Jonas
“C’mon, slowpoke,”Emma says with a bright smile two days after I woke up hungover on her deck. “You’re almost there. And it’sadorable.”
She’s maybe ten feet ahead of me on a path through a rainforest. We’ve seen parrots and cuckoos and iguanas and tamarins. I helped her up when she tripped over a massive root. She pulled me out of a spider web and promised not to tell anyone about the way I shrieked and danced.
Clearly, you’ve never had an on-set dance instructor for spider web extraction, she said.I’ll forever judge Razzle Dazzle for that oversight.
It was such a dry, spot-on delivery that I laughed longer and harder than I thought I was capable of this week.
And now, we’re apparently almost to our destination, where we’ll eat the picnic the resort staff fixed for us.
Didn’t see myselfenjoyingmy time in Fiji when I left home. I just wanted to be away from the true-but-unflattering press coverage and all of the questions that came with it.
Instead, I found a mission to make something good out of the crap hole that I was in, and here we are.
For the first time in months, I feel like myself.
Happy. Optimistic about the future again, even if it’s small optimism.
Big optimism will probably take some time.
I might even be ready to take a call from my mother sometime in the next day or so. But I’ll still likely start with Begonia. OrmaybeHayes. He’s less irritable now that he gets sunshine twenty-four seven with her in his life.
“I’m tired.” I plop down on the ground five feet from Emma. “We should stop and eat here.”
Her mouth forms a perfectO. She’s in a bucket hat with her blond hair pulled up under it—I assume the hairstyle and the light pink tank top are measures against the heat—and she’s also in at least a gallon of sunscreen.
I know because it took an extra half hour for her to be ready to go while she slathered more and more on.
“Oh my god.” She points at something in front of her. “It’sright there.”
I grin.
She does a double take, and then she laughs.
“Okay, okay, I’ll dig deep.” I moan and groan and make a show of trying to get off the ground. “I’ll find the energy to make it another seventy-four miles.”
“How does your family tolerate you?”
“Why do you think they keep me buried in movie scripts and never visit me on set?”
She laughs again.
This is definitely the reason I’m supposed to be here.
To be her friend.
Two days of hanging out with Emma, and she’s a different person.
She’shappy. There are still moments of lingering sadness—that look on her face is haunting sometimes—but I know a few good jokes. I’ve pulled her out of it whenever I can.
Now, though, she’s trying to pull me. “C’mon,” she says, holding out a hand. “Let me get you up.”
Her fingers are long and slender, much like the rest of her. When I take her hand and she tugs, there’s not a lot of heft behind it.
I act like there is, leaping to my feet like she has the power to throw me over her shoulder. “Jeez. Watch it with those muscles.”
She rolls her eyes with a smile. “If you think my brother hasn’t tried that on me ten million times, you’re mistaken.”
