Can she hope?
Her phone buzzes, and a text message from Chris flashes up.
I’ve been a total asshole to you, and I’m sorry.
I’ve been unfair. Judged you. Thought you were cruel, even though I knew, deep down, that you weren’t. Were never that. Never could be.
I thought you’d just stopped caring. Or never cared. I thought I was the only one who got hurt. And kept hurting.
Wasn’t going to say this, but I heard you with Philip. Realized I was wrong.
I’ve lived in this agony too, knowing I did things that pushed you away. I didn’t want to face it, but I know I did.
It’s only ever been you. No one else will do. I tried to get away from you, but couldn’t. Tried to pretend you didn’t matter. Couldn’t.
You are everything.
And I’ve done everything I can to push you away! So stupid!
Please, please. I
Nothing more. He must have arrived and been hustled into his event.
Susan only realizes she’s been holding her breath when her lungs begin to ache. She lets the air out in a great whoosh, shaking all over, not sure if she wants to laugh or cry or dissolve into a puddle right there on the hated slate.
“You are everything.”
She bursts out of the house, so consumed she forgets to even lock the door. Her only thought is how vital it is to be with him, to eliminate the distance between them. She runs through the rain and presents herself, a damp and disheveled mess, at the Festival’s largest tent.
“I’m sorry,” the employee sitting there tells her, with a sympathetic grimace. “We can’t admit anyone after the event’s begun.”
No!
Susan wants to scream or cry or do something, she’s not quite sure what. All she knows is that she’s let him down again. She promised to be here, and she’s not. What will he think when he scans the audience and doesn’t see her there? Will he think she just read those texts and chose to step away? God forbid! To lose him again—now! After he poured his heart out like that!
Now she knows what she wants to do: she wants to burst into tears.
Instead, she draws in as deep a shuddering breath as she can manage and shuffles back to the café to wait.
She’s barely through the door when she hears someone calling for her.
“Oh! Susan! Suuuuuusaaaaaaan!”
Susan looks up, frowning, and sees Kay, standing near the bar at the back, smiling and waving to her.
“My, Susan, I’ve been waiting here for ages! Where have you been?”
The hysterics evaporate, replaced with a harsh, raw anger. Steeling herself, Susan straightens her spine, sets her face, and heads toward her aunt.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Half Agony, Half Hope
“I had the most wonderful lunch at this little place down the street,” Kay announces, setting aside the gin and tonic she’s been sipping. “With my director and one of the producers for the play. They’re thinking of pairing me and Philip up again. But don’t you worry—my matchmaking days are over.” She nudges her niece playfully, only to receive a stony face in return. “Oh, dear, what’s put your nose out of joint?”
“Did you fire Chris from Elliot’s and then try to blackmail him into staying away from me?” is Susan’s blunt response.
Kay purses her lips and gets a look on her face that seems to say, “Ah, we’re finally having that conversation.”
“Yes, I did,” she admits. “It seemed like the best thing at the time. It probably was.”
Susan folds her arms over her chest. “Would you care to explain yourself?”
“Oh, Susan, darling.” Kay reaches out and strokes her niece’s cheek. “You were such a mess. We all were. I should have stayed around after your mother died, instead of leaving. I felt terrible about that, and even worse when I came back and saw the shape you were in. Don’t you remember? Oh God, I hope you don’t.” She retracts her hand and grimaces. “You were leaning so heavily on that boy, so when your father came to me and told me the restaurant manager heard Chris had an issue with drugs—and before you ask, no, I don’t know who told the manager about his habit—I knew something had to be done. The situation wasn’t healthy for either of you. But of course my main concern was for you. You’re my flesh and blood, Susan, and I will always fight in your corner. So, yes, I persuaded you to take some time away from the relationship. And I handled the situation with Chris. I knew Bernard certainly wasn’t up to the task.” Her lips tighten again, seemingly at the mere thought of his uselessness.
“You threatened him. It wasn’t bad enough that you fired him; you threatened him so he would stay away from me!”
“I did. I said we’d blackball him in the industry. I didn’t want him disrupting your recovery, and I thought the situation might help him clean up his act. And it did, apparently. He got his life sorted out quite impressively.” She takes a deep breath. “At the end of the day, Susan, you were out of your mind with grief. You were slipping away from us, and I really didn’t think that a junkie was the best person to have in your life at that time. I am sorry that I hurt you both—truly I am. I did what seemed to be the best thing at the time, which is really all any of us can do. I had no way of knowing how splendidly he’d turn out. Good for him, I say. Who knows? Perhaps my intervention was the making of him, in a sense.”
Susan shakes her head. “You have no idea what your actions cost him,” she says. “And mine.” No one is blameless. After all, she’s the one who broke up with him.
“I’m sorry,” Kay repeats sincerely. “And I’ve told him that I’m sorry too.”
Susan frowns. “When?”
Kay smiles and shakes her head. “Doesn’t matter.”
She looks over Susan’s shoulder, and Susan follows her gaze. Chris’s event has let out, and people are flooding into the tent. A peppy-looking blonde leads him to a seat at the signing table as fans, clutching crisp copies of his book, form a line.
Chris is pretending to smile and pay attention to whatever his publicist is saying, but at the same time he scans the crowd. Susan, standing frozen beside the bar, wills him to look her way, at the same time trying to force her legs to move. But even if they do—what? Will she run onto the dais and throw herself into his arms?
His eyes seek her out, settle on her, and his relief is visible in the sudden unstiffening of his posture. His smile becomes genuine, a warm beam that finally melts the ice in her legs, so when Kay gently nudges her and whispers, “Go on, then,” Susan can move forward.
“Oh, oh, the line’s this way,” the peppy blonde informs her, steering Susan to a spot behind two women in flowery Joules jackets, already discussing which of Chris’s recipes they’ll make first. Susan looks helplessly up at Chris, and he returns the expression, and she wants to laugh hysterically at the absurdity of it: her, waiting in a line for what, exactly? And him trying to focus on signing books and politely answering questions and smiling for pictures, all the while darting glances her way, as if he thinks she might disappear.
And then she’s in front of him, unable to speak, realizing she’s on an actual stage, with people behind her still waiting for their books to be signed, and oh god, she doesn’t even have a book!