“What the fuck were you thinking?” Casey launches into a tirade the moment I answer my cell phone the next day.
“I wasn’t,” I answer quietly, backstage at the studio we’ve rented. I hear footsteps behind me, spin around quickly, and nearly knock over a young girl who looks more like a supermodel than a production assistant. She tries to hand me a stack of blue cards for my exclusive sit-down interview with Daisy McKnight. The past twenty-four hours had been a whirlwind. From the time Charlie and I left the ice rink to just a few hours later when the picture showed up on TMZ, to last night when I spent two hours on the phone successfully convincing Daisy to tell her story.
She’d cried throughout our phone conversation, revealing to me why she was choosing to stand by her husband. How she knew what the press was going to say, especially now that as many as four women had come forward, each making an allegation that he’d slept with them. So far, Ryan had only admitted to the one in the hot tub, but Daisy knew in her gut they were all telling the truth and suspected there were even more. That’s off the record, she’d warned, momentarily remembering who she was talking to. I have to do it for our five-year-old daughter, she’d said, her voice small, sounding more like she was trying to convince herself than me.
I’d told her I understood why she’d want to keep her family together at all costs, thinking again of the photos Casey texted me of Audrey before she went on her first date, looking so beautiful and grown up (and stylish!). Thinking for a moment of my own potential indiscretion with Charlie and how if I did cross the line, where would that leave my marriage, my family, and me? Daisy had been surprised that I was so insightful about her situation because I wasn’t married and didn’t have any kids, did I? “I’m very close to my nieces,” was all I could offer her. I hadn’t worked that hard since I tried to convince the PTA to sell wrapping paper instead of flavored popcorn for the annual fund-raiser (as I’m sure Casey now knows, those PTA moms aren’t a walk in the park either!).
“Casey, we need you over here for a lighting check.” The stage manager came around the corner and motioned for me to sit in an oversized cream chair while an audio guy put a mic pack on me.
Fiona glares at me from an identical chair across from mine. She’s doing the lighting check for Daisy because they’re both blond and about the same height. But that’s where the similarities end. Unlike Fiona, Daisy is natural. No plastic surgery. Nothing fake about her. In fact she seems genuinely sweet, a former schoolteacher from the Midwest who met Ryan early in his career when he came to the Mall of America to perform “Baby It’s You,” the song that would catapult him into ridiculous boy-band fame. She was working in one of the clothing stores there and he’d noticed her and asked one of his “people” to inquire if she’d like to meet him. Not having a clue who he was, but incredibly curious, she’d agreed. “And we’ve been together ever since, twelve years just this month, you know, the night he was with her . . .” Daisy had trailed off and I didn’t push her to talk about the fact that he cheated on her on their wedding anniversary. I just promised myself I’d handle the interview well for her sake. She trusted me now.
“I don’t know what I’m more upset about,” Casey snaps, “that you went ice skating with Charlie and got all lovey dovey with him—which by the way you’re going to have to explain in a minute—or that you were wearing that god-awful coat. Wait, I’m zooming in now. Jesus, is that my old pea coat from college?”
I slouch down in my seat and close my eyes, not prepared to have this conversation even though I know I owe it to Casey to have it.
“Sorry to interrupt you, Casey, but can you please sit up a little taller while we check this lighting? We’re almost done.” The stage manager is hovering nearby and I know he’s anxious to get this done with only an hour until we roll tape. “I told her,” the stage manager says into his headset to the director in the control room.
“Yeah, sorry.” I sit up.
“Yeah, sorry? That’s all I get?” Casey spits.
“Not you, I was talking to the stage manager.”
“Can you focus on this please? It’s only my life we’re talking about here.”
It’s not just your life anymore, I think, and despite it all, I can’t help but smile as I remember Charlie’s arms around my waist. How safe I felt. How sexy I felt, even in Casey’s old pea coat.
“Are you even listening to me?” Casey snaps.