Chapter 38
COOPER
She doesn’t say anything right away.
She can’t even hold eye contact with me, but that’s okay. Considering the staggering amount of things that have happened in the last eight hours, I’ll give her all the time she needs—I might even need the same thing.
I stand and grab two water bottles from the mini fridge, setting one on the table in front of her before cracking mine open and taking a drink.
Stephanie sits a moment longer and then reaches forward and picks up the bottle.
“I want to talk about my mom.” She twists the lid off and takes a drink, then traces the plastic ribs on the side with her fingertip while expertly avoiding my look.
“Do you happen to remember the old television commercials for Great Bounty breakfast cereal? Maybe fifteen to twenty years ago. There was a little girl and she would eat Great Bounty at different locations, like in a wheat field, on the beach, in the mountains, or at a bunch of other wholesome places. As if the cereal was creating the ideal natural setting.” She rolls her eyes as she says this.
“Is that the one where the little girl would say, ‘It’s always such a great bounty,’ at the end and then adorably smile?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.” She sounds like she’s pointing out a criminal in a police lineup. “That was me. I was the little girl.”
“Okay.” Where’s she going with this?
She briefly looks up at me before returning her focus to her water.
“It all started with my mom. She was a model when she was younger and, according to her, was on the cusp of a big breakout when she unexpectedly showed up pregnant with me.
Apparently I ruined her body, and it tanked her career.
So she used me to live in her glory days.
She got me an agent when I was still in diapers.
I was doing print ads at age one, on billboards by three, a pageant winner and on television ads at four or five, and on my first of many magazine covers at eleven.
“I started the Great Bounty ad campaign when I was seven. It wasn’t my first TV job, but it was the first one I truly hated.
They were incredibly cruel to me. The directors and executives belittled me, yelled at me, and treated me like garbage.
My mom saw and heard it all, but she never cared.
She would always say, ‘Stop complaining, Stephanie. This is the price we pay to have our faces where everyone can see us. It’s the price of being beautiful.
’” She takes a small sip of water. “Beauty was the only currency my mother valued.”
She stops talking for a moment and fidgets more with her water, not noticing the condensation from the sides dripping onto her pants.
“She outfitted me in the highest fashion at all times because it made her look successful if I was wearing what the highest-paid models in the country were wearing. I was twelve at this point. Twelve! Somewhere around the age of thirteen or fourteen”—at this, she looks up at me with uncertain eyes and waits for a few moments before going on—“well, at that age the men on the sets were getting more . . . aggressive with me . . . and pushy with physical attention.”
I sit up straighter, my jaw tightens, and a cold spark of fury kindles in my chest. I stay silent, not wanting to interrupt, but my body language betrays my thoughts.
She raises her hand to placate me. “It was okay.”
I stare, unblinking, letting my expression tell her everything.
“I mean, it wasn’t okay, but the worst I endured were stolen kisses or roaming and aggressive hands during a mic or costume fix.
Believe me, I got away scot-free compared to what other girls in the industry endure.
But I still saw and experienced more than any child should have to.
I remember deciding that when I was older, I would never be casual with my body.
That I wouldn’t . . .” She looks down again, and I can tell that what she’s sharing is incredibly personal and difficult to recount—but she goes on anyway.
“I wouldn’t sleep around like I saw so many people doing.
Every time I was violated, I told my mom, but she never cared.
It was simply the ‘price of being beautiful.’”
She takes another sip of water. “I always hated it when she said that. Around twelve was when I started refusing to cooperate, really pushing back. I even cut off all my hair once, but unfortunately wigs can do wonders. Then, she got smart.”
Stephanie looks up from the drink she’s been staring at and slowly inhales, exhaling quickly as if to cleanse her palate.
She looks out into the empty patio as she continues her story.
“She started bribing me to cooperate. If I did what the directors and photographers needed without making a fuss, she would buy me clothes. A lot of them. Unfortunately, I’d come to love the quality of my clothes—especially the shoes—so I caved and was more cooperative for a while.
Of course, she still picked out all the clothes and shoes, so she was still controlling me, but in the end, I had a wardrobe almost anyone would envy and a vast shoe collection that mostly consisted of red-bottomed Louboutins.
Essentially, everything in my closet was bought as a way to manipulate me, and I had a love-hate relationship with all of it.
When I was seventeen, there was a particularly bad incident with a man who was doing lighting.
He left bruises on my arms and ribs that later pushed back production for an hour or so while they were covered with makeup.
Again, my mother brushed it off as the ‘cost of being beautiful.’ That was the day I knew I had to get out. ”
She stands and begins to pace as she talks, the story spilling out more easily now.
“My mother kept almost all the money I made, but I started hoarding everything I could get my hands on. I walked away on my eighteenth birthday. I left every single thing in my closet and moved to Austin to start a new, mother-and-manipulation-free life. I had nothing but the clothes on my back and enough to pay for two months of rent and one pair of nice shoes. It was probably a dumb thing to buy when I had so little, but I can’t tell you how liberating it was to own a pair of shoes because I wanted them—not because anyone was trying to control me.
“I bought them as a statement of rebellion against my mother, but they became more than that. They became a talisman of my freedom. I kept those shoes on a special shelf in my closet—practically a shrine—and looked at them almost every day to remind myself that I could do hard things. I only wore them on days that were particularly special, like my college graduation, the first day of a new job, or when I needed a little extra confidence.” She sets down her water bottle and wipes the condensation on her hand on the sides of her pants.
“That probably sounds pretty stupid and shallow to you, doesn’t it? ”
I shift in my seat. “A lot less stupid than you might think.”
She assesses my answer for a beat, then goes on.
“They really were stupidly important to me. Embarrassingly so. Anyway,” her body language portrays a defeated woman, “the last time I wore them was on a day I was meeting with someone who had been very cruel to me. I hadn’t seen this person in a long time and was nervous.
It was my way of telling myself, ‘I can do this. I can do hard things.’ That was the day I ended up losing them.
” She sits down, but in the love seat across from me.
“I accidentally left them on the dock when I was kayaking with a new friend.” Her eyes barely tip up to meet mine.
A bolt of lightning hits me, and I lean back in my seat. The shoes from last night.
“I don’t know if ‘end of an era’ is too dramatic, but regardless—that’s the only way to describe how it felt.” She exhales slowly and begins to fiddle with her fingers.
“I’m so sorry.” The phrase is inadequate, but it slips out anyway. “What about your dad? Where is he in all of this?”
“That’s a totally different story. He was obsessed with money.
Getting more of it was the only thing he cared about, so he ignored my mom, and he ignored me.
At least with my mom, I had some value. I had none with my dad—because I wasn’t something he could tally on a balance sheet.
Sometimes I hate money.” She spits the words out like they are poison on her tongue.
That might end up being a huge problem for me.
For now, I’ll let her talk. “What happened when you moved to Austin?”
“I worked my way through school and built a really good career, one where people respected me for what I could do and not what I looked like. But still—after all these years—I fight my mother’s voice inside my head, telling me that beauty is my only value.
And to this day, when I get a gift, it’s not uncommon for me to wrestle with the impulse of wondering what that person wants in exchange.
Especially if it’s clothes. Especially if it’s .
. . shoes.” She draws her last word out a little as she looks up and meets my eyes.
So many things click into place, and my heart aches for her. “Especially shoes.” Echoing her words is all I can seem to do. We stay quiet for a moment before I speak up again. “How does Chase fit into all of this?”
“Things with Chase were a dream until they weren’t.
” She seems to have found her rhythm in the weight of the discussion.
She’s settled into a matter-of-fact tone now, even though what she’s saying is no less heartbreaking.
“When things started to get serious, it became apparent that we had conflicting views on intimacy in our relationship. We had some conversations, and while it wasn’t what he initially wanted, Chase agreed that we would wait till we were married, because he saw how important it was to me.
It was fine for a long time until, out of nowhere, he started pushing for more than I was willing to give.
When I stood my ground, he would apologize with flowers or gifts—only to follow them up with more pressure.
The gifts and the pressure increased, and it was as if he was trying to buy his way into my bed. ”
Everything she asked me this afternoon now makes perfect sense.
“It turns out that he was also trying to buy away his guilt, because he’d been cheating on me for a while with all sorts of women.
After I found out, I asked him why he kept pushing me when there were so many others.
His three-word response gutted me for well over a year.
He simply said, ‘Because you’re beautiful.
’” Her voice sounds hollowed out now. “It was as if he’d been coached by my mom to say the most hurtful thing possible.
Once again, my looks had been attached to why someone wanted me.
And he would have known how much those words would hurt.
They still haunt me from time to time.” Her eyes look sad.
“We’d been struggling for a while, but that was the only time he was outright mean. ”
The heavy sound that follows is one of finality.
“So that’s it. All the dirt that is my life.
The stories that live inside my head, the demons I fight, and why the shoes freaked me out this morning.
” She looks at me with a tired smile that doesn’t go anywhere near her eyes.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to dump so much on you, but once I got started, it all sort of tumbled out.
I’m sure you think I’m completely insane now.
” She picks her bottle back up and holds it against her chest but doesn’t take a drink.
“No more insane than the rest of us.” I don’t know what to say, but I gingerly pick up the shoe box and put it on the table like it’s a bomb that might go off at any moment.
We both stare at it. “Please understand. I bought these for you only because I wanted to make you happy. If you want to say thank you, fine, but you don’t even have to do that.
I legitimately expected nothing in return.
” I hold my breath. Waiting. Hoping. Her answer to my next question will determine a lot for me. “Do you believe me?”
She slowly starts shaking her head. “Cooper, I’m sorry.” She looks down at her hands.
She doesn’t believe me? I’m totally stunned. I thought that somewhere in the last few days things had started shifting, and?—
“I made so many mistakes the last time I jumped to conclusions about you, and I promised myself I wouldn’t do that again.
” She looks up at me. “I was planning on talking to you about the shoes and giving you a chance to explain why you bought them. I knew I needed to explain why accepting gifts is hard for me—but asking someone if they are trying to buy their way into your bed is really hard to slip into a conversation. I don’t know how long it was going to take me to find the right time, but I was going to try.
Then this morning spun out of control—with Chase showing up at my car, then you showing up, then Frank and your family. And everything went sideways.”
She comes to sit next to me, and I realize that she’s not apologizing for not believing me.
She’s apologizing because she wishes she would have asked me those questions under different, less stressful, and more constructive circumstances.
I can’t show it on the outside, but on the inside, I’m grinning from ear to ear.
“My mind whirled out of control, and I blurted out my questions. I’m sorry if it sounded like I was accusing you of terrible things, but I needed to hear your answers. What can I do to fix this?”