One To Watch (48 page)

On some level, Bea was enticed by Marin’s suggestion to send Ray away without so much as a conversation—after all, it would be easier than confronting him, than admitting to him (and to the world) exactly how badly he’d hurt her. But even if talking to him was a terrible idea, Bea had to know, finally, the truth of what had happened between them, whether he had ever loved her the way that she loved him. She told Lauren she’d see Ray that afternoon, but that she didn’t want a planned date—just to go for a walk through her favorite city with a man who was once her best friend. Lauren agreed quickly, sounding frankly relieved that Bea was consenting to see him at all.

Part of Bea wanted to spend hours in hair and makeup and wardrobe before she spent time with Ray, to transform into a powerful, sexy TV goddess—her “armor,” as Luc had described it. But tempting as that was, she put on her own jeans and an old flannel shirt instead, some mascara and sheer red lipstick. She knew she’d look a mess on camera, but at least she felt like herself. It didn’t make sense to be
Main Squeeze
Bea with Ray, all glamour and glitz. All the artifice of the show, the lavish romantic fantasies—none of that was them. They were just two old friends with too much history, too much pain.

When he opened the door of his hotel room, he said, “Hi.”

He looked wrecked, like he hadn’t slept either, maybe in days.

So she said, “Do you want to take a walk by the river?”

And he said, “Maybe north to the canal?”

“I love the canal.”

“Bea.” He smiled sadly. “I remember.”

They barely spoke on the walk—it was as if they were acclimating, remembering how it felt to be in each other’s presence. It was chilly and gray by the Seine, the water churning, tourists stopping to ogle the
Main Squeeze
camera crew. But as they made their way out of the center, the crowds thinned, and Bea began to feel the same sense of ease she remembered from the months when she lived in this neighborhood ten years prior.

Once they reached the canal, Bea ducked into a wine shop and bought a bottle with her own euros. Bea and Ray sat on the steps of one of the canal’s dozens of bridges, drinking their paper-cup red, two cameras pointed at their faces, a boom mic over their heads. All of it so alien, but being with each other the pinnacle of normal.

“I didn’t think I’d see you again,” he said, his voice that same come-hither mumble, the one you had to lean close to hear.

“When? After last summer?”

“No, the ceremony. I’ve never seen you that upset.”

“Well, sure,” Bea said drily, “you usually take off before you have the chance.”

“Usually?” Ray looked apprehensive. “How many instances have there been?”

“Um, countless?” Bea was surprised to hear the anger in her voice. “Last July, for starters. The night we kissed at Chateau Marmont. The millions of times we were curled up talking in some bar and you ditched me for one of your L.A. girls.”

“Come on, Bea.” Ray flushed with embarrassment. “You know I never cared about any of them the way I cared about you.”

Bea sat up straighter, took a drink of wine. “Then why didn’t you act like it?”

“I did,” Ray protested. “I spent every free minute I had with you.”

“No—that’s not what I’m asking. Ray, you flew to Paris to tell me you left your fiancée for me. And I just, I’m having trouble understanding why you need to make this grand gesture now, all these years later, when you never even went on a single date with me when we lived in the same place, when I was completely in love with you.”

“I didn’t know.” He hung his head. “Bea, I swear, I didn’t.”

“Didn’t know that I was in love with you? Or didn’t know how you felt about me?”

“Either one. I was a mess back then. You remember what I was like, going out every night, hungover every morning.”

“Calling me to bring you a vanilla shake and a McChicken with sweet n’ sour sauce for the fries?”

“Oh my God,” Ray moaned. “When you would show up at my door with that bag, it was like someone opened the gates of heaven.”

“Yeah, and when I’d walk into your apartment and it was completely obvious that some other girl had just been there, I felt like I was in hell.”

Bea shook her head, blinking back the first prickle of tears.

“Ray, last summer—”

“I know,” he cut in. “I know how badly I fucked up.”

“No.” She stopped him. “You don’t, because you weren’t there. I loved you for so long, and then during the biggest crisis of our relationship, you just disappear, like I never meant anything to you? We’re not twenty-two anymore. You can’t keep saying you’re a mess and letting that excuse your behavior.”

“Bea,” Ray implored her, “I was so fucking confused. I felt like such an asshole for cheating on Sarah, and I thought staying with her was the right thing to do, but whenever I talked to you … I wanted to leave. Not talking to you felt like the only choice I had.”

“You could have said that to me! You could have taken five minutes of your life to explain why you wanted to end our friendship and never speak to me again.”

“I kept thinking,
Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and it’ll be okay. I’ll be able to talk to Bea, and I won’t love her, and she won’t hate me
.” Ray took a drink. “But every day, I woke up, and I still loved you. And I was still so sure you hated me.”

Bea was taken aback. “Ray, you’ve never said that to me.”

“That I love you? I’ve said it a million times.”

“I know, but—the way you said it just now, you made it sound like. You know.”

Ray met her gaze, his face a mix of sadness and hope. “Like I was
in
love with you?”

“Well?” Bea’s heart was pounding. “Are you?”

He took her hands. “Yeah, Beatrice Eleanor Schumacher, of course I am. I am completely, inescapably in love with you.”

Bea closed her eyes. It was the sentence she’d wanted to hear for eight years, the sentence she’d imagined him saying millions of times.

But now, after everything she’d been through, Bea found that it wasn’t enough.

“You still haven’t told me why.”

“Why I’m in love with you? You want me to do one of those rom-com things where I enumerate the reasons? I mean, I can—”

“No, Ray. You haven’t told me why this took so long. Why we never got together when we lived in L.A. Why you kissed me once, then moved away and never said another word about it. Why sleeping with me freaked you out so badly that you had to cut me out of your life.”

“I told you, with Sarah—”

“But why did you get engaged to Sarah in the first place? You always said you wanted to come back to L.A., so why did you follow her to Atlanta instead? Why didn’t you come home to be with me?”

Ray shook his head in frustration. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

Bea didn’t know if there was even a point to pushing him on this, whether she was accomplishing anything more than pouring salt in her own wounds. But she needed the truth. If she was ever going to move on—either with him or away from him—she had to know.

“I read this article once,” she said, “about this scientific researcher who analyzed people’s porn searches.”

“I’m sorry, you what?” If Ray looked confused before, now he was downright bewildered.

“Yeah, so, he got access to all this data, and he compared it to a survey of what people said they were looking for in a romantic partner, to try and figure out what people say they want versus what they actually want. And he found that some huge number of men, I forget the percentage, but it was really high, was looking online for porn of fat women. But when you ask men what kind of body type they want in a partner, almost none of them said they wanted someone fat.”

Ray’s face clouded with emotion as he started to understand what Bea was getting at.

“So the researcher talked about how this plays out,” Bea continued, “how all these women are trying to lose weight because they think that’s what men want, and all these men are trying to date thin women because they think that’s what they’re supposed to want. Do you know what he called it?”

Ray didn’t answer—he just looked down.

“He said it was inefficient. A waste of time.”

Ray blinked rapidly. “I know I wasted your time, Bea. Years.”

“But
why
?” Bea pleaded. “Ray, I can’t forgive you if you won’t say what you did.”

“Back then I ruined things with every woman I slept with, and I couldn’t do that with you. I needed you too much.” He shook his head. “I thought I was protecting us.”

“By my count, the last two women you slept with were me and Sarah, and you ruined those pretty well too.”

He took a long drink of wine, and Bea saw his hands were shaking.

“When we were in L.A., I knew I loved spending time with you. I knew how important you were to me. And I knew—fuck, Bea. I knew I wanted you.”

“Is that really so hard for you to say?” Bea’s voice was cold and quiet.

“Yes, but not for the reason you think. It’s hard because I’m ashamed of how small-minded I was. Back then, when I tried to picture the two of us together—really together—I just couldn’t. It didn’t make sense to me. When I met Sarah, I thought,
Okay, this makes sense.
I moved in with her because it made sense, proposed because it made sense. It wasn’t until last July that I realized what an idiot I’d been, how much I’d fucked up my own life—and yours, and hers—but by then I felt like it was too late. I couldn’t see a way out of it.”

“And now?” Bea pressed. “Now—what? You saw me on TV and suddenly the clouds parted and your true path was lit from above? Ray, how am I supposed to believe you’ve changed? After everything? How can I believe it?”

“Because I’m here.” He put his hands on her knees, and she felt the warmth of him spreading through her, the same way she had on the Fourth of July. “Because I stole Sarah’s copy of
People
and stared at you in that gown for hours. I bought every single magazine you’ve been in, by the way. I started reading all the blogs, all the rumors, desperate for any information about you, about these guys who were trying to take you away from me.”

Bea was so nervous she was trembling. “They weren’t trying to take me, Ray. You didn’t want me.”

“You’re wrong.” Ray wrapped his hands around Bea’s wrists. “When I walked into that courtyard yesterday and saw you in that dress, I wanted you more than I have ever wanted anything in my life. I wanted to kiss you so hard you’d forget those other men existed. To make you remember you wanted me first.”

He slid his hands up to her elbows, their forearms clasping, the movement bringing him closer.

“It was never a question of wanting you,” she whispered.

“Then what is it?” He was inches away now, and she remembered the taste of him, and he smelled of musk and spicy clove, just like she knew he would, the same as always.

“The way you hurt me … I don’t know. I don’t know if I can trust you. If I even should.”

“Let me make it up to you. I’m here, Bea. I’m in love with you. Let me show you. Let me show you for the rest of our lives.”

Then he was kissing her, and it was all so strange and so familiar, to be cloaked in comfort and panic and the immutable weight of him, and something deep inside her clicked into place, the question finally answered of whether she would ever feel his lips on hers again.

She didn’t know how long it went on like that, them making out on the bridge, their legs tangled together like a couple of insufferable teenagers. Eventually, a producer broke in to tell them they were losing the light; the crew needed to be let go for the day, and it was time to go back to their hotel.

In the van on the ride back down toward the Seine, Ray asked Bea if they could spend the night together. A voice in her head screamed,
Yes, please, yes,
but she shoved it downward and told him she wasn’t ready, that she needed more time.

“You have all my time, Bea.” He draped his arms around her, pulled her in, like she was his. “Every minute I have left is yours.”

That night, Bea worried she’d lie awake fretting again, but her exhaustion finally overtook her. After all the confusion and elation and anguish and satisfaction, she found that there was nothing left to do but sleep.