“You just made an ass of yourself in public,” he replies, missing the threat or ignoring it. “I’d hardly say you’re ahead.”
I hang up and slide the screen door open only to find Josh sitting outside. He glances at me with his lips pinched tight, guilty and worried at once. “You just heard all that, didn’t you?” I ask.
He shrugs. “It was hard to miss. You’re extremely loud.”
I sink into the chair on my side of the balcony. “Of course I am,” I mutter. I’m too tired to fight on my own behalf anymore.
It’s silent for a moment before he turns toward me. “Why do you let him talk to you like that?” He sounds pissed and also appalled, reminding me just how bad it must seem to someone on the outside, someone not accustomed to it.
I shield my eyes from the sun to look over at him. “Well, he’s under contract, first of all. I’d have to pay out the ass to get rid of him, and he hired everyone else who works for me, so untangling it would be a mess.” Saying this out loud makes my situation seem even more hopeless.
“Except you weren’t drunk,” he says. “When you fell. It was a panic attack, right? So why are you allowing him and everyone else to act like you’re a problem?”
I hitch a shoulder in lieu of answering. I don’t mind that he knows, but the whole thing is embarrassing. “I’d rather let everyone think I’m a drunk than a complete nutcase. At least drunks can be cured.”
“Having panic attacks doesn’t make you a nutcase,” he says. “There are worse ways to cope with stress. And, by the way, I’m really curious to hear what you think the expression live off the land means. Because I doubt there are hot stone massages or mai tais.”
“Stones are from the land and I could build a fire to heat them,” I reply with a grin. “Stop killing my dream in its infancy. To clarify, though, I’m not talking some kind of Castaway scenario where a volleyball is my only friend. I’d rely on my money a little.”
He raises a brow. “While living off the land. Land like…this? A nice hotel with room service?”
“It’s on land, isn’t it?” I ask, grinning.
He laughs, his blue eyes bright and completely free of contempt, his smile wide and almost affectionate. I wonder what he’d do if I woke him at four AM, telling him my world is falling apart. I’m not sure anyone can make it better, but I suspect he’d really do his best.
At ten-thirty, I meet the Baileys down at the valet stand to ride to Diamond Head. Jim has rented an oversized Jeep that manages to fit all of us, but that’s pretty much the only part of the trip that goes according to plan.
At the convenience store, we are mobbed by teenage girls wanting autographs. Josh winds up pulling me out, barreling through the crowd like a lineman. We get to Diamond Head, which—disappointingly—is not a dormant volcano, but a volcanic crater, meaning there’s not even a chance it will explode. And we haven’t even started to head up the path before I’m posing for pics and signing things again, listening patiently while one chick lists the songs on my last album she didn’t care for.
“Your face looks thinner on camera,” someone else says. “Is it contour? Or are they using Photoshop?”
“Can we go?” barks Josh, stepping between us. He successfully separates me from the crowd, and shepherds me up the trail away from them before walking ahead with Sloane.
I’m in back with Beth, who’s moving slowly, while Jim trails behind us, slower still, when I see a group of teens coming down the trail, and feel that too-familiar panic in my chest. At the entrance, I could still escape. But up on that trail, which is about to narrow, anything can go wrong. Sweat dots my brow, slides between my shoulder blades.
“I can’t,” I whisper.
I can’t handle being surrounded, not being able to get away. I can’t handle having a panic attack with everyone watching.
Beth stops. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t deal with this,” I whisper. “Finish the hike, okay? I’ll be fine. I’m just going to meet you at the hotel.”
And then I race back down the trail, past the entrance, and keep going until I finally find myself on some street where I don’t see a single person, thank God.
I can’t keep living like this, I think.
It’s exactly the thought I had that night in Amsterdam, except there it felt paralyzing and right now it just seems…freeing. I pull out my phone and call my assistant’s number. “Ashleigh,” I tell her, “I need a haircut and color in Waikiki.”
She pauses. “Have you talked to Davis?” she finally asks. “He probably has a certain look he wants for the apology tour.”
The apology tour. I still can’t believe they’re calling it that.
“Which one of us pays you, Ashleigh?” I ask. “And who does my hair belong to?”
“You,” she says sullenly. “Fine. When do you want to do it?”
“Now,” I reply. “Right the fuck now.”
15
JOSH
Those photos of Drew and me walking out of the water are suddenly everywhere, it would seem.
Every five minutes I’m getting a text from a buddy in med school. It’s amazing just how many of my friends have made precisely the same joke, some version of Life in Somalia looks a lot better than I realized. My colleagues back in Somalia write to say I see you’re making the most of your time away, or You’re never coming back, clearly, and I can’t blame you.
I could live with the ribbing. But I’m not sure I’ll survive Sloane’s attitude about the whole thing, because she’s getting texts about it too. And even though she knows there’s nothing to it—even though she was there for most of it—she’s absolutely livid.
We arrive at Diamond Head with Sloane’s considerable intellect focused entirely on the question of whether I’m aware of my brother’s girlfriend. It seems a little unfair, as Drew currently comprises twenty percent of the people on this trip. It would be almost sociopathic for me to not notice, but apparently if Drew is surrounded by a crowd of jackals pulling at her clothes and her hair and commenting on her weight, I’m just supposed to ignore it. Someone can say aren’t you going to rehab and someone else can say I thought you’d be thinner and I’m supposed to be sitting there on my damn phone, reading an article about the Greek debt crisis or checking out reviews of the restaurant we’re eating at tonight.
I did almost nothing to extricate Drew from the situation, but Sloane was still irritated.
Look who’s suddenly Sir Lancelot, she said under her breath.
So for ten minutes I have marched forward, determined to salvage a situation I didn’t put myself in in the first place, and when I finally stop I find my parents approaching.
Alone.
“Where’s Drew?” I bark, and I know I sound far too angry and invested, but I can’t help it.
My mother blinks. Just once. A tiny processing of something and discarding it. “Poor thing,” she says. “She saw those crowds coming down and panicked. She said she couldn’t do this.”
“And you just let her go?” I ask.