Chapter 12
LAINA
“Are you sure you’re okay with me going to the mall?”
Lucy had been careful with me all morning, and as much as I loved her, the hovering was too much for me right now.
“Yes, sweetie.” I nudged her toward the door. “You need to get going. Shelly and her mom are waiting for you.”
“Okay, but if you want me to come back early, just text.”
The mall had been my daughter’s favorite place since she discovered the motorized, plush animal scooters when she was five. Her fascination with the place had only grown when she got into makeup and clothes. I usually had to drag her out of there after several hours, so her offer meant a lot.
Brushing a kiss against the top of her head, I murmured, “Don’t worry about me. Go have fun with your friend.”
She finally listened and headed outside. I waved from the front door as Shelly’s mom backed out of our driveway, happy to have the house to myself again for a little bit. But the quiet got to me after an hour.
I wiped down the counters, folded the throw blankets, and reorganized the junk drawer for no good reason. By early afternoon, I was standing at the kitchen island with the electric pepper grinder in pieces.
It had jammed the night before when I was making the pasta salad.
I had the tiny screwdriver out and the mechanism spread on a dish towel.
Black pepper dust clung to my fingertips.
I turned the gear over under the light and realized the mechanism had cracked because a peppercorn got stuck in there.
Unfortunately, it couldn’t be salvaged. That meant replacing it and the salt grinder, since they were a set I’d bought five years ago.
They would look weird if they didn’t match, even to me.
Just as I stood to start cleaning up, the garage door opened. A minute later, Bennett came in through the butler’s pantry and stopped when he saw me at the counter. His eyes moved over the mess, then to me.
“It jammed,” I explained before he could speak. “The set cost two hundred dollars, so I figured I’d try to fix it. Which I’m now just realizing is probably one of those quirks you used for inspiration since I can’t picture another Hollywood wife doing the same.”
His expression shifted, and I realized I was right. “Laina—”
“I’m not finished.” I gestured at the open grinder.
“When did stuff like this stop being mine? If someone had told me a month ago that the husband who loved me so much was using me as material for his hit show, I would’ve told them they couldn’t possibly be right.
But you really did it. You took the version of me that only existed in the privacy of our home and made her public property. ”
He waited a moment to be sure I was done before nodding. “You’re right. About all of it.”
His quick agreement threw me more than an argument would have, taking some of the wind out of my sails.
“I wish you would’ve thought about that several years ago.
Or even when you were writing your acceptance speech.
It doesn’t help me much now when I’m the subject of ridicule all over the internet. ”
“I know.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. “That’s why I asked Julian to help. He sent over a draft statement this morning. He and a new publicist put it together. Nothing goes out until you’ve read it and tell me what you want changed.”
I stared at the phone, my brows drawing together. “New publicist? What happened to Sheila?”
“She was too focused on fixing my image when you’re what’s important.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “I needed someone who understood the difference because I’m not releasing anything that affects you without your input. Not anymore.”
I looked from the phone to him, still angry and guarded but more unsettled by the offer than I wanted to admit. “Fine, let me see it.”
He opened the email from Julian and slid the phone across the counter toward me without coming any closer. My gaze dropped to the screen, and what I read there shocked me.
I owe my wife a public apology.
In my awards speech, I referenced her as inspiration for a character on The Wrong Side of Right. That was a violation of her trust. The private details of our life were never mine to share, and they were not meant for public consumption or commentary.
Sally is a heavily dramatized fictional character created for comedy. She bears no real resemblance to my wife, who is a remarkable, thoughtful, and loving person. Turning any part of her into material was a failure of judgment on my part.
I am sorry for the hurt this has caused her. I ask that if you feel the need to write or post about us, that your focus remains on me, where it belongs. Please leave my wife out of further discussion, speculation, and online commentary.
I set the phone back on the island. The statement was more than I’d expected him to put in writing but still wasn’t enough to undo the damage. I appreciated it, though.
“You really want my input?”
He nodded. “Rule number one for the new publicist—no releasing a statement about you without it.”
Normally, he just handled the crisis and told me afterward that he’d taken care of it. I’d never questioned his process in the past, but now that I was the center of a controversy he caused, I didn’t think we could ever go back to him taking care of stuff like this on his own.
While I appreciated his foresight, I didn’t thank him because this was the least of what he could do for me. Instead, I picked the phone up again and scrolled back to the top to read the statement again.
“I want the request that people leave me out of it to stay exactly as strong as it is. Don’t soften it for the network.”
“I won’t.”
I set the phone down again and crossed my arms over my chest. “This doesn’t fix anything.”
“I know.”
“But your new publicist is really good at their job.”
He nodded. “That’s all Julian since he found Collette for me.”
I liked that he didn’t take the credit for himself. It seemed like he really was setting his ego aside, at least for now. Which only made me think of the man I’d fallen in love with so many years ago, before the fame that came with his success. I missed that version of him so much right now.
Picking up the cracked gear, I dropped it into the open body of the peppermill, then folded the corners of the dish towel over the whole mess.
I didn’t look up at him as I confessed, “I keep thinking about all the other things.”
“What other things?” he asked.
“Each little habit. Every ridiculous comment I made in front of you. All the times I did something silly.” I gathered the tiny screwdriver and set it on top of the bundled towel.
“I don’t know which ones you used. But I’m not even sure I want to because it will probably hurt more to know which pieces of me you’ve chosen to mock. ”
He opened his mouth, probably to deny that was what he’d done. Maybe it wasn’t what he’d intended, but it was the outcome. That couldn’t be denied with all the memes, GIFs, and articles out there about me on the internet right now.
He caught my irritated look, and his lips pressed into a flat line before a word slipped past. It was one of the smartest decisions he’d made lately.
I carried the towel to the trash can and tipped the broken set in. The salt grinder went next.
“I can live with being angry about the speech and all the public chatter, as painful as it is. What I don’t know how to live with is wondering whether something small that I wouldn’t have thought twice about before has already been turned into a joke the world has laughed about.
” I wiped my hands on my pants and finally glanced at him.
“And if it hasn’t, how much longer will it be before you use it? ”
“You don’t need to worry about that.”
Quirking a brow, I crossed my arms over my chest again and waited.
“When I was at the studio this morning reviewing the rough cut of the episode we just shot, I made a promise. Nothing of yours goes into another script. Not for Sally. Or any other character I ever write. It ends now.”
I studied his face and realized he was serious. “Your promises don’t mean a whole lot to me right now.”
“This one was to myself as much as it was to you,” he added, as though the distinction made all the difference.
I didn’t know if I believed him or not, and that hurt because he’d been my safe place for so long. But for the first time since his speech, I realized that I wanted to. And that scared me even more.