Your Perfect Life: A Novel

by Liz Fenton

  They walk out a few minutes later, Chris with a slight smirk on his face and John clearly relieved. John nods at me as a sign that Chris agreed to all his ground rules. “Audrey!” John calls. “Chris is here!”

  Audrey appears at the top of the stairs looking stunning. Her hair, usually wavy, now hanging straight, her skin dewy and eyes sparkling with first-date anticipation. I quickly pull out my phone and snap a picture for Rachel. As I gaze at the photo, I wonder, when did Audrey become a woman? I’m sad that the real Rachel is missing this moment. I get a lump in my throat as I think of her, on location, in New York with Charlie, no doubt eating at all my favorite New York haunts, living my life. But as Audrey hugs me tightly before waltzing out the door with Mr. Perfect, I wonder if it’s the life I want anymore.

  John shuts the door and peers through the window to watch them leave. “Nice guy,” he says. “He better not break her heart.”

  “I know,” I say, and try not to think about the smug look on his face I caught earlier. I sit down on Rachel and John’s worn couch, admiring its comfort and making a vow to myself to get rid of my own uncomfortable furniture the moment I get back home. “Thanks for letting her go. Potential broken heart or not, it’s time to let her grow up.”

  He sinks into the couch next to me. “True. It’s just so hard. I had to stop myself from jumping in the car and following them.” He laughs, but I know he’s serious.

  I touch his arm. “She’s a smart girl, she’ll be fine.”

  For the second time today, he pulls me in for an embrace and I bury my head in his shoulder. “It seems unfair that Audrey is the only one dating,” he says. “Can I take you out this week?”

  I pull back, surprised. It’s one thing to slip into your best friend’s body and live with her husband who doesn’t seem to give a shit anymore. It’s a whole other thing to start going on romantic dates with him. But how can I say no? John really seems to be coming around and the last thing I want to do is send him back to being that detached jerk I moved in with a few weeks ago. I tell myself I’d be doing this for Rachel, that she’ll come back to a husband that’s ready to plug back in. “Sure, I’d love that,” before I can stop myself.

  CHAPTER 20

  * * *

  rachel

  “You know we actually need to get some work done at some point,” I say as Charlie twirls me and I start to lose my balance as my ice skate catches. He grabs the sleeve of my coat and pulls me upright before I fall. Charlie to the rescue. Yet again. If he only knew how in the span of just a few days he’d made me feel sexy and self-confident for the first time in years.

  “We’re doing research.” Charlie flashes me a boyish grin and I can’t help but laugh, despite my anxiety that we’re not in the office working alongside the producers and associate producers trying to secure interviews with the key players in the Ryan McKnight scandal.

  “Remind me. How is ice skating in Central Park research again?” I gaze up at the sun reflecting against the skyscrapers and grab Charlie’s hand to steady myself.

  “I think Ryan McKnight skated here once.”

  We’ve been having so much fun since arriving in New York last night, grabbing hot dogs from a street vendor, sitting on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art people watching and talking until we couldn’t stand the cold a minute longer, then ducking into a Starbucks for hot cocoa. I don’t want to bring us back to reality and remind Charlie that we still don’t have the exclusive interview with Ryan McKnight’s estranged wife, Daisy. That even though a crafty production assistant tracked down her cell phone number and I called and gave her my best sell for why she should come on, she’d told me she’d need to think about it and call me back. But that might never happen. Then what?

  I try to relax and enjoy the moment. Why am I always so high strung? Why do I force Audrey to do her homework the second she walks in the door from school? Why don’t I ask her about her day first? About boys? Maybe if I did, we’d be closer. And I’d know her the way Casey seems to in just a few short weeks. Maybe I’d even agree that she was mature enough to date. And maybe the photos Casey texted me of Audrey getting ready for her first date wouldn’t have caused me to fall into a heaping mess on the marble floor of my hotel bathroom. I was conflicted that she’s dating at all, while feeling guilty and regretful that I wasn’t there.

  Suddenly, a man with a long-lens camera is skating in our direction. Is he taking pictures of us? Just as I turn to ask Charlie what’s going on, another man with a camera appears and begins snapping photos, and I realize, they’re the paparazzi. I pull my arm up to protect my face, as if that’s going to help. They’re obviously taking pictures of Casey and who they think must be her flavor of the month.

  Since the interview with Ryan McKnight, Casey Lee has become a household name—this week even gracing the cover of People magazine (well, a square on the bottom right, but still!). Suddenly Casey’s love life is news. Should I have been more careful today? Was it a rookie mistake on my part to go to such a public place with Charlie? Were they taking pictures of us last night too? And how will Casey feel when she sees pictures of herself and Charlie in the tabloids? Ice skating, no less! Especially after she warned me I needed to keep things with him professional. I sigh, already knowing the answer.

  “We’d better get going,” I say, feeling defeated.

  “Says who? They already got their picture, let’s continue our fun.” Charlie skates circles around me, literally.

  I hesitate as I watch the paparazzi skate away, snow beginning to fall around us, thinking of Casey, knowing we should go, but wanting to stay with Charlie, here in this moment. “You’re right. They can’t stop us!” I skate past him awkwardly but he quickly catches up and I feel his arms wrap around my waist. For a moment, I let his hands rest there and lean my head back against his chest. Just as I begin to wonder what John would think if he saw me like this, another man with a camera ice skates past us and takes our picture. And I know instantly that he got the shot; the picture all the gossip sites will salivate over. I can write the headline for them, Casey Lee Heats Up the Ice as She Melts into Her New Man.

  “Let’s go,” I say, this time not taking no for an answer.

  • • •

  “What the fuck were you thinking?” Casey launches into a tirade the moment I answer my cell phone the next day.

  “I wasn’t,” I answer quietly, backstage at the studio we’ve rented. I hear footsteps behind me, spin around quickly, and nearly knock over a young girl who looks more like a supermodel than a production assistant. She tries to hand me a stack of blue cards for my exclusive sit-down interview with Daisy McKnight. The past twenty-four hours had been a whirlwind. From the time Charlie and I left the ice rink to just a few hours later when the picture showed up on TMZ, to last night when I spent two hours on the phone successfully convincing Daisy to tell her story.

  She’d cried throughout our phone conversation, revealing to me why she was choosing to stand by her husband. How she knew what the press was going to say, especially now that as many as four women had come forward, each making an allegation that he’d slept with them. So far, Ryan had only admitted to the one in the hot tub, but Daisy knew in her gut they were all telling the truth and suspected there were even more. That’s off the record, she’d warned, momentarily remembering who she was talking to. I have to do it for our five-year-old daughter, she’d said, her voice small, sounding more like she was trying to convince herself than me.

  I’d told her I understood why she’d want to keep her family together at all costs, thinking again of the photos Casey texted me of Audrey before she went on her first date, looking so beautiful and grown up (and stylish!). Thinking for a moment of my own potential indiscretion with Charlie and how if I did cross the line, where would that leave my marriage, my family, and me? Daisy had been surprised that I was so insightful about her situation because I wasn’t married and didn’t have any kids, did I? “I’m very close to my nieces,” was a
ll I could offer her. I hadn’t worked that hard since I tried to convince the PTA to sell wrapping paper instead of flavored popcorn for the annual fund-raiser (as I’m sure Casey now knows, those PTA moms aren’t a walk in the park either!).

  “Casey, we need you over here for a lighting check.” The stage manager came around the corner and motioned for me to sit in an oversized cream chair while an audio guy put a mic pack on me.

  Fiona glares at me from an identical chair across from mine. She’s doing the lighting check for Daisy because they’re both blond and about the same height. But that’s where the similarities end. Unlike Fiona, Daisy is natural. No plastic surgery. Nothing fake about her. In fact she seems genuinely sweet, a former schoolteacher from the Midwest who met Ryan early in his career when he came to the Mall of America to perform “Baby It’s You,” the song that would catapult him into ridiculous boy-band fame. She was working in one of the clothing stores there and he’d noticed her and asked one of his “people” to inquire if she’d like to meet him. Not having a clue who he was, but incredibly curious, she’d agreed. “And we’ve been together ever since, twelve years just this month, you know, the night he was with her . . .” Daisy had trailed off and I didn’t push her to talk about the fact that he cheated on her on their wedding anniversary. I just promised myself I’d handle the interview well for her sake. She trusted me now.

  “I don’t know what I’m more upset about,” Casey snaps, “that you went ice skating with Charlie and got all lovey dovey with him—which by the way you’re going to have to explain in a minute—or that you were wearing that god-awful coat. Wait, I’m zooming in now. Jesus, is that my old pea coat from college?”

  I slouch down in my seat and close my eyes, not prepared to have this conversation even though I know I owe it to Casey to have it.

  “Sorry to interrupt you, Casey, but can you please sit up a little taller while we check this lighting? We’re almost done.” The stage manager is hovering nearby and I know he’s anxious to get this done with only an hour until we roll tape. “I told her,” the stage manager says into his headset to the director in the control room.

  “Yeah, sorry.” I sit up.

  “Yeah, sorry? That’s all I get?” Casey spits.

  “Not you, I was talking to the stage manager.”

  “Can you focus on this please? It’s only my life we’re talking about here.”

  It’s not just your life anymore, I think, and despite it all, I can’t help but smile as I remember Charlie’s arms around my waist. How safe I felt. How sexy I felt, even in Casey’s old pea coat.

  “Are you even listening to me?” Casey snaps.

  “Yes, I am. Sorry, but I can’t really talk about this here,” I say as the roving cameraman positions his camera in front of me. I stay sitting tall even though I want to jolt backward, still not feeling completely comfortable with a camera so close to my crow’s-feet.

  “Oh, is that so? You certainly didn’t have any problem gallivanting around town with Charlie and suddenly you want to be discreet? Everyone knows you were out canoodling with him, even if they’re pretending they don’t. They’ve all seen the picture. This is my professional reputation at stake here. Don’t you realize that? Are you trying to ruin my career?”

  I shuffle the blue cards in my hand, reading over the questions Destiny typed up from the notes I carefully wrote out after my conversation with Daisy last night. I look around the New York studio rented just for this interview. I did this. I made Ryan McKnight cry. I got Daisy to agree to an interview. I’m the reason Casey Lee is on the cover of People magazine.

  “Last time I checked, I revived it,” I say, raising my voice, causing the stage manager and the supermodel PA to spin around and look my way. Fiona’s eyes widen and her signature scowl crosses her face, and Destiny, who was walking toward me with a stack of research I’d asked for, stops dead in her tracks and gives me a look as if to ask, are you okay? I nod my head yes, even though I’m not. Not by a long shot.

  There’s a long pause on the other end of the line and for a moment I wonder if Casey has hung up. I wouldn’t blame her if she did. I was that mad.

  Casey finally speaks, this time her voice more controlled but still icy. “I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing, Rachel, but you’re married. You have children. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think this whole Hollywood thing has really gone to your head and you are on your way to following in your new BFF’s, Ryan McKnight’s, footsteps. And P.S., you’re not the one Charlie’s falling for here. Don’t forget he thinks you’re me.”

  CHAPTER 21

  * * *

  casey

  I hang up on Rachel and throw the phone onto the bed. “Damn it!”

  Charlotte looks up from her blocks in surprise at my angry tone. “Your mommy is really effing things up.” I pick her up and squeeze her, trying to get the images of Rachel and Charlie doing their best Skating with the Stars impression out of my head.

  Charlie. I got an instant migraine when I pulled up PerezHilton.com this morning, shocked to discover my own face staring back at me. In another circumstance, I might have been thrilled to grace the gossip giant’s Web page, as long as it didn’t involve a sex tape. But this was different. Rachel was cavorting with a man I had cared about. Probably the only man I’d ever cared about. I’d never told anyone what had happened between us, and even now, thinking about it made my heart hurt. And here comes Rachel, having no clue the Pandora’s box that she’s opening, showing me (and the rest of the country!) the play-by-play of what Charlie and I could have had, even after I asked her to stay away from him. It doesn’t escape me that not only is she eclipsing my career in just a few short weeks, she’s also trumping me in the love department as well.

  And that’s pretty ironic, considering her love life seemed DOA when I got here. John barely even looked at me the first week, and I had to practically force any details about his day out of him at the dinner table, making me wonder how long they had been eating in silence. And she wasn’t kidding when she said he wouldn’t try to have sex with me. It almost felt as if Rachel and John had been living separate lives in the same house, something that both surprised and saddened me. I’d always put their relationship on a pedestal, so finding out it was far from perfect, that it was downright lousy, was beyond disappointing. Why hadn’t she confided in me? Had I really become so caught up in my own life that I didn’t even know my best friend anymore? I glance again at the picture of her beaming and leaning against Charlie’s chest and wonder how long she’s been unhappy in her real life.

  “Mom?” Audrey interrupts my thoughts. “Does this look okay?” She does a small, insecure twirl, her dress spinning like a top around her long legs.

  “You look beautiful.” Since her first date with Chris, I’ve suddenly become her fashion guru and we’re becoming closer than ever. At the end of their date she’d bounded in the front door, on time and sober (I’d done one too many segments on binge-drinking celebrity teens), and bursting with excitement that he’d asked her to the formal dance. Her happiness was contagious, and soon John and I found ourselves jumping up and down, holding hands and celebrating with her. I did my very best to brush away the inner voice inside my head that made me wonder if Chris was all that he appeared.

  “Oh my God, is that Aunt Casey?” She points to the computer screen.

  “Yes,” I say flatly.

  “What is she doing?”

  “Something she shouldn’t be,” I answer and close the laptop. “She’s acting like an idiot!”

  “Why do you say that? She looks like she’s having fun with that guy. She looks . . . happy, happier than I’ve ever seen her look.”

  I pop the laptop back open and peer at the picture again. Is that what I look like when I’m with Charlie? Not Rachel as me, but the real me? I sigh and think back to how my heart would skip a beat when he walked into the studio. That he was the only person there who seemed to get me. How much it hurt when he
wouldn’t even make eye contact for months after I melted down and told him never to call me again. And how I wish I could tell him that I still question if I made the right decision that day. “Yes, she does look happy. But she works with him. You can’t just go around ice skating with your producer.”

  “Why not?” Audrey asked. “If you find love, why should it matter where you find it?” She scrolls down the page and clicks on the other photos. “Don’t you want Aunt Casey to be happy?”

  “More than anything,” I say quietly. “But life isn’t always that simple.”

  • • •

  Three hours later, I hang up the phone and mark yet another hotel off my list. I’ve called half the hotels in the city trying to locate Brian, our body-switching bartender, to no avail. Even if there was a Brian on staff, no one fits his description. But I’ve refused to give up, calling at least ten hotels a day, hoping once I track him down, he’ll finally tell us how to get our lives back. I know both he and that psychic told us there’s a lesson to be learned here and that it has to do with a “promotion,” but so far the only thing I’ve learned is how to steam carrots and why Spanx are critical after having three kids. And with each day I’m here, I start to wonder even if we do make it back to our own lives, will I still fit into mine?

  As I walk down the hall to Charlotte’s room and pull the blanket over her as she sleeps soundly, I want to figure out what the word promotion means in all of this, but I’m also scared of what it could mean. If it’s the key to switching back, leaving here might not be as easy as I want it to be. As much as I’ve always loved these girls, I’d always thought of motherhood as a burden, something I vowed to never be a part of. Something I thought I didn’t deserve. Now, as I stroke Charlotte’s sweet face, I’m not so sure anymore.