“I’m gonna head home,” I’d called over my shoulder. “I don’t feel well.”
The girls had chimed in a chorus of regrets, their vocal cords suddenly working just fine. I’d stuck their extra, unopened bottle into my purse and pasted a smile on my face. Wiggled my fingers at them and heaped out my thanks for their tireless bridesmaid efforts as I walked back through and out the door.
It was what I had deserved, befriending the cool crowd of women in Quincy. They hadn’t really ever been my friends. They’d ignored me in high school and only buddied up when I’d started dating Scott. Scott’s friends had been their boyfriends, husbands, and brothers, our three-year relationship the only grounds that our friendship had been built on.
I had driven home to Momma, tears dripping down the stupid purple mascara that Avril Lavigne looked good in, and Bridget had raised her eyebrows at. And that night, one pruned toe playing with our bathtub drain, I had devised My Plan.
My Plan had been simple. My Plan had been foolproof. My Plan had been, according to Variety Magazine in that fateful issue that changed my life, diabolical.
I thought diabolical had been a strong adjective, used by a magazine editor who had clearly never read stories of Herodias or Jezebel. I mean, let’s face it. Nobody died.
CHAPTER 93
“How did I not know this?” Cole exploded, throwing a Coke can against the wall, the contents splattering on some poor PA. “How did we not know this?” He held up a magazine and waved it wildly, the flap of its pages loud in the quiet room. I couldn’t see the cover from my seat, his motions too fast, but I had seen him reading it, had seen everyone reading it, copies passed out like candy. I hadn’t taken one. I had simply taken my seat at the end of the table and waited for punishment.
“We didn’t think we needed to do a full work up on her.” Some man I’d never seen spoke up, his hands nervously adjusting the bridge of his glasses. “I mean, look at her.” He gestured in my direction, and I looked down at the table, the chastised child. “We ran criminal, background, and porn searches—did the blood work. Everything came back clean.”
Porn searches? They talked about me like I was a prop in the scene, one without feelings or emotions or explanations. Though, as far as explanations went, I had none. What I had done was terrible. And whatever was printed in that magazine… it probably painted it exactly in that light.
“It wasn’t that big of a deal,” I spoke up from my corner of the table. “And it was years ago.”
“So you already know what this is about?” Casey rested her weight on the table, her long red nails matching her lips.
“My rehearsal dinner?” I guessed.
“The Rehearsal Dinner From Hell,” she read loudly, her words over enunciated, her fingers shoving a glossy cover in my direction. It skidded halfway down the table and stopped. No one furthered its journey, but I could see the cover picture from where I sat. It was Scott’s and my engagement photo. Some creative mind at the magazine had drawn horns on my head and given me a tail. I looked away and saw Cole, staring at me, his weight against the wall. Our eyes met, and I couldn’t look away. I tried. I failed.
“Why didn’t you tell us about this?” Her voice rang out across the room, and I felt like I was eight years old, in Mrs. Wilson’s class, fessing up to forgetting to feed Sparky the Goldfish. I wanted to look at Casey, wanted to look at the floor, wanted to look anywhere but couldn’t pull away from Cole’s stare.
“Clear the room,” Cole spoke, a copy of the magazine crumpling in his fist. “I need to speak to Summer. Alone.”
No one moved, save for that Coca-Cola-drenched PA who started to stand, then realized no one else was, and plopped back down.
“I mean it.” Cole turned to Don, who sat next to Casey, his hands pressed to his temples. “Film the entry scenes. Have extras stand in for us. I want a chance to talk to her alone.”
Don looked at Cole for a long moment, then stood. No one, out of the ten who left, looked at me. It was three years ago, all over again.
When the door shut, I spoke. “Cole…” I didn’t even know what I had planned to say. I just knew I had to speak; we had to have something between us other than empty space.
“You should have told us. We can control something that we know about. This…” he set the crumpled magazine down on the table and tapped at its surface, “this we can’t control. Not now. Right now every tabloid and entertainment publication has someone, as we speak, getting on a plane and coming to Quincy. And they will talk to every one of your friends, and every Chatty Cathy they can find, and you will be a Trivial Pursuit answer before the end of the week.”
Every one of your friends. Ha. Good luck finding those.
“I don’t care.” I looked down at the table when I spoke, a dried glob of something… was it ketchup?… on its surface. With all of the Franks’ money, you’d think someone here would have cleaned that.
There was the sound of slickness on wood, and I turned my head, watching him walk down the long length of the table, his fingers braced on the wrinkly magazine, sliding it down.
Closer to me.
Three places away.
Closer to me.
Two places away.
He stopped. “Repeat that?”
I looked up into his face, and forgot, for a moment, how much I hated him. “I don’t care.”
“You will. Maybe you don’t right this second, but you will.”
I shrugged. “I don’t think so. I’ve been an outcast in this town for three years. I can’t imagine caring if some soccer mom in Nebraska also thinks I’m psycho.”
“It’s not just moms in Nebraska. It’s everyone in this industry.”
“No offense, but I hate your industry. This is a one-shot thing for me. Then I’m taking my money and running.”
“Really.” He laughed. “You get a lead role in a feature film, and then you are going to just disappear?”
I didn’t smile, I didn’t smirk, I just stared at him and made sure that he understood the words out of my mouth. “Yes.”
He slid the magazine the last seat length toward me and stopped. My thigh jiggled against the seat, and I wanted to stand, wanted to change this dynamic of him looking down on me, but I didn’t. I sat in my chair like a good little girl and tried not to look at the front of his pants. He half-sat against the edge of the table, pulling the magazine around and before me, and his new position was even worse. There, one leg cocked up, the other one on the floor, I could see the outline of him. He was not hard, but I… in this horrible situation, was turned on. I couldn’t help myself. It was a chemical reaction between us that didn’t understand anything else.
He moved his hand from the magazine, and I forced myself to look at that instead, at the glossy photo from a time when I thought that teasing my hair made me look sexier. It didn’t. It made me look trashier. I see that now, and I have no doubt the observation will be so helpfully pointed out by someone like Nancy Grace or Kelly Osbourne or… I swallowed hard. I told him I didn’t care, but part of me did. Part of me had just recovered from being ignored. I didn’t know if I had the strength to now be ridiculed.
When he said my name, it was an exasperated sigh, and I looked up to see him rubbing at his neck, his eyes closed, his features tight. “Summer…” he let my name fall and stretched his head back. “You are so different from every other woman I know.”