My lips twist as I grapple with an answer. “I don’t know. I used to know exactly who I was, but I don’t anymore. The only role I kept was dad. And son, I guess. And brother.” My thumb taps the steering wheel. “So, I guess I kept most of my roles except one.”
“A role that eclipsed the rest. Except maybe dad.” Tenley’s hand drops from the air and brushes over her thigh. “I know how that feels. Roles, I mean.”
“Well, yeah. You’re an actress.”
She laughs softly. “I don’t mean in movies. I mean in life. My real-life role is that of a perfect daughter. My parents wanted me to be an actress, and I wanted to please them. I couldn’t stand disappointing them. I still can’t.” Her body presses into the seat, like the admission is heavy, and I get the feeling there is more she isn’t saying, more to the story of why she refuses to disappoint them. I wonder if it has something to do with her scar.
“So you decided to become an actress? Just like that?”
“My mom and dad were big in daytime television. I don’t expect you to know them, but they played a couple on-screen in a soap opera. Cassidy and Jonah Malone. For almost two decades.” Tenley smiles. “They died and came back to life many times.”
“Lucky them.”
Tenley snorts. “I suppose. But I think if I could come back to life, it would be as something else.”
“Like a hummingbird?”
She stares at me across the console. “Why would you choose a hummingbird?”
I shrug. “Just seemed like something you could be. Kind. Unassuming. Sweet. Non-predatory.”
She laughs, the sound bouncing around the truck, shooting through me. “Thank you, but I meant I’d come back to life as someone with a different backstory.” She looks down, her lips twisting, and she says, “Obviously that’s not possible, but a metamorphosis might be nice.”
“You want to change into something else?”
Her answering shrug is one-shouldered. “Maybe.”
I wipe my palm on my thigh and focus on driving. Because the thought that just slammed into my head wasn’t one I was prepared for, but now it’s there, ping-ponging around, and I can’t escape it.
I want you to be who you are, no matter what it took to get you here.
This thought conveys more than it’s seventeen words say. It is a book, a poem, a tome.
Its message reverberates through me, inciting just as much exhilaration as it does fear.
* * *
“Look, look, there they go.”Barb grabs Shirley’s arm hard enough to make the old woman wince.
“Goodness, Barb, keep your sweater on.” Shirley squints in the direction Barb’s pointing, but all she sees is an HCC truck passing by, and that’s hardly enough to yammer about.
Barb ignores Shirley’s whining. “I had a feeling that actress was going to get on with the middle one. Gut feeling.” Barb pats her generous middle.
Shirley chooses not to say what she’s really thinking, which is that Barb watches too much daytime television.
* * *
“Please,please, please tell me you dance,” Dakota says, grabbing Tenley’s hand across the table.
“Nope,” Tenley answers, sipping her beer. “But I’m teachable.”
“That’s all I need to hear.” Dakota grins, drinks half her beer in one gulp, and stands. She looks pointedly down at Wes. “If Wyatt were here, I’d have a dance partner.”
Dakota pulls Tenley out to the corner of the mostly empty dance floor.
“What did she mean about Wyatt?” I ask Wes, taking a pull from my bottle.
“Apparently he can dance.”
