by Tracey Ward
I hope he can’t see how bad they’re trembling.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
COLT
November 29th
Culver City, CA
Pictures of Lilly and me showed up on TMZ.com this morning.
Colt Avery has a new filly.
Fucking stupid.
The picture is from an incident we had with a ‘razzi at the bakery yesterday. Lilly had the backdoor propped open to let in some cool air after the ovens heated the place up and the guy burst in with his camera raised. He got a couple shots of Lilly and I rolling dough together before I threw him out. I locked the door tightly behind him.
Lilly smiled like it didn’t matter but she was different all morning. Tense. Jumpy. I know it’s because of all of the attention. It’s messing with her day to day life and I hate that shit so much. I wish there was a way I could make it stop, but I know I can’t. All we can do is wait it out and hope it dies down soon.
She’s still off this afternoon. She saw the picture online. She said there was another on Yahoo!’s newsfeed. One of us outside the bakery trying to make our way in. I didn’t look at it. It used to be I’d look at all of the pictures popping up of me, proud of the attention, but I’m not feeling it today and that has everything to do with Lilly.
It’s twelve twenty-two when I ask her, “Are you ready to go your parents’?”
She glances up from the donuts she’s filling with lemon jelly. “Almost.”
“We’re running late.”
She chuckles lightly. “Sloane told me you’re normally late to everything.”
“Most of the time, yeah.”
“You’re always early getting here in the morning.”
“That’s ‘cause I’ve got something to be excited about.”
I’m relieved when she looks up to smile at me. “Apple fritters?”
“Nah,” I chuckle. “Tiramisu.”
She lowers her head quickly. “How are you liking it so far?”
“It’s good. It’s the best dessert I’ve ever had.”
“It’s tedious, right?”
“It’s worth it.”
She brushes her hair away with the back of her hand, picking up another donut and waving it vaguely at me. “Not craving one of these?”
“Nope.”
“They’re good.”
I step behind her to wrap my arms around her waist, kissing her neck lightly. “Not as good as this,” I mumble.
She’s tense under my lips. She doesn’t melt into me the way she normally does. Her hands never stop working.
Ten minutes later she hands the shop off to John and Rona before following me outside to my car. There are only three ‘razzis today and they’re staying across the street. I recognize the motorcycle immediately. We’re going to be followed.
I wait until we’re pulling out of the parking lot to mention it to Lilly. She immediately jerks around in her seat to look back at him.
“Fucking again?” she murmurs. “Seriously, when are they going to stop?”
“It’s only been a couple of days. It’ll die down soon.”
“Until when? Your next game? You guys are headed for the Super Bowl. It’s going to get worse then, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it will,” I admit reluctantly. “But it’ll die down in the off season. We’ll lay low. No more bars, no clubs. I promise, they’ll get bored. Maybe we’ll get lucky and some actress will get pregnant. Take the heat off us.”
“They should be following Andreas. His love life is way more dramatic than ours.”
“They are following him. His ex-wife too.”
“Did she have the baby?” Lilly asks, her voice softening. She’s sitting forward in her seat again, her cell phone spinning methodically in her hand.
“Yeah. She had a boy.”
“Are they okay?”
“They’re both fine.”
“How’s Andreas doing?”
I shake my head, my lips pressed into a straight line. “I don’t know. Not good. Tyus says he went over there to visit him at his hotel and the blinds are drawn and it reeks of cigarettes. He’s barely going outside.”
Lilly winces. “He’s really depressed, isn’t he?”
“It’s ugly. We agreed it’s time to get him some help.”
“Like a therapist?”
“Yeah. He can’t keep going like this and we don’t how to help him.”
“That’s good that you’re doing that.”
“I feel like a fucking snitch, but I’d rather feel guilty for sending the docs after him than guilty for not helping him in time.”
Lilly nods sadly, digesting that heavy truth in silence. She’s already down and I wish we hadn’t talked about this. It feels like it’s making everything worse.
Her phone rings in her hands. She answers it immediately, like she was waiting for it. “Hi, Mom.”
I drive in silence as she listens, but I can feel her tensing. Tightening the air in the car until it’s difficult to breathe.
“What? How many?... Okay. Okay, yeah… No, we’ll turn around. We’ll go home… No, it’s not worth it. We’ll stay away… Tell Dad and Michael I’m sorry… I don’t know… Yeah, I’ll tell him… Love you too. Bye.”
Lilly is shaking her head as she hangs up. “Turn around. Take us back to the bakery.”
“What happened? Is it your dad?”
“It’s the fucking paparazzi,” she spits out angrily. “They’re there. They must have gotten the address somehow. There’s a guy there waiting on the sidewalk with a camera.”
“Just one?”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s just one. It’s one too many. Turn the car around.”
“There’s nowhere to turn around right here,” I argue. “Give me a minute.”
Lilly swears again, pressing her hand to her eyes. “This was supposed to stay private. My dad was private. You promised me.”
“It is private,” I insist. “They don’t know shit about your dad, other than you have one.”
“He doesn’t need camera crews hovering around the house.”
“It’s one guy.”
“And tomorrow it’ll be six if you go there. You’re a magnet for them. Turn the car around.”
“Jesus, Lilly, I said I will. Calm down.”
“Why do people tell other people to calm down?” she growls. “It never works.”
“Yeah, I see that,” I mumble under my breath.
She glares out the window, whispering, “I can’t believe this.”
“You’re overreacting. It’s not that bad. We won’t go anywhere near their house and they’ll stop camping outside.”
“So I have to stop seeing my family to keep them safe from this?” she asks bitingly.
I scoff. “Keep them safe from what? Having their picture taken?”
“What if they get a picture of my dad? What then?”
“What do you think he’s gonna do? Wander outside naked?” I demand, my mouth seconds ahead of my brain. I realize my mistake the second I say it.
“You know what I’m afraid will happen again,” she growls low and angry. “His brain is disintegrating. No one knows what he might do and the last thing any of us needs is to have it show up on fucking ET.com!”
I frown. “Why are you yelling at me?”
“Because I’m freaking out,” she answers, her voice dropping drastically. She’s instantly deflated, all of her fire burned out in a wild flash, leaving nothing but molten coals behind. “Yesterday they were outside the bakery. Today it’s my parents’ house. What happens tomorrow? They make the connection between Michael and Cassie and that whole nightmare is brought up again? This is too much. It’s gotten too close to my family. My dad… he’s a deal breaker for me.”
My hands sweat against the leather on my steering wheel. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” she whispers.
“Lilly, you’ve gotta give me a chance to figure this all out. I’ve never done a r
elationship like this before. The fame has never been a problem, but I’m working on it.”
I feel her eyes on me. She looks at me for a long time. Just looking. No words, no expression. She’s watching me and I’m left wondering what she’s thinking. Maybe she’s not thinking anything at all. Maybe she’s waiting, like there’s something else I’m supposed to do to make this right, but fuck me if I know what it is.
“It’s not just today. It’s everything. I’m never going to like that you’re on billboards in your underwear or on TV in an ice cream cone,” she admits reluctantly. “So much of you is out there for everyone to see and do with as they please, I wonder what would be left for me. I’m not saying I want all of you, but really, Colt, you’re so out there all the time, what do you honestly have left for anyone else? What’s left for you to call your own?”
“Everything that I put out there, that’s not me.”
“It sure looks like you.”
I glance at her, my brows pinched tightly. “You’re talking about my body. My face. You know that’s not all of me. You know me, Lilly. You know there’s more to me than that.”
“I know. And I l… I like that part of you so much, but I don’t know if I can deal with everything else.”
I pull up slowly in front of the bakery. The motorcycle pulls in close behind me.
I put the car in park, my hands still on the wheel. My eyes unfocused out the windshield. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say. I can’t control them. I can’t stop them. All I can tell you is that it might get better after a while.”
Lilly nods slowly. “I know. And I think if it was just me that it affected I could handle it, but I can’t have it around my dad. Him or my mom. She’s going through enough right now. She doesn’t need her life under a microscope.”
I swallow thickly. “So where does that leave us?”
“I think I need to figure out what I can handle and what I can’t. Until then, I think it’ll be easier for both of us if we’re not anywhere.”
“You mean if we’re not anything,” I clarify, my voice as tight as my hands going white on the wheel.
“Yeah,” she says faintly, opening the car door. “That’s what I mean.”
I watch Lilly leave. I sit there parked on the dirty street with needles in the backs of my eyes, and I watch her walk away. I watch the distance grow between us as the reality sinks in, deeper and deeper until the pain in my chest grows inside my body, leaching into my bones, and I’m aching from head to toe.
I don’t take losing well. I never could.
And I just lost more than I ever had.
CHAPTER THIRTY
LILLY
December 5th
The Mad Batter
Los Angeles, CA
Christmas is everywhere. It started showing up the day after I walked away from Colt. It was little things at first. Music in the stores. Decorations in windows. But now that we’re full on in December the city is bursting with cheer. Commercials are all set in snowy scenes where people meet in glowing houses wearing warm sweaters and carrying piles of packages. We’ve started serving hot apple cider. The store smells like cinnamon.
I love this time of year, but I haven’t been able to get into the spirit.
I haven’t been able to think straight since I last spoke to him.
I can’t stop to think about Colt or his eyes or his arms. His laugh. That smile of his that makes me angry and excited. Happy in a weird way that makes my head hurt. I keep waiting for a tabloid to show up with him on the cover kissing another girl. Giving her his time. His smile. It’s a hit I’m not sure I can take.
He hasn’t called and that sucks, but I haven’t called him either. I told him I need to figure out what I can handle and he’s giving me time and space to do that, but how the hell do I decide? How do I measure how much hurt I can stomach by being with him when it aches this badly being without him?
Even the paparazzi have disappeared. They followed him away, just like he said they would.
It’s been a month since I met him, but it feels impossibly longer. Probably because of that night we stayed up together, a single evening that felt like days. Or maybe it’s because we saw each other here at the bakery almost every day after. It feels sad coming in without him there waiting for me. I miss the smug look on his face and the sugary coffee warming his hands. The one that I could taste on his lips when he’d kiss me, long and deep. Exhaustively. Or when his lips would graze the top of my head, gentle and fleeting. Barely there but burning inside me.
Almost every night he asked me to come to his apartment, to stay with him, and every time I said no. Not yet. I don’t know what I was waiting for. Maybe this; the end. I must have seen it coming. I must have known it would go down this way, and by not having sex with him I was protecting myself. I was holding onto a ripcord, readying myself for the fall that I knew was coming.
“Or you were giving yourself an easy out,” Rona suggests starkly.
I pause with my hands pushed inside a big ball of dough. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means you gave yourself an easy way out,” she repeats plainly. “You always assumed it was going to end and by not having sex with him you were keeping yourself distanced. You assumed it would hurt less when he left if you’d never gone all in.”
“That’s… it’s not why I didn’t do—“
“I mean, seriously, why’d you break up with him? Because he’s famous and people want pictures of you with him? Of course they do! He’s Colt Avery. You knew that going into it, and be real, was it so awful that you really couldn’t handle it?”
“No,” I grind out, punching the dough roughly. “But it’s not about me. It’s about my dad and Michael. They don’t need that kind of attention.”
“Oh, come on. It was one time and they didn’t get a glimpse of either of them. And even if they had, what is that hurting? Your dad is a silver fox. The internet would love him.”
“What the fuck?” I demand.
Rona stares at me hard. “I will not apologize for finding your dad attractive.”
“Dude.”
“Or your brother.”
“Dude!”
“You knew something like Sunday was bound to happen at some point, and I think you were kind of hoping it would because it gave you a reason to bail before he could.”
I shake my head stubbornly, my throat closing tight around her words. They’re too tough to swallow. Too true to digest right now. “You’re wrong.”
“I’m not. You never fully committed, and you know it. You went into that with him assuming it was temporary.”
“So did he. He doesn’t do long term.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Pretty sure,” I laugh. I rip the dough up, folding it in half to knead it again. “A guy like that—“
“That’s your problem. You’ve been dating the man but you’re fearing the image. They aren’t the same person, Lilly. He’s all soft serve and sex in his commercials, but when he’s with you he’s different. He’s a person. And he’s into you. Like really into you.”
“I know that.”
“And you’re into him too. I think you’d be in love with him if you’d let yourself.”
“Don’t you think I want to be?!” I demand sharply, the words bursting out of me. The truth exploding in my face. “He’s fucking amazing! And not because he’s Colt Avery, but because he’s him. He’s sweet and fun, and I’m better when I’m with him.”
“I know,” Rona replies softly. “I can see it and it’s been awesome having you back. Hearing you laugh and seeing you smile again. You’re singing again too.”
“What? No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are,” John says from the alley.
I jump, turning to catch his black clad shoulder disappear from view. “Quit eavesdropping!” I shout after him.
He doesn’t respond. I don’t think he can hear us anymore.
“See?” Rona decl
ares triumphantly. “Even John notices it. You’re singing to yourself when you’re working. You do it all the time. The same way you used to when we first started working here, and Colt did that. He brought that back out of you. I’m a little in love with him for that.”
“Well, teach me how because I can’t make that leap. I can’t take that last step into loving him and it’s all her fault.”
“Whose?”
“Cassie’s,” I snap. “Ever since she left Michael high and dry I’m afraid to let anyone hurt me like that. And Colt could definitely do what she did. He could just disappear into the fame one day, and he won’t even remember my name.”
“The way your dad doesn’t?”
I feel like she hit me. Like my best and oldest friend slapped me across the face. Blood rises to my cheeks in response to the blow, my jaw and heart dropping to the floor. Her words, her hit, they hurt so hard I can barely breathe.
“You’re not afraid of Colt leaving you,” Rona tells me gently, her eyes shining sorrowfully. “You’re not afraid of your dad being in the spotlight. You’re afraid of loving someone and having them forget you again. That’s why you’re running.”
I breathe out in a rush, my body doubling over. I fall with my palms flat against the cold steel of the island, the fight pouring out of me on hot tears that rush down my cheeks.
Rona is there in a flash, her arms going around me. I lean into her. I lean on her, and I try to breathe. I try to inhale, to calm, but I can’t. I’m crying silently, an extended sob that’d be a wail of agony if I had the strength.
“It’s okay to be scared,” Rona whispers soothingly. “I would be too if I were you. But you’re strong enough to handle it, and he’s worth it, Lilly. You both are. He loves you. I know he does. And you’ll love him too if you let yourself. And you’ll be better for it.”
“I can’t,” I moan, not even sure what it means. “I can’t. I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
I hiccup hard, so hard my throat closes and I feel like I’ll be sick. “I miss him. I miss him so much.”
