Chapter 28
“Um, okay, what is happening?” Gigi asked as they perp-walked her into Nikki’s office and closed the door.
“An intervention,” Jordan said, arms crossed, eyes narrowed. “What’re you doing?”
“I don’t understand the question.”
“Why are you leaving when you have a great guy who’s crazy about you and clearly wants more with you?” Jordan asked.
“I’m leaving because I don’t live here.”
“You’re self-employed, Gigi,” Nikki said. “You don’t have to leave the second shooting ends. What’s another week or two after three months?”
Another week or two would make it so she couldn’t leave him. She had to go now while she still could. She shook her head. “I have to go.”
“You’re running away from him,” Jordan said.
“No, I’m going back to my real life. This place is a fantasy.”
“It feels pretty damned real to me,” Nikki said.
“And to me,” Jordan added. “He’s in love with you.”
“No, he isn’t. He’s in love with the idea of me.”
Jordan shook her head. “He sees the real you, and he loves the real you.”
Feeling more desperate to escape this intervention with every passing second, Gigi laughed. “You’re so in love with being in love, you think you’re seeing it everywhere you look. Cooper and I are friends. It was a fling. That’s it.”
“Who you trying to convince, G?” Nikki asked softly. “Us or yourself?”
“You guys are insane! I’ve known him a couple of weeks. People don’t change their lives or their plans for someone they just met.”
Nikki raised her hand. “I did.”
Jordan raised hers. “Me, too.”
“It’s different for you guys. You want hearts and flowers and happily ever after. I’m not wired that way.”
“You think we were wired that way after living through the worst divorce and custody battle in recorded history?” Nikki asked. “Things were tough for you growing up, but don’t forget how rough it was for us, too. If we can take a chance on hearts and flowers and happily ever after, why can’t you?”
“Because I don’t want it. I like my life the way it is—uncomplicated and unencumbered. That’s what works for me.”
“For now,” Jordan said. “But that life is going to look very different without us in LA, isn’t it?"
Oh, low blow. Gigi’s chest ached, and that goddamned lump lodged in her throat again. “I’ll be fine.”
“You didn’t ask for our opinion,” Nikki said, “but I think you’re going to regret running away from what this could be with Cooper.”
“Maybe so, but I’ll survive. I always do. Can I go now?”
“Don’t do something you’re going to regret, Geeg,” Nikki said gently. “Cooper is a great guy who genuinely cares about you. Let him.”
If she didn’t get out of there right away, she was going to break down in front of them, and that couldn’t happen. “I hear you, and I love you both, but I’m leaving.” Blinking back tears, she turned to leave the room and crashed right into Cooper’s broad chest.
He wrapped his arms around her, and she lost it all over him, shaking with sobs and choking on that damned lump that had settled permanently in her throat, or so it seemed.
“Hey,” he said, “what’s this?”
Gigi couldn’t speak, and anyone who knew her well would say that was a rare thing. She gave herself five lovely minutes of being comforted by him while she breathed in the scent she’d forever associate with him. “I have to go.”
“I’ll take you home.”
“No, I have to go, Cooper. This, with you… I can’t do it.
I just can’t. I’m sorry.” She pulled herself free of him and got the hell out of there while she still could.
Half running, half walking, she made it to the ferry landing in a matter of minutes and jumped into the first cab she saw.
“Can you please take me to the James estate?”
“Sure thing,” the driver said. “Y’all right, doll?”
“I will be. Eventually.”
“Ya wanna talk about it?” he asked, looking at her in the mirror with kind eyes.
“No, but thank you for asking.”
“My missus and I, we love yer show. You and Jordan are a hoot.”
“Thank you so much,” Gigi said, wiping away tears.
“I read somewheres that the funniest people are the ones who feel things the deepest, or somethin’ like that.”
His kind words had more tears flooding her eyes.
“I met yer friend Cooper. Seems like a real nice young man.”
“He is.” Gigi held back a sob that wanted out right now. How did he know about her and Cooper?
“Tough to say goodbye to someone special like that.”
She nodded, hoping he could see her in the mirror.
“I’m sorry. You said ya didn’t want to talk about it, and here I am prattling on. But can I tell ya a little story ’bout myself?”
“Sure,” Gigi said, wiping away more tears.
“I met a gal right here on Gansett Island round about thirty-three or so years ago. Fell madly in love, the kinda thing you never recover from, ya know?”
She was starting to know all too well. “What happened?”
“She married someone else.”
Gigi was heartbroken for him. “Oh no.”
“Yeah, it was pretty rough for a long time. They had a coupla little girls, and I had ta watch her walk around town with an unhappy look on her pretty face. I knew he wasn’t treatin’ her right, but what could I do?
She’d made her choice. Then one day, he up and left on the boat and never came back. ”
“He left her with two little girls?”
“Yep.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothin’ I could do but watch from a distance.”
“That must’ve been so hard.”
“It was tough cuz I still loved her and woulda stepped up for her and her girls, but ya know what kept me from doin’ that?”
“What?” Gigi asked, riveted by his story.
“My own foolish pride and a whole lotta fear. I coulda had it all with her and those sweet girls years ago, but I was too afraid ta try. Ya have any idea what I missed out on?”
Gigi shook her head, not sure what to say.
“Everythin’,” he said softly. “That lovely gal and I are married now cuz I finally worked up the courage to do what I shoulda done years ago, and now… Now I finally have it all when I coulda had it decades ago. Those little girls are grown women now, and they’ve made me a grandpa seven times over.
I have everything now, doll. Every single thing I coulda had way back when, if only I coulda found the courage. ”
Gigi wept silently in the back seat, moved beyond reason by his sweet story.
He pulled the station wagon into Jared’s driveway and put the engine in Park before he turned to her, handing her a tissue. “Don’t have regrets, sweetheart.”
She took the tissue from him and used it to dry her eyes. “I’m so happy things worked out for you and your wife.”
“I am, too. Never been happier in my whole damned life. I have a feeling things are gonna work out the way they’re supposed ta for you, too.”
Gigi opened the case that housed her wallet and phone and held out a twenty.
“Yer money’s no good here, sweetheart. Happy to have the chance to meetcha and have a chat.”
“What’s your name?”
“Ned Saunders.”
“Thank you, Ned, for the ride and the chat.”
“A pleasure, doll.”
Gigi got out of the car and walked up the dark driveway to her apartment over the garage.
Ned put the high beams on to light her way and waited until she was at her door before he tooted and drove away.
His wife and daughters were lucky to have a man like him in their lives, even if it had taken years for them to find their way to each other.
Some people got lucky. Others didn’t. That was how the world worked, and Gigi had always been a realist who didn’t let herself get caught up in the fantasy of happily ever after that other women pursued so relentlessly.
Marriage and children and white picket fences…
That life wasn’t for her, and she’d known that all along.
Now that she’d ended things with Cooper, she could focus on getting back to reality.
“She broke up with me,” Cooper told Nikki and Jordan when they joined him in the hallway outside Nikki’s office.
“No way,” Jordan said. “She did not.”
“Ah, yes, she did.” The ache that started in his heart had overtaken every part of him as he’d watched her run away from him as if her life depended on getting as far from him as she could get.
“She’s afraid,” Nikki said. “She’s learned the hard way that she can’t trust anyone except the very small circle of friends she allows to get close to her.”
“I’ve tried in every way I can think of to let her know she can trust me.”
“Now, you’re going to have to take a step back and wait for her to come to you,” Jordan said.
“Except she won’t.”
“No,” Jordan said, “I think she will, but she has to believe it was her decision, not something that was forced on her in any way.”
“So what am I supposed to do in the meantime?” Cooper asked, desperate for insight from Gigi’s two closest friends.
“Wait and hope,” Jordan said. “Give her the space to figure out for herself that you’re what she wants.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
“Then I guess it wasn’t meant to be, but I don’t think that’s what will happen.”
Cooper wished he shared Jordan’s certainty.
“Jordan is right,” Nikki said. “You have to let her go for now and give her the space to think and breathe and make her own decision. She knows what you want. Let her figure out what she wants.”
He’d go mad waiting and hoping for her to come around, but the sisters knew her better than anyone, so he’d try to take their advice.
“Let me ask you this,” Nikki said. “Was she crying when she said it was over?”
“Yeah.” Her tears had wrecked him. “Big-time.”
“Gigi doesn’t cry,” Jordan said. “Like, ever.”
“If she was crying as she ended things with you,” Nikki said, “it’s because she cares too much about you and isn’t sure what to do about it. I completely agree with Jordan’s plan for you to chill and give her time to come around on her own.”
“Thanks for the advice. I appreciate it.”
“In case you haven’t noticed,” Jordan said, smiling, “we’re on Team Cooper. We’re rooting for you guys to figure things out.”
“Means a lot to me that her two closest friends want us to be together.”