When in Rome(89)

“I love you, too, Rae-Rae.” My heart cracks open—but this time with hope. Maybe my relationship with my mom isn’t so far gone as I thought.

I hang up at the exact moment that Susan walks through the front door, Noah hot on her heels.

“What’s going on here?” she says, looking over her shoulder at Noah. The sharp edge of her bob whips her jawline. “Why was he trying to keep me out of here?”

“You’re the one responsible for the paparazzi showing up today, aren’t you?” I ask Susan as she walks in.

She’s so stunned by my accusation that her purse falls off her shoulder and hits the floor. After blinking several times, she clears her throat and bends gracefully to retrieve her purse. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t just throw that horrible accusation at me, and instead, help you get packed like we discussed.”

“You discussed it, not me. And I’m not leaving.” I say this calmly, while anger pulses through my veins. Noah steps past Susan and crosses the room to stand beside me, putting his hand on my low back. It’s such a supportive gesture without trying to handle anything for me that it jostles the release mechanism on my tears. Not now, emotions.

Susan’s eyes drop to where Noah is touching me and she sighs with annoyance. “Let me guess. He is the one who planted this idea in your head?” She scoffs. “So typical. Rae, open your eyes and see that he’s not right for you. In fact, have you stopped to think that maybe he’s the one who told the photographers where to find you? Or maybe that money-sucking mother of yours. We both know that she—”

“Enough.” My voice is sharp as the crack of a whip. “I just got off the phone with my mom. It wasn’t her. In fact, it’s never been her, has it? You’ve been leaking stories about me to the tabloids for years and using my mom as your scapegoat. Also, how many of those money-sucking requests you tell me she makes actually come from her?”

“This is ridiculous. You’re going to trust your mom—the one who’s been using you for years—over me?”

“Yes.” My reply comes instantly and Susan looks like I just impaled her. Noah presses lightly against my back. Quiet solidarity. “I know it was you, Susan, and now I know you’re responsible for so much more than I ever realized, so you can cut the shit. And thanks to finally talking to my mom about all this, I know that you’ve been meddling in our relationship and purposely not relaying messages and making up lies instead.” I shake my head at how obvious it seems to me now.

Susan crosses her arms and I have the strongest urge to push them back down by her sides, because that’s Noah’s Surly Pose and she has no right to it. “You’re wrong. Your mom is the one who continues to lie and let you down. I’ve always been the one to take care of you.”

“No, Susan. You’re fired.” The words glide right off my tongue, and suddenly, I feel lighter than I’ve ever felt before. Like my feet might lift off the ground.

Susan’s mouth falls open. “You’ve got to be kidding me?” Her eyes bulge. “I have done nothing but bend over backward for you the last ten years! I have gotten you the best gigs. Major deals on your contracts. The best endorsements. I have single-handedly grown your career, and you wouldn’t be anywhere right now if it wasn’t for me!”

“If you had truly cared about me, you would have been looking after my well-being, too. Noticing that you were working me into the ground. That I was so lonely without my mom. But instead, you were so consumed with making more money that you just used me. You used me and you pushed the most important person in the world away from me.”

She stares at me—no, glares at me—for two beats. Her eyelids are twitching from withheld rage. “It’s him, isn’t it? Is he pressuring you into this? He’s brainwashing you into thinking I’m the problem.” She’s grasping at straws, but it’s too late. I can see the truth perfectly now.

“Stop. You need to go.”

Susan’s lips tremble but not from tears. It’s pure anger. “You’re making a mistake.”

I shrug. Even if I am (which I’m not), it’s my mistake to make. It feels incredible to allow myself to follow my gut again. “This is your thirty-day notice since that’s what is in our contract. But consider it a paid vacation because I don’t want to see or hear from you over the next thirty days or thereafter.”

She grips the strap of her purse so tightly, her knuckles go white. “I’ll leave, but you need to know that you’re wasting your life out here, and that man”—she spits those last two words while nodding in disgust toward Noah—“will only bring you down just like your mom was doing. Believe it or not, what I did today was for your own good.”

“So you’re admitting to being behind the paparazzi ambush today?”

Susan takes a second to think it over, and when she decides she has nothing left to lose, she nods. “Yeah. I did. And I’d do it again in a heartbeat because I could tell you had deluded yourself into thinking this place could be your new home. It never will, Rae, because your life and his life don’t mix.” I grit my teeth against her words. “So I brought what would have inevitably happened anyway to you a little sooner—was that really so wrong? Was it so terrible to force some space between you and your mom who were so obnoxiously inseparable? I mean for shit’s sake, Rae, you were attached to that woman’s hip when I found you. You always listened to her advice over mine, and she held you back. So yes, I meddled a little, but it was necessary to help you achieve your dreams.”