I answer as if I’m talking to a friend, and that’s a mistake.
“He was arrested though,” she says as she places her pen down and pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “I would say that’s a bad thing, wouldn’t you?”
“That was after we broke up,” I say defensively.
It was months later that he started doing stupid shit. It was one fight after another once we split up. He was expelled after a fight that ended with the other kid’s nose being broken. I found out later it was because Matt was talking shit about me. I thought maybe I could approach him then, but he’d never been colder to me than that day I showed up at his house.
Even worse, he got caught for stealing, not once but twice and the second time was when they locked him up. When I first saw him being arrested, I thought the cops had found out the truth, but turns out it was just petty theft and we’d gotten away with everything. It didn’t make anything feel better; it didn’t make anything right.
“Oh, is that so? Do you think the breakup had anything to do with his outbursts?” she asks and I don’t have an answer.
Again, my mouth parts but the words just hang there, refusing to leave me. I never thought about it like that. I remember thinking he wasn’t the boy I loved. That he was someone else.
I never thought it was all an act.
Blinking away the memories and confusion, I start to tell her that we were just two young and dumb high school kids, to try and blow off her questioning, but when I raise my eyes I catch sight of him watching me.
The cold in his gaze is back and it sends a chill down my spine.
With that look, I know I’ve said something I shouldn’t have, but I don’t know what.
Chapter 13
Nathan
* * *
All I keep thinking about is Hally implying I wasn’t a bad guy until I left her. You do stupid shit when you blame yourself and you’re convinced you aren’t worth a damn thing.
I think I wanted to get caught. I wanted to go to prison like the criminal I was. It made it easier to forgive myself for leaving her the way I did.
Fuck, some nights I prayed that she would tell someone so it could all just end. But she never did. That was the worst torture of them all.
Everyone around me, walking through the hall of dressing rooms, must know I’m pissed and I don’t care. My hands are shoved in the pockets of the suit pants I’m wearing for the scene I just did, and my tie is loose around my neck. I pace back and forth outside of her room waiting for her agent to leave.
The oxford shoes I got from the set stomp the floor as I walk, ignoring how everyone passes by me, each of them tearing their stare away from me as I look up from watching my feet hit the ground. Stomp, stomp, stomp. The steps are only dulled by the thick carpeting.
I’m sure Nancy is telling her that she needs to go into an interview more prepared than she was. Maybe it’s Nancy’s fault. She should have prepared her.
What’s done is done, but the information she gave Margo is going to give me a fucking PR nightmare. My phone vibrates in my pocket and I check the name.
Mark.
To hell with that, I’m not taking it. There’s only one person I want to talk to about that interview.
The sound of her door opening stops my feet right where they are and I turn to see Nancy taking a step down from the makeshift dressing room and easily closing the door behind her. She sees me when she lifts her head, simultaneously searching for something in her oversized bag. She gives me a smile as if everything’s just fine and says, “Mr. Hart.”
I watch her leave, knowing there’s more going on behind the scenes and very much aware that she’s a better actress than I gave her credit for.
I don’t knock and I don’t ask to come in, I barge in and catch Hally by surprise. She jumps at her seat on the vanity, putting a hand to her heart as I close the door behind me.
“Nathan,” she says with bit of shock in her voice, but she doesn’t look me in the eyes.
“What were you thinking?” I ask her, letting the anger out little by little, like the edge of an over boiled pot of water, climbing higher and higher until it’s spilling and uncontainable.
“Excuse me?” she says with indignation.
“You made me look like an asshole,” I tell her.
“I only told the truth,” she says and narrows her eyes to watch me stalk closer to her. She’s defensive right off the bat, ready to fight. Maybe it’s a bad habit, maybe she really doesn’t think there’s a damn thing wrong with the impression she gave the papers.