Chapter 42 Cynthie
“Thirteen years ago?” Hannah repeats blankly. Her eyes do a sort of creepy reptilian blink. I nod.
“You kept a secret from me for thirteen years?” She doesn’t sound hurt, just baffled.
“How? You literally tell me everything that happens to you. And not just in real life. You tell me everything that happens to you in your dreams . I had to hear all the juicy details about your subconscious marrying you off to Mr. Bean, but this slips your mind?”
“It didn’t exactly slip my mind. It was very… memorable.”
“Okay.” Hannah holds up her hand, fishing out her phone. “Don’t say another word, I’m sending out a code red to the group, right now. I’m calling an emergency meeting.” I see her finger smash down repeatedly on the blaring red alarm emoji, then she makes a call.
“Greg,” she barks, when someone picks up on the other end.
Greg is our driver, and as far as I know he’s been summoned to collect us.
“Are you already here? You did a course in stunt driving, right? How quickly can you get us back to the hotel?” Her brow furrows at the answer.
“Let’s see if we can shave another thirty seconds off your personal best, shall we?
” She hangs up the phone and fixes me with a look.
Her phone is pinging away like mad; she glances at the screen.
“Everyone is mobilized. We rendezvous at the hotel. Let’s go. Now.” She’s already moving. I half expect her to army roll down the steps.
“You’re so scary,” I whisper.
She turns to me with a feral grin. “Wait till Patty finds out.”
“Shit,” I mutter, hustling after her.
As it turns out, Greg has been looking for an excuse to put his training to use, and we basically squeal into the hotel parking lot on two wheels. I emerge from the backseat pale and trembling, while Hannah grins and palms Greg an enormous tip. I am 100 percent certain that she’s enjoying this.
When we get upstairs, Patty, Liam, and Arjun are pacing outside the door to my suite like expectant fathers outside the delivery room. These gossip-hungry little gremlins.
“What is it?” Patty demands, before the door is even open. “What’s the big news?”
“Cynthie slept with Jack,” Hannah says, tapping the key card and sailing into the room.
“What?!” Liam and Patty chorus, scrambling in behind her.
“I knew it!” Arjun pipes up, then when we all turn to look at him, he adds, “Okay, I didn’t know it know it, but come on , is anyone surprised?”
“They also slept together thirteen years ago,” Hannah says.
“WHAT THE FUCK?” Patty explodes.
“Okaaaayyy,” Liam whistles.
“Fair enough.” Arjun scratches his cheek. “That is actually pretty surprising.”
“Cynthie Taylor, you have some serious explaining to do,” Patty says, flopping down on the sofa. “Thirteen years you’ve been sitting on this hot gossip. How did none of us know about this?”
I exhale. “It’s kind of a long story.”
“Our favorite.” Liam sits, his chin propped on his hand. Four pairs of eyes are trained on me, avid and unblinking. If there was popcorn they’d be munching it.
“Do you remember the day we filmed the big kissing-in-the-rain scene?” I start.
“You mean when you and Jack kissed and then you swooned away into his arms?” Hannah perches in a chair.
“As I’ve said many times ,” I reply hotly, “I was hungover and it was very cold and… you know what, that’s not the point. That night I couldn’t sleep and I went downstairs to the kitchen and Jack was there and things just… progressed.”
“In the kitchen?” Patty asks.
“Technically, on the kitchen floor.”
“Fucking hell.” Patty looks awestruck.
Hannah grimaces. “Not very hygienic, is it?”
“Oh my god,” Liam whispers. “The power that kissing scene has. The MTV thing goes viral like every six months. No wonder you and Jack were powerless to resist.”
“It wasn’t the kissing scene,” I say, rubbing my forehead. “Or it sort of was, but we were both so angry with each other and things got a bit heated, and it just happened.”
“Hate sex.” Patty nods wisely. “Hot.”
“Was it good?” Arjun asks. “What?” He says when the others look at him. “You all want to know.”
“It was the best sex I’ve ever had, until the night before last.”
They all take a moment to digest this.
“Okay,” Hannah says, after several deep breaths. “So you had very good, very hot, angry sex thirteen years ago. But what happened afterward? And what happened this week?”
I fill them in on all the details. It’s a messy, meandering story and it contains several segues on my part where I try to explain the shambles that is my mental state, and several more on their part, which revolve around questions like “Why would you say that?”, “Why would you do that?”, “Did he really pick you up with one arm?” (breathless), and “ How big?!”
“So he said he wants you to be together?” Hannah says slowly. “To start over?”
“That’s right. And then there’s the love letter.”
“The love letter?” Patty says blankly. “Is that slang for something? Is it a sex thing I don’t know about?” She pouts. “I really like to stay up-to-date on these matters. Oh! Is this like a historical kink thing? They used to call condoms French letters, right?”
“No, he literally wrote me a love letter with a pen and a piece of paper so that I can keep it in a box and pull it out when we’re old and gray to show our grandchildren.” I’m crying now, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of them.
“Did he say that?” Hannah asks, dazed.
“No, but I know him; that’s what he meant.”
“And just to clarify…” Liam says slowly. “That’s… bad?”
“No,” I sniffle. “It’s wonderful.”
“Right.” Liam nods wisely before looking to the others in confusion. “So you’re unhappy because…” he trails off, obviously hoping I’ll finish the sentence.
“I don’t know!” I say. “That’s the whole problem. What is wrong with me?”
Hannah gets up from her chair and comes to sit on the floor beside me. She puts her arms around me and holds me like she has many, many times over the years when I’ve been sad or desperate or heartsick. Only I’m none of those things now. I don’t know what I am. Broken, maybe.
“There’s nothing wrong with you, Cyn,” she says softly. “Well, nothing that a qualified therapist couldn’t help you with.”
“Yeah, okay, I’ll admit it might be time to get some help in that department.”
“Halle-fuckin-lujah!” Patty crows. “You might be the last resident of LA to enter therapy. I’ll give you a list of potential candidates. This is going to be so good for you.”
“But why am I so freaked-out over everything that’s happening with Jack?
” I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand.
“It feels too good to be true, right? There’s no way something like this just…
works out. I know that. You can love romance in a movie and know that stuff like that doesn’t happen in real life.
Love letters and destiny and soul mates. It’s just a fantasy.”
My friends exchange another look. That’s happening a lot tonight.
“Cyn, it’s not like it’s a huge mystery…” Hannah says, finally. “You just got out of a… I don’t even want to call it a relationship .”
“More like a hostage situation,” Patty grumbles.
“With someone who massively screwed you over,” Hannah continues. “With the exception of Theo, you’ve made fairly consistently awful choices when it comes to romantic partners.”
“God, remember Barry?” Liam says. “And Josh!”
“Nah, Freddie was the worst,” Arjun says. “What a wanker.”
“Yes, all right,” I say, nettled. “I get the point.”
“No, you don’t,” Hannah says, shaking her head.
She fixes me with her tough-love stare, and I know that whatever is coming next, I’m going to absolutely hate it.
“You’ve never been out with someone who had the potential to be serious.
And I do include Theo in that, because neither of you were ever really in that relationship.
I know Shawn told you he was getting a divorce, and I don’t doubt for a second that you believed him, but don’t you think, on some level, that you knew it wasn’t going anywhere?
That the fact he wasn’t actually divorced yet meant there wasn’t any real possibility of a future? ”
I stare at her, the words bouncing off me like rubber bullets: they might not be fatal, but they sting like a bitch.
“But with Jack,” she says softly, “it’s real, Cynthie. You’re in love with him. You have been for ages, and we all know it. You’re scared.”
“That’s not true,” I croak. “That can’t be true. Why would I be scared of that?”
“Babe,” Liam says, getting up to sit next to me on my other side, his arm round my waist. His cheek resting on the top of my head. “You’re like the most stubborn, independent person I know.”
“Now that’s demonstrably untrue,” I huff. “Several people have referred to my relationship with Hannah as almost problematically codependent .” I say this last part a bit too proudly.
“Yeah, because I’ve been wearing you down practically since the womb.” Hannah rolls her eyes. “And you still don’t let me all the way in, Cyn; you know you don’t.”
I wish I could disagree with this, because it makes me feel like shit.
How can I possibly be withholding stuff from Hannah, who is as important to me as air?
But I know she’s right. I know I didn’t tell her about Jack.
I know I haven’t told her about the panic attacks.
I know I haven’t told her all the details about Shawn—even if she’s read between the lines.
I’ve kept those things to myself as much as possible.
The only person I’ve opened up to is Jack…
and that in itself probably means something.
“I might know a frankly insane amount about what’s happening in your life, but you hate talking about your feelings,” Hannah continues. “It’s like pulling teeth getting you to admit you’re upset about things. You never ask for help, even though we’d all lie down on train tracks for you.”
“I know how to ask for help.”
Patty scoffs, then clambers to her feet and stretches. “I swear, if you were trapped on a desert island and you had to write a message in the sand for passing planes to see, it would say ‘no worries if not!’?” She comes to sit on the floor and leans against Liam.
“After the stuff with Shawn, you just shut yourself in your house alone,” Liam points out. “Hannah was performing wellness checks. We had a secret WhatsApp chat with Petra because she was the only one getting near you.”
“What did she say?” I ask, temporarily diverted.
“Let’s just say there was a lot of graphic imagery when it came to what she’d like to do to Shawn.” Liam shudders. “Google translate was having a field day. My search history is a dystopian nightmare. I can’t unread that stuff, you know.”
“The Serbs really know what they’re doing when it comes to cursing,” I agree.
There’s a beat.
“So we’re all just sitting on the floor are we?” Arjun asks, sounding resigned, but he comes down to sit next to Hannah anyway.
“The point is,” Hannah says, steely, “that you’re scared of making yourself vulnerable, and you always have been.
You have huge abandonment issues. Understandably.
You’re only comfortable when depending entirely on yourself.
But you don’t need to get in your own way.
It’s time to let someone else all the way in. ”
“ That’s what he said ,” Arjun whispers gleefully, and Patty chokes on a giggle, trying to look somber.
“I’m sorry,” he adds, instantly contrite. “I just had to.”
I nod. “You really did.”
“There was no way we could let that one slide,” Liam agrees.
“It was irresistible.” Hannah sighs.
“So, what?” I ask. “I just need to find a way to trust that Jack’s feelings are real and that he’s not going to get me to open up to him and then leave me, and accept that our relationship—which started off as a PR exercise—is now true love, while at the same time overcoming thirty years of abandonment issues, and then everything will be fine? ”
“Exactly.” Liam beams proudly.
“I think I might need some help,” I say the words stiffly, but I get a round of applause.
“We’ll work something out,” Hannah promises.
“You do know I love you guys, though,” I say, finally.
“Of course we do,” Arjun pipes up.
“And we love you,” Liam adds.
“We’re family ,” Patty insists.
And then they’re all hugging me and even though I can’t breathe, I think maybe there’s something to this whole sharing-your-feelings business after all, because for the first time today I don’t feel worried at all.
“But seriously… can we get off the floor now?” Arjun asks.