Fake Halo

by Piper Lennox

  “Thank you.” I practically whisper it. It’s funny: every other time Georgia and I interact, we’re deadlocked in some informal competition over who can get louder. Now we’re both so quiet, even the dogs can’t hear us.

  “Clara believes you now. That you didn’t leak her email.”

  “Yeah? Then why are you here, instead of her?”

  “She’s taking a shower before she heads to your place. I decided you and I needed to have a talk first, though.”

  “You followed me here?”

  “Maybe.”

  Bowie bounds back to us and drops the ball into Georgia’s lap, oblivious to the horror-movie gasp she gives.

  “Shit, that’s right: you’re, like, terrified of dogs, aren’t you?” I look around and realize how big a deal this is, that she followed me into a veritable canine wrestling ring. “You gonna be okay? We can step outside the gate.”

  “I’m fine.” Her voice shakes. Gingerly, she picks up the ball—with an Academy Award-winning gag at the drool dripping off it—and tosses it away from us. Bowie bounces happily after it, and she relaxes.

  “Whatever you want to talk about must be pretty important, then.”

  “It is. First of all, I wanted to apologize for the shitty comments I’ve left on your videos.” Maybe it’s the sunset, but I could swear she’s blushing. I figured this was biologically impossible for her. “It was childish.”

  I blink at her until it all clicks. “You’re Kawaii43?”

  “Who did you think it was?” When I sputter, she bursts out laughing. “Jesus. I would hope you’d know my sister better than that by now.”

  “In my defense, she’s given me some truly brutal criticisms before.”

  “Never unprovoked, I bet.”

  This makes me shrug, then nod. Fair enough.

  “Anyway,” Georgia continues, waving her hand between us, “all the comments are deleted, and you won’t find any more from me.”

  “Not all of them were that bad. A few times I even thought Clara—I mean, you—meant to help me out with them.”

  She shifts on the bench, hating that I’ve now cornered her into admitting she doesn’t completely hate me.

  “You’ve got talent. It pisses me off that you don’t use it better, that’s all. And when I started suspecting things were happening between you and my sister...I guess I couldn’t stay quite so bitchy.”

  “You just weren’t trying hard enough.”

  Her laugh lures a small one from me. It feels good to have a Hurley on my side.

  Just not half as good as it could, were that laugh a lot quieter and sweeter.

  “The second thing I wanted to talk to you about is my sister. I don’t know what she’s going to say when she shows up at your place later. Part of me hopes she slaps the shit out of you, because—recent developments or not—you’re still the jerk that blackmailed her. Or pretended to. Either way, still a dick move.”

  I blow a bubble, then suck it back into my mouth with a snap. “Trust me, I know. I’ve never regretted anything more.” Now I’m not so sure it’s the sugar burning my throat. I tuck the gum against my cheek and swallow a lump rising from my chest. “If I could take it back—”

  “Save the sap for my sister, Durham. We don’t have much time, and I’m not the one you have to convince.”

  “Aren’t you? That’s why Clara didn’t tell you about us. She knew you’d be pissed at her.” I shrug with my hands. “And kill me for blackmailing her, but still.”

  “Look, I’m not gonna lie and say you’re the guy I’d choose for her. You’re about as far from Prince Charming as that piss-covered ramp over there.”

  “Yeah. Guess Sir Ewan fit your standards for Clara better than I ever could.”

  “He would have...except that Clara told me everything about him, too. So he’s that pile of sun-dried shit next to the piss-covered ramp, as far as I’m concerned.”

  Despite myself—despite everything—I smile.

  “My sister really likes you, Wes.” Georgia flattens her sarcasm. “I’ve never seen her talk about a guy the way she talks about you. Even when she was, like...sobbing over some of the shit she told me, I knew she still had some heavy feelings about it. Whatever you two had.”

  The only thing worse than picturing Clara crying over me is that I just sit here in silence, while Georgia waits for an answer I can’t give her. I don’t know what we had, either.

  All I know is that it was incredible, and I ruined it. Yeah, I wasn’t responsible for that email leak and everything that followed—but I lied to her from the start, as soon as I held her secrets over her head in that coffee shop. I ruined us before we even began.

  Bowie comes back and spits the ball at Georgia. This time, she’s able to throw it without cringing or gagging, though I think I hear her curse under her breath once he’s gone.

  “Our dad left when we were kids,” she says suddenly.

  I nod. “She told me.”

  “There’s another hint she’s crazy about you,” she laughs, a little darkly. “She doesn’t tell anyone that. But anyway, my point is that...that there’s no one around to give you that ‘hurt my daughter, and I’ll fucking end you’ speech.”

  I watch her drag her expensive-looking shoes, much more generic sandals than Clara would ever pick, through the balding grass under our bench.

  “But there’s you.”

  With her smile bitter and drawn between her teeth, she gives a slow-motion nod and braids her hands on her lap. “There’s me. Here to tell you that you already hurt my sister once...but she still cares about you. You’ve still got a shot.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.”

  “I know her better than anyone. So believe me, you still have a chance with her. The look on her face when she told me she was going to see you today...I could tell.”

  It’s undeserved, the hope that fishes my heart out of the black hole in my chest. It shouldn’t be this easy for me to believe Clara will take me back.

  “So you’re here to tell me if I ever hurt your sister a second time, you’ll fucking end me?”

  “I won’t have to.” Georgia stands and brushes at the slobber Bowie left on her shorts, making a face until she gets to the hand sanitizer pole. Looking back at me, she says, “If you hurt her a second time, she’ll never trust you again. That’ll be it for you. And we both know you’ll be your own end, Durham.”

  Involuntarily, my hands clench into fists—remembering all too well the moment I realized I’d fucked things up with Clara, regardless of where her email leaked from. It was when she blocked me.

  All I’d wanted was to grab a bunch of pills and block out the world.

  I hadn’t, thank God. But the urge was there. I’d wanted to destroy my life as thoroughly as I’d accidentally destroyed hers.

  So Georgia might be right. If I ever lose Clara again, maybe I would cope with old habits and be my own end.

  Or maybe I’d stand up and face it, like I did this time around. There’s really no way to know.

  Luckily, I don’t plan to ever find out.

  Forty

  I knock again. And again. The other side of the door gives me nothing but silence. Even Bowie’s skittering footsteps and happy bark aren’t there.

  I press my forehead to the door and shut my eyes, praying this doesn’t mean what I think it does.

  He wouldn’t move away. Not without telling me, at least.

  Right?

  “Wouldn’t try selling your Girl Scout cookies there, princess. Word is that guy’s a huge asshole.”

  I spin to find Wes, stepping off the elevator.

  Two seconds later, Bowie has his paws on my chest, licking my face with “miss you” whines like I was gone for years.

  “Down, Bowie!” Wes wrestles him away and looks up at me, panting. “Though I have to admit, boy: you’ve got the right idea.”

  I smile, just a little. “You want to lick my face, too?”

  “And a few other plac
es.”

  For all the jokes, there’s tension. Miles of it. Tons. Every unit you can possibly use to measure loneliness and heartache and pain—it’s caving in on us when he unlocks the door, lets Bowie charge inside, and waits for me to step over the threshold.

  After a moment, I do.

  “So. I saw your sister’s video.”

  “Yeah? Little cheesy for my tastes.”

  “I don’t know, she made some good points.” His Jim Morrison canvas is crooked. I right it. “The whole ‘just hair’ thing, for instance.”

  This is what I rehearsed on my walk here, but I didn’t get much further than that.

  Words escaped me, out there mingling with all the New York lives I could normally spend hours wondering about, but today had to ignore. I’d entered Wes’s lobby hoping I’d find the rest of my little speech once I saw his face.

  The only problem?

  I managed to forget exactly how stunning that face is in person.

  When he lunges across the floor to kiss me, I let him swallow up whatever words I might have found. I give him moans and sighs of relief that match his own because God, I missed this.

  I needed this.

  His hands frame my face before he breaks the kiss, both of us panting as his forehead rests against mine.

  “Sorry for interrupting.” He swallows, his thumb running along my bottom lip while his stare drugs my heart into a slow, lilting song. “Continue.”

  “I, uh...I’m not sure what I was going to say, anyway,” I confess, which makes us both laugh. Even if I’d had every last sentence planned, his kiss would’ve wiped it clean. A kiss like that could erase every word in the English language.

  “You were talking about my sister,” he reminds me, adjusting himself between us, “which, frankly, kills the mood.”

  I laugh again and step away. It’s not easy, but I know I need just a little of the distance we’ve built these last few days if I want to close it completely.

  “Long story short,” I sigh, dragging my hand through a clump of dog fur on the back of his sofa, “I believe you now. That you didn’t leak the email. I’m sorry I didn’t listen before.”

  “You were right to think I was lying.” Wes goes to the kitchen and pours some dog food into Bowie’s dish, I assume to distract him; it’s still an hour before his dinnertime. “I mean, I lied about keeping the email.”

  In a perfect world, I’d have a response to this. But I’ve got twenty-four years of proof this world is as imperfect as the things that inhabit it.

  Wes motions to the bedroom, then holds up his palms when I hesitate. “I won’t touch you, no matter how much it’s killing me not to. It’s just for privacy from a certain someone.”

  I chuckle and look at Bowie, who, right now, is content to wolf down kibble, but will no doubt bring me every toy in his arsenal once he’s finished. If this conversation’s going to happen, we need a distraction-free zone.

  Not that Wes’s bedroom falls under that category. The second he shuts the door behind us, I inhale the scent of him in the air. I look at the wrinkles of his unmade bed. I laugh at his armchair, once again covered in clothes.

  “Waiting for me?” I ask, nodding at it.

  He smiles, but shakes his head. “I promise, you’ll never have to fold my shirts again. I’ve just been too...out of it, I guess, to bother with laundry.”

  “Out of it,” I repeat. “Is that all?”

  “You know it’s not. Just a horrible euphemism for what I really feel. Depressed as shit. Missing you so much it hurts.” Wes sits on the floor in front of his window; I do the same. “Hating myself for ever pretending to blackmail you.”

  “The email still would’ve gotten out, anyway.” I peel my thumbnail, taking half the polish on that finger with it. “The screenshot’s from just two minutes after I sent it. So whoever hacked you already had it.”

  He nods with a long, resigned kind of sigh that shows he’s obsessed over this truth for days, but still hasn’t accepted it.

  “Do you know who hacked you?”

  For a second, his face darkens into that old “fuck the world” look tabloids were so good at catching, during his pill years.

  “Remember when I told you my agent was pissed I wouldn’t do the reunion special, or any of that endorsement shit he lined up for me?” He flicks a bottle cap on the floor. It slides away and bounces off the leg of the chair. “That I wouldn’t have been one bit surprised if he invented a scandal for me soon, since I never gave him anything better?”

  “Oh, my God. You think he did it?”

  “I know he did it. Got a text from an unknown number telling me if I didn’t say yes to the Chases reunion, they were going to release proof of the molestation cover-up.”

  “How did you figure out it was your agent messaging you?”

  “Because there wasn’t one ounce of evidence on my laptop, or in my emails. All of that stuff happened behind closed doors. Only my agent, Burke, and one of his lawyers knew about it. And since Burke is dead and his lawyer’s an eighty-something-year-old stroke victim, they weren’t exactly top suspects.”

  Grimly, Wes taps out a too-peppy beat on the floor. “The texts had some details that….” He shakes his head and exhales towards the window. “Well, let’s just say Louis was the only person I ever halfway trusted with details, and it didn’t do me a damn bit of good. But it did help me figure out who it was.”

  Looking back at me, he shrugs. “That, and the fact he so conveniently vanished off the face of the earth about an hour later, when I texted his real number that I knew it was him. But, yeah. Wasn’t a tough one to crack. ”

  “Wes...I’m so sorry.”

  He smirks at my tears, wiping them away with his thumb. “Don’t waste those on me, sweetheart. I’ve lived through much worse than a backstabbing agent. Cry for yourself, or my sister—but not me.”

  “No,” I correct, “I’m sorry that Burke…did that to you.”

  His thumb slides to my chin, resting there. Wordlessly, he nods and looks away.

  “But I guess, now that you mention it, I am sorry Louis betrayed you like that. And I’m sorry your secret got out. You clearly didn’t want anyone to know, if you hid it all these years. That scandal—”

  “Wasn’t released,” he interjects, “by my agent. That was me.”

  I draw back. “You? But why?” My arms flail towards the window. “All you had to do was that stupid reunion special.”

  “A reunion special glorifying Bernard Chase, and Burke by extension. And I wasn’t about to let that happen.”

  At a loss, I shut up. That would be hard. Downright impossible, probably.

  “Besides…it wouldn’t have mattered whether I did the special or not, because I knew Louis would never release the info. He was part of that cover-up, too. So I called his bluff. His mistake was thinking I was still desperate to keep that shit under wraps.”

  “If you knew he wouldn’t tell, regardless, then why release the story?”

  Wes scoots closer like he’s going to kiss me again, but doesn’t. He just hovers unbearably close, like he needs me in his orbit to keep talking.

  “Letting the world turn Burke into some kind of sitcom deity, gone too soon, all that bullshit...he doesn’t deserve it,” he says. “Even in death. And I can’t stand the thought that me letting him off the hook might have given him the chance to do what he did to me, to someone else. For all I know, they’re staying silent because they think they were the only one.”

  “What if you were the only one?”

  “I hope I am. I really fucking do,” he laughs, the sound so choked I almost reach for him.

  I sit on my hands until the urge passes. Not yet.

  This isn’t an easy conversation, but one he needs to have.

  He goes on. “But if you mean, ‘What if it was all for nothing?’” He shakes his head. “It won’t be. At the very least, I deserve to not have that secret.”

  “Wes,” I say, and my voice shows
every bit of heartbreak I’m feeling for him, “revealing your secret as some kind of—of penance, for mine and your sister’s secrets getting out? You didn’t have to do that. You suffering won’t make us feel better.”

  “Not ‘deserve’ like as a punishment. I mean it like….”

  I wait, even though I already know.

  “Freedom,” he says, finally. “Maybe that was why I gave you such a hard time about your secret. Telling you it wasn’t a big deal like you thought. Same with my sister’s. Because I knew how much it had to be weighing on you guys, and how much better you’d feel if you could stop shouldering that. Which makes me a huge fucking hypocrite, I know.”

  Wes runs his tongue along his teeth and looks at the skyline. The tears I catch in his eyes send fire through my arms. I want to hold him. I want to give back everything this secret stole from him. But I know I can’t.

  It’s something he has to reclaim for himself, one small piece at a time.

  “When we can’t accept we deserve better, we do one of two things,” he says. “Either we try to make everyone around us just as miserable as we are...or we try to push them forward, to something better. We get them the hell out of that hole we can’t make ourselves climb out of.”

  This time, I do reach for him. But only to press my thumb against the single tear skating down his cheek.

  I know, no matter what he says, he didn’t just reveal his secret for his own sake. The relief of unloading that burden is merely a consolation prize, for him.

  He did it for the same reason he uploaded his new song, just this morning.

  After an hour of reading every article on the cover-up I could find, I was a mess. Georgia asked me to check for new comments on our videos while she ran errands, under the guise of being too busy to do it herself. I knew she just wanted to distract me. But I obliged, because I definitely needed a distraction. At least until I could pull myself together, and figure out what on earth I was going to do next.

  As I scrolled through the comments, one in particular made me take notice.

  OMG, who else is here after Wes Durham’s new love song for Clara???