“No, they’re fine. I think you were having a bad dream. You were whimpering.”
“Oh,” I say, as the dream comes flooding back to me. I was chasing Brian up the stairs at the hotel again, but this time, my feet felt like cement blocks, each step a monumental effort. I kept calling out for Rachel to help me, but she was nowhere to be found. I finally just gave up and lay down on the cold, unyielding floor.
“It was odd, you kept calling your own name,” John says before getting up and heading to the bathroom. I reach over and grab a glass of water off the dresser, still trying to understand what happened at the hotel yesterday. Why Rachel chose to take a call from Charlie instead of chasing down the one person who could help us get our respective lives back. Why she’s barely been over here to see the kids. Rachel is the last person I would have pegged to get caught up in the celebrity lifestyle I lead. In fact, she has always been the one person who saved me from completely succumbing to it, her house always feeling like a sanctuary from the craziness of it all. But what bothers me most is that she’s obviously falling for Charlie.
Charlie, always hoping he’d see that softer side of me again, and Rachel, feeling unappreciated by her own husband and family, being totally vulnerable to someone as caring as him. It’s the perfect storm. It’s ironic how it wasn’t until I found myself neck-deep in Rachel’s life that I could finally see my own clearly. I squeeze my eyes shut, feeling despondent that I might never get the chance to tell Charlie how wrong I was the night we broke up. That it’s taken going to hell and back in my best friend’s body to realize that I haven’t really been living at all.
I feel the mattress rise and fall as John turns over. I begin to move over to make room but feel his strong arms circle around my waist and pull me against the fold of his body. I lean my head down but don’t pull away, craving the comfort. “You okay?” he whispers, his breath tickling my ear and giving me goose bumps.
“Yes,” I answer quietly and rub my arm to make them disappear, as if they’re betraying me, betraying Rachel. Whatever’s going on with her and Charlie, I still have no business getting goose bumps from her husband, even if I can’t remember the last time I’ve let someone hold me like this. Either way, I let the rhythm of his warm breath on the back of my neck coax me into a dreamless sleep.
? ? ?
“Is that Tori Spelling?” Audrey cranes her neck to get a better view of the lithe blonde standing at the valet stand, wearing a beautiful canary maxidress, holding a baby in one arm and grasping a small child’s hand in the other.
“No,” I lie.
“Are you sure, Mom?” She narrows her eyes and pulls out her phone to take a picture. “I think that’s her.”
“It’s not,” I say as I put my hand over the phone, thinking about how Tori Spelling deserves her privacy. In this moment she’s just a mother trying to balance her purchases, a cup of coffee, and four small children all at once. Even though I’ve made a living exposing these little nuances in order to prove celebrities are human, just like us, it made me uneasy. “Don’t.”
“Fine,” she relents before glancing around the room again. “Do you see anyone else? I thought you said we’d definitely see some celebrities here.”
I look around the Joan’s on Third dining room, recognizing a few industry faces, but no one that a sixteen-year-old would get excited about. “Sorry.”
“I wish Aunt Casey were here. She would know who everyone is!”
“Well, she couldn’t make it. I’ll have to do,” I snip, but quickly force a smile when I see Audrey’s confused expression as if asking, Why would Mom be upset that Aunt Casey couldn’t make it? “Something very important came up at work.”
When Rachel called a few hours ago to cancel, I was livid. Something about Melissa McCarthy and being in Santa Barbara. Charlie and I had some of the best moments of our short relationship there, and the thought of him being there with Rachel breaks my heart. “Audrey’s counting on you,” I told her as I paced the living room, trying to console a teething Charlotte, whose normal easygoing, cheerful disposition had been replaced by a tantrum-throwing, drooling devil baby for the past forty-eight hours.
“I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do,” she answered plainly, closing the door on any further discussion. I could hear her fingers typing on her keyboard in the background, and I wondered if she was even listening.
I was counting on you too, I thought as I hung up the phone and grabbed another teether from the freezer.