I turn to Ashleigh. “I’ll meet you in front in a minute.”
“We’ve really got to go—” she begins and then sees the look on my face and shrugs. “I’ll wait outside.”
I give her a thirty-second head start before I grab my phone and my purse and start walking, and then running, the other way.
I exit through the back with my heels in hand, run across the street and jump in a cab. Ten minutes later I’m entering my hotel room, dialing his number.
His voice, his quiet exhale—they’re like a warm bath I could soak in for hours. I can’t explain why just the sound of his breathing on the other end of the line is enough to make my ridiculous anger about the brioche crack open. I finally let the tears I’ve been holding in fall.
“Are you alright?” he asks, as if he already knows I’m not.
“Yeah,” I reply, but my voice has that rasp it gets when I’m upset.
My feet dig into the plush carpet as if gripping it for balance. I’m here now, alone at last, and I have no idea why I called him. Maybe I shouldn’t have.
“You’re exhausted,” he says. His tone indicates that denying it isn’t an option, and I don’t think I could anyway, not to him. Everything just feels like too much, and I don’t even know what everything is. I can’t seriously be this upset about a pastry. “Are you crying?”
“No,” I whisper. I drop the heels on the floor. “I don’t cry.”
“Of course not.” He laughs, but it’s a gentle laugh and for some reason that makes the tears drip faster. “Tell me why you’re not crying.”
I swallow and turn the lock on the door behind me. “I don’t know. I’m just tired. It was nonstop today, and then I had to perform, and I just…didn’t want to.”
“Okay,” he says. “Except that’s every day for you. Why are you not crying this time?”
I give a strangled laugh. “I’m crying over a fucking brioche. There’s this place here, Brioche Dorée, which is like the 7-Eleven of pastry shops.” It’s so stupid that I’m crying over a pastry. With everything that’s happened to me, this shouldn’t even make a dent. That it does makes me feel crazy. “And I told my assistant to get one for me and Davis told her not to because I’d gained weight in Hawaii and—”
“He said that?” Josh asks. His rage cuts through the phone line like a knife. “Tell me he did not make that about your weight. Jesus Christ.”
His outrage makes me cry harder because I am seeing how insane it is that I’m in this position at all. How utterly fucked up must I be to have let this whole situation evolve? I’m so untethered without Josh. I had no idea I felt so alone until that trip to Hawaii, and now I can’t stop feeling it.
“I haven’t slept,” I tell him. “Davis kept giving me coke just to keep me awake today and I—”
“Get on a plane,” he whispers. “Just come back.”
And I’ll take care of you. He doesn’t say it aloud, but I hear it anyway.
“Come back where?” I ask. “I don’t even have a home.”
“Come to me.”
“I can’t,” I whisper. “You have no idea how badly I wish I could, but I can’t. There’s another press call tomorrow, and a charity thing tomorrow night, and then I leave for Berlin. And you’re leaving anyway.”
He sighs. “Where are you now?”
“In my hotel room,” I tell him. “And I’m supposed to be at some party, and Davis is going to be such a dick about this tomorrow and make my life so much harder to punish me.”
“Get undressed. Keep me on the phone.”
I laugh through my tears. “This is taking an unexpected turn.”
“I’m not taking advantage of your exhaustion to have phone sex, I promise. Get undressed and climb into bed.”
I still have all my makeup on and my hair is like a shellac helmet on my head, but I’m so tired and…fuck it. I’m here for whatever he’s about to suggest, the makeup and hair be damned. I unzip the side of the dress and exhale in relief when it’s off. The strapless bra that’s been digging into my rib cage for hours soundlessly follows.
“Put me on speaker,” he says, “and turn out the lights.”
I pad across the carpeted floor, flicking out lights as I go, and then climb into the bed at last. They’re the smoothest sheets I’ve ever felt in my life.
“Oh my god, it’s such a comfy bed, Josh. I wish you were here.”
“I wish I were too,” he says.
I smile suggestively in the dark. “What would you do?”
“Given that you’re still crying, I wouldn’t do anything especially exciting,” he says with a quiet laugh. “I’d lay down with you, and I’d pull your back to my chest, and I’d wrap my arms around you and stay just like that until you fell asleep.”
Does anyone but me know how sweet he is? How much goodness lies under that cranky exterior? I lay the phone on my pillow and roll to face it, as if it’s him there beside me.
“You would totally get a boner,” I reply. “I’m naked.”
“I’d think about amputations to prevent it, if necessary.”
I grin. “I always wanted a guy who’d think about amputations when I’m naked next to him.”
“Then apparently I’m your prince,” he says with another small laugh. “Okay. You’re in bed? The lights are off? Close your eyes.”
His voice and this soft bed are lulling me to sleep, but I’m not ready to go yet. I feel like I just got him.
“I don’t want to stop talking to you,” I whisper.
“I’m going to be right here, just like I would be there.”
It’s afternoon in California. I guess he’s packing to leave for Somalia and once he’s there, whatever this is with us will be over.
“I wish we had that whole two weeks back, from Hawaii. I wish it had been different.”
“I do too,” he says, “but it was pretty perfect in its own way.”
I smile. “You mean the little replica of the Washington Monument in my back during the camping trip? The moment I realized you kind of liked me?”
“I don’t love the fact that you’re calling it little, baby.”
I laugh, but my heart warms at the endearment. I doubt it’s one Josh gives out lightly. And then I fall silent and sleep is overtaking me, whether I want it to or not.
“I miss you,” I tell him. “I wish you were here.”
“Me too,” he sighs. “You have no idea.”
When I wake in the morning, the hotel phone is ringing and my cell is dead. I wonder if he’d still be on the line if it wasn’t.
I shower and am hustled into hair and makeup. When my phone is charged, I text Josh to thank him, but he doesn’t reply. He’s on his way to Somalia by now, so that makes sense, but it leaves me feeling exposed. As if I gave away something last night, asked for too much, leaned too hard.
I find myself blanking out, again and again, throughout the day. I’m an adult now, cossetted and sought after. But whenever my eyes close, I’m eleven years old, riding on a bus that’s getting farther and farther from home with no idea how I’ll ever get back.