Crazy Thing Called Love (23 page)

Billy
, Coach Hornsby’s message said,
I need to hear about what happened from you. Management is out for blood and I can’t hold them off forever. Help me help you
.

Oh, man, now the guy was quoting Jerry Maguire.

Billy forwarded the message to Victor. Let him handle Hornsby and all his disappointment.

The second the message was sent, an email took its place.

It’s Dom
, the email said.
You want to talk?

No. No, he did not want to talk.

Ignoring Victor’s command, he turned off the phone, and sat all alone in his house. He looked at his hands and wondered what he was supposed to do. What was right in this situation? Because he couldn’t see it.

This was one of those moments that required him to be better, and it had been so long he didn’t remember the steps up and out of the darkness.

But maybe … maybe he was already doing what he could. Maybe being better sometimes meant being patient.

Finding some comfort, some confidence in that thought, he sat back in his silent house and waited. For what, he wasn’t sure, but whatever it was, he would handle it. Maybe not well. But he would handle it.

It was dark in the seedy little bar and no one recognized her. Which was great, because by the time she got done with her third vodka soda, Maddy didn’t recognize herself.

“We have to get Billy back,” Ruth said. Her hair was messy and the neckline of her dress had been pulled aside. There was a flash of a purple bra strap. Purple.

All in all, it kind of looked like Ruth had just been fucked.

“How?”

“You were married to the guy,” Ruth said.

If only that had come with special knowledge. A guidebook. Something. Billy in his anger was as unpredictable as ever. But the one thing she was sure of was that he didn’t want anything to do with her. Or the show. She had to think of a way to get past that.

Ruth’s elbows hit the table. “I need another round.” She bypassed the sullen woman who was supposed to be taking their orders and instead signaled to the bartender, who nodded.

It seemed like an oft-repeated conversation between the two of them.

“Do you come here often?”

“Twice a week,” Ruth said. “A shot of Jack and I cry in the bathroom for ten minutes.”

Maddy gaped at her producer.

“Swear to God, it was the only way not to hit Phil in the head with a hammer.”

The waitress with the ill-fitting tank top and a put-upon attitude brought them their drinks.

“You have any more peanuts?” Ruth asked, lifting their empty bowl.

The waitress spoke volumes with the roll of her eyes.

“If this place weren’t across the street I would never come here,” Ruth said as the woman left.

“Come on, Ruth, we need to be thinking. We have an opportunity here to put together the kind of show we’ve always wanted to do. Let’s forget gluten-free cheese and making the perfect cocktail, let’s do the stories that matter.”

“What would Matt Lauer do?” Ruth’s sarcasm infuriated her.

“No! What would we do? If we had no restrictions, what would we do?”

“What about Billy?”

“I’ll handle Billy.” She thought of Becky’s blue eyes, so like her mom’s. The blue of a clear sky on hot days. Tomorrow she’d go over to Billy’s house and see how they were. See if she could help.

Ruth stared deep into the ice of her fourth drink.

“Why are you so scared?” Maddy asked, the knowledge that fear was guiding Ruth right now only obvious after three drinks.

“I’m not scared, I’m mad. Mad at myself for thinking I was so clever to go to Phil behind your back. Mad at you for not telling me the truth about Billy. Mad at Richard for making us pick up after Phil. I mean, what are we doing here, Maddy?”

“Our jobs.”

“Well, our jobs suck right now. I never dreamed about having a husband and kids or a house with a white picket fence. I couldn’t give a shit about that. But I do want a life. I’d kill to have a friend to watch
Survivor
with. I’d kill to have sex. Real sex. With another person. Don’t you want that?”

“This job is what I want,” she said. It was the truth and at the same time not quite. Right now she wanted
more
. She looked down at her glass and blamed the alcohol … not Billy at the fund-raiser. Not Billy with those kids. Not Billy turning the lock on her office door.

“You know how I felt the first time I heard that Phil was banging Sabine? I was jealous. Jealous.”

“You want to have sex with Phil?” Maddy gasped, she couldn’t help it. The thought was repulsive.

“God, no.” Ruth shook her head, appalled. “Gross. I have to scrub my brain now. No, I was jealous that Phil got to have it. Kinky sex in the workplace. It’s not fair. I’ve worked myself right out of a social life. So have you.”

“How do you know it was kinky? The sex.”

Ruth shrugged, her collarbone a knife blade peeking
out of her shirt. “I don’t. I just wanted someone to be having kinky sex.”

Maddy felt herself blush, felt the burn of embarrassment flood her face. She was like one of those cartoon characters who catches fire and then is dust and ash afterward.

“No,” Ruth gasped, because she was no dummy and Maddy was practically broadcasting her sex life. “In the office?”

“Just once.”

“Okay. Okay.” Ruth sat back, her arms spread wide, a strange grin on her face. “Spill.”

Maddy chased down the straw in her drink and shook her head.

“Nothing?” Ruth asked and again Maddy wondered if this was what friends did. Ruth sobered and sat forward again. “Okay. Then tell me this, what are you so scared of?”

“About what?”

“Billy. Why aren’t you at his house right now?”

“You saw him.”

“Yeah, and I’ve seen him every other time he’s been here. The man is crazy for you. You tell him you didn’t know what Phil was doing and he’ll believe you.”

He would, Maddy knew that.

“And from there, isn’t it just a hop, skip, and jump to getting him back on the show?”

“I don’t want him on the show,” Maddy said. “I never did.”

“Because you were married?”

The marriage was the least of it. She set down her drink, lining up the bottom edge of her glass with the damp ring on the paper napkin in front of her.

“Never mind, Madelyn. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t pry. And I know it’s not like you should trust me.”

“No. No, it’s okay.” She did want to talk about this.
She didn’t have anyone else in her life she could confide in. And three drinks had made Ruth seem pretty trustworthy. Billy had always told her she was a terrible drunk, too trusting, too ready to believe the best in people when they were showing her their worst. “My mom signed her name Mrs. Doug Baumgarten,” she said, because this,
this
was the root of it.

“So did my mom. It was a generational thing.” Ruth shrugged like it was no big deal. Maybe because she’d never been married. Maybe because she’d never looked that decision in the eye and decided, just decided, to put aside her name for someone else’s. Like everything she had been up until then didn’t matter.

“I started doing that with Billy when I was thirteen. Thinking of myself as Mrs. Billy Wilkins.” Ruth sat back, her black eyes surprisingly understanding. “It wasn’t just my name. He was my life. My identity. And when we broke up, it wasn’t just him that was gone. It was me too, in a way. I was defined only by his boundaries. Where he ended, that was me. That was what I got. And he had a way of filling every available space, every thought. Until I was nothing.”

She wasn’t making sense, but Ruth was nodding like she understood.

“And if word gets out that Billy and I were married,” she snapped, “there goes Madelyn Cornish. I’m back to being Mrs. Billy Wilkins. And I’ve worked too hard to let that happen.”

“So why are you having sex with him in your office?”

“Because part of me misses what we had together and part of me is weak and part of me is stupid and all of me is lonely.”

For him. Lonely for him.

Ruth reached between them over the scarred black surface of the table, past their half-f drinks, and grabbed her hand.

“I’m sorry, but you heard Richard—Billy has to come back on.”

“I know and I’ll do the best I can to get him. Tomorrow.”

Ruth nodded. “Tomorrow.” It was a promise.

The silence between them was kind. Generous. The type of silence that gave everyone the privacy of their thoughts.

“But … about the show,” Maddy said. “I have an idea.”

“I’m listening.”

Maddy leaned forward and so did Ruth.

“An hour show, one topic. Interviews, panels. It can be serious and fun. But no more traffic reports. No more weather.”

“What about Joe the Cameraman?”

“Gone.” It hurt to say it, he was so great in front of the camera, but the new show had to be totally different. A whole new animal.

It took a long moment, during which Maddy died about a hundred times, but finally Ruth sat back and slapped the table.

“I love it!” They pushed aside their drinks and got to work.

Maddy’s soul, starved on a diet of snake segments, cheered.

Becky’s hands were
sweating. Everything was sweating. Partly because she’d put on every scrap of clothes that the Luc guy had bought for them.

Underwear, even; how totally embarrassing.

But mostly she was sweating because she’d never tried to steal a car before.

God, why hadn’t she paid better attention when Jonah showed her how to do this? Becky panicked as she stared at the wires under the steering wheel.

“Becky?” Charlie asked from the backseat.

“Yeah, Char?” Was it the red wire and yellow wire? And what was she supposed to do with them? Did Jonah strip them? She remembered him doing something with his teeth.

“Where we going?”

An excellent question.

Pittsburgh was not an option. They’d left that place behind for good. And they obviously couldn’t stay here. As soon as Luc and that nice Tara Jean woman had left after dinner she’d hustled Charlie back into the guest bedroom and waited until midnight before sneaking out.

“Padre Island.” Padre Island was where all those MTV spring break shows were.

That seemed as good a place as any.

As long as it wasn’t Pittsburgh.

She had taken the last of the pizza from dinner, the jumbo box of Goldfish crackers, and the gallon of milk in the fridge. This car had to be worth a whole bunch of money. And there was that hundred dollars in her pocket.

“Is Uncle Billy coming?”

“No. Just you and me, bud.”

The pounding on the driver-side window scared the crap out of her and she screamed, jumping a mile.

It was Uncle Billy outside the door, the black night a dark curtain around him. It made him look scarier. Meaner. He was wearing sweatpants and no shirt and she’d never seen anyone with that many muscles.

Aunt Janice’s boyfriend liked to pretend he was a big guy, but he was a fat bloated pig compared to Uncle Billy.

He was going to kill them. She just knew it.

Defeat strangled her and she bit her tongue until it nearly bled, to keep herself from crying. Charlie freaked out when she cried, and one of them freaking out was about all she could deal with at the moment.

Uncle Billy knocked on the driver-side window again and she wiped her nose on the sleeve of her hoodie before opening the door.

“Are you stealing my car?” he asked.

“Admiring the leather.”

“You broke out of my house.”

“I didn’t know it was a jail.”

It was weird, a surprise, and Becky didn’t really like surprises, but Uncle Billy started to laugh.

Instead of hauling her out of the car, he leaned against the door like he had all the time in the world.

“Where were you going to go?” he asked, looking in the backseat at the pizza and milk and Goldfish box she’d taken.

“Away.” She lifted her chin and settled on a plan.
“Look, you don’t want us. Aunt Janice sure as hell doesn’t want us. Why don’t you just give us some money and we’ll get out of your hair.”

“Just like that? I’ll never hear from you again?”

“Not even a Christmas card.”

That made him laugh and she wondered if it was good or bad.

“How much money do you think you’ll need?” he asked and she couldn’t believe it, but it seemed like he was going to go for it. The guy was rich, so she pounced on the biggest amount she could think of.

“Ten thousand dollars.”

He pursed his lips and nodded.
Ohmygod, this is happening
.

“I don’t just have that lying around.”

“We can go to an ATM.”

The laughter faded from his face and she realized he’d been joking. Tricking her. She clenched her fists in anger, her brain shook with it.

“I can’t let you go,” he said.

“I won’t tell. You know Aunt Janice won’t tell—”

He put a hand on her knee and she jerked back, hissing. Immediately he lifted his hand.

“Don’t touch me,” she whispered through numb lips. She sounded scared and she hated that. It made her hate him even more.

“I won’t. I swear, Becky, I won’t ever touch you.”