I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. I wanted Tommy to come back. This was getting really uncomfortable. “I’m not toxic. I’m not anything. I’m just trying to live. Look, you should leave me alone.”
I did not appreciate being lectured by a stranger. But Paulina clearly had no intention of leaving me alone. She leaned forward, invading my space. Her eyes were even brighter now.
“It’s not really about you,” she whispered. “You’re fine. I’m sure you’re perfectly nice. But having the press link you and Tommy and then Tommy and the Beauty Queens Go West is bad for him. It’s bad for Tommy’s prospects and bad for his career. According to Elaine, Tommy would be better off getting drunk in public every night for the next two weeks than being seen with you.”
“That’s fucking stupid.”
I wasn’t usually one to swear, especially in front of strangers, but please. That couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t. I was better than public drunkenness. I may not be the socialite that his father wanted for him, but I wasn’t toxic.
Paulina shrugged again. “Well, maybe Elaine’s wrong. We’ll find out soon enough. The Oscars are two weeks from tonight.”
I swallowed. “Did she send you in here to scare me off?”
Paulina blinked her big, dark eyes. “Of course, she did. Is it working?”
“No.”
Paulina frowned. “That’s too bad. She was hoping you were really in love with him.”
I froze. “Excuse me?”
Paulina continued to frown. “Well, if you were in love with him, it would have worked. When I told you how much you were hurting Tommy, you would have come to your senses. You would have realized that you cared more about him than your own selfish, immediate satisfaction. You would be forced to put your desire to make him happy and see him succeed ahead of whatever personal feelings you have for him. But I guess she was wrong, huh?”
I gaped at her. She nodded like my reaction was exactly what she expected and kept talking.
“If you aren’t in love with him, then that makes things more complicated. Then, according to her, you’re in it with your family. You’re part of their plan. You’re just using him. Making him fall in love with you so that you can help your stepsisters somehow. She was really hoping that wasn’t true. Because it’s obvious that he’s in love with you. Or if he isn’t in love with you, he’s using you as a crutch to escape the greatest challenge of his life. Either way, Elaine was depending on you to be the one to snap him out of this.”
I stared at the woman in front of me, utterly shocked and appalled that I’d been so thoroughly outplayed. Admit that I was in love with Tommy and all of a sudden, I was selfish. Deny it, and I was worse than selfish. I was maliciously selfish.
And Tommy was obviously in love with me?
I felt myself rising from my seat and walking out of the restaurant. I refused to be the instrument of Tommy’s destruction. I refused to let my family win.
I hated Paulina. I hated Elaine. But I hated myself most of all.
It was time to take myself out of the equation.
35
Tommy
When Cindy came out of the restaurant, I knew it was already too late. Whatever Paulina had said to her in there had sunk into her, under her skin, and poisoned her against me. Elaine said that it was Cindy who was poison. I was pretty sure that it was her, instead.
“Tommy,” she told me. “I think we need to go.”
Cindy’s voice was resigned, and I hated the sound of it. Her hands were clasped demurely in front of her body and her shoulders were slumped.
I looked over at Elaine and she stared back at me impassively. The quality of Elaine’s silence at my side made me feel nervous. She took one look at us and got up, walking out of earshot but looking satisfied in a way that made my head hurt. She was quietly triumphant. I knew that was bad, but I wasn’t giving up yet.
“Okay,” I told Cindy, standing up from the fountain and grabbing her hand. “We’ll go. Let’s go back and get some rest.”
I leaned in to kiss her and she stepped back. She shook her head at me. “No. Not back to the house. Back to LA.”
I swallowed. “Cindy—”
She shook her head, looking like she was holding back tears. I couldn’t stand the look on her face. “You should go back with Elaine and Paulina,” Cindy told me. She wasn’t looking at me. Instead, her eyes were focused hard on the ground a few feet in front of her. “They have a helicopter waiting for you. I’ll drive the van back.”
I blinked. “No.”
She pulled out of my hand. “It’s better this way.”
“No, it isn’t. I love you.”
It just slipped out. I hadn’t meant it to, this was possibly the worst moment, but it happened anyway. But it was true. I did love her. I loved her more than I ever intended to, and now that it was out, I was going to stand by the statement.
One second slipped by. Then two. The moment lengthened painfully.
Cindy’s eyes widened. Her gaze rose to my face, lingered, and then slipped away. “I love you too. But it’ll never work.”
My hopes crashed and burned.
“I don’t think you realize how little I care about winning that stupid statue.” I shook my head, furious that this had to happen now, like this. It shouldn’t have had to be like this.
Her mouth trembled. “You do care. You should care. Please care. Look, I’ve got to go.”
“Cindy please—” I begged, wondering if making a scene would do any good. “Please listen to me. This isn’t the disaster that you’ve been led to believe.”
I could only imagine that Paulina had laid it on very thick. Making it seem like there was no possible way that I could win the Oscar if I was at all tainted by Cindy in the media. I knew things weren’t that simple. Nothing was ever that simple. Especially in Hollywood.
“Paulina explained it to me,” Cindy said. “I get it now.” She took a deep breath and stared at me as if challenging me to dispute it.
“She’s wrong.” My voice was adamant, angry almost.
Elaine had wanted me to pull her aside, out of Cindy’s earshot. It was her plan all along. Because she never really wanted to convince me. She knew that was impossible. She wanted Paulina to convince Cindy to leave me. And it had worked. I’d played my part masterfully by putting Cindy into a situation where someone like Paulina could manipulate her.
And now, I could tell it was already too late.
Cindy’s expression was closed off to me. “You don’t even know what she said.”
“It doesn’t matter. If it results in you walking away from me and choosing fear over love, then she’s wrong.”
I believed what I was saying to the core of my being. Losing Cindy now, when we were just beginning to fall in love, was unthinkable. And the opposite of love wasn’t hate. It was fear. Fear of putting yourself on the line. Fear of letting your vulnerability be shared. I’d played a lot of roles in my time in Hollywood. I’d pretended to fall in love a thousand times. But I’d never understood it until now.
“I’m not choosing fear.” She shook her head slowly from side to side and one tear managed to escape and carve a little channel down her soft, pale cheek. “I’m choosing to let you reach your potential. That means we can’t be together. At least for now, I’m too much of liability for you.”
Watching her cry was killing me. I’d rather take a hit to the gut than watch her cry.
“This is crazy,” I told her. “Even if Elaine were right, and she’s not, but even if she were, we could still be together. We might have to keep things quiet for a little while, until the Oscars are over, but—”
Cindy’s face fell. Her hazel eyes were sadder than I’d ever seen them. “I’m not going to be your dirty little secret.” Her expression was horrified, but she stood up straight. “And it wouldn’t even work to try to see each other secretly. Marigold thrives on secrets. She thrives on lies. We need a clean break, and I’m giving you that. Please give me t
he same.”
I wanted to run after her. I wanted to throw myself at her feet. I wanted to beg her not to go, tell her I loved her, and convince her that it was true.
But I didn’t. I let her go. Because she was right. She deserved much better than to be my dirty little secret. If I wasn’t strong enough to be with her in the light, I wasn’t deserving of her at all.
Elaine and Paulina put me on the helicopter. They’d already been by the villa we were renting. While I’d been having dinner with Cindy, they’d been busy. I’d been packed, checked out, and made ready to return to LA.
There was a lot of work there waiting for me. Maybe it would be enough to make me forget about Cindy.
36
Cindy
The only thing worse than a breakup is a breakup followed by a long drive, all alone, mostly in the dark. At least it gave me plenty of time to listen to sad music and cry.
I tried to console myself as the highway slipped by with the knowledge that I’d done the right thing. I had, hadn’t I? I only ever wanted to do the right thing. To help Tommy. Even if I had to lose him to do that.
Somewhere above me, Tommy was also headed back to LA in the helicopter. He would reach LA in just over an hour. Travelling by helicopter was much more efficient than my van, so soon he’d be back in LA where he belonged and doing what he needed to do.
Elaine and Paulina hadn’t said another word to me at the restaurant. I was glad. I hated the way they looked at me. It was pity that I saw in their expressions. I couldn’t stand their pity. There was nothing less comforting than feeling like the people who wanted rid of me also pitied me. It was better to be a source of poison than pity.
But being poison wasn’t so great, either. In fact, it sucked royally. I was like Typhoid Mary, spreading my disease wherever I went.
As I drove down the long, endless stretch of road ahead of me, I played back through the events of the preceding evening. No matter how many ways I tried to view it, I ended up right where I was now. Alone.
Ironically, I was now back exactly where I’d been a few days ago. Tommy was better off without me. It wasn’t because he needed a socialite this time, but I was just as much of an albatross to him now as I’d thought I’d been before. Different problem, same solution. As long as I stayed out of his life, he’d be fine. He’d be better. He’d win his Oscar.
I didn’t care what he told me; he did care about that. He’d been working towards it for the better part of the last fifteen years. Since he moved to LA when he was eighteen years old, he’d been making choices that put him on the path toward where he was now. I wasn’t willing to be the one to derail him now, in the eleventh hour. Then I really would be a monster.
Marigold was always telling me that I was bad. It takes one to know one, maybe. But even when I was little, she’d been adamant that I would never amount to much and the best I could hope for was to not become a burden for someone else.
“Cindy,” she told me once when I was in middle school. “You’re not very smart. You’re not very pretty. You definitely aren’t very talented. But you work hard and that’s something. As long as you always work hard, you’ll be able to find people who will take care of you.”
There had been no precipitating event that led her to make this pronouncement about my future and personality. I’d just been eating breakfast. It was just one of her little pearls of wisdom she was constantly dropping on my head like artillery.
And she’d been right, at least, to a point. She’d taken care of me as long as I worked my ass off for her. Through a twisted series of events and plenty of psychological gas-lighting, I’d basically ended up as her indentured servant. My obedience was guaranteed because I thought I wasn’t worth anything more, thanks to her.
But I was free of that now. I wasn’t bad. I wasn’t stupid, or ugly, or talentless. All of that had been a lie that had been carefully curated to slip under the skin of a young, vulnerable girl and trap her. I’d broken out of that abusive bullshit and found myself just as trapped as I was before. Only now, my private hell was a public one.
“You look familiar,” the guy at the gas station said when I came in to get more gas. I definitely didn’t have the money to be buying this much gas, but I didn’t have any other option. I had to get back to LA. My job was the only thing I had at the moment to provide my life any stability or hope. I wasn’t going to lose it.
“Oh?” I replied, grabbing a package of skittles and seeing a tabloid with my sister’s face on it. The headline made me cringe. How the hell had she managed to get this famous this quickly? I guess there was just a lot of appetite for trashy, awful reality television this year.
“Will Quincy Wilson reconcile with Tommy Prince before the Oscars?”
She was wearing a sparkly red evening gown in the picture. I recognized it instantly. It was her pageant gown from senior year of high school. I remembered in staggeringly visceral clarity the process of working on that gown. I’d applied thousands of sequins, by hand, to the red satin fabric. She’d never thanked me. She won the pageant.
She always won.
Even when Tommy loved me and not her, she won.
The man at the gas station was squinting at me curiously. He was trying hard to remember where he’d seen me before. “Are you an actress?”
I shook my head back and forth. “No. I’m just a seamstress.”
“Are you sure?” he asked. His eyes crawled over my face. I’d liked it better when I was invisible.
“Am I sure that I’m a seamstress?” I asked. “Pretty sure.”
“But you look so familiar.”
I shrugged at him, ready for this interaction to end. I needed to get back on the road. “I’ve just got one of those faces, I guess.”
After a moment, he nodded. He wasn’t able to place me, and I was grateful. I knew someone would eventually. And then, just like with Paulina, I’d have my insides on my outside and be unable to cope.
The sun came up as I was driving. It rose off the driver’s side of the van, filling the cab with light and doing nothing to lift my spirits. It was just bright. I’d liked it better when it was dark.
Eventually, the green valleys of Napa disappeared, and the hazy, brown sprawl of LA appeared. Home sweet home. It took almost as long to get through the city to the theater district as it took to drive all the way from Napa. LA traffic is beastly.
But eventually I got home. Well, it wasn’t exactly home. It was a parking spot behind a theater. But it was the closest thing to a home that I had at the moment. Until I made enough money to go somewhere else, it was home.
The days melted together in a haze. I worked, I slept, I ate. I went through the motions of a life. But it was only a charade. It didn’t mean anything to me. For the first time in my life I was independent, but I was also alone. At least when I’d had my horrible family, I hadn’t been alone.
Now my days were spent, mute, sewing alone in a room. There were a few people who tried to befriend me, but I didn’t have the energy. I didn’t want more friends. I didn’t want anything but for this feeling, this horrible empty feeling to dull and fade away. But it didn’t. Even after a week, it was still as livid and raw as it had been in Napa.
After a particularly long day sewing, I slipped inside the empty theater and took a shower, eternally grateful to Lena for her generosity. The hot water didn’t fix anything, but it did make me feel a bit less horrible. I cried in the shower a bit, letting the water wash the tears away. By the time I emerged I was dry-eyed. I told myself for the one millionth time that I could survive this. I could survive anything, if I had to. My phone rang right as I was about to crawl into my nest in the van. It was from a number I didn’t know. I answered it warily.
“Cindy?” Greenlee’s voice was the last one I expected. She sounded like she had a cold. “Are you there?”
I considered hanging up, but I couldn’t.
“Greenlee?” I stuttered.
“Yeah. It’s me. Can you come get me
? I need to get out of here. I have to get out of this house, like you did. I don’t have anyone else to call.”
I paused.
She was probably lying. She was probably luring me over to the apartment. I knew, rationally, that there was a ninety-nine percent chance that this was true.
If it had been Quincy, I would have hung up. If it had been Marigold, I would have told her to fuck off. But it was Greenlee. She was just a kid.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, against my better judgement.
“I have to get out of here,” she repeated. “I can’t live like this. There are cameras in my face all the time. I have no privacy. Mom and Quincy have lost their fucking minds. All they care about is if the show is successful. Please. Please help me.”
I took a deep breath in and out. She was lying. She was lying. She’d never asked me for help before. She didn’t care about me.
“Please, Cindy,” she begged. “I’m sorry I was mean to you. But we’re sisters. I need your help.”
I should have told her to fuck off. I should have used the rational part of my stupid brain and known that I was walking into a trap, and then sidestepped it. But I couldn’t. Greenlee, the little girl who’d been only six years old when I first met her, needed my help. I couldn’t just ignore her.
I took a deep breath. Then, with my eyes wide open, I made a choice I knew I would regret.
“I’ll be right there, Greenlee. Don’t worry. I’m on my way.”
37
Tommy
“And after you finish up at the benefit dinner, I want you to spend at least half an hour at the afterparty. You need to talk to these three people,” Elaine said, sliding a sheet of paper to me. “And make a good impression. Oh, and I want you to wear the navy blue suit with the grey tie. Brown shoes. I don’t want you looking like you’re going to a funeral.”
We were in the car, sitting in traffic somewhere after doing something. It was all running together now. The helicopter ride home from Napa had been uncomfortable and long, and every second since had been just as uncomfortable and long.
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