A Little Less than Famous (29 page)

             
“Do you think Chris
will hate cleaning the vents? I mean, he’s so tall; it’ll just be easy for him. Maybe I’ll just do it myself with the ladder…”

             
“McKinley!”

             
“What?” I said, looking up, my eyes wide.

             
“Do
n’t give me that innocent look;
it doesn’t work for me anymore. You need to stop cleaning the diner right now and go and meet your mother.”

             
I looked at him in shock. “I thought you were against all of this. You certainly seemed against all of it.”

             
Luke leaned against one of the counters and sighed, running a hand over his face. “I’m not really for it, honestly. I’m extremely protective of you, McKinley. I’ve been taking ca
re of you since I was twenty-three
.”

             
“Raising me,” I corrected him, quickly.

             
“Right,” Luke said, a small smile on his face. “I just don’t want to see you
get hurt. I don’t want Corinna to be, well, Corinna
. But the fact is, she is your mother, Kins, and I can’t help but want you to try. You never knew your mom and I don’t want you to keep wondering your whole life, not when you have the chance in front of you right now.”

             
I let what he said sink in for a moment before throwing down my towel. “All right, you’re right. I’m going to get changed.”

             
I made it to Tony’s Little Italy about five minutes past noon, cursing myself for being late. If there was one thing I hated, it was being late. Tony’s was a small place, tucked away in a small strip mall in Placentia. If you didn’t know any better, you might just drive right past without pausing to look. But for those who did know where it was, it was a place where one could enjoy an authentic Chicago-style deep-dish pizza that was utterly delicious. It was an explosion of Chicago Cubs memorabilia with not a White Sox logo in sight. Someone had once told me how you could tell an authentic Chicago eatery: they either sported the Cubs or the Sox. You just couldn’t have both.

             
I walked in, glanced around the small shop and saw that my mom had not made it yet. I relaxed a little; sometimes I was too paranoid about being on time and I forgot that others were not as punctual as me. I put in an order for a medium deep-dish pepperoni so that it would hopefully be ready by the time she showed up. One important thing about Tony’s was that the wait for the pizza was long but it was worth it.

             
When it was about half past noon and th
e pizza had shown up
and my mother had not, I started to get worried. My immediate emotion should’ve been anger but that wasn’t there at all. I was worried and I was scared and the feelings felt entirely too familiar. I kept glancing at the screen of my phone, though only seconds passed in between each glance. It was about forty-five minutes past noon, that I caught the owner’s eye and asked for a take-out box for the now cold pizza.

             
“McKinley, right?” he asked, when he brought over the box.

             
I nodded, not surprised at all that he knew my name. I was a regular here, and I was known here, just as I knew my regulars back at Luke’s. “Yeah.”

             
“Lady came by earlier for you, left a note,” he said, looking apologetic. “
I didn’t remember until right now
, when I saw you waiting there.” He passed over a small white envelope, with a sympathetic smile and walked back behind the counter.

             
I stared at the envelope for a moment and then tucked it inside the pocket of my coat. I packed up the pizza and headed out to my car. I turned the key, bringing the car to life and immediately turned up the heater. Ben Wright’s newest single blasted out of the speakers; I’d had it on repeat for the past few weeks. I yanked the envelope out of my pocket and held out in front of me, my thumbs making creases in the corners. My name was written in clear script. The writing meant nothing to me. I could recog
nize Luke’s handwriting, Crystal
’s, Amanda’s, even Jake’s but the writing of my mother didn’t do anything to me.

             
I squeezed the envelope between my left fist, squishing it and crumpling it. I sighed, smoothing it out as much as I could and tore it open. A small fold of paper fell out, looking very much like a paper ripped from a hotel stationary pad. I opened it up, and smirked when I saw that it indeed had the heading from the local Embassy Suites.

             
The note was short, to the point, and void of all emotion. It also cut me just as badly as I thought it would.

McKinley,

I am so sorry that I couldn’t meet you today for lunch. I received a call about an interview for job and found that I just couldn’t pass it up. I wanted to stop by the diner before I left but there just wasn’t time. I hope that this note finds its way to you. I hope to see you soon and that you understand why I had to leave.

Mom.

             
I took a few deep breaths, and before I could stop myself, I crumbled the paper up tightly in my fist and threw it in the passenger seat, where it skidded across and fell to the floor between the seat and the door. My fingers were wrapped around the steering wheel tight, my knuckles white. A sound was beginning to form in the back of my throat and bubble up to my lips before I realized that I was trying to hold back a sob. I shrieked in frustration, slamming my fist into the steering wheel.

             
I didn’t know why I was surprised, but I was. I was expecting to see her in there, waiting for me, just as I had expected her to come back so many years ago. For all these years, I had held myself away from her, telling myself I didn’t care if she ever came back, that if she did, I would have a million things to say to her, none of them nice. Never did I actually expect her to come back. All those things I had spent years rehearsing in my head and not one of them managed to make it to the surface when I actually saw her. Instead, I let myself agree to
meet her;
I agreed against my first judgment and I opened myself to this. I reached across the passenger seat and opened the glove compartment, sure that there were a few napkins shoved in there somewhere. After sifting around, I managed to procure an extremely wrinkly napkin. I pressed it to my face for a moment before wiping up my angry tears.

             
I somehow ma
de the drive back to the diner. M
y music
was blasting loudly in the car. It was a
distraction from anything else going on, drowning out my own thoughts. I pulled into the parking lot with aggression, screeching to a stop and slamming the door shut. I burst into the diner, and saw that Frank, Amanda, Cameron and Luke were all sitting at the counter, playing what seemed to a game of Scrabble. They all looked up when I walked in, smiles across the board. It didn’t take long at all for their smiles to fade.

             
Amanda immediately stood up and came over to me and wrapped me in a hug. I wasn’t a touchy feely person and I tended to stay away from forms of affection. However, Amanda always hugged with everything she had; she didn’t hold back. That combined with t
he fact that she was a good three or four
inches taller than me, made me feel like I was as safe as I possibly could be.

             
“What happened?” Luke said, his voice somewhere to the left of Amanda. He sounded angry and I could hear Scrabble tiles hitting the floor with tiny little plinks.

Before I had gotten out of my car, I had grabbed the letter and shoved it into my jacket pocket. I pulled it out now; it was already crumpled and there was a small tear in the left bottom corner. I held it out to Luke, wordlessly. He took it and read it out loud; I turned away from the four of them.

“Oh, McKinley,” Luke said, softly when he had finished reading it. “I’m so…”

“Fuck her,” I said, sharply, my fists clenched inside my jacket pockets.

Amanda t
ook a step back away from me,
worry etched across her face. “McKinley, you don’t have to…”

“I mean it,” I said, as calmly as I could manage, my fingernails biting into my palms as I squeezed my fists tighter. “Fuck her. It’s fine. I didn’t expect her to be there anyway.”

“You don’t have to pretend, sweetie
. Not for us
,” Frank said, gathering up the tiles that had scattered on the floor.

The word “sweetie” might have been my undoing. I felt the lump in my throat rise up again and I had to look up at the lights to prevent my eyes from welling up more. “I’m going upstairs,” I spat out before I turned on my heel and sprinted up the stairs. I managed to get all the way up the stairs and into my bedroom before I started crying.

It took a couple hours for me to calm down, which was helped by the fact that no one came up stairs to check on me. I had heard my phone go off a few times, but I knew better. It was either Amanda, who sometimes braved talking to me on the phone, rather than in the flesh, especially when my temper got the best of me, or it was Jake, wanting to know how things had gone. I couldn’t really stomach either one of those until I had calmed down. I grabbed the box of tissues sitting on my desk, there for allergies and make-up removal, never there for actual tears, and scrolled through my missed-calls log. Two from Amanda, and three from Jake. I had been wrong; they both had called me. I took a deep breath and pressed the ‘call’ button.

“McKinley!”

“Hi Jake,” I said, brightly.

“Is everything okay?” he asked, soundin
g a bit wary. “Amanda texted me; she
said things hadn’t gone so well.”

Of course Amanda would still have Jake’s number saved in her phone.
For some reason, this bothered me.
“It’s fine, seriously. She had to leave last minute to go on a job interview. No big deal,” I said, trying to sound as breezy and uncaring as I possibly could.

“Baby, you don’t have to pretend with me,” Jake answered, a little shortly. I could hear him turn away for a moment and tell someone to wait a moment. “I’m here for you.”

“Honestly, Jake, it’s completely fine,” I said, a little bite in my tone, hinting at him to back off.

“But…”

“How’s New York?” I asked, cutting him, refusing to discuss this any further. In my mind, it was done, over, and I didn’t want it mentioned ever again. “What show do you have today?”

“I’m about to film Letterman, actually,” he
admitted, “which is why Adrienne
keeps walking into the room and BUGGING ME.” He shouted the last part away from
the phone, presumably at Adrienne
.

I laughed, surprising even myself at how natural I sounded. “Well, go be a superstar then, okay?”

“Okay,” he agreed, still sounding like he was unsure. “I’ll call you on Christmas, okay?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

There was an entirely too long pause and I pulled the phone away from my ear, seeing that were still connected. I put the phone back to my ear, and could hear Jake’s faint breathing. “Jake?”

“Sorry,” he said, sounding nervous. “I was going to say…never mind. I’ll talk to you later. Bye.” Then there was the sound of silence and I knew the conversation was over. I stared at my phone a moment as if it were going to explain Jake’s behavior.

Christmas was uneventful and the usual affair. We all piled into diner: me, Luke, Iris, Dave, his wife and three kids, Oliver and Cassandra-who seemed to be spending more and more time with each other-Frank
, Diane and Robert, even Chris and Mitch
managed to make it. Luke cooked and yelled things through the pick-up window and Iris got silly drunk and started singing Christmas carols at the top of her lungs. Gifts were exchanged and I got a seriously good haul.

Jake called as promised and, because most of my family was drunk, they all insisted on talking to him. The phone was passed around the room and by the time it made it back, he sounded tired and p
romised to call me the next day.