I drive down the road that leads out of town. I wonder what Anna-Marie is doing now—if she’s going to stay there for the last couple days of her trip, or if she’ll be doing what I’m doing and get the hell out of Wyoming.
I have my basement back in LA. I have Ben, and my family, and my job. But the idea of returning to the life I used to love fully aware of what I’m missing but with no hope of regaining it—
It’s painful enough that by the time I reach the next town over, I’m crying.
I’m not sure I’m ever going to stop.
Twenty-five
Anna-Marie
For several moments I just stand there, staring after Josh, replaying those words in my head over and over and hoping eventually they’ll lose all meaning: You are replaceable.
They don’t. Each time is just as sharp, just as cutting as the first.
All the fury and pain I unleashed on Josh is still there, still waiting to be dished out to someone far more deserving of it. And I’m no goddamn martyr, able to just stand around suffering in silence. I stalk back inside the house, past Aunt Patrice who is standing on the porch wringing her hands. Past Lily, who, for once, doesn’t seem to be exulting in my pain, but instead just stares down at her bare feet. Past Cherstie, who watches me with wide, sad eyes, and stutters out a “Oh, Anna-Marie, I’m so so sorry, I’m . . .” and trails off when I don’t look ready to collapse into her arms for a hug.
It’s not me she should feel sorry for. It’s Tanya and Byron and Ginnie. It’s stepmoms and stepsiblings of days past. It’s my mom.
It’s Josh, who I should never have let into the emotional minefield of all this in the first place, no matter how much he fought to be there. I knew better. We were only ever going to hurt each other.
And damn, does it hurt.
I walk into the house, catching sight of Uncle Joe in the kitchen, drinking the coffee I made out of the mug I had poured for Josh. But I storm right past and up the stairs, all my fury aimed for the closed bedroom door at the end of the hallway.
I don’t bother knocking on my dad’s door. I just fling it open and charge in.
“Dad, how could you—” My torrent of righteous anger is cut off with a strangled yelp as I trip over a big pile of fur positioned right inside the bedroom, landing in a less-than graceful heap beside said pile of fur. Who only stirs enough to lick my ankle. “Dammit, Buckley!”
Dad frowns from where he’s sitting at the very edge of the bed. “Anna-Marie, pumpkin, are you—”
“No,” I say, brushing off my dad’s attempt to help me up. I push myself off the floor and stand up, and shit, one of the gold straps on my Ferragamo sandals has broken. And honestly, I barely even care, which is a real sign of how upset I am. “No, I’m not okay, Dad. I’m not. But you know who’s really not okay? Tanya! Tanya is not okay!”
Maybe I should have planned this tirade out a little better. God, my parents got divorced when I was ten, so I’ve had like fourteen years to do so. But it’s too late now.
“Pumpkin—”
“No! Don’t use that ‘calm down’ voice with me! You cheated on her, didn’t you? Of course you did, because you always do. Because no one is ever good enough for you, no one is enough—and why is that? Why the hell is that?”
My dad’s expression, which was originally surprised and concerned, becomes hard. His blue eyes look gray in this light, like chips of granite. “It’s complicated.”
“It’s complicated? Keeping your penis in check is complicated?”
“Don’t you dare talk to me like that, Anna-Marie,” he growls. “What happened between Tanya and me is none of your business.”
I gape. “None of my business? She was going to be my stepmom! I . . . I liked her! And you have to go and hurt her, and I can’t—I can’t have a normal relationship because all I know is what happens to women who date you!” My voice breaks, and I can still see Josh standing there, see the pain on his face, the hurt I gave him before he hurt me right back.
You are replaceable.
My dad’s face is flushed, his hands balled into fists. Not that I think he would ever physically hurt me, but when he stands up, I take an instinctive step back. My dad doesn’t get angry often, but when he does, it’s like a force all its own.
And it has very rarely ever been directed at me.
“I am your father,” he says. “You have no right to come in here and judge me. I have taken care of you your whole life.I made sure you had everything you ever wanted, even when I had to work extra hours to pay for it. You wanted horse-riding lessons? Vocal coaching? Done. Anything. You wanted to leave the state and go to Los Angeles and be an actress? Fine. I made sure you had the money to get an apartment, to afford headshots and clothes and new shoes and whatever the hell else you needed for auditions. I have loved you and supported you and cheered you on through everything. Because I am a good father. What else do you want from me, Anna-Marie?”
I blink, the fury settling into a fiery pit in my gut, simmering there. He’s right. He has been a good father. But maybe that’s not enough.
Maybe it never was.
“I want you to be a good man,” I say. Then I turn and leave the room, limping slightly from the broken sandal. I make it to my room, and I shut the door.
And that’s when I finally let myself break down and cry.
It’s not the crying I do on Southern Heat—a few escaped tremulous tears, a faint shudder, a delicate sniffle, all designed for maximum on-camera sympathy and attractiveness.
No, this is real, honest-to-god ugly crying, full of wracking sobs and dripping snot and enough blotchy redness that my makeup artist would quit on the spot for easier work, like brain surgery. It’s the kind of crying that physically hurts. And yet it’s nothing compared to the pain I feel on the inside. How gutted I am, and how I know that nothing is ever going to be completely right again.
I lost Josh. No, I pushed him away with both hands. And maybe I’m sparing myself even greater pain later by doing so, but god, it hurts now. And I don’t think it’s going to stop hurting any time soon, not when I have to meet with him as my agent, and sure as hell not when I see him on the gossip sites with his arm around my replacement. Looking at her like he once looked at me.
Loving her like he once loved me.
I’m crying so hard I miss the first tentative knocks on my door. It’s not until Patrice starts calling, “Anna-Marie, honey, you have a phone call. Anna-Marie, the phone,” that I blink blearily and remember there’s a world outside this miserable bedroom.
I fumble around for my phone before remembering that it’s lying in pieces in a field, possibly under a sleeping moose’s ass.
I manage to drag my achy body to the door and open it to see Patrice holding out the old cordless house phone, a big brick of plastic I’m surprised my dad still owns. Patrice’s brow furrows when she sees me.
“Oh, honey, you look . . .” She trails off, the English language clearly failing her when it comes to a word that can adequately describe the awfulness of my appearance. She purses her lips. “Maybe Cherstie has some makeup that can help.”
I yank the phone from her hand and close the door in her face.
“Hello,” I mumble into the phone.
It’s Gabby. I can tell before she even speaks, by the little heartbroken sound she makes. “I heard what happened, Anna,” she says. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
“How do you—” A sudden spike of panic stops me. Was someone filming us? Is my awful breakup on the internet now too?
“Ben called,” she says, and I let out a breath of relief.
Of course. Ben. Josh called Ben, probably to tell him how horrible I am and how he wishes he never met me.
But even in my grief, that doesn’t feel totally right. Josh might wish that, but I can’t picture him badmouthing me like that, eve
n to Ben. He probably won’t even badmouth me to his next girlfriend. Because I’m his client, and he’s professional.
And more than that, he’s just a deeply good person.
Something tickles my brain about that, but Gabby is talking again, and I force myself to pay attention. “—and I found your dad’s number online, and oh my god, Anna, I’m so glad I got a hold of you.”
“Me too,” I say with a sniffle that is nowhere in the range of “delicate.” It’s not like Gabby can actually do anything about this mess—not like when I got fired on Passion Medical—but just talking to her, just knowing she’s there . . . it helps. Not, like, a ton, but I’ll take anything I can get. “I don’t know how much I can even bring myself to talk about it right now, but I just . . . It’s awful, Gabs. The things we said to each other . . .”
Another of those sad sympathy sounds. “Are you planning on coming back home soon?”
The pain hadn’t allowed me much time to think about anything but surviving the next breath and then the one after that, let alone plan out my next moves, but now the answer is clear. “Yeah. I was only going to be here for another two days anyway, but—” I sigh. “My dad and I had this fight, and the whole family thinks I’m a sex addict, and now with Josh gone—I’m done. I’m coming home.”
Home. Even with Gabby leaving the apartment, I can feel how true that is. LA is my home now, and it fits me way better than Everett ever did.
“Good.” She sounds truly relieved. Which is when I notice the weird distant background noise that I first assumed was just this old crappy phone.
“Are you driving?”
“Um. Yes.” She pauses, and then blurts out, “Don’t hate me, but I’m actually with Ben now. On my way. Well, to Utah.”
“You’re driving with Ben. To Utah.”
“Because that’s where Ben is meeting Josh.”
“Okay.” I don’t know how to respond to that, but even the mention of Josh sends a little stab in my heart.
“And you can meet us there and—”
“And what, Gabby?” Though I already know what she’s going to say.
“And work things out with Josh, maybe.” I can practically see her biting her lip nervously as she says this. “Because you love him.”
“Yeah, I do.” God, I’m only now getting a sense of how deeply true that is.
I love him. But Tanya loves my dad, as did my mom, once. Reid’s wife loved him.
“I had reasons for what I did,” I say. “And none of those were because I didn’t love him.”
Gabby sighs. “Okay, but just—think about it. Think about how happy you were with him, even when you were scared. And then, if you don’t change your mind, well. I’ll still be stuck in Beaver. So you need to come pick me up. And then we’ll get through this.”
“Buffy and wine and One Direction karaoke?”
“Of course.” She gives me the name of some bar in Beaver they’re headed to—I still have no idea why on earth this is their destination, but I’m too shell-shocked to care—and then she tells me she loves me. I say the same to her, and we hang up.
I slump down onto my bed and try to think about what she says, about how happy we were, but it feels so distant right now, even the parts that were just last night. All I can think of is Tanya hunched over, trying to keep herself from shattering, and Ginnie’s sobs muffled by the car door. And Bryon’s angry face, watching his mom hurt and unable to stop it.
And Josh, begging me not to end things, before his face grew hard and walled-off.
You are replaceable, he said, and then he left. Just like I told him to.
How can I even see him again after that?
He left so immediately that I realize there’s probably a bunch of his clothes and stuff still in the storage room. So at least I can bring him that. And maybe apologize for hurting him. Maybe salvage our agent/client relationship, at the very least. I owe him that, no matter how much it hurts.
There’s a knock at my door, and I groan. “Yes, Patrice, I’m off the phone. You can have it ba—”
The door opens and it’s my dad there. He looks abashed, and what’s more, his eyes look puffy and red, like he’s been crying too.
I’ve never seen my dad cry. Ever.
“Can we talk, Pumpkin?” He shifts from one foot to another.
I don’t trust myself to speak, so I nod. He walks in, Buckley trailing close behind him. Dad closes the door and paces the room a bit. He barely glances at the stacks of CDs and jars of makeup, but he takes in all the trophies on the shelf. Then the photos stuck in the edge of my mirror. One of them he pulls out and studies, and I find myself hoping it’s not one of me and Shane.
I should seriously burn all those.
“I remember this day.” He flips the picture around so I can see it. It’s the only one of me and my mom and dad, all together, that I have. Mom notoriously hates having her picture taken, so she was always the photographer. It’s not us doing anything special—no matching Mickey ears at Disney World or anything like that. Just us in the backyard, on that concrete patio. I’m about six and I’m putting on a show—of course—wearing a tutu and waving around a baton with glittery streamers. And Mom and Dad are sitting in those awful old foldable lawn chairs, laughing at my antics. I’m guessing Grandpa was the one taking the picture, since he lived with us back then, before Patrice and Joe moved and he went with them.
I shift uncomfortably on the bed. “Is this going to be one of those things where you tell me how you and Mom had some really great times, and how those were worth all the pain that came later?”
“God, no,” he says, with a short laugh. “Your mom and I were miserable, pretty much from the beginning. The only great times we had involved you. We never really had anything in common besides how much we both loved the hell out of you.”
That sounds about how I remember my childhood.
Dad sets the photo down on the vanity and stares at it some more. “It doesn’t make it okay, what I did to her, though.”
I look up, cautiously. My dad and I have never really talked about that, not directly. I think because I never wanted to know more. I wanted to think about it as little as possible, so that I could love my dad without being burdened by his bad choices.
Obviously that turned out to be a great plan.
“You were right, what you said before,” he says. “I’m not a good man.”
I cringe. “Daddy, I didn’t mean that, like, you’re not a good man at all, I meant—”
“I know what you meant. And you’re right. I’ve hurt a lot of people. People I loved. I hurt you.” He finally meets my eyes. “I think I always knew all this would affect you, but I convinced myself it wouldn’t. That as long as I was a good enough dad, that if I provided for you and supported you and loved you enough, that’d outweigh all my mistakes. But it didn’t.”
I had all the things in the world to say to him before, it seemed—so many I was stumbling over them in my infuriated need to get them out. But now, I can’t think of anything to say. So I just sit there, numbly, playing with the fraying edge of my jean shorts.
“I didn’t want to hurt Tanya,” he says, evidently seeing that if we’re having a conversation now, he’s going to be the one to lead it. “I didn’t want to hurt any of them, not even your mom.”
“Then why did you?”
My dad frowns and pulls out the chair at my vanity. It creaks when he sits down in it. “You know that intervention Patrice and the rest tried to have for you—”
I groan. “I’m not a sex addict, Dad, I promise.”
“I know,” he says. “But I am.”
The shock is so great it jars me out of my grief-stupor. Though now it seems shocking that it wasn’t something I ever considered before. “Oh my god. That’s—are you serious?”
He nods glumly. “I figured it ou
t after the divorce from Margaret”—his third wife, who had been the woman he’d cheated on his second wife with—“and I started going to a therapist. And from there to meetings. I’ve been in recovery now for two years. I know lots of people don’t believe it’s a real thing, and I also know it’s not an excuse for the things I did. But I wanted to stop. I wanted to be a better man.”
“Did Tanya know?”
“She did. I told her right from the beginning. God, I was scared to tell her. I’d never told anyone outside of my therapist and recovery group—still haven’t, besides her, and now you. But she was—she was amazing. She came to a few meetings with me. She supported me through everything.”
“And then you cheated on her, too.” I wish I didn’t sound so bitchy about it, now when my dad is confessing this deep, dark secret to me. But he’s right—maybe I don’t really get it and I sure as hell don’t think it’s an excuse.
He slumps forward, putting his head in his hands. “I didn’t, actually. I mean, she found texts that were . . . yeah. Not great. I shouldn’t have been texting that woman at all, let alone saying those things. I even drove to a bar last night, where I knew she would be. I sat there in the parking lot, and I hated myself for even being there. And then I turned around and drove home. I should have told Tanya about the texts, though. I messed up.”
I pause. Maybe I shouldn’t believe him, but I actually do. He sounds different, now. Honest, not defensive. Besides, I suppose at this point he has no reason to lie to me about it. But I’m still finding it hard to forgive him—after all, not only did he keep this secret from me all these years, but he let them all have an intervention for me, and left me thinking he was ashamed of me.
Even though now I realize the shame was probably for himself.
“So is that it, then?” I ask, my tone still tinged with bitterness. “Tanya’s gone, so on to the next one?”
He doesn’t answer for a bit. Then, finally, “I don’t know. I love Tanya. I’m going to do everything in my power to work things out.”
The Girlfriend Stage Page 25
