Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee(88)

“No, yeah, you really are.”

“Yeah, no, I’m super tired.”

“I’m not stupid. I know you, like, very well.”

“I really don’t want to talk about this right now.”

“We can make our show great without him,” I murmur. I look to see Josie’s reaction.

She has a pained look. “Yeah,” she says faintly.

“Okay, seriously? Spill. We’re in this car for like ten more hours. Let’s hash out whatever this is.”

“That’s exactly why I don’t want to talk about this now. Also, I don’t want to make Lawson uncomfortable.”

“Oh, what, scared to fight in front of Lawson…the professional fighter?”

Lawson does a hey, leave me out of this slump into his seat.

“No, DeeDee, I legitimately don’t want drama,” Josie says.

“Well, I’m currently experiencing the most devastating twenty-four hours of my life, so why not put it all out on the table?”

Josie takes both hands off the steering wheel for a second and holds them in front of her face like she’s gripping an invisible box—one containing whatever she’s not telling me. She breathes in deep, holds it, and releases it in a rush. “I can’t do the show anymore. Okay? I can’t do it anymore. There. Happy?”

I suddenly feel like a giant, ice-cold steel claw is opening under my stomach. Going down in flames with my dad was one thing. That was my past. But this show? This show is my present and future. It’s all I have. It’s what gets me out of bed. “What are you talking about?” I ask weakly.

Josie blinks fast, like she’s clearing away tears.

“What, Josie? What is it?” My voice rises.

Her voice is pinched and taut. “I promised my parents. If this didn’t work out. This whole thing. With Jack Divine. If he couldn’t help us. I told them. They made me promise.”

“Promise what?”

“That I’d take the internship in Knoxville.”

The claw opens more. “You cannot be serious.”

“I am.”

“So tell them you can’t.”

“I promised.”

“Break your promise.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Won’t do that, you mean.”

“Fine. Won’t.”

“So that’s it?” I say, laughing astringently. “You won’t fight for the show?”

“I fought, DeeDee. My parents have been on me for months. They wouldn’t have let me come at all if I didn’t promise. I rolled the dice and lost.”

“You’re eighteen. You could have told them to suck it.”

“No, I couldn’t. They’re my parents. I love them.”

I look out the window and shake my head. Every part of my body hurts, like my emotions are spilling over and being turned into pain chemicals or whatever.

“And honestly,” she continues, “I don’t know if this is the kind of show I want to be on for the rest of my life.”

“Nice,” I say.

“I’m not roasting our show. It’s that being at that convention, I realized this isn’t the world I belong in for my whole life. Like, I can be at the periphery and dabble in it, the way I’ve done, and that’s fine. But I can’t invest my whole life in it. If it weren’t for you and how much I care about you and love you and love making the show with you, I wouldn’t choose this world.”

“So you’re going to just walk away from everything we made?”

“No, I’m not going to just walk away. I thought I might drive twenty-four hours round-trip to Orlando to spend the evening hanging out with a legitimately unhinged person who, I might add, cleaned me out. Our little evening with Jack Divine cost me almost every penny I have.”

“What?”

“Yeah. That’s a terrific story, by the way. But anyway, I tried, okay? I didn’t just walk away. I did my damnedest to make it work so I could have my dream and we could keep doing the show.”

“You just want to be famous.” I can’t hide the acidity in my voice. I’m being super unchill and I know it, but…

“Seriously? You’re going there?”

“Oh, I bought the first-class ticket there.”

“Y’all,” Lawson says. “Maybe—”

“We’ve got this,” I snap.

He raises his hands like I trained a pistol on him. “Okay. Cool. Sorry.”

“Please don’t be rude to him,” Josie says.

“Please don’t both of you gang up on me,” I say.

“I’m butting out,” Lawson says.

“Anyway, yeah, Delia, I want to be super famous. I want to have three-point-seven million followers on the current hot social media platform. I want to post pictures of myself wearing billowy white pants and drinking a big glass of red wine with some insufferable platitude like Caring for yourself…starts with you. I want to eat expensive seaweed and drink water in which all the molecules have been lined up facing the same direction. I want to tell people who love Chili’s and save twenty-percent-off Bed Bath and Beyond coupons that no wardrobe is complete without my favorite pair of twelve-hundred-dollar flats and seven-hundred-fifty-dollar jeans. I want to take trips to a private island for six months to ‘center myself.’ This is all I want.”