At the Heart of It

by Tawna Fenske

  “Yep.” He set down his drink and grabbed a piece of pizza out of the box. “She owns Clearwater Animal Shelter. She also owns me, come to think of it.” He grinned and took a bite of pizza, but there was something in his eyes that Kate couldn’t read. It was somewhere between pride and sadness, which seemed so incongruous that she knew she wasn’t reading him right at all.

  Kate slid a slice of pizza onto her own plate and wondered if it would be weird to ask for a fork. Probably. She needed to just go with the flow. If she wanted any hope of persuading Jonah to do the show, she needed to come off as friendly and unassuming.

  Requiring flatware to eat pizza wasn’t very unassuming.

  “I have to admit I don’t know a whole lot about reality television,” Jonah said. “What’s your job in all this, exactly?”

  “For this show, I’m the executive producer,” Kate said. “But I’ve also asked to be on-site as a field producer.”

  “Is that unusual?”

  “Sort of. The executive producer is the one with the big-picture vision for the show, and the field producer is on the ground helping to capture footage and steer the day-to-day filming. In this case, I wanted to do both.”

  “That sounds like a lot of work.”

  “It is, but it’s important work.” She smiled, feeling a little awkward as she spread a few paper napkins over her lap. “This show is kind of my baby.”

  “I caught that.” Jonah helped himself to another slice of pizza.

  “So,” Kate said, taking a small bite before she continued, “you’re open to hearing about the TV show.”

  “Yes. May I first tell you what I’m not open to?”

  “This isn’t sounding like a good start for openness.”

  He shrugged and took a big bite of pizza, chewing and swallowing before he spoke again. “I just don’t want to waste anyone’s time here, so I need to put this out on the table.”

  “By all means.”

  Jonah cleared his throat. “I’m not willing to fake it,” he said. “I’m not going to make up handyman projects or talk about NASCAR or scratch my junk on TV or anything else they think will help me look more like an average, blue-collar guy.”

  “Okay.” Kate nodded and made a mental note to put No junk scratching in an e-mail to the network execs. “Would you be okay with continuing to offer the sort of blunt, no-filter commentary you gave in On the Other Hand? That’s the part of Average Joe that everyone fell in love with.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “I’m not willing to play dumb. And I don’t want to be made to look dumb.”

  “Understandable.” She took another bite of pizza as she waited for him to continue. “What else?” she prompted. “What are your other conditions?”

  “I’m willing to collaborate and be friendly with Viv because we are friendly,” he said. “More or less.”

  “I got that from the kind and tender way you told her to fuck off.”

  Jonah offered a small, chagrined smile. “Sometimes exes bring out the worst in us.”

  “Can’t argue with that.”

  Jonah leaned back in his chair and took a swig of tea from the bottle. A cat the size of a small automobile took it as an invitation to jump up onto his lap.

  “Get down, Porky,” Jonah said as he eased the enormous beast onto the floor. “Your dinner is cooling.”

  The big gray cat growled and sauntered away. Jonah turned his attention back to Kate. “I suppose Viv would say you can’t blame someone else for making you act a certain way,” he said. “That people control their own words and actions.”

  “You don’t agree?”

  He shrugged. “You can’t blame others for your actions, but you also can’t help how you feel. And sometimes certain people bring out the worst kind of feelings in you. It’s up to you whether to act on them, but feeling like shit never brought out anyone’s best personality traits.”

  “I suppose that’s true.” Kate took a sip of tea. “So is that it for your conditions?”

  “No, that was my preface to the biggest one.”

  “Which is?” Kate braced herself, hoping it wasn’t a demand she couldn’t meet. Hoping the network would agree to it, whatever the hell it was.

  “I won’t pretend Viv and I are still married,” he said. “I don’t know if that idea has been tossed around or if the TV people are jonesing for the happily married vibe they got from us in On the Other Hand, but I can tell you right now I won’t do that. I won’t pretend we’re in love or that there’s some kind of undercurrent of unrequited emotion between us. There’s not, and I refuse to fake it.”

  Kate nodded as relief sluiced through her. She told herself it was relief that his condition was fairly minor. The network would agree to it, she felt pretty certain.

  But she knew there was more to her feelings of relief. That deep down, she was cheered by the vehemence in Jonah’s denial of feelings for Viv.

  “I hear what you’re saying.” Kate dabbed her mouth with her napkin, even though she’d taken only a couple of tiny bites of pizza. “It’s true that networks love arced stories when it comes to reality tel—to unscripted TV.” She paused there, wondering if he cared one way or the other whether they called it reality television or something else. “I can’t make any promises, but I can definitely make it clear to the team that you’re not willing to fake a relationship that isn’t there. Under the circumstances, I feel confident they’ll be fine with that.”

  “Good.” Jonah chewed thoughtfully for a while. Kate watched as his gaze drifted to the windowsill where judgey-eyebrow cat sat watching them with disdain. A lean little tiger-striped cat tried to jump up onto the sill beside her, but eyebrow cat stuck out one paw and whacked the kitten on the forehead.

  Jonah laughed. “Denied.”

  “You know, her eyebrows aren’t her only striking feature,” Kate said. “That little spot on her cheek makes her look a little like Marilyn Monroe.”

  “Marilyn.” Jonah looked at the cat. “That’s a good name for her.”

  “She doesn’t have a name?”

  “She just came in. Owner surrender. When that happens, we usually come up with a new name for the cat in case they have negative associations with the old name.”

  “That makes sense.” Kate wiped her hands on a napkin and reached for her own bottle of tea. She took a slow sip and wondered why the hell he’d served it warm. “So your conditions sound reasonable. Is there anything you’d like to know from me about the show? About what the network has in mind?”

  She expected him to ask something obvious. The format, the timeline, the way his name might appear in the credits.

  She didn’t expect the question he really asked.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. Why are you so fired up about the TV show, first of all? And why do you give a shit whether I’m part of it?”

  Kate thought about how to answer. She picked up her pizza and took a small bite, surprised to find it still warm. She chewed carefully as she considered how much to tell Jonah about her reasons for wanting to make this show.

  Bravery, openness, transparency, honesty, Viv coached in her head. The acronym is BOTH, and it’s your key to connection with another human. Your ticket to understanding and being understood.

  Kate cleared her throat. “My father used to hit my mother,” she said.

  Jonah blinked. “Jesus.”

  “It was a long time ago. He died in a car accident when I was fifteen, so my mom has been safe ever since.” Kate fought the urge to look down at the table, wanting Jonah to see why this mattered to her. To understand the importance of this TV show beyond a paycheck. “I was really angry about it for a long time. All the way into my late twenties, actually. I was angry at my mother for putting up with it, and angry with my father for doing it in the first place. Angry with myself for not doing something about it.”

  “But you were just a kid.”

  “I know. I understand th
at now. And I understand the dynamics of abusive relationships. I also understand how to move past all that. How to break the cycle. I owe that to Vivienne Brandt and the words she wrote in her first book about escaping an abusive relationship. I read that book when I was twenty-eight, and it was like someone shining a flashlight into my brain.”

  She watched his face for a reaction, wondering if he heard the reverence in her voice. Wondering if it bugged him to hear his ex-wife referred to as some kind of life-altering shaman.

  But she was that to Kate, and she needed Jonah to understand.

  Jonah nodded, all traces of the flippant bravado erased from his face. “That book helped a lot of people,” he said. “But Not Broken was Viv’s best work.”

  “I disagree.”

  Jonah frowned. “What?”

  “I think the next book was. The one you wrote together. On the Other Hand was more than just a memoir or a trendy self-help guide. It made the issues relatable. It wasn’t just a woman on a pedestal giving her advice on communication strategies. It was two people—two very different people—giving their perspectives on communication and relationships and all the messy stuff that comes along with human connection. Jonah, that book changed lives. You were a part of that.”

  Jonah stared at her for a long time. When he spoke, his voice was softer. “That wasn’t me. That was Viv.”

  “It wasn’t just Viv.” She shook her head, needing him to believe this. “Your contributions may have been smaller, lighthearted pieces of the equation, but they were equally vital. They’re what got people buzzing about the book. They’re what made men pay attention and actually read instead of rolling their eyes when their wives brought home a silly relationship guide.”

  Kate’s voice had gotten louder, and she watched Marilyn, the judgey-eyebrow cat, shift positions. The cat’s brows lifted a fraction of an inch, and Kate imagined her remarking, “You’re laying it on pretty thick, lady.”

  She was, but she didn’t care. She needed Jonah to hear this. Needed him to understand. He still hadn’t said anything, and she wondered what he was thinking. Were her words having an impact at all?

  “Thank you,” he said softly.

  “For what?”

  “For what you just said. About the book mattering. About my parts of it. I know I’ve been acting like sort of an asshole about the whole book thing, but it means a lot to hear you say that. That it mattered.”

  Tears pricked the back of her eyelids, but she fought them off. “It did matter. It still does.”

  She looked down at the table, struggling to get her bearings. She couldn’t afford to get too emotional over this. It was business, and she needed to stay professional. She thought about picking up her pizza and taking another bite, but she wasn’t sure she could get it past the lump in her throat.

  The rumble of Jonah’s voice made her look up again.

  “Who was he?”

  Kate blinked, her expression so startled Jonah knew he’d hit a nerve.

  “Who—what do you mean?” she asked.

  “The guy who broke your heart. Who was he?”

  He watched her take a few steadying breaths, watched her glance up and to the left. A neurolinguistic indicator, sometimes an indication that the subject was accessing a part of the brain that forms fabrications.

  Or maybe she was looking at judgey-eyebrow cat again.

  “His name was Anton.” Kate’s words were soft, and Jonah could tell she was speaking the truth. “I mentioned him over dinner in Ashland.”

  “Did he hit you?”

  Kate shook her head, but she blinked when she did it. Something was off here. “No,” she said.

  “But?”

  He watched her swallow, and he kept his gaze on hers, channeling all his energy into using the subtle elicitation skills he’d honed in his counterintelligence training for the Marines.

  “Abuse takes more forms than fists,” Kate said. “I’m quoting Viv again, I know. But I’m trying to tell you how much those books meant to me. How much I learned about what a healthy relationship looks like. But Not Broken may have taught me to recognize signs of an unhealthy relationship, but it wasn’t until On the Other Hand that I understood what a healthy one looked like. That I shouldn’t settle for anything else.”

  Something tightened in Jonah’s chest. A pang of guilt, or maybe regret. He remembered the first meeting he and Viv had with the editor contracted to work with them for On the Other Hand.

  “You two have such an amazing relationship,” the editor had gushed, folding her hands on a polished ebony desk as she beamed at Jonah and Viv sitting across from her. “You have an important gift you can give people here. The gift of seeing what a healthy relationship should look like.”

  Viv had smiled and twined her fingers through Jonah’s, and Jonah had squeezed back as the lump formed thick in his throat. By then they were already sleeping in separate bedrooms, already talking quietly about “taking some time apart.”

  Deep down, he’d known then that they were past the point of no return. He hadn’t wanted to believe it, but it had sat there between them like an angry cat. Even if Viv had been the one to pull the plug, he’d known where things were headed.

  “We’d love nothing more than to set a positive example,” Viv had told the editor while pressing the tip of her toe against his instep. “To help other people.”

  Even then, Jonah knew she’d meant it. That was Viv for you. Maybe her words weren’t always genuine, but her desire to be of service never wavered. Her urge to help others, even at her own expense sometimes.

  It was the thing he’d always admired most about her.

  Jonah shook himself back to the present. Back to the woman sitting across from him with wide toffee eyes and a calico cat on her lap. She’d barely touched her pizza, and he wondered if he should have cleared his choices with her before ordering.

  But now wasn’t the time to be fretting about pepperoni. He reached across the table and touched her hand.

  “Hey,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”

  She nodded, then gave a small smile. “Yeah.”

  He thought about sharing his own story then. Telling her everything about Jossy and that horrible day eighteen years ago. He looked down at his plate, trying to form the words.

  “Owl.”

  Jonah looked up at Kate. “What did you say?”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “It sounded like you said owl.”

  “I heard it, too, but it wasn’t me.” She glanced toward the window. “I think it came from over there.”

  But there was no one there. Just the weird-looking black-and-white cat with the judgey eyebrows and the Marilyn Monroe beauty mark. Jonah looked back at Kate.

  “Weird.”

  “Very.”

  “So this TV show. Would we be filming at Viv’s house?”

  “She suggested it, and the network seems to like the idea. Some of it comes down to licensing and insurance. That’s Amy’s department, so she’s looking into—”

  “Ooowl!”

  The voice was more forceful this time, and it was definitely coming from the window. Judgey-eyebrow cat seemed to lift one brow, or maybe it was Jonah’s imagination. If a cat could speak, would it really choose to say owl? Her expression looked more like, “You people are fucking idiots.”

  He was probably reading too much into this.

  “I really think it’s the cat,” he said. “Judgey-eyebrow cat.”

  “You have to stop calling her that,” Kate said. “She’s not judgey. Just misunderstood.”

  Jonah laughed. “Funny. I think I said that to my sister the first time she met Viv.”

  “That’s nice,” Kate said. “That you stuck up for her. Viv, I mean.”

  “Sure,” he said, wishing he hadn’t said that. He needed to watch his mouth, especially around a woman who made a living in reality television. It was juvenile to be hanging up their dirty laun
dry so long after the divorce.

  He looked at the cat again, wondering what the hell her deal was. She had a sweet face, regardless. The cat stared back at him, then opened her mouth.

  “Owl!”

  Jonah shook his head. “Apparently she has something important to say about Strigiformes.”

  “Strigiformes?”

  “It’s the order owls belong to,” he said. “In the animal kingdom. It includes a couple hundred species of solitary, nocturnal birds of prey known for an upright stance, a broad head, binocular vision, binaural hearing, sharp talons, and feathers adapted for silent flight.”

  “Wow.” Kate did her own eyebrow raise, though it wasn’t nearly as impressive as the cat’s. “You really are kind of a geek.”

  Jonah grinned. For some reason it sounded like the best compliment anyone had paid him in a long time. “Thanks.”

  “Have you always been such a nerd?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Kate laughed and took a bite of pizza. She seemed ravenous all of a sudden, and he watched her wolf down the rest of the slice in just a couple of bites. Then she wiped her hands on her napkin and stood up.

  “Look, I know it’s important to you to get out of the shadow of the Average Joe thing.” She carried her plate to the trash can and dropped it in, then smoothed down the front of her dress. “To have the opportunity to be known more for your brains than your favorite sports team.”

  Jonah started to nod, then stopped. That wasn’t it exactly. “It’s not as much that I care how other people see me. It’s more about how I see myself.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I know I’m a smart guy,” he said. “Intellectually, I know that. But I haven’t always felt smart.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I grew up with dyslexia,” he said. “I’m still dyslexic, of course, but I’ve learned ways to manage it.”

  “Wow,” Kate said. “And you co-wrote a bestselling book and own a bookstore?”

  Jonah nodded and watched Kate’s face. He waited for the barrage of questions. The gentle probing he’d always get from Viv about how he felt about his disability or what motivated him to overcome it.