Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I had just declared my love—again.
And Charlie was still as the statue of Apollo in the Louvre.
It was not the response I was going for.
Maybe he didn’t believe me. “Charlie, when I thought we were dying on that plane, and I said those words, I meant them. It wasn’t just adrenaline or our impending demise.
I have never stopped loving you. Even Ian saw that.
” I watched Charlie’s eyes soften, and I took heart.
“I love your strength, your kindness, your faith, and even your weird addiction to all things sports.”
I pressed my hand to Charlie’s cheek, and he covered it with his.
“I adore watching you with your little sister, the way you treat your mother, and how hard you work. You’ve seen me at my best and my worst, but you’ve always been behind me like a protector.
I feel safe with you. I don’t want that to be so important, but it is.
” I was rambling. Babbling like a drunk sorority girl at a rush party.
“Say something. Please.” I had just reached into my own chest cavity, dug out my bleeding, beating heart, and asked him to take it. Why was he just standing there ?
“You know how I feel about you.” The words tore from his lips like they pained him to say.
“No, I really don’t think I do.” I had been so certain I did. But everything about this was so off-script. I had rehearsed this evening a dozen times in my mind, and now every page, every line was so dreadfully wrong.
“I would give you the world if I could.” Charlie’s hand dropped to his side. “But you didn’t just ask me here tonight to tell me how you felt. Did you?”
“I don’t understand.” I was suddenly cold, as if I were standing there naked in front of him. Stripped and vulnerable.
“Was there anything else you wanted to ask me, Katie?”
That bleeding heart shuttered to a stop. “Yes,” I whispered. “I wanted you to see my theater. Really see it.”
“I do.”
“Do you?” My volume escalated to the lights above us.
Charlie took a step away from me, and that bloom of hope within me wilted. “I see you in every brick and board in this whole building. I see this place in my dreams every night—with a vision of you crying because I can’t do anything to save it.”
“If I have to lose the Valiant, I don’t want to lose you as well.”
“Say it, Katie. Let’s just get it out there.”
I sniffled and wished he had offered the words himself. “Quit working for Thrifty Co. Walk away from them, Charlie.”
He muttered a curse and began to pace a path around the stage. Loretta’s picnic basket of chicken and all the fixings grew cold on their spot by the first row. Dinner would not be happening.
Not while Charlie walked the length of the stage, his face taut with frustration.
Charlie’s temper had always had a long fuse, but tonight it was sizzling to the quick.
“You’ve lived your whole life playing it safe,” he said.
“Your mom was the wild child. She was the one you couldn’t depend on.
But not you. And now you want every thing to be a sure bet before you even consider attempting it. Me. Your career.”
“There is no career.”
“Because you won’t even try! You go out of your way to not be like Bobbie Parker, but you’re living half a life in the process. You’re going to die here in In Between if you stay.”
“ I love this town!”
“God gave you this incredible talent to entertain, to act, to bring stories alive, and what are you doing with it?”
“At least I’m not hurting people with my career choice.”
“What are you doing with it?” he demanded.
“I’m not good enough, Charlie.”
“Because Ian said so?”
“College is over. I’m no longer the star of campus, and I have to face that reality.”
“You dumped Ian. He would’ve said anything to hurt you. He knew that was your Achilles heel. You have zero faith in yourself or your ability.” Or me.
He didn’t say it, but it was there.
“My stage career is over.”
“Because you’re scared. What happens when you wake up twenty years from now, and you’re still here in Texas, going through the motions of some job just to pay the bills?”
“You have no inkling what it’s like to stand on that stage every night at the mercy of your audience’s judgment.
What it’s like to step into a part so big, it’s survived centuries, and you’re some kid from small town, Texas.
You can’t begin to imagine what it’s like to hear all the voices in your head, louder than my own voice delivering my lines.
Those voices that say I can’t do it. That I’m on borrowed time, and soon they’re all gonna know I can’t act.
And that the only reason I’m there is because I caught the director’s eye.
Or what it’s like to finish your scene, high on adrenaline, only for your director to cut you down, tell you every single thing you did wrong.
Constantly telling you it’s not good enough.
” My mascara had to be black rivulets streaking my face by now, but it felt good to open that festering sore and let it bleed out.
“You want to know the truth? I knew from the beginning why I had the part. Maybe I even led Ian on.”
“You wouldn’t have.”
“Yes, Charlie. I would have. Because I was desperate to get that role. . . desperate to be somebody. ”
“You are somebody.”
“I flirted with him ’til I got his attention, until he was intrigued enough to give me a shot. I just wanted one chance to show him I had what it takes. One try to be the understudy.” Then the lead.
“He wouldn’t have given you the part if you hadn’t earned it.”
“But I didn’t have enough talent to keep it. And I still don’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Broadway is for the Julliard graduates. Not for the daughter of Bobbie Ann Parker. I tried, I failed. I’m done.
You can only fall on your face so many times before you have to be honest with yourself.
I don’t want to go to Manhattan and wait tables until I’m sixty because I’m still trying to get my foot in the door at the Gershwin. ”
“So you’re gonna wait tables here instead.”
I lifted my chin and dared him to contradict me. “I’m going to run the Valiant.”
“And if it’s not here?”
“Can you tell me for certain it won’t be?”
“I can’t tell you anything. I want to,” he quietly admitted. “But I can’t.”
“You won’t.”
He slammed his hands into his pockets and studied the floor for long, agonizing moments before slowly lifting his head. “I’m not quitting my job right now.”
“Then when?” But I knew the answer now. It was never. It was job first, like his father.
It felt silly to stand on the stage in the midst of this life-altering conversation with the Sound of Music set behind us. How do you solve a problem like. . .me?
“I asked you to trust me.” Charlie yanked on the knot of his tie, loosening it with a few harsh tugs.
“How can I do that when you’re a part of this company? This theater is part of my family. For a time in my life, it was all I had. It saved me. Do you get that? I probably wouldn’t be here today if I hadn’t met the Valiant. I’d be in prison or dead. But I sure wouldn’t be where I am now. ”
“And where you are is asking me to just quit my job and go do something else. Like it’s that easy.”
“I didn’t say it would be easy. I think I know a little bit about job transitions.”
“Really? Because I don’t see you transitioning to one.”
That icy dagger stabbed right through me. “Not all of us are born with family connections or this genius talent. Some of us have to work our butts off to get even one rung up the ladder.”
“I work very hard. I work day and night, trying to keep my head above water, while dodging hate mail from the neighbors, and attempting not to break your heart.”
“Is that what you’re doing right now? Trying not to break my heart?”
Charlie scrubbed his hands over his face. “I can’t give you what you want.”
“I’m not talking about business.” The pitiful words gathered in my throat and danced on my tongue. I hated them. I hated every one of them, but I spit them out anyway. “I told you I loved you. . .and you said nothing.”
“I can’t be the man you want right now.”
“The one who can leave a job that makes him miserable and do the right thing? You’re not willing to take that risk for us? You, who keeps telling me to get on a plane to New York?”
“Loving you has always been a risk,” Charlie said.
“But you don’t trust me right now, and I don’t trust tonight’s declaration.
Twice you’ve told me you’ve loved me, and both times in a moment of desperation.
What about on the average day when you have nothing to gain?
Let’s say I was able to stop the Valiant from going down.
Would you still be there when it was over?
Because anytime someone gets too close, you take off. ”
“That's not true. I was with Ian for nearly a year.”
“He’s got temporary written all over him.
I have no doubt you knew that from the first date.
You knew he wasn't the type to put a ring on your finger, so less risk for you.
What about our freshman year of college?
I told you I loved you, and you disappeared.
I didn't hear from you again until...when was it? When was it, Katie? ”
On a plane ride from Chicago to Houston.
“It took you four years to say you loved me back, and only then under the threat of death. So you wonder why I haven't said the words to you? Because you can't take them.” His booming voice echoed throughout the theater. “And because I don't want you to leave again.”
Tears fell unchecked down my cheeks. “I didn't run from you.”
“Why don’t we finally talk about that last night I saw you.”
“Just stop.” It was old history. Dark ghosts of memories that haunted me when I was too worn down to lock those doors.
“Freshman year. February.”
“I don’t need to hear this story again.”
“You didn’t even bother calling me with the news. Frances did.”
My mother had died.
She was gone.