by C. D. Reiss
“He’s going to be thrilled.” I sipped my tea. Little sticks swam at the bottom of the cup. I missed coffee. “He can answer all these questions the way a good Southern Baptist would. She’ll believe her grandparents. Trust me.”
Milton was about to have a month to revel in his lovely granddaughter too. We were spending all of August in Arkansas. Then we were back to Los Angeles, and reality. Nicole would be off to school, her father would be unemployable, and her nanny would be in limbo.
“Is there a last number?” Nicole asked, lining up sweet dates and picking them off one by one as she counted them.
“One,” Brad said. “The last number is one.”
She screwed her eyebrows into a knot and tightened her lips.
“No,” she said. “Not one. That’s first.”
“Not if you count backward.”
“Silly Daddy.” From the garden we heard the tap of a gong. Her eyes went wide, and her mouth opened with excitement. “They’re doing the little gong!”
She threw her napkin on the table and scrambled off the bench. A monk who was reportedly 113 years old approached the steps to the deck. His gait was painfully slow, and his body had little muscle mass left, but he always smiled at Nicole. He must have been the reason for the question about how old people flew to heaven. It was hard to imagine this man in flight.
“She can come?” The monk held out a crooked hand to Nicole, who bounced to him without a thought. “Morning prayers?”
“I can do the little gong? The red one?”
“Go on,” Brad said.
She went into the garden with the monk and didn’t look back, chattering up a storm.
“We need to get her a gong for her room.”
“No way.” He brought his cup to his mouth, looking at me over the edge. His eyes were awake, and his skin was flush again.
The hardest day had been the first, when he told his agent he was indeed quitting Bangkok Brotherhood and reassessing his schedule. He had been in the middle of contract negotiations on two roles and lost them before the sun set over the mountains. Another smaller picture fell through when he became unbankable because he’d lost the other two. His March picture? Let go when the insurance company doubled his bond.
He laughed it all off and told Variety he was dyslexic. He met with the director of Bangkok Brotherhood in a nearby riverside café to explain. I didn’t think it would help, and he assured me it didn’t. He was finished in the business.
Nothing kept his body from mine at night. Nicole was in an adjoining room, and she didn’t cry for us to be in bed with her. Maybe she knew we were together on the other side of the wall.
“Home tomorrow,” he said on the monastery patio. “I never thought I’d want to see Arkansas twice in a month.”
“And then Los Angeles.”
We weren’t talking about who we were or how we were arranging our relationship when we got back. It was easy in Thailand. I was his, and we were both Nicole’s. Back in Hollywood we had questions over whether or not I’d be a nanny or a live-in girlfriend who took care of his daughter. Whether or not I’d work and he’d hire someone else. Whether or not Nicole would be confused, and how much. There was no easy answer.
But the breeze was so perfect, and the humidity hadn’t gotten sticky yet, and the chimes and gongs echoed through the mountains.
“I’ve been thinking about going home,” he said.
“Really?” I leaned back and crossed my legs, resting my teacup under my breasts as if it would protect my heart.
He put his elbows on the table. That meant he was serious. “At first I thought we should all just move to Redfield. If I ever work again, I’ll just travel.”
I tried not to react. I adored his family and even Redfield, but my dismay at being away from him must have been all over my face, because he held his hand up for a moment as if he wanted to calm me down.
“But I’d end up keeping the house in LA and without you guys in it?” He shook his head. “It would suck. So here’s what I got. You ready?”
“Probably not.”
“I think we have to define what this family is for us. Not for everyone else. And you have to define what you are to yourself.”
I was the most complicated piece of this puzzle. We knew that. If I was a caretaker for children, what did that mean for Nicole? And if I loved Nicole as much as a mother could, was I still her nanny? Would she feel abandoned if I got another job?
“I still don’t know anything.”
“I know.”
“Except that I love Nicole,” I said, “and I love you.”
“Let me ask you. Would this be easier if—”
“Daddy!” Nicole cried from the garden, the exact opposite of a meditative sound. The monks didn’t seem to mind. They said they rented out their huts to families because they loved children. Thank God. Because enlightenment was tough enough without a five-year-old’s demands.
“Yes, pumpkin?”
She’d stepped away from the circle of monks chanting and held up the little gong with one hand and the mallet with the other.
“Listen! I’m going now!”
“Okay. Go ahead.”
She sat cross-legged in the circle, looked back at us, and tapped the gong.
We gave her the thumbs-up.
“No matter what I say,” he said, still looking onto the garden, “it’s going to sound like it’s about convenience. But it’s not.”
“What’s a matter of convenience?”
The gongs vibrated, sending their harmony to the blue sky and the frothy clouds.
“I was happy before I met you, you know.” His eyes went to the table between us. “I was perfectly fine. But she came. She came first, and that’s a fact. She blew it all apart, and I held my life together with spit and chewing gum.” He looked up at me and smiled. “You know, if you break a vase and glue it back together, it’s bigger after it breaks? The glue takes up space. The cracks add to it.”
I put my cup down. He took my hand before I could put it back on the arm of the chair.
He continued. “You’re my glue. You’ve made me bigger. Better. And you hold it together. All my life. I’m nothing without you.”
I squeezed his hand.
“You were a good man before you met me.”
“I was worthless.”
“You said you figured out something about going back home?”
“I was just saying it’s not about convenience. What I figured. It’s not me doing the easy thing.”
“Can you get on with it?”
“You have to marry me.”
Surprised, I tried to pull my hand back. I tried to curl up so I could think for a minute. But Brad wasn’t about deep thoughts. He was about action.
“I mean it,” he said.
“Brad. It’s soon.”
“So? You’re not going anywhere, are you?”
“No, but—”
“Good, because I’ll chase you down.”
It was yes. Of course it was yes. I didn’t really have a choice. He gave me purpose. He made me happy. I wasn’t going to choose misery over him because we hadn’t known each other long enough. We’d bonded over the well-being of another person.
Maybe that was my worry. I didn’t have to worry, but I always did. I squeezed his hand and looked him in the eye.
“Promise me you’re not doing this for Nicole.”
“What do you mean?”
He knew exactly what I meant. He was making me articulate it.
“If she wasn’t around, would you have asked me to marry you?”
“You mean if I met you . . . where? At a bar? In the SAG waiting room?” He leaned back. “I can’t imagine you without her. My life changed, and you were a part of it. Without the life change, you wouldn’t want me.”
He picked his ass off the bench and leaned over so he was that much closer to me, tugging my hands closer to him. I knew I was going to say yes, because he was right. The man he’d been w
asn’t a man I’d take seriously. But the Brad Sinclair who quit the best job in the world to make room for his daughter? That was a guy I took seriously.
I half stood off my chair so my face was close to his.
“You know no woman can resist you.”
“You’re not just any woman. You’re mine.”
“I am. Always.”
Our lips met only briefly.
“Don’t kiss on the lips!” Nicole cried on her way back from the garden. “It’s germs!”
I pulled away, but Brad grabbed me by the back of the neck and pulled me closer, sealing the deal. He tasted like the salt of the earth and the breeze brushing through the trees. I was safe with him.
No matter where we were, we were home.
EPILOGUE
CARA
It was the one-year anniversary of Nicole’s arrival, and we had a huge surprise planned for her. A pony. We didn’t have a minute to fuck. Not even a quickie.
Nope. Not a second to spare.
“Hush,” he said. “Not a sound.”
Brad’s voice was no more than a breath in my ear. We’d left Nicole by the pool with Blue, Bonnie Greydon, and Perla, her nanny. We had so much to do that sex had to be quick, but I never promised quiet.
“No way,” I breathed back. Brad jerked his hips.
We were in the second guest bedroom, which was dangerously close to the play area. I’d started it. I could be getting dressed already, but when he picked Nicole up and threw her in the pool, laughing, his taut forearms called me. I figured I had ten minutes to get him off.
I’d closed the blinds, dimming the room into a few strokes of light that got in between the wall and the curtains. I’d got on my knees in front of him and took him in my mouth, running my hands all over him.
I couldn’t ever get enough.
He was barely in my mouth a minute before he threw me on the bed and took me with nothing louder than a gasp. I was on my back, sweating in the unreasonable early summer heat, sliding against him, my legs wrapped around his waist.
“They’ll hear,” I said, holding his face in my hands.
“Not if you hush.” Push, roll, a gentle thrust. He was going slow on purpose. “And when you come, you come for just me.”
My fingers pressed into his back as my body vibrated in a heated throb.
I looked him in the eye, nose to nose.
“Faster. Fuck faster.”
“No. You’re too sexy like this.”
His mouth said no, but he thrust inside me again. Hard. Slow. I was heated to a boil on simmer.
“I’ll be quiet.”
“You will. Yes, you will.”
Slow and steady, he coaxed an orgasm out of me, teasing it higher and higher. I bit my lips between my teeth as he whispered how much he loved me.
Family first.
Brad didn’t invent the phrase, but it would forever be associated with him getting out of his car in the pickup line at Nicole’s school to confront the umpteenth pack of paparazzi with the umpteenth battery of questions.
Why’d you back out of the Brotherhood?
What do you think of them casting an unknown?
We hear you’re being sued by Overland Studios.
“You guys want to know why I backed out on Bangkok Brotherhood?”
Brad had slapped the car open and the angle of the camera changed as the paparazzi taking the video backed up. He’d been mad. He’d come home mad and when I saw the video, I knew he only came home with a fraction of the rage he’d expressed an hour earlier.
“Because the guy who signed up for Brotherhood didn’t have (beep) to do with his time but work and (beep) around. The guy who almost got on the set had a daughter. That changed things. It changed who I was, and it changed how long I could be on (beep)ing set. She lost her mother. She needed me. She was first then, and she’s first now. Not when I get around to it. Okay? (Beep)ing first. Family first. Now get the (beep) out of here. I’m nobody. Git!”
Watching him lose his temper on the entertainment news that night, I took his hand. It was the only way I knew how to support him. Ken had warned about the blowback, finally resigned to the fact that there was nothing he could do to stop Brad’s impossible fall from somebody to nobody.
“I’m proud of you,” I’d said.
He’d believed in what he’d done. Nicole was first in his life. But as unstoppable as any actor seems, their livelihoods are dependent on factors that are invisible to the public. His career really was over, and he had to realign his idea of himself. That night, we’d slept all three in a bed like the old days.
“I’m scared,” he’d said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t want to do infomercials for juicers.”
“Give it a week,” I said. “Don’t make any decisions. Just decide not to worry for seven days.”
He’d reached over and took my hand. “If I didn’t have you, I’d be nobody. I’d be lost in the sauce.”
“You’d be her father.”
“All I’m saying is, don’t go anywhere. I’m hanging on to you. I need you.”
“I’m here.” I squeezed his hand. “We’ll get through this.”
Twenty-four hours after the video went public, the public responded.
My father worked fourteen hour days #familyfirst #Bradvsmydad
I’d rather be Nicole Sinclair broke than have a rich daddy #familyfirst #ImWithSinclair
My father left and got another family #familyfirst #Bradvsmydad
Check out my blog post on the real meaning of fatherhood. #familyfirst #ImWithSinclair
How many dads would give everything up for their kid? One that we know of #familyfirst #ImWithSinclair
My father missed my piano recital because he was drinking. #familyfirst #Bradvsmydad
My father never hugged me. Not once. It was like he was scared of me #familyfirst #Bradvsmydad
He didn’t get paid for the talk shows or the appearances, but he did them because he felt that if his fans were supporting him, they deserved an explanation. He became the poster boy for giving it all up for your family. He spoke for women and men all over the country who had made the same choice. He validated them. He let them know they weren’t the only ones, and their pain and their identity crises were his too.
I’d gotten so wrapped up in tomorrow, the next day, the incremental progress he made in people’s eyes that I never planned the wedding. It never seemed important in the face of his ever-spiraling career. Upward. Downward. We could never tell, and I didn’t want to distract him.
Truth be told, I’d been afraid that if I started planning a wedding, something else would go wrong. But nothing went wrong. He just got more and more popular.
Celebrities came forward to talk about the sacrifices they made either for their families or their careers. Michael Greydon first, with heartfelt stories of his children and why he only took movies in Los Angeles. Then others, until a national conversation about career and family became impossible to get away from.
The bubble grew and grew, and when it popped, so did the perception in the business that he couldn’t be trusted.
Paula had come back just as the internet was exploding with #Bradvsmydad. She didn’t contact Brad, who had changed his number by then, but me. I’d agreed to meet her at a coffee shop, expecting she’d demand something or another. But what she wanted to meet about was worse.
“I sent the parental rights form to DMZ,” she’d said in her butter-yellow linen pants suit.
“Jesus, Paula. What do you want? Is this blackmail?”
“I don’t want a thing. I feel like a first-order Judas.” She’d covered her eyes with her hands, and I noticed for the first time that her nails matched her suit. “The devil came over me and after I sent it, I tried to undo it but it was too late.” She took her hands away. “I know he can’t forgive me, but can you tell him I’m sorry?”
“But why would you do that?”
“I loved him.”
She sai
d it and snapped her mouth shut. Closed her eyes. Took a long breath and continued.
“I was jealous. And threatened like a cat in a corner. I felt filthy when I sent it. I just had to come and talk to you and tell you I was the one.”
I snapped up my phone and dialed an old number.
“That was shitty,” I said while it rang.
“I know . . . I—”
“It’s not like it matters. He doesn’t have a career to ruin right now, but if Nicole finds out, she might not understand why her father rejected her.”
“My father wrote us off when I was just little,” she said pensively. I was mad as hell and had a few choice words for her, but the phone had been picked up on the other end.
“Hello?” I said. “Ray? It’s Cara.”
“Funny you should call,” he said. “Something just came across my desk.”
“I heard. I was wondering if we could work out a trade.” I was about to overstep by a mile, but the tabloids would cross-check with the county and get those documents out in under an hour.
“I’m listening.”
“Access.” God, I was in such trouble when Ken found out. “Exclusive access to the new Brad Sinclair.”
Nicole was not good at surprises. She wanted to know what they were before they happened. So we didn’t tell her we’d planned anything for the one-year anniversary of her arrival on Brad’s doorstep. We distracted her with a playdate with Blue and Bonnie, and planned a pony behind her back.
Her grandfather carved Nicole’s new pony’s nameplate from the lumberyard in a few hours, sanded it, and got a coat of shellac on it. She was a calm roan mare. After a bottle of wine and a long conversation about our lives and where we wanted them to go, Brad and I had named the horse California Pie.
Brad brandished his father’s work. “Gorgeous,” he said.
“She’s going to love it,” I squealed, taking the plate from him. It was still sticky and it needed another coat of lacquer, but I wanted it on the stable when we gave Nicole the pony.
We had a pre-interview with David from DMZ about Brad’s upcoming animation voice-over and his newly-packed-but-not-too-bad acting schedule, then David got in his car to meet us at the stables and we blindfolded Nicole for her surprise.