Between You and Me (30 page)

Kelsey swings her away. “Have you been giving him money?”

“Now, just hold up a minute,” Andy says.

“You’re helping him take her away?”

“No. Absolutely not.” Andy slices the air.

“Logan was there. She saw it.”

“It’s strange,” I attest.

“What did you expect him to do, for God’s sake?” Michelle’s incredulous. “That baby deserves a proper parent, and you’ve been—”

“Doing every fucking thing you’ve ever asked me to.”

“Now, don’t go turning this around.” Andy crosses his arms, his chest puffing. “You put us in this situation. Your partying left us cut out of that baby’s life, and Aaron was good enough—”

“Good enough?” she shouts back in disbelief.

“We can help him give that baby a stable environment,” Michelle says.

Kelsey snorts. “Like when I used your bag of coke in my Easy Bake brownies? What was I, six?”

“Now you’re just trying to get attention.”

“See it from our point of view.” Andy fumbles to recover his ground. “You’re going to have to let this go, Kelsey Anne.”

“Like all the times I had to let it go when Momma had a black eye?” She thrusts Jessie into my arms and dumps the jewelry boxes onto the couch. “Take this fucking stuff—I never wanted it. I can sing till I bleed. Smile till I black out. But I can’t make this shit you’ve pulled with Aaron okay. It’s impossible. I have
nothing left
. She catches her breath as Jessie breaks into a full wail. “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay.” She bounces her as she turns back to the door. “You have a day to get off my property. You’re officially fucking fired from Kelsey, Inc.”

“You’re
where
?”

“Vegas,” I repeat to Finn that night as I hand a twenty to the distracted bellboy. Kelsey crosses the onyx-floored penthouse to a switch by the two-story windows. The immense curtain panels whir, blocking out the city lights below.

“I thought you were coming with me tomorrow morning. The breakfast with the charity consultants—I wanted your two cents.”

“I’m sorry,” I say as Kelsey studies the gold drapes in consternation. “We’ll be home tomorrow night.” When Andy and Michelle are gone.

“A family vacation?”

“No. No, just us.” The sole remaining members of Kelsey, Inc.

Kelsey lifts the heavy lamé, and I see her moving under it until she finds the switch. The schizophrenic skyline returns, the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower.

“Okay . . . ” Finn answers. “Should I be concerned?”

“No. No. It’s all good. You’ll be great tomorrow. I wasn’t going to be much help, anyway. I’ve got a lot going on.”

“In Vegas.”

“Yup.” I strain not to scream at him,
I know!
I get it, thanks. Kelsey circles the party pit to stand beside me in the foyer. “Gotta go.”

“Right.”

“I love you,” I say.

“You could leave, you know. Let her make her own mistakes. There are people who’d kill to hire someone with your experience and discretion. Just, you haven’t even mentioned it, and I thought I should put it out there. It’s your life, too.”

“I—I—”

“What?”

“No, you, too!” I disconnect, and stare at the device in my hand. “How we doing?” We are reflected back at each other in infinite telescopes in the mirrored walls.

“I remember this different.”

“Okay . . . ” I walk away from the prism effect. “Is this not the hotel?”

“No, it is. I just . . . I thought it would feel different.”

“It’s been a big day, Kel.” An understatement. “Maybe if you took a bath. Got some sleep.” I rest on the edge of the lacquer dining table. She looks down the gold hallway leading to the bedrooms.

“No,” she says simply.

“A cheesy movie and room service?”

Her brow furrows. “I thought if they weren’t here. If I wasn’t working. But it’s just big and cold and—”

“Let’s go.” I swing my finger in the air and turn to the vestibule, my voice echoing.

“What? No! I’m not going back until they’re out of there.”

“We’re not going back.” I swipe up the keycards. “But we’re not staying here.”

“All the paparazzi downstairs? I can’t go home—”

“Kel, there’s a middle ground between Versailles and defeat.” I pick up the house phone.

Three hours later, we’ve finally
found it—in a king-size bed in a standard-size room. We’ve polished off two bottles of wine, macaroni and cheese, and a chocolate molten cake. I unlock the door and roll the ravaged cart into the hall.

“You got a lot of potential, Kit De Luca,” Kelsey murmurs from under the bedspread.

“Ya think?” we say together as I pad back in, slip off my jeans, and hop in next to her. Opera music fills the room as Richard Gere comes to his senses on the glowing screen. Kelsey smiles drowsily, her eyes closing.

“This was good, Lo. A good night.”

“You deserve it.” I squeeze her arm, and then, clicking off the TV, nestle down and give in to Bordeaux-sodden exhaustion.

I awaken to the sound
of the door clicking closed. Four twenty-eight—shit. With a thick head I kick off the covers, and run to the door, yanking it open and squinting in the bright light. But there’s only a guy at the elevator bank, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He glances back at me as the car arrives, and I shut the door, confused. I hear the shower turn on and push into the bathroom—it takes a moment to readjust to the dimness—Kelsey is hunched over the toilet bowl.

“What happened?” I ask.

She whips around, holding the wall. I realize I smell vomit and that she’s only wearing her tank top. “Are you okay?” Panic wells up from the cold tile. I flick on the light.

“No.” Her hand slams over mine, shutting it off, but I’ve already seen the discarded Trojan wrapper.

“Kelsey, what did you do?”

“I couldn’t sleep. I felt like they were gonna show up. My heart pounding a million miles a minute. And I needed . . . I needed . . . ” She starts to dry-heave, spinning to the sink. My brain fully revved now, I sickeningly place the tattoo on the forearm of the guy in the hall.

“That guy was paparazzi.”

“Get out, Logan.” She trembles, steam filling around us. “
Get out
. I’m taking a shower. Just, please.” I throw my hands up and back away. The door closes behind me, and I sit down hard on the bed.

Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.

I should leave.

I can’t leave.

I mean, obviously, I can’t leave.

Or can I?

Let her make her own mistakes?

No. That’s not my job.

Or is it?

What the fuck
is
my job, exactly?

Finn’s face in my mind’s eye, I dare myself to just get dressed and walk out the door.

Hearing the bathroom door clicking
open, I feel her pull the covers up. I have crystallized all of my questions down to one so pressing I was asking it in my restless sleep.

“Are you looking for someone to beat you up?” I say quietly.

“What?” She speaks into the pillow, her head turned away.

“If you want someone to beat you up, at least have me do it, because I won’t kill you.”

A luggage cart rolls by outside.

“I don’t want to get beat up.”

“Good.”

“This is all new, Logan.”

“I know. I just . . . want you to be okay. I want to know that you’re going to be okay.”

She props herself up on her elbows and faces me. “I waited my whole life for that love, for everything I thought I was getting.” Her eyes clench against tears, and she blows out. “But I’m not . . . whatever
that
was.” She points to the bathroom. “I’m not. I’m going to be fine, I promise.”

We opt to drive back
, making it through the gate just after three, the hour of Kelsey’s stated deadline. Even though the guard said the moving van had left, neither of us quite believes it when we round the oaks to see their cars aren’t there. She pauses before twisting the handle of the guesthouse. I nod encouragingly, and she goes inside while I wait, looking up to where the breeze is ruffling the tops of the trees, the branches below untouched.

“They’re gone!”
She throws her arms around my shoulders. “Really gone! And they didn’t break anything or take everything or kill themselves. Oh, my God, Logan. Oh, my God.” She grips my hands. “Could it be this easy? Did I just have to fire them?”

“I guess.” I can’t help but smile at her euphoria.

“It’s going to be okay. It’s really going to be okay! I’ve been thinking all day, I’m going to figure this out, do whatever it takes to get Jessie back. Something different—no more touring. Something on my terms. Let’s make a picnic and sit on the lawn, and just, holy shit, I don’t even know where to start.”

“You should’ve seen her,” I
marvel to Finn that evening, leaning in Travis’s kitchen doorway with a glass of wine. High off Kelsey’s victory lap, we’re taking advantage of Travis’s absence. “Within an hour, she’d gotten on the phone with the head of comedy programming at NBC—”

“Impressive,” Finn says as he plates the salmon.

“And he said she can have a cameo on any sitcom she wants. She’s going to be fine,” I say, believing it for the first time. “So, this whole time we’ve been living without a kitchen, you can actually cook,” I say, admiring the bowls of rosemary grilled vegetables and wild rice.

“You haven’t tasted any of it yet.”

“How did your meeting with the charity consultants go?”

“Leo has water, but they said no one has air yet, so Travis could take air. Make air his thing.”

“And for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, this couple will help Travis navigate becoming air?”

“Yep.”

“Genius,” I say as I set our places at the mahogany table painted down the middle with the racing stripes of the Indianapolis driver Travis sponsors. Finn is just pulling my dining chair out when both our phones start ringing and pinging at the same time.

“Ignore it,” he says. “If James Franco is dead, he’ll still be dead when we finish dessert.”

“Finn,” I say, immediately nervous.

He pulls my napkin out of its numbered ring and waves it onto my lap. “So? David Duchovny joined a monastery. Charlie Sheen helped a seeing-eye dog cross the street. I don’t care. How often do we get to have dinner together?”

But I can’t stop myself. “TV on!” I say loudly, bringing the flat
screen to life with Kelsey’s image—her bloody mug shot. The reporter is saying something about paparazzi.

“It’s just some new shit about the crash, Lo. The fish’s getting cold.”

“—reportedly had sex with her in her Las Vegas hotel room.”

I’m going to be sick.

“According to this gentleman, Pedro Gutierrez, she invited him to her room, where he alleges they had sexual relations.” Pedro comes on the screen. He’s saying something about loving her for a really long time. And then there’s a picture of her posing for him in the bathroom like a pinup. Her body in position but her eyes are drunk and sad.

“She really let me in,” Pedro says. “Like most people don’t know that tattoo on her ass—it’s the Velveteen Rabbit.”

“I have to go,” I say.

“No, you really don’t.” The camera pans over photos of the darkened room.
“Oh my God,”
Finn says. “That’s you.” Asleep in bed, my bare ass black-barred.

“I can’t just sit here.” I rush to the front door.

“What if this guy had been a rapist?” He grabs my wrist, putting himself between me and the door. “You look pretty naked and pretty passed-out.”

“Finn, don’t—I have to—I’m scared for her.”

“I’m scared for you. What if you’d been in that car she totaled? You can’t see this clearly—you’re too close.”

“You’re jealous.”

“Wow.” He releases me. “Okay.”

“Finn—”

“No, if you go to her now after the danger she put you in—”

“It wasn’t like that—”

He shakes his head. “Then you’re on your own.”

“Are you forbidding me?”

“Yeah, I think I am.”

And I can’t slam the door hard enough.

“It’s the cousin!” The reporters
and paparazzi blind me with their flashes, crushing against the car, slapping the windows, hurling questions
until it’s a singular indiscernible din of need. “Is it true you had a three-way with Pedro Gutierrez?” I try to hold on to the awareness that I am an employed grown-up, surrounded by a throng of other employed grown-ups. Yet I still take a shuddering breath once the gate shuts behind me. Finn, I don’t know.

I see Andy’s car and run up the steps. Kelsey stands on the stairs, facing off with him, while Michelle sits on the couch, eyes on her lap.

I hear a small cough and step inside to find, perched by the fireplace, a middle-aged woman with a platinum bob.

“Thank you.” Kelsey is trying to muster civility. “But I’m really okay, and you can really go.”

“Kelsey,” Andy presses, “you’re pissed at us, fine. But at least listen to what the doctor has to say. You let a paparazzi into your hotel room.”

“It’s none of your business, Daddy, remember? You made Aaron your business.”

“How you can look at us like that?” Michelle asks. “With such contempt. I was there for
everything
.” Her hurt is palpable. “Pounding Five-hour Energy so I could drive you half a day to some mall where I was the only one clapping. I’m not one of those bitch mothers who didn’t give a shit. The ones who complained and read their magazines and looked at their own nails.” She wipes her nose as tears stream. “I was front-row center, Kelsey. Sewing, driving, saving. I just hope.” She palms off her cheeks. “I hope for your sake that your daughter doesn’t ever make you feel so small.”