Where was laid-back Brad who didn’t give a shit? I had to take a breath. If Cara saw me like this, she was going to get upset.
I could make light of it, but Cara wasn’t stupid. And she wasn’t inexperienced with this bullshit either. Hollywood wives have long memories.
In the time it took me to think about Hollywood wives, the video of the tacked-together pictures was linked 170 or 701 times.
The comments. My God. So many. I couldn’t read them. I felt the anger roil all over again.
And I’d just fucked her. That wasn’t going to help.
But it couldn’t be undone either. Couldn’t unfuck the situation. Couldn’t unfuck her. This was going to contaminate everything. I was gripping my phone so hard my knuckles were white.
“Can you put some clothes on?”
I looked up. Cara was standing in the doorway with her hand over Nicole’s eyes.
“Yeah, sure.” I rushed into the bedroom and closed the door.
There, I did something I didn’t think about long enough. Something I never thought I’d do.
I set up a lie.
If I showed her, she’d never feel safe with me. Of all the reasons to hide what I knew, one terrified me the most.
I needed to see where it went with her. Just to see. I didn’t know why. We were going nowhere, but it was a compulsion. If she knew about this, my compulsion would never be satisfied.
I wasn’t an intense guy. Not normally. But this was real. I needed to protect her and whatever it was we were doing.
Just to see.
I took a screenshot of the website when the flip-book video of her puking was on. Did it a few times until I got it right. I deleted the link to the website and Ken’s text. Deleted my cache and history so the social media links would disappear. It took twice as long as it should have because I was stressed and everything was jumbled.
That wasn’t going to hold up for long.
I e-mailed the front desk. Told them my daughter was in trouble and needed the Wi-Fi password reset so she couldn’t get on her iPad.
“It’s improv,” I told myself. “Just say yes.”
CHAPTER 49
CARA
Nicole wanted to watch TV, so I let her while I read a text from Blakely.
—Where are you? I have to tell you something— —Disney—
—I thought you weren’t going?— —Didn’t you have something to tell me— —I GOT A CALLBACK!—
—Also there was something that just showed up on Twitter— —Congratulations!—
—What?—
Brad came out of his room with a spring in his step. In pants. And shoes. I was immediately suspicious. Even Nicole, who was watching the pony show with a little bowl of O-shaped cereal in her lap, noticed.
“I like your shoes, Daddy.”
“Thank you. I like your barrette.”
They were tennis shoes, but they were newish. I wondered if I had inspired the switch from sandals and shorts. I turned my phone off and put it facedown on the shiny dining room table.
“Did you want to get lunch?” I asked. He came to the table and leaned over.
“You’re the only thing I want to eat.”
“Cute. Your daughter needs more than dry cereal. And then we should head back out. We didn’t see half the park before I launched my cookies.”
He chuckled, then turned to Nicole.
“Nicole, honey, how would you like to see Grandma and Grandpa?”
She bolted upright. “Grandma!?”
“Yeah.”
“They’re coming?”
“No, we’re going there.”
I felt powerless. He was leaving Disney early, and I couldn’t help but think it was because of me.
“If this is because I puked, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Forget it. I think we can squeeze ten days in before we have to leave for Thailand.”
“My thirty days is up during that shoot.”
“It’s perfect, listen.” He held his hands out as if they could contain me. As if I already had one foot out the door . . . which, maybe I did even if I didn’t realize it. “You and I have this problem. You work for me,” he put his right hand to the right side, and his left to the left as if weighing gold dust on a scale, “and we have a personal relationship. So you go to Arkansas as Nicole’s nanny, and you come back from Thailand not her nanny.”
He slapped his hands together as if getting the dust off them.
That was a lot of travel for a kid, and his solution solved nothing between us.
I started to object, then remembered my place as far as Nicole went. If he wasn’t harming her or making poor decisions, I didn’t have a thing to say. As far as he and I went, I didn’t have a better solution. So I’d go with him to his parents and then to Thailand, where I’d metamorphose from nanny to “not her nanny.” Nothing. Zip.
“Should we eat first?” I asked, trying to get back to business if not in my mind, at least in my actions.
“We’ll get something on the way.” He smirked at me, gorgeous thing. I never thought it would last, but I never thought it would be so short.
“I’ll pack up.”
I went into my little studio. The bedsheets were wrinkled, and there was a damp spot where my wet hair had been.
I collected my toiletries from the bathroom, swiping the soft soap and little bottle of conditioner.
“Are you all right?” Brad said from the doorway. He’d put on a sports jacket. I didn’t know he even owned a sports jacket.
“Yeah. Confused. But I’ll be all right.”
“What are you confused about?”
I blurted it out, running the words together. “We have about ten days left and then Thailand and then I’m nothing except what I’m not so I don’t want to think it’s me or what just happened here that’s making you leave but I do have to think that.”
He stepped forward, and I held my hand up.
“Don’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t kiss me or anything.”
He took out his phone. “I wanted to show you this away from my daughter.”
STORM IN A TEACUP
It was the headline I’d just seen.
“Scroll,” he said. I put the shampoo down and drew my finger across the glass. A picture of the teacup ride appeared. I was throwing up on Nicole.
I hadn’t ever wanted to see myself in the paper. My perverse imagination built the scenario into the thing I thought about when I wanted to horrify myself. To be flat, oversexualized, called names, and surrounded by strangers who hated me.
Now it was right in front of me. I was in the paper, and laughter was the only appropriate response.
Without sexual connotation it was just funny.
“All right? That’s the reason. I just want to get out of here until this blows over. I mean I know it’s funny, and you can stop laughing now.”
“I can’t. It’s too good.”
“I’m trying to protect you from embarrassment here.”
“I know, I know. I feel like I have no control. I mean—” I waved my hands between us, trying to swat away misunderstanding. “I go where you go because I work for you, and after that what do we call it? And what do we tell Nicole because we can’t say we’re just . . . you know.”
“What happened to the dirty mouth?”
“I’m on duty.”