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It’s a deep red, more rust than cherry, with sleek lines. A 1970 Plymouth GTX. I had to get Wendy to teach me how to drive a manual, but we had a blast. She screamed when I fucked up a gear change and panicked when I stalled out at intersections and laughed her ass off with me over the whole thing.
We take a bunch of selfies in the car too. She posts a few on her social media, but I’m not ready to post anything on mine yet.
I need to get out of LA for a while. Kate Van Sandt publicly condemned the actions of her fans and went so far as to personally call me with an apology, but everything here still feels toxic and intrusive. I need to clear my head. So I drive. I don’t know where I’m going or what I want, but everything I own is in my car. I could go anywhere. Start over and be anyone.
It doesn’t feel as good as it did with Gabe next to me, but there’s something in the emptiness, once I leave the mountains behind, that soothes me. I have space to think and grieve and cry. By now, he’ll know about the investigator. It won’t change anything, but I’m glad he’ll know it wasn’t me.
I post one of the pictures Wendy took. My hand wrapped around the gear stick, in black and white. Very similar to the one I took with Gabe. I can’t bring myself to comment and I have no idea if he’ll even see it, but it’s a new beginning for me, and this time, I’m driving. I’m not living my life trying to win the love or attention of anyone. I’m living it for me, loving myself for me. Taking the time to figure this newer, truer version of myself out.
I don’t know if it will last, but I hope so. As terrifying as it is, for the first time in my life, I feel good.
Okay, maybe not good, but I feel like I’ll survive this. Like I can find happiness in myself.
Hours and miles fly by and I drive as long as I can before stopping for the night. It’s hardest in the dark, as loneliness bites while I toss and turn, but morning always comes.
The roadsides turn greener with trees and the roads get thicker with traffic. I stick to highways though. The interstates are boring.
I want the scenic route.
Chapter thirty-four
Gabe
I’mmiserable.Irritable.Ican’t hide it or pretend everything’s fine. The cast and crew of Warwick are giving me a wide berth, except for the director, who is almost giddy over what he mistakenly assumes is method acting.
I push through each day, but the relief I expect to feel when I get home—to my apartment, to the house in Malibu, it doesn’t matter—never comes. Even David doesn’t want to be around me.
He has a key to this goddamned apartment, and yet he’s taken to knocking at the door.
Tonight, I debate ignoring the knock. Whatever this is can probably be an email.
“Gabe?” Her voice is muffled by the thick door, but that’s not David.
I fling the door open and Aunt Cora sweeps me into a hug. Her arms hold me with the same firm but gentle embrace, and immediately I’m thirteen again, meeting her for the first time, terrified and angry and lonely. That scared little boy is still inside me, and he bursts into tears.
Cora makes a sympathetic noise and lets me cry it out. I haven’t cried since Michael’s funeral and it feels like I’ll never be done. It passes through me like a storm, while my aunt holds me, and eventually, my eyes dry and I feel empty.
She sends me off to shower, insisting it will make me feel better. It doesn’t. When I come out, she’s in the kitchen, chopping vegetables. I help her while she catches me up on the latest news from her life in New Mexico.
I needed the reprieve of half an hour of lightness in my life. It’s been so dark lately.
We sit with a warm roast vegetable salad topped with almonds and a pesto dressing. Cora watches me like a hawk and pushes a second slice of crusty bread my way when I finish mine.
“I can’t eat this,” I tell her, but the look on her face tells me exactly what she thinks of that, so I eat the second slice. And a third.
It’s coming. The talk. The reason she’s here. I put it off by doing the dishes when we’re done eating, but Cora doesn’t let me escape. She makes me a cup of tea and pushes me back to the table.
“What happened?” she asks in a soft voice.
I don’t deserve the sympathy in her eyes. I turn my gaze to the table. “It was supposed to be fake.”
“However it started, it was real by the time you arrived at my house,” she says.
I don’t want to remember the night Ash and I spent together there. The way she looked up at me from her knees. Her hands on my thighs. Every night we had together after. Just…her. I want to forget her. I need to.
“Things got out of hand,” I explain everything as briefly as I can. I don’t try to hide how wrong I was, or how mean I was, but I don’t want to relive it.
“She’s special,” Cora says when I’ve finished. “You don’t open up to others easily, but you did with her. And she cared deeply for you. I don’t think she’s the type of person who easily gives that away. Have you talked to her?”
