“For a while you wanted her back.”
“Yeah, well, that was a long time ago. It’s not like she’s here, Jules.”
“I know. I just worry.”
“You don’t have to.”
She sighs in defeat. She loves to worry about me.
“Okay?”
“Okay,” she mumbles. “I should go. I have a million things to do. Bye, Jax.”
“Later, sis.”
I shove my phone into my back pocket, smiling to myself. Jules, as tough as she acts on the outside, has a gooey, caramel center. Don’t tell her I told you that.
As I pass by the front door, the lock disengages, and it opens. I step back, head tilted in curiosity. I can’t imagine Tommy or Daryl showing up voluntarily. Then the door widens and the subject of mine and Jules’s phone call stands at the threshold. The blood drains from my head to my toes so swiftly, I wobble a little.
Allison Murphy is silhouetted by sunshine. She looks a lot like she did when we were together—petite, her dark hair curling over her shoulders. She’s wearing huge sunglasses, her full mouth open in a stunned gape and her thick eyebrows arched in surprise.
I open my mouth to speak, but it’s my sister’s words that come out. “Holy shit.”
Chapter 2
Jackson
Allison and I stand in shared stark, shocked silence in the beam of sunlight stretching across the foyer. My mind’s a jumble of what Jules just told me. That Allison stole an Oscar from Millie Duncan. That McCormack made a statement today that Allison needs rehab. That Hollywood’s “it” couple McNina is no more.
It’s a lot to absorb, and I would’ve preferred letting it sink in slowly while enjoying a ham and cheese sandwich. Processing with my ex-girlfriend standing right in front of me is less than ideal.
“Jackson.” She pulls off her sunglasses, her wide eyes suggesting she’s as surprised to see me as I am to see her.
“Hey,” is my response.
Her mouth flinches into a quick, unsure smile. I push my hands into my pockets since I don’t know what to do with them. She drops the sunglasses into a large purse and then tosses the bag onto a nearby chair. When she turns back to me, we both ask the same question at the same time.
“What are you doing here?”
I palm the back of my neck and return her awkward smile with one of my own.
“I’m visiting. For a while.” Her gaze darts away. I don’t have to ask why thanks to Julieann’s precisely timed phone call.
“I’m remodeling your parents’ bedroom while they’re away.”
Allison’s eyebrows rise even higher. “They’re not here?”
“No. They’re on vacation. In Italy,” I add, in case she didn’t know her parents had left the country.
“Italy. Right. I remember them mentioning that trip coming up…” She bites her bottom lip, dragging her teeth over it before slowly releasing the plump flesh.
I remember capturing that same lip between my own teeth on several past occasions. I guess it’s true you never forget your first. She was my first time, and I was hers. We had the rare opportunity to surrender our V-cards to each other in her second-floor bedroom in this very house.
I scrub my face with one hand and come away with more drywall dust. The white powder grounds a situation that would otherwise be surreal.
“I’ve sort of been ignoring their calls. Ignoring everyone’s calls,” she mumbles. Her chin wobbles and she lifts her hand to her mouth. Her muffled voice escapes her fingers. “I just… I really needed to see someone I know.”
A tight sob wrenches from her throat as fat tears roll down her cheeks. I’m frozen in place. It’s like watching a car accident happen right in front of me. I’m powerless to stop it. Powerless to help.
Her face crumples into a borderline ugly-cry, if Allie was remotely capable of being ugly. Then she shocks the hell out of me by crashing into my torso. Her arms cling to my back, her face presses hard into my chest. Despite the ten years that separate us, and the nasty argument that ended in our breaking up, I wrap my arms around her small frame and hold her while she cries.
A wail racks her body. She hugs me close, quaking like she hasn’t had a single soul to lean on since she left Ohio. And, God, I hope that’s not true. I hope she’s had someone on her side while she’s been in California, living the life she’d dreamed. As badly as we ended, she deserves to be happy. What’s the sense in us suffering the pain of that split if we didn’t wind up better for it?
My heart isn’t as pragmatic as my head. As if remembering a serious injury that I suffered, my brain instructs my arms to hold her stiffly rather than gently.
The last time I saw Allison was when I flew to California to stay for a week. She’d been living in a house with three female roommates at the time. They were all trying to break into acting careers, but Allie was the only one with a role that lasted longer than an episode. When she’d told me she was staying in Cali for another year, I was simultaneously happy for her and devastated for myself. I nearly puked, if you want the ugly truth. I wanted her to be successful, sure, but I also wanted her to come back home. To come back to me.
We agreed to try the long-distance thing, which was how I found myself staying in her packed flat. We spent the week wedged on a sofa—Allie’s bed—in between looking for insanely expensive apartments in Los Angeles.
“How do you feel about moving here?” she’d asked while we walked around a particularly outdated, roach-infested apartment. It was the fourth one we toured that day, but that was the first mention of me moving there. I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything at first.
“It’s hard. The distance. And, um…” She’d walked to the bedroom closet and slid aside a janky folding door to reveal a sad, filthy square of carpet below a warped bar for hanging clothes. “I want you here. With me. I’m going to make it. Beyond America’s Sweetheart. And I don’t want to give up what we have for my dream. I want you to be part of it. So, whaddaya say? Move in with me?”
I had taken in her smile, wide and hopeful as the sun streamed in behind her, not unlike it’d done two minutes ago when she stepped into her parents’ house and cried all over me. Whaddaya say? That’s exactly how she’d asked. Do you want to know what I said?
“I say no.” That’s what I said. As plainly and evenly as that. “I don’t like California.”
She’d clammed up after that. When we arrived back at her shared apartment, she was still too angry to speak. She didn’t say more than three words to me before I left for the airport the next morning. The final volatile conversation happened over the phone later, with what felt like a million miles separating us.
“I’m so happy you’re here,” she tells me now.
Those words zap me back to the present.
We went from loving each other to not even being friends. No in between. We didn’t keep in touch over the last decade. I wonder if she’s thought of me in the interim. I’ve had trouble escaping her if my working in her parents’ house is any clue. I’ve seen her on TV, and yeah, on the covers of few magazines in spite of trying to avoid them.