“Finish your coffee, get ready, and I’ll be back in, say, forty-five minutes?” He stands and moves towards the door.

As I shower, I realize that Graham completely sidestepped my question about his comment that last night was “fun in its own way.” I’m definitely not running on all cylinders, as my father would say.

My phone is recharged and flashing when I get out. There’s a text from Emily answering what I sent her last night:

Me: er oksyrf * becer smf o ;rgy brfpre dpom tnr vorrle

Em: I assume, from your text, that drinking was involved. Hello? Something I can READ???

I text her back and she answers immediately.

Me: Sorry, tequila attack. The keypad kept moving around.

Em: You promised to tell all. Start telling!

Me: What i meant last night was we played i never, and i left before spin the bottle

Em: WHAT??? HOLY SHIT!!! Calling you.

“You guys seriously didn’t play I never and spin-the-bottle did you?”

“Yes and almost.”

“Somehow I’ve always pictured celebrity parties as more… sophisticated?”

I laugh. “Yeah, me too. I left when Quinton suggested spin-the-bottle or seven minutes in heaven.”

“Are you insane? There was a possibility of seven minutes in heaven with Quinton Beauvier, and you left early?”

“Em, you know how I feel about those games…”

“Yeah, I know. I just don’t see why I can’t body-double for you during times like this! It would be a grueling task, but I’d make the sacrifice for you.”

I recognize Graham’s one-knuckle thunk-thunk at the door.

“Um, I’m about to go to brunch, so I’ll call you later?”

“Sure. Don’t worry about me. All by myself in boring Sacramento. Alone. No life.”

“Emily, you know you’re always with me in spirit.”

“Bite me,” she says. “I wanna be with you in person playing spin-the-bottle with Reid and Quinton.”

“Now who’s whining?” I tease.

“Fine. But one of these days, I expect to reap the benefits of having a big star for a best friend.”

“Absolutely. You’ll be first in line.”

Chapter 14

REID

I wake up just before noon and call room service for coffee, then my voicemail to retrieve a message received early this morning from Dad. Like he didn’t know I’d still be asleep when he called.

I got charged with pot possession earlier this summer, and he’s avoided communicating with me directly since then. I was at a party, passing a couple of joints around with some people when John texted me this:

John: pass the joint to the girl next to you and walk to the back door NOW

While John may lack anything resembling judgment, he always knows what’s going down. So I obeyed. He pulled me into the alley where his girl du jour was waiting with her car, just as the police came in the front door. There were photos of me smoking, but it was dark, and they were too indistinct to be incontestably me, or weed, for that matter. With no physical evidence to prove that I was present or in possession, Dad’s firm claimed hearsay and the case was thrown out… which didn’t preclude Dad from going ballistic.

We pitched a fortune at my PR firm to ward off the tarnish to my image. The money came straight from my account, but for some reason, who paid for what wasn’t a viable argument. My straight-laced father has never stepped out of line in his life, and as he’s expressed stridently on multiple occasions, he can’t comprehend why I live my life the way I do.

I assumed his message would involve some account information I needed, or a contract I forgot to sign that he’s overnighting. So I don’t expect this: “Reid,” he sighs heavily, “I’m calling to let you know that your mother has decided to check into a rehab program.” He doesn’t say again but it hangs there, unsaid, nevertheless. “Exclusive facility, by the ocean, not too far from home. She’ll get good care. Ninety day program. She hopes to be back home for the holidays, possibly before you’re done filming.”

He goes silent for several seconds, and I’m not sure if that’s the end. Then he adds, “She’ll be able to take phone calls in a couple of weeks. I’ll let you know the number, in case you… have time to call her. Just don’t… say anything upsetting.” He has a lot of nerve saying that. I’m usually not the one who upsets her. “If you have any questions, call me. Otherwise… well. Call if you need anything.”

Awesome.

I should have seen her rock-bottom coming. Even though I was seldom around, she had a drink in her hand every time I was. With the exception of when I was really young, and for short, varying periods of time after any rehab experience, this is how I picture her: Mom, drink in hand. It’s her prop, part of her costume. Sometimes I wonder if her despondency stems from trying to be something she isn’t—someone constantly sober, without the ability to dull the knife-thrusts of reality. Maybe Mom-with-a-drink-in-her-hand is who she really is, and thinking that it’s immoral or makes her a bad person is what causes the crisis.

Or maybe I’m a classic enabler, as one of her therapists yelled in a fit of untherapist-like vocal exasperation.

Or maybe I look in the mirror every day and am scared as shit that I’ll see either of my parents looking back at me.

*** *** ***

Emma

“Thanks again for the coffee.” Graham and I are walking along 6th street. He’s shortened his stride to match mine, like he does when we run. “That was nice. Otherwise, I’d still be hiding under my pillows, feeling like I just ate a dirty t-shirt.”

He smiles. “A dirty t-shirt? That’s… disgustingly descriptive.”

“Disgustingly fitting, unfortunately.”

He’s walking with his hands in his pockets, and he bumps my arm lightly with his elbow. “So you think I’m nice, huh? Maybe I’m actually a complete jerk with ulterior motives.”

I tap my lip with a finger, peering at him. “You’d have to be a nefarious individual with seriously evil intentions, to bring me coffee and be a jerk at heart.”

He looks down at me, eyebrows raised. Out here in the sunlight his eyes, while still dark, seem more deep caramel, less onyx. His hair has a reddish tint in the sunlight, too, something completely invisible inside. It’s like being outdoors turns his color dial a notch or two lighter.

“Good deducing. And use of the word nefarious,” he says. “Especially with the hangover and all.”

The day is warm already. I assumed as much, and dressed in shorts and the pink t-shirt I’d left on the bed last night in favor of the black tank. I grabbed my red canvas Chucks instead of flip-flops, since I had no idea just how much walking Graham had in mind. Good thing, too, because we’ve walked about a hundred blocks by now.

“How much farther?” The good news is I may actually feel like having brunch at some point in the near future. The bad news is I don’t know if we’re planning on walking to the next county first.

“I take it you’re a suburbs sort of girl. I grew up in New York City—lots of walking. This feels like nothing.” This guy is a freaking master at dodging questions.

“Yes, I’m a lazy suburbian girl… who, lest we forget, is suffering from a killer hangover because I don’t weigh a hundred pounds more.”

“Seventy. And I hate to tell you, but—” He takes my shoulders and turns me, guiding me up a pathway to the front door of the restaurant, located in a renovated old house. “We’re here.”

I give him a haughty look. “In that case, I’m glad I don’t have to kick your ass, since I’m too pooped from walking a thousand miles for that type of exertion.” He smiles and shakes his head, pulling the door open for me.

Twenty minutes later, I’m eating the fluffiest blueberry muffin ever made and mumbling an apology. “Sorry about the cranky.”

He forks a bite of omelet, dabs it into the pool of salsa he poured on one side of his plate, and sticks it in his mouth. Chewing, he appears puzzled. “What cranky?” He lines up another bite. “Oh, you mean when you looked like you were about to stage a mutiny for having to walk a couple of blocks?”

“A couple? It was at least fifteen!”

“Actually, ten.”

“Nuh-uh.” I was certain it was closer to twenty.

“Yep. Ten exactly.”

God, I’m in worse shape than I thought. “Huh.”

“That’s five,” he says, before I even have time to hear myself and cringe.

“Know-it-all.”

He laughs. “Would you rather be in your room, buried under your pillows?”

“No.” I sound like a sullen toddler. Sipping my chicory-flavored coffee, I relax, and the house seems to sigh with me, the refinished wood floors creaking as a waiter walks by with a full tray over his head. “This place is great.”

“Told ya.”

After brunch we backtrack and spend a couple of hours at the bookstore. There’s a puppet show going on in the kids’ area, and he insists we sit on the floor and watch. This is when I learn that Graham and his older sisters used to make sock puppets and put on shows for their parents. This whole idea is so foreign to me that I’m sure he’s making it up. On the walk back to the hotel, I ask him what kinds of shows.

“We’d make puppets of ourselves, or our favorite book characters, like Where the Wild Things Are, gluing on wiggly eyeballs and yarn.” I try to imagine a sock puppet Graham. “One time we made penguins, coloring popsicle sticks like lightsabers and hot gluing those to the flippers, and then we did a Star Wars reenactment for my Dad’s birthday. He loves penguins, and anything Star Wars.”

Penguins puppets with lightsabers? There’s no way he could make this up.

“So according to one of the shots you tossed back last night, you’re an only child,” he says. “What was that like—being the center of attention all the time?”

My first thought is that after my mother died, I felt more like the invisible kid than the center of attention. And then I begin stressing about how I’m going to talk about my mother being dead. The subject of family always, sooner or later, brings the story of my mom forward. There’s no simple way to say it, no way to fully express everything those two words mean to me: she died. The feelings are muted most of the time, something only accomplished by the passing of time, but they’ll never go away. I know that now. There are moments I wish the pain would disappear, but mostly, it’s a comforting ache. I lost her, and I feel it—sometimes like a bruise that doesn’t hurt until it’s pressed, sometimes like a knife.

“I bet you were spoiled rotten,” Graham says, slowing at the window of a narrow storefront of skateboards and boarding gear.

“I seem like a brat?” I pout, ruining any defense against it.

“I didn’t say that. But I can picture you as a little girl: adorable, no one else around to steal the spotlight. That’s all it would take to wrap your parents around your little finger. I mean at that point it’s self-preservation, right? Darwin’s lesser-known theory: survival of the cutest.”