her hours were longer. So, of course, mine were too. Some nights, we didn’t get back to her place until the sun was almost coming up. And that was before they started shooting at night, which put us all on a vampire schedule for a while.
Of course, that meant I didn’t get to see much of Scott, and it didn’t help when Anna had to scale back her appointments with Leigh and Dr. Vincent. After three solid weeks, Leigh was coming unglued, Anna was losing her mind, and I was going to join them if I didn’t spend some time with Scott. That was to say nothing of the relentless guilt from having to miss Skype sessions with my kids.
Such was life in this business, though. I Skyped with my family—my ex-wife and son, anyway—as often as I could, even if it meant pinging them while they were eating breakfast and I was heading to bed. When my schedule allowed and my body wasn’t collapsing from exhaustion, I met up with Scott. Sometimes that meant a few hours in the evening. Sometimes it meant a quickie in his office between his appointments and before I scrambled over to Anna’s or went home to collapse in bed. More than once, I went to his place, we skipped the sex, didn’t pass Go, and went straight to the collapsing into bed part. Then a few hours later, I’d pry myself away from him—careful not to wake him up—and reluctantly leave his bed so I could go to work.
Finally, though, the schedule relaxed a little. The days were still long, but we were regularly leaving the set by eleven or twelve at night.
One night, as things were winding down at the unspeakably early hour of nine thirty, I texted Scott.
We’re wrapping up. Free tonight?
Almost immediately, he replied: Absolutely.
I couldn’t help grinning. It had been a few days.
Not that I would have been much use to him over those few days even if I’d had time to see him. Like everyone here, I was running on less sleep than the human body required. And while assholes like Carter and Ginsberg just needed an extra cup of coffee and the odd catnap, the rest of us weren’t as young as we used to be. Judging by how much Levi was dragging lately, I suspected Carter had a lot more energy than Levi these days.
The price of dating a younger guy, I guess.
I chuckled, but as I gazed at my text conversation with Scott, I sobered a little, and couldn’t help but feel a pang of dread. Scott wasn’t twenty-five anymore either, but he also hadn’t been working hundred-plus hour weeks.
Fair warning, I texted back, I’m exhausted. Can’t promise much tonight.
I fully expected him to bail and tell me we’d meet after I’d caught up on some sleep, but instead, he wrote back: Why don’t we grab something to eat? Can play the rest by ear.
I could live with that.
By the time I’d dropped Anna at her place and made my way over to Scott’s, it was nearly eleven. Scott drove, since he wasn’t as tired as I was, and we set out in search of food. Every place worth eating in Bluewater Bay was closed, so we drove over to Port Angeles. Of course, by the time we got to Port Angeles, all the decent places there were closed too. Oh well. This town had a few fast-food joints that stayed open until all hours of the night—it wasn’t high dining, but after eating nothing but on-set catering for the last century and a half, a Big Mac and fries actually sounded great.
After picking it up in the drive-through, we drove down toward the waterfront and parked by the marina.
“I haven’t had fast food in ages,” I said as I dug a few piping hot fries out of the bag. “But goddamn, it hits the spot tonight.”
“You ain’t kidding.” He unwrapped a sandwich and took a bite. After he’d washed it down with some sweet tea, he fished around for more fries. “I forgot to have dinner, so I’m starving too.”
“You forgot to eat?”
He laughed. “I do it a lot.”
“How the hell . . .” I blinked, eyeing him like he’d lost his mind because holy shit who the hell forgot to eat? “Isn’t that like forgetting to breathe?”
“You would think.” He munched on a couple of fries and took another drink.
We ate in silence for a little while since both of us were starving. After we’d finished, I got out and dropped the bag and my empty cup in a trash can, then returned to the car.
Scott reached for the key still dangling from the ignition but hesitated. “You in any hurry?”
I’m in a car with Scott. And there’s nowhere else I need to be. Definitely nowhere else I want to be.
I shook my head. “Not really, no. Are you?”
He withdrew his hand and sat back. “I could stand to just hang out here for a little while. And there’s a convenience store up the road.” He took another sip of sweet tea. “Before we take off, I may have to grab a Red Bull for the drive back.”
“I might need one too, and I’m not the one driving.”
He grimaced. “They’re really running you into the ground, aren’t they?”
“They are.”
“Isn’t that supposed to be my job?”
I shivered. “Yes.” I put my hand over the top of his and paused just to enjoy the warmth of his skin under my fingertips. Meeting his gaze in the low light, I grinned. “Just wait until my schedule’s back to normal.”
He swept his tongue
across his lips. “I’m looking forward to it.” He leaned across the console and kissed me lightly, and as he returned to his seat, said, “It is nice to actually spend some time with you again, though.”
“No kidding.” I smirked, absently running my thumb along the side of his hand, tracing the little lines and imperfections I’d long since memorized. “Did I mention I’ll be out of town next weekend? For that big Wolf’s Landing con in Vegas?”
“Vegas?” He grinned. “Don’t have too much fun.”
“Yeah, I’ll be working. I don’t think that’ll be a problem.”
He laughed quietly. “Those cons get pretty crazy, don’t they?”
“Always.” I almost reminded him I’d be seeing the kids, but didn’t feel like going there tonight. Being here with him, my hand over his and the rest of the world sealed outside, was something I’d learned not to take for granted. The way my schedule was, we could have a long, blissful night tonight, then not see each other again for a week or more. I wanted to savor this while it lasted.
“What about . . .” Scott gazed out the windshield, his features taut.
“Hmm?”
His Adam’s apple jumped, and he turned toward me. “Do these things get . . . well, dangerous?”
My heart sped up a little—so much for keeping things nice and relaxed. I chewed my lip, not sure how to answer honestly without worrying him. After a moment, I squeezed his hand gently. “Look, there are a ton of people at these cons, but it’ll be fine. There will be loads of security, beyond just private security like me.”
“Which I assume they have because things have happened in the past.” His voice was so calm it was flat, but there was the faintest undercurrent of uneasiness.
I started tracing my thumb along his hand again. “All that security is mostly there for liability reasons. They’re less worried about something actually happening than they are about having to pay if something happens.”
Scott stared down at our hands, as if he could see them in the shadows. “But things can happen.”
