“I don’t plan to talk about it either,” Sam finished.
“Come on, Sam. Don’t you think it’s time to finally put this all out on the table with Aubrey?” Ian asked. “If you asked me, you deserve to get it off your chest.”
“I agree,” Dale said. “It’s the only way you’ll be able to finally move on.”
“In case you both missed it, I have moved on,” Sam said.
“Bullshit,” Ian and Dale replied in unison.
Sam ran a hand down his face. “What’s the point of rehashing any of that stuff? It’s not as if it’ll change what happened. Besides, weren’t you both just telling me I need to let it go?”
“Dude, haven’t you watched at least one episode of Dr. Phil? It’s all part of letting it go,” Dale said. “Look, I like Aubrey. I always have. But we were both here after she left. You never got the chance to tell her just how much she hurt you.”
“If I wanted to tell her anything I would have said so when she apologized the other day.”
“Wait. She brought it up?”
Sam gave a reluctant nod. “This past Wednesday when I ran into her at the high school auditorium. She wanted to give me her condolences over Charlie dying, and apologize for what happened back then, but I don’t need her apology. It doesn’t matter.”
“The hell it doesn’t.” Dale held both hands up. “It’s up to you whether or not you decide to forgive her, but at the very least you two should finally talk about it and get it all out in the open.”
“Think of it this way,” Ian interjected. “Once you finally get it off your chest, maybe it won’t be so hard to see her around town. Who knows how long she’ll be here? You really want to go the next year avoiding the places where you might run into Aubrey?”
Sam wasn’t sure if he would be here this time next year. Not if he finally gave in to Noah’s requests to come out to the West Coast. But he hadn’t talked about that with Ian and Dale yet.
He also wasn’t sure if taking his friends’ advice would yield what they both thought it would. What if he got everything off his chest yet became even more bitter toward Aubrey?
Sam couldn’t deny that she’d been on his mind a lot lately. Ever since their conversation on the old playground, he’d been thinking about her more and more. As she’d talked about the work she’d done in L.A., he saw glimpses of the friendship they’d once shared, the ease in which they’d always connected. He’d left the church grounds Wednesday night wondering if there was a path that eventually led to the two of them becoming friends.
When he got home that night he’d spent over two hours looking at clips and reading articles about the singer she’d coached for that reality TV show. She went by one name: Zena. Sam had wondered if that had been Aubrey’s idea. She used to talk about one day being big enough to go by one name, like Cher, Madonna, and Beyoncé. That led him to doing a Google search on Aubrey’s name and scrolling through dozens of still shots taken during her time as a backup singer.
They would never be as close as they’d once been, but maybe they could get to the point where, if he saw her out and about, he’d stop and say hello instead of doing everything he could to avoid her. Sam didn’t realize until this very moment how much he wanted that.
He looked over at Ian and Dale. “You two may be right. Maybe I should go talk to her.” He pushed away from the worktable.
“Whoa, wait.” Ian put both hands up. “No one said you should go right this second. Take some time to think about it.”
“I’ve had ten years to think about it,” Sam said. “If we’re really going to put it behind us, why not start right now?”
But as he pulled up to Deanna Martin’s house a half hour later, Sam wasn’t so sure he was up for this. Did he really want to reopen this wound? It was bound to hurt like a bitch.
“Stop kidding yourself. The wound reopened the minute she came back,” he whispered.
His heartbeat escalated as he made his way up the walkway and knocked on the front door. The nerves swarming around in his stomach had him hoping for a moment that Deanna would answer and tell him that Aubrey was out with Chandra, but no such luck. A minute after he knocked, the door opened with Aubrey on the other side, dressed in a pair of gray sweats and a T-shirt from the Stevie Wonder Songs in the Key of Life concert tour.
A faint smile pulled at the edges of Sam’s lips. When he’d heard about the concert last summer, he’d immediately thought of her. Aubrey had always been a huge Stevie fan. It was something she and his dad had in common.
“Hi,” Sam said.
“Hey,” she answered. She looked beyond him, toward where he’d parked his truck at the curb. Her forehead wrinkled in confusion as wariness clouded her brown eyes. “What are you doing here, Sam?”
“I was hoping we could talk.”
She stiffened. “We tried that the other night. Did you figure out yet another way to ask me how long I’m planning to stay in Maplesville?”
Sam grimaced. He rubbed the back of his head. “Yeah, now that I think back on our conversation, I realize it may have looked as if that’s all I was concerned about.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No. No, Aubrey.” He released a sigh. “I’m not sitting around counting the days until you leave. I just—”
Shit.
This wasn’t going the way he’d envisioned. He wanted to clear the air so they could start fresh. But in order to move forward, they would have to finally put the past behind them.
“We need to talk,” Sam said again. He stuck his hands in his pockets, shifting from one foot to the other. “We need to talk about what happened, Aubrey. What happened ten years ago.”
“Sam—”
“You owe me that much,” he said.
Her back went ramrod straight. She held up both hands. “Okay, let’s get one thing straight. I don’t owe you anything.”
Sam’s brows shot up. “You don’t think you do?”
“No, I don’t,” Aubrey said. “We weren’t married or engaged when that video came out, Sam. In fact, if I recall correctly, we weren’t even a couple. You’d broken up with me, remember?”
“Yeah, but—”
She cut him off. “So, no, I don’t owe you anything.” Aubrey ran both hands through her straight hair and sighed. “Look, Sam. We agreed to give each other space. I’d hoped that maybe we could…I don’t know…be friends again. But that will never happen.”
“How do you know if you’re not even willing to talk to me?”
“Because I’m not sure it’s worth it to talk to you. The way I see it, I’m only opening myself up for more pain. You’ll never change the way you see me. I realized that Wednesday night.”
“That’s not true,” he said.
“Yes, it is,” she said. “You don’t care about me. You care that I’m here in Maplesville and that people may start talking about how that ‘ho’ Aubrey Laurent made poor Sam Stewart look like an ass. Well, guess what, I’m done worrying about how the people here see me. I’m done worrying about how you see me.
“For the past ten years I’ve carried enough guilt and regret to last me a lifetime, for something I did when I was eighteen years old. Eighteen, Sam! I’m tired of paying for a mistake I made when I was just a stupid kid.”
“I know,” he said, the words barely making it out of his clogged throat. She’d suffered just as much as he had. Maybe more. He’d had everyone’s sympathy. She’d had their scorn.
Even if she did deserve the ridicule that had been heaped upon her, did it mean she had to suffer for the rest of her life?
Sam swallowed past the knot of regret wedged in his throat. “Please, Aubrey, just…please.” He held his hand out. “Let’s talk about this so we can finally put it behind us.”
* * *
As she opened the door wider to let Sam inside, Aubrey questioned the wisdom of it. Why should she just accept that he suddenly wanted to clear the air? What would it accomplish?
But this conversatio
n was a decade in the making, and it was past time they had it. Even if it meant they never talked to each other again.
Aubrey crossed her arms over her stomach and tucked her hands around her waist. The need to protect herself resonated within her. “Why don’t we go out to the backyard?”
He looked around. “Is your sister here?”
She shook her head. “Deanna drove Felicity and some of her castmates to Gauthier to get fitted for their costumes, then she was taking them for pizza.” She lifted her shoulder in a slight shrug. “I’d just rather go outside. It’s a nice night.”
She also wouldn’t feel as confined. Everything within her screamed for space. Sam would never lay a hand on her, but he could hurt her with his words. There was a sense of foreboding swirling through her, an anticipation of the mental bruises this discussion was likely to inflict.
Sam followed her through the den and out the back door, stopping as soon as he stepped onto the teakwood deck.
“Whoa,” he said. “Who would have thought this was hiding back here?”
She’d had the same reaction when she first encountered this backyard. It was an oasis more beautiful than any botanical gardens Aubrey had ever visited, with pockets of brilliantly colored flowers, a rock garden, and a small pond covered with water lilies. Even though Deanna had sent her pictures over the years, Aubrey was still taken aback by its breathtaking beauty.
“This is my brother-in-law’s pet project when he’s not on the road,” Aubrey explained. She pointed to the left corner of the spacious backyard. “The gazebo is his latest masterpiece.”
“Now that you mention it, I can remember a couple of times Charlie talked about grabbing a beer with Paul. I didn’t realize they were talking shop.”
Aubrey descended the deck steps and walked over to the arbor. Its spindly birch branches were covered with a canopy of wisteria and fragrant jasmine. She sat on the stone bench underneath it and flattened her palms on her thighs.
“Okay.” She stared straight ahead at the pebbled path that cut through the yard. “Let’s talk.”
Instead of sitting next to her, Sam remained standing. He stuck one hand in his front pocket and massaged the back of his neck with the other.
“Easier said than done,” he said.
“Let’s start with this. You hate me,” she said.
He didn’t deny it, and the pain that slashed through her made Aubrey want to pack up her bags and hightail it out of Maplesville again as fast as her feet could take her.
“I did hate you,” Sam said. “I hated you for a long time. But I don’t want that anymore.” He inhaled a chest full of air and blew it out. “I need to figure out a way to let go of the hate.”
“I don’t know how to help you do that, Sam. I can’t take back what I did. I tried to apologize and you threw it in my face.” She lifted her hands in entreaty. “What else is there for me to do?”
“Admit you were wrong.”
Her eyes shot up to his face. He stood there unmoving, his chiseled jaw looked hard as stone.
“That’s the one thing you never did. You never admitted you were wrong.”
“You never gave me the chance,” she said. “As soon as that video came out, you washed your hands of me. You’ve refused to talk to me for the past ten years.” She pushed up from the bench and came to stand directly in front of him. “But if that’s what it takes to get us past this, then I’m sorry, Sam, because I’m not going to admit I was wrong.”
Shock widened his brown eyes as his mouth fell open.
“You don’t think you were wrong? You were caught on camera sucking another man’s dick, Aubrey.”
She flinched at his crudeness, but then she straightened her spine. Crossing her arms over her chest, she lifted her chin and asked, “What upset you more, Sam? What I did, or that I was caught doing it on camera?”
“What the hell do you think? Both upset me. I logged into my email to find a dozen people had sent me video of my girlfriend on her knees in front of some slick asshole from L.A., giving him a blowjob like her life depended on it.”
“I wasn’t your girlfriend. You’d broken up with me. After telling me that you loved me.”
“I broke up with you because you couldn’t stop talking about leaving Maplesville,” he said. “Everything was about you moving to California and becoming a star. I asked you—begged you—to come to Tulane with me, but you wouldn’t even consider it.”
“Because that’s what you wanted. That wasn’t my dream.”
“Yet you’re going to school now,” he said, his voice dripping with accusation.
“Things are different now. My ambitions have changed. I have every right to do whatever is necessary to fulfill my dreams, the same way I had every right to do it back when I was eighteen.”
He huffed out a gruff, humorless laugh and shook his head. “So damn selfish. How can you be so damn selfish?”
“How am I being selfish by wanting to do what’s best for me? How is that any different from what you did, Sam?”
“What did I do?” he asked, his voice rising with perplexity. “I went to college.”
“Yes. You did exactly what you always wanted to do. You could have followed me to California. There are colleges there too.”
“It’s not the same.”
“It’s exactly the same.”
“I had a scholarship,” he said. “And Tulane is only an hour away, not clear across the country. And don’t act as if I didn’t give you a choice, Aubrey. I asked you to wait for me. You’re the one who decided I wasn’t worth it.”
“Do you hear how selfish you sound right now? You expected me, at eighteen, to put my life on hold for four years while you went to school. Do you know what that tells me, Sam? It tells me that you didn’t give a damn about what I wanted at all. It was only about what you wanted.
“So, no, I’m not going to say that I was wrong for going after my dream. Maybe I did suck some guy’s dick like my life depended on it, because at that time I thought it did. Music was my life. I was young and naive, and when he told me he could get me a meeting with a big time producer, I did what I thought was necessary to make sure it happened. Would I have done it if I’d known some random jerk was in the corner filming me?” She shook her head. “I can’t answer that, because back then I was so desperate to make it to Hollywood that I was willing to do whatever it took. I thought that’s just how things worked in the music industry.”
He looked at her and the pain in his eyes cut right through her.
“You hurt me,” Sam said. His voice broke over the words. “You hurt me so damn much.”
Aubrey tried to speak, but couldn’t. She averted her gaze, pulling her trembling bottom lip between her teeth.
“Yes, I hurt you,” she finally said. “And I’m sorry for that. I truly am sorry, Sam. I loved you more than I can even put into words. Ten years later and it still takes my breath away when I think about how much you meant to me. But I had to do what I thought was best for me and my dreams.
“And you know what else? You hurt me too,” she said, unable to stop her voice from quivering. Sam’s eyes shot to hers. “I thought you believed in me enough to support me, but when you couldn’t get your way, you decided you were through with me.”
“That’s not—”
“And not just that. How do you think I felt when that video came out? You think you were humiliated? What about me, Sam? It was one of the lowest points of my life, and the person I loved the most, the person I thought I could count on, wouldn’t have anything to do with me.”
Aubrey held up a hand. “You know what? It no longer matters. It’s in the past. And I’m done apologizing for something that happened so long ago. I’m a different person now. And I’m not asking for your forgiveness,” she said. “All I’m asking for is acceptance. Accept what I did. Understand why I did it. Accept that I was young and naive and just doing what I thought I had to do. Believe me, Sam, after ten years in this business, I’ve
seen people do a whole lot worse than giving a guy a blowjob at a party.”
That pained look flashed in his eyes again. He looked over at the pond, then after several moments passed, returned his gaze to her.
“Just tell me one thing, Aubrey. Was that as far as it went?”
She studied his face for a moment before she asked, “Does it matter? Would that be even worse in your eyes?” He remained silent. “Be honest, Sam. After all this time, what would it change if I told you that I slept with that guy from the video?”
He ran both hands down his face. “Nothing,” Sam said.
“That’s right. It wouldn’t change a thing,” Aubrey said. “But, for the record, I didn’t. What you saw on that video—what everybody saw—was as far as it went.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. Tension saturated the thick, humid night air as seconds ticked by with agonizing slowness, chirping cicadas and the gurgle of the artificial waterfall providing the only sounds in the backyard.
Sam released a heavy breath before he asked, “Did you at least get to meet with the producer?”
For a moment Aubrey was too startled to speak. She cleared her throat before answering. “Actually, I did,” she said. “I sang on two commercials, one for soap and another for car insurance. They were my first paid singing gigs.”
One corner of his mouth lifted in a slight smile. “I’ll bet you had the soap flying off the shelves.”
And just like that, the tension broke.
Aubrey choked on a half-laugh, half-sob. “It was really horrible soap,” she said. “It smelled like cough medicine.”
Sam closed the distance between them and trailed the backs of his fingers down the side of her face. Her skin shivered where he touched.
“I’m sorry for hurting you,” he said softly. “And for not believing in your dreams the way I should have.” He brushed his thumb along her jaw. “I’m sorry for giving you an unfair ultimatum. You had just as much right to hate me these past ten years.”
Any Time You Need Me Page 6
