Not to Scale, page 21
She smiles. “He always does.”
“One condition.”
Gilly narrows her eyes. “What condition?”
“No way am I doing the Estonian style, upside-down position and sticking my face in your husband’s ass.”
She giggles. “Not a problem. I can’t imagine Bobby allowing you to take that for the team.”
I wish she’d stop bringing up his name.
As Gilly starts the car, a loud incoming call chimes through the speakers. Baby Daddy flashes across the display. She clicks a button on the steering wheel. “Hi, honey—”
Jack’s agitated voice blasts through car, cutting her off. “Somethings turned between Elodie and Bobby. I’ve just got off the phone with him, and he’s a bloody nightmare. I don’t know what to say to the poor fool.”
My heart lurches. Not only do I drive Bobby fucking crazy, now I’ve turned him into a bloody nightmare. That’s a penalty of ten Pettipas points. Deduct five more for dragging Gilly and Jack into our misery.
I truly believed the steady state of our romance was sustainable, but I never factored in being thousands of miles apart. It shouldn’t be so gut-wrenching hard for two people who want to be together to stay together, yet it is.
Gilly’s voice is calm. “Jack, I’m here with Elodie, and you’re on speaker.”
“Holy fuck. Sorry, I’m raving like a madman, Elodie.”
Gilly’s giving me a raised eyebrow do you want to elaborate look.
My gaze locks on the dash display. “Hello, Jack, and congratulations. Your mom spilled the baby beans.”
I believe the term for what he does next is sputter.
“Don’t freak out. I’m not going to run off at the mouth about wee baby O’Leary, and yes, I’ll do the wife-carrying thing with you.”
The sputter morphs into a grunt. “Grand.” He breaths loudly into the phone. It sounds like wind whipping through the car. “I’m not gonna push, but is there anything I can say to Bobby to ease the poor bastard?”
Gilly barks out a loud Ha. “You, not pushing? I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Jack huffs. “I feel like a useless fool talking to him.”
Now I’ve got fucking crazy, bloody nightmare, and useless fool on my scorecard. The callous on my thumb throbs as I spin my ring. “Jack, you can tell him we’ll talk when he gets—” I almost say home, but the word sits like clay in my mouth. “Back.”
“That’ll be right soon. He bunked off with me to call a car to take him to the airport.”
Shit. No. It’s still the middle of the night, and I’ve set Barrell-Ahead-Bobby running at top speed to get back here. “Jack, please stop him. Convince him cutting his trip short to blast over here right now won’t change anything.”
Gilly lays a hand on my arm as Jack’s voice quiets. “Is it done then with you and him?”
I don’t know how to answer without bleeding out in the O’Leary’s Renault.
Gilly saves me. “Honey, just call Bobby and tell him Elodie says to stay put until he’s finished with his business.”
“I’m on it, love. See you at dinner.” Another long pause and then—“El—el—ooodie…” He fumbles my name. “If you want company, you’re very welcome to dinner at my parents’ house tonight.”
“Thanks for the offer, Jack. I’m really okay.” Such a liar. “Sorry to put you and Gilly in the middle of this.”
A low grunt ripples through the speakers. Jack is a very noisy phone guy. “I’m sorry—”
I interrupt. Jack needs to get on the phone to LA. I can’t deal with the guilt of being the cause of ruining Bobby’s future in addition to screwing up his present. “It’s all good, Jack. Please call Bobby.” It’s so the opposite of good.
Jack and Gilly say quick lovey goodbyes as I drop my head onto my hands.
She rests a warm touch on my hunched back. “I don’t know if it helps, but Bobby does go to LA regularly. It’s not weird for him to be gone this long.”
I think of the cowboys on the ranch, filming a cattle roundup segment. My thoughts are splattered across my brain in desperate need of a roundup. There’s still a huge part of me who wants to take back the breakup, but I have to believe I did the right thing. Bobby needs to make decisions for his own path without me as a factor.
Slowly, I turn my head to look at her. “I do want to talk to you, but there’s stuff I can’t blab about.”
“You mean like Bobby considering leaving the show?”
I spring up so fast it knocks her hand away. “You know?”
“Jack and Bobby golf. Think of it as the male equivalent of us getting mani-pedis together.” She aims a meaningful look at me. “Bobby looped Jack in on Stream Up’s interest.”
I lean my head against the window, the relief of shedding part of our prickly secret trickles through me. “If he leaves the show, he wants me to go with him.”
“That’s not fair.”
I gawk, shocked at her reaction. I fully anticipated this half of the most in-love couple in Ireland to go rabid Cupid on my ass, not agree with me.
“Well, it’s not,” she says, gripping the steering wheel. Gilly cuts the engine and meets my gaze. “For someone who’s barely joined the show, you’ve made a major impact.” She pauses. The battle whether to go further showing across her face.
“Hit me with whatever’s swimming around in there,” I say, gesturing to her temple.
She gives her head a quick shake. “Okay, I may be breaking a confidence, but I know from Bobby’s season two rants that Jeff Palmer was basically a ghost.”
I stare at her. “What?”
“Apparently, he did a bang-up job on season one, won his awards, and then delegated to the point of ridiculous. He hated it over here and spent the majority of his time designing from LA. His hip replacement was a convenient excuse to bail.” She dances her fingertips across the top curve of the wheel. “My parents thought it was a crime he held on to the show as long as he did. Keep it to yourself, but Bobby was going to start looking for a replacement and let Jeff go once season three was set. His unexpected exit moved up the timeline.”
I blink, attempting to take this in. It explains so much. I remember my first gig as an assistant art director on a sitcom where the production designer had so many shows going, we only met once per episode to hash out the sets, and then I had to make them happen. My crew was my lifeline. Was The Chieftain’s Son one of many commitments for Jeff Palmer, not his everything?
It seems the guy leaving abruptly was a gift, not a detriment to the show. The Chieftain’s Son’s art department must have been forced to mesh and see everything through to fruition with Jeff’s minimal investment to maintain the high quality of a show they clearly love. No wonder they resented a new face waltzing in with plans to shake up their independence.
My appreciation for my extraordinary department heads and their dedicated crews crosses the threshold into awe. I cringe, realizing in retrospect what a bad call my strategy to come on strong out of the gate was. Bobby tried to warn me to ease in instead of banging the drum of authority. He should have been straight with me about Jeff. Would that have altered the way I handled things? I was so determined to overcome my own fear of inadequacy, I probably still would have cracked the whip of change too hard.
As showrunner, Bobby had the right to impose on the situation. Instead, he supported and believed in me. He allowed me the space to find a rhythm with the crew which I finally achieved with our team success at the Battle of Waterville. Did he think because they survived with Jeff phoning it in they would be fine with yet another transition if I left? How can I abandon them now when we’ve become a cohesive unit?
I can’t, but does that mean I can let Bobby walk out of my life? Oh my God, this is too much. There are too many dust bunnies in my brain to clean up.
Gilly watches my wheels turn. She startles when I whip my body around in the seat to face her. “Did you and Jack discuss yet what you’re going to do when the show ends? Are you and…” I gesture to her belly. “…Your kids going to follow him wherever his career takes him?”
“Absolutely we talked. We had to play the what if game. It would be magical thinking to believe there’s ever going to be another long-term show here at home like The Chieftain’s Son for Jack. Temporary separations in our lives are a given. It’s the reality of both our careers.”
“Did you figure out a solution or table the topic until the end of the show rears its ugly head?”
She gives a half-smile. “We have scenarios. Thank God there’s plenty of time to flesh them out. We’ll most likely establish homes both here and LA.” Hands rest on her belly. “Near grandparents at either end.” Her sigh is weary. “If he goes off for prolonged periods to do films or another series, I suspect I’ll get very good at efficient packing and wrangling kids on airplanes.”
I stare at her bump. “What about times when you can’t do that, when you have to be separated because of different jobs or kids’ schools?”
“We’ve committed to each other to make it work even if it’s a royal pain. We knew the instability of our careers was part of the deal before we got married.”
I stare out the front window at the row of houses across the road and the fields beyond. “And the prospect of upheaval doesn’t scare you?”
Gilly leans forward to rest her chin on the wheel. “Make no mistake, it terrifies me.” She straightens. “In the sense that any adventure is frightening when you start imagining endless possible outcomes.” The corners of her lips lift into a soft smile. “However insane our lives might become, at the end of the day, it’s Jack and me. That’s a strong enough promise for us to build a life on.” Her expression goes serious. “I’m not saying it’s the answer for everyone.”
“So, Crystal Award-winning screenwriter, if you were writing the script of Bobby and Elodie, one in LA and one in Ireland, how would it go?”
She raises both hands. “Oh, no. I am the last person on the planet to ask for relationship advice.” Her laugh is brittle. “Jack is my happy ending, but I waded through plenty of mud to get to him.”
Mud.
I fall back through time to my first face-to-face meeting with Bobby on the hilltop, me covered in mud. I’d be lying if I denied that was the moment my heart whispered I found you for the first time and meant it. I lay hands over my chest. Beneath my fingers, heartbeats pick up the tune of that whisper.
For a designer who has a palette of endless shades and tints of colors in her arsenal, I haven’t looked past black and white, you there and me here, when it comes to Bobby and me. My fingers dip into the bib of my overalls to my phone. Gilly’s optimism tempts me to text Bobby to ignore Jack to tell him to come home. By some miracle, my often-faulty impulse control kicks in. It would be cruel to surge forward, give Bobby false hope, only to backtrack if I truly can’t handle the emotional slaughter of constantly missing him. For fuck’s sake, we work on the same show in the same place, and we have to fight for time together. As tempting as Jack and Gilly’s model of flexibility is, who’s to say it could work for us?
I collapse against my seat. My regrets and creeping indecision are part of the breakup process. I’m sticking to my path because for once, the most important person I need to please is myself. No matter how much it hurts.
Chapter 19
Stunt Double
The Killarney park stretches a few blocks into the distance before it curves out of sight around a bend. Strings of multi-colored flags outline two lanes of the wife-carrying competition. The outgoing route is blocked by a big-ass log Jack will have to navigate over with me on his back. Since I nixed the face-in-butt style, we’ve landed on a fireman’s carry.
Scaling the log won’t be a picnic, but the second half of the obstacle course makes me question why I ever agreed to do this bonkers wife-carrying insanity with anyone. Halfway between the far U-turn at the end of the first lane and the finish line, a huge hole has been dug into the ground and filled with water.
I watched every video on wife carrying I could find. There were many civilized, thick-gauge vinyl-lined water obstacles that looked like the sunken version of above ground pools. For my shot at the event, I get a mud puddle.
“Team t’irty-t’ree,” calls the jolly man, standing at the scales.
I look down at the bib pinned to the front of my The Chieftain’s Son t-shirt.
Thirty-three.
I love being weighed in public about as much as I appreciate the sting of a deep paper cut. The winner gets his “wife’s” poundage in beer so a date with the scales in unavoidable. If I’m under the required kilograms, they’ll have to attach weights to me. This just gets better and better.
I barely pass muster without needing enhancement and head over to join a particularly boisterous group from the show stationed on the other side of the rope.
“Give his bum a good slap at the go,” says Maureen.
“That’s my job,” says Gilly, elbowing her.
One of the plasterers sidles up next to me. “You sure you don’t want a nip before you’re off, Miss Boss?” He raises a tiny flask from the breast pocket of his flannel.
The previously cutting nickname is now a warm fuzzy. I lean close to him. “Save some for my impending humiliation.”
He guffaws and claps me on the shoulder. While I appreciate the enthusiastic support, there’s one face in this group I miss. Jack did catch Bobby in time to keep him from jumping on a plane so his LA excursion continues to drag on.
The text thread between Bobby and me dead-ended that same night. I’ve been tempted to revive it about once an hour. The certainty he needs to do what he needs to do for him kept me from reaching out at first. Then unfair but lingering anger at him for lighting the fuse that blew us apart got me over the weak moments of calling or texting every time I reread our existing thread from happier times.
Every reconciliation scenario I tortured myself with ends with a big red fail sign. I shouldn’t even be trying to imagine fixing what I broke. This is best for both of us. Bobby is a high-octane force, not a home and hearth type like Jack. I don’t have the career flexibility Gilly’s writing has. My profession can’t be done anywhere a laptop can travel. No matter how many times I tried to design a solution, the compromises Gilly and Jack are willing to embrace will never work for us.
All I have a right to wish for is a bit of closure after what in retrospect was my heartless goodbye over a phone call. Bobby Provost deserves better.
There’s a roar from the bystanders as two teams blow past us. They are neck and neck, or rather face-in-ass to face-in-ass until they come to the log. The first pair slides right over with nary a blip, which makes sense given the man’s massive legs. The second husband attempts a belly-down slip-over that results in him dumping his wife onto the ground on the other side of the dry obstacle.
I’ve never noticed if Jack’s legs are particularly long. Damn, I hope they are. Where is he anyway? I get Meg doesn’t want him mobbed, so he’ll show right before our racing slot. She’s not in the crowd, and the camera crew that had to endure my less-than-elegant interview earlier disappeared as well. They must be tucked away in a private corner of the park getting pre-game footage.
I nudge Gilly. “Where’s my ride?”
She looks around but doesn’t spot him.
“He’d better not be off tailgating with Guinness and pizza.” I cross my arms. “I don’t want him losing his balance and dunking my head underwater in the mud bath.” Thankfully, Jack is both tall and insanely strong. I’ll look like an ant on an elephant across his shoulders. As long as he doesn’t slip, my head should remain well above the water line.
There’s renewed commotion from the sidelines as one couple creates an impressive splash, toppling over into the brackish water feature.
Cian appears at Gilly’s side. “Word on the lawn says the pool is…” He busts out an Irish accent. “Wicked slippery.”
“Pool? That’s generous.” I tighten the strap on my helmet. I’d better establish an I’m drowning signal to pound into Jack’s flesh.
Before my nerves can extend their fangs, Pat and his wife push their way through the crowd. He gathers me in a hug. “You’re going to do the show proud.” His eyes snap to the starting line. “There goes Jimmy and his lady.”
“Wife up,” calls the starter.
The stunt coordinator hoists his wife, Mary, into the Estonian carry and off they go. The pair tears up the course as we holler our lungs out. The couple they’re competing against doesn’t stand a chance to best them. I swear, there’s not a drop of mud on Mary when they finish and come over to collect fist bumps.
The next few rounds are painful to watch as husbands and wives dunk under the chocolate brown water and come up sputtering. My mantra become less than two minutes, less than two minutes, which is the estimated time to complete the course. I have to trust Jack to carry me from start to finish without cracking any of my teeth.
Cian lays a hand on my shoulder as he reads a text on his phone. “Meg says it’s time to meet Jack near the starting line. I’ll walk you over.”
I’m buried in well-wishes as we leave our cheering section and skirt the back of the crowd to the on-deck pavilion.
I land a playful punch on Cian’s bicep. Oh, another tall, thin specimen hiding solid muscle. “I haven’t forgiven you and Meg yet for not suffering through this with me.”
Cian has mischievous eye-twinkle down perfectly. “Maybe I can talk her into it once she’s officially Mrs. O’Malley.”
I bark out a laugh, picturing Meg in one of her pencil skirts and blazers slung across Cian’s shoulders. “Forgive me if I don’t take that bet.”
He guides me around the back of a tent into a semi-circle of trees where Jack, Meg, and the camera crew wait. I suffer through Jack hefting me up several times in different positions, then pretending to drop me while the camera rolls. Meg directs more antics for them to capture before my head starts pounding from the blood rushing between my ears.
