The Comeback(54)

I shake my head, knowing that it’s just bullshit LA talk, so it has to be the acrid smell of the bleach making my eyes fill with tears.

“Lions are the most courageous of all the spirit animals. They will fight relentlessly to protect you if they need to.”

I swallow as Margot straightens up and puts her hand on my shoulder.

“We’ll take you back to your natural color next time, but right now you need a blond moment,” she says.

“A Marilyn moment,” I say, frowning at my reflection as water drips down the back of my neck.

“I was thinking more a Courtney Love moment. Actually, shit—it’s your Kurt Cobain moment,” Margot says, grinning at me. She has a gold tooth that I didn’t notice before.

She leans forward and speaks softly in my ear. “I know that somebody hurt you. Now it’s time for you to fuck shit up, baby lion.”





CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE





For a while now, I’ve had this ninety-minute rule. I never spend longer than ninety minutes in someone else’s company, whether that’s for a work meeting, an interview with a teen magazine or just hanging out with someone at a party. I think that it’s easy to pretend to be someone for ninety minutes, but after that you can’t help but let your guard down. Maybe you tell a revealing story about your childhood or about a weird dream you had the other night; whatever it is, you end up exposing too much of yourself. Dylan is one of two people I ever spent more than ninety minutes with outside of a movie set, and the other is Able. Ninety minutes is the maximum amount of time I can pretend to be Grace Turner, and after that it’s anyone’s guess.

Despite my rule, when Emilia invites me back up to hers for a drink after Margot has left, I can’t think of a single reason not to. It’s Saturday night and my rental feels even bleaker than before the two women arrived, as if the echoes of laughter will now be reverberating off the bare walls around me, mocking me.

We sit in Emilia’s kitchen and she pours some vodka into a glass, topping it up with soda water and elderflower cordial. She leaves the vodka out of mine, and I know that she noticed my full glass of wine from the other day and figured it out.

“I’ve actually been thinking about you a lot, and not just your hair,” Emilia says, once she’s settled opposite me. Then she lets out a peal of laughter when she sees my face and misunderstands. “Not like that. God, I wish? Wouldn’t that be a story. No, I’ve realized that I never did ask what happened between you and Dylan.”

I pause, unsure of what to say that wouldn’t reveal too much of myself to her.

“I don’t exactly know,” I say slowly, buying time before deciding to use my old interview technique of lightly skimming the truth so that my words still feel authentic. “I think what mattered in the end was that I wasn’t who he thought I was, and he was exactly who I thought he was.”

In a way, it is sort of the whole truth, but Emilia is still waiting, her head tilted to one side. I remember now that she was a reporter for years.

“He wanted me to be someone I couldn’t be. I could never live up to his perfect vision because I’d had . . . a life before him,” I finish quickly, because I don’t know what else I can say.

Emilia studies me for a moment.

“Well, isn’t that just the most absurdly male quality,” she says finally. “So you weren’t saving yourself for Dylan. They always want to be the first to discover anything. They want to be Christopher Columbus or Neil Armstrong. They want to stick a flag in it and own it.”

I look at her, surprised by her tone, and I can tell that she wants a back-and-forth, but the pressure of it all, of having this conversation with the only other woman who may have been able to stop it all if she’d known, is paralyzing.

“I have trust issues,” I say lamely, wiping my palms on my jeans.

“Don’t we all,” Emilia says lightly, but before either of us can dwell on it, she’s speaking again. “And what’s happening with work? Are you looking for your next project?”

I shrug, avoiding meeting her gaze. Emilia seems frustrated with my ineptitude, and I have to work harder to pretend I don’t care than I do with most people. I know that she’s trying to understand exactly what happened to me, but it’s the one thing I can’t tell her. I need to take control of the conversation, but I can never seem to find the right thing to say around her.

“Grace, I know it seems like I’m being nosy, but I just can’t help but feel like we’re similar in so many ways, and that I could help you. I’ve been where you are now, and sometimes when I look at you, I see your vulnerability so clearly that it rattles my insides, do you know what I mean?”

“I guess so,” I say as Emilia’s pale eyes stare into mine.

“You know, I never said I’m sorry,” she says, blinking for a moment, as if to dismiss an unpleasant memory. “I told your parents that I would look after you, but I didn’t. Everything after the twins were born is a little . . . hazy. If I’m being honest, it was a shock that none of it came easily to me, and I just had to focus on getting through each day for a while. But you were too young to be alone, and I shouldn’t have made a promise I couldn’t keep. So I am. Sorry, I mean.”

I shrug, staring down at the tiled floor, not trusting myself to speak.