Chapter Twenty
I don’t know why I feel like I’m engaging in a walk of shame out of my own room, but I do. I move quietly around the courtyard, making my way to the reception desk, slipping into my pink chair.
I ask Elise to stop by the office when she gets back from dropping Emma off, and then I type in the password for my computer.
My Word document is still there, minimized. My crickets chirp at me, and I feel disoriented. Like I forgot what my real life is. Like I’ve forgotten everything except the last all-consuming twelve hours with Nathan.
The door to reception opens, and Wilma walks in, followed by Lydia. They each have a copy of my most recent book in their hands.
“Good morning,” says Wilma.
“Hi,” I say, typing a couple more words officiously in my manuscript.
“We just came to tell you how wonderful we think your new novel is,” Wilma says.
“Yes,” says Lydia, smiling.
“I don’t think you did,” I say. Because I know them, and I know that they’re up to something.
“It is good,” says Wilma. “But what we wanted to ask you about is what exactly happened when you went into that man’s motel room and didn’t emerge until the early hours of the morning.”
My mouth drops. “Are you spying on me?”
“No. You were very indiscreet.” Lydia looks at me meaningfully.
“It really is such a boon to your generation,” Wilma says. “We couldn’t be so obvious when we took a lover. You know, back in Charleston in 1959, I bedded a man who worked at the newspaper, and his endowments—”
“Wilma,” says Lydia. “We want to hear Amelia’s story, not about your days as the town bike of Charleston.”
“They were good days,” Wilma says, with a smile. “Tell us about how he is as a lover, Amelia.”
I want to be offended. I want to dig in and say that he in fact isn’t my lover. That nothing happened when I went into his room.
The truth is, nothing happened in his room.
But I can still feel the impression of his hands on my body from the morning spent in my room, so I feel that my protestations would ring hollow.
“I just felt like I was entitled to a little bit of fun,” I say.
Wilma laughs. “I knew it. And I knew you had electricity.”
The door opens again, and in walks Elise.
“We’ll let you gossip,” Wilma says, patting my hand as she and Lydia exit, clearly taking credit for my sex life.
My crickets chirp again, and I jump.
I look at my newest reservations while Elise stands there, waiting.
Then, I finally turn my full attention to her.
“Is everything good?” Elise asks.
I experience a deep feeling of guilt. Because I’m not going to tell her everything. Not now. His secrets are his. Mine are still ... complicated. It’s going to be a big deal when she finds out that I’ve kept all of this from her. I don’t think she’ll be mad at me. Though I think she might be hurt. I feel like maybe I need to be careful about choosing my venue. Or maybe I still don’t want to talk about it freely.
Maybe that’s closer to the truth.
“Yes. I ... Everything is fine.”
“You had sex with him again, didn’t you?”
“I did, Elise. I did.” I pause for a moment. “So, this is where I tell you that my ex-boyfriend is an actor, and he’s in a lot of Christmas movies, and he may or may not be booked to come to A Very Desert Christmas.”
I brace for impact.
There is no impact. Elise is just staring at me. “What?”
“That’s relevant,” I say. “Because Nathan has agreed to be my ... my fake boyfriend so that when Chris shows up ...”
“ Christopher Weaver is your ex-boyfriend. Your terrible ex-boyfriend ... The one from LA.”
“Yes, he is. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. But I was blindsided by the whole thing, and frankly, still kind of in denial.”
“Well, I don’t really blame you for that.”
“Who could?” I ask. Except, she could have, and I know it.
“So, you’re actually engaging in the plot of one of these Christmas movies in order to deal with this?”
“Kind of. Except he isn’t going to fall in love with me. I don’t need to fall in love with him.”
For some reason, those words get stuck in my throat.
“This is a recipe for disaster,” she says.
“No,” I say. “Because I am full up on disaster. There have been enough disasters. Who the hell does this kind of stuff happen to?”
“Women in the kinds of Christmas movies your ex stars in?”
“Exactly! It’s ridiculous.”
Elise examines the edge of her currently bright-red thumbnail. “Just ...” She looks up at me. “Be careful, okay? This feels like a very dangerous, potentially volatile situation, and I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I’m not going to get hurt. Don’t worry about me.” I try to internalize that. I try to bolster myself. I’ve had my heart broken in such a terrible, complicated way. The breakdown of my long-term relationship was so complete and so deep. I know that I haven’t given Elise the whole story, so she doesn’t really know what I went through, or why everything felt extra sharp, extra hard, but I know.
Nothing else could ever hurt me that bad.
But I also know how I feel about her. About how much I want her to take a chance on Ben. On happiness. Even knowing everything she’s been through. I suddenly appreciate that I’ve been a little bit cavalier with her fears.
Thinking that you might love somebody again after you got broken apart by another person really does feel like the riskiest thing imaginable.
Nathan is temporary. When he leaves Rancho Encanto, I’m never going to have to see him again.
We can dump all this pain into each other and then never have to deal with the consequences of it. We can indulge in pleasure and really, really feel like we deserve it because we know how bad so many other things have been. It’s ideal, in many ways.
That’s not how it is for Elise.
Ben is her best friend. If she takes a risk and it goes badly, she’ll lose her support system. It’s easy for me to say that he’ll be there for her no matter what. I think that he will be.
But I can also understand why that’s not so easy or clear cut for her.
“I’m really sorry that I was being pushy about Ben,” I say.
“Oh, it’s okay,” she says. “It’s probably fair. Somebody probably should be pushy with me. I’m ... I’m tired of myself. I have two best friends. You and him. I can’t tell him ...”
“You know that he feels the same way.”
“I do,” she says. “That’s the scary part. Because if I jump in, I’m going to be jumping in all the way.”
I can understand why that’s scary.
I haven’t given over any control to another person for a very long time. I haven’t even been trusting enough to tell the people around me my entire story.
“This whole being a person thing really sucks,” I say.
“You write romance,” Elise says. “Doesn’t that make you uniquely qualified to comment on this stuff?”
“Yes. If I were writing your romance, it would be a friends to lovers, and you would have a happy ending, complete with a wedding epilogue.”
“I like the way you think, but I’m concerned life doesn’t work that way.”
“That’s why I don’t feel uniquely qualified to comment, even with my romance pedigree. Those who can’t do ... write, or something?”
She taps the counter with her bejeweled nail. “So, you have a terrible ex who’s a movie star.”
I hold my hand up. “He isn’t a movie star. He is a fixture of midbudget TV movies.”
“Okay, but still. Doesn’t that make you ... not believe in happy endings?”
I think about that for a moment. “No. Though I do think that sometimes in books, happy endings take a different shape than they do in real life. In books, they’re kind of a fixed state. But I think in real life ... we continue to have conversations. We continue to change. We continue to live in the happy ending, even as life happens around us. I think in books, the characters deal with all their issues, and that’s when they can be together. I think in real life it’s not that simple.”
“Great. So you just have to do everything while dealing with all of your immeasurable issues and trying to love somebody.”
My heart squeezes. “That’s what I think. But, at least you have somebody that you love.”
She nods. “Yeah. Somebody that you might lose.”
I think about her daughter. Her beautiful, perfect daughter.
Emma.
You can lose anyone you love. I am so painfully aware of that. My thoughts get tangled up, and it takes me a long time to talk again.
“I think that’s life too,” I say, slowly. “We can always lose something. Hell, we can always lose everything. I think the truly miraculous thing about life is that we keep loving anyway.”
Not necessarily romantic love. Not even necessarily the love a mother has for her child. My own mother’s love certainly wasn’t enduring, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever get the chance to have a child that I get to keep with me.
I’m grateful for my family at the Pink Flamingo. I love Elise. I love my life.
Even though I don’t want to examine the full implications of it right now, everything in me is telling me to reach out to Nathan. To grab hold of him. To keep on connecting to him.
Even knowing how everything could end.
“You’re so funny,” Elise says, looking at me. Her words make me startle.
“What?”
“I don’t know, Amelia. Sometimes I feel like I still don’t really know you.” She shakes her head, and her earrings jingle. “But you’re usually right.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve tried hard to be a good friend. Though I’ve been trying to do it while I ... I got hurt badly before I moved here. I was still kind of a mess. This place, you, have been so important to me.” I feel tears pushing against the backs of my eyes. Pressure building. “You’ve been the friend that I needed. I’m sorry if I haven’t always given back as much as I’ve gotten.”
“Amelia, you share everything you have. Except your own feelings. You’ve given me your time, your advice. You’ve been wonderful to Emma.”
I think, not for the first time, that it’s probably helpful that Emma wasn’t a baby when I moved here.
I’m uncomfortable with babies.
“I’m going to try,” I say. “I’m going to try to be more normal. And not ... I just wanted to leave everything behind.”
“I get that too,” she says. “That’s actually one of the hardest things about Ben. He saw the person I was with Emma’s dad. I’m so careful. I always have been. I wasn’t with him, and I’m embarrassed. I think I don’t ... I don’t fully understand why he should care about that woman. That woman who let things get so bad with her ex. Who didn’t like herself enough to walk away when it was so obvious she needed to.”
“Stop,” I say. “Okay. I think we both need to stop blaming ourselves for bullshit that stupid men put us through.”
Nathan makes me feel beautiful again. His hands on my body ... It gives me an appreciation for myself that has been gone for a very long time.
“You know that Christopher cheated on me. I’ve been carrying around this feeling that I wasn’t enough. I’m just done with it. He doesn’t get to decide how I feel about myself. He doesn’t get to keep being in my life when he is so resolutely out of it. It is so hard when you love somebody in good faith and they twist it because they’ll never hurt the same way you do.”
She nods. “He never loved anybody but himself.”
“So he doesn’t get to decide how much you’re loved now. If that’s with Ben, then great. If it’s just you and Emma, then great. If we turn into old spinsters in this motel, then great. But he doesn’t get to decide what you accept. He doesn’t get to decide your worth. Neither does ... Neither does Chris.”
“So, does that mean you’re thinking of trying for something more with Nathan?”
I shake my head. “I’m not the deciding factor there. There’s a lot going on with that one.”
“Yeah. Well. He definitely seems like a lot.”
She pushes away from the counter. “I have a grocery order coming that I need to grab. Thank you. For taking the time for my nonsense in the middle of yours.”
“There’s room for both of us to have nonsense at the same time,” I say.
I really believe that. Suddenly, my life feels so much more connected. So much more integrated.
I brought my pain with me, and it hasn’t destroyed me.
I’ve given Elise a new piece of myself, and I’m shocked to find I don’t feel reduced. Instead, I feel more whole.
I feel happier.
For the first time since everything started to crumble at that meeting, I feel like things might be okay.