Positively Pippa

by Sarah Hegger

  “You turned down that scholarship to do it.”

  God, why wouldn’t she look at him? He needed to see her face, gauge how this was all going down. “Yup.”

  “Do you regret it?”

  Every day of his life until that dream drifted out of age range. “Sometimes. I loved football, I wanted to go to college.”

  “But you still did it.” Jo looked at him. “You’re like a saint, Matt, and that makes the rest of us look like screwups.”

  Matt tried to take that in. It was the second time someone had called him a saint in the last three days. Eric accused him of being stuck, and keeping the rest of them stuck with him. How had they all gotten this screwed up? It had broken him to make the call that would end his scholarship chances. He had driven out to Lovers’ Leap after the call and sat in his truck and cried like a baby. Cried for his chance gone by, cried for the loss of his dad, cried because he was so fucking scared of the load that had landed on his shoulders. Part of him was pissed with Jo for saying that, but the bigger part was shocked. Reeling.

  “I’m not a saint, Jo-Jo.” He managed to find some words to express the crap tangled in his head. “I was mad as hell about the way things turned out. It still gets to me. I’m thirty-six, running my dad’s old construction company and living in the same town I grew up in. I want out too sometimes. I want my life to be the way I dreamed it would be when I was a kid.” He shook his head. “I’m not a saint.”

  “I love you, Matt,” she said. Her words made his throat dry up. “And I feel like I owe it to you not to get into any more shit.”

  “You don’t owe me anything.” His throat was so tight it was hard to work the words out. “I did what I had to do.”

  “Nope.” Jo’s dark hair swished around as she shook her head. “You did more than that. Plenty of people wouldn’t have done the same as you. They would have left it to Mom to cope.” Her face lost its soft look. “She should never have let you do it.”

  “She was a mess.” Hadn’t he said the same thing to himself? So why the need to defend his mother?

  “She was the mother,” Jo said.

  Matt didn’t see it as quite as cut and dried. Maybe because he was older and had noticed more of how things worked with their parents. Dad had been the tower on which their mother leaned. When he was taken away, and so suddenly, their mother collapsed. Matt had known what his dad would have wanted him to do and done it.

  “Enough about me.” This conversation made his skin feel too tight over his bones. “Now that we’ve gotten it clear that you shouldn’t get married because you don’t want to disappoint me, what are you going to do?”

  “Call off the wedding?” She said it like she was asking his permission.

  It was all great and good to tell him all this crap about not wanting to be a burden, but that went two ways. If Jo wanted to stand on her own two feet, she needed to get up off her ass. “Don’t ask me, Jo. This is all on you.”

  She frowned as if that hadn’t occurred to her. “I want to call off the wedding.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “And pay you back for all the money you’ve spent on it so far.”

  Wow, she really did have it in her head to go all out. “That’s not necessary.”

  “Yes, it is.” Jo set her jaw in a stubborn line. All the Evans kids had that way of sticking their jaw out, like they were bracing for the punch.

  “Dad would not have made you pay it back,” he said.

  “You’re not Dad.” There was no arguing with that. If she needed to do this, then so be it. “I can pick up extra shifts at the bar until I pay you back.”

  “Okay.” The idea of taking her money didn’t sit right, but their conversation had gotten him thinking. It rang too close to what Eric had said. Maybe it was time to step back a bit and give everybody some room to breathe. Isaac had taken that room for himself, and maybe Matt needed to let him do it.

  “I enrolled in an online college.” Jo dropped her head again, hiding her face.

  He stamped hard on the urge to go paternal and congratulate her. “Studying what?”

  “I’m not sure yet, but something in the sciences.” Jo shrugged. “I don’t know yet, but I figured it was time to get back on the horse and see where that led me.”

  Jo had more brains than all her brothers put together. She wasn’t so hot on the street smarts, though. She did have a way of getting herself into trouble. Maybe it was time to give her the space to get herself out of that trouble. “Let me know if there is anything I can do.”

  She rolled her eyes at him.

  “What?” He shrugged. He couldn’t change seventeen years of habit in one small conversation.

  “Are you going to take Eric’s offer?” Jo asked.

  “I don’t know.” This conversation was certainly giving him a new perspective. “I need to think about it.”

  “You should take it,” Jo said. “I think you need something like this to get on with your life.”

  She smirked at him and shuffled out of the treehouse through the hatch and down the ladder.

  He went much slower, his big feet scrabbling for traction.

  Jo dropped to the bottom and stared at the house. “Are you going in to see her?”

  “Yup.”

  He strode toward the house. He couldn’t put this off much longer. His mother already knew he was here. She would have heard his truck and would be waiting for him.

  “Matt?” Jo stood where he’d left her, arms crossed. “What if you didn’t go?”

  “Where?”

  “Into the kitchen.”

  He glanced back at the house. A curtain twitched at the upstairs window to his mother’s room. “I don’t know.”

  And that’s why he went, because it scared the crap out of him what might happen if he didn’t.

  * * *

  As afternoon gave way to evening Matt let himself into his house. Tired didn’t begin to cover it. Sitting in his mother’s kitchen, trying to keep track of business and keep his mother stable had eaten up his entire afternoon.

  He’d been a dick to Pippa this morning. Eric had called him, special-like, to let him know. He really needed to talk to her, but first he needed to grab a bite to eat and a shower. His mother’s desperation clung to his skin.

  Condom wrappers littered the floor next to the bed and he bent and snagged them. His mother had a way of barging into his house and cleaning. Pissed him the fuck off, but sometimes you had to pick your battles, and he got a clean house out of this one. Pippa’s perfume clung to the sheets in a subtle reminder of their night. And just like that, he didn’t feel so tired anymore.

  Chapter Twenty

  Once she started reading, Pippa couldn’t stop.

  #getyourfactsstraight #askpippawhatshesaid #justiceforpippa were trending all right. God, how could she have been this stupid? All the positive tweets had been lost amongst the deluge of scorn and outright derision.

  @bigboy wanted to know, “How did the Kool-Aid taste as you rammed it down your throat?”

  @jenniferkearns went with a simple but effective, “fuck you, Pippa bitch”

  @christyroth suggested she go into politics if she wanted people to believe her bullshit

  @graeme_parker thought #justiceforpippa meant being stripped naked and paraded through LA.

  From one tweet to the next she went, the nausea growing with each one, as if the venom seeped out of her Twitter feed and sank into her bones. Her chest tightened, and she went into the yard. Breathing deep, she dragged much-needed air into her lungs.

  Her wobbly legs dropped her ass onto the side of the water trough fountain. Damp seeped through her jeans, but she didn’t care. This was so much worse than before. She should never have believed she’d hit rock bottom because where she was three days ago was a long way up from here.

  Like the instrument of her deliverance, Matt’s truck cleared Phi’s “verdant thicket” and entered the yard. Until he drove up, Pippa hadn’t known how desp
erately she wanted to see him.

  Strong and sure, he came toward her.

  She walked straight into his arms. The world stopped spinning as his steady heartbeat drummed against her ear.

  “Are you okay?” His voice came from above her head.

  Pippa shook her head. She was far from okay. Suddenly she was all of thirteen again, watching her dad load his packed bags into the family station wagon. Lost. Alone. Terrified.

  Matt tightened his arms about her. “Man, I needed this,” he said.

  So did she, and the idea terrified her enough to get Pippa out of his embrace. “Bad day?”

  “I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours.” A ghost of Matt’s cocky smile flitted across his mouth.

  Pippa crossed her arms over her chest, as if she could contain the screaming pit inside her. “I pretty much killed my already dying career on Twitter. Now your turn.”

  Matt frowned and stepped closer. “What?”

  Not really wanting to say the words out loud, Pippa handed him the phone.

  “Fuck.” Matt’s thumb scrolled from one screen to another. “How did this start?”

  “Someone tweeted me.” Her stupidity crawled like a poisonous spider all over Pippa. “I responded. I was desperate.” Matt kept scrolling. “I wanted people to know my side of the story. Everywhere else I went was a dead end. I thought . . .” She shrugged, because she pretty much hadn’t been thinking, otherwise they wouldn’t be having this conversation.

  “But you told me to leave it alone. That the less you said, the sooner it would die,” Matt said.

  “I know that.” It sounded too much like a criticism and she didn’t need it right now. Everything she’d worked for, ever wanted was even deader than before and it had been barely twitching before this.

  “Look.” Matt pushed his hand through his hair. “This looks bad. I don’t know much about this stuff, but this isn’t pretty.” He cupped her shoulders and pulled her closer. “But I know you, Pippa. You’re tough. A fighter. You can recover from this.”

  “How?” Pippa blinked at him, staggered by his naïveté.

  “I don’t know.” He dropped his hands. “What I’m trying to say is it isn’t the end of the world.”

  “It’s the end of my world.” Pippa’s voice rang across the stable yard.

  “No, babe, it’s not.” He tried to take her hands but Pippa evaded him. “Look.” He frowned. “I seem to be saying all the wrong things today. Why don’t we have a beer, and talk about how to fix this.”

  “This can’t be fixed.” Pippa crossed her arms over her chest. Part of her knew she was being unreasonable. Matt didn’t come from her world. He had no idea what the repercussions of this would be, but she was so fucking scared. “And you’re not the person who could fix it anyway.”

  “Okay.” Matt’s eyes went hard and cold. “That certainly put me in my place.”

  Damn. She hadn’t meant to sound that harsh. Pippa opened her mouth to correct it.

  Matt slashed his hand through the air, silencing her. “No, it’s fine,” he said, but it clearly wasn’t. She’d hurt him, and guilt mixed uncomfortably with all the other rioting emotions inside her. “It seems to be everyone’s day for telling me to butt the hell out of their lives. I’ve got the message.”

  He turned and stalked over to his truck.

  Pippa stood and watched him back out of the yard. Part of her wanted to stop him, and another part knew this was how it always was. This was what she knew. Pippa standing alone against the world.

  Her phone rang as she walked back into the kitchen. Chris Germaine’s number flashed up on her screen. She let it ring, and then changed her mind. Might as well see what else her day had in store for her. Her finger shook as she accepted the call.

  “Hi, Pippa.” Chris Germaine’s robust, husky voice vibrated down the line. “You’re a difficult lady to get hold of.”

  Not hard enough, apparently. “I’m hiding.”

  “Yes.” Chris lingered over the s in that one word. “You’ve had a rough time.”

  That was one way of putting it. Pippa shut the kitchen door. “Some days are better than others. Today is probably the worst.”

  “Uh-huh.” Chris spoke to someone on the other end of the line, her words garbled. “So, let’s put our cards on the table.” Her voice came back, stronger and with less background noise. “It seems your producer has been a very naughty boy.”

  Pippa stopped dead. As far as she knew that little secret was still inside the show’s bubble. “You know about Ray?”

  “We know all about Mr. Ray Brightly.”

  Pippa needed to sit down before she fell down. “Oh?”

  “There were some members of your crew who were not at all happy about what went down,” Chris said. “They have been very active on your behalf.”

  “Really?” This was news to her.

  “That’s when they came to me,” Chris said. “Allie wasn’t too happy about what aired either and she’s also stepped forward.”

  “Allie?” The same Allie who wouldn’t take her call?

  “Actually, Allie is royally pissed off,” Chris said. “It seems she’s considering a lawsuit against the show.”

  Pippa tried to picture that, meek and sweet Allie getting mad about anything was far enough of a stretch. Thank God she’d sat down already, because her knees had melted.

  Phi slapped open the baize door and paused in the doorway. She caught sight of Pippa and dropped the pose. Her stage whisper was loud enough for the back row of any amphitheater to hear. “What is it?”

  Pippa waved her to silence, trying to concentrate on what Chris Germaine was saying.

  Chris kept talking public apologies and shows being taken off the air. Past tense. As if they’d already happened.

  “Are you still with me?” Chris sharpened her tone.

  “No.” Pippa shook her head to clear it.

  Phi was making faces at her, trying to find out what was going on.

  Pippa dropped her eyes to the kitchen table and drew in a deep breath. Then another, and her mind slowed down enough to process. “I didn’t hear anything after you told me Allie was considering a lawsuit,” she said. “This is rather a lot to take in.”

  Chris chuckled. “Right. Pull up your big girl panties and listen. I am going to say it all again.”

  “Okay.” Mental check on the big girl panties.

  “With Allie threatening the lawsuit, and your cameraman still holding the original footage, the show agreed to a public apology. Ray is not producing anymore, and that woman they hired to replace you has gone back to serving cocktails.”

  “Uh-huh.” She nodded at the table.

  Phi banged her knuckles on the table, her eyes bugging out of her head.

  Pippa caught her hand and held it, twisting her fingers with Phi’s for support.

  “The public apology aired last night,” Chris said. “Along with the real footage of what happened. Given a few editing bits and pieces for dramatic effect.”

  “Right.” Because if the public really saw the hours of boring that happened to get the forty-five minutes that hit the air, they’d be asleep already.

  “Now.” Chris cleared her throat. “You and I both know that even with all that, this is going to take some time to die down. There will still be some people who insist on believing the worst.”

  It was the God’s honest truth. It came with the job description and Pippa made a noise of agreement.

  “But something you said on that last show got me thinking. Just a second.” Chris spoke to an unseen body on her end. “I’m back. I have a million things going on. Where was I?”

  “Something I said on the last show intrigued you.”

  “Right. You were talking about how it takes more than a pair of shoes to turn a life around. I agree with you. It’s part of why I find these makeover shows so facile. No, I can’t come now. They are just going to have to do it without me.”

  Pippa figured that
last part was not aimed at her. “I believe that,” she said.

  “And you’re right. It takes a total transformation to make any real change in a life,” Chris said. “Which is why I’ve been stalking you. I have a show in mind, with you as the host. We take a woman for a year. Give her the tools to make real changes in her life, part of them cosmetic but the bigger part internal.”

  Pippa opened her mouth and a strange squeaking noise came out. It was like Chris Germaine had reached inside her head and plucked out a dormant idea that had been lurking there for the last few years.

  It must have been the right sort of noise because Chris kept on talking. She went on about financial backing, selection processes. A lot of it washed right over Pippa.

  She met Phi’s intense green gaze. Her eyesight wobbled as a wash of tears filled her eyes. This couldn’t be happening. Dreams did not, as a rule, come true. You made them happen. You hustled, you fought, and you hung tough and made them happen. You didn’t get phone calls out of the blue that handed them to you.

  “Damn it.” Chris’s sharp bark dragged her back to the present. “I have this all written down in a proposal for you to look at. Let me courier it to you and you can have a few days to look it over before we speak again. Yes, I’m coming now.” Chris near bellowed that last part. “I have to go, but I want to know that you’re interested. Before I go any further, let me hear you say yes or no.”

  “Yes.” It came out whisper soft and silly.

  “Great.” It sounded good enough for the formidable Ms. Germaine. “I have to go, before they lose it over here. We’ll speak in a couple of days. And Pippa—I said I was coming now—stay off Twitter.” Chris hung up.

  Pippa had the phone pressed to her ear for a while as she listened to silence.

  “Merciful God our Father.” Phi exploded from her seat. “Tell me what the hell is happening before I have a shit fit.”

  Pippa shook her head, trying to make the words come out. “That was Chris Germaine.”