Chapter 23 Guest Cigarettes #2
“We’re the same!” Lainey practically bounced. It almost made up for the way her heart was shattering into a million pieces. Almost.
“Fine. We’re the same. Now, are we going to watch Heartburn with your grandmother or not?”
They did just that. And Bree only compared her current situation to the events in Nora Ephron’s semi-autobiographical classic a mere seven times.
The sounds of women selling portable photo printers on the Home Shopping Network played softly in the background of Gran’s bedroom.
Her room smelled like her—a musky floral perfume she poured into the same Chanel N°5 bottle she’d been gifted years ago.
The head of her adjustable bed was lifted for prime television viewing, and still Bree had managed to fall fast asleep in the space between Lainey and Gran.
“I’m sorry about you and your…Elliot,” Gran whispered over Bree’s head. “I know it takes a lot for you to like someone.”
Lainey shrugged. “It is what it is. We’re better on our own anyway.”
Gran tsked. “No, don’t be like me.”
“Why not? You’re happy.”
“But I’m me and you’re you, and you are not meant to be on your own.
You’re only used to it. There’s a difference.
” Bree made a wet respiratory noise that landed somewhere between a snort and throat clear.
“This one snores, if you weren’t aware. Her grandmother pointed at Bree’s head.
“It’s a pregnancy thing. I sounded like a truck horn blaring over an overpass when I was pregnant with your mother.
She’s coming for the Fourth of July by the way. ”
Lainey grimaced instinctually at her grandmother’s invention of yet another opportunity for her mother to disappoint her. “Can we stop with that?”
She looked confused. “With what?”
“With the ‘Camille’s coming’ bit. We’re never going to have this mother-daughter moment you want us to have. You have to stop forcing this. This is how we are.”
Her grandmother shook her head. “I can’t accept that.”
“Why not? I’m fine with it.”
“That’s the part I won’t accept. You’re not fine with it, but I think you are starting to believe you deserve it.”
Lainey could feel the defensiveness rising in her chest against her will like a Pavlovian response. But what had she said to Tobin just hours ago in the middle of a gas station mini-mart?
You decided I wasn’t worth the trouble.
What had been the consequences of having two parental figures abandon her? What was the cost?
Lainey didn’t hate Tobin or Camille. Sometimes she wished she did.
Villains were tidy. They were someone to blame.
Lainey knew it was more complicated than that, but it had never made it hurt less.
As much as Tobin seemed to regret giving up on her, he’d never fought for her.
Meanwhile, Camille was still traveling the world in search of something else to give her life purpose, when Lainey had been right there, ready and waiting.
“It’s okay to want more than what you have.
To need people. To ask them to be good to you and to be angry when they’re not.
You’re worth so much more than what you’ve learned to accept.
” Gran, smiling fondly, reached over Bree’s sleeping body to smooth Lainey’s hair.
“You don’t need to be so tough all the time, my dear.
Acting like you don’t need anyone won’t make it true, because that’s not how life works. Trust me.”
“You don’t need anyone,” Lainey replied, her voice soft.
“That’s not true. I need you.” Gran looked briefly discomposed, which wasn’t like her. Then she blinked it away. “But I don’t need your money, and you need to stop sending it, because I can’t convince this place to stop accepting it.”
“You know about…?” Lainey shook her head. “It’s too expensive here. You’re going to fall behind on payments.”
“I have my ways, and you know I’m at my best when my back is against a wall.
Worry about yourself, and let me worry about me.
” She tilted her head toward Bree. “You’re not alone, dear.
You have a lot of people who are ready to be in your corner the moment you say the word.
I imagine that’s the case with this boy of yours as well. ”
Lainey pulled the blanket higher up on her chest. “He is solidly not in my corner. He’s at the opposite side of the ring.”
“Yes, I heard about the property contract. Very clever of him.”
“Gran!” Lainey laughed, scandalized.
“What? I can admire a good grift when I see one.”
“Well, clever or not, I was the one who got conned in the end.”
“Oof.” Her grandmother reached for a tin on her bedside table and passed it to Lainey. “I’ve never liked that feeling. Now, darling, one side is Rolos and the other’s cigarettes. You decide what you need.”
Lainey sighed. “Gran, you shouldn’t be smoking.”
“I don’t. They’re for guests.”
Lainey made the deliberate choice not to think too deeply about who might require guest cigarettes and grabbed a Rolo.
“Now what I don’t understand about his dastardly plans is why he’s still married to you.” Gran tapped her chin, like this required deep consideration.
“It was the only way he could get the property. I sign the prenup. We get married—”
“You get divorced,” Gran finished. “Right, of course. So why not divorce you right away?”
She hadn’t considered that. “I don’t know.”
“And I can’t figure out how getting you to fall in love with him factored in.”
Lainey clattered the tin closed. “I wasn’t in love with him.”
Gran raised her eyebrow. “Please. You can lie to yourself, but don’t lie to me.”
“Maybe he wanted to lull me into a false sense of security and rip the rug out from under me when I least suspected it.”
“But the longer you were married, the greater the risk that you’d find out. So that doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe he’s bad at grifting and you should rescind your earlier compliment,” Lainey huffed.
“Is it possible that he’s telling the truth? That he put it in there because he was scared, and he never had any plans to use it at all?”
Lainey wanted so badly for that to be true. “He didn’t trust me, Gran. From the very start.”
Gran snorted. “That’s rich, coming from you.”
“What does that mean?”
“When have you ever trusted anyone from the very start? You certainly didn’t when you were an angry seven-year-old girl whose mother had just left.
For days, you refused to sleep, in protest of bedtime.
I still don’t know how you did it. And when I would try to hold you, you would just scream and scream. ”
Lainey frowned. “I don’t remember any of that.”
“You needed to see that I wasn’t going anywhere. That you couldn’t scare me or push me away. For some people, trust comes easy, but it sounds like for Elliot, trust takes time. He needs to see it to believe it. Perhaps you might relate.”
Lainey gave her grandmother a watery smile. She had used so much energy not allowing herself to want things she wasn’t sure she could keep.
“I just want you to imagine a world in which you are someone worth caring for. Fighting for, even. That you are a woman a man might be so scared to lose he’d do something…very stupid.”
Lainey sighed and reopened the tin. “Now I kind of want the cigarette.”
“No, your skin is too bouncy to be messing around with that. Here, do you want a vintage Rolex? I’ve won half a dozen of them at Ernie’s.
” She lifted up a large gold men’s watch that was much too big for her grandmother’s dainty wrists.
“I wouldn’t pawn it yet—the man I won it from was quite testy about it—but I think it has a certain je ne sais quoi.
You never know when you might need a gift for someone special. ”
Lainey handed her grandmother the tin of cigarettes and pretended not to hear the thing about the Rolex as she let the Home Shopping Network send her into a deep sleep.