Chapter Fourteen

She couldn’t leave it alone. Bad enough she ruined things for Tanner once. Now she had to do it again? What the fuck?

“Look, Tanner,” she said, placing her hand on his shoulder to turn him toward her.

He held up his hands and pointed toward the door. “Your cat is over there. I need to… do something.”

With that, he stormed out of the room, down the hall, and into his bedroom. He was spitting mad and didn’t want to say something he’d regret.

But once he was in his room, he couldn’t stop pacing back and forth, dragging his fingers through his hair. He should’ve stayed at the office. It was his day off, although things were busy enough in there they could have used an extra hand. But no. He came back thinking it would be nice to entertain his unexpected houseguest. Only to find her sticking her nose where it decidedly did not belong.

He sat down on the bed and reached for the remote and turned on the TV. Perhaps he could drown himself in a baseball game or something to escape this quagmire. Unfortunately the first channel he turned to was airing The Beast Within, of all the damned things, starring none other than Alexa and Armando Lipari. They played two star-crossed lovers, separated when Armando’s character is wrongfully sent to prison for ten years, where he then marries another woman, played by Gina LeFevre, who fell in love with him after writing him letters of support in prison.

Jesus, could he not get a break from this blast from the past? And by blast he meant of the nuclear variety. He threw the remote against the wall and heard the clatter as the batteries fell out. Sprawled across the bed for a while, he tried to figure out what exactly had him so angry—was it her snooping? Was it her finally blowing a cover he’d protected for so long? Was it his crap parents, rearing their ugly heads even now? Was it the fact that ESPN wasn’t the first thing that came on when he turned on the television?

He heard a soft knock on the door, then the creak of the doorknob. Suki nudged her head in, then jumped up against the bed, her paws reaching out for her dad, not quite tall enough to hop onto the bed unassisted. He looked over to see Zoey hoisting the pup up onto the bed. Should he even mention that he didn’t allow her on the furniture? He let Suki lavish his face with kisses until she curled up in a ball at the foot of the bed. Oh, she was gonna hear it later on for her misbehavior, but he didn’t have it in him to kick her off now.

“Why don’t you want me to know that you’re Tanner Cox?” Zoey asked quietly. He could barely hear her over the noise of his mom and her dad panting and grasping at each other as they made love in a conjugal visit scene in the film. If that wasn’t enough to turn him off of sex forever, nothing was.

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do. You and I spent a night together—”

“I’ve never slept with you.”

She sat down next to him on the bed. “I didn’t say we slept together. I said we spent a night together.”

He knew, and he was sure she knew, that had she not stopped things last night, they’d have certainly spent the night together last night.

“Look. I know you’re Tanner Cox. What I can’t figure out is why you’re going to such great lengths not to admit it.”

She looked up at the screen where their parents were canoodling and rolled her eyes, then pointed at the screen. “Really?” She shook her head.

Tanner was so mad he wasn’t sure what to say. “I’m going to start calling you Blurt.”

“What do you mean, Blurt?”

“Because on a regular basis you blurt out things that make no sense and it makes me crazy trying to decipher your crazy talk.”

“What are you talking about?”

He waved his hand dismissively. “This ridiculous nonsense you’re saying right now. It’s crazy talk.”

“You’re telling me you’re not Tanner Cox?”

He fumbled on the bed for the remote, but came up empty-handed.

Zoey went over to the floor where it lay with batteries now missing. She got down on her hands and knees and padded around until she found them. Standing up, she reinserted the batteries, handing the remote to Tanner. He thrust it toward the screen with far more force than was called for, trying to change the channel. But it wouldn’t change. Instead they were left to listen to the gasps and groans of their parents in the clutches of high-def ecstasy.

Zoey sat down on the bed, facing Tanner. Suki looked up and thumped her tail a few times, then lay back down, thoroughly disinterested. Zoey waved her hands in front of Tanner’s face. “Hello! Paging Tanner Cox. Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

He swatted at her hand. “Stop calling me that.”

“Fine, I’ll be glad to as soon as you explain what the heck is your deal?”

Tanner heaved a sigh. “Jesus, Zoey. Can’t you leave things alone?”

“What things?”

“This.” He splayed his hands as if there was something specific before them he was referring to. “That.” He pointed to the television. “Us.” He aimed his finger at her and then at himself.

“But why?”

“Christ. Why must there be a reason? Because I said so. Do you have any idea what I’ve had to do to shed the skin from my former life? Do you know how shitty it was to be Tanner Cox? No thanks to you, I might add.”

A rush of red crawled up Zoey’s neck and spread across her face. “Look, Tanner. That was so long ago. Why are you still concerned about something that happened a lifetime ago?”

“Because it ruined my life, that’s why.”

Zoey’s lip started to tremble. “It ruined your life?”

He nodded, staring straight at the television screen, refusing to look in her direction. He could hear her voice beginning to quake and he was determined not to cave and help her feel at all better for what she’d done to him. “Yes. It fucking ruined my life. Here I was this dopey, lonely, gangly kid. I already didn’t have many friends. I was freeze-framed in my parent’s bogus, superficial Access Hollywood life, and they were mostly not even there regardless of the bullshit perfect life they portrayed to the public. Bad enough I couldn’t do anything about it. And then I go to that stupid movie premiere and some girl—you!—pulls back and coldcocks me, for no reason whatsoever.” He took a deep breath. “Do you have any idea what it means to be a ten-year-old boy who is shamed for being a wimp, a sad-sack loser?”

Zoey started to cry, a quiet sob. “I had no idea,” she said, her voice cracking. “Honest, I didn’t. It was all so awful, I can’t even remember much about the whole thing. I remember my mother made me dress up in this awful frock and I didn’t want to go, but they made me and all of a sudden there are your parents and there are my parents and there you were and you had been there with me at the swimming pool and saw everything I saw. It was more than I could bear to deal with—”

“I was there, yeah. Only because you made me go. I told you we couldn’t go to the pool, yet you made me take you to the pool. We would have been blanketed in blissful ignorance if you’d have simply listened to me. It wasn’t my fault you saw that!”

“You should’ve put your foot down and said no. That would have been the chivalrous thing to do!”

“Chivalrous? Are you crazy? I did put my foot down and say no! Besides, I was a fucking child. You were peer pressuring me and I stupidly caved to your demands.” He growled, combing his fingers through his messed-up hair. “Honestly, this is why I moved far away from people like you.”

“People like me? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know exactly what that means. People like you who traumatize people like me.”

“I didn’t mean to traumatize you. I was traumatized. I didn’t know how to process everything. It scared me. I didn’t mean to do anything to you that night. I don’t know, I guess I panicked. And your face got in the way of my freak-out.”

He turned away from the television and glared at her. “Yeah, my face happened to jump out in front of your fist.”

“You have to believe me—it wasn’t about you. It was about me.”

“But like it or not, it became all about me. Overnight I was the butt of jokes all over the world. They did a fucking skit about it on Saturday Night Live, for crying out loud. They tried desperately to book me on all the damned morning shows and even the stupid Tonight Show. My parents tried to make me appear on them! You think a kid that age is not going to be mercilessly teased by every kid in school after being ‘beaten up’ by a little girl? It took years for this to go away, for me to finally scrub the sordid Tanner Cox legacy off my skin.”

“Oh, Tanner, I hate that I did that to you. I had no idea how hard I made your life. I feel absolutely awful about it.”

“And then you come parading in here after I open my doors to you, a complete stranger, and you have to pick open the scab.”

“I promise, I didn’t even know who you were. I dug around because I was worried you might be a serial killer and I was looking for proof you were a normal person.”

“That explains last night with your snooping. Doesn’t satisfy your having done it this morning.”

“Well, sure it does. Last night I found out not only were you normal, but you were someone from my past. Who wouldn’t admit to it. I needed proof of it.”

“So you could resurrect all the shit I went through?”

She shook her head, tears leaking from her eyes. “I didn’t think it through, Tanner. I guess I was curious.”

“Remember that cat that was killed by curiosity?” He frowned. “Speaking of, where’s Snowball?”

“I left her in my room to get acclimated.”

“You sure she’ll be okay in there? Sometimes cats don’t take to being left alone in tight quarters at a strange place.”

She waved her hand. “She’s fine.” She reached for the hem of her dress to dab at the tears still coming down her face, giving Tanner a peek at her black lacy panties. He was a guy, after all—a little emotional trauma wasn’t going to stop him fantasizing a bit.

“The thing is, after all that happened, I was so humiliated. Girls laughed at me. Guys mocked me and called me a pussy and beat me up. I was treated like a pariah. If I didn’t have friends before, I sure didn’t have them afterward.” He scrubbed his hands across his face. “I hated my life. I hated being the only child of two narcissistic Hollywood celebrities. I counted the minutes until I could get the hell out from under their thumbs. And then I did it. I made a clean break. I got away. I carved a new life for me. I left Tanner Cox behind, thrilled to be done with that part of my life. I moved on. And I never looked back. I’ve never once had to deal with all the fallout from that since I walked away from it. And now this.” He glared at her.

She squinted at him. “Did you know it was me when I walked into your exam room?”

He shrugged. “Sort of hard not to with your name. And I could still see the little girl Zoey in your face. Your big brown eyes. Your dimples. Like it or not, I remembered these things about you because, well, let’s say you left a lasting impression on my life.”

“And still you took me in?”

He extended his hands palms up. “What was I going to do? Let you get into a fistfight in a bar and hauled off to jail? Or leave you to sleep in a tent in the store? That would’ve been sort of shitty of me.”

She shook her head. “Dammit!”

He furrowed his brows and leaned over on the bed. “What?”

“Now I’m remembering. That night. When my folks dumped me on you. You were so damned nice to me. Took me in, offered to play Legos. Took me to get food in the kitchen. And all I did was cause trouble.”

“I kind of remember you telling me trouble was your middle name.”

She started crying again. “I used to say that, jokingly. But you know what? I did that to deflect the pain from hearing it from my mother all the time. One of her many ways to make me feel bad about myself.”

Tanner leaned forward and brushed some hair away from her eyes.

“I remember something else you told me too.”

She lifted a brow. “Oh yeah? What?”

“‘Get comfortable with being uncomfortable.’ I remember you saying that to me and I thought it was a smart thing for a little kid to say.” He combed his fingers through her cropped hair. “Little did I know it would need to become my motto shortly thereafter.”

“I suck.”

“You don’t suck. You were a brave little girl and you got scared. Maybe you got a little too uncomfortable.” He reached for her hand and laced his fingers with hers. “You know what my motto was?”

She shrugged.

“Stay under the radar.”

She half laughed. “Well, looks like you finally managed to do that at least.”

“Yeah, but yours is far more courageous than mine.”

“I guess sometimes I can be a little too bold.”

“Like when you leaned over and kissed me last night?”

She nodded. “Maybe like that.”

“So how brave would I be if I leaned over and did this?”