Chapter Six Bozos with Cameras #3
Just me, Ava, and my music.
“So if you’re looking for a place to escape…” she continues, letting the words fade with a shrug.
“That would be perfect, actually.”
She searches my face again, like she’s looking for a lie. After a few moments, she crosses her arms over her chest. “Okay.”
There it is again. That okay.
Okay, I believe you.
Okay, I trust you.
“Well,” she says. “It’s also January, so it’ll be cold.”
I shrug. “Not a problem.”
She shakes her head again. “You’re really serious, aren’t you?”
“If you are.”
“No, no, no,” she says with her hands up, laughing. “This is on you. Are you really gonna pack up your whole life to move home with me?”
We could. My life is me and Ava and nothing else.
And then it hits me: Beverly would have to know about Ava.
I don’t know why I didn’t consider that earlier, but for some reason, a part of me thinks…I can trust Beverly. I can trust this woman who is simply trying to revive a children’s show.
I trust her because she trusts me.
“Yes,” I answer. “I’d move with you.”
She sputters out, “Well, you can’t live with me.”
The sentence shoots out of her so fast that my chest constricts.
“I promise I had no plans to shack up with you,” I say.
Her face flushes pink. “No, I mean, I’m living with my parents. You literally can’t move in with me. I didn’t think that you’d…that we would…”
“Me neither.”
“We just met,” she says. “You don’t even know me.”
“But I’m serious about this.”
“Are you ever not serious?”
I huff out air through my nose. “Sometimes.”
She twists her lips to the side.
“Okay,” she finally says. “Okay.” She sighs and holds her hands up. “Okay. I mean, I can’t stop you.”
And even though her words are dismissive, she has that little smile back.
Then the room just…quiets. There’s an unspoken shift, as if we got away with something, like skipping school or borrowing our parents’ car.
I return her smile, admiring how her long, delicate fingers trace over Bernie Bird’s feathers.
“Bernie plays favorites, by the way,” she says.
“Does he?”
“He might be mean until he gets to know you.”
“Don’t you control what he says?”
“Absolutely not,” she says. “He has a mind of his own.”
Beverly might be one of the more fascinating people I’ve ever met.
“So,” she says. “How long do we hide from the paparazzi for?”
I almost forgot about that. The man at the restaurant seems so inconsequential now.
I’m leaving town. I’m going somewhere new—somewhere secluded—where I can write and explore and be with my daughter.
Goose bumps shiver down my forearms. I clench my fists tighter together.
Beverly needs to know about Ava sooner rather than later. Realistically, I should get her to sign an NDA first, but Beverly doesn’t seem like the NDA-required type. Jimmy will kill me for ignoring paperwork, but Jimmy won’t be around the next few weeks—or months, who knows—to chastise me anyway.
“You should know something,” I say.
“About the paparazzi?”
“No, about me.”
“All right…” she says, her tone shifting into skepticism.
“When I go, I won’t be alone.”
Her lips dip into a frown.
“You’re seeing someone,” she announces so matter-of-factly that just the idea has my heart sinking.
“I have a daughter.”
Her head jerks back, as if the sentence bumped into her.
“Oh” is all I get. Those blond eyelashes flutter; then she squints. “Wait, you’re a dad?”
“Nobody knows.” I hop down off the counter and take a tentative step forward.
“Nobody, Beverly.” I don’t miss the slight shiver in her shoulders at me saying her name as I come close to towering over her.
Maybe I’m intimidating her, so I halt mid-step.
“My daughter means the world to me. And you can’t tell anyone, understand? ”
“I would never,” she says plainly.
“I know.” I don’t know, but I have a feeling.
Ava and I haven’t met someone new as a team since she arrived in LA one year ago. It’s always Ava with the nanny. Never Ava and Griffin Harvey. It can never be that way. So this—this confession—steels my nerves and makes every passing second feel like a heated spotlight over my head.
Did I make the wrong decision?
Would Robin be upset?
Beverly focuses on me again. Her green eyes are always searching. I don’t like how she looks like a surgeon with a scalpel, cutting apart to find the core of me.
She stands up, and her hand shoots out toward mine. “I promise I’ll keep it our secret. I’ll shake on it.”
Her eyes are hardened, and it might be the most serious I’ve seen her so far.
I reach out to engulf her hand in mine. The tips of her fingers are rougher than I expect as she shakes my hand with vigor.
“I promise,” she repeats.
Without thinking, I nod and say exactly what she’s said to me so far: “Okay.”
Okay, I believe you.
I trust you.
“And thank you,” I add, and maybe I hold on for too long—or maybe she does—because suddenly both of us drop our hands at the same time.
She finally smiles, and I return it.
“So,” I say. “Tell me where I’m vacationing.”
“Elk Grove, North Carolina. Pancake capital of the world.”
“Really?”
“No.”
“Fantastic.”