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“I busted my ass for years trying to get somewhere. No one wanted my paintings. I didn’t give up—I had nothing left to give.”
“Maybe.” She concedes. “If it stopped bringing you joy, then quitting is good. But it would be a shame if you let fear of rejection hold you back from something you loved.”
“Or someone.” Timothy adds.
I ignore that from Timothy.
It was more than a handful of galleries and they weren’t all in New York, but she’s close enough I have to concede the point. Maybe I burned out a little and lost my desire to create, but mostly, I’ve been avoiding having my feelings hurt.
“Come on,” Timothy says, maybe sensing that they’re pushing me too far. “Grab that drink. Let’s get trashed and play cards.” Maybe our twin language is back, a little different because we’re different.
It’s nice to have almost everyone here, to get sloppy drunk on cocktails. We play spoons and scrap over cards and talk. I tell them about the commission opportunity and they’re encouraging, but they don’t push me hard like they used to. We talk about family but instead of swapping the usual stories about Amanda coming to the rescue or Timothy’s shenanigans or my mother’s wild stories, they talk about me. The time I tested Timothy’s homemade zip line and landed on Nic. The time Mom tried to set me up three times at the same Christmas Eve Folly so I turned it into a game show.
Mom’s edibles and Muppet sex positions come up. Now that I’m older and wiser, I have a few amendments to my theories.
But over the evening, as we order too much take out and laugh over silly things because we’re a bunch of ridiculous drunks, I feel like I belong. Maybe they’re only here because Timothy spoke up on my behalf, but the fact that my twin saw that I needed this and made it happen when I couldn’t means the world to me.
I should’ve spoken up for myself years ago—maybe I wouldn’t have felt like such an outsider in my own family—but hindsight and all that.
They want me to come back with them and finish out the holiday, but I don’t want to sleep in my bed when it smells like Nic and all I want to do is paint, so I pass.
Before they leave, I hear Amanda whisper to Timothy. “Did you see the family group chat?”
He pulls his phone from his pocket, checks it, and sighs. “I’ll take care of it.”
After they go, I hunt down my phone. Nic’s left the family chat after telling everyone to look after me. Only Amanda and Timothy have seen it.
I want to text Nic, but I don’t know what to say. I don’t think he wants to hear from me. Instead, I open his notebook and fill it with little studies of our history together.
As little scenes from our past take shape on the pages, I can’t hide the fact that Nic is it for me. I love him and maybe he doesn’t feel the same, but if I never tell him how I feel, he’ll never know. He deserves to know he was never a fling to me, and I need to face my fears and put myself out there.
It’s terrifying, but the more I think about it, the more I realize I have to do this.
I book a flight to LA in ten days. I need the time to fill the notebook, collect my thoughts, and gather my courage.
Chapter thirty-four
Nic
December Twenty-ninth
Aknockonmybedroom door startles me out of my sleep. “You’d better be dead, Fontana,” a deep voice calls out as the door swings open. “You’re fifteen minutes late.”
Jax. My personal trainer.
I groan. “I have a concussion. Go away.” I’d forgotten about Denise’s plan. As far as Denise knows, I got in last night, not the day before. Jax and I are supposed to post one of the hellish workouts he puts me through to bulk me up for Warwick on social media, thus showing how committed and excited I am for this next movie while also feeding fandom. After that, we’re meeting acting coaches.
“You’re going to need a doctor’s note,” Jax says in that desert-dry tone of his. “Got one?”
“My phone is in my pants. Don’t—” He turns on the light before I can ask him not to, and pain slices through my head.
“You look like shit.” He comments, stepping into the room and rummaging through the pockets of the pair of pants on the floor. “A hangover won’t get you out of leg day. A hangover—”
Gets me burpees.I know from experience. “I have a fucking concussion you monster.” He finds my phone and hands it to me. I unlock it, pull up the email with the discharge instructions, and hand it back to him, rolling onto my stomach so I can bury my face in my pillow.
“You have a concussion.” Jax announces in a monotone.
“No shit,” I mumble.
