24. Archer
CHAPTER 24
Archer
It’s been three weeks since I left L.A. Two since Tinsley flew to Europe for her tour via a surprise eighteen hour layover in Berry Falls.
There’s eight weeks left. That’s 56 days; 1,344 hours; 80,640 minutes; 4,838,400 seconds.
Time has never moved so slowly, but I’ve never been more productive.
I spent four days driving across the country to come home. Four days of thinking, regretting, and planning.
Ten weeks is a hell of a lot easier than ten years. But after having her every morning and every night and stealing her minutes throughout the day for six weeks, I know I don’t want this to be our norm if it doesn’t have to be.
Coping with my anxiety was never an issue in the past. I knew my limits and I lived my life within those lines. However, those lines aren’t big enough anymore. So step one of my plan: get into therapy. I’ve been going three days a week since I got home, and while my resilience has yet to be tested, I’m more optimistic now than I was when I left L.A. My anxiety won't ever go away, but I’m learning to manage it when I can’t control my environment, which will make me better for Tinsley.
Step two is a bit more intricate and requires reinforcements from the outside with clandestine transatlantic phone calls and video chats and so many plans. There is absolutely no room for reckless spontaneity after L.A.
Step three will be the easiest though: loving my girl and supporting her until my last breath.
In the meantime, routine keeps me busy and helps to break up the longer hours in between.
I wake up in the morning at 4:30 like normal and call Tinsley. We have breakfast over video chat—me on the deck of our home here and her either on the balcony of the hotel in whichever city she’s currently in or in bed if she’s not performing that night—and go about the first hour of our morning routines with our phones glued to our hands.
After that, I help Ryder out at the track, where Dolley Maddison still acts in a manner most unbecoming of a First Lady. Then, at midmorning, I either go to my office and work on things for the ranch or the favor Tinsley asked of me last week or I go into town to see Michelle for a session. But without fail, at lunchtime I’m in my office with the door locked so I'm not interrupted, talking to my girl as she gets ready to perform in front of another sold out venue.
Sometime during the course of Tinsley’s show, Briar calls me and holds the phone up for me to watch her sing “Reckless” and “Unravel Me.”
After that, it’s more work until her concert is over and then I spend my afternoon talking with her as she comes down from the high of being on stage and gets ready for bed. And once she’s asleep, I’m on the phone with Briar, Mikey, and John, making plans.
From the time I get off with them until I go to bed myself is the worst part of each day. The hours seem to double in length, taking far longer to progress than the whole rest of the day. But even the longest nights with Tinsley are better than the shortest days without her.
Glancing at my watch, which is currently set to Central European Summer Time, I see it’s almost 6:30 in Munich. She doesn’t perform tonight, so I took the afternoon off to have what she calls our long distance date night.
The concierge will deliver flowers to her suite from me, and room service will bring her dinner. We’ll eat and talk about our day, then get into our separate beds where one of us will read to the other. Four days ago when she was in Milan, she read Skylar’s book to me. Well, about a third of it. We got distracted and never finished. Tonight, she has asked that I read her The Great Gatsby, again. But she’s requested that I do it without looking at the book so I know we won’t get far. For whatever reason, watching my mind do the odd things it does has always made her insatiable. Not that I’ll ever complain. If flexing my perfect recall gets her off, then I’ll read and repeat anything and everything she asks of me.
Right at 6:30 P.M., I’m pressing the video icon beside the contact name, Shortcake, on my phone. The call takes a second to connect, but once it does, it doesn’t even fully ring one time before her beautiful face fills the screen.
“Hey, Superman,” she greets. She’s swimming in one of my t-shirts she stole while in Berry Falls, her chocolate brown hair piled on top of her head, face a little tired but her smile radiant as she sighs.
“Hey, Shortcake. How are you?”
A massive yawn is my answer. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” she says, yawning again halfway through. “Let me make a cup of coffee. There’s some in the little kitchen—I’ll perk right up.”
“No, baby, stay in bed.” She scowls for a moment then starts to stretch across the King size mattress to the nightstand on the left side of the bed. “Don’t even think about it,” I warn, knowing she’s reaching for the hotel phone.
“But—”
“We’ll have dinner and then I’ll read to you until you fall asleep.”
“It’s date night though.”
“You’re exhausted, Tinsley. You need to sleep.”
She’s still laying across the mattress, not even under the blankets, and her eyes are starting to droop.
“I miss you,” she mumbles.
“I miss you too.”
“How much longer?”
“56 days, or 32 shows, depending how you want to count.”
“So not even halfway.”
I turn onto my side in our bed so I’m laying as if I'm actually facing her and confirm, “Afraid not, baby.”
“Archer?”
“Yeah?”
“Will you read to me?”
Her eyes aren’t even open now and I smile, “Sure, Shortcake.”
She’s asleep before I’ve even recalled the first full page of the book.
I stay on the phone watching her until her lips part and her breathing turns deep and even. She’ll be out until morning. I don’t end the call though. Instead, I prop my phone on the pillows on her side of the bed and open my laptop, going over the financial records she asked me to look at again.
She hadn’t given me any details when she asked me if I’d be willing to look into some records for her. All Tinsley had said was she had some suspicions but couldn’t make heads or tails of what she was reading. Naturally, when I saw the gradual, inexplicable drain of money from the accounts, I immediately called her, not caring that she was in Portugal and it was the middle of the night there. Three million dollars may be a drop in the bucket for her in the grand scheme of things, but this was only one block of accounts. Who knew if and how much more was being siphoned off from her others.
It wasn’t her account though. And while that brought me some relief, it made it worse because that meant it was either Briar—unlikely because she and Tinsley share an accountant, not that it’s stopped me from basically demanding that they let me audit their finances to verify no one was stealing from them too—or Skylar, whose parents managed everything, including the trust that the money she made from her show was supposed to be going into. A trust Tinsley told me she can’t even access a statement to without their consent until her twenty-fifth birthday, which is still four years away.
Looking at how much she’s already lost, I close my laptop, not wanting to think about how little, if anything, remains in the trust. For all intents and purposes, minus the allowance she gets twice a month, Skylar’s completely broke.
“Tinsely?” Briar knocks before entering the room.
I pick my phone back up and softly call out, “Shh.”
She’s carrying the vase of flowers I sent when she comes into view. Spotting Tinsley asleep on the bed, she slaps a hand over her mouth to stifle her laugh.
“She’s gonna be so mad in the morning,” she snorts, setting the vase on the nightstand. Briar picks up Tinsley’s phone and takes a spot on the bed, asking, “How bad is it?”
“Bad. I’ll send what I found this afternoon so an actual forensic accountant can verify everything, but Skylar’s parents have completely screwed her.”
“And I thought my dad couldn’t be dethroned from the lifetime achievement award for Biggest Asshole.” A tell of confusion must have crossed my face because she asks, “You don’t know?” When I shake my head, she shrugs and with a nonchalance no one would believe, explains, “Davenport was my mom’s name. She was a maid in my father’s house when he took an interest in her. She was young and na?ve, and he was this huge movie star showering her with attention and false promises to leave his wife. When she got pregnant with me, he gave her 150,000 dollars to quit and get an abortion. Obviously she didn’t do the second part. I didn’t know who my dad was until my mom went to hospice when I was fifteen.”
“Shit, Briar, I’m so sorry.”
“I wish that was the worst of it. Turns out caring for my mom and burying her by myself was the easy part. The hard part came when CPS asked if I had any living family, and I stupidly gave them my dad’s name.
“The existence of his secret love child was leaked to the media within hours of my mom’s passing. With all the bad press breathing down his neck, he and his wife had no choice but to take me in so they could save face.
“He should have won an Oscar for how well he portrayed the story of having no idea my mom was pregnant when she quit.”
She plays with her blonde hair for a moment, lovingly, almost reverently, running her fingers through the strands, and though I want to ask who her dad is, I refrain.
When she finally looks back at the camera, she says, “From someone who has had to make her own family since losing hers, don’t waste time with yours being angry. Make up with your brother. He may be a hillbilly asshole, but he loves you.” Flicking her hair back over her shoulder she adds, “Besides, that’s like what you have me for. I’ll carry the torch of undying disdain for both you and Tins.”
Briar starts to get out of the bed, then stops. “Want me to leave you here?”
I don’t even have to think. “Please.”
“You got it,” she says, taking the phone to the nightstand and propping it up on the charger, making sure the camera is angled so I can see Tinsley. “Good night, Archer; talk to you in a few days.”
“Night, Briar.”
When the door to Tinsley’s room in the suite clicks closed, I take off my shirt and jeans, promise myself I’ll take my contacts out as soon as I wake up, and get under the blankets. It may be the middle of the day, but I miss sleeping next to my girl, and this is as close as I can get for right now.