by Emma Roberts
"Alright," I agreed. "But I have to be back in time to pick up the kids.”
"I’ll make sure of it," he promised, and there was a warmth to his voice that made my stomach crackle with excitement. This sounded like the Morgan I had known, the Morgan who had taken me away on that trip. The Morgan I had been desperate to see again ever since.
I quickly got ready – well, I had no idea what I was getting ready for, but I did my best anyway. Makeup, hair brushed, and straightened clothes. I headed outside, sending Adam an email to let him know that I would be out of office for the rest of the day, deciding to skip an actual conversation where I would have to explain where I was headed.
By the time I got outside, a car was already there waiting for me. I couldn’t help but smile. He took care of me so well, making sure that everything in my life ran smoothly when I was around him. It was incredibly sweet to be taken care of so well, especially given that I was usually the one doing the taking care of others. I enjoyed it, and I wanted the chance to get used to it.
The car took off, and I leaned back in the seat and watched as the scenery outside whipped by the window. I still had no idea where I was going, but I had learned that, when around Morgan, it was best not to ask at all and assume that he knew what he was doing.
The car drew up to the large gates of an enormous lot, and I peered out of the window to see if I could make out where we were. There was a sign above the gate, but the doors opened to us before I got a chance to read it. I leaned back, staring out across the lot – and suddenly, I saw it.
"No way," I muttered to myself. I almost burst out laughing right there in the back of the car. I was looking at an enormous poster with a woman and a man beaming brightly over at me against a yellow background. I recognized it at once. Who wouldn’t? It was Amber and Stephen’s Afternoon Snack, the local talk show that everyone had at least caught a few dozen episodes of over the years, whether they’d intended to or not.
The car came to a halt, and I climbed out, a little nervous at the thought of being surrounded by all of the people I had watched on TV before. But I couldn’t get too worried because my feet had barely hit the ground before Morgan emerged from the side entrance to the building and greeted me.
"Kari," he smiled at me and leaned down to plant a kiss on my cheek – it could have passed for platonic, but I knew it was anything but.
"I’m so glad you could make it," he continued. He was confident and in-control – he had probably been at a dozen afternoon talk show studios over the years, so none of this was new to him. Still, I felt as though people were giving me funny looks, wondering what the hell I was doing in this place. I shifted on the spot, wishing I could ease into this a little smoother.
"So, you got me away from work for this?” I asked, prompting him to let me know what was happening.
"Well, this is work-related," he assured me with a smile. "Trust me."
"Are you going to tell me what we’re doing here?" I asked him, and he grinned.
"I booked us a segment on this talk show," he explained, gesturing to the building behind him. "Said I could come on here if they let you talk about the charity a little bit, about the project."
"Is that where you’ve been for the last few days?” I asked, and he nodded.
"I didn’t mean to drop off the face of the earth, but I wanted to come up with something that was actually practical and would help," he explained. "I heard this show has a pretty good reach, so that should be something, right?”
"Yeah, that should be something," I agreed, beaming up at him.
"So, you’ll do it?” he asked. I laughed.
"You probably should have let me know this is what you were doing before you brought me out here," I remarked to him. "Actually given me a choice as to whether I wanted to do it, you know?”
"Well, do you?” he asked playfully. I chuckled.
"Look, I’m here now, and I’m not going to leave you in the lurch," I assured him. "I’ve never done a talk show before, though. If I’m terrible, you’re going to have to jump in and cover for me."
"They have a list of some of the questions they want to ask you in the makeup room. You can run through some answers with me first, if you want?”
"That would be awesome," I agreed, and, without thinking, I linked my arm through his. I knew that it might look a touch too flirtatious for my own good, but I could live with that. He had organized all of this for us, for the charity, for me. He hadn’t vanished; he had been doing a good deed. He was the man I had thought he was all this time. I had been right about him. And that was all that mattered.
"You’ve really never done this before, huh?" he teased me gently as we made our way into the studio.
"Not all of us have movies to promote, buddy," I reminded him playfully as I took my first step into the studio. It felt different in here, like it was somehow removed from the real world at large. But I liked that. Because it meant that I could be here with my man, away from the rest of the planet, just me and him hiding out in this place. And I was just fine with that.
19
Morgan
"Oh my God, I’m so nervous!”
Kari was practically hopping from foot to foot beside me as she waited for us to be led onto the set to start our shoot for the day. I touched her shoulder gently, trying to get her to stop dancing on the spot. She seemed soothed, at least for a moment, and came to a halt.
"I’m going to make such an ass of myself," she fretted. "What if I just forget how to speak or something? What if I—"
"Kari," I cut her off before she could freak herself out any further. "You need to take a breath, alright? You’re going to be just fine. Trust me."
"You promise?” she asked, and I smiled and nodded at her.
"Promise."
"Alright, Morgan and Kari, we need you out on set in the next thirty seconds," a woman with a mic and headphones called in our direction. I squeezed Kari’s hand gently, letting her know I was here for her. And then, at last, we headed out onto the stage.
These places were always so bright – probably to make sure that the audience didn’t get too close of a look at the hosts they were meant to be watching. I had never been on this particular show before, but the man and woman running the show seemed about standard-issue for what you got when it came to stuff like this – overly made-up, a little older than they probably would like their audience to know about, and with big, plastic smiles slapped on, even during the ad breaks.
"You alright?" I asked Kari as we sank into the seats opposite them. She looked a little wobbly, as though she might keel over on her feet at any second.
"Yeah, I’m good," she replied, but she was shushed loudly by one of the floor staff. She clasped her hands in her lap and took a deep breath as the floor manager counted down to us being live on air once again. I smiled at her just as we flicked back on to live, and she managed to return it.
"Welcome back to Afternoon Snack!” the woman announced brightly to the camera. Just a moment before, she had been gazing off into space, looking as though she was considering what she was going to have for dinner that evening, but now, she was back in full force. It was a little startling, seeing the difference between the two versions of herself, but I supposed I shouldn’t be too surprised by it – I was an actor, after all.
"And this afternoon, we’re joined by Kari and Morgan," the man picked up. I knew I should know their names, but they had slipped my mind. I glanced around the studio, looking for something branded with their names on it, and came up with a flat nothing. Damn. I would just have to hope that Kari had done a better job than me on actually taking all of this in and let her lead by example.
"Morgan, I’m sure most of our viewers know who you are," the woman – Amber? Amber sounded right – turned her attention to me, that megawatt smile aimed in my direction. "Would you like to tell us a little about why you’re here with us today?”
"Actually, I think Kari is better suited to tell you about the projec
t we’re working on together," I replied, glancing over at Kari. She flashed me a slightly panicked look but managed to compose herself enough to turn her attention back to Amber.
"Yes," she began, her voice trembling a little – but she was holding it together. "I’ve been working – running…I’ve been running the charity for about ten years now..."
And with that, she was off. She spoke well on the charity, passionately, the kind of expression that PR people would have paid a fortune for in pure sincerity. She told Amber about the drive for presents, about my work in publicizing the charity, and about what they hoped to achieve this year with their output. As she went on, she became more and more confident, the words coming smoother and faster until it just sounded like she was on the other end of a business meeting. I interjected where I thought was appropriate, but I let her take the lead. For her first time on a talk show, she was doing a great job – my first time, I’d had a little too much to drink and had wound up uploaded to social media as a sideshow amusement that weekend.
But she was perfectly in control, and I could see that this was coming easy to her now that she had gotten on a roll. I was actually proud of her. It was strange – I couldn’t remember the last time I had looked at someone pulling something out of the bag and felt anything other than mild jealousy, but I was pleased to see her so totally calm and in control of the situation. This would be wonderful PR for the charity, reaching a wider audience than anything they had done before. I was just glad I could pull a few strings to make it happen for her. There wasn’t much I wouldn’t have done to help her out.
"Well, Kari, that’s just fantastic," Amber nodded, and I could tell from the tone of her voice that we were about to move on to something else entirely. I shifted in my seat, ready to make a break for it as soon as she made the transition into an ad break or a human interest story. But instead, she turned her attention on to me.
"But obviously, Morgan, there’s a bigger reason you’ve chosen to get involved with this cause," she remarked to me. I froze on the spot. Amber was playing it cool, but her eyes were shining, and I could tell that she sensed she was on the brink of breaking something big.
"I’m very passionate about the project," I replied, trying to keep my tone neutral. But Amber was far from done with me yet.
"But there’s more to this, isn’t there?” she continued, leaning in. I didn’t know what she was talking about. I had taken a look over the questions before I had come in here, and all of them had pretty much been covered at this point. I couldn’t figure this out.
"I’m not sure what you’re asking," I admitted, laughing it off, hoping that it was just some bit of conversational connective tissue that I’d missed by drifting off for a moment. She narrowed her eyes at me.
"You’re passionate about providing a safe environment for these children because you were abused as a child," she told me. "Isn’t that correct?"
As soon as the words came out of her mouth, everything froze to silence. I couldn’t think about anything else, couldn’t listen to anything. The mumbles of the floor-staff faded to obscurity in my ears. There was no way in hell she could have asked what I thought she had just asked, had she? I must have misheard her. I managed a smile, leaning forward.
"Sorry, could you repeat the question?”
"You were abused as a child," she repeated calmly. The man beside her was giving me a hard look, as though he was waiting for me to crack and come out with it. I couldn’t deal with this. She couldn’t be asking me that.
"I don’t know what you’re talking about," I finally managed to get the words out. It wasn’t much, but it was something. I could just get up, get out of here, hit the road, and do some press conference about what a dirty liar this woman was and how they’d had me confused with another guest or something. I didn’t know exactly how I was going to sell that, but I would find a way.
Someone must have told them. But the only person I had admitted it to was Kari. I glanced over at her. She was looking at me with a horrified expression on her face. Guilt? Was it guilt? I was so angry, I wanted to tear lumps out of this couch and hurl the giant screen with their grinning faces on it through a wall. The studio was completely silent, as though everyone was waiting for me to respond.
"If we could keep this focused on the charity—"
I did my best to turn the conversation back to what we were actually here to discuss, but she wasn’t having any of it.
"We’re curious, Morgan, to understand what your motivation is for getting involved in something like this," she continued smoothly, as though she had rehearsed this in front of a mirror a few times before she had come out to say it to my face. That thought infuriated me. How long had they been planning this?
"As we all know, you’ve had plenty of trouble with your reputation over the years," she remarked. "And with your personal life. Is this some way to redeem that? A chance for you to make right what went so wrong in your childhood?”
"I really don’t feel comfortable—"
"We’re just trying to get to the truth of this, Morgan," she continued. Her persistent use of my name flared a circuit in my head. It was like she was trying to pretend that she actually knew me, that she understood me, that all of this wasn’t just for views and controversy.
"Perhaps you think your abuse makes it alright for you to act out," she pressed. "Maybe you think that the world owes you for the way you were treated, and now you have the right to lash back at everyone around you?”
"What the hell are you talking about?" I snarled back at her. I knew I wasn’t helping my case, but I didn’t care. How dare she just come in here and act like she fucking understood anything about me? In what world was it alright to air dirty laundry like this on some shitty daytime talk show, with no warning that it was going to come up at all?
"I think you know," she replied, her voice faux-soft, like she was trying to convince me that everything was going to be just fine. But it wasn’t. This woman – this show – had just exposed all of the secrets I had been trying to keep to myself for so long. I wanted to yell at the top of my lungs, to shove over the table, to storm out, but I felt as though I was stuck to the couch. I hated this. I wanted to leave, but I felt helpless. Kari was there next to me, but she might as well have been a million miles away for how alone I felt at that moment.
"Morgan, can we get an answer from you?” Amber pushed me. And with that, I finally felt something in me give.
"That is none of your fucking business," I shot back. I knew that I would get chewed out for cursing, but I couldn’t have given less of a shit. Everything that I had tried to keep to myself was on the line now, about to be exposed, and none of it was something I could keep from reacting to. I felt like I had with Kari in that car – exposed and torn open – except this was happening on a much bigger scale, and I had no control over how it went out to the world.
"This is a disgusting invasion of privacy," I continued, my voice low, reaching for the microphone that was pinned to my lapel and tearing it off. I didn’t want it anywhere near me anymore. If they thought they could just use me like this – just expose me because their shitty little show needed better ratings – they had another damn thing coming.
"Where the hell did you get this information, anyway?” I demanded, glaring at her furiously. She shifted in her seat and for the first time actually had the good sense to look a little embarrassed at what she was doing for views.
"We received the information from an anonymous source," she replied coolly. They hadn’t expected this reaction from me – that much was obvious. But how could they not have? They were dumping this on me out of nowhere; they couldn’t have expected me to just sit there and take it.
"I’m leaving," I told her as I got to my feet and tossed the microphone down on my seat. Everyone in the studio was silent as I turned and stormed off of the set. I wasn’t going to spend another fucking second here, not for a moment. I hated this. I hated them. I hated Kari because she had to have been the
one who’d told them. Nobody else knew. She must have been the one to expose me to someone. But why? Who? When?
I strode out through the studio, not looking back for a moment. Nobody stopped me. I guess, in that way, my reputation was a helping hand, since they probably thought I would freak out and attack them if they came too close to me. And honestly, yes, I wasn’t sure that I had it in me to contain myself after what they had just done to me.
I made it outside and gulped in a huge breath of air. Now that I was back in the real world, the weight of what had happened was tumbling down on top of me so fast, I could hardly keep up with it. This was insane. How could they have done this? How much had Kari known? How could she have figured out that we were going to come on this show and made sure that they knew what to ask me? I had only gotten the call from them the day before, and I had assumed it was about the charity because it was getting closer to Christmas. But clearly, they’d had something else in mind for my tenure on the show. Something much darker.
I heard footsteps behind me and turned, ready to chew out whatever hapless studio staff member had been sent out to bring me back to finish the interview. But instead, I found Kari chasing after me, her microphone ripped off, her eyes wide, and her face written with panic.
"Morgan—"
"I’m out of here," I snapped at her. I had driven over to the lot myself earlier, and I had every intention of driving myself the hell back out of it now that they had revealed what they actually had planned for me. This was such spectacular bullshit – to think, I had imagined that this would be good for my reputation, not something that would dismantle it entirely. It would already be trending on social media, think pieces being typed out as I stood there. None of this was fair. None of this had been theirs to share. It had all belonged to me, and that was what made me the angriest.