by Sara Celi
Dad kept up with the small talk about work down at the garage and someone in town who planned on adopting a few of the foster kids from the county. While I worked on the meal, I supplied the right phrases and questions to keep the conversation going, but it didn’t change the fact that I felt dead inside.
“Let me guess,” Dad said. “You heard Tanner is in Cincinnati with that crew scouting movie locations.”
I stopped slicing the chicken breast. Dad stood in the doorway linking the kitchen and the living room. He had his arms crossed.
“You know I don’t pay attention to Hollywood gossip anymore,” I said.
“Bullshit. You’re my daughter, and I know you better than you think.” He laughed without humor. “So spill it.” He walked to the kitchen table and sat down, waiting for my answer.
“It’s nothing.”
“What did I say? Talk to me. I can tell when there’s something on your mind.”
“You’re right, there is.” I put down my knife and thought about where I’d begin. Not an easy thing to figure out.
“Are you going to contact Tanner while he’s here?” Dad said after a moment.
“He already reached out to me. He came out to the store this afternoon.” I threw my elbows on the table and covered my face with my hands. “He said the baby isn’t his. Lana’s been cheating on him this whole time.”
“Wow.”
“I know. And he wanted to apologize for everything he put me through, and what he put us through.”
“And did you accept that?”
I pulled my hands away from my face. “No. I didn’t. I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
I leaned back in the chair and studied my dad. “You know, I never gave you enough credit after Mom left. You’re a good man.”
“Don’t know about that.” He shrugged. “I’ve had my problems in the past.”
I knew what he meant. “Tanner has the same problem with alcohol as you do, you know. He says I make him better.”
A beat passed.
“Honey, I worried about you a lot while you lived out there. People aren’t the same as they are here. Lots of people with agendas, and not always good ones. Lots of temptations.” Dad narrowed his eyes. “But you cared about this guy, didn’t you? You still care about him. I can hear that in your voice.”
“No, I don’t. I don’t care about him anymore.”
“What did I say to you earlier? Don’t lie to me.”
My shoulders slumped. “I don’t know what to do, Dad. He wants me to come back to Hollywood and give our relationship another chance, but if I go back to LA, what am I going to find? What kind of life is that?”
“You also have to ask yourself, what kind of life are you going to have if you stay here?” Dad shook his head and looked out the kitchen window. “Last time I checked, Griffin isn’t the kind of place people are hurrying to get to. They’re trying their damnedest to leave.”
“He gave this bag before he left the store. I didn’t look at what’s inside, but it’s heavy,” I said, still weighing all of the options in my head. “Said there’s something in it I need to know. It has an envelope with it, but he told me not to read it until he left the store.”
“And what did it say?”
“I don’t know,” I said as I rubbed my eyes, thinking about it all over again. “I didn’t open it.”
Dad turned his head back to me, and his gaze met mine. “Don’t you think you should?”
The envelope’s contents spilled out with ease. A single handwritten note in slanted script on a crisp piece of light blue paper.
“Oh, wow,” I whispered.
Dad excused himself from the table, but I made a gesture and insisted he stay. He sat back down and waited for me to finish.
Brynn,
I need you to know one thing: You’re the only person who makes me feel alive.
When we met, I wanted revenge on everyone and everything. Lana had left me a broken shell; I hated my life and all of the things in it. For weeks I thought about nothing but revenge, and I blotted out the pain with more and more alcohol, always chasing a dragon I could never catch. That night you saw me in the parking lot, I had given up, and that’s not an overstatement. I was out of control, and I’d tried to drink myself to death.
And then you saved my life.
I knew I wanted you around. You, who didn’t take my bullshit, you who didn’t let me run roughshod over her, you who seemed stronger than me in a thousand tiny ways. I couldn’t get you out of my mind, and what’s more, I didn’t want to. But you also made me afraid. I thought opening myself up to anyone after Lana would kill me for sure.
Funny how things work.
When Lana told me she was pregnant, I wanted to do the right thing. I’d been raised that way, to take responsibility for the mistakes I made, and the dates lined up in my mind. Before I met you, Lana had a way of floating in and out my life post breakup, always teasing me just enough to keep me connected to her. The baby could have been mine, and I had no way of knowing the absolute truth. Perhaps that was what someone like me deserved.
That afternoon, I should have never let you leave. I should have been a better man. I should have stood up for you and the relationship we’d built. I should have fought for what we had.
I’m sorry I didn’t. I’ll be sorry for the rest of my life.
I’ll understand if this is still not enough. I’ll understand if you never want to see me again, if you want to wash your hands and be done with whatever mess I created in your life. But I need you to know this: I loved you then. I still love you now.
Tanner
After I read the letter, I opened the bag. In the bottom, I found a small bottle from Avalon Winery. As I read the label, the glass almost fell out of my hand.
“I can’t believe it,” I said. “He named the wine after me.”
There it was, stenciled in bold letters across the front, and surrounded by a graphic of twisted ivy.
“He means it,” I said to my dad. “And he loves me.”
I had a meeting and dinner scheduled with the film commission for that evening. On the way back to Cincinnati from Griffin, I canceled it. Rescheduled it. Even if I’d attended, I wouldn’t have been there; I wouldn’t have been present.
Room 231 at the 21C hotel had a cold bed and silent comfort. I tossed my key at the valet on the street, shared a fake laugh with him about a Hollywood star renting a Toyota Corolla, and bounded up the stairs to my room. Once there, I drew the curtains, ordered a cheeseburger from room service, and turned on Pay-Per-View.
Hours passed. Room service came and went. I ate the burger and barely tasted it. Thought about booking a room at the hotel spa and decided against it. Watched more mindless TV. Some more time slipped away, but I still didn’t feel much better. I took a shower. Surfed the Internet on my iPhone. Considered ordering a bottle of bourbon. For the rest of the night, I fought the urge to get blitzed.
As I lay across the bed flipping channels, someone knocked on the door.
“If this is about the valet sticker for my car,” I said as I opened the door, “I promise you I have—”
I broke off when I saw who stood there. I didn’t have any more words.
“I got it right,” Brynn said with a half-smile. “I thought you mumbled that when you walked out of the store. Room 231, 21C Hotel.”
She could have stepped right out of the pages of a magazine, and I recognized the clothing. Leather leggings. Black booties. A loose burnt-orange top. She hadn’t gotten rid of everything from her life in LA after all.
“Come in,” I said. Before she said anything else, the way she dressed gave her away. I had won. Goddamn it, I had won. I’d won her back, and I would never lose her again. That much I knew.
“This room is pretty nice,” she said, turning around in the middle of it, her gaze sweeping over the king-sized bed and the rest of the minimalist, upscale furniture. “I guess I should expect that.”
/> “Best hotel in the city.”
She nodded and bit her red lacquered bottom lip. “I read your note. And I opened the bag.”
“I figured you did. You’re here.”
“You meant every word, didn’t you?” Then she laughed. “Not that I have to ask again. I already know.”
He crossed the room and grabbed me right after I spoke. His mouth covered mine, and I gave in to him. It was like coming home. Our kisses had a feverish insanity, a depth they’d never had before, back in Los Angeles, before things changed. For the first time, we laid ourselves bare, fresh, and clean.
I didn’t want it to ever end.
After a while, he picked me up and took me over to the bed. I fell back against the mattress and he climbed on top of me. My shirt came off in a flurry of broken buttons, and I tore open his robe. I wanted him more than anything, and finally, I was getting him for real—Tanner Vance, without any prerequisites or shadows of the past. I moaned, and his lips found mine again.
“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said when he broke away a few kisses later and shifted his weight. “Don’t ever leave me again.”
“I won’t,” I said.
“Will you come back to LA with me? Can we start over? Do things better this time?”
“Yes,” I said.
And it was the truth. At last.
Eighteen Months Later
“Well, that went well,” I said after we climbed into the town car and it sped away, headed back to our home on Mulholland Drive.
Tanner grinned, then raised my hand and kissed the top of it. “You looked fantastic tonight.”
“I try.” I jerked my head in the direction of the disappearing theater. “They say you’re going to get an Oscar nod for that performance.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’ve got a lot of competition out there.”
I shrugged, more confident than him about it. Critics loved his portrayal of a desperate campaign manager willing do to anything to fix the Ohio electoral votes for his candidate in The Season. I hadn’t heard or read one bad word about the film, and people had nothing but accolades to say about his performance at that night’s premiere. Soon, people wouldn’t think about The Flash Returns when they thought of Tanner Vance. His career had reheated over the last year, and so had mine. In addition to a huge print campaign with Lancôme, I had my own major role in Boelyn, a historical drama about the sibling rivalries of Anne and Mary Boelyn. It hadn’t done as well with the critics, but I’d gotten noticed. People knew my name now, and the tabloids had stopped calling me Tanner’s arm candy.
The car wound its way into the Hollywood Hills, but then it took a turn I didn’t expect, and headed away from the house. When I asked Tanner where we were going, he didn’t give me a straight answer. Instead, the car drove up the hill and through the entrance of Griffith Observatory. The driver parked the car, and Tanner helped me out of the backseat.
“I love this view,” he said after we walked to the edge of the observation deck. “Never gets old. Never.”
A panoramic, sweeping view of the city and the rest of the county swept out before us. The city lights played and danced against the nighttime sky; most of the tourists had left the park for the day.
“I’ve never been up here at night,” I said.
Tanner wrapped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me closer to him. “We’ve had a good year, haven’t we?”
I didn’t disagree.
“I can’t help but think, that something is still missing.”
“What?”
“Well, we left something unfinished.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a rumpled stack of papers. My eyes widened. “This.”
“The contract we signed,” I said, confused, as I pulled myself out of his arms. “You still held on to that thing?”
He nodded. “I’m good at paperwork. One of my better qualities.”
“And the contract is—”
“Don’t you think that’s a little sad?” he said. “It was all business when this first started between us.” He looked down at the papers. “But I have to be honest you,” he said and ripped the legal paperwork in half. “I don’t think it was ever business for me.”
For a second, my heart stopped beating.
“Starting now, at this moment, I want to do this right way,” he said, tearing the pages into a smaller stack of scraps. He walked to the nearest trash can and threw them inside. “That way doesn’t fit.”
“Tanner, is this what I think it is?”
He had one hand in his pants pocket, and when he arrived back at my side, he took his other hand in mine. “I never believed I’d meet anyone like you in Los Angeles, Brynn. You’re the best, most consistent, most important thing in my life. I don’t ever want to live it without you.” He paused, and then took a small blue box from his pocket. “Will you marry me?”
A large, clear, princess-cut diamond sat in the box. It caught the evening floodlights around the observatory and sparkled.
“Yes,” I said. “Every day, and for the rest of my life. Yes.”
A thousand thanks to the people who believed in this story. It was so much fun to write. If you are reading this, I hope you enjoyed it. Individually, I want to thank Sean, my mom, Lisa, Mandy, Jenny, Lauren, Terra, Kevin, and the fantastic editors at Write Divas. I couldn’t do any of this without your unwavering support.
An overactive imagination has always served her well. Starting from age ten, with an epic tale about a soldier during the Civil War, Sara has made creating stories her life’s work.
After graduating cum laude from Western Kentucky University in 2004 with a degree in Broadcast News and History, Sara Celi started her decade-long career in broadcast journalism at a TV station in Louisiana, then worked in Oklahoma and Ohio.
Her love of the written word came to fruition with the publishing of her first novel, THE UNDESIRABLE, in 2013, and she has since published THE PALMS, PRINCE CHARMING, and NATURAL LOVE. She is also a contributing author to Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Power of Positive and a regular columnist for Cincinnati Refined.
Sara Celi calls the Greater Cincinnati area home. In her spare time, she likes to read, shop, travel, run, volunteer with the Junior League, serve on the Board of Trustees for Wesley Community Services, and work with Cooperative for Education, a non-profit providing educational opportunities for the children of Guatemala.