our Weeks – Episode 21 – “Thirty Two”
Written by J.D.Denisson.
A sequel to the movie “This is Where I Leave You”.
Characters and back story based on the novel “This is Where I Leave You” by Jonathan Tropper.
Copyright 2016 J.D.Denisson.
Previously…
“You want to know?” she asks me angrily.
“I think I deserve to know.”
“All right...” She takes a breath. “When I went to the hospital you were on the bed. They’d stitched up your head and they were watching you. You had concussion, and you were talking and talking.”
“I don’t remember any of that,” I tell her, but she puts up a hand to silence me.
“And then you started to tell me what you think. What you really think. And now I know.”
“Know what?”
“What you really think of me. And then you made me tell you about the first time I... when I told him I loved him.”
And it’s all become clear to me. The picture has been assembled. The moment I lost her. They’d been sleeping together for a few months by then, but it was only sex. Right then, at that moment, it all changed. It became a relationship. Her bonds with him started to grow strong and hers with me started to fade – slowly, so slow that I failed to see it.
“The New Years party at Wade’s,” I say, “On the balcony. I interrupted you two. God... I was an idiot not to see it.”
…
I’m walking back over to Quinn with a coffee in hand. Once again, instant. Once again, tolerated for the purposes of something to hold while we mingle after the class. She is talking to another couple. The woman looks to be as advanced as my wife. They appear harmless enough, professional, happy. Like us, I guess, but without the baggage.
“Judd,” Quinn says, “come meet Ted and Sarah.”
I shake the husband’s hand. “Ted Wentworth,” he says. “My wife, Sarah.” I shake hers too.
Quinn leans in. “Bathroom,” she says, and retreats, leaving me with the strangers she’s introduced me to. They weren’t at classes last week.
“So, Judd is it?”
I nod.
“What work do you do, Judd?”
I think quickly. “Advertising mostly.”
…
“Have you seen Wade,” I ask Kenny. He looks to the copy room, one of Wade’s favourite rendezvous places. I stand at the door and listen. I know it’s wrong. I know it’s creepy. The realisation has me step away quickly and wait for him to come out. But he doesn’t. One of the new interns does – the girl from earlier this week. She has a smile on her face. Wade follows a moment later, closes the door behind him and turns. I’m in his face.
“Nothing’s going on,” I say, just like he’d told me on Tuesday.
“This is not what it looks like.”
“Really. Because it sure looks like you just fucked that girl. But that couldn’t be right, because you assured me that nothing’s going on. So, maybe you were… what? Talking? Using the copier, perhaps?”
“We were just talking.”
“Just talking?”
“She wanted to talk. She’s finding it hard here, so I said I’d give her some advice about surviving in this place.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“I’m a generous guy.”
“Real generous.”
He shakes his head. “Then she jumps me.”
“She came on to you?”
“I’m irresistible, I can’t help that. But listen, I pushed her off. I told her I’m married and I’m not interested. Okay? Don’t tell Chloe, because nothing happened.”
“You expect me to believe that?” I ask him, looking at him through my brows.
…
We are thirty minutes away when Quinn’s cell rings. She smiles when she sees the caller’s name and picks up quickly. She speaks for several minutes and slowly the smile drains from her face. Finally she says: “I’ll have to talk to Judd about it,” and she signs off and hangs up.
“Who was that?” I ask her.
“Chloe,” she says quietly, looking out the window, and I know there is something wrong. I can guess: something to do with Wade, something to do with his wandering eye.
“What’s up?”
She sighs a little, then turns and looks at me. There is sadness behind her eyes, regret. “She invited us to their New Year’s party.”
I nod. I know what this means to her. I know what this means to us. Then I feel my mouth inch up into a smile. “We can go if you want.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know.”
…
“So, what are you going to do?” I ask him. I’m with Ted, out on the frigid fire-escape, looking over his city street. Quinn and Sarah are sitting on the sofa in the warm apartment.
“I don’t know. What would you do?”
I close my eyes briefly, push back bad memories. “I haven’t been in your position.”
“I can see that. You’re not like that.” He shakes his head. “But you have been hurt...” He gasps. “Quinn...? Quinn cheated on you, didn’t she?”
I run a hand through my beard. That tells him everything he needs to know.
“But you’re still together,” he points out. “You forgave her?”
“She carrying my baby,” I point out.
“Still...”
“I love her.”
…
“I know that we haven’t talked about Christmas yet, but it is next week. I think I’d like to go to church with my family before lunch at the house. Then we could go see your family for dinner.”
We’d always avoided the morning service, spending that time at Elmsbrook, We would drop over at her parent’s house sometime in the late afternoon.
“Where did that come from?” I ask her with both brows raised.
“I don’t know. I guess I’ve been thinking about my family and my roots, and something Mary said to me yesterday. And I’ve been praying – for you and Rachel mostly.”
Thirty two
Monday
I leave Quinn in bed and head down to the station. Wade is waiting for me when I get there, which is unusual, so I know something is amiss. He pulls me into his office and slides a newspaper over to me after he’s sat down behind his desk.
“What’s this,” I ask him.
“Page eight,” he says, his face pulled into a frown.
I turn over page after page and find what he’s directed me to. It isn’t half obvious. Wade’s face is plastered over the page with a headline that paints him in a very bad light.
“They’re calling me a liar,” he says. “And you. But mostly me.”
“What?”
“Did you talk to the press? I mean, we had an agreement. Surely you didn’t go behind my back and break it. That’s not you at all.”
“I didn’t.”
“Because someone did. And that someone knows a lot about us. Are you sure it wasn’t you, because this sort of thing could well derail my deal with the network, and we both know that you’re not part of that deal.”
“What are you saying?”
“I saying that this could be payback for Quinn and for leaving you behind.”
“I’m not that petty.”
“I don’t know. You killed one of my cars, if you remember,” he says through gritted teeth.
“I remember. But that was before. I’m telling you, I didn’t say anything.”
“I’m having trouble believing you. The article mentions Chloe by name. It says I’m cheating on her. Where would they get that idea?”
“Not from me.”
“Who then?”
I shake my head. “Maybe there’s a leak at the station. Maybe someone talked.”
“But people here don’t know that whole story. These people...” He points to the article. “These people know much more than that.”
“We agreed to keep our wives out of this. Why would I go back on that if Quinn gets hurt, just before she’s about to have the baby. I wouldn’t do that to her. And I wouldn’t do that to you. I might have a few months ago, but not now.”
“So who did?”
“I don’t know.” But even as I’m saying those words I know that I do. I know what was said and to who. I just don’t know how it’s filtered to the newspaper. “Wait...” I say.
“What?”
“If I’m right, then I do know.”
“Who?”
“Let me find out first. Then I tell you.”
“Well, that’s all well and good, but I have another problem.”
“What’s that?”
“Chloe.”
We do the show, but he’s distracted. He’s thinking about the ramifications of the article. I’d like to think that Chloe is the first thing on his mind, and maybe she is, but he’s thinking about the show as well.
She rings him during our after meeting and he asks us to leave his office so he can talk to her. When I come back in after half an hour he’s still sitting behind his desk, starring into space.
“You alright, buddy?” I ask him quietly.
“She’s kicked me out,” he says simply.
“She’s seen the paper.”
“She has.”
“What are you going to do?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I guess I’ll go home and get some clothes and find a room somewhere.”
I’m no stranger to the process. I can remember the dread that comes with finding yourself adrift and alone, abandoned by the one that is supposed to love you no matter what.
I sigh. “You need any help?”
“I’m fine,” he lies. “She’ll calm down in a couple of days and I’ll talk my way out of it, like I always do.”
“You don’t sound so confident.”
“I suppose that I’m not trying to charm my way back into her pants. Things are different now. I mean, I love her, and I’ve hurt her and I don’t want to lose her.”
“Maybe I could talk to her.”
“No,” he says with a sigh. “It’s my responsibility. I’ll talk to her when she’s ready.” He laughs. “Who’d have thought that I’d ever say that?”
“Not me.”
I’m simultaneously proud of him and glad that he didn’t have this kind of growth five months ago. If he had he might of decided that Quinn was the one that he needed to fight for, not Chloe.
The details of the article has filtered down to the television news by the time I get home to Quinn, and she knows all about it before I opened my mouth.
“I thought that this was sorted out,” she says accusingly. “They used my name, Judd. They know about everything. What happened?”
I take a deep breath. “I can’t be sure, but I think that it was Ted and Sarah.”
“What?”
“We talked to them, and the next day it’s all over the news. I think we were too trusting and told them too much.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“I don’t want to believe it either, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.”
She comes to me and I put my arms around her. Our daughter settles in between us. “What are we going to do?” she asks my shoulder.
I sigh into her hair. “The first thing is to find out for sure. I guess I’ll have to go down to the paper and see what I can find out.”
“Do you know if Chloe’s heard about this?”
“Oh, she knows all right. She’s kicked Wade out.”
“This is a mess,” she says quietly.
“It certainly is. Did you tell Sarah about Wade cheating on Chloe, because I didn’t.”
“No,” she says. “She was asking about me. Wade and Chloe are none of their business.”
“Well, that does open up some other questions, doesn’t it?”
“Like what?”
“Who at the station is leaking details to the press?”
Tuesday
Wade is in his office with his manager. The network suit sits in the seat that I usually sit in. I’m outside, looking through the window. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but I can guess by the looks on their faces. Things are not good at all.
Stewart comes and stands next to me. “They don’t look happy.”
“No,” I agree. “They don’t.”
“I don’t know whether to be disappointed that he’s not going to be leaving or disappointed that he deal hasn’t gone through for him.”
I shake my head. “I have the same conflict sometimes.”
“He’s a pain in the ass.”
“But he does grow on you.”
“Like a fungus.”
“...that they don’t make a cream for.”
He laughs. “We have to talk about what you’re going to do when he goes.”
I nod. “Not right now. I’ve got to get out of here.”
I walk down to the newspaper armed with a name: Brad Samuels. I find myself in the newsroom, full of bustling people. It’s an environment that I’m not unused to, being in the media. I have enough experience for me to talk my way this far. I grab the first person walking past, a woman in her forties carrying files.
“I’m looking for Brad Samuels,” I say.
She looks over to the back of the room, stands on her toes to see over the cubicles. “I don’t see him,” she tells me.
But I see someone else. Sarah walks near where I’m looking. I notice her because she’s pregnant. I know that I’m right now. I know that it was Quinn and I that inadvertently leaked the story.
“That’s okay,” I tell the woman. “I see someone else I know.”
She nods and moves on. I make my way through to Sarah, sifting through papers on a desk. She doesn’t see me straight away.
“Sarah,” I say and she doesn’t respond and that tells me everything I need to know about her. I say the name she gave me again, louder this time, and she looks up.
“Judd?” she says. She’s been caught and she knows it.
“It’s good to see that your pregnancy wasn’t a lie at least,” I say casually.
“How did you...?”
“I produce a radio program,” I remind her. “I do have some research skills. So, I assume that Ted is Brad Samuels. And you are...?”
“Marcie Andrews,” she tells me.
“I have a question.”
“Just one?”
“To start with. You both lied about who you were. You both didn’t declare yourselves as journalists.”
After a moment of silence she frowns. “Is there a question somewhere in there?”
I take a deep breath. “Even I know that you can’t publish what we tell you if we didn’t know that we were being interviewed. None of that was on the record. So, how did your editor clear this story?”
She folds her arms across her chest. “You’d have to ask Brad that.”
“I’m asking you.”
“Brad handles gossip.”
“This isn’t gossip. This is people’s lives you’re messing around with. You know that, right?”
“I only helped him.”
“So what did you do? You posed as a pregnant couple in class. You went looking for us.”
She says nothing.
“And then you found us,” I continue. “Then you suck us into telling you our secrets. You make friends with us just so you can get the story.”
“This isn’t my story,” she says. “I just helped him. You’re going to have to leave.”
“But you got my wife to talk too,” I point out. “You manipulated a pregnant woman to give out private, personal details. I do
n’t know how you could do that, as you’re pregnant too.”
Sarah – or, as it turns out, Marcie – folds her arms across her chest. “She’s not innocent, Judd. You know that. She slept with your boss and wrecked your life. I don’t know how you could forgive her, but I wouldn’t.”
“Well, it’s a good thing she’s married to me then and not you. Otherwise she’s be pregnant and alone.”
Tears form in Marcie’s eyes and I learn a little more about her. Everyone has a story. Perhaps everyone has secrets too.
“Do I have to ask security to throw you out?” she asks me defiantly.
“No,” I say. “I’m going. But you tell Ted, or Brad, to leave us alone, or we’ll start spilling his secrets all over the radio.”
We won’t. That’s not what we’re about anymore. But that doesn’t stop me from threatening her. I’m a little ashamed that I did threaten a pregnant woman, but she’s invaded my life and I won’t stand for being screwed around with anymore.
To make a point Marcie has security show me the door, but I don’t care about that. It’s not the first time it’s happened.
Wade has left the station when I return. I call him. He’s moved into a room at the Ritz. I head on down to meet him. What I have to say is better said in person.
He knows what I’m going to say by looking at my face when he opens his door.
“Are you kidding me,” he says.
“No. It was me. I didn’t know who I was talking to.”
“You shouldn’t be talking at all!” he yells.
“It wasn’t like that. I was giving advice, from a personal perspective. They were very slick. They tricked us into talking.”
“Us?”
I clear my throat. “Quinn and me.”
“Damn it,” he says. “Do you know what you’ve done?”
“I think I have a pretty good idea. And you should know, this has hurt Quinn and I as well. We’re all in it.”
“You both have completely undone everything that we’ve achieved. I hope you’re happy.”
“Not even remotely,” I tell him. “So what do we do?”
“You tell me. You’re the genius.”
“To be honest, I just don’t know. It’ll probably blow over in time. These things usually do.”
“But that doesn’t help me, does it? The network is threatening to pull the show.”
“They haven’t done it yet, though, right?”
He shakes his head.
I nod, take a deep breath. “Then keep calm and let me think. Maybe there’s something we can do. Until then, there is something else.”
“What’s that?”
“Neither Quinn nor I told these people about you and Chloe, which means that someone else talked. Maybe we should try and find out who that was.”
“There’s another thing as well.” I look at him speculatively. What else could there be? “Our New Year’s party has been cancelled. …what with me being here and Chloe not letting me in the apartment.”
“You’re joking, right? You’re worried about a party, with all of this going on?”
“Parties are what make all of this crap bearable. And my New Year’s Eve bash is the one everyone looks forward to. You always looked forward to them. So, I know this news is going to bring you down. So, I’m sorry. If I hadn’t screwed up…”
“We probably weren’t going anyway,” I tell him simply.
“Am I hearing you right? You two always came – without fail.”
“Well, this year would have been different.”
He closes his eyes. He always does that when he thinks. He’s distractible, and this blocks distractions. I wait for whatever thought bubbles to the top of the pile. “This is about Quinn and me, right?”
I nod, my face without expression.
“Look,” he continues, “we’re friends again. All that is behind us. If we’re going to move forward then anything that’s still between us has to be talked about. I know I haven’t been up front with you before, I know I’ve
Twenty Four Weeks - Episode 21 - "Thirty Two" (PG) Page 1
