The Truth About Love

by Sheila Athens

  And he hated every fucking minute of it.

  He felt like such a fraud. Everyone wanted to know the football star. They had no idea how he’d grown up. No idea who he was. No idea how this whole scene made him feel like such an imposter.

  “Hey, hey. Senator Byers.” A white-haired gentleman touched the elbow of his conversation partner, a signal to excuse himself to greet the newly arrived guests. As the man approached, his youthful face seemed incongruent with the color of his hair. Landon guessed him to be in his midforties. Not as old as he’d expected the guy to be, given his net worth and the amount of money he donated to the senator’s campaign each year.

  “Anton.” The senator smiled as he shook the man’s hand. “So wonderful of you to have us here.”

  “You and my fifty closest friends,” he said, sweeping his arm to indicate the others in the room.

  The senator laughed.

  “And this guy”—Anton Winston turned to Landon—“is the staffer I wanted to meet.” He held out his hand to Landon. “Happy you could make the trip.”

  Landon hoped his smile wasn’t too stiff as he shook the man’s hand. “Thank you for having me.” Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Scott Meredith preening. It had been Scott’s idea to bring Landon on to the senator’s staff after meeting him at some booster event. And every time Landon’s celebrity gained them points with the campaign donors, Scott beamed like a proud father.

  “I need to find Olivia. She’s been dying to meet you.” Anton looked around the room, which was as long as a kid-size basketball court and towered as high as a gym. Three distinct seating areas, each with two cream-colored couches facing each other, divided the guests into elegant clusters. Others milled around fully stocked bars at each end of the room. “Oh, here she is,” he said as a blonde woman stepped into the room. He pecked her cheek as she joined their group. “My wife, Olivia.”

  “Nice to meet you, ma’am,” Landon said as he offered his hand.

  The statuesque woman clasped his hand in both of hers. Her perfectly tanned skin crinkled into crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes as a smile spread across her face. “Landon Vista.” Her diamond necklace glinted in the fading light. “The ladies from the club can’t wait to meet you.”

  She whisked him away on her arm without stopping to greet the senator or anyone else in his party. Landon made the circuit of the room with her as she floated from one seating area to the other, introducing him to this person and that: the Babcocks, who wintered in Naples, but who were here in the summer because they were having some work done on their house; the Michaelsons, whose son had just finished his first year at Harvard Law; and the Drapers, who . . . Landon couldn’t remember anything about them. They had blended into a sea of faces. A sea of people he didn’t want to know and wouldn’t remember. The only ones who caught his eye were a couple of college-age girls who leaned against the bar at the other end of the room. They were the only ones here who were even close to his age, but Olivia Winston steered him away from them.

  Forty-five minutes later, he made his escape from the hostess and ducked into what looked like the kitchen. Maybe he could pretend he was looking for a bottle of water when what he really needed was a quiet spot to hide for a few minutes.

  “Did you see Landon Vista?” a girl’s voice said from around the corner before he could even rest his hips against the granite countertop. He stilled. What looked like the beginning of a breakfast nook wrapped around that corner of the kitchen.

  “There aren’t any guys like that at my college,” another female voice said.

  “Because you don’t go to a real college.”

  “Too bad your parents are here. Otherwise, you could take him upstairs and . . . entertain him a bit.”

  “Mom would die.”

  “Only because she wants to sleep with him, too.”

  A potato chip bag was ripped open around the corner, where the voices were coming from. “She’s like a hundred and four years old.”

  “That didn’t keep her from sashaying around the living room with him on her arm.”

  “She told me to stay away from him.”

  He held his breath as irritation and curiosity warred inside him.

  “Why?”

  “His family doesn’t have money.” A potato chip crunched. “I guess she thought I’d be slumming it.”

  His jaw tightened.

  “Do you care?” the other female voice asked. “I mean, if all his body parts are as big as the ones you can see . . . I’d slum it once or twice just to see what it felt like.”

  “Oh, I’d definitely do him. I just wouldn’t let my parents know.”

  The screech of a chair on the marble floor caught Landon by surprise. He quickly turned and opened a cabinet door as one of the two college-age girls he’d seen before rounded the corner.

  Damn.

  Plates.

  “Ummm. I’m looking for a glass for some water?” he said. He hoped his face wasn’t as red with anger as the blush was that crept up the girl’s neck.

  “Landon Vista?”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “Did you . . .” She turned and pointed in the direction from which she’d come.

  “Did I what?” Clearly, her friend wasn’t coming to her rescue.

  “How long have you been standing here?”

  He shrugged. “I just walked in. I’m looking for a glass—”

  Her shoulders relaxed. “They’re over here.” She crossed to the other side of the kitchen, opened one of the dark wooden cabinets, and got out a glass. “Ice and water in the door of the fridge. Can I get you some?”

  He studied her face. Wanted to make her nervous. To maybe make her twitch a little. He’d always known he was out of his element at events like this, but he’d never had it ground into his face like that.

  Slumming it.

  Because Mama had been poor and his dad was a drunk. Because his parents didn’t have the kind of money to build a house like this one.

  He slowly reached out and took the glass from her hand. “I can get it.”

  “My parents were really excited when they heard you were coming.”

  “So this is your house?” He hated people who thought they were better than everyone else because they had money.

  She nodded.

  He filled his glass at the refrigerator and guzzled it down, knowing she was watching him the entire time. When he’d finished, he set his glass in the sink and turned to her. “I’d better get going.” He jabbed a thumb toward the living room. “I wouldn’t want your parents to think I’m slumming it in the kitchen.”

  Her eyebrows shot up and her mouth fell open. From around the corner, he heard a gasp.

  Served them right.

  Rich little bitches.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Gina stood on one side of the tiny conference room in the administrative area of the prison. She felt like a latecomer, an intruder to the scene that was about to unfold. While Gina had been in her first two semesters at law school, Suzanne had fought to have Buford Monroe’s conviction overturned. DNA tests hadn’t been available at the time of his trial, but now proved that he hadn’t committed the murder he’d been convicted of years earlier.

  Her boss held the leathery hand of Ella Monroe, Buford’s mother. The African American woman wore what must have been her best clothes—a flowered housedress and beat-up sneakers with laces so white they had to have been put in that morning.

  “I can’t believe this is finally happening.” Ella’s voice quavered. Her coarse, white hair swept back from her caramel-colored skin. The eagerness in her eyes seemed out of place in a face etched with time, hard work, and worry.

  Suzanne patted the woman’s hand and smiled. “I’ll bet he’ll want some of your good home cooking tonight.”

  “Twenty-one
years,” Ella said. The length of time her son had been in jail for a crime he hadn’t committed.

  Suzanne nodded. Her voice was grim. “Way too long.”

  Ella beamed. “But now he’s coming home. Thank the Lord, he’s coming home.”

  The three of them—Gina, Suzanne, and Ella—jumped like nervous rabbits when someone knocked on the conference room door.

  Suzanne took a deep breath. “You ready?” she said to Ella.

  The woman nodded.

  Suzanne walked to the door and opened it, then stood aside as Buford rushed toward Ella, tugging her into a long, tight embrace. Gina looked away, hoping to hide her tears, thinking at that moment that nothing could be more unfair than keeping a parent from their child. Nothing she’d learned in law school—theories and definitions and precedence—could have prepared her for this moment. For the raw truth of how much a mother loves her son.

  “This makes it all worthwhile,” Gina whispered to her boss.

  Suzanne nodded and dabbed her eyes with a tissue.

  Finally, Ella and Buford parted. The big man turned toward Suzanne and took her hand in his, covering it with both of his. “Thank you.” Tears trailed down his face. “I have my life back. Thank you.”

  Gina looked around Buford toward Ella, who smiled with trembling lips and nodded slowly to her, a silent acknowledgment of the importance of this event.

  “Thank you, too.” Buford moved toward Gina, embracing her hand in both of his, though they’d never met. “For everything you’ve done.”

  Gina smiled. She wasn’t going to disagree with anything he said. Not on a day like today. Not when his face showed so much appreciation for work she’d never done.

  “Would you like a few minutes with your mother before you go outside?” Suzanne asked. “The media’s pretty thick out there.”

  “Five or ten? Then we’ll walk out”—Buford looked toward Ella—“together?”

  Ella nodded as tears streamed down her face.

  Gina followed her boss into the hallway and waited. She leaned against the wall made of concrete blocks and wondered what was going on inside the conference room. Wondered what a guy said to the mother he hadn’t hugged in twenty-one years. How much time it would take for them to get to know each other again. What kind of grief a mother must endure when her eighteen-year-old son is sent to prison. What it does to a mother and child who are torn apart.

  What it must have done to Landon.

  She pushed the thought aside, wanting to focus on the happiness of the day rather than remember the pain in Landon’s eyes when they’d talked about his mother’s murder. His eyes had haunted her since that first volleyball game—alternately making her want to forget she’d ever met him and wanting to learn more about him.

  The click of the conference room door across the hall jarred her from her thoughts. Buford and Ella stepped into the hallway. The bevy of men who’d waited inside the warden’s glass-walled office down the hall stepped out to introduce themselves to Buford—prison officials, a couple of state representatives, the state’s attorney.

  Then they all made their way to the front gate of the prison. To the flashing lights of cameras and TV crews jostling to get a shot of the man who’d wasted away for years, but was now thrust into the spotlight, at least for a day or two.

  Gina stood back, watching as Buford and Ella waded through the crowd of reporters, mumbling answers and looking overwhelmed. Finally, they ducked their heads and got into a car that waited nearby to whisk them away.

  “Not a bad day of work, huh?” Suzanne beamed at Gina.

  “Beats sitting in class at law school, that’s for sure.” This was the kind of thing she’d dreamed about—sticking up for the people everyone else had forgotten. Struggling for those who had no one else to turn to.

  “See you Friday,” Suzanne said as she opened the door of her ancient Audi. “And call me tomorrow if you need me.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Gina called, proud that her boss trusted her to take care of things at work tomorrow while Suzanne visited an elderly aunt who lived in a town near the prison. She watched as Suzanne pulled out of the parking lot, off toward a well-deserved couple of days off.

  Suddenly, a tiny woman in a bright red pantsuit appeared from behind an SUV parked nearby. She held a microphone in her hand. A man with a camera on his shoulder followed her. It took Gina a second to recognize Donna Crocker from the local news station. On air, the woman looked like a tall, svelte model. In person, she was the height of a middle schooler.

  The light on the camera turned from red to green.

  “Excuse me, Ms. Blanchard?” Donna Crocker’s familiar voice left Gina no doubt as to who she was.

  She instinctively glanced around for an escape, but the only other people in the parking lot were other reporters, packing their gear into news vans about a football field’s length away.

  “Are you in a romantic relationship with Landon Vista?” Donna Crocker shoved the microphone toward Gina’s face.

  Gina froze. The woman was bringing Landon into this? Today was supposed to be about Buford Monroe. She glanced at the camera with its green light aimed right at her. Anything she did—any look of surprise or feigned innocence—could appear on tonight’s Tallahassee newscast. She squared her shoulders, trying to convey as much confidence as possible. “No.” She congratulated herself for the simple response. Single-syllable words didn’t make for good sound bites.

  Donna Crocker pulled the microphone back toward herself to speak into it. “A reliable source tells us the two of you had a romantic encounter on the patio of a local tavern a couple of weeks ago.”

  Oh, God.

  Gina glanced in the direction Suzanne’s car had gone. A rush of desperation flooded her. She was in this by herself. She’d seen people in this situation on the news before—disgraced politicians and crooked businessmen—but never a twenty-two-year-old in her first weeks of an internship. What would Suzanne think? Would she lose her job? Get sent back to law school with an incomplete internship?

  She hesitated. She was a smart woman. She knew they were after a sensational news story and she would do her best not to give it to them. She cocked her chin and spoke into the microphone jammed near her chin. “Today was a great day for Buford Monroe and his family.”

  “So you’re not denying that you and Landon Vista know each other?”

  “I’m saying today is about Buford Monroe reuniting with his family. About justice being served.” Maybe if she refused to answer the questions, the tape they were filming would be unusable for the nightly news.

  “How does Landon feel about your employer trying to get Cyrus Alexander out of jail?”

  “The only case I’m focused on today is Buford Monroe.”

  “Given Landon Vista’s past, he’s perfect for Senator Byers’s office. Aren’t you concerned that a relationship with someone at Morgan’s Ladder will hurt his career there?”

  Gina glared at the newswoman. Landon was so much more than a former football star whose mother had been murdered. “He doesn’t even like his role in the senator’s office. He doesn’t like . . . people like you . . . thinking all he is . . . you all make him out to be”—her mind searched for the right words—“some poster child for tougher sentencing laws. He’s so much more than that. He’s . . .” God, what was she doing? Her anger had hijacked her body and overtaken her brain. She needed to shut up. She took a deep breath. “I have to go.” She beeped the locks on her SUV.

  Donna Crocker had a look in her eyes like she was going in for the kill. “So you know more about Landon Vista than you’d initially let on.” She shoved the microphone into Gina’s face again.

  Gina ducked inside her car, wishing the slamming of the door could block out that evil green light on the front of the camera. She’d seen the news when other people were filmed getting into their cars and dr
iving off. They were always the guilty parties. The disgraced politicians and racketeers. The child molesters. The villains.

  She cranked the key and turned to look for cars behind her as she backed from her parking space. Outside her window, the bright green light of the camera still aimed at her like a sniper’s scope. Her heart pounded. Her sweaty palms slid slickly across the fake leather steering wheel. Donna Crocker stepped aside as the SUV jerked backward.

  Gina yanked the gear shift into drive and barreled from the parking lot as quickly as she dared. Only when she’d pulled onto the road in the direction Suzanne had gone did she let her body fall back against the seat. Snippets of the interaction with the news crew raced through her mind like disjointed still photos strewn across a darkroom floor.

  Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.

  The awfulness of how she might look on the news paralyzed her.

  What would Suzanne think of this unplanned interview?

  What would Landon think?

  She dug her phone out of her briefcase. Her thumb shook as she scrolled through her recently called numbers, looking for Suzanne’s cell number.

  Come on. Pick up.

  Finally, the line connected. “This is Suzanne.”

  She swallowed. “Hey, it’s Gina. I’ve got to tell you something.”

  “Go on.” Suzanne’s voice was wary.

  “Donna Crocker from Channel Four approached me in the parking lot. She had a cameraman.” The words rushed out of her mouth, almost incoherent, even to her. “I . . . I tried to handle it as best I could.”

  “Calm down. I’m sure you did fine.”

  “I kept focusing the conversation back on Buford. I think I did okay on that part.”

  “What else did she want to talk about?”

  Gina took a deep breath. “She asked whether or not I was in a relationship with Landon Vista.” She couldn’t bring herself to tell her boss about the first night she’d met him at the bar. The night Donna Crocker had asked about. As much as they’d connected with each other since then, describing their actions that night to someone else would sound . . . sleazy.