Chapter Fifteen #2
A series of framed photographs lined a shelf.
Lola looked closer. Annie with three cool-looking friends Lola didn’t recognize, grinning in a sun-spangled pool.
Annie sitting on a sofa with her grandmother, in Pearl’s later years.
And a sun-faded one of a smiling man and woman in their thirties, holding a chubby toddler in pigtails.
Lola picked up the frame. “Are these your parents?”
“Yeah.” Her smile was forlorn. “Wish I could remember them a bit better.”
It still surprised Lola that kind, optimistic Annie had a childhood defined by such loss. That kind of trauma could have made her closed and distrustful. Instead, Annie seemed to love even more deeply—as if she’d decided that opening her heart was the only way to keep it whole.
“You have your mom’s nose,” Lola realized, glancing from the photo back to Annie.
They were standing close. The warmth from Annie’s body rolled over Lola’s skin, and it felt like sinking into a deliciously warm bath.
She caught herself with a start. She was here for an important conversation, not to fantasize about bubble baths. Lola put the photo back, attempting a neutral tone. “So. What did you want to talk about?”
Annie’s gaze skittered to the rug, her fingers tightening around her glass. For a second, it seemed like she might back out: change the topic, announce that dinner was ready. But then Annie exhaled slowly and met Lola’s gaze. “Us,” she said. “And what really happened.”
Lola’s heart kicked against her ribs. She wasn’t sure what Annie meant but her expression was alarmingly intense. “What really happened when?”
“When we were kids,” Annie said. “I know it’s been ages, but I don’t think I can do the play—or, like, sleep at night—until you know the truth.”
“Are you talking about…our breakup?” Lola steeled herself. It was still so hard to reconcile that her first love hadn’t loved her back.
Things had started to become tense between her and Annie during the final week of the original show, especially anytime Lola brought up the future or anything to do with Pearl’s health.
Annie seemed anxious during their final show and moody on the short walk to the closing night after-party, held in Trixie Hartzog’s backyard; their fellow cast member lived a few minutes from the theater.
Lola recalled little white lights strung up in the backyard, a bluegrass band playing by folding tables piled with food and drink. A self-serve bar. No one was monitoring the teens. They’d both gotten stupid drunk after stealing a bottle of something clear that tasted like gasoline.
Annie had pulled Lola into an unfamiliar bedroom, her cheeks already tearstained. A messy, jagged fight spewed between them, peaking when Annie finally cried the words that Lola would never forget. I don’t love you! I never have!
Even now, decades later, the words were an axe swinging right into Lola’s heart. “It was…how you felt,” she said. “I wasn’t enough—”
“But it wasn’t how I felt!” Annie’s grip tightened around her wineglass.
A low thrum of anxiety curled through Lola’s chest. “What do you mean?”
Annie stared up at Lola. Something enormous shifted behind her eyes. She let out a long breath, sounding steady and sure. “Let’s sit.”
Outside, the rain got a little heavier, drumming against the windows. They sat a few feet apart on the blue sofa. Lola couldn’t move, each muscle tight with anticipatory tension.
Annie began, her voice thin. “The summer we did the play, Gran’s health was starting to decline. I knew I had a long road ahead of me and I’d be putting off anything after high school to look after her.”
Lola frowned. “I remember.” More specifically, she remembered Annie refusing every offer of help.
Annie squeezed her eyes shut for half a second, then forced herself to look at Lola.
“Everyone knew you could make it. You were talented and beautiful, but you were tough, too. When that Broadway producer offered you Mockingbird, it just…felt inevitable. Of course you were going to leave. Of course you were going to be someone.”
Lola’s heart kicked hard, like it was trying to break through bone. Where the hell was Annie going with all this?
Annie’s voice took on a desperate edge. “But you’d started talking about staying in Rhodes. To help me. You were going to turn down the audition. For me.”
“Well, I loved you,” Lola said bluntly, almost offended. “Your family was my family.”
“I couldn’t let you do it.” Annie’s eyes were wide. “I had to get you to leave. It was what was best for you.” Her voice became a hoarse whisper. “That’s why I told you I didn’t love you.”
Lola’s breath snagged in her throat. Her chest started to burn, her mind scrambling to catch up.
Annie sounded tortured. “It was all a giant lie. I did love you, Lola. So much. Too much to make you stay with me and deal with—everything.”
The heat in Lola’s chest started to infect her limbs. “So…you lied to me?” Her voice was knife-sharp. “You?” Annie—the most honest person Lola had ever known. The person who never hid anything.
“I knew things with Gran would get tough,” Annie went on, tears filling her eyes. “And I couldn’t be the one keeping you small, in this town, with me. That’s what I did to Gran.”
Lola let out a hard, confused breath. “What?”
“Lola, my parents died when Gran was only fifty-five.” Annie’s words were a plea.
“I found out that summer that she had all these plans for her second act. She wanted to take art classes, and date, and travel. Maybe even do community theater! But instead, she was back to playdates and potty training. She was trapped.”
“That wasn’t your fault,” Lola said.
“It still kept her here,” Annie pushed back. “So I wasn’t going to keep you here, too. And you would’ve left, eventually. Lola Wilson wasn’t going to stay in Rhodes for the rest of her life. I think I figured, by ending it, I had some control over the inevitable.”
Annie’s words were choked, each one sticking in her throat. “I lied about not loving you. I did love you, Lola. I loved you so much, I couldn’t make you throw away your future to stay in your tiny hometown, looking after my dying grandmother with me.”
Lola was having trouble breathing. The whole world seemed to contract around her.
Blood roared in her ears. Every instinct told her to run.
She pushed up off the couch, backing away over the rug.
“But—my whole life—all my—trust issues.” The past twenty years rewound jerkily in her mind’s eye.
The way she’d pushed people away. Second-guessed their declarations.
Cut things off before they got too serious.
For nothing. For a lie.
“I didn’t know that’d happen,” Annie whispered miserably. “I thought you’d forget about me.”
“Forget about you?” Lola spun on her, voice rising to almost a shout. “I loved you. I loved you and you broke my heart.”
Annie’s eyes widened, scared.
Lola’s breath was shallow. “I can’t—I can’t believe this.”
Annie got up, reaching for her, but Lola slapped it away. “Don’t touch me.”
“I’m sorry.” Annie began to cry. “Lola, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know…I didn’t know how much it’d hurt you.”
“Then you don’t know me at all!” Emotion reared in Lola’s chest. She was about to cry or have a panic attack or break something. Maybe all three. “I need a minute.”
She moved blindly down the hallway, yanking open two closet doors before finding the bathroom and locking herself in. Finally alone, she sank to the tiles, put her head between her legs, and started to cry.