“Jules,” Dad says, and then turns his tone from fire to ice, “we do not discuss our problems in public. And regardless, I am here now, am I not?”
“Oh my God, stop,” I say, voice breaking. “Please stop.”
They stop. Too late, but they do stop.
I’m back to having serious doubts about the benefits of honesty, especially when it causes this kind of snowball effect.
On the other hand, I’m still standing here.
I’ve been exposed, unmasked, and totally mortified. And it didn’t kill me.
Become something better.
I sigh. “Look: I never started drinking. Okay? I didn’t just exaggerate, and I wasn’t confused. I faked it. I lied. I lied because I actually wanted to come here, crazy as that seems now. And yeah, since it’s out there—thanks, Mom—my dad and I don’t have such an amazing relationship. I lied about that, too—to everyone. I didn’t want to be the daughter someone would dump and just…walk away from because of a stupid fight.” I meet my dad’s eyes. “And I didn’t want you to be the kind of person who would do it, who wouldn’t try harder instead of bailing. So I lied, told people what I wanted to be true, and hoped at some point reality would line up. But…it didn’t exactly pan out.”
Dad holds my gaze for a moment and then breaks it, looks down. Obviously he’s not thinking I’m worth a hundred of Dr. Koch now, and my mom looks mad enough to spit.
I have to get the hell out of here.
“So,” I say, “I’m a fake and a liar. Sorry, everyone. I guess there are worse things to be, but it feels pretty shitty. What I am not lying about is my part in yesterday’s fiasco, though, and that’s what I stood up to talk about. If none of you trusts my word—I guess I can’t blame you if you don’t—there are others here who can back it up. I’m really sorry, Adam. Don’t worry, Dr. Koch, I’m going. Again. I hope your paparazzo friend”—I point at the guy sitting next to my dad—“the same guy who followed us around all day yesterday, I believe, gets all the details right. Including the fact that you have him, or his agency, on speed dial.”
Everyone turns to look at the guy, whose guilty expression gives him away instantly, and then to Dr. Koch, who is, for once, caught off guard, and also looking guilty as hell.
Suffice it to say I have my ways…
“See you later, Dr. Koch,” I murmur, delighted and simultaneously nauseated that my hunch about this was correct. “Suffice it to say I have my ways, too.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Adam finds me at the beach where I am standing arms out, eyes closed, pressing myself against the wind.
“The beach is closed, Lola,” he says, coming to a stop a few feet away from me.
“I know.”
“Should I even ask how you got down here?”
“Celebu-spawn superpowers,” I say, risking a sideways glance at him. “Should I even ask how you found me?”
He cocks his head. “Mentor superpowers.”
I’m doing my best to act normal, to pretend I didn’t just practically declare my love for him in front of everyone, and then admit I’m a huge liar and a fake about everything else. Another thing I have to live with.
“I came to say thank you,” he says, rather formally. “And wow. You left Koch in such hot water he forgot all about firing me. You probably saved my job…”
“Yeah, but then there’s Jade in the hospital, Talia relapsing, Wade bullshitting when recovery is all about being honest.”
“They made their choices. It’s not all about you.”
I choke back a laugh.
“What?”
“I just hear that a lot.”
“Maybe I should have said ‘on’—it’s not all on you,” he says. “It’s a pretty wild swing—you’ve gone from never taking any responsibility to taking all of it. By the way, your parents are up at the mansion waiting to talk to you.”
“Oh God.”
“No, I think it’s good. They seem… I don’t know them, but they seem okay.”
“Keep in mind, my mother’s an actor and my dad’s a very charming guy when he feels like it.”
“But they seem subdued. Kind of the opposite of all that. And they weren’t fighting. Don’t be scared.”
I roll my eyes.
“Don’t try to tell me you’re not,” he says.
“Don’t make me say I am.”
I turn back out to face the water, and he does the same.
The silence is awkward and full of all the things we’ve said, all the things there’s no point saying. I’m under no illusions—this is good-bye. I’m grateful, at least, that I’ll get to say it. Hopefully I’ll manage not to cry my face off.
“Why’d you do it, Lola?” he asks after a couple of minutes.
“Which part?” I say, still not looking at him. “I seem to have done a lot.”
“Why’d you come here? I mean, why would you want to if you’re really not an addict?”
“You saying you believe me now?” At this, I can’t help turning to study him.
“Can you just answer the question?” he says in his bran muffin voice.
“I came to make life miserable for my mentor, apparently.”
“In that case, you succeeded.” He crosses his arms over his chest to show me he’s still waiting for my real answer.
“And I wanted a tighter ass.”
His eyes narrow.
“And a better tan.”
“You could get both of those at home. Don’t you live on the beach?”
“Okay, honestly, Adam? It’s so fucking stupid, I’m not going to tell you.”
“More stupid than a tight ass and a tan?”
“Much more. Okay, let me put it this way: I was trying to recover something I lost. Something I thought I lost. But I couldn’t really get it back because it wasn’t what I thought it was. And maybe I never had it in the first place. Deep, huh?”
“Not to mention cryptic.”
I laugh.
“But not stupid,” he says, eyes finally softening a little. “It doesn’t sound stupid at all.”
“Oh, believe me, I gave you the positive spin. I have changed, though. Learned a few things. Kind of an uphill battle, but still.”
“Well, you’ve grown. I don’t know about changed. You’re still very much…you.”
“Yeah,” I say, flushing and looking down at the sand.
“What’s wrong?”
I shake my head, refusing to look up at him because I might start sobbing. And that would suck.
“Lola,” he says, coming closer, which is torture. “What?”
“Just…I’m guessing I’m about to be kicked out, so this might be the last time I see you.” I stop, swallow hard, stare at the sand. “I would have liked it to be more…I would like not to have fucked everything up so thoroughly.”
“Ah, that,” he says. “You know what the thing is about you, though?”
“Mm?”
“Look at me, Lola.”
I look up.
“As thoroughly as you tend to fuck things up, you have a pretty extravagant way of…fixing them, or making up for them, anyway.”
I allow myself a tiny smile and blink back the tears.
“So I have good news and bad news,” he says.
“Go ahead,” I say, bracing myself. “Tell me.”
“You are being kicked out, and your parents are going to take you home.”
“Is that the good or the bad?”
“Both,” he says.
“And that’s because…?”
He comes closer, holding my eyes captive with his superpower gaze.
“Because you’re so kicked out that you’re not even going to have outpatient privileges.”
“And that’s good news because…?”
“Because I am only going to be your mentor for about…five more minutes.”
The circus starts up again in my stomach.
“And?” I say. “Last I checked, you considered it kind o
f a lifetime position.”
“I did, yes.” He nods, then reaches out and takes my hands in his. “But I’m allowed to change my mind.”
“You don’t want to be my lifetime mentor, then?” I’m staring at him, searching his face for confirmation of what I think, hope, he’s saying.
“I want a lot of things,” he says, voice husky. “But no, I don’t want that.”
“All right then, Adam.” I grip his hands, feeling like I might burst, feeling like I could go up in smoke at any moment. “In that case I’m totally firing you. I’m firing you right now. Because five minutes seems like a really long time to wait for—”
I don’t get to say anything else because all of a sudden Adam is kissing me. One second we’re standing there holding hands and talking, and the next he’s swooped me up into his arms and his mouth is on mine, hot, deliberate, and full of a million pent up emotions.
If I thought my clothes were going to melt off last time, this is a whole other level of melting—melting and melding, drowning and flying, my entire sense of reality dropping away so there is only this moment, and there is only him, me, us.
We kiss until we are gasping and I think I might be crying and really it feels like we both might fall down if we didn’t have the other person to hold us up because we are dizzy, drunk, on fire.
He holds my face to his so we are forehead to forehead.
“We have to stop,” he says, clearly no more ready to than I am,
“Not again,” I almost wail.
“No, no. So you can go up there and make this official.”
“Oh. Official, huh,” I say, trying to get my brain back online and pull myself together.
“Officially not professionally connected,” he says, still holding me. “Not to mention, you’ll be free to invite me to your house for lasagna from New York City.”
“I’m inviting you to my house to lock you in my bedroom,” I say. “I may or may not feed you first.”
He gives me a boiling-hot look, pulls me even tighter up against him again, gives me a hard kiss, then steps away with obvious reluctance, keeping his eyes on me.
“Real world,” he says, his back to the ocean and jerking his thumb toward the stairs.
“Give me a minute,” I say, coming back to him, sliding my hands up his (very chiseled) abs, up to his shoulders, and slowly walking him backward as I kiss his lips, his cheeks, his neck.
“A minute…for what?” he says, trying to focus but not succeeding.
I slip my hands up under his shirt, around to his bare back, holding onto him and kissing him deeply, hoping to keep him distracted as our feet enter the water.
“Lola?” he mumbles, his mouth against mine. “What are you doing?’
And that’s when I use my body weight against his to tumble him backward, with me on top of him, into the ocean.
“What the hell…?” He’s roaring and laughing and trying to pin me in the sand. “Now you’re really in trouble.”
I kiss him fast, then escape, grinning like a fool. “I told you I’d do this when you didn’t expect it.”
“You’re right, I did not expect that.”
“If you’re going to be scandalized you should close your eyes,” I say, and then I pull my T-shirt over my head and throw it onto the sand.
He almost chokes, then covers his eyes with his hands. “I’m not scandalized,” he says. “That’s not at all a description of what I am right now. But what exactly are you doing?”
“If I’m getting kicked out anyway, I’m going skinny-dipping first.”
“I don’t suppose you’d listen if I forbid you to—”
“Forbid me?” I howl with laughter, then go deeper into the water so I can wriggle out of the rest of my clothes discreetly. “Good luck with that, Cupcake. And by the way, I am going to mock you so hard every time you use that voice. I fired you, remember?”
“Oh, I remember. I think it’s pretty much seared onto my brain matter,” he says, peeking out of one eye, then opening them both when he realizes I’m underwater from the neck down.
“Plus, I don’t want you to think I’ve stopped being me.”
And with that, I toss the rest of my clothing onto the beach and swim out into the deep water.
On the shore, Adam gets to his knees and watches me, seeming to know I need a minute alone.
The wind has dropped, leaving the water calm, smooth, and cool while above me the sun is hot, and for this moment in time, everything feels amazing.
Yes, I’m still sick about Jade, embarrassed about being unmasked, and I feel stupid about holding a four-year torch for a guy I never really knew. But I’m happy to have met Talia, and even Jade, because they both helped me learn a few things—about myself and about life. And at least in the end I managed to stand up and do one decent thing.
Plus, out of it all came Adam, who’s real, and loves me for real, even if he hasn’t said so yet.
I breathe deeply, swimming in wide circles, feeling my muscles flex and extend.
Yes, the rehab project turned out to be an epic freaking disaster.
But I wouldn’t trade it.
And come to think of it, once we’re away from here, I could probably get Adam to bounce a quarter off my butt cheeks—if only to humor me.
Acknowledgments
It takes many dedicated people, besides the writer, to get a book out into the world. I am tremendously grateful to have had wonderful, smart, talented, and hardworking people on my team, from conception to publication of this book. Among my friends, family, and the greater writing community I’m so lucky to be a part of, there are too many people to name. To all of you: thank you. It would be very lonely, and so much harder, without you.
There are some specific people who need to be thanked. My deepest gratitude and appreciation go out to:
-my agent, Emmanuelle Morgen, for her hard work, sharp eye, and patience, as she worked with me on every stage of this book;
-my Entangled editor Stacy Abrams, for giving the book such detailed and intuitive attention, for helping me to make it better and better, and for being gentle when she had to tell me some of my references were out-of-date or slightly less than cool;
-Bev Katz Rosenbaum for connecting me with Stacy, and Entangled, in the first place;
-the fabulous team at Entangled, including Alexandra Shostak for the fabulous cover art, Erin Crum for her meticulous copyediting, Heather Riccio and Debbie Suzuki for publicity, Meredith Johnson for production, and the rest of the team, including marketing and sales people at both Macmillan and Raincoast…at the time of this writing I don’t yet know them all by name, but I know it’s a stupendous group of talented and hardworking people;
-my early readers and critique partners: Bev Katz Rosenbaum, Maureen McGowan, Joanne Levy, Keith Cronin, Shelley Saville, Michael Wacholtz and Nicole Muyres;
-Stephanie Saville, another of my beta readers, and my very generous go-to for general psychology research and more specifically, information about rehabilitation programs, treatment methods, and teen addiction;
-Veronica Canfield for specifics on the legal details and practices of rehabilitation centers from state to state;
-Lainey Lui, for the intelligent and thought-provoking assessment and coverage of Hollywood Gossip on her blog, www.laineygossip.com, which influenced my own thoughts on celebrity and its effects on character;
-Kimberley Stevens, for helping me push through the first draft of this by setting a timer and making me work while she sweated it out on the elliptical machine right behind me;
-in addition to those listed above as beta readers, fellow authors Adrienne Kress, Caitlin Sweet, Tish Cohen, Lesley Livingston, Eileen Cook, Jon Clinch, Jessica Keener, Renee Rosen, Sachin Waikar, Karen Dionne, Lauren Baratz-Logsted, Elizabeth Letts, all of whom have offered encouragement and inspiration over the years;
-my family—my incredibly supportive husband, Michael, and our two sweet girls, who all pitch in to help when I have a deadl
ine; Cindy and Gary Ullman, Beatrice and Jim Wacholtz, Brian Younge, and the larger circle of family, encompassing Saville, Ullman, Wacholtz, and Younge, all of whom have been immeasurably supportive and awesome;
-and finally, my readers—it would be pointless without you!
From the bottom of my heart, thank you.
About the Author
Danielle Younge-Ullman is a novelist, playwright and freelance writer. She studied English and Theater at McGill University, then returned to her hometown of Toronto to work as professional actor for ten years. Danielle’s short story, Reconciliation, was published in MODERN MORSELS—a McGraw-Hill Anthology for young adults—in 2012, her one-act play, 7 Acts of Intercourse, debuted at Toronto’s SummerWorks Festival in 2005, and her adult novel, FALLING UNDER, was published by Penguin in 2008. Danielle lives in Toronto with her husband and two daughters. For more information visit www.danielleyoungeullman.com or her author page on Facebook.
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