Me:Yes, you fucking weirdo. I do think it’s infected. GO TO THE DOCTOR.
Me:Why did you have your hand near Snapple’s mouth anyway???? You know she bites.
Kallum with a K:I made her a special puppy pizza! I wanted to feed it to her!
Like me, Kallum had lost almost all his INK money when our manager fled the country, but he’d had enough left to start a (very) small business, which, instead of being something adjacent to any of his life experience as a Grammy-nominated pop phenomenon, was a pizza parlor called Slice, Slice, Baby. I’d initially thought this was a terrible idea, but since he’d opened the first Slice, Slice, Baby location, he’d seen nothing but success. He’d expanded all over the Kansas City metro area and was thinking about branching out even farther—Iowa, Arkansas. Maybe even Texas.
And because he was a good guy, he’d brought over some SSB pizza to the house last night. He was checking in on Maddie and Mom while I was here, and between him and Barb, I felt like there was a good safety net if Mom’s rough patch continued on longer than the rough patches usually did. I was grateful for the help, even if it didn’t lessen the giant ball of worry I carried around with me everywhere.
Me:Thank you for donating a finger to the cause.
Kallum with a K:Anything for Mrs.K!!!
(Mrs.K was my mom, April Kowalczk. He’d called her that since the first day he’d knocked on our door in preschool, asking if I could be his best friend and also if he could have some fruit snacks for the road.)
Kallum with a K:Do you still think you’ll miss Christmas?
Misery coiled like a clammy worm in my chest as I tapped out a reluctant reply.
Me:Yeah.
When Dad had been alive, Christmas had been the Kowalczkthing. We were the house that had ten trillion inflatable things on the lawn; he was the dad who spent days and days cheerfully fucking with Christmas lights; Mom was the mom who turned an entire room of the house into a hyperorganized wrapping depot with ribbons and bows and hand-lettered tags. (Joanna Gaines could never.)
But then things had changed. Dad had died of a heart attack a month after the Duluth cluster-eff, and since I’d been off living up to my bad boy reputation, it wasn’t until the funeral that I realized how much he’d done behind the scenes. Mom was brilliant and smart and funny and compassionate beyond all belief, but with her bipolar disorder, our family needed a little more ballast than most families, and Dad had been that for us. So after I came home, I decided to give up on the career I’d ruined anyway and be the family ballast instead. I moved in and got a respectable job (as Nolan Kowalczk, not as Nolan Shaw), and kept all the family traditions alive, including making every Christmas a balls-to-the-wall Kowalczk Christmas.
Except now we needed more money, and the only way I could make it was by being away over the holidays. God, theirony of missing Christmas to make Christmas joy for other people. It burned like hell.
Kallum with a K:Have you seen Winnie Baker yet?
Oh, right. I hadn’t told him about the UnFestival disaster yet.
Me:she got sick (long story) and had to be recast at the last moment (even longer story).
Kallum with a K:oh
Kallum with a K:okay
Me:why?
Three dots appeared and then disappeared, like he’d started typing and then changed his mind and decided not to respond.
I shook my head. He’d been weird about Winnie ever since a disastrous Teen Choice Awards ceremony several years back, when he’d sort of injured her with the surfboard-shaped trophy and also sort of caused a giant scandal about her at the after-after-party. Good times.
“Okay, so, Nolan,” Gretchen said, and I turned to face her, tucking my phone away in my jacket and trying to look like I was here to be a Serious Actor and not like half my brain was back in Kansas City with my family and a pizza-parlor-owning friend. “I wanted to check in with you. See how you were feeling about the duke since we talked yesterday.”
“I’m feeling excellent,” I said. Although Gretchen’s vision might have been deep, Pearl’s writing... wasn’t. As much. And that was okay, because the pace of the shoot didn’t allow for much depth anyway. So I felt pretty confident that I could pull off the brand of grumpy smolder Gretchen seemed to want. I’d pouted and scowled my way into thousands of adolescent hearts once upon a time, after all.
“Good, good,” she said, stepping behind the nearby camera to squint into the lens. “And you had a chance to acquaint yourself with Bee?”
Be cool, Nolan. No one needs to know that you’ve jerked off to your castmate before.
I cleared my throat. “Uh. Yeah. I think she’ll work out fine.”
Well, that sounded lackluster.
So I added a hearty, “I’m really excited about working with her!” to make up for it.
“Good,” Gretchen said firmly, finally looking at me again. “She’s new, so I want to make sure everyone’s around to lend a hand and show her the ropes.”
