Nora Goes Off Script(40)
“Is it still on?”
“Yeah, I should have said. They start filming week after next.”
I’ve got to get myself out of this room. I chug my coffee, which is hot and burns my throat, and say, “Well, good luck to both of you. I’ve got to get this hair taken care of, a little less Carole King and little more Naomi Sanchez, if you know what I mean.” I am talking too fast and being too glib. I grab my bag and give her a quick hug. “Take care.”
“Oh no,” Weezie says, and I stop. “You’re in love with him.”
I’m a pretty good liar. I can fake my way through a lot of uncomfortable social situations. Heck, my sister’s a New York socialite. I’ve faked my way through dinners with her friends where they complain about how their nannies insist on getting paid on holidays. But in this moment, I cannot muster, “Oh, don’t be ridiculous.” I’m so raw, and the thought of spilling it to someone who might have some insight is irresistible.
“I am.”
“Oh no,” she says again. “Did you . . . ?”
“Yes. And he told me he loves me, about a thousand times. I can prove it,” I say, holding my phone up. “He couldn’t go two hours without seeing me, touching me, texting me from a hundred yards away. And now I haven’t heard from him since Friday.”
Weezie looks crestfallen. “I’m really sorry. That’s not his usual MO, at least not as far as I know. None of them ever told me he’d said he loved them.” None of them.
“So he’s not in jail or lost his phone or in the hospital with amnesia,” I offer.
“Nope. There’s got to be something really weird going on here if he’s ghosting you.”
I hug Weezie because I’m supremely grateful that she’s been honest with me. The last thing I need is someone feeding me false hope through a morphine drip. I need to face the very simple facts here and move on.
The elevator is waiting for me, thank God. Better still, there are sunglasses in my purse. I smile to the doorman and head out into midday sun. I am a fool. It’s all so clear to me now that I don’t know how I twisted my mind to avoid it. I must have been having a post-divorce psychotic break. I’ve let myself slip into one of my idiotic fantasy stories.
Facts: Leo was sleeping with Naomi Sanchez. Men who sleep with women like Naomi Sanchez don’t fall in love with women like me. I was a woman with a welcoming, homey house. I was a place where he stopped for a while to recover. He’s had four days to call and he hasn’t. He used money to assuage his guilt. I was a place to rest so that he would be in the right state of mind to rise up and score the biggest movie of his career. I suddenly regret returning the money.
CHAPTER 15
I spend the week trying to reclaim my house. I start with the sunrise, which I try to enjoy but mostly cry through. I find bright green bedding for the tea house and force myself to sit at the table for an hour a day. I don’t write. How did I let this man stop by for three weeks and steal my heart, my house, and my career?
Sometimes I can’t breathe. Like I walk into a space we once shared and the sound of his voice arrests me. I can hear his voice saying something that must not be true. I’ll just stand there, struck by the pain of it. My mind chases its tail—he said he loved me and he was coming back and he’s not calling and he had a third party send cash but he said he loved me and he was coming back.
School pickup is a slow death, thirty minutes at a time. I try to arrive a little bit late so I don’t have to say these things: Yes, it’s exciting about the movie. No, I haven’t heard from him. I’m fine, really.
Kate moves me around like she’s my handler, throwing her body between me and any particularly offensive comments. I’m raw and exposed. I understand what that means now; I feel like I don’t have skin. I should never have been out with him in public. I could have kept this to myself. I didn’t need to kiss him at two P.M. in the middle of town.
People felt bad for me when Ben left, but no one really liked him. No one really thought I was happy either. To have seen me with Leo, probably grinning like a lovesick kid, they must have seen this coming. Leo Vance isn’t going to stay in Laurel Ridge with that woman forever. She’s setting herself up for a fall. Real or imagined, We knew it! is what I see on their faces. Everyone but me saw this coming.
I don’t know where Kate is when I find myself on the receiving end of Vicky Miller’s pouty face. I have to give Ben credit, she really is a very attractive woman. Blond and fit and nicely maintained. “I heard,” she says.
“Oh,” I say, looking over her shoulder for a way out. She’s stepping closer to me and to my horror her arms are reaching out to pull me into a hug. The thought of it is unbearable. “Wait. You’re not going to touch me, are you?”
“Of course. I just want to give you a hug. I feel terrible.”
“Because you slept with my husband? Or about Leo?” That’s how raw I am. I don’t care who on the playground knows. I don’t care if I seem a little crazy. All I know is that if this woman touches me with her self-pity, I will die.
“Nora,” Vicky says in the most maddening way, a cousin of “calm down.”
Kate swoops in from wherever she’s been slacking off and links her arm in mine to drag me away. “She knows,” she says to Vicky over her shoulder. “Everyone knows, and we think you’re gross.”