Adulation (33 page)

“I am such a fool,” I said in practically a whisper, too ashamed to look at him.

“Correction: You
 
were
 
a fool. But now you know better. Now you’ve finally seen the light, and you can move forward from here. And you can realize that what you’re really afraid of is that the closer you get to Josh, the more the window lowers on Danny Masters.”

“There was never any window on me and Danny Masters,” I insisted.

Georgie shook his head and sighed, “Oh, Sunny... Sunny, Sunny, Sunny Delight. So much delusion, so little justification.”

I switched my position on the bed so that I was flat on my stomach, leaning on my elbows and staring ahead at nothing, processing all of it. Georgie handed me a cookie. I accepted and inspected it just as he did, as if to observe Marcus’s craftsmanship, then took a bite and looked up at him.

“Do you think Danny Masters would recognize me if I came to the signing?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t know. But the fact that he might not shouldn’t stop you from going.”

I nodded slowly.

“I blew it, Georgie.”

“You fucked up, I’m not going to lie to you. But you’ve always had the power to fix it. Sorry to be all Glinda the Good Witch on you, but it’s true.”

“What would I say to him?” I asked.

“How about, ‘Sorry I called you a jackass’?”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know... Then, ‘Sign my fucking book and do me right now’—what, you want me to play Cyrano? Speak for yourself!”

I broke into laughter. “Yes, Georgie. That’s exactly what I want. Screw it. From now on, you’re my official spokesman. Hell, you can even ghostwrite my books too.”

Georgie shook his head. “Won’t be able to.”

“Why not?”

In the blink of an eye, he stopped laughing and his eyes grew both scared and serious as he straightened his posture, took in a breath as if to speak, and then stopped and hopped off the bed. He left the room and came back with Marcus seconds later.

“What’s up?” I asked, getting more nervous by the second.

“We have to tell you something,” said Georgie. I moved to the edge of the bed and sat on the corner, looking up at both of them, my hands gripping the comforter. He looked at Marcus, who took his hand, and then let it out in one exhale. “Marcus and I are moving to Massachusetts to get married.”

The room was still and silent; I couldn’t even hear myself breathe. I tried to ask him to repeat thewords, but my mouth wouldn’t move.

“Sunny, did you hear me?” asked Georgie.

Still nothing. He said it again, and then Marcus took over.

“We’ve been planning it for a while now, Sunny. Georgie’s been assisting my catering business inorder to get some contacts and experience so he can be an events planner. He’s already got threeinterviews lined up in the coming weeks: one’s for a PR firm, one as a wedding planner—”

“That one was under protest,” interjected Georgie. “You can just kill me if I get that gig.”

“And one is at a high-end hotel in Boston,” finished Marcus. “I’ve got an interview there as well,as an executive chef. If that doesn’t work out, I’ll just relocate my business.”

It was taking a while for my voice to return. “But...” I started, trying to will the words. I looked at Georgie, pleading with him to read my mind instead, and he seemed to be trying to do that very thing. Finally the words spilled out. “I thought you didn’t want to get married. I mean...” This time I looked at Marcus. “I knew you both were committed, but every time I brought up the subject of marriage, you totallydissed it.”

“I spent so much of my life believing that it wasn’t meant for guys like me that I never allowedmyself to want it. And the longer Marcus and I are together, the more we realize we both want it.”

“But why do you have to move? It’s gonna be legal here like any minute now,” I said. I knew thequestion was a  selfish one, and thank goodness Georgie saw through it and didn’t jump all over me.

“Sweet Sunrise, I’ve been waiting a long time to get out of my crappy job and my crappy inertia. Long Island’s just not the place for me anymore. It’s too little.”

“It’s a
 
long
 
island,” I protested.

“Not for me, it isn’t. It’s a fishbowl.”

Wow. Just hours ago, Josh had used the same metaphor. Georgie would hurl if I told him they hadone more thing in common.

I sighed back a sob. “When are you leaving?”

“As soon as prom and wedding season ends,” said Marcus.

The cookies I’d just consumed sat like boulders in the pit of my stomach as a single tear made itsway down my cheek.

“I know I should’ve told you sooner, but things were so weird between us. You have no idea howmuch I wanted to.” Now Georgie started to tear up, and Marcus turned and asked his lover—no, scratchthat, his
fiancé
—to leave us alone for a moment. Georgie closed the door behind him as Marcus sat on thebed next to me while I wiped my eyes with the back of my sleeve.

“Sunny, Georgie’s been a mess without you. You have no idea how much you mean to him. I toldhim that this whole thing between you two was stupid and that you were both stupid to drag it out, butyou’re both rather stubborn sometimes.” He playfully clunked my head, and I couldn’t help but smile; I’dliked Marcus since day one. He reminded me a little bit of Ted Allen. “Your boyfriend really demeanedhim at that meeting months ago, when  you first started dating. Said Georgie would be better off doingsomething more suitable for his
 
lifestyle
. And he did it all under the guise of a smile. Georgie never toldyou because he was humiliated. He believed everything Joshua said was true, and it took me a long timeto convince him otherwise. He was even more upset because you weren’t there to make it better.”

The guilt was enormous enough to swallow me whole. How many times had he tried to tell me, but I wouldn’t listen? Or maybe he never said a word? Or maybe he was just tired of talking.

“Why didn’t he say anything?” I asked. “Or did he, and I was too clueless?”

“Georgie knew how lonely you were, how much you needed someone in your life. It was a goodstep for you. He just felt so personally betrayed—not by you, but by Josh. It was as if he knew what youmeant to Georgie and took you away just to show that he could, that he had all the power. I’m not saying

that’s what happened. I’m just saying that’s what it
felt
 
like to Georgie.”

I turned to face Marcus. “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?” I asked, my guilt manifesting as anger. “I would’ve stopped seeing Josh that instant! I would’ve apologized a thousand times over! I would have—”

“No, I don’t think you would,” Marcus retorted. “Or at least, I
 
didn’t
 
think you would. Not from the way Georgie talked, and that’s all I had to go on. I probably should’ve come to you, gotten your side of the story. I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t think it was my business.”

“It was totally your business,” I said, yet wondering if I would’ve said otherwise had he actually come to me.

“By that time we had a plan, and everything became about the plan. Both Georgie and I have been working our asses off so we can save money to buy a house, have something to live on if the job thing doesn’t work out right away. There’s been no room for anything in life other than the plan.”

We sat on the bed, side by side, and Marcus took my hand into his own. We sat in silence for a few moments, both of us staring at the floor.

“I just got him back, and now he’s leaving,” I cried, sounding almost like a little girl.

“It’s not that far,” Marcus said. “Five hours, maybe? You can take the Orient Point ferry to New London and skip all the bridge traffic out of New York.”

Just then Georgie opened the door following two soft courtesy knocks, and carried a cup of ginger tea to me. I took it as he instructed me to scoot over, prodding me gently, and sandwiched me between him and Marcus. I watched as the two of them exchanged knowing glances, realizing they’d mastered the art of mind-reading between each other, and that that was the way it should be. At that moment, a wave of calm overtook me, a feeling of all being right in my world. I hadn’t felt it in a long time, couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt it, or if it would remain, and I knew I had to seize it in the Now.

I wiped away the last of my tears and sniffled. “So who proposed?” I asked, an attempt to regain a sense of normalcy. I diverted my eyes to Georgie in a teasing way, for I could’ve bet money on the

answer.

“He did, of course,” said Georgie, rolling his eyes and nudging toward Marcus’s direction. “Like you had to ask.”

“That’s not true,” argued Marcus. “It was a mutual decision. I just decided to make a special engagement dinner.”

“So, no official proposal? No one knee? No ring?” I asked. As if on cue, the two of them made exaggerated gagging noises and gestures, and the three of us erupted into laughter.

“We’re gonna need an old maid of honor, Sunny Delight. Better start planning to use all that vacation time you’ve been hoarding, especially before Whitford’s goes belly-up.”

I laughed and looked at my best friend lovingly, adoringly, and told him that I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Danny Masters

D
ANNY SAT UPRIGHT
 
on the couch in Raj’s office, tired yet jittery. He’d developed raspy coughing spellsfrom all the smoking and could feel the painful burn in his throat and chest every time he had one, likesomeone was lighting his larynx on fire.

The writer’s block had never been this bad, or gone on for this long, he told Raj. Ever since the Oscar win, followed by the television show rejection, Danny was terrified of the page. Even Ella’sencouragement wasn’t enough to bolster his confidence. He knew first drafts weren’t final drafts. Hepromised himself that whatever he wrote could be as crappy as it needed to be, that no one would everhave to see it, that he could erase it from his hard drive so that no hacker could get a look at it (he’d ratherbe caught with porn than bad writing, he joked). As long as he wrote
 
something
.

But nothing. Absolutely
 
nothing
 
came to him.

It was as if all the voices in his head had been silenced when he won the Oscar, like they’d beenbanished, blown out by January Miller’s voice announcing his name following,
 
And the Oscar goes to...

Exiled.

As if he had nothing left to say.

But he had plenty to say. All those pain bodies that had been dredged up in the last six months—his parents, his childhood house, the little girl lying in the street with the contorted dog (that ghost neverstopped haunting him, despite the girl’s survival), and
 
Sunny
... For fuck’s sake, why couldn’t he get Sunnyout of his head? This woman he’d met once, who’d called him a jackass and a failure, who’d put him inhis place and then iced him out. It was all
 
her
 
doing. She had reached into his chest, grabbed hold of hisheart, and squeezed it like a stress ball day in and day out.

“It’s that old adage of wanting what you can’t have, right?” he said, hoping Raj would confirm. “That’s why I’m obsessed with her.”

“I don’t think you’re obsessed,” answered Raj. “I think your soul is telling you that you
 
can
 
havewhat you want, but you’re insisting otherwise.”

“Bullshit,” said Danny. “That’s got to be bullshit.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s too easy. Life just doesn’t work out that way. It’s not all hearts and butterflies. You’re buying into the very thing you sell, which is wishful thinking, only you’re cloaking it undermystical language of ‘the soul.’” He made quote marks with his fingers as he said the words. “Just thinkhappy thoughts, and make it so. Life is not a vending machine. You don’t put in your coins and press abutton.”

“The candy bar gets stuck sometimes, doesn’t it?” Raj asked, ever-amused.

Why, oh why couldn’t he ever win an argument, just once, against Raj? Just once, why couldn’t Raj put up his hands in defeat, as if to say, “You caught me, man”?