49. Will
WILL
Tiffany gathered bubbles around her like a feather boa. “Aren’t you supposed to be downstairs now?”
“Probably,” I said. I closed my eyes and let my head fall back against the hot tub wall.
“I still can’t believe it never occurred to you to invite me to your family’s mansion in the Hamptons before.”
“Sorry,” I muttered. Only I wasn’t sorry. It took forever to get out here, and my family’s wealth made me uncomfortable, a constant reminder that I was nothing without them.
Miles’s muscular leg bumped mine underwater. “I’ll go for you if you want. I’m probably great at writing screenplays. I watch movies all the time.”
“Do it,” I said. I felt like a poached egg, my skin taut, my insides a liquid mess, but I couldn’t summon the strength to climb out into the breeze.
“Is there room for one more?”
I blinked the steam from my eyes in disbelief as Theo stepped onto the balcony, a towel draped over his bony shoulder.
It was like coming across a bear cub in the woods.
My impulse was to hug him, but my good sense told me to back away.
Just my fucking luck. Dad must’ve invited James to help with the rewrites, the fucking asshole.
Clearly, the movie was all that mattered to him. My broken heart didn’t count for shit.
Miles scooted over. “Get on in here. There’s plenty of room. Plus, Will was just leaving.”
I stood, the jolt of fear giving me the push I needed, and let the summer air cool my pickled flesh. Then, forcing a smile, I said, “Hey, Theo.”
“Is this really where you grew up?” he asked, peering over the balcony at the koi pond in the garden below. “This place is ridiculous.”
It was ridiculous, and it was just one of Dad’s houses. Although seeing as it had been in our family for generations—my great-grandfather bought it in the 1920s—it felt far more like an actual home than Dad’s other properties. “Some of the time, yeah,” I said, grabbing a towel to dry off.
“You know how I’m kind of an ideas man?” Theo said, seemingly immune to the awkwardness hanging in the air with the steam.
“Well, I thought of the perfect way to make your dad’s part smaller.
Make my mom’s part bigger. I mean, think about it.
She’s hardly in it now, which makes no fucking sense.
I think Dad probably just didn’t wanna think about her because she broke his heart.
It’s like how Uncle James gets all quiet whenever your name comes up.
You know, avoidance and denial and all that.
But isn’t that the point of art, to stick your finger in the wound and wiggle it around? ”
I froze. I didn’t know what the point of anything was.
We met around my father’s dining room table, a skeleton crew consisting of Mom, Dad, Michelle, Ryan, James, and Annabeth, the screenwriter. Joining us from Mom’s laptop were the two ADs and Roger, the cinematographer.
Apparently, James hadn’t lost his voice or taken a vow of silence. He still had all his fingers, and they seemed to move well enough to dial a phone or tap out a text message.
I sat three chairs down from him on the same side of the table so I wouldn’t have to look at him. But I still had to listen to him, to that gravelly voice that used to whisper words of encouragement in my ear.
Annabeth had a million questions for the real Jimmy Young, and James rattled off answers like it was no big deal, like I wasn’t in the room, absorbing every word like radiation.
“I think we should leave Jimmy alone,” Annabeth said, an hour into the meeting.
“It’ll muddy the story too much if we dive into his romantic entanglements, and I like the brother dynamic the way it is.
If anything, I think we should make Jimmy’s part smaller.
Maybe we don’t even bring him in until the second act.
” She glanced at James and Ryan. “No offense. I just think the story will be stronger if we establish Travis as the point-of-view character.”
“I agree,” Dad said, and I nearly fell out of my chair. He wanted to make Travis the lead? But that would relegate him to a supporting role. Dad never took supporting roles. Was this some kind of prank?
“That’s not a bad idea,” Michelle said. “It is based on his memoir.”
Someone had to stop this nonsense, and I was about to speak up when Mom beat me to it. “I agree it’d make a better movie, but the studio will never go for it.” What she didn’t need to say was that they’d never go for me as the lead.
“Fuck the studio,” Dad said. “Let’s just make a great movie. Maybe we can buy back the rights. I’ll leave enough money in my will to finance the rest independently.”
“They’ll never go for it,” Mom repeated. “Alan lost his mother to Alzheimer’s. This film is his pet.”
Ignoring her, Michelle turned to Annabeth. “How do you propose we add more to Act One without expanding Robert’s character?”
Annabeth thought for a moment. “Well, we could cast someone as a younger Bruce and sprinkle in childhood flashbacks.”
Michelle frowned.
“Theo thinks maybe we should focus more on Emily,” I said, speaking up for the first time. “If we round her out and show why Travis fell for her in the first place, it might make her eventual departure more impactful.”
Annabeth’s eyes closed, and for a second, she looked as if she were already rewriting the script. “Hmm, that’s actually kind of brilliant.”
Michelle nodded and flashed me a rare smile. “I agree.”
After the meeting, I made a beeline for the bathroom and locked myself inside.
I didn’t care if everyone thought I was constipated or jacking off.
There was no way in hell I was exchanging awkward pleasantries with James as if nothing had ever happened.
Mom and Dad might be able to sweep it all under the rug for the sake of the movie, but I wasn’t there yet.
Some time later, after I figured everyone had gone, I opened the door. I jumped when I saw James leaning against the wall.
“Hey,” he said.
My temperature spiked. “There are other bathrooms, you know.”
“Can we talk?”
“Why? I thought we’d already said everything there was to say.” Which was nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing.
“Because you deserve to know what really happened between you and Derek ten years ago.”
My blood ran cold.
“Is there somewhere private we can go?” James asked, taking a step toward me, his green eyes unbearably bright.
I took a step back, hating how his presence still made my body buzz with longing. I considered telling him to fuck off. But instead, I walked down the hall and opened the library doors. If James knew more about that night, I had to hear him out.
The library was my favorite room in the house. How many hours had I spent within these book-lined walls, running scenes with my father?
“You can sit wherever.” I headed for the bourbon and poured myself a generous helping. I was going to need it. As an afterthought, I asked, “You want one?”
“I was spying on Tony, not you. That was how I came upon the videos.”
“I take it that’s a no on the bourbon, then?” I sipped my overfilled glass before turning around to face him. What videos was he talking about?
James still had the mustache, but his beard was growing back. It was already half its former length, and somehow even hotter.
“Tony stole the security footage from the Beverly Hilton Hotel, and he’s been using it to blackmail your parents for years.”
James’s braced stance suggested he expected a big reaction, but I only nodded, like this made perfect sense. Because it did. Certainly more than Mom orchestrating a cover-up to protect me. There was nothing Tony wouldn’t do for Derek, whereas Mom couldn’t even be bothered not to fuck my crush.
“I have copies if you wanna see.” James held out his phone.
I stepped just close enough to grab it, then retreated over to the chaise by the window, where I hit play with a trembling finger. Is this really happening? Am I really about to find out the truth firsthand?
Bile rose in my throat as I watched my teenage self trail after Derek like a lovesick puppy. Anyone with eyes could see he wasn’t into me. I watched the video several times before moving on to the next.
The second video was even worse, and I couldn’t hold back my tears any longer.
James had seen this, too, hadn’t he? He’d seen how desperate and pathetic I was, how I’d thrown myself at Derek, how I’d ignored his persistent demands to leave and crawled into his bed like .
. . well, like a pathetic fuckboy. No wonder James had never bothered with excuses or explanations.
Still, I brushed my tears aside and hit play on the third video, which was the most damning of all.
Now I couldn’t even hate my mother. She didn’t care that I was in her lover’s hotel room, or that I was holding a bloody statue screaming, “He’s dead, Mom.
He’s dead.” She took in the scene in an instant and pushed me inside, away from any prying eyes.
A few minutes later, she emerged with my arm slung over her shoulder.
The bloody statue was gone, probably stashed in her purse.
I let the video loop a third time, as I had with the others, though I wasn’t sure why. I could barely see the screen through the blur of tears.
I jumped when I felt James’s hand on my shoulder. “Where are the others?” I asked, rising from the chaise and moving out of arm’s reach.
“There are no others.”
“No, where is the moment it happens? The moment I try to kill him? Show it to me.”
James took a step closer. “I don’t have that part.”
“What do you mean you don’t have that part? Why the fuck wouldn’t you have it? That’s the most important part.”
Again, James just stood there, mute.
“What the fuck is wrong with you? Why can’t you fucking talk? Where is the rest of it?”
“I don’t know, Will. If I had it, I’d show it to you. Your father didn’t want me to show you this much, but I thought—”
“I don’t give a fuck what you thought.”
James took another step closer. “I never meant to hurt you, Will. I—”
“Then why the fuck did you sneak a pap into my brother’s bachelor party?”