Luckiest Girl Alive

by Jessica Knoll

  That was something Dan the lawyer had actually warned me about. That with the real villains dead, everyone was looking for a target, and I looked pretty right for it.

  I reminded Dean, “But I’d never even met Ben.”

  “I know,” Dean said. “I just, once I had some time to recover, and to think, I realized you didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “So why didn’t you just come out and say that? Do you know the hate mail I still get? From your fans.” The last word came out trembling with rage.

  “Because I was angry,” Dean said. “There’s nothing else to it but that. Anger. And resentment. That you came out okay.”

  I laughed. All these people so sure I’d come out okay, and I only have myself to blame, for putting on the greatest show on earth. “Not really.”

  Dean looked me up and down. It wasn’t a leer. He was simply making the most obvious observation. My casual, expensive clothes, my hair trimmed to $150 ends. “You look pretty okay.”

  Dean’s legs slumped together in a V at the knees. I wondered if he set them like that every morning when he got out of bed. Another raindrop, more bulbous this time, docked at my forehead. “So why do we need privacy to say all this? Aaron said you wanted to set the record straight.”

  “I do,” Dean said. “I’ll say all of this on camera. I’ll explain how I was confused and then too angry to rectify the situation. I’ll apologize and you’ll forgive me.”

  I simmered. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Dean said. “Because you want to clear your name. And I can do that for you.”

  “And what do you get out of it?”

  “Ani”—Dean steepled his fingers—“I’ve made a very good fortune out of my bad fortune.”

  Not far behind him was the black Mercedes, the driver in a spiffy suit waiting to chauffeur Dean to his next engagement. “You’re a true inspiration, Dean.”

  “Hey”—he chuckled—“can you blame me for making the best out of it?”

  The sun surfaced again. Found something like understanding and blasted it bright.

  “I guess I can’t,” I said.

  “It’s a little serendipitous, actually.” Dean leaned forward, like he was excited to share this next part with me. “I was working on my latest book, which is all about the power of asking for forgiveness, and here, this project comes along.”

  I went stiff. “Like it was meant to be.”

  Dean laughed into his useless crotch. “You’re sharp, Ani. You always were. I hope your husband appreciates it.” He sighed. “My wife is so fucking dumb.”

  “Fiancé,” I corrected him.

  Dean shrugged, like it didn’t matter. “Fine. Fiancé.” He looked behind him again, checking to make sure no one could hear but me. “It will be very . . . impactful . . . for my fans”—a little smile, for my benefit—“to see us come to some sort of peace. But I also think people will understand why it took me so long to get to this point, and why I was confused at first. I didn’t set out to ruin your good name, I was traumatized. I’m man enough to admit that now. But . . . the, ah, other stuff. There’s not really much of an excuse for that, is there?” He paused for a moment, as if considering whether or not to tell me the next thing. “My wife is expecting, did you know that?”

  I stared at him numbly.

  “Biologically mine.” He looked up at me, squinting beneath the temperamental sky. “It’s amazing the things they can do these days.” His voice took on a tenor of amazement. “All it takes is a noninvasive surgery, a lab and a petri dish, and voilà, I’m a family man, exactly what my community wants for me. And they foot my bills, so I’m happy to oblige, even though kids . . .” He made a face I had made many times before. For a moment, he just studied the road, considering what his life would be like with a child he could never chase after, could never teach to play soccer. He cleared his throat and looked at me again. “But the other stuff, I don’t see them giving a pass on that.”

  “No,” I agreed. “It’s pretty scummy.”

  “That’s a private apology.” Dean tilted his head. Gauged my face and added, “And it is an apology. I am very sorry for that.”

  I stared him down. “I want you to answer something though.”

  Dean’s jaw ticked again.

  “Did you guys plan it? That night at your house?”

  Dean had the nerve to look offended. “We weren’t diabolical, Ani. No. It just—” He looked at the empty road again and thought about how to put it. “There was a little bit of competition. Who gets the new girl. But when we went to my room, I didn’t even know that what happened with Liam happened. I didn’t even know that until the next day.”

  I took a step toward him, so shocked I wanted to shake the rest of his secrets loose. “You didn’t know about Liam?”

  Dean winced at himself. “But listen, I knew about Peyton. But I . . . I didn’t know, I didn’t think that was bad. I don’t know”—he shrugged—“that wasn’t sex to me. I didn’t understand how what happened with Peyton and me could be bad.” Off my look, he added, quickly, “But I do now.”

  The sun blasted us again, one quick lash before darting behind a moody cloud. “What do you know now?”

  Dean pierced his eyebrows together, like I was a teacher who had asked him a difficult question and he wanted to get the answer right. “That it was wrong.”

  “No”—I pointed my finger at him, the line a downward diagonal—“I want you to say it. What it was. If I’m going to play along, I deserve to hear one of you finally call a spade a spade. Tell me what you did to me.”

  Dean sighed and considered my request. After a moment, he admitted, “What we did to you . . . it was rape, okay?”

  The word ripped my stomach apart like cancer. Terrorist attack. Plane crash. All the things I’m terrified will get me because I slipped out of Arthur’s fingers half a lifetime ago. But still I shook my head. “No. None of this distancing language. ‘It was rape’—I know those tricks. I want you to say what you did to me. What you all did to me.”

  Dean examined the ground. The fold in his brow softened as all the fight went out of his face. “We raped you.”

  I rubbed my lips together, tasted something deliciously metallic. The moment felt impossibly sweeter than when Luke proposed. “And that night at Olivia’s—”

  Dean cut me off with a resigned nod. “I know. I hit you. There is no excuse for that. For any of it. All I know is I felt lied to. Led on by you. And it infuriated me. It was like I blacked out from the anger. I’m still so grateful that Olivia’s dad broke the whole thing up, or, I don’t know what . . .” He stopped, because the raindrops had roused the crew from their waiting place.

  “Hey! Guys?” Aaron called. “If we want to do this, we have to do it now.”

  We got the shot moments before the sky found its release. Did I sell out? I don’t see it that way. But only because there is still something else I’ve kept to myself all of these years, a reason to cut Dean a little slack. I may wonder what I would have said if Arthur came to me and asked me to be a part of his plan, but I don’t wonder as much about what would have happened had Arthur actually turned the gun over to me. Because if I’d gotten my hands on it, I think I just might have blown that motherfucking cocksucker’s cock right off. Arthur would have gone second.

  CHAPTER 16

  * * *

  There are two keys on my key chain plus a New York Sports Club pass even though I haven’t been a member since 2009. That means I have a fifty-fifty shot of getting the right key in the door. I can’t remember a time I’ve ever gotten the right key in the door.

  Luke thinks it’s cute. He says it gives him the heads-up that I’m home. “So I can ex out of the porn windows,” he teases. I’ve seen the porn Luke watches—girl with huge fake tits shouting yes, yes, yes, right there, some muscled moron plowing her, looks about as much fun as doing your taxes. Luke thinks I don’t like porn, but I just don’t like his porn. I need to see someone in pain. Pain is
good. Pain can’t be faked.

  I pushed the door open with my foot. “Hi.”

  “Hi,” Luke said from the couch, watching me struggle with a smile on his face. “I missed you.”

  The door slammed behind me and I dropped my bags. Luke opened up his arms. “Can I have a hug?”

  The words “Can I have some help?” sat snippy on the tip of my tongue. The decision not to say them required some strength.

  I walked toward Luke and curled up in his lap. “Aw,” he said. “You okay, babe?”

  I tucked my face into his neck. He smelled like he needed a shower, but I’d always liked him a little dirty. Some people have a good natural scent, and Luke was one of them. Of course he was. “I’m exhausted,” I said.

  “What can I do for you?” Luke asked. “How can I help?”

  “I’m hungry,” I said. “But I don’t want to eat.”

  “Babe, you look amazing.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t.”

  “Hey.” Luke forced his fingers underneath my chin, tilted my head up so I was looking at him. “You are the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen and you are going to be the most beautiful bride. One more cheeseburger isn’t going to change that. A million cheeseburgers couldn’t change that.”

  Now was the time to ask. I’d caught him in a moment of Ani-infatuation, a rarity these days. But before I could, Luke’s expression became serious. “So,” he said, “I have to talk to you about something.”

  It was like I was riding a roller coaster at the exact moment the car inched over the summit and plunged to the ground below. The change in force jumbled all my organs, my lower abdomen throbbing as though my heart had tumbled there. Had Mom been right?

  “The London offer came through,” Luke said.

  I repeated what he’d said in my head, trying to adjust, trying to identify the emotion ricocheting from my free-falling kidneys and liver and heart. Was it disappointment? Relief? Resignation? “Oh,” I said. “Oh,” I said again, stumbling into something like curiosity. “When?”

  “They want us to move over the holidays. So I’m there for the start of the new year.”

  I leaned away from him, transferring my weight in a way that made Luke grimace. He shifted beneath me, trying to get comfortable again. “Did you already tell them yes?”

  “No,” Luke said. “Of course not. I said I had to talk to you first.”

  “When do you have to give them an answer by?”

  Luke frowned, considering. “I think I should let them know in a week or so.”

  The ligaments in Luke’s legs tensed beneath me, bracing for my meltdown. I suddenly realized the leverage I had if I could keep my cool. It meant accepting a decision that made me sad, but the other option made me afraid, and I was so tired of being afraid. “I need to talk to LoLo,” I said, imagining the meeting in her office, her chemically calm face incapable of expressing what a massive mistake she thought I was making. “Maybe she’ll hook me up with a job at the UK brand.”

  Luke smiled, surprised. “I’m sure she would.” He added, generously, “She loves you.”

  I nodded, all agreeable Ani. Fiddling with a button on his shirt I said, “I actually have to talk to you about something too.”

  Luke’s golden eyebrows twitched.

  “The production company wants to film the wedding.” I rushed the next part before Luke could butt in and object. “They just felt really moved by my story, and it’s kind of cool because they also offered to basically be the videographer and put together a wedding video for us. For free.” WASPs love the occasional freebie.

  Aaron had approached me after Dean wheeled up the ramp and into the handicap cave of his private car. I’d been so brave. So fearless. I slunk in on myself as he piled on the praise. “You really are emerging as this sort of tragic hero,” Aaron said. “I think it could be so powerful to end the movie on your wedding. Your happily ever after. So long deserved.”

  I didn’t disagree. This ending was the easy one.

  I realized that I must have told Aaron I’d discuss his idea with Luke at the same time Luke was telling the partners he’d discuss London with me, both of us having something we wanted that only the other could make possible. I wondered if Luke exited his meeting, pep in his step, picturing the sleek modern flat the company would put us up in, dismissing the possible killjoy in the whole scenario, me. She’ll be no problem to convince, he probably thought, as only a person whose life has been one endless loop of pass-go-and-collect-two-hundred-dollars thinks.

  My meeting with Aaron had ended much differently. I waited to react until I was alone in the Jeep. Our Jeep, I reminded myself, grimly. I gripped the steering wheel so hard my teeth chattered, and then I was slumped over the center console, wailing my resignation into the leather that smelled faintly of skunk, like one of Luke’s friends spilled a beer a very long time ago and never bothered to clean it up.

  Luke scratched an ingrown hair on his neck. “For free?”

  There was a give in his voice, and, for a moment, buyer’s remorse crept in. Why not just let him say no? Why not just fight and cry and say, “I can’t do this,” and really mean it this time? I spoke loudly, over that possibility. “For free. And you know they’ll do a good job. A really good job.”

  Luke stared at the naked white wall above the TV, thinking. I’d been meaning to get to Brooklyn Flea, find something “eccentric” to hang there. “I just really hate the idea of our wedding being in that documentary though.”

  “It really will be just a few minutes at the end,” I said, the lie ready and waiting. “We’ll get a say in the final cut.”

  Luke bobbed his head around, considering. “And you trust them?”

  I nodded, meaning that at least. Aaron had surprised me after I decided to stop despising him. “I do. I really do.”

  Luke tilted his head back, the brown leather couch puckering beneath the full weight of his skull. His parents had bought us these couches. I’d gone from sharing a Diet Coke–and-pizza-grease-stained futon with Nell to these couches, the leather like butter, Mom said the first time she visited us, running her French tips along their creamy skin. Sometimes the transition seemed too much, too quick. There had to be an in-between, and it seemed unfair that I had skipped it. Like something I could be punished for later.

  “Luke.” Now I released the tears that had been building since I nosed the Jeep onto the West Side Highway, the sudden, disorienting panic that where I was headed was no longer home snowballing as the West Village became Tribeca. “This weekend was so good in so many ways. I really feel like, for the first time, everyone is on my side. Dean is on my side. I saw Dean. I think they want to—”

  “You saw Dean?” Luke’s head snapped upright. I stared at the couch, at the way it held his skull’s imprint tight. “I thought you weren’t planning on talking about what happened with him.” Luke brought his thumb to his mouth and chewed on it angrily. “I knew those producers were going to manipulate you.” He wiped saliva on his shirt and pounded his thigh with a tight fist. “I knew I should have gone with you.”

  A tingle, electric and wild, sparked all along my spine. Never in my life did I think I would feel the need to defend Dean Barton. “I saw Dean because I wanted to see Dean,” I snapped. “And relax. We didn’t talk about the rape.”

  That word stopped Luke cold. I’d never said it out loud. Not to anyone.

  “His story changed,” I said, rushing to fill in the uncomfortable silence, confirming what I’ve always suspected about Luke: He doesn’t think it was rape. He thinks it was an unfortunate incident, something that happens when hornball kids get together and drink too much. “He doesn’t think I had something to do with it anymore.” Remembering the picture I had promised to return to Mrs. Finnerman, I swung my legs over the arm of the couch and stood, making my way to the bookcase in the corner. I crouched in front of the bottom shelf for the folder where I store all things Bradley—news clips, memorial service cards, the imag
e of Arthur and his father, laughing at the drab Jersey ocean, pastel seashells lining the memory.

  “He said that?” Luke asked behind me.

  I shook the folder, trying to locate the picture. “He told me that. He apologized for ever saying so. On camera.”

  Luke peered over the surface of the coffee table to see what I was doing. “What are you looking for?”

  “That picture,” I said. “Of Arthur and his dad. I promised Mrs. Finnerman I’d give it back to her.” I dumped all the contents onto the floor. “It’s not here.” I pushed through it all, one more time. “What the fuck?”

  “You probably moved it and forgot,” Luke said, suddenly helpful. “It’ll turn up.”

  “No. I would never have moved it.” I eased one leg across the other on the hardwood floor and sat.

  “Hey.” Luke got up off the couch, and there was that sound, like peeling a sticker off a piece of paper. I felt his hand on my back, and then he was next to me on the floor, collecting the file’s contents. “It will turn up. Stuff like that always does when you’re not looking.”

  I watched him neatly file away my tragedy. The care on his face gave me the courage to try one more time. “Aaron understands how invasive it could be to have the cameras there. He really is going to just look like the videographer.”

  Luke sealed the folder shut. “I just don’t want, like, an entire camera crew at our wedding.”

  I shook my head and held out two fingers. “That’s it, that’s all they need.”

  “Two guys?”

  “I told them the same thing.” See, Luke, we’re on the same page. “They promised me, two. No one will be able to tell the difference between them and a regular videographer.” I didn’t mention the part about everyone having to sign releases. I just needed to get him to a yes.