22. Jamie
22
JAMIE
R ight as I’m at the door to leave for Avery’s house, a series of strange rapid-fire texts pops up in our group chat.
Avery—I’m doing it. I’ve already signed the papers. You can’t change my mind.
Avery—Also, sorry to pile on even more drama, but my mom found out about what’s going on when we all went to the zoo with Leo.
Avery—They’re insisting on meeting you.
Avery—I’ll talk about it with you later. I promise. I’m not running away. I just can’t do it right now.
Avery—Turning my phone off for the night.
Avery—Sorry.
I don’t even have time to let that sink in before the group text with just the guys starts lighting up too.
Phillip—Emergency meeting. My house.
First Avery, now this?
A knot forms in my stomach.
Jamie—Why the change of plans? Is everything okay?
Wesley—Is Avery okay? Why isn’t this in the group text that she’s in?
Phillip— There’s no point. She’s turned off her phone. We don’t need to involve her in this right now.
Wesley—The hell we don’t. Give me one good reason for me not to go over there.
Phillip—She clearly needs space. We need to respect that.
I know Phillip would have told us if Avery was hurt, but all I can see right now are images of Julia lying lifeless on the floor in our old home.
I can’t shake the feeling that Avery is in the same situation.
Jamie-—I really need you to tell me she’s okay. All I can think about right now is finding Julia. I know you would have said something if she was hurt, but I need you to confirm it.
I hate how pathetic I sound.
Phillip—Physically hurt, no. Emotionally, yes. She just texted me that she got home safely and is going to bed now.
Jamie—It’s only eight thirty. That’s early for her.
Phillip—It’s been a horrible day for her. Will you come over?
Jamie—Yes.
Wesley—Leaving now.
I make it to Phillip’s house in record time, but as I pull in I notice I’m the last to arrive.
Wesley lives farther away from here than I do. How did he manage to get here before me?
I don’t even want to think about how fast he had to have been going to get here so quickly.
When I walk in, I smell something amazing—Wesley’s work, I’m sure—so I head straight to the kitchen.
Sure enough, the table is full to the brim with fried chicken, cornbread, collard greens, and mashed potatoes.
We must have caught him in the middle of making dinner.
“Grab a plate and load it up. You’re going to need the comfort food,” Phillip encourages.
There’s no need to ask me twice.
“I take it you visited your mom today?” I ask, filling my plate.
“What gave it away?”
“The food you made.”
“Fair enough.” He shrugs. “We had a good time right up until the end when she realized I wasn’t her brother and got confused.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It's not her fault her memory is going. I’m just glad I’m in a position where I can afford to give her the treatment she deserves.”
“She likes it there?”
“Likes it?” He snorts. “She’s practically running the place. She’s got all the nurses wrapped around her little finger. They adore her.”
“That certainly sounds like the Ms. Lillian I know. I don’t think I’ve met a single person who wasn’t immediately charmed by her.”
“I’m glad she’s doing well,” Phillip says, “and your mother is very important to all of us, but I’d like to get this over with, so can we save the small talk for later?”
Wesley and I nod.
There are several times in his story where I have to stuff my mouth with cornbread or potatoes so I don’t derail him with an angry outburst.
By the time he finishes, I’m seeing nothing but red, and Wesley’s actively shaking with fury.
“First thing tomorrow, I’m going down there and I’m going to give Dimitria a piece of my mind. She’s been after us since day one for her marketing schemes, and now to use one of our students against us? I know Avery’s more than that to us, but she doesn’t know that. For her to go after a scholarship student and talk to her the way she did?” I shake my head in disgust. “That’s low even for her.”
“I’m not doing it. She can huff and puff and threaten all she likes, but I’m not signing that damn release and I’m going to make sure Avery doesn’t either,” Wesley says, slamming his fist on the table.
Phillip sighs. “I feel the same way, but there’s no talking Avery out of it. You saw what she said in the group text and I told you what she said to me in my office. She feels obligated.”
“What, to roll over and be treated like trash? Why the hell didn’t you bring her ass here so we can talk some sense into her?” Wesley demands.
The crestfallen look on Phillip’s face tells me everything I need to know.
“Someone’s hurt her like this before. She actually feels like she deserves that treatment, doesn’t she?”
“I don’t know what happened for sure, but the dead look behind her eyes and the way she shrank into her chair...” Phillip sighs. “If she wasn’t dissociating, I’ll eat my degree.”
“I’d put good money on Leo’s father,” Wesley says. “She talks about her parents plenty, and the way she talks about them doesn’t give me any indication it was them.”
“You know, now that you mention it, she does completely shut down or avoid even the possibility of talking about him.”
“I think we need to get to the bottom of things, but we’ve got to deal with Dimitria and meeting her parents, and she’s already a wreck. I think prying too soon will only make things worse,” Phillip says.
“So, what’s the plan?” I ask.
“One thing at a time. We’ll deal with the promo, and we’re going to be supportive and not cause trouble for her.” Phillip glares at Wesley. “Then we’ll deal with the whole meeting the parents thing. After that, there should be time enough to start digging into the ex-husband and what happened there.”
“I still think we should tear Dimitria a new one.” Wesley crosses his arms across his chest.
Phillip shakes his head. “If you saw the look in her eyes when I even hinted at standing up for her, you’d be on my side.”
“Fine, I'll do the damn thing and not make a fuss about it, but if Dimitria tries to pull this stunt again, the gloves are coming off,” Wesley grumbles.
“What about the rest of my plan?”
“I’m on board with it. Not sure I’ve been through enough anger management to do more than one of those things at a time.”
“Okay.” Phillip nods. “ And what about you, Jamie?”
“The whole plan sounds good, but if Dimitria tries to pull that crap during filming, I will be saying something.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
So that's how I find myself on campus at the crack of dawn a week later with some cosmetology student painting me up like a harlot.
I used to wonder why Julia used to take so long to get her makeup done to go out, and here I am ten years later, grumbling about the same thing with Avery on the rare occasions we all go out.
Now that I’m having the experience for myself… let’s just say I'm never going to complain about it again.
When I'm finally out of the torture chair, I go and join Avery off to the side.
The corners of her lips twitch. “You certainly look pretty.”
“I am quite stunning, yes,” I say dryly.
“You rival the morning sun with that dewy glow of yours.” She nods solemnly.
“Well, at least there's some breakfast to console you for not being the prettiest one on set.” I gesture to the picnic table on the quad.
“Bad news on that front, I'm afraid.”
“Please don't tell me it's plastic.” I groan.
“Alright, I won't tell you, but I wouldn't advise attempting to bite into it.” Avery smirks.
“It's bad enough that Dimitria forced us all into this, but no breakfast either? I'm going to stage a mutiny.”
Her face falls. “I'm sorry I dragged the three of you into this. I should have let you refuse.”
“Let me make one thing clear to you. You didn’t drag any of us into anything. Dimitria bullied you into saying yes to strong arm us into doing this. She’s been after us to do promos for the academy for years, and we've said no every single time. It’s always been about the students for us and she knows that. Why else would we take time away from our careers and businesses to do this work if we didn’t want to help people? She’s just finally found a student of ours that she could bully into doing it, and she used that against us.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough to stand up to her,” she says, hanging her head.
Right now, what I want more than anything is to hunt down her ex and make him pay for whatever he did to her.
Unfortunately, that’s the one thing I absolutely cannot do right now. Especially since I don’t know his name.
Once Wesley and Phillip have been painted up, we get the rundown from Dimitria for what we’re supposed to do.
“There are going to be a series of slice of life shots we’re going to have playing along with the narration. So you can talk about whatever as long as you look happy doing it as we won’t be recording any of the audio.
“There’s the picnic shot to show off the quad. Then we’ve got Avery and Wesley in the kitchen decorating the cake I had you make yesterday. Then we'll have Phillip and Jamie with Avery in their respective offices. Phillip, you’re going to have a game of chess. Jamie, you’ll be going over graphs and pie charts and other business type things.
“And we’ll end with the interviews. This whole thing should only take three hours. Any questions?” she asks.
“Let’s just get this over with,” I huff.
If I had to pick between pretending to laugh and have a good time on camera with Dimitria undressing me with her eyes and sewing my face to a carpet, I'd pick the carpet.
Just watching Avery go through the motions of it all makes me sick to my stomach.
She's good, I'll give her that. If I didn't know her as well as I do, I would have thought she was enjoying every minute.
The truth is hidden at the corners of her mouth, the tilt of her chin, and the stillness of her hands.
Avery is never still. I hadn't even thought she was capable of it until now. She's always full of bustle and movement.
When she's seated, her hands are fluttering about or her leg is bouncing, or she's constantly shifting positions in her chair.
She's not even still when she's sleeping—the woman rolls around more than a rotisserie chicken.
So to see her so prim and still is unnerving. It’s like looking at a mannequin.
Thank goodness we both took the full day off. When we get home, I’m going to do whatever I can to make sure that she relaxes.
As we move through the scenes Dimitria orchestrated, we reach a rhythm and soon, Avery’s not the only one who’s good at faking it. The only feedback the cameraman is giving now is what faces he’d like us to make and when to change positions.
By the time we get to my scene with Avery, the last one, I’m feeling pretty comfortable. Don’t get me wrong, pointing at nonsense graphs and trying to look serious is an exercise in the absurd, but it’s easy to do.
The interview part, however, is a new kind of torture—specifically, having to watch Avery’s portion.
Dimitria is smart, I’ll give her that. She purposely arranged the interviews to be last in the lineup, and based on the questions she was asking, we would have put a stop to the whole thing. As it was, she had plenty of footage and all of our interviews by the time she got to Avery’s.
“How do you feel about your time at the Age Gap Academy so far?” asks Dimitria.
“My time here has been incredible. My teachers are knowledgeable, accommodating, and take my prior knowledge into account when planning out my lessons.”
“That’s great, but can you make sure that you mention your scholarship status in your response?”
Wesley starts to open his mouth but shuts it at the near imperceptible shake of Avery’s head.
“Can I just add to it instead?”
“Depending on what you add, that should be fine.”
She puts on a dazzling (and very fake) smile and says, “As a scholarship student, this means the world to me. If the Age Gap Academy hadn’t awarded me one of their two full scholarship slots, I would have never benefited from this wonderful institution.”
The next several questions go much the same way, and Dimitria never fails to rub Avery’s status in her face.
Right when I’ve had my fill of this nonsense—her interview was double the length of ours—Avery puts on a pleading look.
“I understand how important this is to you and the academy and I’m so grateful you’ve allowed me to help. I owe so much to this place, but between my full-time job and classes here to give my son and me a better life, I don’t get to see him much. I promised him I’d be home around now to spend some time with him. Is it at all possible we could finish up soon so I don’t miss out on that precious time with my baby?”
She’s really putting it on thick—especially since Leo’s spending the day with her father at his worksite—but Dimitria is eating it up.
“Of course. I can’t imagine how hard that is for you. I think we’ve got what we need.” She turns toward the cameraman. “Don’t you think so?”
He nods in agreement.
Once we reach our cars and are well outside of Dimitria’s earshot, everyone relaxes.
“I never knew you were such a good liar.” Wesley grins. “Next time you cancel class because you’re feeling sick, I’m going to have to personally verify.”
Avery laughs for the first time today. “People like that like to feel like they’re the savior to the poor. I just played into it so we could be done with all that garbage.”
“I’m impressed.” I smile. “Is that something you learned from your time with your ex?”
The empty mannequin look is back.
“I’m not talking about that right now.”
I hold up my hands in surrender. “I’ll leave it alone for now. Today was more than enough for anyone to deal with. How about we go back to my house and get you to relax a little?”
“I’d like that.”
Then she turns to Wesley and Phillip and asks, “Did you two take the day off too? I hadn’t realized.”
Wesley groans. “I wish I had now. You’ll have to have fun without me.”
“Same here. I agreed to cover one of my colleagues' time on the crisis counseling line.” Phillip shrugs. “It was his kid’s birthday, and I felt bad that he’d miss it.”
“Don’t worry.” I grin. “I’ll take good care of our woman.”