Five
It’s after midnight by the time most of us make it up to bed. I look in on Dustin and see him wrapped up with the puppy and the blankets. I know letting them sleep together from the beginning is undoubtedly a mistake, but it’s not like we have a spare dog bed or a crate lying around. Plus it’s Christmas Eve and tomorrow—or actually today—is a big day. I don’t have the strength to deal with a lonely puppy up crying all night and I don’t want to inflict it on others.
I’m way too tired to do more than splash water on my face and brush my teeth, but I do have the energy to give Sydney some shit for the number of tiny plastic containers of cosmetics arranged on the sink—I’m amazed she fit any clothes into that carry-on—and the amount of time she’s spent on her “beauty regimen.”
“I’m thirty,” she says as she massages a second layer of cream onto her face and down her neck. “Which is practically fifty in Hollywood. I’m my only real asset and I’m not a big enough name to let myself go.” She applies some sort of conditioner to her hair and then begins to tweeze her eyebrows.
She’s wearing a plum-colored satin nightgown trimmed in lace with a matching robe, which is about as far from the ancient boxers and T-shirt I sleep in as it’s possible to get. On the outside she looks like an exotic butterfly, on the inside she’s more like a squirrel cataloging its acorns. Not for the first time I’m grateful that I’ve always worked behind the camera and not in front of it, and that my inside and my outside are in sync.
“Is it weird knowing your mother’s having sex down the hall?” she asks, catching my eye in the mirror.
“I’m willing to bet they’re already asleep,” I say as we share a smile. “But, yeah. I never even thought of her as anything except my mother until my parents got divorced. And if you would have asked me then, I would have said they’d had sex twice—once about nine months before Andrew and I were born. But I’m getting used to it. It’s kind of nice to know that fifty’s not too late to start a relationship. You know?”
Sydney makes no comment. She’s still looking at herself in the mirror, but I can tell she’s thinking about something—or someone—else. I’m pretty sure it’s not my mother and Will.
“So, what happened with Jake?” I didn’t intend to bring this up, but he’s apparently in Vail with someone else right now and she’s barely mentioned him since she got here. And she’s the one who introduced the subject of relationships.
It takes her so long to answer that I think she isn’t going to. I’m about to apologize for bringing him up, when she says, “I don’t know. We had this huge fight after those photos of him and that . . . Andrea . . . surfaced and he stormed out. I’d see him on the set every day, but he just kept acting like I was the one who did something wrong.”
“Yeah.” I watch her tilt her head to check out every angle. “A lot of guys seem to believe the best defense is a strong offense. I think they teach them that when they start playing sports and they just apply it to everything.”
She snorts, but there’s a sob in there somewhere. “I didn’t know he was still going to Vail. And I sure as hell didn’t know he was taking someone else with him.” She finally turns away from the mirror. In my room we head for our beds and she says, “I think I’m going to take a nice, long break from men.”
It’s my turn to snort as I pull back my covers and climb between the sheets. “Really? Because I think Thomas and Andrew both have the hots for you. I’d kind of hate to see my brother get crushed.”
“I’ll be gentle,” she says as she pulls her covers up to her chin. “I’m not trying to start anything.” Her voice drops. “I guess I’m just kind of lonely.”
Your average person would be shocked to know that a beautiful and well-known actress deals with the same kind of stuff they do. But in the end it all comes down to who we let into our lives and the choices that we make. I sigh and think about Daniel’s Santa stunt. I don’t like being manipulated, and I especially hate how hard it is to keep my emotional distance from him. It barely took him two weeks to get me in bed and make me fall in love with him during the filming of Halfway Home. You’d think I would have built up immunity by now.
Six weeks on a film set with him and his wife and their children? I don’t see how I would ever survive it. And how would it make Dustin feel knowing that they all get to live together and be a part of Daniel’s life while he gets the occasional visit and over-the-top gift?
“What was all that with the puppy?” Sydney asks, as if she’s following my disjointed train of thought.
“Well, I know Daniel loves Dustin. And he does like to give him serious gifts. But the timing and the staging? He and Tonja have sunk a lot of their own money into this film and to Daniel’s directorial debut. I don’t think there’s much they wouldn’t do to help guarantee its success.”
“Including bribing Dustin with a puppy?” she asks with a yawn.
“Dustin already wants to ‘hact’ with his father so the puppy’s probably just an extra inducement. Some of that was for the media. There’s not much hard news over the holidays and that was a beautifully orchestrated pull-at-your-heartstrings kind of moment that’s bound to get a lot of attention.”
“And if you’re not seduced by the money or lulled by the warm pull-at-your-heartstrings moments?” Sydney asks.
“They’ll go back to playing hardball.” I’ve already experienced this on more than one occasion. “You were there the first time Tonja came after me, Syd. Honestly, I deserved to be chucked off that film. I was a complete and total fool for believing Daniel actually loved me. But you—you didn’t really have to get involved.”
Sydney repositions her covers and sighs. “I always side with the underdog—it’s one of my biggest failings. Besides, if I hadn’t been in Hollywood as long as I had at that point, it could have been me.”
I stop staring at the ceiling to look at her. In the shards of moonlight that filter through the window, I can see her wince. “What do you mean?”
There’s a long beat of silence and then she says, “Daniel hit on me when I was reading for the part. He was subtle but his intention was clear.”
I hold my breath and wait for her to go on. Even though I’m pretty sure I don’t want to hear this.
“I’d been around long enough to know that’s not the best way to get a part or hold on to one. I turned him down as gracefully as I knew how—that’s an important skill in my line of work.” A wry smile twists her lips. “I don’t think he was really all that interested in me. But if he hadn’t set his sights on you so quickly, I might not have skated off so easily.”
I try to take in this rewriting of the most important part of my history to date. “And this is the first time you’re telling me this?”
She goes up on one elbow. “At the time you were in love and as I recall it, that love was almost completely blind.” She swallows. “And we didn’t know each other that well. It didn’t seem like the right time to bring it up.”
“Seriously?” I really can’t believe this. All this time I’ve told myself that Daniel met me and simply couldn’t help himself. “You didn’t think I should have known that I wasn’t his first choice?”
“Oh, Kyra. What makes you think I was his first choice? Tonja probably knew he hit on me the same way she knew the first time he kissed you—she makes it her business to know what’s happening on Daniel’s sets. Besides, what would have been the point? Tonja was already moving to have you thrown off the picture. Then you were pregnant with Dustin. How would knowing that he’d hit on me have been helpful?”
“Jeez!” I flop onto my back and stare up at the shadowed ceiling, still trying to absorb the shock and what feels like a betrayal. Would it have made me more cautious if I’d known he’d wanted Sydney? Would it have made me realize how easily he could transfer his interest from one potential lover to another?
“I’m sorry,” Sydney says. “I just couldn’t make myself tell you at the time. Then the longer you don’t say something, the harder it gets.”
I know this from personal experience, having kept the loan I took out on Bella Flora to myself way longer than I should have. On the other hand, information is key. How can you prepare against things you don’t know? And friendship should be based on honesty.
“Jeez,” I say again but less emphatically. This is way too heavy a conversation for Christmas Eve. Sydney’s revelation has knocked even the possibility of visions of dancing sugarplums right out of my head.
“I’m sorry for not telling you sooner,” she murmurs. “I really am.”
I’m exhausted and not remotely able to process this revelation or think about what happened five years ago. I’m not even sure why I’m so shocked that I wasn’t his first choice when I already know I wasn’t his last.
“I hope you’ll forgive me, Ky.”
“Mmm-hmmm.” Despite the shock, my thoughts are slowing. My eyelids get heavy. I begin to drift off. I have way bigger issues with Daniel than the fact that he came on to Sydney first all those years ago. I have to reach a decision about the movie. I have to move out of Bella Flora and turn it over to a stranger. I have to be up in just a few hours. I try to push these things out of my head, but as darkness descends this is exactly what I dream about. Daniel and Sydney. Only it’s now, not then. Daniel and Sydney, whom he falls so madly in love with that he actually leaves Tonja Kay and . . .
Something cold and wet touches my skin. There’s a snuffling sound attached. Visions of Daniel and Tonja Kay and Sydney evaporate.
“Mommy?” A hand grasps my shoulder.
“Mommy!” It’s Dustin. My eyes feel as if they’re glued shut, but Dustin needs me. I have to wake up. I have to . . . “I need help!”
I don’t know whether this is real or a dream, but I’m a mother. I struggle out from under my covers and sit up. I manage to swing my legs over the side of the bed while trying desperately to wake up completely so that I can take action. I can’t seem to make my eyes open. I don’t understand what’s happening. “What? What is it? What’s wrong?”
“It’s my . . .”
My feet hit the floor. I start to rise. Which is when I realize that I’m standing in a puddle. A warm one. My eyes snap open.
“. . . my puppy needs to go to the . . .”
We both look down at the yellow liquid I’m standing in.
Dustin looks up at me then back down at the puppy, who is apparently not quite finished.
“Oh no! Oh no you don’t!” I scoop up the puppy and run for the back stairs, holding him out in front of me, careful not to slip in the droplets that jounce out of him as we descend. By the time we get outside, he’s finished and my feet aren’t the only things that have been splattered.
I put him down on the grass and he sniffs around for a moment or two. He looks up at me. Then I swear he shrugs.
“Merry Christmas, Kyra! Can you and Dustin give us a smile, luv?” Nigel Bracken is wearing a red and green Hawaiian-print shirt, no doubt in honor of the holiday. A red Santa hat sits at a jaunty angle on his head. He is not alone.
I look down at the ragged boxers and T-shirt I slept in. I’m not wearing a bra or underwear and I am spattered with puppy pee. I never want to see this picture or the caption they’ll give it. But it’s unlikely I’ll be able to avoid it.
Dustin puts his hand in mine as the camera drives whir. He and the puppy look up at me. I’m pretty sure they’re both smiling. “Is it time? Dustin asks me hopefully. “Can we go in now and open presents?”