Chapter 30
thirty
. . .
Jordana
The wind stung my eyes and throat. Somehow, I pulled on my pants, shoved my feet into my shoes, wrapped my coat over Gavin’s flannel shirt.
Blinded by tears, I gasped for breath. Everything had fallen apart. It was too good to last.
Gavin didn’t see me as his equal. I was a college girl he’d had fun with for a week. That was all. I could see that now.
I’d been an idiot to think we had a future.
And what about my future? I’d lost Blanche. Lost Rachel’s recommendation. Lost Eden.
The past wasn’t prologue; this was my life. My one, real life. And I kept fucking it up. I should have known. Once I started caring — loving — I was bound to lose it all.
I was probably done at Hawthorne. Rachel would tell the faculty what happened, and no one would cast me again.
I stumbled away from campus to Len’s Liquor Emporium, the liquor store across from Korner Koffee. Though the name made it sound big, it was as small and cute as everything else in Hawthorne.
Len was leaning against the counter, filling out the crossword in the local newspaper. Photos of his grandkids hung on the wall behind him.
“Well, look who’s here! It’s the star of the show!” he exclaimed.
I nodded and pulled a bottle of tequila off the nearest shelf.
Len’s bespectacled gaze moved over my cheetah coat hanging open, Gavin’s flannel shirt half-unbuttoned, my slouchy turquoise sweatpants, and the wild hair broadcasting that I’d just had sex.
“My wife can’t stop talking about you,” he went on after a pause. “She says you’re almost as good as Vivien Leigh in the movie. Gorgeous lady, very talented, but did she ever have a lot of problems. Did you know that she and Sir Lawrence Olivier—”
“I’ll get this, please,” I croaked, plopping the bottle on the counter.
“Tequila?” Len frowned at the label, then my ID. “Doesn’t go too well with all of that.” He pointed to the twinkling lights of the Fall Leaf Festival. “Might I recommend a nice rum or bourbon? We’ve got a smoky maple bourbon that’s just perfect with the apple fritters.”
“No, no, it’s fine.”
I’d forgotten Len always offered running commentaries on his customers’ alcohol choices, none of which I was equipped to handle at the moment.
“As you wish.” He scanned the code, taking his sweet time.
God, the pace in this town. Until now, it was usually comforting. I bounced on my toes, itching to leave.
Finally, he took my money and handed me the tequila in a paper bag. “Don’t drink it all in one place.”
“Not a problem, Len. I’ll start right here.” I unscrewed the cap, took a long swig, and wiped my mouth.
“Now, look,” Len began. “I don’t want any—”
“Blanche?” The voice sounded vaguely familiar.
I turned to see a guy with a messy ginger mane and matching scruff on his jaw.
“Hey, I know you!” I pointed my bottle at him. “I definitely know you. Wait…don’t tell me…”
“Dominic,” he said.
“Riiiigght!” I took another swig. “Dominic. The grad student. The ex-lighting designer of our glorious Streetcar. The man publicly fired by Rachel Salazar. My friend, you and I…you and me…we have something in common.”
“You got fired by Rachel too?”
Dominic was shorter and heavier than Gavin, but his style was similar. Black hoodie, black jeans. Unlike Gavin, his clothes looked like they’d spent the past week balled up on the floor.
“Uh-huh. I’m finis. Persona non grata in the theater department. I didn’t even have to show up drunk! I just had a little indiscretion with your…” I flourished my free hand in a mockery of a bow. “Replacement.”
Dominic blinked. He didn’t appear entirely sober, which made two of us.
“That new lighting designer from New York? Kevin something?”
“Gavin! But he sent me away. He thinks I’m a child.”
“Listen, young lady,” Len said warily from behind the counter. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
Huffing, we ended up on the sidewalk. The lights of the Fall Leaf Festival glittered, and everyone seemed too happy to be real.
“Drink with me, Dominic!” I took another swallow and thrust the bottle toward him. “Come back to my place. Let’s drown our sorrows. We’ve been loved and left by Rachel Salazar and the rest of the world.”
The next few minutes were fuzzy. Dominic was definitely walking with me up the stairs to my apartment, and he was there when I opened the door, but when I sat on my bedroom floor, he was gone.
“Dominic?” I called. “Dominic! You’re my only friend.”
I crawled down the hallway, peering into each of the rooms.
“Dominic?”
He wasn’t here.
Back in my bedroom, I slumped on the wooden floor, hoisting the bottle of tequila.
“You are my only friend, baby,” I told the bottle. “You will never, ever let me down.”
I took a long drink. My phone buzzed. I set down the bottle and blinked at the text.
Are you okay?
From Gavin.
“Fuck you, Gavin!” I shrieked. “You don’t care. You just want to be the superior grown-up, all dutiful about checking up on me. You probably feel guilty, after that heart-to-heart with your bestie Rachel. I bet you just wanted to save your job. Never mind your book. Or your precious model.”
My head drooped. I plucked at my rumpled cheetah coat, open over Gavin’s plaid flannel, and a shaky laugh burst from me.
Poor Gavin. He didn’t have his shirt. On this cold night, he’d wanted to cover me, protect me. He’d been in his boxers when I left. Looking so worried…so hot, so nearly naked, with his hand on Rachel’s shoulder, wanting to talk to her without me there…
Goddammit. What was their deal?
It didn’t matter. I didn’t need him.
I texted very carefully so there would be no mistakes.
Leave me alone
“See?” I said proudly to the tequila. “I’m not Blanche. I don’t need men to survive. I can be alone. I can…be alone.”
I stared at the bottle, then at the theater posters papering my walls, covering every inch.
Blanche was constantly, secretly drinking during Streetcar.
Dominic had called me by my role tonight. He didn’t know my real name.
And Corey claimed I could only play myself.
I set the bottle down and screwed on the cap, which took several tries.
“I’m Jordana.” I said it, but it didn’t sound convincing.
I picked up the bottle and placed it outside my door and closed the door.
“Jordana Louisa Green.”
Pulling the white covers off my bed, I wrapped myself in them. I squeezed my eyes shut and rocked back and forth.
My phone rang from my purse on the floor.
Reaching from the nest of blankets, I picked it up, hoping against hope that it was Gavin or Eden.
“Hello?”
“Jorie, hello.”
My dad.
Shit. Of all the people. My head fell between my knees.
Even on the phone, the colon after my name came through. I hadn’t heard his booming voice since he announced the divorce.
“I’ve got good news for you!” he exclaimed. “I’m coming to Hawthorne tomorrow. I’m going to see you in your play.”
A dull pounding started in my head, like far-off thunder. “What? What did you say?”
“You’ve got a starring role. I wouldn’t miss it.”
He was saying the words, I heard them, but they made no sense. Starring roles were for other people. For whoever I’d been before tonight.
Not this girl, huddled under the covers in a room reeking of tequila, the scent oozing out of her pores.
“Dad,” I said thickly. “Why? You’ve never been here. You’ve never…” I hiccupped. “Come to Hawthorne.”
He laughed, a brisk laugh, so fake it set my teeth on edge. “Well, you know how it is with work. But this is special. I-I’ll take you out to celebrate!”
“Dad.” I was shaking now. Cold. Maybe it was the alcohol sloshing through my system, or maybe it was hearing my father fumble over what to do with me, hearing his relief at stumbling upon the brilliant idea of taking me out, as a father should. “Listen. Please? There’s nothing to celebrate—”
“Are there any places in Hawthorne where I can toast my daughter?” he barreled on. “Places with some class, where I can show you off?”
“Dad, you’re not listening.”
“I understand it’s a small town, but of course the school is top-notch. They’ve got to have—”
“Oh my God!” I burst out, my voice filling the room, off-key and discordant. I pushed off the blanket, rose up on my knees. “What is wrong with you?”
There was a long and terrible silence. My heart beat in my throat, and I dropped to sit on my heels. My own shout made my head ache.
“Dad?”
“Jorie, that was completely inappropriate.”
I was half-terrified, half-relieved by my outburst. Now that I’d started, I couldn’t stop. I rose painfully to my feet.
“Can you please just say you’re doing this because of the divorce? Because of your new kid, who you couldn’t even tell me about? Can you admit you’re feeling guilty and that’s why you’re coming? For once, can we have a fucking conversation?”
“What’s gotten into you?” he snapped. “I am making an effort to travel hundreds of miles to see you, at a very busy time—”
“Dad, don’t come to the show.”
“Why not?” Uncertainty crept into his voice. If there was anything Jake Green hated, it was being uncertain.
“Because I don’t want you here.”
I hung up and leaned against the bed. My throat was raw, my eyes dry. Before I could stop myself, I texted Eden.
I’m so sorry. I truly am
Am I really dead to you?
The phone fell from my hand. I wrapped myself in the covers, tipped sideways onto the floor, and closed my eyes.
“It’s too late, Dad,” I muttered.
There were so many shows of mine that he hadn’t seen. Shows I’d hidden when I was younger, and shows I’d told him about when I was older, hoping he’d come and find out how much this meant to me.
One show, its aftermath really, kept beating at my skull, filling my mouth with an acrid taste.
I was fourteen. I was out late one autumn night, running around Manhattan with some drama kids from my prep school.
My father had ended my professional career the year before, but he wasn’t aware that I’d gotten a role in the fall play, that I’d performed onstage just this evening.
He worked so many late nights. And I hadn’t told him.