Bombshell (Hollywood A-List #1)(93)

“Not if you count backward.”

“Silly Daddy.” From the garden we heard the tap of a gong. Her eyes went wide, and her mouth opened with excitement. “They’re doing the little gong!”

She threw her napkin on the table and scrambled off the bench. A monk who was reportedly 113 years old approached the steps to the deck. His gait was painfully slow, and his body had little muscle mass left, but he always smiled at Nicole. He must have been the reason for the question about how old people flew to heaven. It was hard to imagine this man in flight.

“She can come?” The monk held out a crooked hand to Nicole, who bounced to him without a thought. “Morning prayers?”

“I can do the little gong? The red one?”

“Go on,” Brad said.

She went into the garden with the monk and didn’t look back, chattering up a storm.

“We need to get her a gong for her room.”

“No way.” He brought his cup to his mouth, looking at me over the edge. His eyes were awake, and his skin was flush again.

The hardest day had been the first, when he told his agent he was indeed quitting Bangkok Brotherhood and reassessing his schedule. He had been in the middle of contract negotiations on two roles and lost them before the sun set over the mountains. Another smaller picture fell through when he became unbankable because he’d lost the other two. His March picture? Let go when the insurance company doubled his bond.

He laughed it all off and told Variety he was dyslexic. He met with the director of Bangkok Brotherhood in a nearby riverside café to explain. I didn’t think it would help, and he assured me it didn’t. He was finished in the business.

Nothing kept his body from mine at night. Nicole was in an adjoining room, and she didn’t cry for us to be in bed with her. Maybe she knew we were together on the other side of the wall.

“Home tomorrow,” he said on the monastery patio. “I never thought I’d want to see Arkansas twice in a month.”

“And then Los Angeles.”

We weren’t talking about who we were or how we were arranging our relationship when we got back. It was easy in Thailand. I was his, and we were both Nicole’s. Back in Hollywood we had questions over whether or not I’d be a nanny or a live-in girlfriend who took care of his daughter. Whether or not I’d work and he’d hire someone else. Whether or not Nicole would be confused, and how much. There was no easy answer.

But the breeze was so perfect, and the humidity hadn’t gotten sticky yet, and the chimes and gongs echoed through the mountains.

“I’ve been thinking about going home,” he said.

“Really?” I leaned back and crossed my legs, resting my teacup under my breasts as if it would protect my heart.

He put his elbows on the table. That meant he was serious. “At first I thought we should all just move to Redfield. If I ever work again, I’ll just travel.”

I tried not to react. I adored his family and even Redfield, but my dismay at being away from him must have been all over my face, because he held his hand up for a moment as if he wanted to calm me down.

“But I’d end up keeping the house in LA and without you guys in it?” He shook his head. “It would suck. So here’s what I got. You ready?”

“Probably not.”

“I think we have to define what this family is for us. Not for everyone else. And you have to define what you are to yourself.”

I was the most complicated piece of this puzzle. We knew that. If I was a caretaker for children, what did that mean for Nicole? And if I loved Nicole as much as a mother could, was I still her nanny? Would she feel abandoned if I got another job?

“I still don’t know anything.”

“I know.”

“Except that I love Nicole,” I said, “and I love you.”

“Let me ask you. Would this be easier if—”

“Daddy!” Nicole cried from the garden, the exact opposite of a meditative sound. The monks didn’t seem to mind. They said they rented out their huts to families because they loved children. Thank God. Because enlightenment was tough enough without a five-year-old’s demands.

“Yes, pumpkin?”

She’d stepped away from the circle of monks chanting and held up the little gong with one hand and the mallet with the other.

“Listen! I’m going now!”

“Okay. Go ahead.”

She sat cross-legged in the circle, looked back at us, and tapped the gong.

We gave her the thumbs-up.

“No matter what I say,” he said, still looking onto the garden, “it’s going to sound like it’s about convenience. But it’s not.”

“What’s a matter of convenience?”

The gongs vibrated, sending their harmony to the blue sky and the frothy clouds.

“I was happy before I met you, you know.” His eyes went to the table between us. “I was perfectly fine. But she came. She came first, and that’s a fact. She blew it all apart, and I held my life together with spit and chewing gum.” He looked up at me and smiled. “You know, if you break a vase and glue it back together, it’s bigger after it breaks? The glue takes up space. The cracks add to it.”

I put my cup down. He took my hand before I could put it back on the arm of the chair.