Fix You

by Beck Anderson

  I think I hear Franca say “mildly attractive” under her breath, but since I’m not sure, I skip jumping on her and beating her into the carpet. For now.

  “Give me a break, Andy. I saw the way you looked at her when she walked in.” I like Jeremy a little more than Franca.

  “Until the press has proof of a relationship, there is no relationship. And I’m in compliance with my contract.”

  The waiter approaches the table with a tray of food, but even he looks afraid to get too close to the action.

  Andrew snaps his napkin out of its folds and smooths it into his lap. “Let’s eat.”

  It’s the oddest lunch date I’ve ever had in my life. Bar none.

  22: Glutton for Punishment

  BECAUSE THAT WAS SO MUCH FUN, Andrew suggests we take a little walk down to the shops by the restaurant. Franca wants to come along. And Andrew doesn’t tell her no. Why, I have no idea. Jeremy seems to have decided his point has been made, so he leaves, promising to return to the set that afternoon, presumably to get back to spying on his client.

  We walk with Franca ten steps ahead of us, her head buried in her cell phone, thumbs all atwitter with texting. I’m still waiting to learn why we didn’t just go back to his place or part ways until after the afternoon’s shooting.

  It could be that we’re blowing off steam. Andrew’s brow is a dark line, and his hands are buried in his pockets. His shoulders and his hood are up. Everything about him right now says hostile. I feel a knot forming sympathetically between my shoulder blades.

  He smokes too, and for the first time he seems to be doing it without thinking. He finally speaks, through gritted teeth. “I told you I like structure, but there comes a point when even the most docile farm animal strains against the yoke. I usually do what I’m told, but this sucks.”

  “I don’t know what to say.” I truly don’t. No one has ever told me who I could or couldn’t be seen with. My dad expressed displeasure over a few college or high school boyfriend picks, but nothing more than that.

  Franca stops a few feet in front of us. She’s spotted something in a store window. Suddenly she acknowledges our presence again.

  “I want to go in here.” We come alongside her, and she pulls me by the sleeve into the store. Andrew waves me in—his phone is ringing—and in a swift move, I’ve been separated from the herd. I’m alone with the toothy predator, and my one defender, who promised not to leave me alone with this woman, just left me alone with this woman.

  It’s a boutique. I shop at Old Navy. When I’m feeling insanely extravagant, I go to LOFT. This place has me in hives, and I haven’t touched a thing.

  Franca holds a blouse up to her. Does she really worry if it’ll fit? Maybe she recognizes the hanger as a cousin, because she bears a striking resemblance.

  Oh, yes, I’m being mean, but it was only a matter of time.

  “We should find something for you.” She’s talking to me. I notice that she checked to make sure Andrew’s not in the store. Excellent.

  “I’m not much into clothes.” I’m going to make an effort to stay on the sidelines here.

  A salesperson has wandered over. If the colossal Birkin bag and the colossal sunglasses still on in the store didn’t give Franca away as a movie star, the salesgirl will have a chance to ID her now.

  Franca pokes her on the shoulder and pulls her shades down enough to look patronizingly over them. “Do you have anything for her?” Franca points at me.

  “Oh my gawd, you’re Franca Delaney!” The salesgirl sounds Valley Girl circa nineteen eighty-five.

  Franca nods shyly. She’s quite the actress. “She needs something. What might you have?”

  This is going downhill fast. I do need something. I need a way to avoid bolting out of the shop screaming in terror.

  “You mean, that would fit her?”

  Oh boy. Here we go.

  Look, I’m not fat, but I’m not skinny, either. I run, but I eat too. I’m five foot seven, and I’m a steady size ten. I’m an eight when I take better care of myself. There you have it. Total truth-telling. I’m not a twig—never have been, never will be. I sprouted boobs when I was in sixth grade, and that’s all she wrote.

  The salesgirl is done giving me the up and down. “Size six is the largest we go. In the quality brands, it’s size four.”

  I purse my lips, looking for the choice words that might kill these women on the spot. I unfortunately know no such words, but I can’t help but say something. “I’m sorry, I missed it. Did the sign above the door say Big Heads on a Toothpick R Us?” I turn to go. “I’m going to wait outside with Andrew.”

  Skeletor has me by the shirt sleeve again. “You know this’ll never work.”

  “What do you mean?” Why I ask this, I do not know. Am I actually interested in Franca’s opinion?

  “Look at you. He’s way out of your league. You’ll slow him down, you know. Nobody wants to see a guy like him with someone like you.”

  Franca suddenly lets go of my arm and flashes more teeth than one human should have in her head. This lends weight to a theory I’m developing that she’s a wolverine.

  Andrew touches me gently on the shoulder. “Are you done?”

  And now I know why the fake smile. More done than you know, my friend. “Franca and I were just chatting. I’m ready to leave.”

  “Tucker’s out front. You want to ride with us, Franca?” Andrew seems to have cooled off. I’m glad. I wish I felt better too. I feel worse.

  Franca seems smug. I tried not to show weakness, but she seems to sense that one of her slings and/or arrows met its mark. That makes me even madder than the nagging feeling she might be right.

  She waves us on. “I think I’m getting a few things. I’ll be along in a bit. I’ve got a PA coming to take me out to set soon anyway.”

  So we’re done with her. I check to see if I’m bleeding. In the car, Andrew seems tense, still distracted by lunch. I decide against sharing Franca’s thoughts with him. He has to work with her, and he doesn’t need drama to get in the way of the drama. Plus, I’m feeling more and more like a complication. Franca’s little talk is just more of that, even if it hadn’t bothered me.

  We’re back in the garage of his place.

  “Here we are.” Tucker kind of announces it. I think he’s trying to snap Andrew out of whatever distracted place he’s in. I think he’s trying to tell him to pay attention to me for a second before he boots me out of the car and goes back to his Hollywood world where no woman is over twenty and no woman weighs over one hundred twenty pounds.

  Andrew only kind of snaps out of it. Suddenly I’m paralyzed with a new fear: it’s finally sunk in, and he’s regretting it. Sleeping with me. He’s regretting it. I bet that’s what’s up.

  “See you,” I say and try to get out of the car as fast as I can.

  “Hey.” He touches my arm.

  “Yeah?” I have a glimmer of hope.

  “You need the key.” He hands it to me, and his phone rings again before I can say anything else. I practically sprint to the elevator. We can talk later. Right now he’s late to the set, has to take a phone call, and I need a good, long cry.

  23: Oh, the Self-Doubt of It All

  I SIT ON THE EDGE of the bed. I know the tears are on my face, but all I can feel is the pain under my collarbones. This is familiar. After a while, I’m too tired to feel any punier, so I lie down.

  I fall asleep.

  The first thing I’m aware of is the crunch of leaves under our feet. Andrew holds my hand as we walk through a dark forest. Now I can see light beyond the tree trunks, and we come out into the clearing. We’re on campus—at college, where Peter and I went to school. Andrew looks at me, and he leads us to the steps of a fraternity house. It’s Peter’s old frat. People mill around, red cups in hand. It’s a party.

  Then we’re inside, weaving through the crowd. Andrew lets go of my hand, and I lose him in the crowd. My heart starts to pound. I climb narrow stairs up to the s
econd floor, and I try one door after another. The music throbs in my ears, but I can’t make out the song. Finally a door swings open. It’s a dorm room, two beds and two desks. The air is smoky.

  Andrew sits on one of the beds with a cigarette in his hand. Next to him is Franca. Her lips are painted bright red. She smiles at me and then turns to Andrew and kisses him, wrapping her arms around his neck. I shout, but neither of them pays attention. I look around for the door to leave, but it’s gone. Someone sleeps on the other bed under a thin quilt. I pull the covers back. It’s Peter. I shake him, but he won’t wake up. With no other way out, I go to the window, open it, and look down. It’s too far to jump. Suddenly Andrew is behind me, and I turn around. I lose my balance and stumble backward, tripping. I feel myself slipping out of the window, falling.

  I startle awake, the sensation of falling still unsettling my stomach.

  I grab a Kleenex and blow my nose. I’m shaky. I must have been crying in my sleep.

  “Kelly?” Oh, no. Andrew’s here, in the great room. I can’t tell how long it’s been, how long I slept. I jump up and turn on the TV, try to straighten out my clothes.

  Then he’s standing in the doorway. I turn away, ashamed of these tears. I don’t like feeling so vulnerable, so shamed.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Hi. I was just watching this.” Storage Wars is on. He looks at me, looks at the TV.

  This would be a great time to not be stuck in his place several hours by plane away from my house. I am unwanted and stuck.

  “You weren’t asleep?”

  “Nope.”

  “’Cause when I came home half an hour ago, I’m pretty sure you were asleep.”

  I give up. “I thought you just got home.” I try to take a deep breath to stop shaking.

  “Did you have a nightmare?”

  “Yeah.”

  He comes over and sits on the edge of the bed. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No, I have them a lot. It’s nothing.” I grab my shoes and put them on. I don’t want to look him in the eye. What I really want to do is get out of here. “I thought I’d try to catch a ride back to LA in the morning.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “Andrew.”

  “What?”

  “None of this makes any sense. You don’t belong with someone like me.”

  “You don’t make any sense. What Jeremy wrote into my contract doesn’t matter. We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing. We never wanted to go public right now, anyway. The boys need their privacy, and we have Boise to ourselves, the way it is now.”

  “Franca—”

  “Do not listen to a thing she says. Did she go after you in that shop?”

  “I’m the definition of awkward. Beautiful, creepy Franca doesn’t have to tell me that. I know that.” I pull a pillow up in my arms. Maybe I can make myself small enough to hide behind it.

  He looks mad. “Awkward? You’re real! God, you have no idea how desperately I need someone like you in my life. I lie for a living. I’m surrounded by plastic. Then you come along.”

  I stand. “You don’t know what real means. Real means that sometime in the next ten years, I will develop the Harrison chin, which is actually no chin at all. Real is outweighing that big-head-on-a-toothpick co-star of yours by at least twenty pounds. Real is having things in your past that are ugly. Real is a mortgage and crow’s feet and sometimes getting sick and tired of driving kids and doing dishes and sometimes even getting sick of the person next to you every night.” I flop down on the bed, covering my head with the pillow.

  He scoots next to me, and I feel his hand on my shoulder. “In ten years? In ten years I may or may not still have a career. I may or may not still have my hair. And you don’t think I’ve ever screwed up? God, let’s not start in on that list. Despite what everyone in the world thinks, I’m real. I want a partner who’s real. A real woman who’s raised two boys alone for two years. I want you. I want you, flaws and all. I can only hope you’ll want my very flawed self in your life too.”

  I roll over to look at him, stunned by his admission. He wants a partner? Like a girlfriend or a life partner or a wife partner or what? I didn’t see that coming. “I don’t know what to say.”

  He hands me a tissue. “Don’t say anything.”

  “Just once I’d like to look like a normal human being in front of you.”

  “You’ve got a bit of the ugly cry going, that’s all.”

  “And everything’s okay? You were so distant after lunch. You weren’t having regrets?”

  He frowns. “I was pissed at Jeremy, pissed at myself. And getting seven million calls from my publicist about totally unrelated stuff that distracted me. I didn’t even notice Franca. She was trying to keel haul you in that store, wasn’t she?”

  “It felt more predator than pirate, but yeah.”

  “If I was perfect, I would’ve had a clue about how you were feeling. I wouldn’t have let Franca get you away from me. Are we agreed that I’m by no means perfect?”

  I nod. I’m smiling a little now.

  He grins too. “Except my teeth, they’re perfect.” I hit him with the pillow. “No, really, I paid a lot of money for these suckers. They’re gorgeous.”

  I sit up and kiss him.

  “Watch it. You may still be a little snotty.”

  I push him over on the bed.

  24: Three for the Road

  OH, THE DAYS BETWEEN Ventura County and our Christmas visit drag—so slowly that I think I’m going to lose my mind. I’m worse than a kid, the way I’m counting down. I’m almost ready to make a paper chain like we used to in grade school, but I remind myself that I’m an adult. But an adult who happens to know a small boy who will make a chain with eleven rings on it for her…

  I’ve enjoyed shopping for the boys and my folks, but shopping for Andrew is at once insanely fun and acutely terrifying. I remember this from the early days with Peter. I want desperately to pick something that’ll tell him, “I’m cool. I’m amazing to be with. If you love this gift, you’ll love the giver even more.” But at the same time, if it looks like I’m trying too hard, I worry the gift will scream, “This one’s totally clingy! She wants to marry you straight away! Run!”

  I think the boys are happy about the new developments in my life. I hate to say I’ve been a nag, or overprotective, but I suspect I’m less meddlesome to them now that I have a few things of my own going on. And they do like Andrew. Anyway, they try to be helpful and suggest gifts for him, but very often the discussions sound like this:

  “Mom, he’s totally cool. How can you possibly get him something cool?”

  “Are you saying I’m not cool?”

  “Mom. Of course I am. Get real.”

  “So what’s cool?”

  “You should totally get him—”

  And this is usually followed by something that eight- and eleven-year-olds think is legit: a car, a sound system for a car, a game system, bling…Often things they would like to own themselves. Once in a while the suggestion is a puppy. That’s a totally transparent one, but again, this is like Hunter hoping Andrew would let him drive. They’re occasionally under the impression that adults have misplaced their brains altogether.

  I waffle, I vacillate, I have no idea what to get him. Finally one day I give up. The perfect gift is going to have to wait. Instead, I buy him a warm coat for his next visit to Boise, whenever that might be.

  I also shop for three little people who are a lot easier to please: Tessa’s girls. Their birthday on December eighteenth (five days until LA, but who’s counting?) is a nice diversion from the Christmas countdown. And having only boys, I enjoy shopping in the Barbie and pink-sequin sections of the store for them.

  Beau, Hunter, and I pile in the car and head over to Tessa and Joe’s for the girls’ party. I can’t even believe it. Genevieve, Jasmine, and Josie came into the world after Peter died, and here they are turning two. Life moves on mercilessly.

/>   Another merciless event is the conversation I’m about to have with Tessa. I’ve been to Ventura County, and I’ve been with Andrew, and she’ll see all of this coming from a mile away. Because I have no poker face. My only hope is she’ll be too busy with the hoopla of the party to notice me.

  We park down the street from the house. Joe and Tessa live on one of the “best” streets in Boise in one of the “best” neighborhoods. Tessa makes a house quite a home too. Their white house is rambling and shabbily chic, but definitely chic. She doesn’t have dog hair on her couch, I can guarantee that. But she welcomes everyone in as her family.

  The place is packed with her real and adopted families right now. All manner of friends, kids, grandmas, aunties—everyone packs into the living room, the kitchen. The party spills out into the backyard, even though it’s freezing. Kids howl with glee upstairs, probably jumping on beds, judging by the barely perceptible swaying of the living room chandelier.

  I take our presents into the living room. The boys have friends here, no doubt, and they’ve gone off in search of them. I wander to the kitchen in time to see a pony walk by in the backyard with Jasmine perched on it. She’s bundled up in a parka and looks thrilled.

  “I know, it’s totally ridiculous. Pony rides for two-year-olds in the backyard in the middle of December.” Tessa stands at the doorway, looking out at the line of tiny kids waiting for a ride. All of them hop up and down, either from excitement or the cold. The pony and the pony’s handler look very blasé about the whole situation.

  “I wouldn’t expect anything less.” I kiss Tessa on the cheek.

  “How are you?” Tessa looks at me for a second, slips her arm around my waist, but turns to keep an eye on the toddlerpalooza out in the yard.

  “Fine.”

  “I heard you took a trip.” She shoots me a sideways look.

  “How’d you hear that?” Tessa knows everything.

  “Your mom answered your phone and told me. Come on.” She pinches my side.

  “What was that for?”

  “I’m fully prepared to inflict physical pain here, Kelly Jo. And I have about fifteen minutes before Misty of Chincoteague out there leaves and the fits are thrown. So now would be the time to redeem yourself as a BFF and tell me what happened.”