14. Vanessa
14
VANESSA
“Hey!” Lara greets me at the door, falling into my arms in a giant hug. “Oh God, the drive out here was so crazy…”
“Come in, come in,” I tell her, stepping aside and gesturing for her to enter. Callie practically knocks her off her feet with a hug around the knees, and she laughs and swoops her up into a proper embrace.
“It’s so good to see you, Callie!” she tells her. “I’m sure you’ve grown since the last time I saw you, even in the last few days…”
Callie darts back out to the garden, where she’s been playing all morning, and Lara turns to me to greet me properly.
“It’s so good to see you, babe,” she tells me. “Come on, I have a bottle of wine for us—let’s have a drink, okay?”
“Sounds perfect,” I laugh, and we head outside to the back porch so we can watch Callie playing as we sip on our glasses of slightly purse-warmed rosé wine.
“God, it really is beautiful out here,” she sighs, leaning back in her seat and letting the sun warm her face. Callie, hearing her voice, lifts her head and waves at us—we wave back, and then Lara turns her attention to me.
“So,” she begins, knowing that there’s only one place I’ll want to start. “Tell me how things are coming along with the story?”
“Oh, yeah, I think I’m really starting to get somewhere,” I reply. “I’ve done a couple of informal interviews with them, and…”
“Informal?” she cuts in. “How informal are we talking here? Do they know that you want to write a story on them?”
“Yes, of course they do!” I protest. “I wouldn’t try to sneak around and write a bio feature about someone without them knowing about it.”
“Sure, sure,” she laughs, waving her hand. “But I don’t think I’d put anything past you. You’re fearless like that.”
“True as that might be,” I reply, grinning, “they know. And I’ve sat down with a couple of them, just for an informal chat about where they’re at and what they’ve been doing, you know…”
“And when you say informal,” she says, lifting her glass of wine to her lips and taking a long sip before she continues, “what exactly do you mean?”
“How do you…?”
“I mean, I know that firefighters are meant to be hot ,” she explains, lowering her voice dramatically to make sure Callie doesn’t hear us. “And you’re out here for the whole summer, alone. I thought maybe…”
She raises her eyebrows. Shit, she’s onto me. I should know that I can’t keep anything from Lara. She started off in the business creating these kick-ass celebrity profiles, so she knows how to read people, how to see the secrets they think they’re hiding.
“Well, I mean…we’ve gotten quite friendly.”
Her hand flies to her mouth. “Friendly? Friendly like how? Friendly like…?”
She waggles her eyebrows at me pointedly, drawing another giggle from between my lips.
“No, not like that,” I assure her. “I mean, not with all of them.”
“But with one of them?” she asks. I shake my head, and her eyes widen. “Two of them?”
I nod. “And I kissed the third one.”
She closes her eyes for a moment and pinches the bridge of her nose, taking in this glut of new information. “Please tell me that you’re not putting this in the profile…”
“Of course I’m not!” I reply. “It’s got nothing to do with the story I want to write on them, anyway.”
“So these affairs, they’re just strictly in your free time. For fun,” she clarifies.
I shoot her a look. “I wouldn’t go as far as to call them affairs,” I tell her. “They’re just…we’re just having fun, that’s all.”
“I can’t believe you,” she murmurs, shaking her head in obvious shock.
“Is it really so unbelievable that I’d find three guys who are interested in me?” I laugh, and she giggles and squeezes my arm.
“No, no, not like that,” she promises me. “But more just…you’ve always been so focused on work and Callie in all the time I’ve known you. I don’t think you’ve mentioned more than two dates to me over the last six years, and neither one came to anything. But…”
She eyes me for a long moment, as though making sense of the information she’s just been given.
“But here you are, getting involved with three guys at once,” she remarks. “I guess they must be pretty special for you to be able to relax enough to enjoy it.”
I pause, silent. I don’t know what to make of that. Because I guess, on some level, she’s right—it’s been a long time since I’ve even thought about being with a guy the way I’ve been with them, and I’ve been in no rush to change that anytime soon. But something about their attention—not just individually, but knowing I command it from all of them—is seriously hot to me. And there’s something about the fact that they’re older that makes them even more captivating to me. They’ve probably been with lots of women over the years, and yet, I’ve still managed to become the object of their desire.
“You’re being careful, aren’t you?”
Her voice cuts through my reverie.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…” She looks over at Callie, and frowns. “You came here to get away from something,” she reminds me. “I wouldn’t want you getting caught up in the middle of something else in the process…”
“Well, you don’t have to worry, Lar, honestly,” I promise her, squeezing her hand. “I’m not getting involved in anything. I’m just having fun. And I feel like I’ve earned a little fun, after everything that’s happened.”
“I guess so,” she agrees. “But just—just don’t let any of these guys fuck you around, okay?”
“I won’t,” I promise.
“Even if they’re really hot firefighters.”
“Even if they’re really hot firefighters,” I reply, planting my hand on my heart as though I am making the world’s most solemn vow.
“So…is it good?” she asks, leaning in again. I groan, sliding back in my seat as the memories catch up with me all at once.
“It’s so good,” I whisper back. “I can’t believe it. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this way in my life before…”
We chat a little as we sip on the wine, and Lara sticks around to make some dinner with us before she drives back. She gives me a huge hug at the door, squeezing me close.
“I’m holding everything down for you in the city,” she tells me softly. “You just do the same for me up here, alright? That’s all I need.”
“I will,” I reply, and I wave her off to her car. For a brief moment, I see something out of the corner of my eye. My head snaps around, following the motion, but by the time I look, it’s gone. I blink, staring at the spot. I must have imagined it…
I lift my hand and wave Lara off, then head back inside where popcorn is filling the microwave and Callie is picking out a film.
“What have you got for us, sweetie?” I ask her as I flop down on the couch next to her, a towering mound of popcorn filling the giant bowl in front of us.
“Can we watch Dragon Riders ?” she asks excitedly, and I nod. God knows we’ve seen it a hundred times already, but it was one of my favorite movies growing up, and I never get tired of watching her face light up with the same joy I once felt.
“Sure thing,” I reply, and I grab the remote and tap it a couple of times to bring up the movie. Flicking off the lights, I sink into the seat, resting my chin on her head as we watch and eat together.
See, this is the stuff I was missing back home. Working so hard doesn’t give me a whole lot of time to just hang out with my little girl, and I am soaking up every moment of it while I can. It’s hard to find that balance—not just because I need the money, but because I want Callie to know that there’s no shame in getting out there and pursuing a career that she’s passionate about.
I drop a kiss onto her head as she tosses a handful of popcorn into her mouth, her eyes fixed to the screen. I swear, the world could be ending outside this cabin, and she wouldn’t know anything about it until the credits rolled on her favorite movie. She is already such a smart kid; sometimes it’s hard to believe she could have come from me. It feels like she’s been beamed down from some other planet into my life.
I still can’t believe I get to be her mom. It’s the greatest gift anyone could ever have given me—even now, I send a little prayer up to whoever might be listening, telling them to let Johnny know that I’m so grateful for her and the parts of him I can see in her. I miss him like hell sometimes, especially in the city. Though maybe that’s because we still live just a few blocks over from where we lived with him. Not as though I could afford to move anywhere fancier, not on my budget.
But here, in the cabin, it feels a little more…distant. There’s something a little less pressing about the stress. My mind drifts back to what Lara said to me earlier—to be careful, not to let myself get drawn into anything I can’t handle.
But I feel like it’s a little too late for that, after I published a story that got the goddamn cartel on our tail. I still can’t believe that happened. Sometimes I feel like I don’t know where to draw the line between making the world a better place for my daughter and landing her in the middle of danger in the process.
Soon, she’s dozing off on my shoulder. She was playing outside in the garden most of the day, so it’s not really a surprise that she’s so exhausted now. I kiss the top of her head and pull her into my arms—she’s getting too big for it now, or I’m getting too decrepit and old, but I still love carrying her to bed.
I take her upstairs and tuck her in, and then return to the living room to turn off the TV and put everything away. I’m still getting used to how quiet it is out here at night. Usually there are cars zooming past our studio-apartment window back home, but here there’s nothing but the sound of a few birds chirping.
I switch off the TV and go to pick up the bowl of popcorn. But before I can grab it, something catches my attention. The same thing as before, the same movement. My gaze flicks up, and right there in front of me, reflected in the now-black TV screen, is what looks like a lens peering out from the trees behind me.
I stare at it for a long moment, my heart thudding in my chest. What the fuck? Is someone watching me? Watching us? How long have they been out there? Is that what I saw when Lara was getting back into her car…?
My mind rushes with panic and I spin around on the spot, throwing a mess of popcorn out of the bowl as I move. But as I stare into the darkness before me, I can’t see anything looking back. I take an unsteady step toward the window and peer into the dark, looking this way and that for the lens that I’m sure I saw reflected in the TV. But everywhere I look, there’s nothing amiss.
I squeeze my eyes shut and do my best to control my breathing. You need to get a handle on yourself. I can’t let myself get paranoid, just because of everything that’s going on. I came out here to stay safe, and that’s exactly what this place is going to be. A haven for my daughter and for me…
I look to the stairs, and suddenly I feel the need to check on Callie. I take them two at a time and prop open her door an inch or two—and breathe a sigh of relief. There she is, sleeping peacefully, like there’s nothing wrong in the universe.
And as far as she knows, there isn’t. I just pray she never has reason to rethink that.