by Dahlia Adler
It feels like being punched in the gut, hearing her say that, all but confirming my suspicions. “I know,” I say. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make things weird. It’s just that I feel like I’m disappointing everyone on earth lately, and it sucks, but you…it’s the one that really kills me. I hate that I hurt you. I hate that I ruined any chance of anything happening with us. I mean, I still don’t have everything figured out yet, but I guess I was holding on to the thought that it was still a possibility. If you’re back with her—”
“I’m not.” She sighs, fiddling with the sleeve of her T-shirt. “I mean, I guess she’s still interested or whatever, but it isn’t mutual. I didn’t come to this class to see Amanda. I came because I didn’t care about seeing her anymore.” She laughs bitterly. “I started going to the late class to avoid her, and now I’m back here to avoid you. Maybe I just need to take up a new hobby.”
My relief at the knowledge I haven’t lost her completely is so strong that I almost lean over and kiss her right then and there. I know I can’t do that, but I need to acknowledge the fact that there’s still something between us. That I still feel it, too.
And so, without even thinking about it, I place my hand on that tiny little curve of belly.
She winces. “God, I hate when you do that. Do you just enjoy pointing out the squishiness?”
“I love your body,” I rasp, admitting what I couldn’t the first time I did this. “I think it’s so sexy. I wish you saw it the way I do.”
“You don’t think that,” she mumbles, casting her eyes downward.
“Of course I do.” Now it’s my turn for a humorless laugh. “I think that way, way more often than I should. Trust me.” I drop my voice, and I don’t realize just how honest I’m going to be until the words push themselves out of my mouth. “I wonder what it would be like to be with that body—with you—every freaking day.”
She just shakes her head, but I can see tears forming in her eyes, and I feel them forming in mine, too. Because it doesn’t matter that I feel this way. It doesn’t matter if she feels the same. These are just words; I’ve already given up any opportunity I had to put anything behind them.
“You can’t say things like that to me,” she says, her voice faltering as a tear falls onto her shirt, and I know she’s right.
“I’m sorry. God, I’m sorry.” I take my hand back, wishing I had a pocket to stuff it in or something. “I just moved in to a new place, and I think I’m a little stir-crazy, and being dumb, and…I should go. I’m sorry.”
I don’t give her a chance to respond before I rush out of the studio and to my car. But I can’t drive away just yet. Not until I give my breathing a chance to calm down and my tears a chance to dry up. Which is gross, because I’m just sitting in my own sweat, but I don’t even care. I don’t care about anything right now except—
“Hey!” I look out the window and see Bri jogging up to the window, which I immediately roll down. “You’re still here.”
“I’m still here.”
“I was thinking…” She nibbles on her lip for a few seconds, and I can’t help watching her do it. Which I’m pretty sure she notices. “I mean, you had me all curious about your new place.” She squeezes the back of her neck. “I’d love to see it. And maybe we can talk. There are some things I probably…we should talk.”
There is so much I don’t know about what’s happening with everything right now, but if there’s one thing about which I’m absolutely, positively certain, it’s that I want to be alone in my apartment with Bri. “I’d love that,” I say softly.
“Just let me shower and change, and I’ll be there soon. Text me where to go?”
“I will.”
I watch in the rearview mirror as she gets behind the wheel of her Jeep and pulls out of the lot, and then I text her the address with shaking fingers. As I start off toward my new home—imagining her in it—butterflies take flight in my stomach.
I might be leading the way, but I have no clue where we’re about to end up.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Josh
The only place I hate being more than my parents’ house is at one of my mother’s stupid friends’ houses. But that’s exactly where I am tonight, wasting an Yves Saint Laurent tux on a bunch of walking Botox injections, with cameras at my back. Unsurprisingly, Marsha’s old costars are every bit as vapid and fame-whore-y as she is, and Lisa Torres had no problem inviting Chuck and the dick-replacements he calls cameras into her home for her bullshit “Save the Children” charity ball thing.
“I saw your interview with Gavin Lawrence the other day,” Lisa’s daughter Clarabel says, cornering me by the hideous modern sculpture in the living room I’m hiding behind to browse porn on my phone. “You were funny.”
“I wasn’t joking about anything,” I reply without looking up.
She giggles. “There you go again.”
Christ. The only reason I’m here at all is because it’s the first time my parents have been together in the same room since my little epiphany that I want out of Hollywood—Marsha’s been off at some spa for two days, which I’m sure made for scintillating reality TV, and my dad’s been practically sleeping at the office, which is nothing new. Even now, he’s on a conference call in the Torres’ study, and I’m running out of patience with waiting.
“Clarabel, honey, can you scooch two steps to the left?”
Running out of patience with the camera guys dictating every move, too.
Apparently Clarabel’s A-OK with it, because she “scooches” two steps, then resumes blathering while I scan the room for either my mother or a passing tray of drinks—they probably have about the same alcohol content by now.
“Josh, could you focus a little more on Clarabel? You’re coming off distracted.”
“That’s so weird, because I’m not—oh, look, a bird. Gotta run.” I step around both Clarabel and the camera guy and start looking for my mother in earnest, pausing only to grab a baby lamb chop from a waiter walking by. Finally, I spot the red sequin dress she’s about a decade too late for in every way.
My father’s not with her, but I don’t care anymore—I’ve had enough. “Mother,” I say with a smile, taking her elbow and nodding at Richard and Cara Anselm, both of whom are rumored to be banging their pool boy.
“Hi, sweetheart! Richard, Cara—you remember Joshua.”
We exchange inane pleasantries for the camera, and I wonder how they’re possibly going to make this interesting for viewers. And then I realize it’s not my problem, and I don’t care. “Can I talk to you?” I ask her.
Her eyes flicker over to the cameras, and it’s clear they have every intention of following us. “Is everything all right?”
Yes, because now, suddenly, all of America will buy you as a doting mother, Marsha. “Fine. Just need to talk to you. Not to you,” I add pointedly to the camera guy.
He shrugs, but he doesn’t move the camera off us, and there isn’t really anywhere in this place they won’t follow. Fuck it. I pull her into the emptiest corner I can find, letting them film us the whole time. They’ll edit out most of this, anyway. “I don’t wanna do this anymore.”
“We talked about this, Joshua—”
“Not really. I mean, I never wanted to do this stupid show, and you know that, but I don’t wanna do any of this. I don’t wanna be on TV. Or in movies, for that matter. It’s time for me to go…do something.”
“Like what?” she asks, her concerned-mother tone reminding me the cameras are still very much rolling. I feel like I’m in Shannah’s awful preachy family dramedy. At least she’s not here for any of this; I haven’t seen her since the interview with Gavin in which I declared myself single, resulting in tabloids everywhere proclaiming she got dumped on national television.
“Like get out of Hollywood for a while. I don’t know what. I just know I’m over this place.”
“You’re ‘over’ it?” She crosses her arms. “You are such a spoiled—” She st
ops and turns to the camera. “Can I please talk to my son in private?”
“Nah, let ’em stay,” I say gleefully. “We are supposed to be opening our hearts to America, aren’t we? You were saying?”
Her jaw clenches and it’s kind of great, but she doesn’t speak again, and finally, the camera guy gives up and declares he’s taking five. She waits until he’s gone and then turns on me. “Do you realize how incredibly ungrateful you are? I would’ve killed for everything you have. When I was your age—”
“You were clawing your way over here. Trust me—I know. But this was your choice, not mine.”
“Are you honestly pretending you haven’t enjoyed the fruits of your father’s and my labor?” I could swear the woman is about to spit fire. “I know all about your extravagant parties at the beach house, Joshua. We’ve let you do whatever you’ve wanted for years now, and we’ve bankrolled it all without a word. Don’t you feel any obligation at all?”
“I might have if you hadn’t blackmailed me,” I remind her, but a little part of me actually feels…guilty, which is decidedly not a Josh Chester emotion. She has a point. Sort of. But that doesn’t mean I should have to put my life on display. “But you have to understand where I’m coming from. Don’t you ever want a break from this? Don’t you ever want to get out of here?”
“I come from ‘out of here,’ Joshua. I promise you, it’s not better out there. You think you know, but you have no idea.”
“Of course I have no idea!” I explode. “This is all I’ve ever done! I never got to think about whether it was what I want. But I know I don’t wanna do this shit.”
“Keep it down!” she whispers fiercely. “And stop thinking you’re so above it all. For your information, this ‘shit’ is an incredibly rare opportunity. All you had to do was let a few cameras follow you around while you live your life. You make it sound like that’s the hardest thing in the world. You have no idea what is to really work. You’ve never served plates of grease to truckers who try to stick their hands up your uniform, or walked miles in the mud because your family’s only car broke down. You should be thanking your father and me every damn day that this is all you know.”
I can’t even remember the last time I heard my mother acknowledge her life before Hollywood, and I’m so stunned by it now, I don’t even know what to say.
Of course, Chuck does. “That was great,” he says, emerging from I don’t even know where with a huge smile on his punchable face. Marsha turns flaming red at the realization that this entire conversation was caught on camera, and I almost can’t blame her.
Almost.
Because this is what she signed on for. This is what she signed me on for. And it’s ab-fucking-surd.
“Unfortunately, the lighting isn’t great in this corner,” Chuck continues, as if he hasn’t just interrupted the most honest conversation I’ve had with my mother in years—maybe ever. “Let’s try this again in a separate room. Yvette, you can be sitting on the couch and Josh can come find you?”
“Dude, are you kidding with this shit?” I demand. “We’re not—”
“Fine,” Marsha says flatly, all the fight draining from her face. “Let’s go. There’s a den I’m sure Lisa will be happy to let us use.”
Of course she’s on board. Of course she is. I open my mouth to blast them both, but Chuck cuts me off. “Hey, Josh, can I talk to you for a sec?”
I glance at Marsha, who’s already smoothing down her hair for the reshoot, and roll my eyes. “Whatever.” I’m bolting straight out of here to get blitzed, anyway, so may as well hit rock bottom first.
He waits until the camera guy has Marsha out of earshot, then says, “So, you’re thinking of hitting the road, huh?”
“Do people seriously still say that?”
Chuck laughs. That bastard always laughs. It’s maddening. “Where is it you’re planning on going?”
“What’s it to you?”
“What if I said I thought we could work something out?”
“I’d say I highly doubt it.”
“Look, Josh, let’s be real for a minute. I know you can’t afford to send yourself on some world tour right now, and Mommy Dearest ain’t gonna help you after you get this show canceled, which is obviously gonna happen without you in it.”
“What’s your point, Chuckles?”
“We start with six episodes. Just Josh Chester being Josh Chester, giving a glamorous insider look at some of the most gorgeous locations in the world. You get your travel budget, and we get the stuff that’s actually been working for this show.”
“You’re out of your fucking mind.”
“Am I?” He raises his eyebrows.
“Yes. You are.”
But I don’t walk away.
And neither does he.
And despite myself, I grin.
And so does he.
And I wonder which of us just made a deal with the devil.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Vanessa
I clean up as much as I can while I wait for Bri to show up, but the truth is, there isn’t much there. I hate how unsettled my apartment looks. When I walked Ally around it on FaceTime, she said it looked a little serial-killer-y, and now that’s all I can think. The only décor is a couple of framed pictures on the end tables and a couple of my favorite detective novels on the lone bookshelf. I couldn’t fit much into my little car, so I let clothes take top priority, but now I wish there was some semblance of personality here.
Something to make Bri wanna stay.
I don’t even have any food to offer; there’s nothing in my fridge but mustard. But after half an hour, I start to think I’m worrying over nothing; she’s not going to show up. Somewhere in between when we left yoga and now, she changed her mind and realized my mess of a life and immature, inexperienced ass aren’t worth it, and—
Buzz.
I wipe my palms on my denim mini and answer the door, my insecurity about my apartment increasing by about a billion. But when she walks in without saying anything and drops onto the ugly beige couch that came with the place, I realize even when she looks around, she isn’t really seeing anything at all. I take a seat opposite her, on the overstuffed armchair that’s become my only happy place in the apartment, and curl my legs up underneath me.
“Do you want a drink or anything?”
She lifts her water bottle. “I’m good, thanks.” She doesn’t drink from it, though. She just picks at the label, her eyes on the threadbare rug, her lips pressed together. “You never asked about when or how I came out.”
“I figured you’d tell me when you wanted to. It seems like the kind of thing that should come out in its own time.”
“I guess it’s time,” Bri says wryly, the corner of those lips that haunt my brain curling up just a little. She catches herself picking at the label and stops, lifting her eyes to meet mine. “I was a sophomore. I was dating a guy, and we were fooling around a lot, and I liked him okay. But the truth was that given the choice between hanging out with him and hanging out with my best friend, Candice, I chose Candice every time.
“At first I thought I was just being considerate, making sure not to choose a guy over my best friend or whatever. But then we’d be watching a movie, and all I could think about was how badly I wanted to slip my arm around her. When we were walking around, I’d just find myself staring at her hand, wishing I could take it, wanting us to be some sort of…unit or something. I just wanted more.”
I know those feelings. God, I know them. Even now, I look at all the empty space on the couch next to Bri and wish I were filling it, lying in her lap while she tells me this. To hear her talk about having these feelings for another girl burns me with jealousy, but I also know Bri’s never mentioned Candice, even casually, which suggests this story doesn’t have a happy ending.
Her fingers return to the label on her water bottle, absently picking. She obviously doesn’t like reliving this, but it seems important, so I try to help it along. “So
you tried something?” I ask gently. “And she rejected you?”
Her responding laugh is filled with so much pain that I want to hunt Candice down and destroy her. “Nope,” she says with an edge to her voice that could shred that label into ribbons. “She did not reject me. She kissed me back that day, and the next day, and the next. And after every time, she would have some sort of crazy freakout about it—oh my God! What are we doing? I’m not gay!—and then it would just be more of the same. I’d promise myself that I’d stop hanging out alone with her, stop putting myself in these positions, but I couldn’t help it. She’d get drunk and leave me these voicemails begging me to come over, and I would. Every damn time.”
“All while you were dating that guy?”
“I broke up with him when I realized he was no longer the one I was constantly thinking about kissing. But as far as Candice goes, that was somehow the worst thing I could’ve done. She thought that was psycho-extreme, and that it meant I was a lesbian and obsessed with her. For some reason, everything was okay as long as I liked guys and she was my one random exception, but when she thought I didn’t like them at all anymore, somehow that changed everything.”
“But aren’t you bi? I mean, don’t you like guys?”
“I am, and I do, and the fact that she fucking erased that—that she acted like I’d been living some lie with exes I’d genuinely liked—didn’t exactly endear her to me, either. But she flat-out hated that I liked girls, and I didn’t want the fact that I also like guys to make it better. I wanted her to understand that I wanted her, but she was so hung up on what it all meant instead of how it all felt and…” She exhales deeply. “Anyway. We had a big blow-up and stopped talking. She told our friends that I was gay and had come on to her and…” She waves her hand. “I mean, you can imagine.”
“And you didn’t tell them the truth?”
She shrugs. “I guess I could have, but the shit that went down between me and her seemed so secondary to what I’d figured out about myself. And I do like girls. I didn’t want to take that back. I didn’t wanna be all confused and freaked out like she was. I wasn’t gonna pretend about anything like she did. And I haven’t.” She takes a deep breath.
