The Bodyguard (87)

“Was it not … real?” I asked, when time started up again. My voice seemed like it was coming out of someone else’s body.

Jack’s eyes made an expression I can only describe as “incredulous disdain.” “Of course not.”

Of course not.

Then Jack added, “You really bought it? You believed me? That’s so funny.”

“Wait—so…” I shook my head. “Yesterday? Everything that happened?”

Jack gave a little shrug. “Fake,” he said.

I couldn’t seem to stop shaking my head. “You were…?” I didn’t know what I was asking.

“Bored,” he confirmed.

“So you pretended…?”

“I was doing a thing they call acting.”

“So … the thing where you”—the question stung my mouth with humiliation, even as I asked it—“chose me over Kennedy Monroe…?”

But Jack just nodded big, like I’d made a great point. “I know, right? I got both of you with that one. A twofer.”

I felt myself sinking. “You were acting,” I said, trying to absorb it.

“Just another day at the office.”

“But…” I still didn’t get it. “But why?”

Jack gave a short sigh, like Try to catch up. “Do you remember when my mom said I really wasn’t that great of an actor?” Jack asked then. “That felt like a personal challenge.”

“You pretended to like me,” I paused for a second, putting it together, “to show up your mom’s assessment of your acting skills?”

He shrugged. “It was something to do. Right? How else do you keep busy in the middle of nowhere?”

My head just kept shaking itself. “So … yesterday? All that … kissing?”

“Choreographed,” Jack confirmed with a nod.

I felt lightheaded. I put my hand against the doorjamb to steady myself. Somewhere, in another universe, my bleeding foot was throbbing.

“I’ll take the wine, though,” he said, in a tone like Moving on.

Weirdly, I handed it to him.

He checked the label. “Cheap.”

The air around us suddenly looked strange, like it was made of fumes. I wondered if I might faint.

“Speaking of bored,” Jack said. “I really do have friends waiting.”

We hadn’t been “speaking of bored,” but okay. “Sure,” I said.

His eyes looked dull and flat. “They’re going to laugh so hard at this story. It’s so hilarious when you think about it.”

“Is it?” I asked, not sure there was an answer.

“We’re done here, right?” Jack said.

And then, without even waiting for me to respond, he just … closed the door. Presumably to go recount the story of the dumbest, most gullible security guard in all of history to some vicious group of A-list movie-star friends gathered around a charcuterie board.

This was how the love of my life would end? With me as the butt of Jack Stapleton’s joke?

It’s so hilarious when you think about it.

I have no idea how long I stood there after that. For all I knew, time had collapsed in on itself in an infinity loop.

My brain felt like white noise. My throat felt like sand. My entire being positively vibrated with shame. The humiliation was total. There was no cell in my body that wasn’t saturated with it.

He was acting. He was acting. He’d been acting the whole time.

Of course he was acting.

Of course.

In slow motion, I squatted down to take off my sandals, and I noticed for the first time how bad the cut was on my injured foot, and how slippery the blood was making the sole.

Next, barefoot and bleeding, I stood back up.

He’d been acting.

As if going through a checklist, I swallowed, pulled back my shoulders, and lifted my chin. I clutched my dumb little purse with one hand and let the shoes dangle from the fingers of the other.

And then I limped back down the driveway as if the whole world were watching me go.



* * *



IT TOOK A thousand years to reach my car.

For one thing, I was walking barefoot on crushed granite, which feels more like broken glass than you might expect.

For another, all my senses were going haywire.

So I had to take it slow.

From the outside, I probably looked like a woman with a foot injury, sensibly taking her time.

The inside, of course, was a different story. My mind was positively assaulting itself, replaying every minute of that encounter at Jack’s front door over and over so vividly that I could barely see in front of me.

It’s a wonder I didn’t wander off into traffic.

It’s a wonder I didn’t die from misery.

It’s a wonder I didn’t just cease to exist.

But … in the end … I made it to my car.

A car that had been driven here by a very different person than the one returning to it.

I walked up to it, bent over, and pressed my head down against the hood.

What the hell just happened?

The person I should have been hating at that moment was Jack. Obviously. I knew that. I should have hated him for being the most callous, soulless jackass in the history of the world. I should have burned with incandescent and purifying rage.