Built to Last, page 2
We used to fit perfectly. So perfectly I had to travel to the ends of the earth to forget it.
I’m not doing this.
(I want to do this. I really do. But I’m definitely not.)
“Shelb,” I try again. “This isn’t what you want.”
She straightens, her expression somehow both hurt and annoyed. “How do you know what I want?”
I glance around, noticing her glass is empty again. Man, she’s a good actress.
She reaches for my face and smooths her body along mine, settling me against the wall. Her tongue slips past my lips and she tastes like everything I’ve ever wanted. Her softness melts against my hardness and of course we fit. I don’t remember telling my hands to reach around her tiny frame, but they’re sliding under her shirt, anyway. One hand is circling her waist and higher, the other dipping into the elastic at the small of her back and clutching at the smooth skin there. She bucks against me, grinding seductively, and sighs into my mouth. She reaches between us, her hand finding my zipper again. I don’t know how to stop her or if I even want to, so instead I pick her up to get us away from this wall, and cooperative angel that she is, she wraps her legs around me.
“Bed,” she pants, and I can’t help but mindlessly oblige any and all panted requests.
At least for a minute. An entire blissful minute. I carry her down the hall and lay her on the comforter. I press myself on top of her and I savor it—both the feeling of fitting and the little gasps and whispered moans I manage to capture between my lips. This minute will take me years to get over, but right now, I don’t care.
I cover her in open-mouthed kisses from her ear to her collarbone, memorizing the taste of her skin. Before, I didn’t know it would be the last time. This time I do.
And then she hiccups, and I stand because the minute is over.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I … forgot something. I’ll be right back.”
She looks at me, dazed, and while I want to believe—need to believe, maybe—that I caused that look on her pretty face, it’s obvious it’s the alcohol and I’m feeling a little sick and a lot pathetic.
“Okay,” she says, and she curls on her side, a sleepy smile lingering on her kiss-swollen lips. Her soft snores reach me before I even make it to the door.
I walk into the living room and drop onto the couch, elbows on my knees and my hands forking in my hair, willing myself to calm down—all of me to calm down. I’m not sure what to do. I can’t stay. She’s using me. It’s not real, and I don’t have it in me to decipher exactly why I came here, but it’s clear she wanted a rebound and I stupidly flew in from fucking Alaska for the chance. I almost died in a claptrap modified hang glider to be her rebound—to be Lyle Jessup’s replacement fuck.
Jesus. It doesn’t get any more tragic.
While she sleeps, I clean the apartment, throw away empty bottles (and some of the more questionable full ones), and take out the trash. I straighten her things in the shower and on the bathroom sink and don’t even spend that much time sniffing her shampoo like a lovesick idiot. I do all her dishes by hand and run a load of laundry. Most of this shit is probably dry-clean only, but beggars can’t be choosers. I itch to leave, my entire awareness centered on her resting a few feet away, all while praying to the patron saint of boners that she doesn’t wake up yet. I know when she wakes up, I’ll be gone, and she’ll hate me.
Finally, I call a car. It’s minutes out, so I pick up a pen and find a scrap of paper and write her a note.
Shelby,
I had to go … Alaska is calling. Lyle never deserved your love, and he definitely doesn’t deserve your tears. If you want to leave, do it. Start over. Don’t let this town suck you dry anymore.
I’m sorry I left you. Both times. Turns out, I don’t deserve you either.
Love,
Cameron
I finally work up the courage to slip into her room. She’s breathing steadily, but blessedly deep asleep. I wonder how long it’s been since she’s really slept? I cover her with the edge of her duvet and press a barely there kiss to her forehead one last time. She doesn’t stir and I’m torn.
Like always.
As I’m closing the door, my phone buzzes with the alert that my car has arrived.
I leave without saying goodbye.
2
SHELBY
IDGAF
PRESENT DAY
I have a confession.
I can’t cry on command. Not in the impressive award-winning child-actress way, anyhow. I’m just sensitive. I cry all the time and can’t help it. I even asked my therapist about overactive tear ducts once. She informed me it was a real medical issue and I didn’t have it.
The thing is, like so many morally ambiguous stage moms, Ada Mae Springfield was a former pageant queen with a chip on her linen-padded shoulder. Before she could skip town, she’d fallen into bed with a local boy who had sawdust in the creases of his hands and found herself with a colicky baby nine months later. She named me Shelby after her favorite movie character, who unfortunately dies (but gives her mother one hell of a grief-stricken graveside monologue, winning Sally Field critical acclaim … which is an important footnote when talking about Ada Mae).
Feeling the pressure to make lemon martinis out of lemons, my mother enrolled me in every lesson, workshop, and camp that marketed the potential to turn me into some semblance of darling.
She cut and permed my hair like a late-nineties Shirley Temple, bought me tap shoes instead of the light-up jelly sandals I’d wanted, and made me practice my baton twirling every night before my prayers. I learned that we ate our salads with dressing on the side, only drank sparkling water so as not to stain our teeth, and that sunscreen “was for Catholics.”
The morning of a particularly ill-fated audition, my dad snuck me a Boston cream donut. My dad was always doing things like that. Monday through Saturday, I was Ada Mae’s project, Sundays belonged to Jesus, and my dad got whatever was left over. So, he’d sneak little things in. Like donuts while Ada Mae was in the shower or Johnny Cash while Ada Mae was snoring in the front passenger seat. I’d savored that donut. To this day, I can still picture the thick layer of gooey chocolate frosting, the feather-light layers of dough, and the smooth, cool custard filling. In my mind, it’s like this delicious symbol of Before, but in that moment, I’d licked my fingers clean and then finished off the Ada Mae–approved apple slices before she’d made an appearance, none the wiser. My dad had smudged a whiskery kiss on our cheeks, winking over the top of Ada Mae’s head at me, and left for work. Later, we did the same.
The problem wasn’t the donut. I will swear to that until the day I die. It was that I hated the smell in the casting director’s office. Even now, I will tear up whenever I encounter someone who overdoes it on the Acqua di Giò. And I never really loved auditions in the first place—everyone staring at you, straight-faced and assessing. Even at age seven, I was uncomfortable with the scrutiny, and that’s all it took for my throat to close up and my eyes to fill.
It was for some cereal commercial, but when I opened my mouth, no lines came out. Just sobs. Heart-wrenching, soul-shattering, earth-quaking sobs. And Ada Mae, queen of spin that she is, convinced them I’d done it on purpose. She said we’d interpreted the lines in such a way that we wanted to express our disgust with other cereals and, presumably, the utter tragedy that my commercial parents would feed me anything else.
It was a stretch, even for Ada Mae. I didn’t get the job, obviously, but the casting director never forgot it. Three years later, they needed a girl who could cry on cue to play a running gag in a sitcom on a popular children’s cable network. I’d done a little more work by that point. More commercials, and I’d won a few regional pageants. I’d even done a guest spot in a country crooner’s music video that had seen decent circulation. Even still, Ada Mae saw a sitcom deal as the pot of gold at the end of the ever-loving fame rainbow. It would mean a consistent salary she could skim off the top of, an accompanying record deal she could micromanage, and most important, a way out of her marriage to my dad.
All because she told someone I could cry on demand.
Lemon martinis out of lemons, indeed.
Except, I can’t cry on cue. Back then, I felt everything so much it never took a lot of effort, but I couldn’t just turn on the tears. I needed to feel first and there were always plenty of feelings to be had.
In short, it was exhausting but very real.
I emancipated myself from my mom and her lies when I turned seventeen, then I spent a good five years making a whole lot of mistakes all on my own. Drinking and partying all over Hollywood, until three weeks before my twenty-third birthday, when I had a massively public breakup. I’d been betrayed by my best friend and humiliated in the limelight. It probably didn’t have to end my career, but I was tired, so I let it.
Totally alone and disgusted with my life and the people in it, I was fully ready to lie down in the sweet grass and let the fairies take me, when … I changed my mind. Or rather, I made up my own mind for the first time in my life. I was done with Hollywood and with feeling like garbage. I was finished giving and giving and giving. And I quit. Retired? Regardless, I packed up my things, rented a truck, and drove halfway across the country to my dad’s place in Michigan.
Daniel Springfield gave me exactly five days to wallow in a second-story guest room, listening to his old Carly Simon albums on repeat, before he dragged me out of the house and made me go to work with him. He handed me a mallet, face mask, and goggles and said, “This wall needs to come down. When you’re done, I have some cabinetry that needs tearing down next.”
It was so much better than crying and the best kind of drained I’ve ever felt.
It took demolishing three more houses before I was ready for the careful work of historic restoration. A lifetime of furious hurt and bitterness was a lot to reconcile.
By house number four, Dad took his time with me. He has an entire carpentry crew with various specialties, and he wanted me to figure out mine. I didn’t need long. I knew what drew me. There’s nothing in the world like tracing your fingers along the weathered edges of a beautiful piece of furniture, memorizing the creases, inhaling the sharp tang of history. Some people want to add their own flair to restoration. They want to remake it into something new.
Not me. Never me. I want to return it to what it was. There’s such satisfaction and comfort in taking something apart only to make it completely whole once more. And I happen to be good at it. So good, in fact, I no longer have to join my dad on his jobs. I have my own state-of-the-art workshop, paid for with years of crying “on demand.” Whenever my dad takes on a new home, I get first dibs. We walk through together and decide which pieces I’ll restore, and whether I’ll resell them or return them to the historic home they belonged to.
This piece I’m working on now is a floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall built-in I begged my dad to buy that came from a 1920s Craftsman. The entire thing had to be carefully dismantled and relocated to my shop for repairs, but I swear it will be worth it in the end. This is one of those heart-stopping kinds of pieces. The kind you buy an entire house for.
At least, that’s what I told my dad. He was on the fence, but my pieces have upped the value of five of his last six flips in the past year alone, so he’s willing to risk it.
I’m completely absorbed in my work, wunderkind country star Annie Mathers’s new solo album blaring over my shop speakers, singing under my breath and smoothing the tip of my pointer finger along the newly sanded edge of a pocket shelf. I’m careful to use only the lightest touch, removing a near century of grime, but leaving the beautiful hardwood unaltered. My shoulders ache with the effort, but it’s a good burn. The kind that feels like an honor to bear—a nod of respect to the original craftsman.
“I met Mathers once. Did I ever tell you that?”
I jump with a screech, the shelf thankfully safely clamped, but my woodworking tools clatter to the floor. I lurch back, my hand clutched to my chest as if it could hold my heart in place.
“Jesus H, Jones, it’s called a doorbell.” I suck in a breath and slowly release it.
“I used the doorbell. Twice. And I tried calling you.” My best friend Lorelai Jones grabs my discarded phone from the bench where I’d tossed it. She’s dressed up in dark-wash jeans, fashionably broken-in Western-style ankle boots, and a leather jacket. Her long brown waves are pulled back in a swinging pony, showing off high cheekbones and stunning dark eyes.
These same eyes are currently rolling at me in exasperation, because, shit, she’s my ride to the airport. I surreptitiously check my varnish-speckled wristwatch and give a yelp.
“I got sidetracked.” I wince and bend to hurriedly pick up my tools. “Sorry.”
“Rough day?”
All that comes out is a grunt. I place the tools in their rightful spots. It’s a good thing Lorelai convinced me to bring my luggage to the shop this morning. “What was that about Annie Mathers?”
Lorelai straightens my stool and swipes some sawdust to the floor, which is already carpeted in a thick layer. She makes a face that plainly tells me she wants to comment on the mess but knows I don’t care.
I love my mess. I could marry it, honestly.
“Nothing really. I just met her once is all. Way back when her momma was alive. We performed the same night at the Grand Ole Opry. Annie was just a peanut with gobs of star power back then.”
I move to the coat rack and drop off my Carhartt, exchanging it for my North Face. “Isn’t that what she is now?”
“Basically,” Lorelai agrees.
I study my best friend’s tone for bitterness, but there’s none to be found. Back when I was attempting to erase my deflated child-star rep by exchanging it for a sexier bubblegum-pop rep, Lorelai was the reigning princess of the country music world. She used to front an all-girl band of Southern belles but went rogue one night on tour, playing some politically charged protest rock, and woke to the news that everyone south of the Bible Belt had turned on her, including her longtime superstar first love and fiancé, Drake Colter.
Lorelai and I met outside our mutual therapist’s office in Grand Rapids. Neither of us kept the therapist, but we kept each other.
I’m fully done with Hollywood, but I’m not so sure Lorelai is. It’s been nearly three years since things went sideways for her and I have a feeling she’s fixing to make a comeback.
“Tide seems to be turning with some of these newer artists,” I comment idly, pocketing my phone and reaching for my overnight case resting in the corner by the door.
She nods thoughtfully. “It might be.”
“But I bet they could use someone with a little experience to show them how it’s really done.”
Lorelai’s lips twitch. “Thinking of getting back in the game?”
I snort. “As if. I’m perfectly happy with my shop.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t think anyone is interested in my brand of experience.”
“Maybe,” I say with a shrug. We have this conversation once a month. So far, Lorelai has been content to play gigs at small-town bars while using her elementary teaching degree the rest of the time.
“So, why were you hiding from your phone?”
“I wasn’t. Not really. It’s just nerves.”
Lorelai makes a sound of understanding in the back of her throat.
“The first time, I didn’t really care that much whether it worked out or not. My dad was reluctant, and really, I was, too, when it came down to the inevitable press. But when they didn’t pick up the pilot, I was disappointed. I’d kind of gotten used to the idea that this would be the best way to make sure my dad can retire comfortably.” Six months ago, my dad and I were approached to do a pilot called HomeMade, one of those home-renovation shows. You know the kind: a couple buys up homes, fixes them, and flips them. We thought it turned out pretty well for a freshman effort, but apparently my dad is not meant for television. Go figure. The middle-aged contractor from Michigan doesn’t have the ever-elusive “it” factor.
“That’s not your responsibility, hon.”
I huff out a breath, playing with the handle on my suitcase, extending it and collapsing it again. “It feels like it should be, though. And that was before his accident.” My dad had gotten into a pileup on the interstate while driving to a worksite last fall. He came out of it alive, but his knee was crushed against the dash. It’s been a slow road to recovery, not least because he’s an ornery coot who’s decided to be allergic to physical therapy. “He can’t keep working on frozen jobsites. It’s terrible for his joints. He basically saved my life and I want to be able to do the same for him.”
I take a deep breath. “I’m going to have to say yes, Lore. To whatever they offer.”
Lorelai freezes midstep and slowly turns to face me, her hand resting on the shop door handle.
“You aren’t.” She groans. “Shelby! I thought we agreed that you would take the free flight, hear them out long enough to be polite, and be home before the paparazzi even know you were in town.”
“Right. I’m doing that, still. But also, I’m going to agree to it. On paper, HomeMade has merit. I can do this.”
Lorelai’s small hand finds her hip. “What if they want to swap your dad for your mom as your costar?”
My throat goes dry. “They wouldn’t do that.” She raises her brows. “No, seriously, that would be a terrible idea. Ada Mae and I are oil and water. They aren’t that dumb.”
“Maybe not,” Lorelai concedes as I follow her out into the last vestiges of early spring sunshine. “But she does have that book now and it’s been sitting pretty on the New York Times bestseller list for months. Clearly there’s interest and it’s not only in her.”
“Exactly, which is why it’s also not happening. Not a chance in hell I’d costar with her. Never mind that she doesn’t know how to renovate a home, doesn’t live in Michigan, and I completely cut her from my life.”
“Honestly, the fact that she wrote a fucking exposé of lies about you, calling you a drug addict and porn star is plenty enough reason not to hire her. One would hope, anyway. But this is Hollywood, Shelb.”
