Chapter Ten #3
“And then, four months before my twenty-fifth birthday, you called my agency. The day we talked, he reached out, too. My mom and stepdad thought he was dangling you as bait. My manager agreed. You don’t know how I regret what happened, Stellar. You were alone.”
I’m as over it as I’m ever going to be, but Sloane’s story gives me the numb, electric sensation of pushing on an old scar. “You were right to be cautious. I should’ve guessed he’d come for you.”
“And I should’ve come for you .” Her voice throbs with regret.
I remember myself at twenty-four, newly graduated from med school, nowhere near as smart or tough as I imagined. I was afraid my dad would come back to haunt me, and afraid he wouldn’t, because then I’d never see my mom again.
That was when Dad landed in my inbox for the last time. I hear you’re a doctor now. So proud to be your father, he wrote. We need to put the past behind us. Family should help each other.
For days, I deleted his email, then recovered it from the trash. Eventually I sent him a screenshot of my six-figure student loan statement and thanked him for helping with my debt. I was angry; I wanted to drive him away. I still cried when he didn’t answer.
I imagine Sloane at age twenty-four, not so different from me.
“I was okay.” I don’t know why my voice wavers.
I was okay. August rent was paid, my job would cover food, and I’d learned the utilities wouldn’t get cut off after one missed bill.
I contacted my university, told them my family was relocating to Australia, and arranged to move into my dorm a week early. It worked out.
Sloane shakes her head. “I know it’s weird, but I had you investigated. You weren’t okay. But by the time I figured it out, it was too late. You were so angry.”
“You didn’t owe me anything, Sloane.” Nothing like what I owe her now.
“I know,” she snaps. “Jesus, Stellar, is it always pay-to-play with you? I guess the only way I’m going to get anywhere is to be as blunt as you seem to enjoy being. So I’ll just say it: my mom’s sick.”
I’ve seen photos of Sloane’s mom on her daughter’s red carpets. Sloane looks like her: tall, regal, with killer legs and a sneak-attack smile. But she also looks like our dad: cheekbones, jaw, shoulders, ankles. He’s in her bones. In our bones.
“Shit, I’m sorry. Is it bad?” I don’t know Sloane, but I know about the end of life. Empathy comes in a painful rush, another frozen limb reawakening.
“Chronic leukemia. She has a few years, give or take. But it made me think about family. You and I don’t have forever to forgive each other. And sooner or later we won’t have anyone who shares our fucked-up history, because I don’t know about you, but it doesn’t look like I’m having kids.”
I slow down as McHuge switches on his turn signal ahead of another narrow, overgrown logging road. “I don’t want kids either.”
“No, I want them. But I’m forty, and I already tried.
Two years of mechanical duty fucking with my ex, six months of IVF.
One morning I went to my egg-harvesting appointment and realized our marriage wasn’t worth another round of giant needles.
Got home early and found him watching soccer in his underwear.
He’d told me he had a casting call that couldn’t be moved. He didn’t even like soccer.”
“What a dick ,” I say, before I remember I’m not that kind of friend to Sloane—not a trash-talking, ex-bashing friend. Not any kind of friend. “You probably shouldn’t tell me this.”
She tilts her head, hair falling across her pale electric eyes.
There’s a streak of dust on her cheek from the hand she didn’t get quite clean on her shorts.
“Telling you is the point , Stellar. Marriages come and go. Careers don’t last. Friends sell your secrets to the tabloids.
Sisters… I think those might be forever. ”
That strikes a fucking painful chord. My failed relationship, my failed career, and the friend I’m terrified to lose: apparently, Sloane has all those pain points, too. Stars: they’re just like us.
“I think you’d be a good sister,” she offers, her voice shaking as we bounce over a rocky section of road. “Loyal, judging by how long you can successfully hold a grudge, my little star.”
She earns a glare for calling me “little,” but she only grins.
“Don’t you want to text each other on our implanted microchips in thirty years?
I’ll bitch about my hip pain and how the lines around my mouth make me look like Dad.
And you’ll say, ‘Shut up , I have the same lines.’” Her half-shouted “shut up ” is very me.
I bark out a laugh. “So what’s the catch? We become friends or… what?”
“No catch.” She shrugs. “I’m not going to rage quit the course. Or tell everyone you’re faking your engagement.”
“What?!” The truck lurches as I reflexively tap the brakes in terror. “Why would you say that?”
“I’m an actor , Stellar. I know fake relationships, on-screen and off. But I won’t tell anyone. I won’t even tell McHuge you like him.”
“I don’t like him,” I snap, flushing when I realize I’ve fallen into her trap. “Because I love him.” My voice goes strangled over the word “love.”
Sloane laughs. “Did you seriously think sleeping in the same tent was enough to fool anyone? Please tell me you have an exit strategy.”
I give up trying to maintain the pretense. “What do you mean, ‘exit strategy’?”
“If you’re fake dating, you either have to fake break up or you get found out. Usually the latter.”
Sloane’s forecast puts an icicle of fear right through my heart. Lyle and I can’t fake break up in the first session . And we absolutely cannot get found out—not with Brent in camp.
I peer through the Mystery Machine’s plume of dust. We’re a few minutes from the put-in spot—not much time.
“Say you couldn’t fake break up. How would you work that problem?”
Sloane considers. “I’d make people think there’s more to the relationship than they’ve seen.”
“And how do you do that?”
“Easiest way? Get caught kissing.”