“She died.”
“She died?” Reagan repeats flabbergasted.
“Oh my God, how terrible! I’m so sorry Diana,” Brooke’s sympathetic tone warrants an eye roll from Jill.
“Thank you, she was in her eighties,” Diana sighs looking at Adam lovingly, “but she was more than a maid, she was a friend.” She takes hold of Adam’s hand on the table and squeezes it.
“Well, sorry,” I end up saying as she looks across at me. “For your loss.”
I wish I could sound as sympathetic as Brooke, even for the sake of a lost life, but I couldn’t master it.
“Diana also thinks, the two of us should bury the hatchet,” Adam declares, and he extends a hand across the table towards Simon. “If not for her sake, then for Julie’s.”
I can see the cameras move closer, Oscar’s face lighting up from at the hope of another spat between Adam and Simon. It’s silent at the table, and as I look at Simon, I realize he’s holding out for effect. Then, he slowly raises his arm and shakes Adam’s hand sternly. “Alright, for Julie’s sake.”
“There, isn’t that nice?” Diana smiles at Adam and Simon, “Maybe now we can all enjoy the last few days of this trip.”
“Unlikely,” Jill mutters.
Diana wiggles in her seat as she looks at me, the menu in her hands. “So, Julie, Reagan told me were going to make maple syrup tomorrow. How fun! It’s funny because I meant to schedule that for us a few days ago but things got so stressful with my maid and all.”
Or maybe you gave the pamphlet to your husband to throw away?
“Trying to take credit for Julie’s idea?” Jill asks gazing down at Diana.
“Not at all,” Diana remarks with a laugh, “just saying. Great minds think alike.” She gives me a wink, which makes me frown slightly.
Simon raises his white wine and clears his throat, “Then let’s make a toast, to no more drama.”
“No more drama!” Brooke agrees with a laugh as she lifts her wine. Feeling the pressure, I raise my glass of water and click it against everyone else's glasses. The only one who doesn’t toast is Jill.
The waiter comes to the table and takes Adam and Diana’s order. Diana comments on the red in Simon’s hair and he laughs as he tells the story of how the dye stains. I hear Brooke remark on how the red streaks suit him, and the jovial atmosphere at the table puts me on edge for some reason.
Maybe because even viewers watching from home will be able to tell how fake this entire table is being. With the exception of Brooke, who probably seriously thinks we can all be friends forever.
Something brushes against my bare left ankle and I cross my ankles under my chair. I pick up my spoon when I feel it again, and it definitely feels like a shoe brushing against my leg. I extend my legs across the table and instinctively glance over at Adam. He gives me a quick glance before drinking the scotch he brought with him from the bar.
Is he—is that him?
I dip my spoon into my soup and this time, something smoother runs itself against my knee. I wiggle away, lifting the table cloth to see Adam’s hand has made its way under the table without anybody noticing.
My mouth caves. What the hell is he doing?
I drop the table cloth and look at him, he smirks into his glass and I detract, looking down at my soup, my legs pulling closer to Simon. I let in a small breath, but I can’t help but gaze up when a heaviness creeps over me. Reagan’s looking at me, her eyebrows raised, no doubt catching my jumpy behavior.
I give her a quick smile as I pick up the spoon from my soup.
“I was telling Julie how I always wanted to try dog sledding,” Simon boasts to the table.
“Let’s do it tomorrow night!” Diana suggests.
“We were going to go ice skating,” Brooke tells her, her face falling a bit.
Diana scuffs, “That's boring. Dog sledding sounds like a lot of fun. As long as a horde of snowmobilers don’t ambush me again…” Jill lets out a laugh,
“I forgot about that. Sad I missed it.”
Suddenly, Adam’s fingertips sweep across the outside of my upper thigh and I jump. My knees bash against the table, shaking the cutlery, and causing my soup to spill over the edge of the bowl.
“Sorry!” I immediately apologize as everyone but Adam looks at me. “Foot spasm.”
“Are you alright?” Simon asks.
I push up from the table, and feel my chair skid a bit across the floor. “Uh huh, great. I’m just going to go walk it off. I must have pulled something earlier today.”
Simon slowly rises from his chair, “Want me to come with you?”
“No!” I exclaim, my face warming uncontrollably as I avoid looking at my ex-husband. “You stay here and eat. I’ll be right back.” I give them a final smile and back away from the table, faking a slight limp as I rub my right leg. With my other hand, I reach behind my back and fiddle with my microphone, managing to flick it off the second I’m out of the restaurant.
What the hell was that?
I’m crossing the lobby, but I don’t know where I’m going so I stop and turn back around staring at all the guests huddled throughout.
I can’t go back in there and sit next to Adam but if I change seats it may look weird.
Ugh, why am I even protecting him? I should just call him out on his behavior.
Only, he’d deny it. He’d give the cameras just what they want, Diana freaking out at me.
“Jules?”
I realize I’ve been staring at the floor to ceiling screen water fountain, looking completely lost. I turn around at the sound of my name and spot Declan coming down the stairs. He’s dressed in his winter coat.
“Hi,” I greet. “I thought you were at the bar?”
He stops at the bottom of the stairs, slipping his gloves over his hands and motioning towards the resort doors. “Few of the crew wanted to try the segway tours the resort offers. We’re going to head back to the bar after. What are you doing out here? Aren’t you supposed to be filming?”
I glance over my shoulder as I bite my lip.
I can’t go sit next to Adam again.
“Uh, no, they don’t need me,” I lie without control as I look back at Declan.
Declan looks over his shoulder briefly, “Do you want to come with us?”
I probably only have five more minutes before Oscar sends someone after me.
“Okay,” I nod. “Can you give me five minutes to get into my snow gear?”
Declan backs towards the door, “Sure. We’ll wait outside.”
Chapter Sixteen
I threw jeans on over my dress, grabbed my jacket, hat and gloves before running back down to the lobby. All the while looking over my shoulder to make sure nobody from dinner was coming to make sure I was okay.
I meet Declan and the crew outside and we head around the front of the resort, towards the left side, down a salted cement staircase. I see a wooden shack at the very bottom decorated with bright string lights, and lanterns. On the other side of the shack is a snowy pathway, lit by the same kind of string lights and tall wooden lanterns. It disappears into the dark woods.
There are several segways already parked in front of the building. They all have small but wide tires, black turning pipes that have bright red gripping handles. Shiny red rims hold the wheels in place.
It’s my first time seeing a segway and I didn’t think they’d be so clunky looking.
A man in a bright yellow vest comes out and assigns us each a Segway. He takes ten minutes to explain where the pedal is, the brake, and how to turn the turning pipe. He warns us to stay on the path and that there are halfway points if we need assistance. As he’s giving us a demonstration on how to work the machine, Declan’s phone begins to ring.
I watch as he reaches into his pocket to retrieve it. He answers the call, with his back to the group of us. I’m too far away to hear what he’s saying but he turns his head and looks ove
r his shoulder at me. His eyebrows come together.
Uh oh.
I bite my lip as he turns away from me and continues with his conversation.
He’s going to rat me out.
I watch as Declan ends his conversation, briefly glancing down at his phone before slipping it back into the pocket of his jacket. As he twists back around, he only gives me a passing glance before stepping up to his segway.
I breathe out a sigh of relief.
I know I have to confront Adam for what he did but I just need to figure out how to do it. The last thing I need is the cameras to catch me accusing him, and having it twist into a story of how I’m still in love with him. Diana would love that.
Seriously though, what was Adam thinking?
Suddenly, everyone around me reaches down to turn on their segway’s. I realize that the demonstration is over and we’re on our way. I turn my segway on, expecting the roar of a snowmobile but it’s actually very quiet. I step onto the comfort mats between the tires and lightly press down on the right pedal. I lurch forward against the turning pipe as my segway moves at almost a glacial pace.
This isn’t too bad.
I push down on the pedal and the machine rumbles a bit beneath my feet as it speeds up. I begin to follow the rest of the crew around the wooden shack and down the pathway the instructor directed us to.
The lights slowly zip past me as I keep my eyes on the pathway before me, the crunch of the snow below the tires is the only sound for a while.
I like it, it’s actually quite peaceful.
“So,” Declan’s voice comes up behind me, and he slowly coasts up to my left side. “Want to tell me why you ran off from the dinner?”
“I didn’t run off,” I defend, my hands gripping the hand rail. “I had a leg spasm and needed to walk it off.”
“A leg spasm?” he can’t help but laugh. “A leg spasm from what?”
“From—from earlier today!” I protest. “I probably pulled something!”
He shakes his head, his hair sweeping across his forehead, “Oh that’s a load of crap. When did you pull something?”
“I don’t know,” I hiss. “Sometime.”
“Well you should know,” there’s a sarcastic melody to Declan’s voice as he speeds ahead of me on his segway, “that your adoring boyfriend is about to form a search party.”
“What?”
I push down on my pedal so I can catch up to the producer and soon, I’m swerving next to him. “What do you mean search party?”
“He’s probably convinced you fell down some staircase from another leg spasm and crying out for help,” he explains.
“What did you tell him?” I pry.
He looks over at me, “I told Oscar that I hadn’t seen you.” My insides flutter with relief and it must show because Declan adds, “But I can’t speak for the rest of the crew.”
I look towards them, they’re a good distance away from us in the forest, laughing and swerving into each other on purpose. “Do you think they’ll rat me out?”
“Oh, most likely,” Declan sighs. “I would.”
“But you didn’t,” I say, and then glance back at the crew in front of us. “Maybe I can bribe them…”
He lets out a laugh, “With what?”
“I don’t know...pizza?”
He frowns, “They aren’t twelve.”
“Everybody loves pizza,” I tell him. “Doesn’t matter if you’re twelve or forty or eighty. It’s pizza!”
“My nana is eighty and she hates the stuff,” Declan tells me. “Gets stuck in her dentures and burns her gums.”
“Ew, God, gross,” I exclaim but I can’t help but chuckle at the thought of dentures and cheese. Declan just shrugs and I look over at him, “You call your grandma Nana.”
A soft smile forms over his mouth and he looks ahead, “And what do you call your grandma? Gram-Gram?”
I laugh, “No. I call her grandma, like an adult...”
I look beyond the trees to my right, past the string lights that light our path but I can’t see past the dark bush, even though the snow illuminates a kind of light from the pine branches. “This is kind of spooky.”
“Watch out for bigfoot,” Declan says.
I shut my eyes briefly as my chest heaves with a chuckle. “That was as bad as the beard joke.”
His laugh is low as he says, “I know…”
I speed up a little bit and so does he. I look over at him to find him smirking. “Want to race?”
I frown, concealing a smirk as I look into his dark eyes. “Race? What are we, thirteen?”
He shrugs. “I figure since were’ lagging so far behind and—”
I push down on my pedal midway his sentence and zoom away from him. I snicker as I hear him curse behind me.
“That’s cheating!” I hear him call out.
“You never said ‘Ready, Set, Go!’” I shout back with a laugh.
The pathway bends to the right slightly and I lean forward as I steer the seqway slightly to the right. The cool air starts to sting my face and I have to look down so my eyes don’t water. I make a nice curve in the snow but as I turn I can see Declan right behind me. How’d he catch up so fast?
I push down on the pedal, feeling my machine speed up again but when I push down on it again, I stay on the same speed.
“Ha,” Declan laughs right behind me. “They lock at a certain speed, cheater.”
He suddenly zips past me, moving at a fixed speed I can’t catch up with. “How did you do that?”
“I unlocked my speed safety thing,” he calls over his shoulder.
I glance down at the comfort matt and pedal, where my feet stand. “How do I do that?”
“No way,” he laughs loudly without looking back at me. “You’re an opponent.”
I clench my jaw as we both turn at another right bend, “You cheated!”
“You cheated first!”
That’s true, I suppose.
I push down on my pedal again but I stay the same speed. Just as I’m about to call this race, Declan’s segway lets out a huff and clanging sound. I watch as his speed drastically drops and he looks down at his pedal.
“What the hell?” He mutters as I approach him. “It just locked at a lower speed…”
I let out a haughty laugh as I pass him, “That’s what you get, cheater!”
I spot a fork in the path but only the left side of the pathway is lit with the string lights and lanterns. The right side has a few hanging lanterns from tree branches along the pathway.
“Which way?”
“I don’t know,” Declan answers, and I look over my shoulder to find him a few feet behind me, his segway stuck at a lower speed still.
“Pick one,” I tell him as I reach the snowy fork.
“Right. Maybe bigfoot will jump out of the bushes and throw you off your segway,” he answers seriously.
I laugh again and shake my head as I swerve to the right, “He won’t do that. He’s more likely to bear hug you once he sees that weird stubble you have going on. He’ll think you’re a relative.”
“That’s funny,” Declan calls out, his voice far from amused. “You’re so funny.”
The path he chose is much darker than I thought it would be. There’s only one lantern hanging every ten or so feet off a branch and the snow on the pathway seems untouched from other segway’s. There’s also a stiffer wind that succeeds in making my eyes water.
“I think we went the wrong way,” I shout to him.
After a few seconds, and a sharp turn to our left, a cascade of lights appears ahead of us, at the end of the pathway. I blink away the tears from the cold wind and spot the end of the forest. After about a minute or two, I reach the end of the pathway completely stopping my segway. I’m standing in front of a road, across from it a small plaza, brightly lit from the parking lot lights and store signs.
Beh
ind me I hear the buzzing of Declan’s segway and I grip the handrails with my chilly hands as I wait for him to get to me. Once he reaches me, I give him a big smile, “I win.”
He rolls his eyes and shakes his head, “You cheated.”
“So did you,” I protest with a laugh. “Cheated and still lost. How embarrassing.”
He smirks and runs a hand through his hair as he looks from me to the plaza. “Hey, look, pizza.” He points to the corner of the plaza to a small grey building with a revolving pizza slice above its door.
“Loser buys.”
Ten minutes later, we’re inside of the pizza chain, our segway’s outside against the building. I’m sitting in a booth near the windows and as I take off my coat, Declan sets down my pizza in front of me. He then sits across from me.
We bite into our pizzas and then Declan speaks, “So, ready for tomorrow?”
“No, but I haven’t been ready for anything when it comes to this reunion. Tomorrow I’ll try to focus on making maple syrup instead of getting Reagan to forgive me.”
“She’s forgiven you,” he says biting into his pizza again.
I wait for him to swallow before I ask, “How do you know? Because she had my number saved on her phone? That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Because she told me,” he says.
I set down my pizza, gobsmacked, “When?”
“The other day. But if you tell her I told you she admitted it, I’ll special effect your skin green for the entire reunion.”
I smirk at his empty threat and bite the inside of my mouth before asking, “Do you think she’s telling the truth?”
“Sure,” he nods, “I saw it the other day when you guys where filming. She’s not that good of an actress.”
“You saw it?” I confusingly frown at him.
“I saw it,” he repeats. Then he taps a finger against his temple, “I see everything. I hear everything. And I catch everything.” There’s a twinkle in his eyes that causes me to sit up, stiffly.
“What do you mean? You catch everything?”
“What do you think I mean?” he shoots back, raising his eyebrows amusingly. I take the second to scan his face. I can’t decide whether he’s trying to get me to admit something or whether he really has caught something, amiss. “Why’d you really leave the dinner?”
Reuniting Reality Page 21