Chapter 37
Despite my lack of sleep, school the next day is much more manageable—more survivable—now that Evie is back on my side. The
questions don’t bother me nearly as much. Evie has torn phones from the hands of at least three people who were taking pictures
of me, and threatened to smash them under the heel of the imposing Doc Martens she’s wearing. And maybe I’m just imagining
it, but it seems like the whole thing might even be dying down.
Plus, I finally—finally—get to see Luke again today. The past week has been so brutal that it almost feels like us kissing happened in a different
life.
When I get home, Mom’s car is in the driveway, but inside, there aren’t any signs of life. Not even Thisbe, who always greets
me at the front door.
In the kitchen, I spot a giant plastic jug of premixed margaritas that’s been opened and left out on the counter. That wasn’t
here when I came back to get my school stuff earlier this morning.
I go to knock softly on her bedroom door. “Mom? Are you in there?”
From inside I hear rustling, and the whine-yawn Thisbe does whenever she’s been sleeping but is woken by something exciting, like me coming home, or the prospect of a walk.
“Yeah, come in,” Mom calls.
She’s sitting in bed, propped up with a bunch of pillows, with an empty glass and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream with a
spoon sticking out of it on the nightstand. On the blanket are a bunch of wadded-up Kleenexes.
Thisbe is lying next to her, but doesn’t get up when I come in. Her tail thumps, but she stays put.
“Are you okay?”
Mom blows her nose with a fresh Kleenex. “Todd and I broke up.”
I sit down on the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry.”
“No,” Mom says. “Both you and Nicky saw him for what he was. And last night . . . you were right. He’s always picked on you,
hasn’t he? I just hadn’t seen it. Maybe I was willfully ignoring it. I’m the one who’s sorry, Gus.”
So she broke up with him, in large part, for me. And I don’t feel bad, or guilty. What I feel is an overwhelming sense of
relief—of safety—that she was willing to put me first.
“I got swept away by the idea of being in a stable relationship,” she continues. “Of going on vacation with a significant
other and not worrying that he’d gamble away our family’s savings if we were in driving distance of a casino.” Even after
everything, I’ve never heard Mom talk about Dad like this. She pauses before adding, “I didn’t realize my taste in men was
this bad.”
We both laugh, and then she pats my hand. “You two have veto rights on my next boyfriend. If I ever have a next boyfriend.”
“There’s always Johnny,” I muse.
Mom goes a brilliant shade of crimson. “Johnny? No. He’s my business partner. That would be so unprofessional.”
“Details,” I say. “If only he and Victoria would break up.”
Mom is even redder now. Even her ears are red.
“What?” I ask. “What is it?”
“They broke up a couple of months ago.”
“Mom!” I say. “Why didn’t you mention that?”
“Because it was none of my business, which means it’s most certainly none of yours.”
“It could be your business.”
“No. I’m freshly out of a relationship. Even if I was interested—which I’m not saying I am—it’s too messy.”
And she’s probably right. But the glimmer of light I see in her eyes . . . maybe it could happen for them. One day.
I get into bed with her, and we put on an episode of Friends. And then another one. We pass the pint of Half Baked back and forth until it’s gone. Mom pours herself another margarita.
At some point, I start to doze, because I’m tired from staying up so late with Evie last night.
Around six, I text Luke. From the flight info he shared with me, I know he landed at JFK around four.
ME:
Are you back yet???
It takes twenty minutes for him to text me back.
LUKE:
Almost. About ten minutes away. I can get the Bronco and pick you up?
ME:
I can borrow my mom’s car. Meet you at your place?
LUKE:
Sounds good. Can’t wait to see you
I can’t put my finger on it, but something feels . . . off. He’s been slower to respond, and when we talk he’s distracted,
like something is going on he hasn’t told me about. But maybe I’m just being paranoid.
I click off my phone and turn to Mom. “Luke is back. Is it okay . . .”
“Go. Your lump of a mother will be fine here by herself.” She reaches out and pats Thisbe, who lets out a long dog grunt.
“I’ve got good company.”
“You sure?” I ask, and Mom nods.
“Thanks for being here for me, honey.”
I run upstairs to freshen myself up—brush my hair and my teeth, put on deodorant, text Evie—before heading out.
When I get to Luke’s, his Bronco is in the driveway and the lights from inside glow a soft orange. I didn’t bring my coat,
and it’s even colder than it was earlier, so I jog from Mom’s car.
I’m coming up the front steps, about to knock, when he pulls open the door.
He’s wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants, and he’s tanner than he was the last time I saw him, with more color in his cheeks.
The way the light falls on his arms, I can see the outlines of his lean muscles.
He looks good.
We reach for each other at the same moment. His body feels warm against mine as we kiss, his hands on either side of my face,
in my hair.
“I’ve been so excited for you to get here I’ve just been waiting at the front door,” he says when we finally pull apart, which
makes me feel better. Maybe I was just imagining things earlier. “Come in.”
I can tell by the flashing shadows that he’s got a fire on. It’s also very tidy. I wonder if he had cleaners come while he
was gone. Part of me tenses when we get to the sunken family room, expecting Ani Labrie to be there waiting, but she’s not.
“Do you need anything to eat? To drink? I asked one of the PAs on the film to fill the fridge before I got back, so there
should be a lot in there.”
“No. I’m good.”
We sit down on the couch, and he pulls my feet into his lap. “So has your week been as batshit crazy as mine?”
I nod, then tell him about the invasive questions at school, the fight with Evie, even about the blowup with Todd last night.
When I’m done, he squeezes my feet.
“Shit, Cee. Sorry I wasn’t around.”
“It isn’t your fault. I guess the secret identity angle was too titillating for people to ignore.” I’m glad to be able to
tell him this story when things feel like they’re starting to get better. If I’d told him this story yesterday after school,
I wouldn’t have been able to get through it without ugly crying. I press into him with my toes. “So why was your week crazy?”
“Lots of similar reasons. I didn’t realize this”—he motions between the two of us—“was going to create such a media frenzy.
And actually . . . I want to talk to you about that.”
“About what?”
“About us.”
I sit up straighter. “What about us?”
I’m not sure what I’m expecting him to say. Maybe something like, I can’t believe how fast I caught feelings for you. Or, I’m really into you, but I want to take it slow since we were friends first and this is all so new.
But that’s not what he says. That’s not what he says at all.
“So Cal asked me in for a meeting the other day. I think I mentioned it. Anyway, my PR team was there, too. They had some
ideas about how to play my image in the best way for both the film and my career.”
I match up the timing of this meeting with my own intuition.
Something has felt off since Wednesday. Wednesday was his meeting with Cal.
It’s clear he doesn’t want to say what comes next.
“So all this stuff has apparently been bad for me. Bad in terms of me transitioning to being taken more seriously as an actor. So their recommendation was to avoid any unnecessary drama and negative press as best I can for the time being.”
My heart is beating so hard. “Okay. And?”
“And they said it would be best for me to chill a little. For us to chill a little,” he says. “Publicly, at least. So we just have to stay under the radar. They said it’s better for my reputation
for me to deny anything romantic between us.”
The irony of the situation is not lost on me. He’s basically saying the same thing back to me that I said to him. That he
wants me to be his secret. The same way I wanted him to be mine.
“Do you want to be with me?” I ask. I hate that this conversation was forced on us so quickly, when it’s all still so new. I feel almost
a sense of grief that what we have between us didn’t have time to take root and grow more naturally.
“Yes.” He frowns in a worried way, like he knows he’s losing control of this conversation. “So badly.”
I used to spend every night dreaming I’d hear those words from him. I would doodle different versions of CeCe Cordova and Claire Cordova on napkins, just to see how it looked, before I would tear them up and flush them down the toilet.
So now I let myself imagine what it would be like.
Maybe it would be good. Maybe he’d visit me between projects, whenever he had spare time.
Maybe he could even get an apartment in New York.
Maybe we could get lost in each other, in our own small world.
We wouldn’t be able to go out. We couldn’t do anything.
It would all have to be low-profile, for however long Cal deemed necessary. Maybe that would be okay.
But this is also the first time in recent memory where it’s all been out there for me. I’m not hiding anything anymore. I
don’t think I’ve ever acknowledged the stress I put myself under, keeping all the doors shut tight, being so careful about
what I said to who.
And now that that’s over and done with, I don’t ever want to go back to that, to a compartmentalized existence. I needed it
at the time, to survive, I really did.
But now I’m finally free.
“I don’t know if I can do that.” My voice is shaky, like I can hardly believe I’m saying that.
“Why not?”
So I explain it to him. He nods the entire time.
“But Evie could know,” he stresses. “Obviously. And your family, too.”
He’s not getting it. I’m hot and tingly all over. As if someone rang a bell at the core of me, and the reverberations are
in my very nerves. Why is Luke willing to do all this for a job he hates?
“Hey.” Maybe Luke can see this isn’t going well, because he seems a little panicked. “Nothing has to change between us, not
in private. We can still see each other, exactly like this. Please. I don’t want to lose you again.”
“And in public? Would you be single?”
I know the answer to this by Luke’s discomfort.
“So you’d be with Ani in public, and me in secret,” I repeat slowly.
“Not forever. Only long enough to ride out the film and its release. And Ani’s good people,” Luke adds. “She’d support us.”
“By, what, posing for more pictures where she looks sad and wronged?”
He grimaces. “I don’t think that was her idea. I’d make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
I’m shaking my head now, almost involuntarily. “Luke. I can’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t,” I say again.
“What do you want, then? Do you want me to quit?” he asks, a little frantically. “Do you want me to fire Cal? What do you
want me to do?”
“I want you to decide those things,” I tell him. “I don’t want to make any of those decisions for you. I want you to stand up for yourself.
For me.”
“Cal thinks—”
“I’m sorry,” I interrupt. “Is Cal God? Did I miss something?”
“No. No, of course not.” He looks like I’m torturing him. “But this is the only thing I know how to do. Show up. Smile. Follow
directions. It’s the only way I know how to live.”
It doesn’t have to be, I think but don’t say.
He may be willing to let his manager direct his life, in a job he isn’t even sure he wants, but I can’t.
And I’m not going to be another person in his life who piles my own expectations onto him.
Another person telling him how to live. I won’t do that to him.
Just like he can’t ask me to hide any part of myself anymore. To keep secrets. To be a secret.
I stand. My hands shake as I tuck my hair behind my ears.
“This doesn’t have to be a big deal,” Luke says. “We can still be together. Just in our own way.”
“It’s a big deal to me. But it’s probably for the best that this came up early.” I motion between the two of us. “This would
be so hard. Even if it ever became anything, I’ll be in college next year. Probably out here. And you’ll be in California.
And I just can’t . . . I can’t be with someone I can’t rely on.”
“You can rely on me,” Luke says. “You can.”
“No, I can’t!” The words come out more emotional than I mean them to. “How can I trust you when you don’t even trust yourself?”
Luke is standing now, too. “Is this really what you want?”
“No,” I say. “Which is why I should go.”
“Cee,” Luke says, but I force myself to turn, to walk out of his house, and even as I do, I can’t believe this is happening,
why did this happen, I didn’t want any of this to happen. I just want to be with him, wrapped up in him.
As I walk to my car, the romantic in me thinks it’ll start pouring rain out of nowhere, and he’ll come running out to kiss me.
That he’ll tell me he’s sorry, that he’ll go back to tell his team exactly how things are going to go in his personal life, that they don’t get to decide it for him, that he knows what he wants and what he’s willing to do to get it.
But he isn’t ready for that. He needs to figure himself out first. I can’t do that for him. I won’t.
And therein lies the tragedy.