This Is What Happy Looks Like(38)
“He wouldn’t—”
“Ellie, come on,” she said, and something in her face stopped Ellie cold. All of a sudden, she realized they weren’t just talking about Graham. They were talking about her father too. “You know there are about a million ways this could go wrong,” she continued, her voice strained. “Not just because of who he is, and not just because he’s leaving soon.” She pressed her lips together, considering her words. “You saw the way he gets followed around.”
“You can’t tell me not to date someone because he gets his picture taken a lot,” Ellie said. “Do you even realize how crazy that sounds?”
“Everything about this is already crazy,” Mom said, sliding the last two pancakes off the stove and onto a plate before returning to the table. “Things like this,” she said, shaking her head. “They don’t end well.”
“You mean because it didn’t end well for you,” Ellie said with a frown. “This isn’t the same thing. He’s not some sleazy senator. I’m not some—”
“What?” Mom said, looking at her levelly. “Some cheap waitress?”
“I didn’t say that,” Ellie said, shaking her head. “You know I didn’t mean that.”
“Your father…” she began, then paused, looking far away. “It was complicated.”
“Right,” Ellie said. “But this is different. Graham is different.”
“That’s not the point,” Mom said, glancing down at her plate. Neither of them had touched their food, and the pancakes were growing cold on the table. “He’s someone in the public eye. And you don’t want to get dragged into it.”
“But what does it matter?” Ellie asked. “What happened with you and him—with my father—it’s not like it’s a secret. It’s already been out there. So I don’t understand why it’s such a big deal if people find out. I don’t get why we still have to hide.”
“We’re not hiding,” Mom said, stabbing a piece of pancake with her fork. “We’re just living our lives like normal people. That’s not the same thing.”
“But you don’t want my picture in the papers.”
“It’s not just that,” she said with a sigh. “It’s that I don’t want you under the microscope. Your picture would just be the start of that. You get that, right? All it takes is one photo of you and Graham Larkin for the photographers to start following you around. Then people start digging for information. And they think they have the right to share anything they might find. You were too little to remember the last time.” She shook her head, wincing a little. “It’s awful, what they do. There are no boundaries at all.”
Ellie took a bite and chewed slowly, thinking this over. “But if that’s the only reason, then wouldn’t it be my decision?” she asked. “My risk to take?”
“It’s not that simple,” Mom said. “It affects me too. And your father.”
Ellie snorted. “We’re trying to protect him now?” she asked, sitting back in her chair and folding her arms. “He’s never done one single thing for us, never even tried to find us—”
“You know that’s because I told him not to.”
“—and yet you still worry about him? If he ends up running for president, they’ll probably find us anyway. So what’s the difference?”
“They might,” she said. “But they also might not. That was three campaigns ago now. There are new scandals all the time. They’ll bring it up like they always do, but it doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily seek us out.”
“I thought you just said there were no boundaries.”
“As far as politics goes, it’s old news,” she said. “But as far as celebrity gossip? It’s a big story. Anything involving that kid seems to be a big story.” Mom pushed the last pancake around on her plate. “Don’t you get it? We have a life here. I worked hard to make that happen. And once something like this is out there, you can’t take it back.”
Ellie’s voice, when she spoke, was very small. “But I really like him.”
“I know,” Mom said, reaching out to put a hand on top of hers. “But even if your father wasn’t an issue, you don’t want this. Trust me. Nobody wants to wake up to photographers camped out on their front lawn. I’m sure Graham Larkin would say the same thing.”
As she walked to work later, Ellie wondered if that was true. When she’d asked Graham about being recognized, he hadn’t wanted to talk about it, though when it came to the photographers in town, he seemed oddly resigned, treating them with no more ill will than a pesky stray dog that refuses to take a hint. She’d seen so many photos of him in Quinn’s magazines, leaving the gym or trying to have a quiet dinner at a restaurant, and it didn’t seem possible that someone could ever get entirely used to that sort of thing.
As she passed the trailers, she noticed the crowds were thinner than usual, and she remembered Graham saying they’d be filming out on the water. Even so, she spotted one of the photographers smoking a cigarette off to the side, and she quickened her pace, still unsettled by the morning’s conversation. She was grateful her first shift was at Sprinkles; even if Quinn was still mad at her, it would be better than being stuck in a small space with Mom all day as she tried to figure out what she was going to do about Graham.