He looks like a man in love.
I put my phone, facedown, on the bed.
Gabe comes into the bedroom, with tea, without a shirt. He stops in the doorway and I don’t blame him because I can feel the expression on my face. It’s heavy. Stormy.
He looks where I’ve put my phone.
“Bad news?” he asks.
I exchange my phone for the tea. He sits on the edge of the bed, his thumb scrolling through the pictures.
“Okay,” he says.
There’s a tinge of confusion in his voice. I can see that he doesn’t exactly understand what he’s looking at and why it has resulted in me doing an imitation of a sad theatre mask.
“Okay,” he says again. “This isn’t ideal, but we can make it work.”
“Make it work,” I echo.
Gabe nods, but he’s not actually listening. He’s thinking. Problem-solving. And I can tell that this isn’t the first time something like this has happened.
Of course not.
“We’ll call my management. We’ll put out a statement.”
The mug is hot against my hands, burning the delicate whorls of my fingertips.
“A statement,” I say.
I’m fully parroting him, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
The tightness doesn’t feel like happiness anymore.
It’s that quicksand feeling again. Like I’m being pulled under and I know that no matter how hard I struggle, I’m still going to drown, reality pressing in around me.
I put the tea on the side table with a thunk.
“I need more time,” I say.
I’m not in any rush, Gabe had said.
“We had ten years,” Gabe says now, and this time the ironic twist to his words isn’t funny at all.
“That’s not what I mean,” I say.
“I know.” He looks a little chastened. “But we don’t really have that luxury. It’s better if we put out a statement now than say nothing and have paparazzi stalking us when we get back to L.A.”
Paparazzi.
They say that you should never read the comments.
I made that mistake after the first Go Fug Yourself article. The comments had been fine there, but once it went viral, appearing on websites where posts weren’t monitored, the claws had come out. People were incensed that I had gone with him to the premiere. It was almost a personal affront that I’d been allowed to stand next to him on the red carpet. After my article came out and there were whispers about how he’d fucked me to get good press, the vitriol increased. People were furious that I dared to be so unattractive and still get Gabe’s attention.
My very presence near Gabe had apparently created a tear in the fabric of the universe. Up was down, right was wrong, cats and dogs living together, total anarchy.
People had felt entitled to tell me that. In comments. In reviews. In emails.
To them, I was nothing more than a bad writer who had slept her way into the spotlight. I was the walking, breathing stereotype of a female reporter. And the worst part is that there’s truth in it all. How unprofessional I’ve been. How reckless. How selfish.
And now? That reaction would be nothing compared to the backlash I’d get if the world discovered the truth. If this thing between Gabe and me went public.
I’d be proving them right, and revealing myself to be a liar.
I’m sinking.
“No,” I say.
“No?” Gabe looks at me, then back at the phone. Frowns. “You want to say something else?”
“I don’t want to say anything.”
“Okay,” he says, the word slow and drawn out.
He’s confused.
“I can’t do this,” I say.
“What?”
“I. Can’t. Do. This,” I say, enunciating each word like an asshole.
He looks as if I’ve slapped him.
“Are you fucking serious right now?”
His voice is quiet but hard.
“Gabe,” I say. “I’m sorry if you thought differently, but—”
“Stop,” he says.
I can’t.
“Maybe something could have happened back then. But it didn’t. You made your choice; you ran off and married Jacinda while the whole world gossiped about whether or not I’d slept with you—”
“Enough,” he says.
The sharp lash of the word stops me.
He’s furious.
“I’ve held my tongue, but this is ridiculous. Yeah, I shouldn’t have gone to Vegas with Jacinda. Yeah, I should have called. Yeah, I could have done things differently, but the thing that you keep forgetting, Chani, is that you left.”