Someone Else's Fairytale (24 page)

“Yeah, okay.”

Jason strode from his car to the front door and stepped in the moment I opened it. Only when we were inside did it occur to me to feel embarrassed. My house was so small. The carpet was dingy. It all smelled like dust. Books and papers covered the coffee table. Jason went and sat on the couch without batting an eye.

“You want a glass of water?” I said.

He shook his head.

“Orange?” I tossed one to him from the bowl on the counter and he caught it with one hand.

“Where are the printouts?”

“I'll get them.” I got myself a glass of water, set it on the coffee table, then tried to think. Where were those printouts? I'd taken them out of the front room so Lori wouldn't find them. “Be right back,” I said.

It took me a couple of minutes of rummaging around my room before I found them in a stack of notes. I carried them back out to the front, where Jason had peeled his orange in one great big coil, and tossed the peel in the trash.

I sat down opposite him and held up the papers. “I don't care about most of this stuff-”

He took them from me and started to go through them. I watched him sort them into two piles.

“What are you doing?”

“True and false.”

“Like I said, I don't care.”

“Well I do, okay? I do.” He paused to put one orange section in his mouth and to lay a second one on the couch cushion next to me. While he worked, he ate, and made a line of orange sections between us. They were like a little set of rock markers that Boy Scouts used to mark the edge of a trail.

Finally, he stuffed one stack towards me. It was the bigger stack.

“Some of those are exaggerated, but they aren't complete lies.”

The one on the top was the sex party story.

I set the stack aside. “Look-”

He grabbed it from me again and went through it. “Okay, this one,” he held up the statutory rape story, “sort of... is the crux of the issue. This one got me banned from coming home for the holidays for a year.”

“And it's in the true pile.”

“Well, right. I don't know if the charge was ever true. It happened a long time ago, when I was eighteen. I thought she was seventeen, but she later said she lied about her age and... long story short, it was right when my career was taking off. I'd landed my first big movie deal that wasn't tied into my Disney show. She told me she was going to press charges, my lawyers met with her, they told me the way to deal with this was to buy her off.”

I ate a section of orange, and stared down at the cluttered coffee table.

“People file frivolous lawsuits against me all the time. I've paid out settlements before, but this one's different, way different. For one thing, I don't know if it was frivolous, but you know, what really bothered me was that here was someone I'd loved, and she accused me of rape. Statutory rape, but still, it's a word that I don't ever want any woman who's been with me to think, you know? No guy wants that.” He paused as if waiting to see if I had something to say.

I didn't. I had no idea what to say.

“I went to talk to her about it. I asked her what I'd done wrong and told her I was sorry and that I hoped she didn't hate me. She basically told me she just wanted the money. Not that she needed it, wanted it. Bought herself a house and a car and never looked back. I mean, she didn't put it in so many words, but... yeah.”

“That's pretty awful,” I agreed.

“It's not an excuse for the way I acted afterwards. I got burned, and the way I dealt with it was to decide not to care about any girl that much again. I messed around. Got a reputation as a party animal. I did not host a sex party, but I did have a party at my house where some girls decided to streak down my road and the police weren't thrilled about it. I did stuff like that off and on, I guess, for several years. Then one day I woke up and realized I was lonelier than ever, so I just swore off dating for a while.”

“Well...” This was way more detail than I cared to know.

“I was over all that stupidity by the time this happened.” He held up the statutory rape article. “The girl's friend came forward for her fifteen minutes of fame and told the world how I bought my ex-girlfriend off to avoid a public court case. That was a few years ago. Jen called to ask if it was true, and when I said it partially was, she told me I wasn't welcome to stay with her for Christmas. She said that was just too much bad press from me. She was trying to raise a very confused teenager and I wasn't a good influence.”

“That why you call her your mean sister?”

“No. She wasn't wrong, you know? She put up with a lot for a long time, and Kyra is pretty confused about it all. I understand where Jen was coming from. A criminal charge is serious. That was a really lonely Christmas.”

I nodded and looked down at the huge stack of pictures of all the women he'd been with.

“So now you know,” he said. “I have had normal relationships since then, okay? I haven't done the one night stand thing in years.”

“Look,” I said, “you and I are friends, and I don't usually pry into the, um, sex lives of my friends.”

He nodded. “I take your point. Sorry to delve into that. Guess I feel like I learned so much about you that ought to be private today... never mind. This mean we're still friends?” Maybe it was an act, but he really did look like he cared about what I thought.

“Yeah, we are.” I reached for another orange section and found they were all gone.

He sat back. “Okay. That's all I needed to hear.”

“Thanks for coming today.”

“It wasn't over the line?”

“It's not what I would have done, but... I am grateful you did it.”

He smiled with relief.

The door behind us swung open and Lori walked in, followed by Matthew. “Hey,” said Lori. She glanced at us but didn't really look. She got herself a glass of water and started to gulp it down. “I just need to get some things and then we can go to the gym,” she said to Matthew.

Matthew stopped dead in his tracks.

“Hey, you,” I said.

His gaze was fixed on Jason.

“I didn't know he was in town today,” I said, “and he came by-”

Lori dropped her glass and it hit the tiles with a bang and shattered. I looked past Matthew at her and saw that she was staring, bug eyed, at Jason. “Sorry!” she said. “Sorry, sorry. Getting the broom.” She went down the hall.

“You can say hello!” I called after her.

“Hello, Jason!”

“Hello, Lori.” Jason turned back to Matthew. “Hi,” he said.

“Hi. Was he at the hearing?”

“I wasn't invited,” said Jason. “But I showed up anyway... she was nice about it.”

Matthew pressed his mouth into a thin, firm line.

Jason got to his feet. The tension in the air was palpable, as if their stares were radiating waves of distrust and fury.

“You know?” said Lori. “I'm going to go to my room for no reason and just stay there. Ignore me.” She leaned the broom against the wall and beat a hasty retreat.

“What...” I began. There was some kind of guy turf war going on here, and I didn't get all the nuances. All I could grasp was that Matthew felt threatened by Jason in some way, so I got up and put my hand on Matthew's shoulder. He slipped an arm around my waist.

Jason looked down at Matthew's hand, then up at me. “You propose to him?”

“It's a purity ring,” said Matthew.

“Oh, right, okay.”

“It means-”

“No sex outside of marriage, I know. I used to work for Disney. Several of their actors wear those. Look, I'm sorry I just barged in today, I am. Chloe's been charitable, but I know I'm out of line.”

“Why are you here?”

“Because... coincidence. My parents worked on Chloe's old case. I knew it was bad and I just... okay. It was a mistake. I shouldn't have come.”

“I don't just mean today. Why do you keep calling her?”

Rather than answer that, Jason walked over to the door. “I should go.”

I wasn't sure what to do. It seemed rude to just let him leave, but it also seemed important to Matthew. “Thanks for all your help today,” I said.

“Yeah, no problem.” He let himself out.

I looked up at Matthew, who still stared angrily into the air. “What's wrong?”

“He was at the hearing?”

“I didn't invite him. Like he said.”

“Need a ride home?”

“Sure, but are you Lori's ride?”

“Lori will be fine!” Lori called out. Clearly she'd been eavesdropping. “Go. Take Chloe home!”

The first half of the ride to Val's was in stony silence. Matthew's truck was so high off the ground that all I saw out the window were the roofs of other cars slipping past. “Are you mad at me?” I asked.

He didn't answer that immediately.

“Okay, what did I do?” I turned to him. The front seat was so wide, there was quite a bit of distance between us. I put one knee up on the seat, my seatbelt digging into my hip. Matthew had an evergreen tree air freshener dangling from his rearview mirror that spun lazily as we drove.

“I'm not mad at you.”

“What did I do? I'm lost.”

“I just don't get it.”

“Get what?”

“Why you talk to him.”

“He talks to me. He takes the initiative. I don't.”

“Why do you let him? Why'd you let him come to your hearing today? I offered, and you said no.”

I'd already told him I didn't invite Jason. Clearly that wasn't the issue. Somehow, by not throwing Jason out, I'd upset Matthew.

“And what were you guys talking about just now?” Matthew went on.

“He was telling me about his past. I told him I didn't care- okay, what is this about? I feel like I'm missing something.”

“I just feel like he's taking advantage.”

“Of who? Me?”

“Whom.”

“Matthew.”

“Yeah, you.”

“Taking advantage how? I only ever talk to him. What exactly is he getting away with, in your opinion?”

“He takes you places and buys you stuff.”

“Not recently. Not since that last little mix up. Look, you think he's dating me? Even though I've told him I'm not interested?”

Matthew gave a half shrug.

“Because it doesn't work like that,” I said. “No guy can just decide he's with me. That's my decision too. You know that, right?”

“Why don't you just tell him to get lost?”

“Hey, when he said he wanted to kiss me, I said no. No way. Not interested. We are not romantic, ever.”

“He said what?”

“It's not like I'm clueless. I have talked to him. I've laid out my position and he has to respect it. If he still wants to call, well... even that, I've been turning my Skype off. So whatever you think he's getting away with, you could give me a little credit here.”

“I don't mean to not give you credit.”

“Then what's with this anger? If you have issues with Jason being in town, talk to me. No point fighting with him over it. What do you want? For me not to be his friend anymore?”

“I'd never try to control your life like that.”

“Then what do you want? I'm confused.”

“I want him to go away. I want him to leave you alone.”

“So you want me-”

“But I don't want to tell you whom you can and can't talk to. I know it's not right, and besides, I know that if I told you it was one or the other of us, I'd lose.”

“Why do you think that? You're my best friend. He's just some random guy with way too much free time on his hands.”

“You don't put up with getting bossed around.”

“No, but if you have an opinion to express or feelings that are getting hurt, you can tell me. You know that, right?”