Sometimes It Happens Here

by K. S. Thomas

  He leans back in his chair, this time there’s no carefree rocking involved. “I didn’t find the dirt. I just made a call to someone I knew would.”

  I slam my hands onto the desk, letting it absorb some of my anger. “Byron Munch.” The words are clipped, and it’s all I can do to keep from shouting again. “The sleaziest paparazzi out there.”

  “Took him less than two hours to track you and find out all he needed to know about that Lilan woman,” Mel confirms what I already know.

  I push back from the desk and stick both hands into my pockets. My fists are clenched, aching to punch something. Punch Mel. But that’s never been my style, and something tells me, Lilan would be the last person to appreciate me picking up a violent streak, even if it is in her defense. So, I pace, nodding repeatedly as I come to terms with what I’m learning here.

  Then, after a few seconds, I stop. What’s done is done. All that matters now, is how I move forward.

  “You’re fired, Mel.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  LILAN

  I’m pretty sure the art department kids hate me now. After blowing them off a second time, they’ll probably never take a meeting with me ever again. Can’t say I blame them, but there was no way I could possibly have carried on any sort of productive meeting with them after talking to Hannah. Overall, I was pretty damn useless moving forward. Probably still am. And I’m home. In my pajamas, with no actual productivity required of me, yet I still feel like I’m incapable of even doing the not doing anything I’m doing.

  “You know you’re holding an empty, dirty mug, don’t you?” Mama asks, walking up behind me in the kitchen.

  “I am?” I look down at the cup cradled between my hands. It is empty. Maybe I already drank my tea and can’t remember.

  “Your tea is sitting over there on the table. Still steeping,” she says dryly, prying the cup from my fingers. “Also, you have company.”

  “I do?” Maybe three letter responses are all I’m good for now.

  She hands me my full cup of tea and gently turns me toward the doorway. “He’s in the living room. And I think it’s important.”

  He.

  My heart begins to pound in my chest and my knees turn instantly to Jell-O. Even my fingers feel tingly, like I might drop my cup. “Mama?”

  “It’s not him,” she says softly. “Go.”

  Disappointment floods my chest and I feel like I can’t breathe. I don’t know who I thought I was fooling trying to convince everyone, including myself, that I’m not in love with Bodhi James. It certainly seems an unbelievable lie now.

  Legs still weak from the rollercoaster of emotions my body has been through today, I make my way to the living room.

  The lights are dim and it’s dark out, making it hard to make out his shape right away.

  Then he turns.

  “Jimmy?”

  He stands up from where he’s sitting on the couch to greet me with a hug. “I hope it’s okay that I’m here.”

  “Of course,” I stammer, taken aback by his presence. I figured he needed some space from me right now, given all the history being churned up. “You’re always welcome here. You’re family.” More than that, he’s been my friend nearly all my life. I’ve known Jimmy since first grade, it was years before I ever met his brother.

  He gestures for us to sit and we do, him back on the sofa and me in the recliner beside it.

  “I wanted to talk to you,” he starts, “but then you didn’t show today to drop Mona, and I wasn’t sure if you were up for it.”

  “Jimmy, I’m so sorry.” The words just bubble up out of me, like they’ve been bursting to break free all day. Maybe they have. “I had no idea this would happen. That all the old, painful stuff would resurface like this. I swear, if I had known...”

  His brow scrunches and a sad smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “What? You wouldn’t have gotten involved with Bodhi James?”

  “Of course not.”

  Jimmy watches me for what feels like an agonizing eternity. When he starts talking again, it’s like he’s starting a completely new conversation. “You know what I thought when I saw that story on the internet?”

  I shake my head, unable to put into words how mortified I am that he saw it for himself.

  “I thought, wow – look how happy she is.” He smiles. “Entire minutes must have passed before I even thought to read the caption with the pictures. I was just so damn pleased to see you like that. With someone new. Someone, who so obviously adores you.”

  “You’re serious.” Because it seems surreal. Of all the people who have shown up to support me today, Jimmy surprises me the most.

  “Lilan,” he says, his frown lines deepening. “I hope you know, that we have never believed you were in any way responsible for Marc’s actions that night. Or any night before it.”

  I bite the inside of my cheek, desperate to keep it together. “Your parents wouldn’t even talk to me after the accident,” I remind him, tears stinging my eyes.

  “They’d lost a son,” he says, the heartache surfacing for him too, as if the grief is still as fresh now as it was back when it happened. “They could barely cope with getting through the day. Facing you, facing Mona, and the terrible aftermath of his bad choices, all the pain he caused while he was alive, and the devastation he left when he died... I think they felt responsible. And they just couldn’t look you in the eye and bear it on top of everything else.”

  That’s all it takes to turn me into a blubbering mess. “I thought they blamed me too,” I whisper and wheeze through all the emotion I was so set on keeping bottled up.

  “What? No!” Jimmy looks downright horrified. He essentially leaps from his seat to kneel at my side, squeezing my knees while I sob into my hands, hunched over in my chair. “Oh my God, Lilan. I had no idea. Shit.” He rubs his forehead with his hand, shaking his head. “I should have this conversation with you years ago. I’m so sorry you’ve been carrying that with you all this time.”

  “I just assumed,” I blabber on. “Half the town blamed me. Hell, I blamed me. It just made sense that Marc’s family would too.”

  “God, no,” he insists, reaching up to rub my back while I continue unleashing years’ worth of guilt and grief. “If anything, we blamed ourselves. We should have done more to help, should have been more honest about his addiction and how deeply it was impacting everyone who loved him. You most of all. It’s just...how do you begin to apologize?” he chokes on the last of his words, the hurt of it all taking him down right alongside me.

  “Let’s not apologize.” I try to take several calming breaths to no avail. “Let’s finally let Marc take responsibility for his own life. We owe him that. The last thing he would want, is all of us trying to take the blame for what happened to him.”

  He nods, biting back the tears and wiping his face with the back of his hand.

  We sit together like this for a while, both of us making room for the grief that still holds us captive so many years later.

  Only when the last of the tears have dried and both of us are breathing evenly again, does Jimmy take his seat on the sofa again.

  “This thing with Bodhi James,” Jimmy says, moving one of the cushions to get more comfortable. “It’s not over, right? I mean, I heard he left town again, but that’s not the end of it, is it?”

  I shrug. I don’t know anymore. “It was supposed to be.” I look down at the tea in my hands. I never did drink any of it, just held it steady in my lap this whole time. “Just seemed like the right thing to do.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Probably because the likes of Dick Whitman still go around telling me I’m the reason Marc killed himself. And then all those headlines, stirring it all up again...guess I got caught up in believing it was true. And if it was true...well, I certainly didn’t deserve to live happy ever after with a man like Bodhi James. Or any one for that matter.”

  “And now?” Jimmy looks at me with anticipation, as if he’
s certain my perspective has changed, my intentions have shifted. I suppose they should after the things we said. “Now that you know better than to buy into that, what are you going to do?”

  I don’t have an answer to that. “You’d really be okay with it?” I ask, needing him to be absolutely certain before I even consider an alternative. “Your parents? You’d all be alright if I was with him? If he was part of our lives? Mona’s life?”

  “Of course! Lilan, we would be thrilled for you. And for Mona. As long as he’s good to you both, makes you happy, that’s all we want for you.” He looks at me, waiting. “So? Are you going to go after him?”

  I hadn’t even considered that a possibility. “You don’t think that would be crazy?”

  “Lilan, the woman I saw in that picture, smiling with the sheer bliss of being adored, she would think it was crazy not to.”

  I close my eyes, thinking back to that moment. How lucky I felt to be at his side, holding his hand, at the receiving end of his kindness and affection. I learned to be whole on my own a long time ago, but being with him, I felt fuller somehow, as if my wholeness was expanding to include him, making me feel stronger and happier and more at ease with life and the world than I can remember feeling in years.

  When I open my eyes again, the answer is as clear as that memory. “I’m going to do it. I’m going to L.A.”

  It takes me less than thirty minutes to clear things with Mama, throw some overnight essentials into a bag and kiss Mona goodbye. Even if she won’t remember in the morning, it’ll count for something when she asks if I say goodbye or not before I left. Then, I’m on the road, headed for the airport.

  I call Hannah on the way there and she squeals in my ear at the news. She’s also more than happy to text me Bodhi’s address to make my surprising him that much more effective.

  Once at the airport, getting on a red eye out to California turns out to be less challenging than I thought. While it would behoove me to sleep on the flight, I’m way too wired from the nerves of my impending romantic gesture to do anything but rapidly flip through the plane’s magazines over and over again.

  Needless to say, LAX is a larger airport than the one I departed from, and I am instantly overwhelmed when I step off the plane. Exhaustion probably isn’t doing me any favors here either, having now officially been awake for nearly twenty-six hours.

  Thankfully, one of the luggage cart guys takes pity on me and directs me straight to where I can find the taxis.

  The drive, while technically a lot shorter than the flight, feels like forever. At least until the driver tells me we’ve reached the privacy gate. Then, time suddenly seems frighteningly fast. How can I be here already? I am not ready. I haven’t thought of a single thing to say to him. And I don’t remember the last time I brushed my teeth. How am I just now realizing the flaw in this part of the plan?

  I’m about to tell my driver to abort the mission, when my eyes catch on something moving up by the house. The front door is opening. Someone is coming out. Suddenly, hope returns. It’s nine a.m. on a Sunday morning. Bodhi probably just rolled out of bed and looks about as presentable as I do. Maybe even less so.

  A girl can hope.

  Until.

  “Is that a woman?”

  The driver, who up until now has not been very chatty, looks back at me, almost surprised that I’m attempting conversation of any kind. “Yes,” he confirms. “There’s a woman. And a man.”

  And now he’s talking to me like I’m an idiot. Which I am.

  Because, GOD, he’s Bodhi James! Did I really think he left Blueshadow after one week with me, to come back here and what? Pine away for me? No. Of course not.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” I blurt, before it’s too late, before anyone sees us. “I need to go back to the airport please. Right now. Hurry!”

  Bodhi

  “THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR agreeing to see me,” Mac says, as I’m walking her out to her car. “Especially this early on a Sunday. After I heard what happened, God, I’m just so sorry I was part of this mess and I really wanted to clear things up in person.”

  “Please, if anyone is sorry, it’s me,” I insist. “I’m the idiot who kept excusing Mel’s behavior. Truth is, I knew for a while he would push the boundaries to get his way. I just never imagined he’d take it this far.”

  She stops when she reaches the driver’s side door of her canary yellow corvette. “It’s easy for people to lose their humanity in this business,” she says, and I get the sense she knows this from personal experience. “I guess that’s why it’s so important to me to be clear about who I am and what working with me is all about.” She points at the large, manila envelope in my hand. “Hold onto that. Take care of what you need to, put your life first. I’ll touch base with you in the new year. We can talk then. See if that script is of interest to you.”

  Mac Turner. Apparently, she does wait for some people. “I really appreciate that. Seriously. I’ve been busy putting my career first for so long, it’s nice to have someone remind me that it’s okay not to.”

  She opens her door, about to get in. “I get it. But at the end of the day, what we do, it’s still just a job. And no job is worth giving your life up for.”

  “I’m pretty sure all of Hollywood would cringe hearing you call what you do just a job,” I joke.

  “Don’t tell any of them I said it,” she teases, lowering herself into the seat. “Alright. I’m getting out of here. You do you, get your woman back, and then, let’s make a fucking movie!”

  “Hell yeah.” I laugh, closing her door for her. She waits for me to back up a few steps before she starts the engine and makes her descent down my driveway toward the gate.

  It’s been a weird few days, but I’m actually starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel again. And that, feels damn good.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  LILAN

  Hannah is the hardest to convince, but after a solid week of telling her I don’t want to talk about it, even she drops it. Slowly but surely, the Bodhi fiasco becomes a thing of the past again. Well, at least I’m pretending that’s true. In reality, I haven’t gone a single day, maybe even a single second, without thinking about him and wondering if it’s possible I got it all wrong, that I didn’t see what my eyes so clearly saw, and that somehow, someway, a happy ever after is still waiting for us.

  But, I’m doing my part to deny this hopeful side of me and shove it back down into the dark abyss it lived so quietly and conveniently in since Marc died, erasing all need for hope where our marriage was concerned. I suppose it’s really no wonder I’m as woefully messed up in the romance department as I am.

  Irrelevant.

  The only thing that matters now, is the Christmas show.

  For weeks, I’ve poured all of my energy into creating the set and making it the very best it could possibly be. I’ve told myself it was to stick it to Bodhi in my own way, to show him just how much he’s missing out on letting me go so easily, but the truth is I just wanted to see his vision for myself. See it come to life the way he spoke of it, and, without bragging, I think I pulled it off.

  “And,” I ask Teran, who stepped up and took over directing after his brother left. “What do you think? Ready for tonight?”

  “I think it’s a damn shame we do all this and only show it off for one performance,” he says, clapping his hands in a gesture of appreciation. “Truly masterful, Lilan. You are an artist above and beyond the delicious bread you craft.”

  “You’re a little weirder now that you’re officially Hannah’s other half,” I tell him.

  “Thank you.” He bows. The weirdness suits him.

  “Alright.” I start to walk away.

  “Wait. Where are you going?”

  I turn back over my shoulder. “To pack up my stuff so no one trips over my tools tonight when they’re running on and off the stage all night.”

  “You’re done? Like, completely?”

  “Yeah.” I point at the
stage we were just assessing together. “Remember? My job here is finished. The rest is up to you all.”

  “But, you’re coming back. Right?”

  I give in to the fact I’m apparently not leaving after all and start walking back toward him. “What’s going on, Teran?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Oh my God! Least believable nothing ever!”

  He grimaces. “Come on, least believable? Hannah has to top me there.”

  “I don’t know, man. She might be rubbing off on you in more ways than you know.” I stop in front of him, hands propped on my waist. “Spill. What are you not telling me?”

  “Okay.” He tugs my arm to bring me in closer and whispers, “But it’s a secret, so you can’t say anything to anyone else. Got it?”

  “Uh-huh.” Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the weirdness isn’t so good on him.

  “Reese is flying in to surprise Kaleaha at the show tonight.”

  “WHAT?!” It takes everything I have not to start jumping up and down with excitement. “How?!”

  Teran glares at me, nostrils flared. “Are you kidding? This is how you manage secrets? With shouting?”

  “I’m sucky at secrets,” I admit. “Hannah should have told you.” I shrug. “Surprises are no good either.”

  His glare just drops to deeper, more strained levels. “Well, you’re going to have to try really hard with this one.”

  “Okay, okay.” I hunch over, and hiss, “Tell me more.”

  “Yeah.” He takes a step back, a skeptical arched brow and disgusted smirk greeting me when I look up to see where he’s going. “Maybe not. Maybe you just stick with what you already know and see to it your ass is back here before the show starts so you don’t miss anything else.”

  I give up my secretive hunch. And the hiss. “That’s lame.” When Teran responds by turning and walking away I add, “But apparently deserved.”