When I go to bed, I leave my phone on the kitchen counter on purpose. If I leave it out there, I won’t be tempted to keep torturing myself with pictures.
I lay down and do nothing but think of Tenley. She’s beautiful and sweet and so damn funny, she’s everything I want and everything I’m afraid to have.
I throw off my covers and go get my phone. Who was I kidding?
33
Tenley
“That’s a wrap.” I wink at Calvin and offer my hand.
He takes it, pulling me in for a hug. We’re in the kitchen at the rental house. Filming ended yesterday, and it’s time for me to go back to LA. Calvin will leave later today, but I packed last night. There’s nothing left for me in Sierra Grande, but I try not to think too much about that. If I can avert my gaze from my broken heart for just long enough, I’ll make it out of this town. If I examine my feelings too closely, I’ll wind up back at the HCC, in the arms of a man I’m positive loves me but refuses to acknowledge it.
I step back from Calvin and look at him pleadingly. “Would you mind grabbing my heaviest suitcase from my room?”
Calvin flexes his biceps and lopes off. I take two apples from the fridge and turn back just in time to see my phone flash with a text. I grab it off the table and realize too late it’s not mine. The message has my name though, so I read it. I don’t understand what it means. I need more on Tenley, from a number that hasn’t been given a name in Calvin’s contacts.
“Did you pack bricks?” Calvin jokes, bumping into the wall as he hauls in my suitcase. He stops short when he sees me with his phone.
“Why does someone need more on me? More of what?”
Calvin palms the air like he’s innocent. Ironically, this is what everyone who’s guilty of something does.
“Calvin.” I speak his name like a threat.
“It’s just publicity, I swear.”
I squint, trying to understand, but I don’t. “Keep going.”
“I have skin in the game, too. It’s not just your parents who need this movie to be successful.” He has a pleading look on his face. I don’t like it.
“Nobody wants a flop, Calvin, but I still don’t understand.”
“Your dad came to me six months ago and asked me for a loan. He told me about the gambling and said he had an inside tip on a horse and he was going to win big. I gave him what he needed, but I was interested too. He introduced me to the guys, and I—”
“No.” I shake my head, not willing to believe that Calvin is in the same hot water as my dad.
“Your dad was wrong. And he was smart enough to be done after that.” His voice takes on a pleading edge. “But not me. And you know we get paid more if this movie does well, Tenley.”
“What did you do?” I think I already know, the events arranging themselves in my mind, but I want him to say it.
“I sent pictures of you and Warner to the gossip rags. I told them Warner’s name. I’d heard some talk when I was coming out of a store, two old ladies sitting on a bench talking loudly like they’d forgotten their hearing aids. I told my contact at Celebrity Dirt. It went from there.”
He doesn’t look at me. It’s the smartest decision of his life. If he attempted eye contact with me now, I’d put a big bruise on that pretty, deceptive face. I can’t think of what to do, or say, so I choose nothing.
I grab my suitcase and lug it out the door. I nearly break my back lifting it in Pearl, but once it’s in, I hop in too. Libby wags her tail from her place in the passenger seat. Calvin wisely stays in the house, and as I pull away, I don’t look back.
My first thought is to blame Calvin for costing me my relationship with Warner, but even I know that’s a stretch. There is nobody to blame but ourselves. Me, for wanting something. And Warner, for not wanting it. Nobody could look at us and say we aren’t being true to ourselves.
I’m on the outskirts of Sierra Grande when I stop for gas. While the pump runs, I pop into the convenience store for a bottle of water, then remember the twelve-pack of water my dad put in my car on the way out here. I grab four more bottles, plus a bag of pistachios for the road.
I’m standing by the pump waiting for it to finish when an SUV pulls into the spot beside me. A blonde woman climbs out, glancing at me as she goes through the motions of inserting the pump into her SUV. Recognition lights up her eyes.
I turn back to Pearl. I’m in a sour mood, and I really hope she doesn’t talk to me.
“Excuse me?”
I sigh silently and plaster a smile on my face. “Hello,” I greet her pleasantly.
She’s a little older than me, lines around her eyes and across her forehead, but she’s very pretty. She waves, and a diamond engagement ring sparkles in the sunlight. “This is going to sound awkward, but I’m Anna. Warner’s ex-wife.”
“Oh,” I say before I can stop myself, “hello. I’m Tenley. Obviously. I mean, you already knew that.”
She smiles kindly. “Yes. But it’s nice to meet the real you. Not the public you.”
Everything printed about her comes rushing down on me, like Gatorade poured on a winning coach’s head. “I am so very sorry for that article and what they said about you. It’s my fault. If it weren’t for Warner and me…” Could I make this any worse? First, I get this woman’s private information blasted on the internet, and now I’m reminding her that her ex moved on with me. Way to go.
She laughs in this small, uncomfortable way. “It’s weird, I know.”
I gesture between us. “This is all new to me.”
“It’s new to me too.”
The gas pump clicks, signaling my car is full.
Anna takes a step forward, and I stay where I am. “I want you to know I don’t blame you or Warner for that article. I don’t like it, and I don’t appreciate it, of course, but it’s not the end of the world. Warner probably acted like it, because he remembers how sick I was and how badly I wanted to hide what I was going through.”
“I understood why he acted the way he did. He’s a good man.”
“The best. So,” her gaze flickers over jam-packed Pearl. “Why are you leaving town?”
“The film is over.”
“And you and Warner?”
A lump forms in my throat. “Also over.”
Anna looks at me with a mixture of pity and understanding. “I don’t think you are.”
Pain slices across my heart. “Trust me, we are. We want different things.”
“I just dropped Peyton and Charlie back off at Warner’s place and believe me when I say that man is a wreck.”
“He is?” All I can remember is me standing in front of him, telling him I was in love with him, and him staring back at me like he’d swallowed his tongue.
“I think we’ve already reached the seventh circle of awkwardness, so I’m just going to come right out and say this. He is desperately in love with you.”
Her words should make me soar. Instead, I plummet lower than I already was. Because it doesn’t matter if Warner is in love with me. In fact, that makes it worse. Circumstances killed us, not lack of feeling.