Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
The summons from his mother to see her after they wrapped for the day felt like he’d been summoned to the gallows.
It had been a rough week so it wasn’t an unexpected request, but that didn’t make the walk to her hotel room any easier. His stomach rolled and twisted with every step down the hallway.
Charlotte had propped the door to her room open, and even though he’d been expressly invited, he still knocked.
“Come in and shut the door behind you,” she instructed coolly.
His mother was sitting at the desk, her perpetually lost pair of glasses on top of her head, and her backup pair on her face. She looked like she’d been reviewing material for the next day, highlighters and sticky notes at the ready.
“Have a seat,” she said and closed the binder she’d been marking.
Peter took the armchair in the corner and studied his mother. She looked tired, like the last few weeks had sucked the remaining youth from the marrow in her bones. On set, she wasn’t exactly energetic, but she didn’t look quite so hollow .
“I don’t know if I’m asking this as your mother or your director—probably both—but I’ve noticed a concerning shift recently, so I need to know if you’re okay.” She pushed her backup glasses up on top of her head and her eyes widened when she felt her preferred pair already there.
“You should put those on a chain,” he told her.
“No. That would make me look like an old lady.” She took both pairs off her head and laid them on the desk. “Are you okay, Peter?”
He opened his mouth to answer but the answer wasn’t there. He frowned and closed his mouth. Was he okay? His time in Crane Cove, at least this stint, was coming to a close. The time when he’d have to leave Sybil was speeding toward him like a train and he was tied to the tracks, helpless to change anything.
He shrugged.
“I don’t understand. You were so excited about this project. But lately you’ve been showing up late, unprepared, and distracted. You were my one-take wonder until two weeks ago. Do you need to talk to the therapist? I know the material is a bit heavy…” She trailed off, her mouth drawn down into a tight frown. “It’s okay not to be okay.”
“I’m…” He couldn’t bring himself to say that he was okay because he wasn’t. “It’s not the movie. That’s not what’s eating at me. I…Do you ever think you made the wrong choice being in this industry?”
“I think about that so often that it’s the white noise I fall asleep to,” she said. “You know I never wanted this life for you. You were such a happy child. You...sparkled. Everyone who met you loved you instantly. You were curious, creative, and had such a big, tender heart. I never wanted anyone to take those things away from you. Which is why I was so against you becoming an actor. This industry takes wonderful, excited, creative people and grinds them down, reduces them to parts instead of whole people. And you were always going to get it coming and going because of who your parents are. I knew it wouldn’t matter how hard you worked or how fantastic you were—and you are fantastic —people would always say that you only got to where you are because of who’s in your family tree. The same thing happened to me. I held you off for so long because I thought you’d find something else. Maybe you’d be a teacher, or a therapist, or a writer. But you wanted this so, so badly. You’ve always been so sure. What changed?”
He tried to swallow and couldn’t.
His mother brought her chair over to his and sat, the toes of their shoes touching, and took his hands in hers. Her skin was soft and he could faintly smell the hand cream she’d been using his entire life, the scent of camellia, shea butter, and iris transporting him to childhood. She’d always been there, even when she was working, doing her best to be a pillar of strength and a soft place for him to land. He was too old and too large to curl up in her lap, but he ached to be rocked again.
“Nothing…” He groaned. “Everything. I’ve had so many years to imagine how this would go, and I never once imagined feeling this lost and trapped. I thought it would be easy, like it was for you and Dad, but it’s not. I have to leave soon because I have contracts and commitments, but if I leave, I don’t know if she’ll still love me when I come back. She’s been left too much, and it makes me sick that I have to add myself to that list. So I don’t want to leave, but I can’t stay, and I don’t want to give up my career because I love my career, but I love her too and?—”
“Peter,” Charlotte interrupted gently, “who are you talking about?”
He blinked at her, momentarily mute while his brain caught up with his mouth.
“Sybil,” he answered like it should have been obvious.
“The woman who owns the coffee shop? Maddy’s double?”
“Of course.”
It was Charlotte’s turn to be stunned. Finally, she asked, “Since when?”
“About twelve years.” His mouth curled into a sad smile. “She’s the one. She’s always been the one since the moment I met her, and I’ve been trying to show her for weeks how I can fit myself into her life so she’ll give us a chance.”
His mother’s expression softened. “You were never meant to live a small life, sweetheart.”
“Being here isn’t a small life.”
“But trying to wedge yourself into a box that wasn’t meant for you is. When you find the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, it stops being your life and their life. You have to create a new normal together. You need to know what you’re willing to give up, what you’re not willing to give up, and what you’re willing to modify or reduce. It’s a lot of compromise. And it seems like it’s easy for your father and me because we had those tough conversations before you were born. All you’ve ever seen is the product of years of open, honest, thoughtful communication.”
“Were you ever scared you were going to fuck everything up?”
Charlotte laughed. “Of course I was. Look at the example I had growing up. You didn’t think Grandma Estelle was a paragon, did you? Whatever the opposite of a saint is, that was my mother. And I’d already made so many awful choices by the time your father and I got together that I don’t think I took a deep breath the entire first year of our marriage. I was so scared I’d ruin both of our lives.” She squeezed his hands tightly. “It’s okay to be scared, but don’t let that fear dictate your choices.”
“So what do I do?” he asked, his voice unable to go above a whisper.
She shrugged. “I have no idea. It’s not my life.”
“Mom—”
“No one else has as much at stake with your life as you do. I could tell you to do things I would never do myself because in the end, it doesn’t affect me. Only you can know what the right decision for your life is.” She smiled softly. “Trust yourself. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, even if I’m not certain it’s always attached.”
She let go of his hands, stood, and opened her arms. Peter sank into her hug, letting her hold the weight of his worries for a few minutes.
She squeezed him tightly. “Get some sleep, and come prepared next week. We’re in the final stretch. Have your existential crisis on someone else’s time.”
Peter parked his rental car next to the curb in front of Graham’s house and let it idle, unable to rouse the strength to turn it off and go inside. The insurmountable gravity of the decisions he needed to make pinned him to the seat.
The two things he wanted most in life could not be so opposed to each other. He wanted to be with Sybil, to live a slow, quiet life in Crane Cove where they sat on her velvet couch, drank tea, and read books while rain drummed against the house. But he wanted his career, where he got to breathe life into people who only existed on a piece of paper, and made audiences who had never known them feel deeply about their struggles and triumphs.
Could he have both things? Or would he constantly be sacrificing one for the other?
The clock on the dash told him that he’d gone from late to very late, and he forced himself to turn off the engine and unbuckle his seatbelt.
Headlights flooded his rearview mirror and then turned off. He checked the reflection and saw that it was Sybil’s car.
“I thought you’d already be inside,” she said after they both got out of their vehicles, then frowned. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, everything’s fine,” he lied. “Where are you coming from?”
“Stardust. I wanted to grab the deposit before I came over.”
She closed the miniscule distance between them and stretched up on her tiptoes. Automatically, he lowered himself to accept her tender kiss, and it cracked his hurting heart. How many of these sweet kisses did he have left?
“You sure you’re okay?” she asked, cupping his face in her hands.
“It’s just been a long, heavy week at work. I’ll be okay.”
Sybil looked ready to argue, but it never materialized.
“Knock, knock!” Peter shouted as he opened Graham and Eloise’s front door.
They were met with the jingling of identification tags and the scrabble and pounding of paws on hardwood as Daisy barreled across the house to greet them.
“Daisy?” Peter’s heart leapt at the sight of the dog. If Daisy was here, that meant…
Sam came trotting down the hall after his dog, a smug smirk on his face. Peter had known that Jordy and Annie were coming to visit for the weekend, allegedly to look at a few properties closer to Eugene and Corvallis, but no one had told him that Sam was coming.
“Oh god, don’t cry,” Sam begged when he saw the tears welling up in Peter’s eyes.
Peter pulled him into a crushing hug. “I can’t help it, I missed you.”
“Can’t. Breathe.”
“If you can talk, you can breathe,” Peter countered, squeezing harder. Finally, he released Sam and held him at arm’s length. “What are you doing here?”
“Well, Jordy told me about how he and Annie were coming to look at property, and Lacey and I have a little break, so we went in on a plane and came for the weekend. Plus, we needed to check on the cabin.”
The unspoken words Sam hadn’t said were that he knew what Jordy was planning on doing and wanted to be around to celebrate with his best friend. In their group of four, Jordy and Sam had always been closer to each other than they were to Peter and Graham, which was okay because the same was true of Peter and Graham’s friendship.
“Graham and Jordy are building a fire in the backyard,” Sam said, then looked at Sybil. “Eloise, Annie, and Lacey are in the den.”
“I hope they have a bottle of wine open,” Sybil said, slipping off her shoes and coat. As she passed, she squeezed Peter’s arm, then disappeared down the hall.
Sam waited until she was out of sight, then raised his eyebrows at Peter. “What was that?”
“What was what?”
“Sybil just…” He mimed a squeezing motion. “Touchy-touchy.” His eyes grew wide. “So it was Sybil you were asking me for advice about. How long have you two been fucking each other?”
“Shhh.”
Sam laughed. “Do Graham and Jordy know?”
“No.”
Sam beckoned for Daisy to follow him, not that it would have taken any prompting if he’d started walking away, and they made their way to the backyard. Graham and Jordy were arranging the wood in the fire pit with meticulous care, but when Jordy heard the back door open he looked up and dropped the piece of wood he was holding, demolishing their carefully built structure.
“Peter!”
They crashed into each other, stumbling around while they embraced until they got their footing, and then held each other tighter.
“I can’t believe you’re getting married,” Peter gasped, because Jordy was squeezing him so tightly it was crushing his lungs.
“She hasn’t said yes yet,” Jordy pointed out.
“No one thinks she’s saying no. People on the street who haven’t met you two would put money on her saying yes.”
“Is everything ready for tomorrow night?” Jordy asked.
Peter froze. His heart stopped, and ice filled his veins. Jordy’s proposal. He’d forgotten that he was supposed to organize Jordy’s proposal. Flowers, candle lights… He’d fucking forgotten.
“Uh-huh,” he said weakly.
“Do you want to see the ring?” Jordy didn’t wait for an answer. He dug into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small, black leather box. “I’ve been so freaked out she’d find this since I picked it up from the jeweler.”
He lifted the lid. Inside was a pale purple oval gem, set in a delicate gold band that looked like a vine, each leaf studded with a tiny, glittering diamond.
“Oh, wow,” Peter whispered. “That’s beautiful.”
“Would you mind holding on to it for me until tomorrow night? I don’t want to have gotten this far only to have Annie find it in the final twenty-four hours.” Jordy closed the box and held it out to Peter.
“Why me?”
“Because I’m scared she’ll find it if I hide it in the house, and Sam and Lacey are going with us to look at properties tomorrow since Sam has built a home recently and has some insight into the process.” Jordy smiled and offered him the box again. “Please? It’ll be safe with you.”
Peter took the box and slid it into his pocket, the guilt making the small box weigh his pocket down like a lead weight.
When they turned around, Graham had lit the fire and was setting out three crystal rocks glasses and a bottle of very fancy sparkling water for Sam. He held up an expensive bottle of whiskey.
“So I bought this in the spring, because I was convinced that Jordy was going to propose when he and Annie came up for their anniversary trip.” He shot Jordy a glare. “But since that didn’t happen, I’ve been holding on to it.” He poured two fingers full into each glass.
“How come I didn’t get a toast?” Sam asked.
“Because you eloped without telling us,” Graham said, and passed out the glasses. He held his glass up. “Jordy, two years ago, I never would have guessed this day would come. But you and Annie are perfect for each other and I’m so excited that, technically, we’ll be family now.”
“Cousins-in-law seems like a bit of a stretch,” Sam muttered, opening his sparkling water.
“To Jordy and Annie,” Graham said, ignoring Sam’s snark.
The four men clinked their drinks together.