Here Without You

She frowns in confusion. ‘Your dad said that?’

‘Yeah,’ I chuckle. ‘Shocked the shit out of me.’

‘So he’s really … okay with you doing this?’

I shrug, thinking about the fact that my parents’ house is in an uproar of make-ready for a four-year-old they didn’t even know existed a couple of weeks ago. Dad wore his courtroom face this morning at her attorney’s office, though Brooke’s counsel was genial, and by the time we’d left, the two of them were strategizing together as if they’d always done so. Evidently, there’s a potential issue with the fact that I’ll only be twenty, and the minimum age to adopt is twenty-one. They plan to carefully approach the judge with the contention that I was fifteen and had no legal counsel when I effectively gave up my parental rights.

‘He’s more than okay, and so is Mom. It’s bizarre. In their defence, I think I set their expectations of me quite low in the past few years.’

She laughs softly, one tear escaping and trailing down her cheek. I reach to wipe it away, but that simple touch erases her smile. She swallows and sits back abruptly. ‘Thanks for upending your schedule on such short notice to come with me today.’

My elbows on my knees and my hands clasped, I sigh. ‘You don’t need to thank me any more. We’re in this together. I’m not doing you a favour. I’m doing what I should have done in the first place – taking some f**king responsibility.’

I finish packing while we eat, and she agrees to drop me at the airport so I don’t have to bother with calling a car. When we exit the hotel, there’s a single photographer waiting outside. Snapping up from leaning against his van, he hollers our names, but neither of us takes the bait. Nice try, dickwad. Luckily, the truck is parked in the opposite direction, and since there’s only one of him, he doesn’t get too close – though I’m sure his zoom lens does.

DORI

My cell recorded a missed call from Reid, though I never heard it ring or felt it buzz. It figures that when I fully intended to answer it, my phone goes on hiatus. When I try him back, his phone is off – the call goes straight to voicemail – and I presume he’s somewhere between Texas and Utah. I leave him a message telling him I’ll be studying in my room tonight.

‘Call me when you’re back to your – trailer, I guess? Talk to you later. Bye.’

I try to imagine Reid in a production trailer, but having never been inside one, all I can picture is the interior of a motorhome purchased years ago by a pair of retired neighbours, after they sold the home they’d owned for forty years. They were very proud of the cramped, nomadic house and the miniature everything – from the fridge to the shower to the ‘bedroom’ that was little more than a wall-to-wall bed at the back of the vehicle.

During the ‘tour’, Deb leaned to me and murmured, ‘What happens when Oscar slams on the breaks to take a sharp corner and Ethel is in bed … or in the shower? Naked, wet, pissed-off old lady tumbleweeding up to the cockpit, that’s what.’

I nearly choked to death trying to contain my giggles. When Mom turned and bestowed a narrowed look on the two of us, Deb blinked and appeared angelic, angling her head towards me. ‘She swallowed her gum.’ She slammed a hand on my back several times. ‘Cough it up, Dori, cough it up.’

In between devising a citations page for my Intro to Psychology paper and studying for a test in Intro to Sociology, I text Aimee, who is incensed that she and Kayla won’t get a normal spring break because UCLA does quarters instead of semesters.

Aimee: We only get TWO DAYS of your spring break before we start another quarter! What about the college experience??? This is false advertising.

Me: Didn’t you look at the academic calendar before applying? Or registering?

Aimee: Obviously, no.

Me: I’m sorry. I’ll be home all week, though, and you go to school in LA.

Aimee: But you’ll be making time for REID, I’m sure (not that I blame you). And … Nick?

Me: Nick’s spring recess is a week before mine, so we’ll only overlap the first weekend. And Reid, if he’s in town, yes. He’s filming, though. So I’m not sure of his schedule yet.

Aimee: DUH. He’ll be filming at Universal, so he’ll be in town. I have it on Perez authority.

Me: I’m rolling my eyes at you so hard right now.

Ten minutes later, I get a text from Kayla.

Kayla: Hey, check out the link I just messaged you. I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but there are some things you have to KNOW!

Me: Ok.

The link goes to one of those websites I wish didn’t exist, where the lives of people like Reid are dissected and displayed. It’s there that I find a somewhat indistinct photo with the caption: ‘Reid Alexander and Brooke Cameron! Together again?’ They’re entering a hotel elevator. And if that isn’t conclusive enough – there’s an incontestable photo of the two of them a couple of hours later, exiting the same hotel and climbing into a pick-up truck.

Brooke Cameron is beautiful. This isn’t an envious or unrealistic statement – it’s just the incontestable truth. She’s one of the prettiest girls I’ve ever seen. Who had Reid’s baby. And was with him in Austin on Saturday. Entering and leaving a hotel.

Suddenly, I’m so tired.

I’m tired of feeling jealous – an emotion I’ve never truly experienced before Reid, which has somehow become all-consuming. And relentless. And just so exhausting.

Closing out of the website, I barely register the tears streaming down my face, but I can’t let them blind me to reality. If I talk to Reid, my tongue will burn with the need to ask him what’s going on between them, if anything is. And even if nothing is – yet – I can’t believe that it won’t. Or even that it shouldn’t.