Chapter 22
Twenty-Two
Lou
“Be brave, not perfect.”
Reshma Saujani
“It’s possible he doesn’t want to risk the protection order,” Juliet says on the other end of the call.
“No, he’s playing with me,” I tell her. It’s been a week since the story broke that I was finding comfort in the arms of a mystery man along the coast of Oregon. Luckily, the picture obscures Grady’s face and he’s garnered no added attention from it.
It’s not big enough of a tabloid sensation to have throngs of paparazzi storming the town, either. Neither Pierre nor myself are A-list celebrities, after all. We’re only well-known in our corner of the world.
Still, he’d have seen it. Which means, he knows. And the only fathomable reason he hasn’t arrived on the streets of Stowaway to confront me is because he wants me to squirm.
“He likes the game of cat and mouse,” I add. “It’s his favorite.”
“It has been before, but maybe it’s different, this time. With the publicity and the court’s involvement.”
“Maybe. I can’t trust that, though. Or let my guard down,” I tell her. “Not until I know he’s moved on from it.”
“From you, you mean.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“I know you stopped checking his social media, but I’ve been watching. He’s posted a picture today of him and Priyanka. Her account has it, too.”
“Of all people,” I say. “Micah called this morning to let me know he booked me a shoot for next month. She’s one of the other models I’ll be working with.”
“Where?”
“It’s somewhere in the Colorado red rocks.”
“Be careful. If she knows, he likely does, too.”
“I’m less afraid of him confronting me on set than I am him coming to my home,” I say.
Everyone deserves a place of safety. A place you feel protected and comforted.
For me, that’s here. I’d take a hundred fights with him anywhere else over a single one in Stowaway.
Which is how I know he’ll bring it to me here.
“Besides, we know he’s not going anywhere.
There’s always going to be people who will hire him, despite what he’s done. ”
“I hate how true that is,” she says. “Still, Priyanka is a social climber. Don’t trust her.”
“I don’t. I won’t,” I say. “But it might be a chance for me to warn her off him, too.”
“You’re too kind,” Juliet says, and I can hear her accompanying eye roll. “I’ll never understand how someone so nice ended up with that asshole.”
We’ve talked about that before. I’ve told her how my upbringing never taught me that I should expect any better treatment than I’d always received.
Pierre told me stories of his own childhood.
Tales of neglect that made me think he was as unloved as I was.
Two lost souls trying to heal each other through love.
Beautiful bullshit.
I’m not sure if any of it was true. The longer I knew him, the more I knew him as a pathological liar.
Lies, and lies, atop so many lies. Like all the times he told me he hadn’t fucked the many women I suspected he had.
Or all the times he told me he loved me and I was the most important person in his life.
When what he really meant was that I was his most important subjugate. His most important possession.
How romantic that once sounded.
“The dreams of stupid girls are powerful things,” I say.
“Ain’t that the fucking truth. You’re still coming Wednesday?”
“Of course,” I say. Luke has a new gown he says is only fit to be photographed on me. I’ll be headed into Portland for the shoot and staying for the weekend with Jules.
“Okay, see you then. Be safe, love you.”
“Love you, too.”
I end the call and go back to preparing dinner.
Gray and Maggie are taking Paige out for dinner and a movie.
Grady is coming here for the first meal I’m cooking for him.
Salmon burgers, like the one he delivered to me my first night in Irma’s house.
He doesn’t know how that bag of groceries from him was exactly the lifeline I needed.
Well, maybe he does. But I’ve never told him how much it meant to me.
There’s much I’ve left unsaid. I’d like to change that tonight.
To declare…something. My feelings, my intentions, my hopes.
Mostly, I need him to know how much he means to me.
Whatever happens, whatever comes next, I need him to know that I’m a stronger person because of knowing him.
He needs to hear how much I appreciate him and his family.
I’ve rarely heard such things in life; I won’t let the people I care about live without my sentiments toward them known. All the mistakes I’ve committed and witnessed won’t be repeated from here on out.
Kindness, caring, and love are what I want to share with the world around me.
Not all this vapid and unnecessary excess I’ve indulged in and been prisoner to for a decade, now.
No more indulgent parties full of people hiding their addictions and predilections.
No more being seen for the sake of being seen, or for the promise of what fortunes being seen might bring.
No more pain hiding under a false veil of pleasure and happiness. No more of the lies and pretenses.
Peace. I want peace in my soul, love in my heart, and family in my home. A family. As large of one as I’m lucky enough to have, whether by blood or choice. Children who aren’t alone in this world, as I was. A community to support and be supported by.
My want for all these things burns with a greediness that should frighten me, except none of it is harmful. It’s a greed for goodness. For my cup to overflow with it, spilling down into others’ cups so that they might overflow into others’ and so on.
Grady arrives as I’m finishing up the meal.
We eat over small talk. Sam won eighty dollars at poker night, a rare haul for their small group.
Ruthie had three boxes of books donated by the late Mr. Pierson’s grandson.
When she went through them, she found a first edition Dune and about fainted.
The grandson was contacted over the small windfall, but he declined it, saying his grandfather would want the bookstore to have it.
The assisted living home had their first ever cake decorating class, but half the cakes ended up semi-pornographic.
The wholesome nature of Stowaway’s gossip seeps joy into all the dark hollows of my being.
There’s tiramisu for dessert. Grady eats his serving and mine. I watch, knowing that I couldn’t love him less. He’ll grow older, maybe grumpier, like his father sometimes is. Maybe wider around the belly, if he ever decides to lessen his physical regimen. I’ll love him no less.
He could not return my affections. Or maybe he will, for a time, and then, his heart might find another more suited. I’d be sad until the day I die. But I’d love him no less.
How could I? This genuinely kind man who’d lay his life on the line for a stranger. Who walks into flames to save one. Who is good to the marrow of his bones.
I’m hopeless.
“What are you staring at?” His expression mirrors mine, I suspect. Gooey and wide-eyed.
“You,” I say, propping my chin on my fist across the table from him. “Will you go with me somewhere?”
“Anywhere,” he answers, before quirking a brow. “Where?”
“To ask January why she sold me out.”
Not that he needed another check in the pros column, but he gets one for dropping his fork, standing, and digging his key fob out of his pocket.
“Let’s go.”
“Just like that?”
“You’ve found your ire, love. I’m not about to step in front of it. Let’s go.”
Every time he throws that short, four-letter word out, my heart expands a centimeter. It makes me soft and clumsy from the distraction of it.
“I don’t even know what I’m going to say to her,” I say, still surprised at how readily he’d go with me. I expected at least some conversation about it.
“Speak from your heart,” he says, taking my hand and leading me out the door.
By the time we get to the bar, I still haven’t formulated any sort of plan.
All I know is that I’ve been stewing since I found out about it.
My suspicion that it was her only became truer after I saw the photo, myself.
The angle of it confirms it came from the direction of the bar she stands behind every shift. I’m certain it was her.
When we walk in, she balks. More proof. She must know we know.
I’m sure word of it has swirled back to her.
The owner of the bar doesn’t live here in Stowaway.
Apparently, he is some investor from Eugene and only comes a handful of times a year to check in.
Maggie said if it was a local, they’d have fired January for it.
I don’t want her to lose her job, though. I want her to understand.
Pierre’s betrayals, every instance of them, don’t deliver the same sting that hers does. She had to have seen the story to know that there would be any interest in selling the story. She knew what he did to me. She saw the pictures of me, broken and bruised. And still, she sold me out.
“Do you know what you’re going to say, yet?” Grady’s whisper tickles the shell of my ear. I shake my head. I’ll know when I’m standing right in front of her.
Sam sits at the end of the bar, a knowing smirk under his unruly mustache as he tips his head at me.
“Should I film this?” he asks.
“I live to be in front of the camera,” I tease. “But maybe not this time.”
“Ruining an old man’s fun,” he gripes. Grady takes the empty stool beside Sam.
“I hear you’ve been having plenty of fun with Martha from the flower shop,” I say and laugh as his cheeks turn to tiny apples.
“God damn gossip in this town,” he says, as if he isn’t the biggest offender.
I walk to the other end of the bar where January is working—slicing a small pile of lemons and limes.
“Do you have a minute?”
“Not really, I’m quite busy,” she says without looking up.
“I think you’ll make it work,” I say, ignoring her words. “There’re some things you need to hear, woman to woman.”