Chapter 31 Emmy
Chapter 31
The pit of hell has excellent lighting.
Emmy
JOSIE BARGES INTO my room. “Emmy, this has gone on long enough! You’ve been living in this room for three months. Get out of bed!”
I roll over onto my laptop, which has become my perpetual and only bedmate because, hey, a girl’s still gotta work, and dig myself deeper into my nest of misery. “Leave me alone,” I moan. “I’m meditating.”
Josie huffs. “This is unacceptable. Peyton, bring a candle!”
I yank the covers off my head and squint. “Did I forget to pay the electric bill? Did a hurricane hit? Is it my birthday?”
“Relax. I’m just going to freshen up this room. It smells like dirty laundry and depression. Alexa! Stop playing Death Cab for Cutie.”
I sit up. “Is that tea in your hand?”
“It is.” She hands it to me. The cup is warm. It’s one of the mugs Peyton made me with Best Mom Ever written on it in her thumbprints.
“I love you.” My face crumples. “I love you both so much.”
“No!” Josie shouts at me with the intensity of an early Battlestar Galactica episode. “No more crying! No more wallowing! You have to pull yourself together. We’re leaving for the premiere in a few weeks.” Josie pushes my knees aside and makes room for herself on the bed.
Peyton appears in the doorway with a candle in her hands. “It’s your favorite scent, Mom.”
“The Pandora ride at Animal Kingdom?”
She nods. “Frozen Lake.”
“Gracias, nina.” Josie pushes her out the door. “Let me talk to your mom for a minute.”
I blink in the early afternoon light shining through the tiny window in my tiny bedroom. Through the smeary glass, I can see a little bit of the Gulf of Mexico. The never-ending song of seagulls filters in through the cracks, and I discover a crumb of joy while sniffing the candle and taking a sip of my tea. At least the world hasn’t totally come apart. It’s not Infinity War .
“He still won’t answer my texts,” I say. “He still thinks I leaked those photos.”
“I’ll kill him with my bare hands,” Josie growls.
“He just went right back with her. Immediately. He didn’t even miss a beat.”
“And after I kill him, I’m going to push him down the stairs.”
“Did he feel anything for me? I don’t think he felt anything for me!”
“And then I’ll drag his body into that big fire ant mound in the parking lot.”
We’ve had this same conversation at least ten times, but it never helps. I press my cheek against the warm cup in my hands. “Josie, stop with the support, please. It’s not helping. I think I need you to give me some real advice.”
Josie puts on her bad-news face, which kind of looks like she has a live hamster in her mouth. “You’re not gonna like it.”
“Just shut up and tell me.”
“Okay then.” She takes a deep breath. “Emmy, you always believed that Jason was a good guy even when the media said otherwise. Now that he’s trying to do right by his family, you’re going to fault him for that?”
She’s right. I hate this. “I don’t fault him for anything. I just want him to know I didn’t mean to hurt him.”
Josie’s eyebrows go up. “You didn’t? Because I thought that was the original plan: use him for fame and fortune.”
“I never meant for him to lose his job. I just wanted to catch up with my dreams. You know.”
“I know.” She picks up the face down framed picture that I secretly peek at when I want to torture myself—our morning-after photo. The one I didn’t share on social media. The one I kept just for us.
“That’s a lie from the pit of hell,” I grumble.
She shrugs. “The pit of hell has excellent lighting.”
I fall back on the pillows with a groan.
“Emmy, try to look on the bright side. You’re a hugely successful author with a movie deal! You should be enjoying this. So things didn’t work out with Jason Connor. So what? He was always just the gravy. You got the meatloaf.”
“I like gravy. I want gravy.”
“I always worried about this with you, you know.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t think I can say it. You’re gonna be mad.”
I smack her with my pillow. “Say it.”
“No.” She drops the framed photo on the bed, snatches the pillow out of my hands, and throws it on the floor. “It’s not supportive.”
I smack her with my other pillow. “Say it!” She grabs at that one, too, but this time I manage to keep it out of her reach. “Say it, Josie! I need to know.”
“Fine, I’ll say it!” She blows out a sigh. “With you, nothing’s ever enough.”
I halt with the pillow brandished in midair. “That’s hurtful.”
“I know. But it’s true.” She pins me with her warm brown eyes. “Five years ago, I met a girl who wanted to publish a book. She published a book. Then she wanted a movie deal. She got a movie deal. Then she wanted to meet her favorite actor. She met him. Then she wanted him to fall for her. He fell for her, and don’t say he didn’t”—she shakes the framed picture at me—“because you don’t get a photo like this any other way.”
I scoff.
“Don’t scoff yet! I’m not finished. Then she wanted to be number one on the bestseller list. She did it. And now that she’s achieved all that, how does she spend her free time? Moping around pining for the one thing she can’t have. And I bet you, even if she got that, even if she patched up things with Jason Connor and woke up in that fluffy, white-sheet den of pleasure every morning, it still wouldn’t be enough. She still wouldn’t be happy. Because you, Emmy Ellison, have a problem that not even the love of a superhot movie star can fix.”
A rumbling happens in my chest, like an alien creature awakening. I want to argue with her, but I’m also dying to know what my problem is. “Go on.”
“You have to decide, when is it going to be enough? Because at some point, enough has to be enough to make you happy.”
I open my mouth to protest, but no words form, because I realize that she’s probably right. Maybe I’m climbing a never-ending ladder. Or worse yet, maybe I’m climbing a ladder with nothing at the top.
I drop the pillow to my lap. “I’ll think about it. But in the meantime, what do I do about Jason?”
She studies the photo some more and shrugs. “Do whatever you want to do. You want to kill Jason? Kill him. You want to jump his bones? Jump his bones. You want to apologize and then kill him and jump his bones, do it. Whatever you want to do, I support you.”
“No!” I shout, using her own weapon against her. “Josie, no. For real. Not what do I want to do? What’s the right thing to do?”
Her face softens, and she brushes the hair off my sweaty, greasy forehead. “The right thing to do is to tell Jason how you feel… and then try to be okay with whatever happens next.”