Trae smiled. “I’ll just walk you to your car and see you off.”
Hattie watched the two of them stroll toward the waiting car. “County fairs?” Hattie said, peeling off her fake eyelashes. “That’s a hard pass.”
Cass reached up and began unfastening the extensions Lisa had so laboriously pinned into her hair earlier that morning. “Trade shows? Hell, no.”
Mo took another sip of beer, then tossed the bottle into the recycling bin. “I’m sorry about this, you two. We all put our heart and soul into this show. And we’ve just been officially shafted. Guess I should have known better.”
“But she said Homewreckers will still air. So that’s good news, right?” Hattie asked.
“Yeah, but the time slot they’re giving us is a graveyard,” Mo said. “Realistically, unless we work some kind of miracle, it looks like Homewreckers is gonna be one and done.”
“There goes my show-biz career,” Cass said, unbuttoning the lacy scoop-neck top wardrobe had outfitted her in, to reveal a black tank top with the words MAMA TRIED printed across the front. She tossed the blouse over the back of one of the front porch rockers. “Who wants more banana pudding?”
72
Bye-Bye, Love
Hattie and Mo sat on Zenobia’s borrowed wicker rocking chairs on the screened porch. They were alone in the house. The last van full of rented film equipment had pulled away hours earlier. Crew members hugged and exchanged contact information and promised to keep in touch. Cass and Trae had given each other chilly, cursory nods of farewell before parting ways.
They’d snagged half a bottle of wine from the party leftovers and climbed the stairs to the second-floor porch.
The sun was setting over the Back River, staining the sky in gentle swaths of cobalt, violet, copper, and yellow, leaving the treetops of Little Tybee in stark silhouette.
“What happens now?” she asked.
“You mean with us?” He reached for her hand but she linked only her pinkie with his.
“I meant with the show.”
“Oh. We start postproduction in L.A. next week. And then, I’ve got some irons in the fire … HPTV ain’t the only network doing my kind of programming. In fact…”
“I’ve got to sell this house,” Hattie interrupted. “I wake up in the middle of the night, panicking about it.”
“You will. I bet it’ll be sold before the first episode of Homewreckers airs in the fall. So. You still haven’t answered my question. What about us?”
Hattie stalled by sipping her wine. Here was the moment she’d been dreading since filming had ended hours ago. Why hadn’t she left along with the others? Why stay behind and subject herself to uncomfortable questions and impossible scenarios? She mustered a diversionary response. “You’ll be in L.A. dreaming up a new project, and I’ll be back here in Savannah, demo-ing another stinky old bathroom and crawling around under rotten kitchen floors.”
Mo looped his fingers through hers. She didn’t pull away. “Maybe I’ll drop in and see you.”
It took a moment for her to get the reference to his chance meeting with her at the Tattnall Street house. She gave a rueful laugh. “That seems like a lifetime ago.”
“But it’s only been two months. A lot has happened,” Mo reminded her. “Let’s see where this thing takes us. Okay? The lease on my Airbnb isn’t up yet, which gives me a few days of downtime. I was thinking we could…”
“No,” Hattie said.
“Let me finish,” he protested. “We could spend some time together. Just the two of us. Maybe get out of this blast furnace you call summer in Savannah. I did some research. We could go to the North Carolina mountains. To Cashiers. I hear it’s a lot cooler. There’s an inn, with a spa, and terrific food. Do you like to hike? It’s pet-friendly, so we could take Ribsy.”
She dropped his hand, and was staring out at the darkening sky, her arms crossed over her chest, a defensive mechanism, as though she had to shield her heart from the potential of losing it to this stranger who’d literally come crashing into her life.
Finally, she turned to him. “You said it yourself. You’re going back to L.A. What did you call Homewreckers? One and done, right? That’s us, too, Mo. One and done.”
Mo stood up so quickly that his chair rocked violently before tipping over backward.
“What’s going on with you, Hattie? You’re the most utterly fearless person I’ve ever met, man or woman. I’ve watched you deal with dry rot and termites and crooked inspectors and backyard burial pits, and arson and vandals. Last night you single-handedly disarmed a gun-toting maniac. So why are you such a chickenshit when it comes to being with me?”