Fake Halo

by Piper Lennox

  Love song?

  I told myself not to jump to conclusions. A love song didn’t mean a thing. The fan couldn’t know it was about me. They heard what they wanted to.

  Still, curiosity got to me. Hope got to me. I navigated to his page.

  The title of his latest upload was “Clara Rose.”

  It was that song I’d overheard in the Hamptons: folksy, bending guitar twangs, and that beautifully soulful voice that took me, and now the rest of the world, by complete surprise.

  True, the song would garner him some limelight and new fans; it was already trending on every platform, even if it was a distant second to the latest Durham news.

  And yes, the cover-up story would rob his agent of whatever power his anonymous threats got him. And the public revelation of either would win me back.

  But, when you cut past all the surface reasons, it was easy to find the real one.

  Wes released that song with exactly the same goal as releasing his secret, even if he’s unaware of it: to prove to me, once and for all, that he wasn’t who I feared he was.

  Who he might still believe he is, deep down.

  He isn’t an asshole, or a dick, or even a jerk who likes getting his way at any cost. He understands the importance of secrets.

  He does, in fact, have a halo. It’s busted to hell and warped, like a wire coat hanger you unwound and can never get totally right again—but it exists. He just doesn’t wear it on his head.

  Someone like Wes, he prefers to hold it close. Not near his heart, but somewhere like his back pocket. A place even he can forget about it.

  After the sun sets and we wander to his bed, I ask him for a favor. “Hit the lights, before you climb in with me.”

  Gently, he tugs my hat back and kisses the bare skin he uncovers. He doesn’t even react to the new damage.

  To him, it’s not damage at all.

  “I don’t care about that,” he whispers, his promise hot and soothing.

  “I know. I just want the lights off so I can look at you.”

  He stares at me the way he does when I wear something strange he still finds cute, or when I pause to admire ugly street art, or whenever I sketch some tiny detail he and everyone else misses.

  “Weirdo.” He turns off his lamp and undresses.

  This is how I wanted to look at Wes Durham: in moonlight and the neon city glow. A shadow emanating light at its edges.

  All scars and flaws hidden in darkness, but easy to find with your other senses, when they’re all you have left.

  “I forgot one more thing I had to say,” he whispers, giving the happiest groan I’ve ever heard when he discovers I was going commando under my dress. He pushes it up to my breasts and rubs himself against me.

  “What’s that?”

  “That I love you.”

  Someone once told me it takes twenty-one days to form a new habit.

  While he drags his lips over every inch of bare skin I have, I realize it’s been well over twenty-one days since I first stepped into his apartment.

  Over a year since I first felt his breath against the inside of my thigh, the way I feel it now.

  Three-hundred and ninety days, give or take, that I’ve dreamt of Wes Durham.

  Twenty-seven that I’ve associated bottle caps with him, and color-organized shirts, and even my morning coffee.

  Fourteen that I’ve been without him—an almost-habit I’m glad didn’t have the chance to form.

  But only one minute, a single snapshot in time, that I’ve known he loves me.

  About three seconds since I’ve said it back, my words melting into a moan when he pushes himself inside me.

  Still, I feel like these two habits have a real shot to stick around, every bit as engrained as the others. If all it takes is three short weeks, or even if that advice is all wrong and it really takes six weeks, or six months, or a year…it doesn’t matter.

  We’ve got an entire lifetime ahead of us to get ourselves used to this.

  Epilogue

  Three Years Later

  “Holy. Fucking. Tits.”

  Georgia’s jaw drops before the limo door even opens. Hell, before the limo even stops.

  “Hey, now, there are ladies present,” Wes scolds her. His hand squeezes mine with a wink, because he knows I’m nervous.

  It’s a running joke with him and Georgia, calling each other out on their excessive (and inappropriately timed) cursing. I’m just glad my sister didn’t do it in front of the cameras. Wes has no such rule for himself.

  Like now, when the door opens and he blurts, “Sweet mother of shit.”

  I dig my elbow into his ribs while Georgia and Rylan step out, the camera flashes that greet them flooding the car. Photographers put Georgia right in her element. For Rylan—and me—they’re basically anxiety inducers.

  “You look stunning.” Wes’s mouth plants itself on my neck as we scoot to the door. If you’ve ever wondered why celebrities usually stick to two people per car, if not less, this is why: turns out it’s really hard to gracefully duck-walk from one end of a limo to the other.

  “You first,” I urge him, but he shakes his head and nudges me forward.

  “Let’s give them what they came to see,” he grins.

  “They’re here to see you, Mr. Grammy.”

  “Grammy nominee. Way to put salt in my wounds.” His lips brush across my left hand. “Come on. I need you.”

  Turns out, that’s all it takes for me to push the fear aside.

  This is the first glimpse of us the public and paparazzi alike have received since a photo of us in Tokyo went viral two months ago. Or, more specifically: since a photo of Wes kneeling in front of me in Tokyo went viral, two months ago.

  Georgia knew about his proposal before I did.

  She also knew about my test before he did.

  When he’d slipped the ring on my finger and kissed the tears off my face like he needed them to survive, I had fun whispering my own surprise to him. The unknown photographer captured both our “holy crap” faces, happening one right after the other.

  Or our “sweet mother of shit” faces, depending on how crude you wanted to be about it.

  Now, here we are—stepping out of a limousine at the premiere of All Good Things, Delaney Durham’s first theatrically-released film in years. I don’t like the phrase, “The hype is good,” but the hype for this movie? Off the charts.

  The reason why hangs in the air like a noxious cloud, though. All the veneered smiles and air-kisses in the world can’t hide it.

  “You okay?” I whisper-shout into his ear.

  “I don’t know yet.” The candle-wax heat of his breath curls down my neck. “Just...stick close. If I need to sneak off, I want you with me.”

  Dutifully, I nod. Wes is used to the red-carpet treatment, so I know it’s not all the attention that’s getting to him, the way it gets to me. It’s something else. Something I can’t fix.

  I can only listen, if and when it finally gets to be too much.

  Near the entrance, when an interviewer asks Wes if he thinks his sister would like the turnout at her movie premiere tonight, I realize it was never a matter of “if.”

  He doesn’t have to pull me inside. I’m already behind him, all the way to the alcove by the snack bar. Heavy velvet drapes block us from view.

  Wes puts his face in his hands and sits on the stairs that lead to a defunct balcony. I sit beside him and put my head against his shoulder.

  “She would like the turnout, for what it’s worth.”

  “I know.” Wes sniffs and laughs at the handkerchief I produce from my bodice. Maybe he was convinced he wouldn’t tear up tonight, but I wasn’t.

  He lets me fix his face: pressing the cool edge of my compact to his puffy undereye circles, then wiping his nose like he’s a child who got lost in a flea market.

  “Almost done. I just need to smooth your hair.”

  “My hair’s fine.”

  “It is not. You want all thes
e people thinking you’re a slob?” The second I touch it, he catches my wrist and pulls me close.

  “I don’t give a shit about any of these assholes,” he whispers, lips catching on mine. “Only you.”

  I smile. He’s lying, even if he doesn’t mean to.

  There are Chases fans in attendance tonight—a promotion set up by some new streaming service, which bid just enough to secure the exclusive rights to the Cut to the Chases reunion special. Instead of a “ten years later” scripted follow-up, it was an hour-long, in-depth interview with the entire cast.

  The entire surviving cast, anyway.

  Long story short: the fan club saw a resurgence, fueled by nostalgia and some throwback T-shirt lines on Target end caps. Twenty or so lucky fans won tickets to tonight’s premiere, along with a meet-and-greet with Wes after the film. And I know, for all his talk that he only gives a shit about me, he’ll be impossibly kind to those fans tonight. No matter what hell he’s going through right now.

  “I just…wish she could be here,” he says.

  “Then let’s do the next best thing.” I reach into the other side of my bodice and pass him my phone. “Call her.”

  “You’re crazy,” he laughs, but looks like I just handed him a solid bar of gold as he starts the video call.

  Delaney answers on the first ring. “Miss me already, huh?”

  “Nah, just a butt dial.” Wes grins and asks how she’s feeling.

  “Better, today. Thanks for being a Durham ambassador for me. I mean, I know your agent basically made you do this, but still.”

  Wes laughs again, but it sounds like a bag of crushed glass being ground into the floor.

  “I wish you were here,” he says softly. “It feels so unfair you don’t get to enjoy it. All the work you put in…your first big role, all the press—”

  “I’ll be at the next one,” she interrupts, effortless and breezy. As though there’s no question there will be a next one.

  Her relapse eight months ago hit everyone especially hard, after such a long remission. Two weeks before the news, she’d gotten a watercolor tattoo of a daffodil, her favorite flower and a pet name from her mother, on her calf. Daffodils symbolized rebirth, she told us, proudly displaying her ink via webcam.

  When Billie called to tell us the cancer was back, that was all I could picture: that delicate, melting flower on Delaney’s skin, marking a finish line she didn’t get to reach.

  She refused to even discuss treatment options until her movie went to post, arguing that she wanted “just a little more time” to enjoy the life she’d only begun to reclaim. After new chemo drugs and trial therapies, she accepted a second bone marrow transplant from Wes.

  It was our longest stay in California since we started dating: ten days, just long enough for Wes to lose the backache and fatigue that made flying cross-country too difficult. Billie stayed at the hospital with Delaney, while I took care of Wes and made awkward small talk with Adler, the three of us no match for such a large, silent house that was accustomed to the echoes of Durham women.

  She’s currently doing strict immunosuppression. The outlook is good but, as always, Wes has a hard time letting himself trust it.

  I do too, when I dwell on the possibilities too long. But I never stop reminding him that, as fast as things can go to hell…they can change for the better, just as quickly. We never know what will happen tomorrow.

  “Ready?” I ask him, after they hang up. I hold out my hand. With a breath, he takes it.

  “About time!” Georgia folds my seat down for me, right beside hers. “Guess we’re not as big a power couple as you two. We barely got stopped.”

  “Consider yourselves lucky.”

  “Did anyone...?” She nods at my stomach, where the skirt of my Alexander Wang dress settles underneath gravity, the fabric clinging to my skin.

  “We’ll find out tomorrow,” I shrug, pretending it doesn’t bother me one bit that, yes: cameras were definitely aimed at my stomach. I even heard the question shouted, but it was just distant enough for me to ignore.

  Tomorrow. It makes my heart speed up as though I said, “In two minutes.” Tomorrow, like “someday,” always happens so much faster than you think it will.

  Tomorrow, I will be at the end of my first trimester. The tiny baby bump I now sport will be plastered in pixels far and wide.

  Tomorrow, I’ll have been married to Westcott Durham for exactly three weeks. And the only picture that will make its rounds faster than my stomach is the one of this ring set on my finger, rose gold and shimmering white sapphires, which he lifts to his mouth and kisses as soon as the lights dim across the theater.

  In a now forgotten issue of Tiger Beat, a brief interview with fourteen-year-old Cut to the Chases star Wes Durham went as follows:

  What’s your favorite food/beverage?

  WD: Pizza and ginger ale.

  What do you do in your spare time?

  WD: Sing and play guitar. When I was little, I wanted to be a rock star.

  Describe your dream date.

  WD: We go swimming somewhere, maybe on a beach, and watch the sunset.

  Any pets?

  WD: I can’t have pets because I work and travel a lot, but one day I really want a dog.

  What are you most afraid of?

  WD: Ticks, because my uncle got Lyme when I was little. I’ve been weirdly scared of them ever since.

  And I guess the dark, like when I’m walking alone somewhere? But not really.

  It’s like how people who are afraid of heights, aren’t really afraid of heights. They’re afraid of falling.

  So I’m not really afraid of the dark...just whatever might be inside.

  Accompanying the interview was an exclusive fold-out poster you had to rip from the center-seam staples, then smooth against your leg or bed until the creases faded enough so it could stay taped to your wall.

  Not that I would know.

  Not that I had it taped to the back of the closet in our childhood bedroom, or whatever.

  “Well, well, well,” Wes whistled, the first Christmas we were together. We flew to Cali and spent three days in Burbank enduring his mother’s macrobiotic versions of holiday foods and watching Hallmark movies with his sister, then drove half the night to greet my mother, Georgia, and Rylan in Berkeley on Christmas morning.

  Now, as Wes parted the dry cleaning bags and old Halloween costumes that occupied our closet, I realized Mom’s request of “grabbing a few towels from upstairs” was all a charade. She knew this poster was still here. She knew he’d see—and that I would receive hours of taunting over it.

  “You ever kiss this poster?” he smirked, pretending to study it for lip gloss marks while I whacked his legs with an umbrella I’d found. “Ow, ow, okay! Calm down.”

  “I will not. This is endless ego fuel for a guy like you.”

  “Trust me, baby: if I could have gotten my hands on a Clara Hurley poster at that age?” He shook his head while his arms snaked around my waist. “Not only would it still be in my closet, but it would have a lot worse on it than some lip gloss.”

  I grabbed his erection through his dress pants and stroked him until he bit his lip. He asked me how I’d feel getting fucked in my childhood bedroom.

  “Very adult,” I quipped, which made him laugh so hard it rustled the poster. We watched, silent, as the tape loosened from the drywall, and the poster slid down to a box of old ankle weights at our feet.

  “Good riddance, kid,” Wes told his former self. He didn’t crumple it up—for my sake—but merely folded it back along the creases I’d smoothed out so many years earlier. I took it from him, slid it onto the top shelf of the closet, and kissed him.

  I didn’t need some throwback poster of Charlie Chase.

  What I had before me, this sweater-wrapped tower of muscle and wit, of flaws and soul...this was all I needed.

  Exactly what I deserved.

  You know those girls who drive you crazy and pull you in at the sa
me time?

  Who wear weird shit that sticks in your head for weeks after you see it, no matter how much you mock it to try and pretend otherwise?

  Who say things you’d never let anyone else say—but from them, you almost want it commemorated on a plaque so you’ll never forget the woman brave enough to hand you your own ass?

  Yeah, well. Twenty-one days ago, I married one.

  I told her to pick anywhere on this earth. She’d asked me for a globe.

  It spun; I covered her eyes with my hands and she stabbed the orb with her finger.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  I let her peek, and we both burst out laughing: California.

  “Redo,” she announced. “Spin it again.”

  This time, I turned that thing hard enough to shake the table.

  “Bahamas,” I read, fanning my hands off her face. “Ever been there?”

  She shook her head.

  “Me neither. But it’s about to be my new favorite place on this earth.”

  We left the day my reunion interview premiered. It wasn’t an accident.

  “You’re not even a little curious to see what people will say about it?” Georgia—our only witness besides Rylan, who was going to be in charge of holding mine and Clara’s phones to FaceTime our mothers—poked her head over her plane seat to give me a skeptical look.

  No, forget skeptical: she was flat-out calling me a liar.

  “Not even a little,” I assured her. While Georgia basked in that stuff like a turtle in a tank, I could take it or leave it like a lobster who didn’t know if the water he was staring into would refresh him, or boil him alive.

  “Seriously, Georgia,” Clara said, kicking her seat, “don’t read him Twitter updates all weekend.”