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She lays a hand on my knee and stares up at me, her eyes a window to her turbulent soul. I can see so much of what she's feeling in that one glance. Pain, fear, guilt. It's all there, swirling in the iridescent green of her gaze.
“You can't force a person to eat if they don't want to, Cole.”
“I know that,” I say, trying desperately not to let my frustration show in my voice. Because that's something else Google advised: try not to get angry. “Fuck, I do. I get that. It's just that I don't know what's gonna happen to us when you leave town next week, but I do know that I can't sit and watch you starve yourself until then.”
“What do you want from me?” she asks, though her tone is gentle, not argumentative. It's a genuine question, one I know she wants an answer to. “I have to watch what I eat for work. It's not fair, but it's the way it is. A couple of extra pounds could be the difference between landing a role and missing out on it.”
“Would that really be so bad? Wouldn't you rather give your body what it needs and not feel like you're gonna pass out from hunger all the time, even if it means losing a job or two?”
She directs her gaze to the sputtering flames, the color of them almost as striking as her hair. “And risk never working again?”
“I don't know.” I shrug, defeat a heavy weight on my shoulders. “It ain't for me to decide what you should do with your life, ya know? But I can't help thinkin’ that if it was me, if I had to choose between a job and my health, it wouldn't be a hard call to make.”
“That's easy for you to say.”
“Yeah, I know. And I know all I do is fix cars, so who the fuck am I to think I can understand something like this? It's just that I'm trying so hard to see where you're coming from and support you and shit, but...fuck, Thea, I just need to know you're okay. 'Cause if you're not okay, then I'm not okay.”
For a while, she doesn't say anything. Her eyes continue to track the embers fizzing away in front of us, the firelight reflecting in her troubled eyes.
“I am okay,” she whispers finally. “Or at least, I want to be.”
“How can I help you get there?”
“I don't know,” she admits.
“We could start by having a sausage from the weenie roast later.” She grimaces, but I keep talking before she has a chance to say no. “One sausage won't be the difference between you landing or missing a role, princess. I promise.”
She looks so vulnerable right now, so little buried inside the coat I gave her, her skin paper white but her cheeks shocked the color of cardinals from the cold air.
“Okay,” she finally concedes.
“One sausage?” I ask in confirmation.
“One sausage,” she repeats.
She's not cured. I know that. But the relief I feel at her agreement is powerful enough to change the tides. And later, as she takes tiny bites from that one sausage until she's managed to eat the whole thing, I beam at her with overwhelming pride.
It's a step.
A small one.
But it's enough for now.
Over the years,I've grown accustomed to the blinding flash of a camera. The way it shocks you even when you know it's coming and the spike of your heartbeat that inevitably follows it.
I've learned how to combat the flight-or-fight response it ignites and can school my features effortlessly into what I've dubbedthe paparazzi pose.Blank expression, bright eyes, slight upward tilt of the lips.
It's served me pretty well until now.
That is, until the glare of a camera flash finds me as I'm standing at the entrance of the cemetery four mornings before I'm due to leave for New York.
Maybe it's the familiarity of home that has tricked me into thinking I'm safe here. Maybe I trusted Cole too much when he said no one in this town would sell me out. Or maybe it's even that being back in Tupelo has made me forget who I am for a while. Here, I'm still the eighteen-year-old girl I was six years ago, not the A-list actress whose face is plastered over every damn billboard in all the major cities in the country.
But for whatever reason, when that shutter of the camera clicks, I panic.
On instinct, my hands fly up to cover my face. But I'm not fast enough to stop the photographer from getting the money shot of my crazed expression and the wildness in my eyes. With my skin bare of makeup and my hair scraped back into a bun at the base of my skull, I don't look anything like the Hollywood starlet the press is used to seeing.
In fact, I look unhinged.
