Sloane added quietly, “You’re family, too.”
Caroline had said that same thing when we were spreading my mother’s ashes on Starlite Island. But now those words carried a totally different weight.
Jack smiled and sat back down, and I could tell his heart was about to burst in two. So was mine.
We talked for hours, until the sun began peeking through the curtains, and I crawled back into bed with Sloane and Caroline, and Jack lay down on the couch, all of us hoping for a couple of hours of sleep. That would be enough to get us through.
If only Emerson were here right now, I thought as I drifted off,everything would be perfect.
TWENTY-EIGHT
emerson: fly
Iwoke up slowly, Mark beside me, and the first thing I did was frantically ruffle my hair. No itch. No lice. Thank God. And then I remembered. Our first party of our wedding week was happening today! And despite how conflicted I’d been lately, I felt nothing but pure joy. I kissed Mark’s chest and sprang out of bed to look out the window. The thunderstorms of the previous night had burned off into a beautiful, sunny morning.
I grabbed my phone and sank lazily back into bed, realizing that I had four whole hours to catch up on social media and email until Caroline’s birthday brunch. I didn’t blame her, because James had planned it, but, I mean, really? She always had to have a little bit of the spotlight. Well, Iwashaving a party on her birthday. But whatever. You could really see both sides of that one.
My first email was from my agent. The subject line said,Entertainment Now is stupid.
I felt my stomach drop. The Edie Fitzgerald movie was coming out next month, and the first reviews were starting to come in. I opened the review link my agent had sent, scanning the article until I saw my name and then the words that stuck:very little substance.
My heart sank. Sometimes I felt angry or mad or wanted to throw my phone across the room. Today I felt defeated.
I closed my eyes and nudged the man sleeping beside me. “Mark,” I said, “I just got the worst review.”
He opened one eye. “If you would quit, you wouldn’t have to deal with that anymore.” I swear he was snoring heavily again before he’d even finished the sentence. He’d had enough beers the night before that he’d probably be out for a while.
I fished my bikini and a cover-up out of my bag, now fuming not only about the review but also about the fact that Mark couldn’t be supportive for one damn minute.
Things had been so bad with my mom lately that I thought I might ask her to come with me. I knew she’d be awake. And I knew she was feeling guilty about everything, so she’d be extra-supportive, too. I got the key to her room out of the pocket of the shorts I’d been wearing the day before. I walked the two doors down, slid the key into the lock, and tiptoed in. Maybe it was because of the review or maybe it was because of what I was seeing, but I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. Mom, Sloane, and Caroline were asleep in her bed, with Jack on the couch beside them. The four of them. The little family.
I swallowed and closed the door silently behind me.
A few minutes later, I was sitting on the dock, ruminating. Bad reviews. No family. The mother-in-law from hell. A totally unsupportive fiancé. I was trying to focus on the positive, but I couldn’t help but feel my life was falling apart. I had to wonder if maybe I was making all the wrong decisions, if I shouldn’t scrap the life I had and figure out something else. Maybe Mark was right. Maybe it was time to come back to Peachtree Bluff for good. Although here, every other second was a reminder of Jack and Mom.
I heard footsteps behind me, and I didn’t turn. If it was Mom, I didn’t want to talk to her. It occurred to me that many of the most important moments of my life had happened on a dock—bad ones like this, sure, but mostly great ones. I learned to swim, learned to smoke a joint, took my first sip of beer, had Mark propose to me.
I couldn’t see him, but all of a sudden, I knew who was there.
“They make it look so easy,” I said, looking out at the dozens of birds in front of me. They all clumped together, periodically diving down for fish, and then, in one smooth motion, flying away.
He sat down beside me, his bare feet trailing in the water. Mine wouldn’t be able to do that until high tide. I looked at him, at the line of sweat around the bottom of his brown hair, which was slightly curled from the humidity. He was wearing an oxford with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, paper-thin from being washed a million times, so soft that you could only dream about having it to sleep in every night. He pulled it off over his head and threw it behind him on the dock, revealing a tan, toned abdomen. The way he did it was totally unselfconscious.
I envied that, how sure of himself Kyle was, how he always seemed to know right where he was going.
“It’s a wonder, isn’t it?” he said. “There’s so little effort there. They just fly.”
That’s how I’d thought it would be for me, when I first decided to leave Peachtree to become an actress. I know it sounds so naive, but I was eighteen and beautiful and free-spirited, and I thought I would go to LA and become a star and it would be perfect. It would be easy. It was my destiny.
“I have worked so hard, Kyle,” I said. “I mean, I still am. I feel like I’m begging for every scrap of food they’ll throw me under the table. And yet somehow it doesn’t feel like it amounts to all that much.”
Kyle studied my face, like he did so often. Again, totally unselfconsciously. I could never hold someone’s stare for that long without looking away, without feeling like I was invading his personal space.
“What are we really talking about here, Em? Because the woman I’ve watched on that screen is alive. She is in her element. She isn’t clawing or scraping.” We both looked up as another one of those birds took off and flew high into the sky. Kyle pointed. “That. That was you.”
I bit my lip to keep from smiling. He wasn’t wrong. Acting, becoming someone else, playing a part, was where I felt most alive. It was the other stuff that was hard. But I had to admit that it was exponentially easier than a couple of years ago. And there was no telling where this new part would lead. I knew it would be big. Even so, there was a lot of bad that came along with the good in this job, as there was with most things in life.
“I got a bad review today, and they always throw me.”
