Untangling The Stars (22 page)

Andie’s mouth swung open.
Being kicked out is the
last
thing I want.
That’s what it felt like anyway: being asked to pick up her toys and go play somewhere else. Everything that came to mind to say felt like it would come out stubborn—or offended, which would only strengthen Tandy’s argument—instead of confident.

“I don’t think that’s necessary. I’m totally fine.”
I
am
fine.

Tandy gave her a condescending shake of her head. “Andie, please. You can come back whenever you’re ready. Just take some time for yourself.”

Well, there was no comeback to being asked to walk way for your own good. Even if it was nowhere near what Andie wanted. What she wanted most, actually, was to cling to her comfort zone as tightly as possible. Maybe if she could find one thing to hold her steady, her world would stop spinning so quickly. She glanced around the table at each woman’s face. Tandy was locked in her safe, motherly expression, confident in her expert ability to bulldoze a conversation to suit her agenda without anyone being the wiser. Elizabeth looked miserable; Denise was as unreadable as ever. Melody actually looked confused. It was probably the first time she hadn’t managed to architect the resolution she wanted. It had gone from feud to farewell in less than five minutes. Andie knew she was doomed.

“Look, I really don't—”

“Andie, maybe it wouldn’t be a terrible idea,” Denise cut in delicately. “I mean, there is a lot of stress on you right now, and to be perfectly frank it might not be the best association we want the gala to have. Guy Wilder is a bit of a loose cannon in the media.”

The truth cut like glass in Andie’s heart. “Oh.”

“It’s nothing personal,” Denise continued. “Really, Andie, it’s not. It’s a precaution.”

There was nothing left for her to do but to leave, so she stood. “I don’t know what to say, guys. Sorry you feel that way. Good luck.” She looked each of her friends over in turn, purposely giving them that disapproving look she reserved only for the most hopeless of her students. She might be the one walking out, but she would be damned if she was going to leave without her dignity.

***

It was a lot easier to pretend to be okay than to feel like it. It was not unlike painting your face into a clown’s mask so you could smile while still feeling broken.

It wasn’t exactly that she felt betrayed. It was more than that. Tandy could always be counted on to be a Grade A Busybody fussing about and obsessively ruling her henhouse. Normally Andie could chalk that up to innate personality differences and manage it without letting it get to her too badly. They all had their part to play.

It was
why
they’d asked her to bow out of the gala that really stung. Logically, Andie knew that her name in the headlines and all the buzzing bullshit of the paparazzi didn’t exactly paint her in a good light with the high-nosed types who would be attending the gala. She knew, too, that even being romantically attached to a celebrity was a tricky battle in itself, and it wasn’t as if Guy exactly carried the reputation of the good wholesome boy. He was habitually sullen and naturally enigmatic with his disheveled cynicism and bouts of bad behavior in the headlines. It was never anything too bad; stuff like not showing up to premier events, but it always came with a price. Besides, one could only be perceived as a good guy for so long when he was scripted to kill people remorselessly on TV every night. Hell, at some point even America’s Sweetheart could come off as a real creep. It’s what made character actors so successful onscreen while often so deplorably unhappy in real life. The list of celebrity suicides was sadly long.

If any outsider understood how hard it was to see past that falsified, albeit all too convincing persona, it was Andie. It was what she’d built her research on and what she’d spent the past several years lecturing from her pulpit. The disassociation of fantasy from reality—taking the red pill instead of the blue. It sounded so easy, until you were stuck in the middle of it. It would make for a great happily ever after, if it weren’t already destined for tragedy. She knew better than to believe all the mushy endings of a nice storybook RomCom, but it still hurt like hell to actually ride the wave of one.
Oh Romeo….

That was what made the betrayal all the more potent. Andie had betrayed herself. She knew better. Madeline had been right. Too much guilt was piling up too quickly—problems at work, with her friends, her whole life seemed to be quickly unraveling—and all for a man who she’d barely known, what, a couple of weeks? And then there was the toll that this was taking on him, too. It seemed premature, and not worth fighting for. The media was making sure they felt that way, with all the headlines and leaked stories that made them both look like a couple of maniacs. A photo or two had gone viral from Guy’s altercation on set, too, and that alone was enough to disturb Andie. That boy had some rage pent up in him, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to be around when it all came loose. Normally Andie was a fighter, not a flighter, but this was just too much too soon.

There was only one rational thing to do: end this before it destroyed her and Guy both.

Before she could talk herself out of it, Andie opened her phone to compose a new text. She knew it was the coward’s way out—sending something like this over text—but she also didn’t trust herself to be able to deliver bad news to Guy when she could hear his voice deep and rumbling in her ear. She’d never considered herself chicken, but the evidence was typing itself out on her screen. It would have been pathetic, if she hadn’t felt so heartbroken.

I think we need to take a break until things settle down. It’s just too much, Guy. I’m sorry.
She pressed send. Waited. Guy was back on set filming. It could be minutes or hours before he saw her text. But in a few seconds, the damage was done.
Message read
.

Watching her screen, Andie could see the blinking dots that meant Guy was typing a response. He was typing and not calling, which likely meant he didn’t exactly have the ability to step away for privacy. The dots stopped, and a split second later, his reply appeared on her screen.
What happened? Call me.
He had given her an out.

She considered her reply, beginning several sentences that she erased and rewrote half a dozen times on the small screen.
I don’t think that it’s a good idea right now.

He read it immediately, but didn’t respond. Five minutes went by and Guy still hadn’t responded. Andie held her phone, waiting. It felt like they might both be waiting for the other person to make the next move.

Ten minutes.

Fifteen.

Her phone rang. It was Guy.

She picked up and listened to crackling silence for the space of a few heartbeats before she could force herself to speak. “Hi.”

“You have seriously got to be kidding me, Andie.” His voice was a low growl. He was pissed.

Andie gulped. Whatever she had expected him to say or be, this wasn’t it. In truth, she’d expected him to be worried or upset. She’d thought he’d try to talk her off the cliff. Not that she deserved that, but she couldn’t help for wishful thinking. She’d started this conversation, and it was on her to finish it.

“I’m sorry, Guy. I just think this is too much. It’s too much, too fast.”

“So you just want to bail? What about
us
?”

“No.” She was taken aback. She didn’t
want
to bail. She wasn’t bailing. All she said was that she wanted to take a break. That was a reasonable request, right?
Wrong. That’s go-to girl response for run away. You know this; don’t be an idiot.

“No? You’re not making any sense.”

“I’m not trying to play games, okay? I really think we should take a break and let things calm down. Just for a little while. Try to keep things off grid.” It sounded phony, even to her. Even if it was the truth.

“You’re a lot of things, Andie, but I never took you for someone who ran away from things.” Guy’s voice was hot.

“What do you mean, a lot of things?” Andie could feel the conversation taking a turn for the worse. This had the potential to spiral out of control and end badly—very badly. She tried to recalibrate. “My dean was waiting on me the other day when I got to campus. She was nice about it but she’s pissed, and it’s disintegrated to an ongoing battle in my classes all week. My colleagues laugh behind my back. Students don’t take me seriously. I’ve gone from teaching to being on public display like some kind of carnival sideshow. And today I was asked to walk away from the literacy gala, Guy. They don’t want me because of this—because of
us
.”

Guy made a breathy sound on the other end of the phone line but said nothing. It sounded sort of like a scoff but Andie couldn’t be sure. She kept talking.

“Did you know your manager even showed up in Denver today? That I got to be confronted by Madeline and told in no certain words to get the hell away from you?”

That breathy noise was a scoff. “Well it looks like she wasted her time then.”

“Excuse me?”

“If Madeline would have known you would bail on your own, she could have saved herself the time of coming to warn you off. I’m sure she has more important things to do.”

Andie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Are you seriously defending her for coming here and getting all up in my face? You think I deserved that?”

“Not at all.” It must be opposite day because it sounded to Andie like he was really saying “absolutely yes” instead. “All I mean is that it would have saved her lot of trouble to wait and let you run away from this on your own. Apparently it was stupid of either one of us to actually think you could handle this.”

“I am losing
everything
and going through hell over here, and you have the nerve to climb up on some sarcastic throne of superiority and imply that
I
am ‘handling this’ wrong? Tell me one thing you have done to make it any better?” She could feel her control slipping away. Her words were loud and verging on hysteria. Well, that escalated quickly.

“You asked me to fix it, Andie, but you don’t give me two seconds to do it and you criticize me for how I choose to handle it. You don’t even bother to ask about what
I
am going through over here. Do you think
I
enjoy all this—think it’s all fun and games for me?”

“You’re not watching your whole world crumble around you, Guy. Everything you worked for. But I am.”

She knew it that last was unfair the moment it came out of her mouth. Guy had made it clear that he was willing to walk away from everything for her, and from what she’d been told he was. But that didn’t make it feel any different—well, maybe it actually made it her feel worse. He was far away, making those choices for himself. She hadn’t had a say in what had happened to her here at home. “I don’t think I can take it by myself.”

“Only you weren’t by yourself.” Past tense.

Andie exhaled. “I know. I’m sorry. This isn’t your fault. I just need time to figure it out.”

“Of course it’s my fault, Andie. Isn’t that how it always goes? Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love. Boy fucks up. Girl takes off.”

“Yes, that’s usually about right,” Andie admitted. “But sometimes they find their way back together in the end.”

“Yeah, well, I guess that’s where this story is different, huh? Because Dr. Foxglove doesn’t believe in happy endings. Even if she did, the bad guy never wins.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Their next conversation, several days later, wasn’t any better. Things had decayed quickly, and Andie had never felt worse. It wasn’t just that her heart felt broken, but it felt more like someone had yanked it out of her chest and stomped it on the ground…while they were wearing cleats.

“Why does everything have to be so black and white with you?” Andie appealed to Guy, completely exasperated. They’d done nothing but argue for the past half hour. “Life, real life, is not a script. It’s not written out and pre-planned.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Guy retorted. “But, of course,
I
am not a college professor. I’m just the person you watch on TV when you’re tired of reading and lecturing.”

“Guy, stop. Just stop. This is what I am talking about. You are not the guy on TV. You are not Silas Dove, ‘the bad guy’. You are Guy Wilder, from small town Alaska.
Your
life is not scripted. I’m not saying I never want to see you again. I
never
said that. What I’m saying I need some time. This, us, whatever it is we have or want is blurring everything. Can’t you see that?”

“All I see is the woman I fell for running away because what I told her from the beginning would happen, happened. The media circus began and you freaked out. Welcome to my life, Andie. Thanks for proving me right.”

“That’s the blur, Guy. I’m not freaking out. I’m not running away. I’m stopping. To breathe, to think. You should do the same. My career is being threatened. You are suddenly talking about throwing yours away! Guy, that’s ridiculous. We’ve both worked too damn hard to get impulsive and throw it all away.”