By Your Side

by Brenda Ford

“It… it isn’t your fault,” she sobs against me. “You didn’t know… you couldn’t know… I just wish…”

  I worry that she might be sick because she’s weeping that hard. I don’t like standing her holding her and feeling so hopeless. So useless. I know that I would do anything in the world to make her feel better.

  “I can… I don’t know, I can get my agent to contact the press, to get them to leave you alone,” I offer. “I don’t know how reasonable they will be, but I can certainly try to keep them off your back…”

  “But it’s too late.” She pulls back to look at me curiously. “You know that, don’t you? It’s too late to start asking people to leave me alone now. They have already found out everything that I don’t want them to know.”

  “What do you mean?” I narrow my eyes curiously at her. “What are you talking about?”

  “You haven’t seen? They know who I am, Lance. They know everything about me. People online have found out absolutely everything and now there’s no telling what will happen. I don’t know what to do…”

  “The Internet?” I haven’t even thought about looking online. How dumb is that? Of course, the online world is a million miles ahead of the print media, it always is. Things can be uploaded in seconds and the whole world becomes the equivalent of a journalist. Plus, with information being so challenging to hide online, no wonder this has Millie so freaked out. “I haven’t had a chance to look at the Internet today. I’ve been on set…”

  “Oh God,” she groans in actual pain. “So, you haven’t seen yet? Of course, you haven’t or you wouldn’t be here, would you? You wouldn’t want to see me if you knew everything that had happened.”

  Millie retreats from me, she can’t get away quick enough, and the sheer terror on her face is just too much for me. I shouldn’t look online, that would be the best thing to do, but I need to know all the same. It’s pretty obvious to me that Millie isn’t about to spill the beans and tell me herself, so despite my better judgement I pull out my cell phone and I take a look to see what I have missed. Millie is instantly right; the online world has discovered who she is and all kinds of things about her as well. They know more about her than I do from their sleuthing and I have known her for over a year. They know where she grew up, who she was friends with, the school she went to, who she used to date… the sort of trouble she got herself in to with her ex-boyfriend…

  “Oh, my goodness.” Without really thinking about it, I wander out of the kitchen and back in to the living room without really thinking much about Millie anymore. I’m too much shock to really process what’s going on, it’s almost as if I’m alone digesting this, not with her at all. This is bad, really bad…

  Abuse, beatings, hospital visits… The police reports that people who I assume are fans of me have found show it all. Poor Millie has been through a really horrible time with an abusive ex that it seemed she started dating much too young. As if that wasn’t all bad enough, the public are using this as something to drag her down a bit, to suggest that she isn’t good enough to date me because she got sucked in to a toxic situation. No wonder she didn’t want to tell me anything about this. It’s sickening and shows how bad people’s attitudes are.

  I fall on to her couch as I see something else, something even worse, something that must have really affected Millie. So much so that it made her run away from her life completely. Dante, her boyfriend, killed people in an accident and the local town people really turned on her and made her feel like shit about it with stupid attitudes. Attitudes which have only grown out in to the world now that more people know about it.

  Drug Addict Dante Booth Kills Family in Horror Crash.

  He is the one who took drugs, he’s the one who got in the car and had the crash, but people seem to think that she should have known about it. That she could have changed things. That Millie is somewhat responsible because she was with him. But considering the abuse that she suffered because of him, ow could she have done a thing? It makes me so angry on Millie’s behalf. This is absolutely crazy. I want to reply to every comment, to tell them that they couldn’t be more wrong, but if I interfere I will only make it even worse.

  “Oh, shit.” This is why Millie didn’t want to be seen with me. I can understand now. I wouldn’t want to be associated with anyone if it could put me in a position like this either. “Oh God, Millie…”

  What do I do now? Now, I really am helpless. What the hell can I do to stop this from making Millie’s life worse? Stephen wouldn’t be able to sort this just as much as I can’t. This is out of my hand completely. I can feel it surrounding me, squashing me from every angle, the walls closing in on me. This is a nightmare. And it isn’t even directly happening to me. I’m just the wick that ignited the flames and now the fire is spreading throughout the wood lands and there isn’t a damn thing that I can do to stop it.

  Chapter 12 – Millie

  I chew anxiously on my thumb nail as I wait for Lance to come back in to the kitchen. He will, if he wants to talk about it, if he can still bear to be around me. I suppose he won’t if he agrees with all of those awful comments about me. But if that’s the case then I have no idea what I’ll do. If he goes then I’ll lose every part of myself because he’s the only thing I’m mentally clinging to right now. His opinion is the only thing connecting me to the planet, once I lose him then I will know for sure that I can never escape my past.

  “What is he doing?” I whisper to myself. My foot keeps tapping hard and fast on the floor as my nerves get the better of me. “What the fuck is he doing? He must know by now. He has to have seen it…”

  I spin rapidly and grab myself a glass. My throat is dry and painful, I need some liquid to cool me down, but as I try and pour water in to the glass, it splashes all over my hands. I’m too scared and messy to even get a drink, to satisfy one of my basic freaking human needs, which is just stupid. I am a real state.

  “Just go and speak to him,” I scold myself, trying to snap myself in to action. “Remember that you didn’t do anything wrong, just like your father said. Go in there and be strong. Stand your ground.”

  Maybe if I can stand my ground with Lance then I can do it with the rest of the world as well. Perhaps I will be able to hold my head up high and show everyone that it doesn’t matter how much they want to take me down from behind the secrecy of their computer screens, they can’t destroy me… but I honestly don’t know if I have the inner strength for that. It’s all well and good wanting to be that strong woman, but actually being her is something else. I just don’t know if I can do that quite yet, it isn’t quite there in me.

  But I do need to at least glance at Lance, to see what his expression is. Once I have seen his face and I know how he’s feeling about everything I will be able to decide about what’s next.

  Oh God. My heart stops beating the moment I peer around the door frame to see Lance’s face which has absolutely no color in it at all. He looks even more shocked as he reads than I thought he would be. He definitely isn’t taking this well, which means I can’t be connected to him anymore. I need to get him out of here before he wrecks everything, before he destroys me. I can already feel a sickness swirling in my stomach now. And that’s not to mention the tears that are threatening to come all over again. I can’t cry more… I can’t…

  “I need to be alone,” I blurt out, probably a bit too loudly. Lance looks alarmed as he meets my eyes. “I need you to leave. Today has been bad enough, I don’t want to deal with you as well.”

  “But, Millie…” He rises to his feet and tucks his cell phone away. But that isn’t just a phone to me. Not anymore. It’s a weapon which holds all of the words to take me down. “I don’t like any of that…”

  “No.” My arms fold protectively across my chest. “I don’t like any of it either. But it happened. It’s my life. It’s what happened to me, so all I can do is live with it. Or try and run away from it. Whatever comes first.”

  “You don’t need to run away from me. Y
ou don’t need to escape. Not when it comes to me…”

  He’s stepping closer to me, coming far too close to me, infecting my personal space in a way that I can’t stand. I can already feel my lungs closing increasingly by the second and he’s only making it worse. Of course, I have felt more fear. When Dante used to get near me towards the end, that was an ice-cold terror that was on another level, but this is still triggering me and makes me ill. I can feel myself about to erupt with crazy in a moment.

  “I need you out of here,” I bark, my anxiety shining through my voice. “I need you gone.”

  “I want to talk about this, Millie. I want you to know that you aren’t alone here. That I am here with you.”

  “You can’t be here.” There is a thick ball of emotion in my throat and I can’t swallow it down however hard I try. “Being around you is what caused me to be exposed. You can’t be here now.”

  “But I don’t want to leave. I can’t go. You shouldn’t be alone right now…”

  I don’t care how panicked he is right now. I’m in far more of a state than he could ever be. The closer that he is to me, the more anxiety I get. I start pointing towards the door and when he doesn’t get the hint, I push him in that direction. This is much ruder than I would normally act, but this isn’t a typical situation. My desperation to get this man out of house completely over shadows everything else. I need to be by myself.

  “But Millie, please,” he begs as I take him towards the door. “Please talk to me.”

  “I don’t want to talk to anyone. I don’t want you here, Lance. You bring the press with you. Whether you mean to or not, it doesn’t matter. They follow you everywhere and I can’t stand it.”

  It isn’t easy, but I get Lance outside my door. He continues yelling at me, begging me to keep him with me, but I slam the door hard. Relief floods me once he’s gone because I honestly do feel right now that I am the only person I can trust. I don’t directly blame Lance for what happened, nor do I have any kind of anger towards him for his reaction to the horrible information that he learned about me and my past today, but I definitely can’t be around him either. There is already less pressure on me now that I’m by myself…

  Not that the sense of calm lasts for long. As soon as I catch my breath that I must have lost while Lance was in the room with me, the sadness wraps itself around me once more. It clings to me like a tight scarf and won’t let me go. I don’t think I have the tears to cry again but I’m certainly crushed and depressed.

  Ring, ring… Ring, ring… Ring, ring…

  I stare at my own cell phone like it’s the enemy, not wanting to answer it to anyone. The only thing that draws me towards it at all is the idea that it might be my dad once more. I did kinda hang up on him in a hurry because I wanted to see who was on the other side of the door. He might want to check that I’m okay.

  But it isn’t my father. At least, it isn’t his cell phone or land line number, but it is a local one to my home town. I recognize that even if I don’t directly know who it belongs to. I debate answering in case it’s the media, but to be honest I can’t imagine why it would be the local press. They have all the details of the case, don’t they? They have more than anyone else, so there isn’t any reason for them to call me right now.

  It could be someone who knows me, who gives a shit about me, who I could really talk to…

  “Hello?” There is a strange sound on the other end of the phone. I don’t know what to make of it. “Hello?”

  “Millie, is that you?” Oh my God, I freeze in a state of panic. This is a voice that I haven’t heard in a long time, and that I honestly didn’t want to hear again. Could this day get any worse? “It’s Dante.”

  “D… Dante?” I gasp out while sinking to my knees. Luckily, he can’t see me because I really wouldn’t want him to know that he can still have this kind of effect on me. “Why are you calling me?”

  My stomach twists up in knots. It’s been too long. Before the car crash, before he was arrested. I saw him in court, but I didn’t speak to him. I don’t even know what to say to him right now. Perhaps if he had given me time to prepare then I… well, I wouldn’t have picked up if I knew that this was him. I wanted to avoid my past coming back to haunt me, but now ever part of it is back in my life in the worst way possible.

  “I thought that after today you might want someone to talk to. It hasn’t been the easiest, has it?”

  “What do you mean?” There is no way that Dante can have seen what was online.

  “The news stories, the Internet… I might be locked up, but I do know what’s going on out there when it involves me. You’re dating someone, aren’t you? Someone in LA and it’s caused a media storm…”

  I don’t like Dante knowing where I am. Even with him in jail and no chance of getting out any time soon, it scares me. Just because I have spent such a long time being terrified of him. That isn’t a feeling to go away quickly. Especially with it all dredged up like this. I might as well be back under his control, waiting for the next time that things go awry, and I end up with bruises all over my body.

  The only thing that’s different, and it’s another thing that has me all worked up, is the rational straight-laced tone to Dante’s voice. I suppose he will have had to straighten up in jail, you can’t get drugs while locked up I wouldn’t imagine, so his craziness must have subsided somewhat. It’s still very disconcerting though.

  “Anyway, I’m sure that you’ll be wanting to escape it all and I know that the only place you feel safe is with your father.” I shudder. That man knows far too much about me. Why did I share myself so openly with him before I knew that I could? Well, I suppose because I was a naïve eighteen-year-old in love in the beginning… “So, if you are leaving LA to come back for a bit, I was wondering if you would come and see me.”

  “In… in jail?” I gulp, trying to swallow down the terror but it isn’t going anywhere.

  “Yes. I know that might be a lot for you, but since it’s all up in the air again anyway, it seems like the best time to me. Me and you still have a lot to talk about, don’t we? I think it’s time at last…”

  What the fuck is this day? I wake up in Lance’s bed, alone and on cloud nine, convinced that everything is going to be perfect from here on out because I took a chance… and now I’m talking to Dante about possibly going to see him in prison because we have ‘things to talk about’. I honestly don’t know what’s going on anymore. I think I might be losing my mind. Everything is jumbled up, nothing is where I want it to be, where it should be. I can’t even begin to imagine what all of this means, much less what I need to do next…

  Chapter 13 – Lance

  “She still isn’t back at work?” I ask the bar tender in The Scarlet Longue, starting to feel that sense of hopelessness crushing me now. “But it’s been three days. This isn’t like Millie at all. I don’t know what to do.”

  Of course, the guy working behind the bar in Millie’s place doesn’t care. He does the only thing he can and gives me a one shouldered shrug combined with a very blank expression. “Don’t know what to tell you.”

  I shouldn’t have left, that’s the main conclusion that I can come to. I shouldn’t have gone out of her house however much she wanted me to. That’s the moment when everything went wrong and I lost her. That’s why I have absolutely no idea where she is now. She seemed so panicked, so stressed, I thought that having me around was making her worse because obviously I have been the one that the press follows, but now I think I should have stayed behind. She was in a state and she needed someone. Why didn’t I fight it?

  Now, she won’t answer her cell phone, her house seems oddly empty, and she isn’t at work. I don’t want to conclude that she’s run away once more, but that’s exactly how it seems…

  “Oh wait.” Just as I’m about to give up and leave the bar, the worker grabs my attention once more. “Here is a note from the manager on the schedule. She’s off for the week. Gone back home. Will be back afte
r that.”

  A week… I can wait a week, can’t I? Give Millie the time and space that she so clearly needs, then allow her to come back to me when she’s ready to face it, when she’s comfortable once to deal with everything.

  “Yeah, sure…” I answer distractedly as I make my way out of the bar. “A week, good.”

  But I’ve spent such a long time on the Internet, ever since I first saw this story about Millie, and I know that she wasn’t treated well in her home town. I know that she was villainized badly despite the fact that she was a victim of Dante as well, so I don’t know if I can imagine her going back. Why head right in to the mouth of the lion? Things are bad enough everywhere else so why make it worse? It doesn’t make a scrap of sense to me. I don’t get it. Then again, people do the strangest things when they are in the middle of a panic.

  I need to speak to someone; I tell myself decidedly as I make my way home. I have to.

  All of my brothers have been trying to get hold of me over the last few days, ever since this all spilled out and became intertwined with me and my name, but I haven’t given them much back. Maybe it’s time that I do so. It isn’t easy to get all of my brothers at once, but I’m going to attempt a six-way conference video call just in case. Then, whoever I get, I will ask them what I should do and take their much-needed advice…

  It seems to take forever for anyone top pick up. I sit at my breakfast bar and stare at the ringing blank screen for what feels like a life time with my foot anxiously tapping the floor. Irritation circles through me, I find it really challenging to keep my head screwed on while waiting but I just about manage it.

  “Hey, bro.” Tim answers first, which is a surprise since he’s usually the hardest to get hold of. On his travels around the country, he often lets his cell phone run out of battery which makes me worry. But I’m glad that I can talk to him because he’s just a little bit older than me and we have always been close. “How are you?”