One Week (18 page)

Suddenly I’m exhausted, and I pull down my tray and bury my head in my arms. I feel Jess’s hand on my shoulder, and for the first time I don’t pull away. I’m just too tired. “Bee…” he trails off. There’s a long pause, but I don’t look up. “I wish you would let me explain,” he says finally.

I snort and raise my head. “I wasn’t actually thinking about
you
at that precise moment,” I say dryly. He
frowns, and opens his mouth to ask what was wrong. I wave him off, and look away. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll be fine.”

“Will you let me explain now, anyway?” Jess asks softly.

I shrug, and continue to look anywhere but at him. Jess gently takes my chin and turns my head to face him. His eyes hold mine, earnest and very serious. “I don’t regret anything,” he says firmly. “And to answer your question from this morning, I would love to have you take me out to dinner, even if we went to the scariest-looking restaurant in Chinatown. Isn’t it obvious to you by now that I would go anywhere you were going?”

I want so badly to believe him. I bite my lip and feel my eyes starting to water. “Then why—”

“I was trying to get you to think about what
you
need. And I… I didn’t say it very well,” he says ruefully. “I’m sorry. I don’t exactly like the thought of never seeing you again, and that’s what’s going to happen. I was… upset, and I said things all wrong.”

I shake my head and wipe the tears away. “But there’s no
reason.
Why would we never see each other again? I’ll figure things out in New York, somehow.” And at that moment, I’m absolutely sure that I will.

Jess opens his mouth to say something else, but then he closes it. He looks out the window for a second, and I crane my neck trying to read his expression. He turns back to look at me and smiles. “You’re right,” he says, and pulls me to him. The armrest is biting into my side
but I don’t care. Jess kisses me, so sweetly and so warmly that I want to start crying again, and I can’t say why. He pulls back and kisses my forehead. “It’ll all be all right,” I say, but I’m not sure whether I’m reassuring Jess or myself.

Jess nods once and settles me against his shoulder.
“Go to sleep, Bee,” he says. “It’s been a long day.”

And I do go to sleep, because although I’ve spent all day wanting to talk to Jess and not being able to, now I know that we’ll have all the time in the world.

When I wake up, it’s barely light out. Just like yesterday. Only this morning, Jess is still asleep. In fact, he’s drooling a little with his head resting against the window. I’ll have to remember to give him a hard time about that when he wakes up.

I lift my head from his shoulder slowly so as not to wake him up, and check my cell phone for the time. It’s just after five, and the train arrives at Penn Station at six-thirty in the morning. I stretch my arms over my head and turn my ankles round and round to get some blood flowing again. I decide that traveling by train is way better than flying in a plane, despite how much longer it takes. I can never sleep on a plane, but there’s something soothing about the rumble of the train.

I’m starving, even though we had a late dinner last night—but then again, it’s not like the meals have been all that regular lately. I debate whether or not to wake Jess to see if he wants anything, but decide to let him sleep, since my wanting to wake him has less to do with concern over his hypoglycemia, and more to do with just wanting to hang out with him.

I wander down to the dining car, and on a whim order the “Chef’s Good Morning Special,” which is apparently a mystery since no specials are printed anywhere. But I’m feeling lucky today. The place is empty, which suits me fine. I pull out my book and eat the Good Morning Special, which turns out to be a halfway decent spinach and cheese omelet. I gulp down a cup of not-nearly-strong-enough-for-five-in-the-morning coffee, and look out the window. I’m in New York. New York state, anyway. I made it.

When I get back to my seat, Jess is awake and rummaging around in his duffel bag.  He smiles when he sees me, and holds up a T-shirt. “I thought maybe I’d change my clothes,” he says. “I smell.”

“Lucky,” I say, jealous. “When we get to New York, I’m going to Soho and buying enough clothes so that I never have this problem ever again.”

Jess grabs his shirt and jeans and gives me a quick kiss on the mouth as he scoots by me. “Be right back,” he says.

It occurs to me that I could at least brush my teeth, something I haven’t done in so long that it doesn’t quite come as habit anymore. Which is disturbing. I brush for
a full five minutes, and when I come back Jess is dressed and looking quite spiffy, at least when compared with me.
 

“We should be there in about forty-five minutes,” Jess says.

“Great!” I say, and flop down in the seat next to him. “It’s about time. I can’t believe we’re finally going to get there after all this time.”

“Yeah,” Jess says, and turns to look out the window. “Me either.”

We sit quietly for the rest of the trip. I want to bubble over at Jess, to plan all the things we’ll do in New York—the plays, the dinners, the concerts. I’ll make him take me to all the touristy things he’s probably never even done, like the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State
Building. We’ll go to galleries and pretend we
understand the art. But it doesn’t really seem like Jess is in the mood for that right now, and that’s okay with me. I’m happy to bubble over in my head.

As the train pulls into Penn Station it occurs to me that while for me, New York represents excitement and possibility, and, I might as well admit it, an escape from my problems and responsibilities, for Jess it’s a return to all of that: he has to figure out what to do now that he’s
and he turns away from the window to smile at me.

“You’ll figure it out,” I say. He looks at me blankly. “UCLA,” I explain. “I’m sure there’s something you can do. Maybe if you offered to do community service or something—I don’t know. But I’m sure you can work something out.”

Jess smiles ruefully and kisses my palm. “Thank you,” he says. “For everything.”

“For getting you stranded in Nebraska? Or for almost getting you killed by a drag-racing maniac?” I laugh.

“For everything,” he repeats. The train hisses as we come to a stop, and I stand up quickly, impatient to step foot in New York City. I won’t feel like I’ve made it until I get off this train. Jess follows behind me slowly, and as we step foot onto the platform he swings his duffel over his shoulder. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s go get a cab and go find you some new clothes.”

He walks by the Eighth Avenue entrance and takes us all the way underground over to the Broadway entrance. “We’ll have better luck finding a cab over here,” he explains. I follow him, feeling pleased that at least one of us is on familiar ground at last.

It seems to me that it’s far more crowded over on the Broadway side of Penn Station, but I guess it would make sense that where there are more people, there would therefore be more cabs. I crane my head to look over the crowds, when something makes me stop. My blood turns cold, and at first I don’t even realize why. And then I register what I’ve seen—my father is standing in the crowd ahead of us, waiting for me.

I grab at Jess’s arm. “We have to get out of here!” I say, panicked. “My dad is here—I don’t know how he found us, shit, Mandy must have called him, come on, we’ve got to go—”

“Bee.” Jess sounds eerily calm, and suddenly I don’t want him to say whatever it is he is going to say. He takes me by the shoulders. “Mandy didn’t call your father,” he says, his voice even. “I did.”

I stare at him blankly. “What are you talking about?”

“I called your father and told him where you would be,” Jess repeats.

“But…how? When?” I can’t even register this. It seems impossible.

“At the gas station outside of Des Moines.”

I open my mouth to say…I don’t know what. He took so long in the bathroom that day. And that was before we spent the night in the trailer. He slept with me after he betrayed me. I stare at Jess mutely, and he pulls his hands away from me.

“You promised me,” I whisper.

“I promised you I’d get you to New York,” he says, his voice hard. “You’re here.”

And I guess that is all he promised. It seems that nothing else mattered, and I don’t know what made me trust him again. I look at him for a moment, waiting for something, anything from him, but Jess just stands there. I nod once, and then turn away. I move through the crowd to where my father is standing and looking for me. I tap him on the shoulder.

“Bette!” he gasps, and pulls me into his arms. “Thank God. Oh, thank God.”

I bury my face in his jacket, but I don’t cry. After a moment, I pull back. “Let’s go home,” I say. After all this time trying to get to New York, I can’t stand being here for even a second longer. I want to be as far away from Jess as possible, far away from all of this.

And so all I see of New York is what’s between Penn Station and Teterboro airport. Dad offers to stop someplace and get me some clothes, maybe even stay in New York for a few days if I wanted to, but I don’t. All I want is to go home.

My dad and I don’t say anything to each other at first. After that first moment, when he hugged me and I hugged him back for what felt like the first time in years, I didn’t really know how to talk to my father. I understand now why I had to leave, as I didn’t understand it when I first took off, but I’m not sure I can explain it to him.

But I do know that I have to at least try. As we board my father’s plane, he guides me to my seat and then squeezes my shoulder. “Do you want something to drink? To eat?” he asks.

I shake my head.

“Okay,” he sighs. “I’m just going to let my office know where we are. I’ll be right back.”

I look out the window as the plane begins to taxi onto the runway. I didn’t look back at Jess—I just got in my father’s car and left. I don’t know if he was still there. But even if he was, by now he’s long gone. It occurs to me that I don’t even know his last name.

As the plane takes off I look down over the city, at the Empire State Building, at Soho which must be down there somewhere, and I discover that I don’t really mind missing out on seeing them. I’ll come back someday, and this was never really about New York anyway.

I jump and pull away from the window as my father
sits down across from me. I start to fidget a little,
preparing myself for what I’m sure will be a scolding and an insistence that I behave in a manner fitting a person of my stature. Or worse, maybe I’ll be congratulated on garnering so much publicity.

Instead, my father surprises me. “What’s wrong, Bette?” he asks softly.

I don’t answer. I’m not sure how.

“When I came downstairs and found you’d gone I, uh…” he coughs. “I very insistently asked Thom Derrek what had happened to you. He just said you ‘freaked out’ and ran out the door, but I…” he trails off, and takes a breath. “Can I assume something happened?”

“He bit me,” I say flatly.

My father closes his eyes briefly and grips the armrest. “I’m so sorry. Tim—Thom Derrek’s agent—swore to me that Thom was innocent and that it was all a misunderstanding, but clearly…I should never have insisted that you have dinner with him.”

“Why did you?” I ask. I’m genuinely curious. There are plenty of other guys out there that my father would find suitable for his purposes, so why did he have to pick someone who didn’t exactly have a perfect record?

“I wanted you to do something exciting,” my father explains ruefully. “Which, obviously, you ended up doing.”

I can’t help but give a little snort of laughter. Fair point.

“You just sat around the house all the time,” my father continues. “You never went out with your friends, you never went to parties—you never did anything. And so I thought, here’s something every girl your age wants to do. And maybe if I forced you to do it, you would actually enjoy yourself and open up a bit more.” He reaches forward to take my hand. “Does that make any sense at all?”

I nod reluctantly. It does make sense, but it’s still
wrong. “But just because you think I
should
want
something doesn’t mean I do, Dad. All of the parties, and the publicity, and the attention—I don’t want it. I never did. Why couldn’t you ever understand that?” I feel some of the anger I had when I first left starting to boil up again, and I pull my hand away.

My father leans back in his seat and sighs. He looks out the window for a while and doesn’t say anything. Just when I’m wondering if this conversation is over, he turns back to me. “After your mom left…” he coughs, and breaks off. “You were so young, and I never wanted anything bad to happen to you ever again. I wanted you to have everything, Bette. I tried to give you a world that was as perfect as I could make it.”

“Based on what?” I say hotly. I refuse to feel sorry for him. “Was this the
US Weekly
ideal world? You can’t use my mother as an excuse for every crappy thing you’ve done, Dad. I told you this wasn’t what I wanted, and you did it anyway. You called the photographers, the magazines, you invited people I hate to my birthday parties—how is
that
a perfect world?”

My father leans back in his seat with a huff. “Bette, that’s such a small price to pay! Do you know what you could have in a year or two, with some creative storytelling and a really good publicist? You could have your own label, like the Olsen twins. You could have your own perfume!”

“I’m allergic to perfume,” I say tightly.

“That’s not really the point,” my father starts.

“Yes!” I yell suddenly. “It
is
the point! I’m allergic to perfume! Why the hell would I want something named after me that I can’t even wear or appreciate? I don’t want it—I don’t want any of it!” I take a deep breath. “I’m going to just be me, Dad. Not some publicist’s version of me, not
your
version of me. I’m going to care about the things
I
care about, not the ones you do. As it happens, I don’t care about being the next Paris Hilton. I can’t think of anything worse, actually.”