She reaches across the table and rests her fingers on mine for a split second, but it’s enough to zap all the words out of my mouth.
“It’s fine. I trust you. Besides, I’m sure you heard the story. It was all over social media, hard to miss.”
“I’m not on social media much. Quinn handles all that for the office.”
She chuckles, and our eyes lock. “I dated another actor. Chris Stewart. You know who that is?”
“Yeah, I think so. Wasn’t he in that one movie, the one that’s like Princess Bride, but in space?”
“Yep. That was my longest relationship. Six months. Pathetic, right?”
I shake my head. “Not at all.”
She sighs. “We never had privacy. We couldn’t go on vacation without being followed by the press. They loved to take photos, posting articles judging me in a bikini. You can’t win, really. You’re either too thin and on drugs or too fat and pregnant and on drugs.” She takes a gulp of water. “It was worse because Mom would tell them where I was.”
“What?” She’s told me how her mother is, but it’s still so hard to believe a parent could be that way to her child.
“Oh, yeah.” She shakes her head. “Anyway, the whole thing was . . . stupid, really. I was naïve. I thought we were serious or would be serious. But in hindsight, we never talked about anything real. It was all surface. We never went anywhere we wouldn’t be seen and photographed. I found out later it was for publicity, promoting his movie. I wish I had understood all that before the press released all the photos of him with that model. Six months, and even that wasn’t real. He thought I knew because my mom knew.”
I wince. “That’s a terrible thing to have to go through, so publicly.”
“It kind of turned me off of dating . . . forever. Then there was that whole thing with the reporter, I’m sure you heard about it.”
“No, I don’t think I have.”
“Right after that, I had to do a press junket for the release of the show on a new streamer. I didn’t want to, but I was under contract. One of the reporters kept asking about Chris and what happened, and I kept trying to get back to questions about the show. Eventually, I was on the verge of a panic attack so I got up and walked out mid-interview and refused to go back. It was a whole thing, people calling me a diva and a brat. Mom freaked out on me, my publicist tried to control the spin, but it was all just too much. That was kind of my breaking point. I moved to Boston and hid away until the furor died down. Then I just didn’t really want to emerge.”
“Until now.”
“Until now. It was nice at first, being alone and only interacting with people on my own terms, through text or FaceTime or whatever. I relished not having to deal with people. But over time, it got lonely.”
“I get it. I mean, I can’t possibly understand what you went through, living under a microscope your whole life, because I’ve never experienced it. But it can’t have been easy.” Especially not with her mother working against her.
Her eyes scan my face, and her lips curve up. Then she glances over at the windows lining the wall, the darkness reflecting our images. “It’s getting late. I should probably get out of your hair. I know you’re up early.”
She’s right. I do get up early. She should leave. But I don’t want her to. I shove that thought down and push myself to my feet instead. “Right. I’ll walk you to the door.”
“I can help clean up?”
I wave her off. “It’s nothing. Just a couple plates. Besides, you cooked this time.”
She laughs. “Reheating chicken and mixing a prebagged salad is not cooking. It’s hardly an accomplishment.”
I follow her out of the dining room to the door. I glance down the hall into the office. The curtains are closed, so the path is pitch-black.
“I’ll go with you to the light switch.”
“My hero.” She presses a hand to her chest. “The hallway is so dangerous.”
“It really can be. Slippery wood floor. Uneven boards. Walls.”
She laughs. “Walls? Those are the scariest parts. They’re all large and immovable.”
“Until you run into one. Trust me, they move.”
I feel for the light switch on the wall near the stairs and flick it on, illuminating the rest of her path.
She stops. “Thank you for the walk to my . . . to the stairs.” Without warning, she reaches up, rests a warm hand on my shoulder, and brushes a kiss against my cheek.
