Rocky looks as smug as a cat that caught its prey. He peers into the paper bag and grins.
“Who’s hungry?”
“So, this is where you vacationed as a kid?” Rocky stares out at the lake. Our own children are standing barefoot at the edge of the dock,skipping stones in the water. Sunlight reflects in golden ribbons off the top of their heads.
“Yep. Every summer.”
Rocky nods sagely. “Not exactly Lake Como, but it’s cute. A simpler way of life.” My nails dig into my palms. It’s not that I disagree with his evaluation. The quiet simplicity of the mountains largely makes up its charm. It’s just so belittling when it comes out of his mouth.
I stare out at the horizon, refusing to give him the satisfaction of meeting his eye.
“I can’t help but notice you are without your betrothed again.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Rocky tense.
“She decided to fly straight back to LA,” he says lightly. “Had a lot on her calendar for this week.”
I loll my head to the side and give him a hard look. “You might be able to float that bullshit with other people, Rocky, but not me. I know you too well.”
Rocky drags a hand through that luscious head of hair.
“I know. That’s just the problem, actually.” He levels me with those jade eyes that have made audiences swoon for over two decades now. “Rayna, she… doesn’t get me the way that you do. When we were on the trip, I realized that I was there with the wrong woman.”
I blink once and then again, so surprised by his words that I can’t find my own.
He takes advantage of my silence and leans closer, like the camera is panning in for his big line. “We’re a family, Marissa. It should have been you with us. Not her.”
I intake a sharp breath as a flurry of mixed emotions washes over me. On the one hand, I almost feel vindicated. Of course our relationship is less shallow than the one he has with Rayna. There’s more to our life together than red carpets and photo ops. We’ve seeneach other at our best and our worst. We’ve raised children together. There’s just no competing with that sense of shared history.
On the other hand, I’m pissed. Livid, even. How dare he try to come crawling back to me, after everything he put me through. After what he put the whole family through. After a decade together, he discarded me as easily as an old bag of lettuce. And now he wants a second chance?
“This is so like you,” I say. I had meant for the words to be venomous, but they just sound tired. “You can’t just swap women in and out like they’re actors in one of your movies. These are real lives you’re playing with.”
“You’re right.” Rocky looks uncharacteristically chastised. “I’m well aware that I screwed up, big time. Maybe it was a midlife crisis, maybe it was the Pacific air. Maybe it was the fact that without you there, I realized you’re the linchpin holding this family together. Whatever it was, I had an epiphany on this trip and realized you are the best thing that ever happened to me. I never should have let you go.”
His words are exactly what I would have wanted to hear two years ago. Now they’re hollow, meaningless.
“But you did let me go,” I remind him. “I loved you, Rocky. I always, always had your back. And you threw it all away, like our relationship meant nothing.”
Rocky’s features contort into a look of pure agony. A wrinkle forms above his brow and his eyes are wide and pleading.
“I fucked up, okay? And I regret it every day. I know how much of my success I owe to you. You were there for me, celebrating the highs and coaching me through the lows. I miss having you in my corner. Rayna is not the kind of woman who supports you. The only career she cares about is her own. And frankly, being with her is exhausting, because she’s a bottomless well of need. She’s a taker, not a giver. Not like you.”
Being a giver has always been my best and worst quality. And Rocky has always been happy to receive. I was like his own personal Giving Tree: He used me up until I had nothing left to offer, and by the time our marriage ended, I was just a sad little stump.
Rocky places a hand on my knee. “Over the past two weeks, I had a glimpse of what the rest of my life would be like with Rayna, and I realized it’s never going to work. She’s never going to make me happy. Not like you did. Remember how much fun we used to have together?”
Unfortunately, I do. It’s one of the reasons it was so hard to walk away from Rocky to begin with. My brain cues up a carousel of memories: Flinging handfuls of flour at each other during a pasta-making class in Italy. Trying on the matching bracelets he’d picked out in a Paris flea market, with the magnetic, heart-shaped charms that drew our wrists together. The tender way he’d cleaned me up after I nicked myself slicing apples. I still remember the way he held my hand in his, the way he traced his thumb over my bandaged wound.
But it doesn’t erase all the ways he broke my heart. All the ways he violated my trust and proved he had no real intentions of loving me forever.
“Listen, I’m thrilled that you’ve had some major epiphany or whatever,” I say, my words clipped. “But you don’t just get to throw away the life we built together on a whim and then jump back in when you realize you made a mistake. Your actions have consequences. Our relationship is over.”
Rocky tilts his head to the side, and his woeful pout shifts into bemusement. “Is this about the carpenter?”
My cheeks go hot. There is no way I’m giving him the satisfaction of answering that question.
But the truth is, being with Jesse has changed me. It made me realize that I don’t need to make myself small to fit into someoneelse’s life. And even though this is nothing more than a summer fling, I’ve realized I’m no longer interested in settling for less than I deserve.
