Chapter 22
Stella
“ I have to admit,” I tell him, “I didn’t expect her to fully own it the way she does.”
“Me either.”
“And that she knows what she lost when she let you get away takes some of the sting out of it.”
“I’m one of a kind.”
That makes me laugh as hard as I have in days. “Yes, you are. What do you think of it?”
“Like you, I’m impressed by the way she owns it. No hedging, no excuses. Just the truth of the matter. It could’ve been much worse, I suppose.”
“ Much worse. At least she didn’t bring the sex stuff into it.”
“Small favors.”
“What happens now?” I ask him.
“We need to let Vivian know whether I intend to enforce the terms of the NDA. If we pursue it, Emmett feels we could stop the publication of the book.”
“Wouldn’t it look like we have something to hide if that got out?”
“I suppose it would.”
“Do we have anything to hide?”
He glances at me over the top of his glasses. “Not anymore.”
“Do we care if people know you were once married to her or that I called her a whore and that it cost me my career for a time?”
“I don’t much care, but I bet Jonah will.”
That makes us both laugh.
“He doesn’t come off looking so great.”
Max chuckles. “He’s not worth the bother.”
“That’s something Vivian and I agree on. You know… A funny thing has happened on the way to this memoir being published.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t care about any of it anymore. I don’t feel a single thing when I see her gorgeous photo on the cover of that book. My outrage has left the building.”
“That’s a nice side effect of all this upset. Flynn says she doesn’t look like that anymore.”
“Who among us looks like we did back in the day?”
“You do.”
“Oh please. Do you need stronger glasses?”
“I do not,” he says indignantly. “My wife is as gorgeous today as she was the day I met her.”
“You’re a damned liar, but I’ll allow it in this case.”
We share another laugh.
“If it’s all right with you, I’ll tell Flynn we have no objection to the publication of the book. But I want us to agree that when we’re asked—not if—we’ll say of course you always knew about my first marriage. It was a blip in time before we ever knew each other.”
“Yes, that’s what we’ll say.”
“I’m sorry again that I didn’t tell you a long time ago.”
“I understand why you didn’t. I could be a bit unreasonable about her.”
He raises a dark brow. “A bit ?”
“Don’t push your luck, mister.”
“Yes, dear.” He gets out his phone and sends a text to Flynn, who responds right away. “He says, ‘Thanks for letting me know. She’ll be relieved to hear the news.’”
“I’m sure she will.”
“I hate to hear that she’s fallen on such hard times and that she’s so alone in the world.”
I glance at him tentatively. “Are you going to want to do something about that?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Something .”
“Nah. I mean, she’s still the woman who stole your fiancé once upon a time.”
“Thank goodness she did, or I might’ve been married to Jonah Street when Max Godfrey came along.”
“Lord, I hadn’t even thought of it that way.”
“I have. Many times over the years. Not that it took away my disdain for her and what she did—what they both did—but I’ve always been grateful that I didn’t marry him, that I was free to fall madly in love with you.”
“I guess things happen the way they’re meant to, even if we can’t see that at the time.”
“Yes, for sure.”
He glances at me. “So if I wanted to do something for her…”
“I wouldn’t object. I might even participate.”
“Wow, look at you coasting down the high road.”
“I like to think I can still learn at my advanced age.”
“There’s nothing advanced about your age except in the area of wisdom.”
I snort with laughter. “You have to say that. You’re older than me.”
“Don’t remind me that I robbed the cradle.”
“Three years is not a robbery, old man.”
“Who you calling old?”
I can tell that I surprise him when I get up from my chair and go to him, sliding onto his lap.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asks as he wraps his arms around me.
“I want you to know that even though I don’t condone secrets or lies, I’m sort of glad this happened because it gave us a good shaking, a reminder that for all our years together, we can still be vulnerable to trouble unless we stay vigilant.”
“I’ve never not been vigilant where the most important person in my life is concerned.”
“You know what I mean. Neither of us would’ve thought something like this was possible at this stage of the game.”
“Your point is well taken. I’ll always be sorry you were hurt by the secret I kept.”
“I’m over it, and in the process, I’ve let go of decades’ worth of animosity toward someone who got over the whole incident years ago. I ended up with the husband, the family—and the career—I was meant to have.”
“Yes, you certainly did.”
“The acting career was never going to be what the music became.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“I do. The incident with Vivian forced me to pivot sooner than I might have otherwise. I could’ve spent years chasing the wrong dream.”
“I think you could’ve been just as great of an actress as you are a singer.”
“You have to say that. You’re my husband.”
He pats my backside. “I don’t gotta say nothing but the truth.”
“You know what I want to do?”
“What’s that?”
“Get in bed and talk about the day we met.”
“That was one hell of a day.”
“Let’s relive it, shall we?” We usually do that on our anniversary but haven’t gotten to it yet this year.
“I’d love to.”
Max
When we’re snuggled up to each other in bed, I let my mind wander back in time to the most consequential day ever. This is my favorite story of them all, the day I met the love of my life.
“The very first thing I remember is how uncertain you were, how nervous about performing on Merv.”
“There was so much at stake. I can barely stand to think about the spot I was in, a heartbeat away from having to go home to Iowa a failure.”
“You were never going home to Iowa.”
“I didn’t know that then! What if I’d bombed on Merv?”
“You were never going to bomb either. You were—and are—far too talented to bomb.”
“It was by no means a sure thing back then.”
“I found it refreshing that you were so nervous. I was far more accustomed to meeting cocky young blowhards who had a fraction of your talent. I watched you from backstage while you performed. I caught Merv’s eye across the stage and saw he was as blown away by you as I was. During the commercial break, he said to me, ‘That young lady is going to be a big star.’”
“You never told me that!”
“I did, too.”
“I would’ve remembered that. How is it that I’m still hearing new details about that day fifty-two years later?”
“I swear I told you.”
“Maybe you did, and I forgot. That’s entirely possible.”
We share a laugh, as we often do, over the relentless march of time and how stupid we feel when we can’t recall things. I tell her it’s because our hard drives are full.
“After the show, I was so afraid you’d leave before I could ask you…”
“What did you want to ask me?”
We both know the answers to all these questions, but it’s still fun to ask them. “I wanted to ask you to spend the rest of your life with me, but I feared that might be too much too soon.”
Her laughter is the sound of joy to me. “Perhaps a bit too much. Not that we took our time or anything. I still cringe when I think about how I behaved that night.”
“Tell me how you behaved…”
“I can’t. It’s too embarrassing.”
I poke her ribs, which makes her gasp and then laugh. “Come on… You know it’s my favorite story ever.”
She turns her face into my chest. “I can’t.”
“Remember how immediate it all was? Like there she is, and now we’re together forever?”
“I do. It was like a force bigger than us, or something equally dramatic.”
“Which is why what you did that night shouldn’t embarrass you after all this time.”
“It does. I would’ve smacked my girls around if they’d done that.”
“Um, I hate to tell you, but I bet they have…”
“Stop it. My girls would never sleep with a new guy the night they met him.”
“If you say so, dear.”
“Let me have my illusions, will you? I still can’t believe you got me into bed that night.”
“It was more like the next morning…”
“The three-day first date.”
“It was the last first date of our lives, so we had to make it memorable.”
“We sure did that.”
“By the time we came up for air, your career had been fully resurrected.”
“Dabney was so mad at me,” she says with a laugh. “‘Where the hell ya been, Stelly Belly? Everyone wants to book Stella Flynn!’”
“I’ve always loved your impressions of him.”
“He was the best, but oh, he was mad that I disappeared for three days after Merv.”
“Was it worth it?”
“You have to ask?”
“Just checking.”
“You know I’ve never regretted a moment I spent with you. Except for how easy I was that first night.”
That cracks me up. “We were both easy that night.”
“I decided I had to marry you so I could live with myself.”
“Haha. You were such a good girl until you met me.”
“I fell into a fast crowd.”
“It’s amazing when you think about how after that we never spent another night apart, except when we were working.”
“Until this week…”
I wince. “I hate that I caused it.”
“We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about fifty-two years ago.”
“Right.”
“Stay on topic.”
“Yes, dear. So we left Merv’s studio and then what?”
“You were starving, so we went to get something to eat.”
“I took you to Frankie’s, where my buddies were playing poker. They never let me forget that I chose you over them that night.”
“They got over it eventually. That was the best meal I’d had in years.”
“You still love Frankie’s filet and scalloped potatoes.”
“Yum, and the creamed spinach. To die for. Is it too late to call for takeout?”
“I think it might be. We’ll stop by for dinner after the trip.”
“How many dinners have we had there since that first night?”
“Oh God, hundreds. Sometimes I think he keeps the place open just for us.”
“No way.”
“He gets offers to sell all the time, but he declines out of fear of new owners changing it.”
“Some things should never be changed, and Frankie’s is one of them.”
“Right you are, love. That was the first time you had crème br?lée, remember?”
“I’ll never forget it. Best thing I’d ever tasted.”
“We drank a lot of wine at that dinner.”
“That’s how you got me into your bed.”
“I don’t recall much arm-twisting…”
“Hush. I was coerced. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.”
After all these years, she still makes me laugh like no one else ever has.
“It’s not funny!”
“Yes, it is.”
“How did we get from Frankie’s to your place, anyway?”
“I believe it was a taxi that conveyed us.”
“And the driver was a big fan of yours! He didn’t want to charge you for the ride.”
“I insisted, and he became a friend. I told him to come into Frankie’s, and I’d buy him a drink. He ended up joining the poker game for a while before he moved back to New York.”
“What was his name again?”
“Henry Douglas.”
“Ah, right. I remember now. He was a good guy.”
“The best. We all loved him until he wiped the table clean with us.”
She laughs. “He was a New York card shark posing as an LA cab driver. Is he still with us?”
“Nah, he died about ten years ago or so.”
“That’s right. Cancer, right?”
“Lung cancer. He loved his smokes and refused to give them up. So now we’re at my place… What happens next?”
“I believe there was more wine, and you fired up the record player.”
“That was the first time we danced to our wedding song. I already knew it then, that you were my first, my last, my everything.”
“You couldn’t have already known that!”
“I knew it in Merv’s Green Room. I’d never reacted to anyone the way I did to you.”
“Same,” she says with a sigh. “That’s why I was so easy. The first time you kissed me…” She shivers. “It was… Well… I’ve never forgotten it.”
“Tell me more.”
“One minute we were dancing, and the next…”
“Yes?”
“You pulled back, ever so slightly.”
“I wanted to keep you close to me while I looked at your gorgeous face. I couldn’t believe how lucky I felt to be there with you.”
“ You felt lucky! I was with Max Godfrey !”
“I felt like the luckiest guy alive that night and every night since.”
“I wanted to pinch myself, thinking my friends would never believe where I was or who I was with. And then you kissed me, and it was like nothing else had ever happened to me before right then and there.”
“I felt the same way, like hello, here she is. The one I didn’t even know I was looking for until she arrived.”
“You’ve always said the sweetest things.”
“I have the best inspiration. What happened next?”
“Somehow, and I’m still not entirely sure how, we went from earth-shattering kisses to naked in bed together in the span of seconds.”
“It was actually more like an hour.”
“No way.”
“I swear!”
“I don’t believe it. Felt like seconds.”
“It was an hour’s worth of seconds.”
“If you say so. An hour… Jeez. I really put up a fight, huh?”
“We were powerless to resist each other.”
“‘Powerless’ is a good word to describe it. I’d never been so swept away by anything or anyone. I thought those things only happened in fiction, not in real life.”
“You said that to me at some point during those first few days. You said you thought things like this only happened in fairy tales.”
“It was like being in a dream or something.”
“Except it was very, very real.”
“That was the first time I ever showered with someone else.”
“Mmm, remember that first time in the shower?”
“Uh, yes, because I didn’t know that could be done in a shower!”
Laughing, I remind her, “ That can be done in a lot of places, as we’ve discovered.”
“Don’t remind me of the many ways you’ve corrupted me.”
“Or how often we nearly got caught.”
“I can’t even think about that without wanting to die. It was bad enough being hounded by the press when we were fully clothed…”
“You were always so afraid a photographer would pop out of the bushes.”
“With good reason!”
“That was such an exciting time. Madly in love and in hot demand everywhere.”
“It didn’t matter what I had to do in a day,” she says, “all I cared about was getting it done so I could get back home to you.”
“Same for me. I was obsessed with my girlfriend and then my wife. I rushed through every commitment so I could get it over with.”
“It’s a wonder we weren’t fired or sued or blacklisted during that stage.”
“So true. Back to that three-day first date, though… Remember how I had to go out to get food so we wouldn’t starve to death?”
“And more… protection.”
“That, too. We’d burned through my whole condom supply by then.”
She covers her face. “You just love to embarrass me.”
“It’s one of my favorite things.”
“Believe me, I know. You turned me into a sex-crazed lunatic.”
“How about what you did to me?”
“What did I do?”
“You made me into a sex-crazed lunatic. I’d never had so much sex in my life. Everything hurt, including Mr. Johnson.”
She busts up laughing. “Oh God, I forgot how you used to call it that.”
“When I look back over my whole life, those first three days with you are like a bright light over everything else.”
“For me, too. I’ve never forgotten that magical interlude when we checked out of life and fell into love.”
“I like how you said that. ‘We checked out of life and fell into love.’ We sure as hell did.”
“I’ve been thinking…”
“About?”
“The condition I placed on forgiving you for not telling me about Vivian.”
“I’ve thought of little else since you laid down the law about that.”
“I did some reading about it.”
“Oh my God… I’m trying to picture that…”
“You can imagine how red my face was.”
I snort out a laugh. “Scarlet fever red?”
“Redder than that.”
Chuckling, I ask, “What’d you think of it?”
“That I understand why people like it. There’s a lot to be said for the open communication and all that, but… I just don’t think it’s something I’d enjoy.” She caresses my bare chest as she talks. “I know I said it was my line in the sand but saying it and doing it are two different things.”
“That’s very true, and for what it’s worth, I never got very far on that subject with Vivian. She wasn’t into it at all, and in the end, it was just another reason for her to want out of the marriage. She chalked it up to me being deviant that way, when that wasn’t at all the case.”
“Why is anything different considered deviant?”
“Good question. Different strokes for different folks and all that.”
“Or our old mantra: live and let live.”
“Exactly. What works for one of us might not do it for someone else, but that doesn’t make either way wrong if no one is getting hurt.”
“What other reasons did she have for wanting to divorce you? I’m trying to imagine a scenario where I’m married to Max Godfrey and trying to get out of it.”
“I did back-to-back films during the time we were married. I was in Tunisia for a big chunk of the six months we lived together, and when I got back, she’d already started up with Garrison, who was Tommy’s father.”
“While you two were still married?”
“That was the word on the street from reliable sources. I confronted her with what I’d heard. She denied it, but I didn’t believe her. I moved out of her place and called Corbin’s dad, who’d joined our poker game the year before. He got the divorce train moving. At some point, she had the marriage annulled, which I found out about after the fact. I didn’t see her again for years and rarely gave her a thought. That’s how I knew I’d married the wrong person. I didn’t miss her when I was away and didn’t care when I found out she was cheating on me.”
“Funny how she doesn’t mention in the book that she cheated on you.”
“I noticed that.”
“I guess she’s not coming clean on everything.”
“Eh, what does it matter now?”
“It doesn’t. That’s what I’m saying. I want to rescind my condition. What we have, what we’ve always had, has been more than enough for me.”
“For me, too. I swear to God on the lives of everyone we love, Stel, I’ve never once been with you and wished for anything or anyone else. As long as I had you, I had everything I’d ever wanted.”
“That’s all I need to know.”
“I will mention, however, that I had a few things sent to a PO box under Edwin’s name.”
“What kind of things?”
“Want to find out?”
Her face flames with color that makes me laugh.
“Stop laughing at me.”
“I’m laughing with you.”
“Except I’m not laughing!”
That makes me laugh harder. “What do you say I make a pickup at the post office before the trip, and we see what transpires?”
“I’d be okay with that,” she says primly, which makes me smile.
“Very well, then. That’s what we’ll do.”