When the interview was over, Daisy whispered to me off camera that she and Ryan would give me the exclusive on their first sit-down interview together. I was intoxicated with pride after everyone—even Dean through his gritted veneers—complimented me. Well, if you didn’t suck counts as praise.
But the best accolades came from Charlie. He’d pulled me aside and told me that I’d never been better and should be very proud. Then he’d kissed me on the cheek and I felt my knees start to buckle under me, wondering if a kiss on the cheek could do that, what could a kiss on the lips do? Then he whisked me off to dinner and drinks and before I knew it, it was time to fly home. He stood in the hall outside my hotel room and I knew he wanted to come inside. But I’d made an excuse then just like I had today. I’d told him I still had to pack before the flight. He’d simply taken his finger and ran it down the length of my arm and said, “Rain check, then.” When I got inside my room and stared at the suitcase I knew Destiny had already packed for me, I hated that I’d told a lie. But he’d never understand the truth: that I was married; that I had three daughters; that I was living someone else’s life.
The sound of the doorbell pulls me out of my reverie. I put on a silk robe from a chair beside Casey’s bed and head toward the front door. When I peer out the peephole, Charlie is standing there with a cat-who-ate-the-canary look on his face. I pull the door open only far enough to see him through the chain.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” he mimics. “So you gonna let me in or what? I have big, make that huge, news.”
I debate asking him to tell me through the chain, but think better of it. If he’s making a house call, it must be important. I pull the tie around my silk robe tighter.
“Give me a second.”
“Um, okay, you know where to find me,” he says and laughs as I close the door on him.
I hurry into the bedroom, throw on a sweat suit, run into the bathroom and rub toothpaste across my teeth, and fling the front door open. “Sorry about that. The place was a mess,” I say, thinking Casey’s housekeeper comes so often I barely have time to mess it up.
“You missed a spot.” He runs his finger over the dust-free table.
I grab a pillow off the couch and swat him with it. “Whatever, just give me the news already.”
“Sure you don’t want to organize your closets first or clean out the refrigerator or something?”
“Tell me!”
“Are you sitting down?” he says with a chuckle.
I look down at my feet planted firmly on the floor. “Should I be?”
“Uh, yes, for sure.”
I lower myself onto the couch slowly, starting to have a pretty good idea where this conversation is going, but suddenly I’m not at all sure I want to hear the news. Not because it won’t be good, but because it won’t be mine.
Charlie watches my face change. “It’s good, you know.”
“I know.” I force a smile. “Okay, lay it on me.”
“The New York executives are so excited about the buzz the show is getting from the promo clips of the Daisy and Ryan phone call we fed out last night that they’re coming to L.A. to meet with you.”
I consider the news. So it’s happening. They’re going to offer me, well, Casey Lee her own show in New York. The only question is, what am I going to say?
“Casey. Hello?” Charlie waves his hand in front of my face. “You know what this means, right?”
“I think so . . .” I bite my lower lip, fighting back the tears. Suddenly remembering, of all things, my college graduation. I was so pregnant that I could barely walk, but I’d insisted on going to the ceremony. I needed to see Casey accept her diploma. To see John get his. I needed the fact that I didn’t graduate to be real. As I’d watched Casey fling her graduation cap in the air and hug John tightly, I’d rubbed my stomach, feeling incredibly sad and jealous and also incredibly happy all at the same time. It was exactly how I felt now.
“I thought you’d be excited. I thought this is what you wanted.”
“This is what I wanted.” I just didn’t realize it until it was twenty years too late.
“Then why don’t I believe you?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Try me.”
“I can’t. You don’t know how badly I wish I could explain it to you . . . all of it. But you’d never understand. Never in a million years.”
“Come on.” He sits on the couch next to me, so close that I can smell his scent, which has driven me crazy the past few days. It makes me want to grab him and bury my nose in his neck and inhale deeply.