Happily Ever Never

35. Brooke

35

brOOKE

One month later . . .

“I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date,” Tara sings, dancing up to me. She’s on her way to meet with the new marketing manager for our theater.

Then she reaches out, pokes her fingers into my face, and forces my mouth up into a smile.

I keep forgetting to smile.

“Give me an enormous Cheshire cat grin, but don’t disappear,” she orders me.

“Ha ha,” I say, stepping back.

We’re doing Alice in Wonderland , which is an absolute dream job for a set designer. I’ve spent the day working with a carpenter to construct the mushroom for the hookah-smoking caterpillar. It will be a scenery wagon, which we roll onto the stage. The actor playing the caterpillar will climb up hidden stairs on the back and sit on the mushroom, looking down at Alice.

“This is where you work?” my father marvels, looking around the set design area. It’s a big, well ventilated, brightly lit room right next to the theater, which they were able to rent with the new grant.

“This is it, Dad!”

“Wow. Our little girl is already a huge success. And right out of college, too,” he beams at my mother. A nurse’s aide hovers watchfully nearby.

I don’t bother correcting him. It’s nice to have someone think I’m a fresh-faced college graduate.

“She’s something else,” my mother smiles proudly. She’s only working twenty hours a week at the bakery now, and spending a lot more time with my father.

“So what’s the play about again?” my father asks, looking at the giant mushroom with a puzzled expression. “This looks so familiar.”

“It’s Alice in Wonderland .”

“Of course, of course! I bought you that book for your sixth birthday. We finished reading it in two weeks. You dressed up as Alice for Halloween that year.”

“You’re right,” I say, exchanging a surprised look with my mother, who smiles in delight. Often people with memory loss remember things from the distant past much more clearly than they do recent events.

Overall, my father has been doing much better since he moved back home into familiar surroundings. There’s only so much he’ll improve, of course, but he’s comfortable and happy, and he’s waking up in bed next to his wife every morning.

The thought summons up a memory of Lucas—a sharp, painful jab in the heart. Every morning I woke up with him felt so right, so safe, so strong. Waking up without him feels cold and lonely. Having a taste of paradise and then losing it feels worse than never having it.

“Let’s take a tour,” I say to my father, and I show him my workstation and the other props I’ve been working on .

After half an hour, it’s time for him to head back to our house in Connecticut. He tires easily these days.

Still, the fact that he’s able to handle a trip like this is an absolute miracle.

We linger by the front door of the theater.

“Is everything all right?” my mother asks me, as the aide helps my father walk down the theater steps. “You seem... I don’t know. I thought you’d be happier.”

“I am happy!” I say brightly, with a big smile. And it’s not entirely a lie. “I’m just a little tired because we’re in a time crunch with this play—our dress rehearsal’s in only a few weeks—but it’s a happy kind of tired. I swear.”

“If you say so.” She kisses my cheek, then leans back to look at me. “I know you used to complain about your old job, but I think part of you misses working for Lucas.”

You can’t fool a mom. “Oh, maybe a little. It wasn’t all bad. But this is what I’ve always dreamed of. I’m very happy, Mom, I swear.”

My father is waving at my mother from the car, so she hurries to get in. He doesn’t like to be separated from her and gets anxious if she’s gone too long.

“She’s not wrong, you know,” Tara says from right behind me.

I spin around. “Lurking in a theater doorway eavesdropping?”

“Guilty as charged,” she grins.

“I know somebody else who did that,” I say wistfully. I wonder if Brenda’s engaged yet. I wonder how time passes in the Green Acres world.

“You do? Who?” Tara shoots me a puzzled look.

“Never mind,” I sigh. “Long story, a story for another day.” A story I can never tell.

“Something happened between you and Lucas,” she says quietly. “That morning you woke up shouting his name? You guys had an affair. I knew it.”

I shrug.

She nods. “You want to talk about it?”

“I can’t.” I literally can’t. How could I explain it to her?

“Ah,” she says with a look of understanding. “Confidentiality agreement.”

“What?” I say, shocked. “Oh, no. Lucas would never do that to me.”

Tara shakes her head. “You’ve been talking about him entirely differently ever since that morning. And you never quite explained why you quit that job. Something happened between you guys and it got awkward at work, am I right?” Then she gives me a horrified look. “He didn’t fire you, did he? And this new thing with your dad and all his assistants and him moving back home with you, that was hush money?”

“Oh, good Lord, no. He didn’t fire me.” I hesitate. “It was my idea. Working together would just have been too awkward. He didn’t want me to go.” I don’t know why I don’t want anyone to think bad of Lucas, but I just can’t find it in my heart to be angry at him.

For one thing, I know him intimately—I know every secret part of him—and I’m sure he’s miserable. I don’t want him to be miserable. Even if we’re not together anymore, I want him to be happy. I want him to stop beating up on himself and letting his father sabotage his self-esteem. In fact, I’d love to go yell at his father for not appreciating what an amazing man he has in Lucas, but I also know Lucas wouldn’t want that. He sees a sick old man. I see a bitter bully.

I sigh. My heart feels heavy now. Most of the time I manage to put on a happy face—well, at least I thought I did anyway—but sometimes the loneliness and the sorrow of losing the man I opened my heart to just overwhelm me. “Listen, I want to take a little break,” I say. “I’ll come back after lunch, okay? ”

“Of course.” Tara looks at me with sympathy. “If you ever need to talk, or want me to help you kick Lucas’s ass, I'm there for you.”

“I know you are. You’re awesome. I’ll be back in a few.”

I call an Uber and have it take me to my favorite deli where they sell my favorite overpriced mac and cheese.

I’ve been coming here a lot since things ended with Lucas, and not just because mac and cheese is comfort food.

Part of me hopes he’ll come walking through the door one day and say that he realizes how wrong and crazy he was.

As I sit there slowly savoring the cheesy, salty dish, for a moment I even think I’ve spotted him through the window, but the person just walks on by, and of course it’s not him. Lucas never comes here himself; he orders DoorDash.

Glancing behind the counter, I halfway expect to see Brenda grabbing a coffee pot, with Officer Hernandez sitting there making puppy eyes and thinking that nobody notices.

It’s so weird and isolating to have been through something so intense, traveling to another world, and not be able to talk to anyone about it. I’ve tried emailing Serena and I’ve even mailed her several letters. No response. It’s a little hurtful, to be honest. Nothing like the pain I felt when Lucas sent me away, but still not a fun experience.

I look down at my plate and shovel another mouthful in.

I finish my mac and cheese and bring the plate back to the counter, setting it down with a decisive clang.

I need to stop coming here.

I’ll make my own mac and cheese.

With a sigh, I catch a cab back to the theater.

As we pull up front, and I’m admiring the newly painted facade and the huge new marquee sign, it hits me with the force of a slap.

“I’m an idiot,” I say out loud .

“Excuse me?” the cab driver glances over his shoulder at me. “You talking to me?”

“No, never mind, nothing,” I say to him. I climb out of the car, and I stand there staring at my new place of employment.

But it a way, it’s not really new, because I’m still working for Lucas.

“Son of a bitch,” I marvel.

A suspiciously huge grant coming out of nowhere, for an obscure off-off-Broadway theater. A grant that specifically allowed for the building of a new scenery department and the hiring of a set designer. And it happened right as Lucas was ending things with me and setting up my parents for life.

How could I not have seen it?

He let me go, but he can’t really let me go.

I close my eyes.

All right. I appreciate what he’s trying to do, but I can’t stay here. I can’t keep collecting a paycheck from Lucas Sheffield.

I am going to finish the Alice in Wonderland set, of course, but after I’m done with it, I’m going to find another job. There are actually a couple of openings, one of them at a Broadway theater, and one of them with a company that custom-builds set designs for theaters that don’t have their own scenery department.

As I walk up the steps to the theater, I force a smile back onto my face. I’ve got to get better at faking happiness.