She froze and for the first time in the five-plus years I’d known her, Artie’s eyes filled with tears that weren’t because of a film or a book or a script. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I hurt you and—” She sniffed as one glistening tear escaped. “I—fuck.” Jerking her hands back, she put them over her face. “I can’t believe I-I did that.”
“Hey. Hey,” I repeated, tugging at her hands when she wouldn’t look at me. “Artie.”
She shoved me back and strode away.
I stared after her for a few seconds, trying to figure out why she was so upset. It was clearly an accident, and one I’d thought we’d laugh about for years to come. But she wasn’t laughing. In fact, she was so close to distraught that my stomach was twisting itself into knots. There was something else going on here. I moved, pushing up to my feet, and crossing over to her.
“Artemis,” I said softly.
Her chin dropped to her chest for several seconds. Then she almost seemed to force herself to look at me.
The bottom fell out of my heart at the tear tracks on her cheeks, the reddened eyes, the remorse in her expression. “I didn’t mean to hit you,” she said. “I swear I didn’t. It was an a-accident.”
I dropped my hands to her shoulders, lightly squeezing. “I know that,” I murmured. “It’s just . . . you don’t seem to.”
Her lids closed. “I hurt you.”
“Babe. It was an accident.”
“That doesn’t make it right,” she snapped.
“And beating yourself up until your insides are black and blue for something you didn’t mean to do is?”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand.”
“Then tell me, sweetheart,” I said. “Explain to me why you accidentally hitting me as you tripped and fell is something that’s horrible and—”
“Because my dad did it, okay?” She pulled out of my hold and paced away, this time without the flailing and subsequent black eye. “He’d say it was an accident. He’d pretend that my mom or I fell or that something stupid and innocuous happened and we were just . . . too fucking klutzy to not get hurt and”—her voice dropped—“it would always be an accident.”
Her chest was rising and falling like she’d run a marathon.
And I was standing there, shocked by the revelation and unable to say a fucking thing.
“I ran into doorknobs, slipped and fell in the tub, tripped at the park.” She shook her head, voice dropping so it was almost inaudible. “So many fucking accidents.”
Finally, I got my shit together. “It’s not your fault.”
She scoffed. “It was my hand that hit you.”
“Not that, Artie,” I said gently. “What your dad did is not your fault.”
Her face crumpled and for a horrible few seconds, I thought that I’d said the wrong thing. But then she closed the distance between us and buried her face in my throat. Instinctively, my arms wrapped around her, holding her close.
I thought she’d cry, that tears would soak through my shirt, cooling the skin of my chest. Instead, I held her as her breaths rattled through her chest, as hot puffs of air beat against my neck, as she shuddered and vibrated and then finally, finally relaxed in my arms.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, forehead to my collarbone, tone beyond fragile.
“You have absolutely nothing to be sorry about.”
Her shoulders rose and fell as she took one more deep inhale then let it out. “Normally, I’m not like this.”
“Artie.” I pulled back, crouched a little to meet her gaze. “You don’t owe me an explanation just because I’m here and saw . . .”
Whatever the fuck I’d just witnessed.
“Today is the day I lost her.” She turned away, spine stiff, braid I’d put in her hair less than fifteen minutes before disheveled and flopping over her shoulder.
I hesitated, took Artie’s hand. “Lost who, sweetheart?”
“My mom.”
Seven
Artie
What the fuck was I doing?
“We should go,” I declared, starting to run a hand through my hair and stopping when I remembered it was braided.
That Pierce had braided it.
What the fuck was that?
He’d braided my—
Not the point. What was critically important at this juncture was that I pulled my shit together and we got back to making a fucking movie.
“I had a word with Frank about budget,” I said, hightailing it to the car, not even checking that Pierce was following me. Thankfully, though, I heard his footsteps crunching along behind me when I paused for breath. “He thinks we’d be better off going with Rhonda for cinematography, even though that would put us a bit over. She’s one of the best, and a spot just opened up in her schedule.”
Silence.
Don’t look behind me, don’t look behind—
I looked behind me.
Pierce had stopped about five feet back, crossing his arms over his chest. I opened my mouth, readying a deflection, attempting to draw us down into movie talk and not toward my blurt on the cliffside.
I should have known better than to think I’d be able to work him.
Too smart, too quick, too fucking perfect.
So much so that he’d stuck in my head over the last five years, not staying shut in the locked box of my brain. I’d be in Australia and think, he’d love to see the waves breaking on the shore, know that he’d compare them to his time spent shooting in Hawaii. Then I’d be in Italy and imagine him hanging off a crane to capture just the right angle of a crumbling building. Or at an award’s show and think that he’d fit in way better if he could just understand that he was the most talented guy in the room.
But then I’d tuck it all down, lock it all safely away . . . and I’d move on.
It’s what I did.
Pierce knew that.
He just wasn’t going to let it slide today. “Rhonda would be amazing,” he said before I could make some comment dragging us further from my meltdown. “But that’s not what we should be talking about, is it?”
“It’s the only pertinent conversation we’ll be having for the time being.”
“You mean discussing the movie as a way to avoid whatever the fuck all that just was.”
“Yes.”
His mouth was parted, an argument to press further, no doubt already on the tip of his tongue. At my answer, his teeth clicked closed.
I sighed. “Should I reiterate that you just stated I don’t owe you an explanation?”
He closed the distance between us. “That’s right,” he said, surprising me.
I’d expected an argument about how things change and how I need to lay all my troubles with the big, bad man so I don’t have to worry my pretty little head.
“Your past is your past. It’s yours.” He sighed. “However, maybe the fucking courteous thing to do would be to explain why your past is playing so hard into today. We’re friends, Artie. That means I’m here for you.”
So easy.
It would be so easy to just tell him everything, to confide in him about my past, my dead mother, my incarcerated father, the years I’d spent in Canada with them, hiding from our troubles.