Which is why I consider myself lucky as hell to have Kendra as my publicist. For the most part, she takes my side when it comes to arguing with Paul. And it’s refreshing to have someone in my court for a change. I can see that she doesn’t take very well to Courtney either, and I suspect it bothers her to no end to have to tell me to go along with the rumors for the sake of box office bankability.
My cousin, Jarod, answers Ethan’s door. “Hey, cuz,” he says, pulling me in for a hug.
“Jarod, I’m glad you could make it. Sorry you had to miss the premiere last night.” I step aside, allowing Kendra to pass before I shut the door. “This is my publicist, Kendra Riggs.”
“Hi, Kendra,” he says, shaking her hand. “Nice to meet you.”
Ethan’s wife comes over to greet us. “I’m Charlie,” she says to Kendra. “I’m so happy to finally meet you. Chad has great things to say about you.”
Kendra shakes her hand. “The feeling is quite mutual, I assure you. Thank you so much for having me.” She studies Charlie, her eyes taking in her long red hair and tall stature. “Wow, it’s uncanny how much you resemble your mother. I was truly sorry to hear of her passing.”
“Thank you,” Charlie says politely, even though it’s become obvious to me that she didn’t have a good relationship with her famous mother. In fact, I think she hated her. But it’s not something she talks about.
The front door opens behind us and Kyle bounds through carrying a few bottles of Cristal. He puts them on the kitchen counter as Kendra trails behind to talk to him. “I’m sorry we didn’t get much of a chance to talk last night. You’re the doctor, right?”
“The almost-doctor,” he says. “I’m in my last year of med school.”
“Impressive,” she says. Then she turns to Jarod. “And you are a waiter at what I’ve been told is one of the best restaurants in the city. Thad promised he’d take me there this week.”
Jarod laughs. “I don’t think I’ll ever get over hearing people call you Thad, cuz.”
“And yet to me, Chad sounds strange,” Kendra says.
“Speaking of nicknames and childhood friends who created them, care to tell us any more about what happened outside the club last night with Mallory?” Ethan asks me.
I regret even mentioning to him that I saw her. In my defense, I’d had a drink and was a bit loose in the lips.
“Wait, what? You saw Mallory?” Charlie perks up, stepping away from the stove to corner me. She turns to scold Ethan with her eyes. “Ethan didn’t tell me anything about this. You saw her? The girl who started calling you Thad? Your childhood friend?”
I shoot a traitorous stare at my older brother but he blows me off, busying himself filling champagne glasses.
“Dude,” Kyle says. “You saw Mallory? Why didn’t you tell me?”
I look around at five sets of eyes, begging me for answers. I motion around to all of them. “This is why. I didn’t want to go dredging up shit from the past.”
Charlie looks guilty for making such a big deal about it. I know she’s been through a lot of crap in her life that she keeps under wraps. “I’m sorry, Chad,” she says. “I didn’t mean to open a can of worms.”
I put my hands on her shoulders and reassure her. “It’s okay, Charlie. You didn’t know. Anyway, it was Ethan who brought it up, not you. It’s fine. Really.”
She nods, shuffling back over to remove some casserole dishes from the oven. Shit. Now I feel bad because she feels bad. I take the champagne glass Ethan offers me and down a healthy sip. Then I notice all eyes are still on me. “Jesus, fine,” I say, walking over to the couch to take a seat while everyone grabs a glass and follows me.
I start telling the story mostly for Charlie and Kendra, as they are the only ones here who’ve never heard it. “The girl at the premiere was Mallory Schaffer. She was my best friend growing up. When I was seven, we moved into the house next door to hers. When we were introduced to her family, my mentally-challenged older brother here, was going through a phase where he put everyone’s name into that rhyming song, you know the one that goes ‘Chad, Thad, bo-bad, banana-fana, fo-fad . . .’?”
A few laughs go around the room at the recognition of the catchy tune.
“Yeah, well, Mallory started calling me Thad, and for some reason I didn’t have the heart to tell her it wasn’t my name.”
“You mean the balls,” Kyle adds, earning him a swift slap on the back of the head.
“Awe, that is so sweet,” Kendra says. “How long was it before she figured it out?”
“It was a while. Months I think. I mean, Ethan called me ‘dip shit,’ and Kyle called me, uh” —I turn to him— “what was it you called me when you were six?”
“Buzz?” he says with scrunched brows. “I think that was my Toy Story phase.”
“Right, Buzz Lightyear. And my mother called me sweetheart or some shit like that. And Mallory wasn’t in my grade, she was a year behind me, so she pretty much never heard anyone else call my name.”
“So she was in Kyle’s grade?” Charlie asks, now seeming less guilty and more curious about the whole thing. She turns to my younger brother. “Were you her friend, too?”
“Kind of,” Kyle tells her. “Sometimes we would all play tag and stuff together, but Mallory and I never connected like she and Chad did. I’m pretty sure I thought all girls were yucky back then.” He turns to Chad. “It was your birthday party when she finally figured out your name, right?”
I nod, remembering the day fondly. It was the worst birthday party I’d ever had. But it was one of the best memories I have of Mal. “We were at my party and my mom brought out the cake right away. I loved cake and insisted we eat it even before presents and playing. Everyone sang to me, and when it came time to sing my name, Mallory sang Thad when everyone else sang Chad. She was the only girl there, so her voice was very discernable. Needless to say, some of the other kids in attendance starting teasing her about it, saying she was a stupid first-grader with a lisp. She looked at my cake with horror on her face, the bold icing confirming the correct spelling of my name. She was so embarrassed that she ran out of the house.”
“Oh, the poor thing,” Kendra says. “What happened after that? Did she ever come back?”
“No, she didn’t. And neither did I.”
Ethan laughs. “Boy was Mom pissed. She had to entertain eight second-grade boys for two hours until their parents came to pick them up. She sent Kyle and me to scour the neighborhood for you but we never found you. You were gone the rest of the day. I think you were grounded for a week after that.”
“Where did you go?” Charlie asks. “Did you find Mallory?”
Everyone is on the edge of their seats, even the ones who pretty much know the story. They’re acting like this is more interesting than my latest blockbuster movie. “There was only one place I knew she’d be. In the treehouse her dad built for her. Nobody else knew that was where she went when she was sad. I found her up there crying and I laid down next to her on the sleeping bag she kept there. We fell asleep and didn’t wake up until after dark. Dozens of people were looking for us.” I turn to Ethan. “I think I was grounded for a lot longer than a week.”
“So what happened then?” Kendra asks. “Did Mallory just keep calling you Thad? I mean, obviously the name stuck with you or you’d never have chosen it as your stage name.”
I shake my head. “No, she started calling me by my real name. But as we got older, every once in a while she would call me Thad as a joke.” I can’t help but break out in a huge smile when I tell the rest of the story. “When I was fourteen, she played an elaborate practical joke on me. It was my first day of high school and when my teachers called role, they all called me Thad. I had no idea what was going on. How could every single one of my teachers have gotten my name wrong? I had to explain to them it wasn’t my name but they didn’t believe me. One of them even showed me her class roster that she said came directly from the student database. The school ended up having
to call my mom so she could bring my birth certificate to prove my name.”
Everyone on the couch is laughing. “She was hilarious,” Ethan says. “Man, I loved that girl.”
Yeah, me too.
“I like her already,” Kendra says. “Sounds like she’s got spunk. How did she manage to pull it off?”
“It took me weeks to get her to admit it. And it wasn’t until I heard her mom talking about how she had volunteered to teach a CPR class at the high school over the summer. Her mom was a nurse . . .” My head falls back against the couch as it dawns on me once again that she died and I wasn’t there for Mal. Just one more crappy thing I did in my life to the people I loved.
“So Mallory was at the school with her mom and somehow changed your name in the database?” Charlie asks.
“Pretty much,” I say, picking at a thread on my jeans.
“And you moved to California a few years later and never saw her again until last night?” Kendra asks.
“Well, I came back for a visit once after moving, and that was the last time I saw her until yesterday.” I grab my glass off the table and down the rest of my champagne. “Hey listen, if we’re all done with this little trip down memory lane, how about we get some grub?”
Charlie gives me a sad smile. She gets that there are some things you just don’t want to talk about. “Come on, it’s time to eat,” she says, heading to the kitchen.
Eli’s cries are amplified through the baby monitor as we take our places at the table. Charlie laughs. “Every time,” she says. “I swear that child knows exactly when we sit down to dinner.”
Kendra’s face lights up. “Could I? I mean, if you think he wouldn’t mind a stranger holding him through dinner.”
“He’s three months old,” Ethan says. “He wouldn’t care if Charles Manson held him.”
“Oh, no,” Charlie says, being the perfect hostess. “I couldn’t ask you to hold him during dinner.”
“You aren’t asking,” Kendra says. “I’m offering.”
“She pretty much flew three thousand miles across the country to see Eli,” I tell Charlie. “She drools over the pictures I show her. No offense to your cooking, but believe me when I say she’d be more satisfied holding your kid than eating your meal.”
Kendra swats me on the back of the head. “Be nice,” she says.
“Come on, Kendra,” Charlie says, motioning to the hallway. “Let’s go introduce the two of you.”
Dinner is incredible. And to my surprise, Kendra is expertly able to maneuver a baby in one hand and a fork in the other.
Afterward, the champagne is flowing freely and my cousin and brothers are getting noticeably drunk. I stopped at two glasses myself. It’s always my limit. Alcohol was never my problem, but addiction isn’t picky about choosing its vice so I don’t want to tempt fate.
“You should call her,” Kyle says, slurring his words.
I shoot him a venomous stare. “And you should lay off the sauce, doctor.”
He holds up his hands in surrender. “I’m just saying, I know you never got over the girl. Those first months in Cali were fucking torture, bro. It was always Mal this and Mal that. It was nauseating how much you talked about her. Don’t you at least want to know what became of her? Doesn’t it interest you at all? And didn’t you guys have some kind of pact that if neither of you were married by thirty, you’d get hitched? What happened, Chad?”
“Shut the hell up, Kyle, and mind your own fucking business,” I say, leaping off the couch to walk over to the windows so I can pretend to admire the view.
“Kyle, don’t,” Ethan says.
“What?” Kyle asks. “Someone has to pull his head out of his ass. She was there last night. That has to mean something.”
I shake my head. “She wanted to be anywhere but there, I could see it in her eyes. She doesn’t want to see me. She hates me.”
“Are you one-hundred-percent sure of that, brother?” Kyle asks, coming up beside me, putting a hand on my shoulder. “If there is even a small chance she wants to see you, don’t you think you need to explore that? You have to be the one, Chad. Contacting you these days is harder than putting a call through to the fucking president. There is no way for her to get to you. Will you be able to live with yourself if you don’t at least try? Because if you don’t, you’ll always be living under the shadow of what could have been.”
I turn and stare at my drunk little brother who’s still in full doc mode. “You pick your specialty yet? Because with all that bullshit you just fed me, maybe it should be psychiatry.”
Everyone laughs. Even me. Because it’s better than admitting everything he said is true. But the thought of contacting her scares the living shit out of me. Maybe it’s just better to dream about what could have been rather than to see what actually is.
Chapter Four
Mallory
I’m finding it hard to concentrate on work today. And you can believe the twenty-one fourth graders in my classroom are taking advantage of that. They are particularly unruly today and I just don’t have the energy to deal with it. Sleep has not been my friend the past two nights. Every time I close my eyes, I see him. Every time I fall asleep, I dream of him. Every waking hour, I try to forget him.
Melissa was right. The way he looked at me—it’s not the way you look at someone who you don’t want in your life. But then why has he never contacted me? Does he think I don’t want to see him? Maybe he’s right. Maybe I don’t. He hurt me in more ways than one and I’m not sure I could ever trust him not to do it again. He damaged me. Making friends after he left was not easy. I was afraid to let anyone get close. I didn’t want to risk it happening again. I was grateful for Julian, but then when he hurt me, I was left completely alone. Best-friendless. That is until Mel and I met in college.
You forgave Julian, I tell myself. Was what Chad did to me any worse than what Julian did? Can I even blame Chad for what happened? After all, he was only seventeen when his life went into a tailspin. I often wonder what would have happened if it had been me and not him who was catapulted into sudden stardom. Should he be held responsible for how he behaved when his life was so out of control?
Yes, he should. I mean, underneath it all, we’re still human. I just think the least he could have done was call me when Mom died. But by then, I’d told him I never wanted to hear from him again. I guess he took me at my word after I didn’t acknowledge his pathetic attempt to make excuses in the voicemail he left me.
“Ms. Schaffer?”
I look up to see that the dismissal bell is about to ring and Billy Green is trying to get my attention. “Yes, Billy?”
“Uh, you haven’t given us our homework assignment yet and it’s almost three o’clock.”
I glance around the classroom to see all of my students packing up for the day. This is unlike me. I’m organized. I plan everything out down to the minute. I usually write homework assignments on the board while the kids are at recess.
“No homework tonight,” I announce to the cheers of my class. “But I still want each of you to read for thirty minutes.” They grumble about that, but I can tell they are still happy for the most part.
“Are you okay, Ms. Schaffer?” Kim asks, swinging her lighter-than-usual backpack onto her shoulder.
I nod in reassurance. “Yes, Kim. I ran into an old friend the other day and I guess I was just daydreaming or something.”
“How old was she?” Kim asks.
I laugh. “It was a he,” I say. “And he’s not old as in age; he’s an old friend meaning I used to know him when we were kids.”
“But you don’t know him anymore?”
“No. Not really,” I tell her.
“But you dream about him?” she asks.
All the time. “Daydream,” I say. “Daydreaming is kind of like thinking about something when you’re awake. And you think about it so hard, sometimes you forget where you are or what you are doing.”
She nods in understanding. “Oh,
I get it. Like Billy and Justin during math section.”
I giggle. “Yeah, kind of like that. You’d better get going or you’ll miss the bus.”
“Bye, Ms. Schaffer.”
“Bye, Kim. See you tomorrow.”
I spend the next hour going over tomorrow’s lesson plan. I’m not even sure what I taught today. I hope the kids actually got something out of whatever I said. My door swings open and Melissa walks through.
“Are you about done? I’m ready to get to the gym,” she says.
I put away my planner and gather my things. “Yes. The gym is exactly what I need today.”
~ ~ ~
Kate, another teacher at our school, joined us at the gym and then we decided to go for dinner after, so the sun is setting by the time I get home. As I pull into the driveway, I wonder whose SUV is parked out in front of our house. Dad didn’t say anything about company. He never has company. I park in the garage and reach into the passenger seat to get my leftovers. I hope Dad hasn’t eaten dinner yet because the meal I ordered was amazing.
Melissa keeps trying to talk me into moving to the city, but I can’t get myself to leave. At first, I stayed to save up money for my own place. But after that, as the time came closer for me to move, I couldn’t pull the trigger. My dad all but stopped living after my mom died seven years ago. He still works at the local hospital as an orthopedic surgeon, and that has become his life. Work and me. So I cook for him a few times a week. He cooks for me a few times a week. The rest of the time, I’m with my friends or we get take out. Every so often he’ll ask me about my savings and when I think I’ll have enough to move out. I always give him the same answer, ‘go big or go home—so I’m staying home until I can go big.’ He smiles every time I say it. He also offers me money to reach my goal. I never accept it and he never argues. We have a symbiotic relationship. Or an enabling one. I’m not sure which. He needs to get on with his life. I need to learn to live on my own. But what we have works for both of us.
Stone Promises (A Stone Brothers Novel) Page 3
