“I could go with you to meet yours, if you’d like,” I volunteered, and I realized too late that I was flirting, I was definitely flirting. Inviting Bee on a horse date where we’d be alone together was not a good way to keep our mouths apart, or our genitals, and Bee seemed to be thinking the same thing because she said, “I don’t know—”
Pearl said, at the same time, “Inspired idea, Nolan! I’ll go with you!”
I lifted my eyebrows at Bee, as if to say,How much trouble can we get into with Pearl as a chaperone?
Bee screwed her mouth to the side in a cute little knot, and then she let out a sigh. “Okay. After you’re done here.”
“We won’t be long,” Gretchen said. “We just need one take of him riding in his ducal glory, and then another take of him riding more... sadly.”
She wasn’t being reductive; that was actually what the script said.
EXT. FROSTMERE MANOR
Duke rides horse sadly.
“And let’s be on the ball, everyone,” Gretchen said so the nearby crew could hear too. “We don’t have much good light left, so let’s try to get this as quickly as we can! Nolan, to your mark, please.”
I couldn’t resist showing off a little and cantered down the snowy field, turning the horse with a flourish. I knew that Bee and I had said sex was off-limits, and maybe while I was on Steph’s roster, Bianca von Honey would always be a PR no-no, but goddammit, I wanted to impress her.
Once the camera started rolling, I nudged One Hundred Percent That Horse into a gallop and acted the hell out of a smoldering duke, riding his way smolderingly to his manor house. I felt the coat flapping around my thighs, the ease of my seat in the saddle, the wind rushing through my hair, and I hoped Bee was watching and thinking about how great my thighs looked in these breeches—
Bzzz. Bzzz.
A familiar vibration rumbled from inside my jacket. This wasn’t a text, but a call. And a call could be anything, it could be so many insignificant things that weren’t worth pissing off Gretchen Young for, but if it wasn’t insignificant, if it was Maddie and there was something scary happening and she couldn’t get ahold of Barb or Kallum—
Muttering a German swear word I picked up from a tour bus driver back in the day, I slowed the horse to a halt in the middle of the field. We were only halfway through the shot, and I was ruining the take, and I knew I looked like a gigantic dickhead as I pulled out my phone and answered it.
“Hey, now isn’t a good time,” I said breathlessly, turning the horse toward Gretchen and the crew. Pearl looked baffled, the cameraman looked downright ticked, and Gretchen’s face hadn’t changed at all, in a way that felt like it didn’t mean great things for her opinion of me.
And Bee? The disappointment on her face was enough to shrivel my heart, lungs,andballs.
But all of that was forgotten as soon as I heard Maddie’s teary gasps.
“Hey,” I said quickly, panic rising, “hey, hey. It’s okay, Maddie. It’s okay. Can you tell me what’s going on?”
“Nothing’s okay,” she said in a watery voice that made my own throat ache. “I’m at the pharmacy, and they said Mom’s medicine was going to cost over a thousand dollars for a month’s supply, and I don’t have a thousand dollars, and then they said I had to call the state Medicaid people, and so I did, and they’re being so mean to me right now, and I don’t knowwhat to do, because I still don’t have a thousand dollars, and if I don’t have that, I can’t get the medicine for Mom.”
Her words came so fast, right on top of one another, that it took me a moment to understand.
“Oh Maddie,” I said.
“And I know you said that if I ever have to call for something for Mom that I should just pretend to be her, but the pharmacist was right there, and I didn’t feel like I could lie right in front of her, and—”
“I’ll figure it out,” I promised. “It’s okay. Sometimes places like Medicaid deny things for reasons that are really easy to fix.”
And sometimes the fixes weren’t so easy—or possible—but I elected not to say that to Maddie right now.
“Is Medicaid still on the other line?” I asked.
A sniffle. “Yes.”
“Give them my number. I’ll deal with them and that should bring the price down. Can you come back to the pharmacy later this evening?”
Another sniffle. “Yeah, after band practice.”
I couldn’t sigh right now, not without her hearing, but I let out a long, slow breath instead. If I were there, Maddie wouldn’t be crying. If I were there, I could fix everything and Maddie could be at band practice like a normal high school student and not dealing with the pointless dickery of subsidized health insurance.
“Okay, then that’s what we’ll do. You’ll give them my number, I’ll handle everything with them, and then all you’ll have to do is come back and get the medicine—hopefully for less than a thousand dollars.”
