Mom is currently prowling for Husband Number Four. Number Two, Rick, was actually okay. I sort of miss him. Number Three was a huge douche and I was more than happy to get my own apartment in LA when Mom moved back to Texas with him—good riddance. She now says that her third marriage was the “fifteen minute” variety. In actuality it lasted around a year, but maybe fifteen minutes just refers to how long either of them remained faithful.
Mr. CEO keeps peering at me, and I’m not sure if it’s because of my hot little LA body or if he actually recognizes me. I don’t particularly care. Grabbing the satin sleep mask, I shove it on, lean my seat back and settle in to pretend sleep. I don’t want to contemplate forty-something lechers, or my parents and their meaningless relationship histories. I just want to think about Graham.
I don’t want to screw this up. I know I’m about to manipulate him in deplorable ways, but I’m a practical girl. The ends justify the means. This is something my parents have never, in either of their pathetic lives, done—plan for the future, rather than living in the moment. Graham is not a momentary whim, though I admit he was at first. But that was a very long time ago. I’ve known for a while now that he’s exactly the kind of stable guy I need. He’s one of only two people in the world I can comfortably talk to about what happened with Reid.
God, Reid. What a tortuous mess that was.
When we met, he was fourteen, and I was fifteen. Both of us were recurring extras on the set of a soon-to-be-canceled sitcom. I’d catch him staring at me sometimes and he’d blush, or vice versa. I thought he was the most beautiful boy I’d ever seen. We talked a few times, but in short, nervous sentences on meaningless subjects—not in any substantial way.
Then, a month later, we both managed to land minor parts in the same movie. It was like fate, in a way—though to what purpose, I have no idea.
The cast was on location in Idaho, living in trailers. With no one else our age around, Reid and I had our tutoring sessions together, and we grew close fast. Our parents were too uninvolved to be around much, and the notion that production babysits underage kids is ludicrous. Yes, we were somewhat separated from the older cast mates because that sort of slipup would spell legal disaster, but for Reid and me the situation was akin to being thrown into the same playpen. We could mess around with each other all we wanted to. And we did.
I’d moved to LA with Mom when she married Rick, and the sitcom had been my first acting job. When the movie Reid and I were filming was over and we were back in LA, we kept seeing each other. Neither of us was old enough to drive, but we were privileged kids of clueless parents. We hired cars and hung out frequently at each other’s houses, which weren’t too far apart.
We were too young and irresponsible to be sexually active, but eventually, going all the way felt like a natural progression. Reid looked at me like I was a goddess come to life in his bedroom. He was reverent and adoring. I loved the feel of my hair spread across his pillow and his weight pressing into me and the expression on his face when he stared into my eyes and whispered, “I love you.”
God, we were stupid. We used protection most of the time, but occasionally we’d forget, especially if we’d been drinking. Reid resisted drinking with me most of the time, or he’d have one beer or one shot and quit. Something to do with his mother. And then came the night of the screwdrivers. We must have downed half a bottle of vodka between us, and we were both violently sick most of the night. The next morning, his dad discovered us in his room, passed out and hungover. After delivering a harsh parental lecture, his dad called my mom.
Loving mother that she is, she sent a car around to collect me. (Had she even noticed that I never came home the previous night? Who knows.)
When I staggered through the door, the only thing she asked—derision in her tone, not concern—was if I needed a morning-after pill. The last thing I wanted to appear was dumber than my mom. “Of course not,” I told her, trailing my hands along the hallway walls on the way to my room. “We use protection.”
She narrowed her eyes at me, and if she’d had any sense she’d have never believed me. Instead, she snapped, “You don’t get to be all high-and-mighty just because you know how to use a rubber, missy.”
“Why the hell not?” I returned, my head throbbing. “If you’d known how to use one, I wouldn’t be here to bother you.”
She slapped me then, and it wasn’t like seeing stars, it was like sparks erupting and everything blacking out at the edges. Rick rushed in and said That’s enough, Sharla and steered her out of my room as I stumbled onto the bed. He came back minutes later with ice chips and pain pills. My ears were still ringing when he sighed, “Just sleep it off, Brooke. You’ll feel better later.” In his kind eyes was the concern missing in my mother’s. He was weighing something he never got a chance to say, because Mom began calling his name in that petulant tone. Patting my arm, he sighed and left the room.
She preferred me to be invisible to him. I was starting to look like a woman, and all of a sudden, I was a rival, or at least something conceivably prettier than her. She didn’t like it.
I don’t remember what Reid and I fought over the night we broke up. We’re so similar that if we both happened to be in a pissy mood at the same time, we would inevitably end up in a vicious argument. At first, he seemed shocked at the things I’d say, trying to hurt him, to get a reaction. But his temper was as bad as mine—he just had a longer fuse. When he’d finally lose it, we would say cruel, spiteful things to each other and accuse each other of all manner of sins.