I shake my head. “It’s a comeback story, not a sob story.”
“It heightens the emotion. It makes the audience love you that much more when youdowin.” She steps closer and I don’t move, but all of me wants to step back. “You keep holding back, and I don’t know how to break that last wall down, Landry. I can’t get close to you if there’s always something I don’t know, always a reason standing between us.”
I shake my head. “That’s not what this is. I’m not trying to put space between us,” I tell her, but as I say those words and have all this nameless anger surging through me, I have to wonder if she’s right. If this isn’t just fear wearing an angry mask. “I don’t want that clip in the movie.”
“I heard you,” she says, her eyes no longer glassy. “But, Landry, you didn’t even tell me why or how you got into debt, and I’d been living here, sleeping with you for months.” She reaches for my hands, and I let her wrap hers around mine. “Trust me. This is good for the film, and if it’s good for the film, it’s good for us.”
I don’t like feeling how I feel. I want Quinn, and I want her to stay, and I want her film to do well. But when I glance at the screen again, seeing that same clip playing on a loop, I can’t see anything I want or need. All I can see is anger.
“It’s good for your film, which is good for you, and good for Devin. Right? You want to impress him after what happened.” I don’t even really think that’s her motive, but still, I say the words, each one punctuated and powerful.
Her hands fall away from me, and her eyes widen, mouth parting. “What?”
She wants the world to see a moment private and important, but ever since I lost Amelia, I’ve learned to hold on to moments like those with both hands. Keep them locked up inside me so I have something to cherish forever. Something of mine, no matter what happens. Showing the world would cheapen that.
So I forge ahead on this path. “I told you I don’t want it in. And you keep tellin’ me how it needs to be in there. I have to wonder if that’s whathewants.” She knows I’m talking about her boss, who happens to also be her ex-boyfriend.
Quinn looks like I slapped her, or worse, she looks like I broke her heart.
“Are you seriously saying this right now?” Her voice is so thin and hoarse, I can’t fucking take it. She doesn’t deserve this, but I don’t want the world to see all the ways in which I failed the women in my life.
I don’t reply. We stare at each other, one of the twinkle lights flickering, her laptop quietly turning dark, going into sleep mode. A bug hits the screen with a thunk. My heart races. Why am I being this way?
“Going out with some guy while you’re at Mabel’s… You’ve been taking care of yourself pretty good since you got here, and if adding this scene inThe Comeback Rideris any different, well, then, set me straight.”
She steps into my space, pressing her finger between my pecs. Her eyes are watery again, and I don’t like that, and I hate even more that I’m the cause of it.
“I never went out with anyone else since being in Sable Sky, Landry. I was out on the porch that night and Mabel said ‘out’ to get you riled up to see if you had a crush on me, too. Ask her yourself since you apparently have called my entirecharacter into question,” she says, chin wobbling. “And that is so low.” She prods my chest again. “You think I’m, what? Some filmmaking hussy who came here to use you to make a good movie? If anyone is a user, it’s you.”
She holds her hand up, wiggling her ring finger. I refuse to look, because the longer this fight drags on, the worse I feel.
“Whomarriedwhoas a favor? Oh, that’s right,” she hisses, “I married you. As a favor. If you remember correctly, I was happy at Mabel’s inn with her devil chicken! I was fine there! I was happy to come here and listen to you grouse at me and treat me like a nuisance for months, because no matter who you were or how you treated me, I came here to make an excellent film about you and your comeback!”
She snatches her laptop off the porch swing, holding it to her chest as she comes back for one last point, poking me again. “I sat before a judge yesterday for the two of you. Do you think I came here for that? Hmm? Do you think when I was crying over being cheated on in the city that I thought,Gee, I know what’s gonna make me feel better, how about I go to hot-as-the-Devil’s-ass Texas, and fall for a grouchy prick who calls my motives into question, and fall for his daughter so much so that I become an integral part of her custody hearing all so her father can annul his marriage to me and never think of me again once I’m gone?Yeah, do that, Quinn, that’s what’s best for you!” She takes her hand back. “No, I didn’t. But you did. You most certainly did.” She storms inside and up the stairs.
I stand there a moment, a little shocked at how those last five minutes changed everything. I turn off her lights and put the blanket back in the swing, and lock the porch door, then the back door, too.
Upstairs, I get in the shower then go to bed, desperate for sleep, for a new day, for a new perspective. But I can’t find rest and I sure as hell can’t sleep.
All I do is toss and turn, and replay it all in my mind, pulling apart every word, every expression, trying to decide where it all went wrong.
Is this all really about that clip of me and Sadie? I think back to the clip, and my chest aches that we even went through that. That I had to sit in front of my friends and family and people I’ve known my whole life, like I do drugs or was incarcerated, and prove I’m a good father. I hated it, but what I hate more than doing it is what it makes me feel.
Scared.
And seeing that clip, I felt that fear all over again.
The fear I’ll carry with me forever.
What if I lose her?
I know loss.
I know it well.
If I lose Sadie… and there goes my heart, racing behind my ribs as sickness swells in my throat. I didn’t like seeing the clip because it reminded me that Icanlose it all. I’m not even talking about the rodeo and what happens if hell freezes over and I don’t win. It’s more of a general fear that lives dormant inside me, stagnant and infectious, that stirs up and rears its head when I dare to live.
Nearly losing Sadie has reignited my fear of loss, and I just took all of that out on Quinn earlier. Every last bit.
