Between the Lines (33 page)

*** *** ***

Emma

“Come sit.” Reid takes my hand and leads me to the sofa.

“Um, we have to get up early—well, I have to get up early, I guess you don’t have to be there until later…” The excuses tumble through my brain disjointedly.

“It’s not that late,” he says, and I decide to just hear him out. We sit. “You looked gorgeous today.” He’s still holding my hand. “I couldn’t take my eyes off of you.”

He’s as beautiful as ever, dark blue eyes sweeping over my face, his blondish hair a bit darker, a bit longer, still perfectly disordered. I blink, his words settling around me. “Reid, what are you—? I mean, I don’t…”

“Emma, I made a mistake. A
huge
mistake. I was upset when you disappeared that night, but I should have never given you an ultimatum; it was thoughtless and juvenile. I should’ve waited for you to talk to me. I could have explained. You’re reasonable and fair, and I’m sure you’d have listened.”

My heart slams out a rhythm in my chest, pulses it through my body. “But… you
didn’t
wait. You
didn’t
explain. You just went off with the first girl, and then the second, third, fourth, I mean Jesus, I stopped counting after that…”

“I was reactionary, just trying to make you jealous—”

“No, you were trying to show me how unimportant I was. And you succeeded.”

This is the combat zone we sidestepped when he took up with Blossom and I just let him go. There’d been no confrontation, no breakup. My throat closes up now as I fight tears. I didn’t think, at the time, that he’d actually injured me. I thought I was just pissed off at his attempts to humiliate me. An ambush of emotions takes over as I realize I sold the whole thing short. What he’d done had hurt. And apparently still did.

He wipes his thumbs under my eyes, carefully removing tears. “Emma, I’m an arrogant guy. I’m used to having things my way, every time, with every girl. You were different. That’s why I can’t get you out of my head.” He leans up, cradling my face between his palms. “Forgive me. Please.” His eyes are mesmerizing, dark blue, and I know there’s more depth to him than he’s allowed me to see, but it isn’t enough.

“I forgive you,” I say. “But I can’t forget. And I can’t trust you, Reid.”

He takes both of my hands in his. “I could be different with you.” He’s so sincere that it takes everything in me to think logically. “You may be the only one who’ll see through all my bullshit and help me try to be something more, something better.”

I stare at our intertwined hands. “I don’t want to help you try to be anything. I want someone who’s
already
something more. On his own. With or without me.”

He’s quiet then, and I don’t dare look at him yet. “
Is
there someone else?”

I think of Graham. Graham, who cannot be mine. “No, there isn’t. But that’s really not the point.”

“Then what
is
the point?” He tips my chin up with his fingers, making me look into his eyes again.

My chin trembles, tears spilling over onto his hand. “The point is, I’m not going to settle for less than I want, less than I deserve. Brooke trusted you, and you abandoned her—and yes,” I say before he can object, “maybe you were just too young to handle the situation at the time, but you never gave me a chance to find that out. You started screwing your way through the rest of the cast like my feelings didn’t matter. I forgive you, because I’m past it. But that’s the thing. I’m past it.”

With the last bit of effort I can manage, I get up and leave his room, shaking from head to toe. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t follow, but I can’t unclench my shoulders until I’m in my room, the door shut and bolted behind me. I flip on a light and fall onto the bed, crying and dialing.

“Emily,” I say when she answers, feeling ten times better the moment I hear her voice.

Chapter 45

REID

It begins the same way it did last time, with a glass of wine during dinner. Within a week, it’s a cocktail before dinner, and wine during. And then something before bed. When it moves into the daylight hours, it’s all over.

Some people leap off of the wagon and some people fall. My mother simply climbs down, calmly and with the same resolve under which she’s checked herself into rehab three times. The first time she tried to get help was when she’d discovered she was pregnant, but she lost the baby during that first cut-short stint of rehab. When she came home and sank into depression, numbing herself regularly because otherwise she did nothing but cry, no one blamed her—not her ten-year-old son, not her husband, not her mother, who lived with us.

My grandmother tried to get her to go back and get the help and counseling she needed to deal with her grief, but Mom wouldn’t go back. Her refusals are never loud and messy. Her dissent is genius, really. She never constructs an argument or has an ugly outburst. She merely nods agreement to whatever is proposed, and then doesn’t follow through.

Whether from the grief of losing her mother, or guilt of never living up her to own expectations of being the perfect daughter, Mom tried rehab for the second time a few months after Grandmother died. I returned from being on location—the movie where I met Brooke—to find her gone. Dad was happy. He thought she would kick her addiction and all would be well with the world and the Alexander family.

Clearly that was a stretch.

I don’t remember when she began drinking again that time, just that I had already started by then. I felt better that she was, too, for some irrational reason.

Brook and I had broken up—exploded, more like, after multiple allegations that she was cheating on me surfaced. When she told me she was pregnant, I told her, “What’s it to me? Sounds like your problem.” I was utterly convinced it wasn’t mine. I’m not sure now, not that it matters anymore.

Mom knows I drink. Somehow, though, she managed to be stunned when I went out with John on my nineteenth birthday—a couple of weeks ago—and got so loaded that I’m not exactly sure what we did after some point. That’s the first and only time I’ve ever actually blacked out. I woke up in agony at John’s place, my hand swollen double and throbbing with no idea why.

According to him, we and some other guys pulled an SUV under a fire escape, climbed to the top of a building, screwed around (particularly horrifying considering I was drunk enough not to remember
any
of this) and then attempted to descend without falling. I failed right at the end and fell on top of the SUV, but seemed fine, John said—offering as evidence the fact that I was laughing the whole time. I’d broken my left hand. The hand surgeon had to operate to remove stray bone fragments, set it correctly, and insert a metal rod in my thumb, which is a bitch. I go in to have the rod removed in a few weeks, and then I have to go—I kid you not—to
hand therapy
twice a week for I don’t know how long.

Days after that little mishap was the first time I came home to Mom with a drink in her hand. She’d even made it through the holidays this time, but she couldn’t make it past my thwarted fire escape stunt. Dad had been coming home a bit earlier sometimes, making it to dinner here and there, making weekend appearances. Once the relapse occurred, those changes came to a screeching halt.

Way to be supportive, Dad. Everything back to normal, whatever the fuck that is.

*** *** ***

Emma

While Dad orders coffee drinks, I fantasize about mittens and campfires and down-filled blankets. My fingers are numb from the unexpected cold that is April in NYC, and I crave the latte as much for the digit-thawing warmth of the cup as for the caffeine the double shot of espresso promises. New York will take some getting used to after a lifetime in California; very little resembles my suburban hometown—the local dialects, the crowds, the weather. I remind myself that
different
was sort of the original idea.

As I glance around looking for an open table, I see a tiny girl wearing a man’s jacket over a lime green leotard and tights with a pink tulle tutu. The jacket hangs past her knees, and her small arms are no match for the sleeve length. Protruding from the arm of the jacket as though she has no hand at all is a wooden stick with a glitter-covered star and streamers attached to the end of it. She skips around her table twice, sits down, and is up again five seconds later, skipping in the opposite direction, her short hair bouncing up and down with every step.

My eyes move to the man whose jacket she’s wearing. I blink, because the man is Graham. He tips his chin back, and the girl turns to look at me. They have the same dark eyes, same shape of mouth, but her hair is straight and strawberry blond, where his is wavy and dark, though I remember that in the sun it would be reddish. I remember, too, that Graham has two older sisters. This must be a niece.

I haven’t seen him since last month, but I’ve thought about him often since then. I smile, thinking
what are the odds
? I feel an uncharacteristic shyness with him, this guy I ran with nearly every morning while I was in Austin, shared aspects of my life that only Emily had been privy to before him. And then it was over.

I’m struck then by the fact that I still don’t know why he ever kissed me, or why he pulled away from me after. I assume he withdrew because of a relationship with Brooke, because of my very public kiss with Reid. Yet we became friends, apart from the two of them. Apart from that kiss in my room.

“Here’s your latte,” Dad says. He’s balancing a slice of cheesecake on top of his coffee, taking advantage of being several thousand miles from Chloe’s latest nutritional regimen. Spying the vacant table next to Graham, he makes a beeline for it.

“Hey,” Graham says when we sit.

“Hi. Dad, you remember Graham Douglas?” Graham’s niece stops circling the table and presses her face into his side.

“Mr. Pierce,” Graham says, reaching to shake Dad’s hand while circling his opposite arm around the girl, who is now appraising me openly.

“Graham, of course.” Dad stirs sugar into his coffee.
Sugar
. Chloe would have a cow. “According to Emma, you were the most talented actor in the
School Pride
cast. And she doesn’t impress easily.”

“That’s interesting,” Graham says with a smile. “
I
thought
she
was the most talented.” I could track the flush that spreads across my face.

Dad smiles at the girl as she spins the wand streamers in a blur of color. “And who do we have here?”

“This is Cara.”

My father leans his elbows on his knees. “Are you a princess, Cara?”

“I’m a fairy godmother. See?” She shucks off Graham’s jacket to reveal flattened wings. “Oh, no! My wings are effed up!” People at nearby tables turn and I bite my lip.

“Um, that’s the closest to not cursing my sister can seem to get in front of her.” Graham shrugs, his lips twitching. “Less shocking coming out of a four-year-old than the alternative.”

“Would you like me to fix them?” I ask, and she stares at me for a long moment, contemplating how trustworthy I appear to be, I think, before scooting closer and turning around. I pull the translucent wings away from her tiny shoulder blades, reshaping the wire supports and admiring the silver glittered feathering. “Your wings are beautiful.”

She nods. “They’re magic.”

I smile at her. “Is that so?”

“Yes!”  She grabs her wand from the table. “Close your eyes.” I obey. “Now make a wish.” Into the emptiness of my mind, which hasn’t made a genuine wish in a long time, comes one unambiguous thought.
I want to see Graham again
.
Alone
.

She touches the wand to my forehead; the ribbons tickle my nose. “Okay. Your wish is granted.”

I open my eyes, hear her asking Dad if he wants a wish, too. Graham watches me. “Whatever it was, don’t doubt her. Cara’s wish-granting abilities are legendary.”

I smile into my cup, swirling the remnants of foam and espresso.

A minute later, Cara peers into my face, her small hands on my knees. “What did you wish?” She smells like chocolate, the evidence of which rims her upper lip.

“I thought I wasn’t supposed to tell.”

She considers this for a moment. “Then how can I make it come true?”

I can’t help but be struck by her logic. “You’re a very astute fairy godmother, Cara.”

“Yes, I am.” She goes on a figure-eight trek around the two tables, stopping in front of me again. She chews her lower lip. “What’s asoot?”

“Astute. It means you’re very smart.”

“Yes, I am,” she says again, without a hint of smugness. And then she turns to Graham with a random question, prefaced by a not-so-random title. “Daddy, do I have to like broccoli?”

Graham gazes at me over her head, absorbing my reaction, and there is nothing I can do to conceal my astonishment. I couldn’t be more wide-eyed and dumbfounded.

His eyes fall to her. “You don’t have to like broccoli. There’s lots of other green stuff to eat. But maybe you’ll like it someday, when you're older.”

She wrinkles her nose. “I don’t think so.”

***

“Graham must be older than he looks, to have a daughter that age,” Dad says once we’re in the taxi. Though I know Graham's exact age, I can’t respond. I’m still so in shock that I can barely focus. He never hinted at this. He returned home for that unspecified family emergency during filming, but that doesn’t exactly say,
I’ve got a kid
, does it?

“Why don’t I cancel that dinner with Ted.” He takes my hand. “We’ll go do something together. We’re in New York! You shouldn’t be sitting alone in a hotel room; that’s just crazy.”

I shake my head. “I’m going to be living here in a few months. I should start getting used to the idea of staying in occasionally, or I’ll go bankrupt in a year. You never get to see Ted. Go out. I’ve got this alone-in-a-hotel-room stuff down.”

He sighs, looking out the window. “Cara reminds me of you at that age. Full of energy and ready to question everything, classify everything, using magic to make the world perfect. Now look at you—in this city, visiting college campuses, redefining yourself. I’m proud of you, Emma.”