“It’s almost over now.” Connor comforted him.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll drink to that.”
The clink of their glasses, toasting to the end of me, set me in motion. I regained the ability to move and tiptoed over to the bedroom again, closing the door without discovery. I walked back to the bed, climbed back in under the covers and shut my eyes. Maybe I could pretend the whole thing hadn’t happened? Like it had just been a bad dream.
But then I opened my eyes and still I knew, I’d heard it. I’d heard every word. There couldn’t be any misunderstanding here. He actually had been standing in the kitchen having a heart-to-heart with his oldest, closest friend about how he really felt.
So now I knew. Ash was happy that this farce with me was almost over. And it really was almost over. The clock was ticking. According to the original agreement, I was supposed to break up with him after a month. It would be exactly four weeks on Saturday. Today it was Monday. No, sorry, Tuesday very early in the morning. So we really just had a handful of days left. And he felt relieved and grateful that he had so little time left with the ball and chain.
I felt like I’d gotten kicked right in the gut, all the wind knocked out of me. It was almost hard to breathe, but I focused on that, just that, closing my eyes and telling myself everything was going to be OK. This was the worst of it, right now. This was the bottom, scraping down so low you wondered how you’d ever swing back up again.
It hurt so bad. I’d felt so close with Ash, as if we’d stripped everything away there in that cabin, just the two of us. It had felt so real, as if I’d gotten to know the real man behind all the stardom and celebrity. Hadn’t I just told him that last night? But, come to think of it, it was me telling him. He hadn’t said the same to me. Or confirmed he felt the same way.
The past few weeks had been like a fantasy, and I guessed that was just what they were. That was all they were ever supposed to be. I’d signed a contract agreeing to it. I guessed that was why we should have stuck to the no-sex clause. If we hadn’t gotten in so deep together, I probably wouldn’t feel like vomiting right now. If I hadn’t given myself to him so completely, I might not feel like I’d just had my insides scooped out with a melon-baller.
I’d never fallen for anyone the way I had for Ash. I’d tumbled head-over-heels in that mad, raving way you read about. I’d lost my mind and heart. When he touched me, I felt it though my whole body. And it wasn’t real. As many times as I’d tried to remind myself of that fact, it had gotten away from me. I’d tried to keep my guard up, protect myself, remember he was a player and we lived in separate worlds. But I’d failed. I’d fallen for him completely, and now I felt myself falling and falling further and further down with that sickening, lurching feeling low in my stomach.
He wouldn’t be there to catch me. Worse still, he might come in here in the bedroom and act like nothing was wrong. He might climb into bed, pull me into his arms and try to make love to me. Oh God, I still had to share a whole car ride back to S.F. with him. How was I going to do that?
At least I hadn’t told him I loved him. I’d realized it, but I’d kept it locked in my heart. Where it would stay, and hopefully dissipate over time. Because even though I’d heard him talking shit about me, I couldn’t rouse myself into hating him. That would have been easier. It would have been a lot easier to just flip the switch and feel angry over having been tricked and betrayed.
But lying there in the dark, I just felt awful. Tears spilled out of the corners of my eyes, though I tried to stop them, snuffling under the covers. The last thing I wanted was to be there in the dark, pathetic and crying, should Ash walk right through the door. I needed to pull my shit together. I needed to erect a facade, somehow adopt a poker face, and play this out for a little while longer.
I didn’t think I’d make it until Saturday, though. I’d have to end things sooner than that.
I bet Ash would feel grateful to me for it, too. And I bet Lola wouldn’t have any problem with it. I’d already served my purpose. I’d given them tons of juicy photo ops, from corny romantic rom-com shots to X-rated, forbidden moments nearly captured on film. Titillating and suggestive, they’d really gotten their money’s worth from me in Paris.
The world had already seen Ash propose to me. He’d done it up on a freaking stage, televised on a giant screen. How had I gone and let myself believe any of it?
Well. I was an idiot. But the idiot had woken up.
It was a good thing I’d awakened and overheard Ash and Connor. They’d done me a real favor. Had I not heard them, I almost definitely would have made things much worse—for Ash and for me. In a long car ride to S.F., I probably would have started babbling about how I’d never felt that way before and I really, truly loved him. The silence after dropping that bomb would have pretty much killed me.
No, it was better this way. This silence was at least all my own. I didn’t have to add a whole bunch of humiliation into the mix. A broken heart was enough.
Somehow, I had to make it back to S.F. Once we were there, I’d find a way to end it exactly the way our contract demanded. I’d find a horribly public spot to do it. I was sure Lola would help arrange the necessary cameras in place to capture the moment. I’d break up with Ash and fling that outrageously large rock he’d given me right in his handsome face. He’d pretend to be broken-hearted.
Then I’d fly back to New York and begin the process of tending to my own truly broken heart. The thought of it all nearly drove me into sobs, but I told myself to wait on those. There’d be plenty of time to sob into my pillow, night after night without Ash to sob to my heart’s content.
Right now, though, I had to deal. I’d never been a good actress, but I just had to get through the next day or so and then I’d be able to go back to life as it had been before I met Ash. I just wished the thought didn’t rip me to pieces.
CHAPTER 9
Ash
Hungover as hell, I woke with a groan the next day. Around noon, I had to guess, with the way the sunlight shone in full and brash, burning my eyelids. Someone had pulled apart the curtains in the bedroom. Was it Ana?
I reached for her in the bed but found nothing but tangled sheets. Where was she?
Groaning, I threw my hand over my eyes. What the fuck? I hadn’t felt this way in a while. A month, to be exact. I couldn’t remember a time in my life when I’d gone that long without parting to the max. I also couldn’t remember why it was exactly that I used to do this stupid shit to myself all the time. Ugh. I felt like I’d swallowed a mouthful of ashes from the fireplace.
Padding to the bathroom, I managed to get myself some water. How had I ended up getting so shitfaced? Bits and pieces from last night flashed dimly through my slow-moving brain. Ana with a large plate of pasta. Some girl’s boobs. Connor swinging off the chandelier.
Connor. We’d had a good talk last night, hadn’t we? But something felt off. Something still needed sorting out.
But first I needed water and some Advil. Lots of Advil. Like a truckload.
Staggering into the main room of the cabin, I found various other members of our crew draped across furniture like discarded items of clothes after a striptease. One of the girls sat on the floor, her legs stretched out across the wooden planks, her back resting against the couch. Johnny lay strewn across the couch, his sunglasses firmly in place.
“Ugh.” He groaned over to me.
“Hmg.” I groaned back. More water and a palmful of Advils later, I shuffled back into the main room searching for Ana. She hadn’t been partying with us last night, so surely she was already up. Just as I was about to ask anyone if they’d seen her, the door burst open letting in a sharp, cold blast of wind and, worse, blinding sunlight glinting painfully off of the endless snow outside.
Like vampires scalded by the light, we all put up our hands and shrank away. All Ana needed was a Holy Bible and a cross and we would have looked like the set of an epic monster movie.
“Oh, go
od! You’re up!” she cried out in an unnaturally loud voice. I cringed and she saw it. “Sorry,” she faltered, and thank God closed the damn door. Quieter, she added, looking at me. “We have enough gas in the car to get us to the nearest gas station. I don’t mind driving. If you want, we could—”
“S’all right, sweetheart,” Connor’s slurred brogue wafted up from behind a chair. I saw his feet sticking out. Apparently he was lying on the floor behind it. “Marvin’s flying us back at three.”
“Cool.” I nodded, grateful he’d made the arrangements. A flight would take an hour where driving would take four or five, and even sitting in a car seemed like too much effort to make at this point.
“Marvin?” Ana asked me, sounding unsettled and unsure.
“Yeah, yeah.” I waved away her misgivings. “He’s a good guy.”
She shook her head, as if that hadn’t been what she’d been worried about, but honestly, I needed to lie down again. Collapsing on a sofa, I did just that.
“So, we’re not driving?” Ana stood tapping her toe in the middle of her room. I swear, that toe tap echoed in my brain. I winced.
“C’mere, luv,” Connor called out from the floor. “Come relax with your buddy Connor.”
She spun off in a huff. I should go after her, I recognized that, but the gulf between what my brain told me to do and what my body could execute yawned wide.
“Gimme minute,” I murmured, slipping off again into sleep.
I woke with someone kicking my foot and yelling, “Pack it up! Ten minutes!”
Shit, I must have slept longer than I’d intended. The house was all activity, people scurrying back and forth, shoving things into bags. The kitchen was a mess and Ana was in there doing dishes.
“You don’t have to—” I called over to her as I headed into the bedroom. “Someone’ll come by to clean up after us.”
She scowled, didn’t look up at me and didn’t stop scrubbing. It looked like she was still in the bad mood from last night. Right then, though, I needed to pack.
Giant SUVs waited for us outside the cabin and taxied us over to the small, private airport.
“What about our rental car?” Ana asked.
“Someone’ll take care of it.” I hadn’t thought of it until she mentioned it, but I knew what I said was true. Probably the caretaker for the cabin. He’d find it sitting there, keys in the kitchen, and make sure it got returned to the rental agency. I had people to clean up all my messes. She just hadn’t realized that yet.
All of us wore dark sunglasses except Ana. None of us said much during the flight, including Ana. I tried to pull her over with me into my lap on the couch, but she pulled away saying she had to use the bathroom. When she came back she tucked into a seat by herself and closed her eyes.
“Arf,” Connor barked in my ear.
“Fuck off.” I swatted him, pushing him away.
“Looks like you’re in the doghouse, mate. She’s pissed at you.”
“Yeah,” I sighed. I was sure I’d done something, and almost equally sure that I deserved her ire. But there wasn’t a damn I could do about it on a small private plane with a bunch of people around us. Plus, I still felt like shit. There had been a time when I’d bounced right back from a heavy night. Now was not one of those times.
At the airstrip in S.F., things took a turn for the worse. Ana gathered up her bags and headed on her own to a car.
“Where are you going?” I caught up to her, pulling at her elbow. “Don’t you want to head back with me?”
“I’ve got a massive headache,” she apologized, not meeting my eye. “I think I’ll just go check into a hotel.”
“A hotel?” What was she talking about? She needed to come back to my place so we could sort things out and get back into our groove.
But just then, Connor called out to me, “Remember, we’ve got that thing tonight. With those guys.”
Fuck, I knew what he was talking about. He and Johnny and I were supposed to meet with Lola, Joel and a couple of people from the Super Bowl halftime gig. Most of the arrangements would all get handled by other people, but they wanted to talk us through some of it and discuss the short list of possible guest appearances. Apparently for the biggest televised event of the year, The Blacklist wasn’t enough on its own. We needed some padding with other pop stars.
“Yeah, forgot about that. Listen.” I tried to pull Ana into my arms and she didn’t exactly wriggle away. Nor did she melt into my embrace. “Why don’t you go relax. Take a nap. And we can hang out after I do this meeting?”
“Sure.” Her agreement inspired absolutely no assurance.
“I’ll call you,” I lamely called after her as she climbed into a car. She didn’t look up.
What was she so pissed about? Was it how drunk I’d gotten last night? Was she still mad that the other guys had come up and crashed our party?
I didn’t understand what was going on, and in the past with women I hadn’t ever really tried. Now in a situation where I wanted to unlock the secrets of the female brain, I found myself completely unequipped.
“Woof,” Conner barked at me. I shrugged my shoulders. He was right. She was pissed at me. I was in the doghouse and like countless men before me, I didn’t know why. Resigned, I climbed into a massive limo with tinted windows. I didn’t have energy just then for anything other than the path of least resistance.
My phone about had an epileptic fit on the drive, erupting with texts and messages and voicemails. Lola and Joel and a shit-ton of other people who’d been wanting to get in touch with me the past couple of days all clamored for my attention. I closed my eyes and rested my head against the back of the seat. It had felt so good to unplug. I didn’t want to be back on the grid, not yet.
But the Super Bowl halftime show would not be denied. Even Connor spruced himself up a bit for our meeting late that afternoon, with one of his pimped-out jackets. His preferred look most resembled that of a Vegas brothel owner circa 1979. Stylists had never been able to talk him out of it, and it had become his trademark look with long, open-shirted polyester collars and chains. I wondered, not for the first time, if he ever tired of it. I would have by now. Black T-shirts and jeans took a lot less effort.
But if he tired of it, he never showed it. Connor was on all the time and before I knew it, shots were flowing. Again. Turned out we all agreed on who’d be the best special guests performing with us. Or, at least they all agreed and I didn’t care.
Ana wasn’t responding to any of my texts. I didn’t know if she had her phone turned off or if she just didn’t want to talk to me. I wanted to go show up at her hotel, but that was the problem. I didn’t know where she was staying.
“You know where Ana is tonight?” I resorted to asking Lola, there with us at dinner.
She shook her head, no. “You’d better go home solo tonight. You’ve got until this weekend. That’s five more days until she breaks up with you. Keep it in your pants until then. Remember, you’ve got to look devastated.”
I nodded, feeling kind of devastated. But there, Lola had given me a good out.
“Think I’ll head home.” I stood up, excusing myself. Johnny nodded affably as always, but Connor balled up his napkin and threw it at me.
“Old man!” he called after me.
“Yup.” I nodded and headed toward the door. Paparazzi swarmed me as I made my way to a car. I could see the headlines, “Ash heads home early!” How sad, it was news that I wasn’t doing anything newsworthy.
Back at my place, I lay awake in bed for a long time. I knew it was time to make some changes, big ones in my life. I just wasn’t exactly sure how to go about doing it. It felt a little like trying to get off a train while it was still hurtling ahead full speed. The most prudent way to go about things was talking to the conductor about the path ahead, negotiating a rest stop, and checking in with your traveling companions to figure out how they felt about slowing down as well.
But there was always the other option. Hit the
eject button and hurl yourself right off. I knew there’d be a lot more fallout, pun intended. But I had to admit, at three a.m. lying in bed awake alone in the moonlight it seemed like the right thing to do.
I heard nothing from Ana until the next morning. Early, I got a text message:
Let’s meet at noon at Crissy Field. The warming hut?
I remembered taking her there, had it just been a couple of weeks ago? It felt like we’d known each other far longer. I texted her back right away, letting her know I’d see her then. Earlier if she wanted. But noon it was since I didn’t hear anything back from her.
She stood outside looking so classically beautiful in jeans and a Fisherman’s knit sweater, her natural curls tumbling down her shoulders. I wrapped her in my arms with sheer relief at seeing her again. She let me hug her more than hugged me back.
On her hand, I noticed she was wearing the engagement ring I’d given her. I guess that should have seemed like a good thing. But she hadn’t worn it a single day in Mammoth. When had she put it back on? And why did it give me a strange pit in my stomach?
“Thanks for meeting me, Ash.” She greeted me with the gravitas of a nightly news reporter. “We need to talk.”
That pit in my stomach widened up into a black hole. In my experience, prefacing talking with the introduction ‘we need to’ always meant something bad. If it was good, the person would just launch straight into talking. ‘Hey, let’s head to that party’ or ‘How about pizza?’ never needed a ‘we need to talk’ before it.
“OK,” I managed.
“Here, I need to give you this.” She slid off the engagement ring and held it up, giving it back to me. I took it from her, dumb and wooden. Flashes went off, exploding around us from behind every tree, even up in some limbs. Paparazzi had clearly been waiting for this moment. But I still didn’t understand what was happening.
Undone, Volume 3 Page 14