“It’s because they needed a Bad Boy Bartender,” Val said. She’d been secretly guiding me all season, helping me understand the inner-workings of the industry so I wouldn’t step in too many piles of shit on national television. “He’s got tattoos, a motorcycle, and a bad attitude. How’s it going with him anyway?”
“Perfect,” I said, tossing the mitts on the counter. Sean and I saw each other when we wanted and the crew got footage for the show. He never prodded about my past or asked how I was feeling. He was flighty and shallow, and that was the absolute most I could handle for a love interest. If my life ended up a series of flings, I wasn’t sure I’d mind too much. “Off camera, he treats me all right,” I said. “Better than it’ll look on TV.”
“What about that other guy, the boom operator?”
“I like him, too, but ours is a romance for the shadows. He’s not supposed to date the cast.”
Val’s eyes sparkled as she sipped her champagne. “So that means the sex is hot?”
“Very.” I turned away to check on the bagel bites, worried Val would read my expression and sigh the way she always did. Sex belonged to Manning first. It was so fucking predictable but true—he’d destroyed me for anyone else. Sex could be a lot of things, including passionate, but no one would ever come close to Manning. “Do you miss New York?” I asked her.
“Kind of.” She sounded thoughtful. “Not more than I’d miss working in film, though. I wouldn’t exactly complain if Hollywood was relocated to Eighth Avenue. What about you?”
I leaned back against the counter to face her. New York had definitely had its moments. For me, it had been split in half with graduation in the middle. Before Manning, after Manning. We’d constructed a life there together in five days, and I had spent the next few years not living it. “Coming back was the right choice,” I said. “I didn’t realize I needed a change until it was in motion.”
A male voice spoke from just outside the kitchen. “If only you’d had someone there to point that out to you.”
I turned around with my most convincing look of surprise. I was an actress, after all. “Corbin?”
He sauntered in with his signature ear-to-ear grin and bouquets in both hands. If I could cash in all the flowers he’d given me over the years, I’d be living in a high-rise in downtown New York City like he was. “Evening, superstars.”
“What’re you doing here?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m not staying, I just wanted to fly in and drop these off in person,” he teased, holding out white lilies.
I rolled my eyes, taking them. “Corbin. You did not come all the way here for this.”
He winked. “Wouldn’t miss it,” he said, then turned and gave Val a different bouquet.
She just stared at it. “Aren’t those for Bree?”
“No, ma’am. One for each of my best girls.”
When Val blushed, I almost laughed. It was such a rare sight. She took the medley of mismatched flowers, an assortment of shapes, sizes, and colors, and looked into them with a furrowed brow. “What are these, grocery store leftovers?”
He laughed. “I wanted to buy something I thought you’d like but I couldn’t decide. You have a million different interests and opinions.” To me, he said out of the side of his mouth, “Not to mention personalities.”
Val raised the bouquet like she was going to smack him with it. He waved his hands in surrender. “So I just pulled over and picked a bunch of different shit. If you grew out of the ground, that’s basically what you’d look like.”
Val and I stared at him. I started to laugh, but she just looked perplexed. “O-kay, thanks for the roadside weeds, I guess?” she said, but when she turned her back to look for a vase, I caught the way she stuck her nose in the flowers.
“That’s not all I brought,” Corbin said, shoulders back as he moved aside. Even though I’d been warned, I almost dropped my flowers. Tiffany stood behind him clutching a Louis Vuitton purse to her hip. The kitchen went silent. In a short denim skirt and Rocket Dogs, she dressed the part of the girl who’d stolen Manning out from under me, but she didn’t look the same. Eight years had passed since I’d watched her leave for her honeymoon, and she was a thirty-year-old divorcée now.
She took a few steps into the kitchen, her eyes bouncing from Val and Corbin back to me. She’d never had much trouble handling a roomful of people, but she looked a little out of her element.
I couldn’t quite gauge her mood—or my own. It wasn’t as if I never wondered about seeing her. In fact, I thought about it often, especially when I was at my most vulnerable. Right before I’d moved here, I’d almost picked up the phone to ask her if it was the right choice, but what answer could she have possibly given? Aside from a few short phone calls over the years, I’d told her next to nothing about my life. After I’d lost Manning, in some of my darkest moments, I’d wished I could escape into her bedroom for a few hours where she’d play Soundgarden too loud and pet me and tell me things would get better once I understood boys. Well, here we were, almost a decade later, and I still didn’t understand boys.
“I can’t believe you’re going to be on TV,” she said.
I couldn’t say I understood her, either, or most of the things I was supposed to by twenty-six years old. I was an adult now, and I should’ve known what to say to my own sibling, but I just gaped at her. Maybe that was why she’d come. To see her sister on TV.
“And . . . I can’t believe you’re standing in front of me,” she added.
For all the ups and downs we’d had, she was familiar. She was home. I wanted to hug her. She wore shoes higher than mine, her top showed more cleavage than the ultimate Wonderbra could bless me with, and her beauty—her curled blonde hair and impeccable smoky eyes—outshone anyone else’s in the room. And that was exactly what I needed in that moment—to be a kid again, hidden in her older sister’s shadow, shielded from the attention the people in the next room were trying to give me. That was the thing nobody but my mom had ever seemed to notice, especially not Tiffany—I hadn’t minded being in my sister’s shadow all that much, not until Manning had come along.
Corbin took my bouquet and leaned between us. “This is where you hug.”
We put our arms around each other. She hugged the same. Smelled the same. But there was no possible way she could be the same after what she’d been through. “I’m sorry about the baby,” I whispered into her hair.
She nodded against me. “Me too.”
I’d called after the miscarriage, but neither of us had been in a position to have a conversation longer than a few minutes. I’d gripped the receiver in my hand, tears streaming down my face since the moment my mom had called from the hospital. And as Tiffany had taken my condolences, her grief flowing through the phone, I’d felt him there in the background. I hadn’t asked to speak to Manning. What was there to say?
This was the first time I’d gotten to tell Tiffany in person. Maybe it was overdue, but I pulled back and looked her in the face. “I’m genuinely sorry. I hope you know that,” I said, and it was true. But I couldn’t offer my regrets that she and Manning hadn’t made it. I was sorry for what they’d been through, and that it’d gotten so bad that, according to my mom, the miscarriage had caused their split, but knowing she no longer had him—no, I couldn’t be the least bit sorry about that.
“I can’t really talk about it.” She glanced at the floor but then back up quickly, her eyes glittering. “Were those photographers out front?”
“Paparazzi.” My stomach churned with the word. “They’ve started following some of us the last few weeks.”
“Seriously?” Tiffany asked.
“They might try to take your picture,” I warned, even though I knew that could cause her to run out front, waving her arms. “I talk about you and Dad a little on the show.”
“What? That’s so freaking awesome.”
“It’s not, trust me,” I said. “If I so much as stumble, they catch it. If the film crew doesn’t, t
hen the paparazzi will.”
“Oh, how utterly mortifying.” She shifted feet. “Is there anything to drink?”
“If I know Val, there’s a roomful of rosé on the other side of that wall,” Corbin said. “Come on.”
Val nodded solemnly. “You know me.”
There were probably things I needed to say to Tiffany, but I didn’t even know where to start. And anyway, it wasn’t the time. For tonight, maybe it was best we let the alcohol do the talking.
Five minutes before the show, we were all at least a glass-of-something deep. I was too nervous to do anything other than sit on the edge of the couch and sip wine. The first time I appeared on screen after the opening credits, it became immediately clear to me I didn’t want to see any more. A pit formed in my stomach as I watched Bree and myself at our kitchen table drinking coffee and browsing the classifieds. A title popped up with my name and “aspiring actress” underneath. How many people in America were tuning in at that moment? Learning that I took my coffee with sugar and cream? It was completely innocuous, boring, and, as Tiffany had eloquently put it—utterly mortifying.
My movements on screen were stiff while the rest of the cast looked at ease. They’d taken to having cameras in their face much better than I had. Two had scored forgettable on-screen roles before this, and the others were natural extroverts. Everyone in the living room had their eyes glued to the screen, but I had to look away.
What would Manning think? I hated that he came to mind first, but that’d always been my habit—what was Manning doing, how was he, and did he still think of me? Having Tiffany in the room didn’t change that. If anything, his absence was stronger.
The longer the show went on, the worse it got. Corbin had already made an appearance. Across the living room, he and I kept exchanging uncomfortable looks.
During the last commercial break, Val jumped on the couch. “A toast,” she said, “to sexy Bree, and to Lake, America’s next sweetheart.”
I flinched. I didn’t want to be called that. Not only was it untrue, but was that what America wanted? I hadn’t done anything but sit there. “Please,” I said, “it’s not a big deal.”
Val groaned. “Stop saying that.”
“It’s a huge deal,” Tiffany said. I glanced at her, but she was looking at the bottom of her empty champagne glass. As Val bent over to refill it, my new BlackBerry rang. Only a few people had the number, so I wasn’t surprised to see the name June McPherson lit up on the screen.
“I’m so sorry to interrupt the toast,” I said, “but I have to take this. It’s my agent.”
“Everyone shut up,” Val called. “Answer it, Lake.”
While my friends watched, I picked up. “Listen,” June said straight off. She’d been my agent for over a year now and never seemed to run out of energy. “Are you listening?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Where are you?”
“With Bree and some friends at a viewing party.”
“Put me on speakerphone.”
It took me a moment to figure out how, but once I did, I held up the cell for everyone. “Do you guys fucking love the show or what?” June asked.
They cheered. Corbin winked at me, even as I rolled my eyes.
“So do we,” she said. “I’m almost positive we have a smash hit on our hands.”
Val jumped up and down on the couch as everyone else hooted and hollered.
I took June off speaker, and she laughed. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” she yelled over the noise. “Have fun tonight.”
Everyone clinked glasses as I hung up, while Tiffany downed her champagne in one go. She raised her glass to no one in particular, got up, and left the room. I was sixteen again, watching Tiffany’s light go out while mine shone on. My face was front and center of a hit TV show while my outgoing, full-of-life older sister spent her life—where? I didn’t even know if she had a desk, a cubicle, or an office, just that she’d recently accepted an associate buyer position at PacSun.
She’d married young and to the wrong man, and had since lost a baby and gotten divorced. I’d betrayed her in the worst kind of way—just by existing. By being the one our dad had pinned his hopes on. By rising to stardom when she’d never secured another modeling job. By being her husband’s true love. And yet she had to sit there and toast me. I had the urge to tell her the truth—I wasn’t all that great of an actress, I was definitely a bad sister, and most of all, I was unhappy. I was on my way to a life most only dreamed about. One Tiffany had dreamed about. And yet I would never have what she’d had. No matter how much money I made, no matter who I met or became, I didn’t have Manning then or now, and I wasn’t sure how to move past that.
22
Lake
I left the TV room while the show was still on and found Tiffany out back. She sat at Val’s rusted mesh patio table with a fresh glass of wine, staring out at the pool. I couldn’t watch the show a minute longer. What I’d signed up for wasn’t acting. I’d known that going in, and this wasn’t the end goal by any means, but I wondered if this would be everything Mike Galloway had dangled in front of me. Was it a silver bullet to the career I wanted? The cameras had been around while I’d volunteered, but was it the right kind of attention for the animal shelter I went to?
Tiffany fumbled with a pack of cigarettes. As she lit one, my first thought was Manning—the smoky, mint-on-nicotine taste of him. He’d finally let me around his cigarettes after years of wanting to be part of it and anything that involved him. But Tiffany, she’d been in it all along, and now that I stood there watching her inhale deeply with satisfaction, I couldn’t help but see things from Manning’s point of view. Finally. He’d exposed us both to it, but he’d protected me and not Tiffany. “Do you smoke a lot?” I asked, closing the sliding glass door behind me.
“I quit during the pregnancy if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I didn’t mean that.” I could tell that being here was hard for her, I just wasn’t sure why she’d made the effort. “Did you see how awful the show was?” I asked, hoping to break the ice. There was no better way to bring Tiffany out of her shell than to give her the chance to make fun of me. “Everyone keeps saying it’s a hit, but it’s so bad. I’m so bad.”
“You’re, like, adorably awkward. Naïve but not in an annoying way. People like that stuff.”
“I guess.” I pulled out the seat across her, steel scraping over concrete, and sat. “How’s Mom?”
“She’s excited, even though she can barely get through a conversation about you without crying.” She shrugged. “And Dad . . . well, you know how he is.”
“He probably thinks this whole reality thing is silly.”
“Pretty much.”
I touched the thin gold bracelet Dad had given me as a teen. I’d started wearing it again for filming. Even though I was angry at my father, when the cameras were in my face, the bracelet made me feel close to my parents—and Manning, since it was the reason we’d met. No matter how old I got, how successful I might become, my dad’s rejection would never not sting.
Tiffany blew smoke from the side of her mouth. “But I guarantee he’s watching tonight.”
“What about you?” I asked. “How are you?”
“Good.” She sat back, crossing an ankle over her knee. “I got a used bike on the Internet for only twenty bucks. I mean, I’m not starring in a TV show or anything, but it’s something.”
I rolled my eyes at her. “Look, I know this is weird, but you don’t have to make it worse.”
“I thought I could do this,” she said, stubbing out her half-smoked cigarette on the cement. “I thought enough time had passed that I could come here and be happy for you, but I just . . . it all seems so unfair.”
I digested her words a few moments. For as long as I could remember, Tiffany had taken offense to my success and happiness. “What part, exactly, is unfair?”
“You have everything handed to you,” she said, “and you just shrug, take it or
leave it, like it’s nothing. You throw away your relationship with Dad. Your acceptance to USC. You ignore us for years to run around New York City calling yourself an actress. And then someone shows up at your door and hands you fame and fortune and now you’re not even sure you want it.”
“That’s not how it happened,” I said. “I spent years struggling with nothing, trying to make a life for myself without any of your support. I lived in a tiny apartment with a broken heater—” A broken lock and a broken heart, I thought, my chest squeezing. “The point is, you’re wrong. The only injustice is that you can’t ever be happy for me unless you have a leg up.”
“I came all the way here to support you, even though you never congratulated me on my promotion. When I call you, you’re too busy to talk.” She crossed her legs and fixed the twisted strap of her shoe. “How can you blame us for not being there for you when you made it impossible to be?”
I got quiet as I thought of the myriad excuses I’d invented over the years to get off the line with her or my mom. “Okay,” I said, “but it’s not as if any of you, not even Mom, were beating down my door, trying to get me to come home.”
“Well, that’s not entirely true, is it?” she asked. “Someone did beat down your door.” She pulled another cigarette from her pack. “He was never the same after New York, you know.”
After years of pretending not to notice Manning and me, the veiled accusation had me leaning in, wondering if I’d misheard. “What?”
“Actually, I take that back.” Tiffany flicked her lighter a few times before it finally caught. “He was never the same after he found out he was going to New York. I can remember the exact moment he came home from work after having been approved for an East Coast trip to see his ‘clients.’ He could hardly hide the spring in his step.”
I stared at my sister, noting the new wrinkles around her eyes, the veins in her hands, the slight yellowish hue of her once flawless white teeth. I’d buried the memory of my last few moments with Manning as deeply as I could—it wasn’t how I liked to remember us, pain rolling off him while he’d relayed what should’ve been the best news of his life. “I’ve bit my tongue a lot of times around you,” I said to her, “but what you did to him was so messed up. You got pregnant because you were scared you’d lose him.”
Something in the Way: A Forbidden Love Saga: The Complete Collection Page 77