Chapter Twenty-Three It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times . . .
Chapter Twenty-Three
It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times . . .
I have long considered my life as belonging to two separate people. But that was easy—that was letting myself off the hook.
It was only when I began to reconnect with my past that I realized if I truly want to be whole, if I truly want to make amends
for the fuckery of that past, I have to honor the disaster that I was, and own up to all of my mistakes. Rehab and years of
therapy and recovery programs helped me to see that, but a clandestine trip to the beach in the middle of nowhere solidified
it.
It was there, watching the same piercing blue waves that I stared at a lifetime ago, that I finally understood what I was
meant to do. That this was the answer to why I was still on earth, a question I asked myself a hundred times when I was younger,
messier, and deeply in pain . . .
Nikki is honest in these early chapters, brutally honest. Here, finally, are all of her secrets spilling out across the page the way they’ve spilled out across our lives—the truth about things we never said, things we tried like hell to ignore.
Some of it is horrifying: the drugs she was fed, the things that were done to her, the way Hollywood sank its hooks into her skin and hung her from the rafters to bleed—which she handled with such good humor that to the rest of us she simply looked like she was floating.
It breaks my heart in new and fresh ways, leaves me aching for a time machine, a way to crawl back to way back when, to a
time when I was blinded by bitterness—content to be angry at her, to blame her, instead of acknowledging that she was a victim too, just in a very different way. Nikki was drowning. She was drowning and I was jealous.
No. That’s a lie. An excuse. And I’m done hiding behind them.
The truth that I’ve come to know is that it was never about parties and stolen roles or asshole agents or the Oscar she won
or any of the other ten million things I’ve told myself and others were the reasons I left. The truth was: we were young and
dumb, with too much money and not enough common sense. Our relationship was beautiful, deep, but rotten to the core. Our love
became just another drug, and the codependency would have eventually killed us both. I think I knew on some level that I had
to find a reason to hate her in order to leave, and I had to leave in order to save myself.
My eyes blur with tears and I paw them away, adjusting the screen of my laptop so I can keep reading. Nikki doesn’t pull punches
in the memoir. Not one . . . except when it comes to me.
She dances around the topic of us, a mighty feat considering how much of her story is our story.
She even cheekily writes directly to readers at one point.
I know what some of you are here for, most of you even, and I’m sorry to disappoint. My relationship with Anderson was made
public far too young and far too early, while we were both grappling not just with typical adolescent questions of sexuality
but also with what it means to be a queer kid in Hollywood, where every move you make good or bad is going to be splashed
across TMZ. Her story is her story, and perhaps someday she will bless us all with sharing it, but I’ve screwed up more than
enough in my life to fill this book. It’s time to let that particular sleeping dog lie.
Besides, in the great words of Russell Crowe in Gladiator (2000), “Are you not entertained?” Surely you’re at least a little interested in my story too, since you’ve paid $35 for
a hardcover. (Or are you reading on an e-reader so no one knows?)
(Am I a secret just for you?)
(You get it, then, why I won’t talk about her.)
I wonder what her fans and readers will think when they read this.
When they see, read, hear her protecting me—offering herself up to be picked apart while shielding me from the masses.
It’s the exact opposite of what she did when we were younger, and the exact opposite of what I thought she was doing with this book—what she said it would be when we first started talking again.
Nikki met me—the new me—and she listened, and she changed it. I scroll ahead, shocked to realize that she cut out even the
anecdotes I approved—the ones we worked on together. This isn’t what I expected at all. This is a memory book turned confessional—an
apology and an explanation all at once.
I should have trusted her.
I brace myself and scroll to the next chapter. It starts with a shockingly detailed description of her cocaine addiction,
and I stop. A new realization washes over me. I don’t want to hear about this in a book. I want to hear it from Nikki, with
her face in front of mine, preferably while holding her hand. I want to trace comforting words on her skin while she tells
me all the things I ever wanted to know, and then return the favor.
I want her here with me.
I want her.
Not in the twisted, needy, codependent way of our youth, but in the gentle, quiet-cups-of-coffee way. The laughing-at-the-farmers-market
way. The we’ve-seen-enough-war-to-make-our-own-peace way.
A knock on my apartment door has me up and rushing to open it, hoping against hope that somehow Nikki instinctively understood
this and came back. That she said “forget one last chance, have another,” even though I told her I needed space. Even though
I told her I was confused.
I fling it open, my hopeful expression giving way to disappointment when I see Regan on the other side.
“Hello to you too,” she teases. “Don’t look so glad to see me.”
“Sorry,” I say, holding the door open and ushering her inside. “I am. I just—”
“Hoped I was someone slightly more famous?”
“Slightly?” I smile.
“Well, my flower shop is getting lots of traction with the LA crowd,” she says, fanning herself. “At the very least, I’m fame-adjacent
because of you.”
“Because of Nikki,” I correct, and she gives me a look. “Okay, fine, because of me and Nikki,” I amend.
“Much better.” She smiles. “Remember, it wouldn’t matter how much Nikki hyped you up if your arrangements were garbage.”
“I know, I know, I’m just . . . going through it right now.”
“I figured. I closed up for the night and wanted to check in before I left. That flower order was kind of heavy. A black rose?
Ouch.”
“It’s the book.”
“Hmm?” she asks, grabbing us each a Diet Coke from the fridge and following me out to the living room.
“The email she wanted me to check. She sent me the whole manuscript.”
“Oh my god,” Regan says, cracking open her can.
I follow her lead, letting the crispy fizz of the bubbles rattle around my skull, grateful to feel something else, if only
for a second.
“Are you going to read it?” she asks, when the silence stretches on uncomfortably long.
I blink myself out of my head and shrug. “I read some of it already—the first few chapters or so. She really did keep me out of it and she owned up to everything that was going on back then—the drugs, how she never showed up to set . . . all of it.”
“Wow,” Regan says quietly. I’m sure she’s thinking the same thing as me—Nikki really is one of the good ones.
“I don’t want to read any more.”
“You don’t have to,” Regan says. “It’s okay to be done, Annie. It is. Even with all of this.”
“Wait, I thought you liked her?”
“I do. The woman who I met isn’t like the girl you described all these years. That doesn’t mean anything, though! It doesn’t
mean you need her or owe her. That’s all I’m saying. There’s a reason second-chance romances are usually best kept for books. It’s hard in real life.
It’s complicated and painful. If you don’t want to read her story, then just stop. Let her go for good.”
“No, but that’s not why. I want to know everything, I do, but I want to hear it from her. I don’t want to read it in a book meant for a million other people and I don’t want it written out in small, digestible
chapters that have probably passed through a dozen other people’s hands. I want her to tell me herself. I want to—”
“Then call her!” Regan laughs, like it’s just that easy. “I said you didn’t need her, not that you can’t try to make it work if you want her. The ball is in your court. It’s been there.”
“I don’t know,” I say, looking away. “I lost so much of myself on our first go-round. I have hardly anything left to spare.
If we didn’t work out now, when we’re both finally in a place to make a real attempt . . . I don’t—”
“What if you get it back?”
I scrunch up my face. “What do you mean?”
“What if you never lose more? What if you get back what you lost instead?”
“What if I don’t, though?” I ask. “That’s the problem.”
“You’re right, what if you don’t?” she says nonchalantly, studying her nails. “Better to just sit here and watch her TikToks
over and over and pine for the rest of your life. Solid plan. Sounds much better than taking a chance on the person you love.”
“You’re one to talk!” I snort. “You’ve been pining for Johnny for years and you’re not willing to take a risk because of one
bad relation—”
“We’re together.”
“What?”
“Come on, Annie. You can’t pretend you haven’t seen us sneak off to the back room. Plus, when’s the last time you came over
and he wasn’t there? We practically live together at this point. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
“I mean, I did, but I just thought it was more of your, you know, weird dynamic. Why didn’t you say anything? I’m so happy
for you two! It’s been a long time coming. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” I say, smacking her arm.
“Telling our other best friend that we finally got it together right when she’s falling apart over a relationship felt obnoxious.
We’ve already been waiting so long for each other—a little longer to go public wouldn’t kill us.”
“I would have been happy for you,” I say. “I am happy for you!”
“All right, then we should have told you. I’m sorry. We just didn’t want you to make you feel worse than you already did.”
“No,” I say, jumping up to give her a hug. “I would never! I’m so happy for you, honestly! But what changed? What happened? You’ve been dancing around each other for years!”
“You and Nikki happened,” she says softly, studying my face like she’s waiting for a reaction.
“Uh, what?” I ask, dropping back to the couch.
“You inspired us.”
“You were inspired to finally date the man who’s obviously your soulmate by watching me and Nikki fall apart?”
“No, I was inspired to make the move because I saw how much hurt was caused when neither of you did. I realized that I was
letting my past hold me back from something good, and from where I’m sitting, it looked like you two were doing the same.”
Regan holds up her hand before I can reply. “You have your reasons, and they are incredibly valid. I’m not going to pretend
that it’s not different—the person who screwed me up wasn’t Johnny. That makes it a hundred times easier, because I just had
to let go of my own past, not ours. I did hurt him, though, with my indecision, and we’ve had a lot of talks about that. Still, I’m not gonna pretend to know
what it’s like for you and her. But I do know that when you ripped open your door a little while ago, it wasn’t me you wanted
on the other side of it.”
“Fair enough,” I say, running my hands down my face.
At least one good thing has come out of this train wreck.
“Annie, if you’re going to move through the world happy and fulfilled without her, I am all for it. I don’t care how many
perfect coffees she brought me,” Regan says, laughing. “All I know is that, either way, just like me and Johnny, you need
to put the past behind you—whether that’s with or without her.
You can’t just stagnate. It’s holding you back from your future, which, judging by the amount of orders we get now, is gonna be really friggin’ great.
You’ve built something incredible and I feel lucky to be a part of it.
You are so far from the woman you were when you first got here—I hope you realize that. ”
“I was trying not to cry tonight,” I say, tearing up as she gets up to hug me.
“I’m so proud of you, Annie, not just for everything you’ve accomplished at the flower shop, but for leaving LA in the first
place and for these boundaries you’re trying to set. But are you happy? Are you whole? That’s what matters now. Not what happened before. I love Annie Lacy, but I wouldn’t mind getting to know
Andy Ducharme better too. If you’d want that.”
I wipe at my eyes, nodding. “I know,” I say. “No, I know.” I rub my eyes with my palm again, wiping up the tears that just
won’t stop coming. “I’m done running, Regan. From her and from myself. It doesn’t work! It’s ridiculous!”
“It is.” She smiles. “I know because I did it too and it was such a stupendous waste of time.”
“Yeah,” I say, taking a deep breath as I look down at my phone. “I’m going to make some changes around here, and I’m going
to start with a phone call.”
“Good, but Andy?” she says, and my head snaps up. It’s the first time she’s ever called me that. I expect it to feel strange,
but it doesn’t. It feels right.
I smile at her. “Yeah?” I ask, and she grins back, clearly happy with how using that name landed.
“Just know that no matter what happens next—no matter what—Johnny and I will always be there for you, for better or for worse.
You’re stuck with us.”
I groan, pretending to be put out, even though I wouldn’t have it any other way. “Forever? Maybe I should have thought this through.”
Regan laughs, tossing a pillow at me before she heads to the door. “Guess next time you’ll scope out the riffraff before committing
to a new town.”
“Hopefully there won’t be a next time,” I sigh, glancing down at my phone.
“Something tells me you’ll be just fine.”