Crazy Thing Called Love (39 page)

She felt righteous about that for a few moments, righteous enough to kick off her shoes and turn on the lights.

But it was somehow worse in the light. As if the starkness of her condo was reflective of how stark her life was. Pictures of guests on her wall? That didn’t seem right. No matter how famous, or how great the picture. Because it wasn’t love.

“Stop it,” she cried. “Stop it.” She yanked off her earrings and tossed them in the bowl on the pink table in her hallway. She’d work out. That’s what she needed. It had been a few days, what with the drama of the kids and Billy, and she was simply missing the endorphins of a good sweaty workout.

But in her bedroom the recumbent bike looked like a torture device.

A run?

Rain pounded against the windows.

No. No. Not this.

The dark edges of depression crept in. That crippling melancholy that had kept her in bed for weeks after she and Billy had broken up the first time was coming back tenfold. Darker. Thicker.

She rejected the depression. The idea of it. He wasn’t going to have that power over her anymore. Never again.

Knowing a surefire way of reminding herself that editing Billy from her life was the right thing to do, she picked up her phone and called her mother.

“Honey!” her mom cried upon answering and Maddy fell backward onto her bed. “How are you?”

Surprisingly, Maddy found herself swallowing back tears, waiting until the pain in her throat and behind her eyes passed so she could talk.

“I’m good, Mom,” she said, happy for all that voice training that allowed her to sound normal. “How are you?”

“Good. I’m good. Well, Paige and I lost at bridge today, but you can’t win them all, can you?”

“I guess not.”

“You don’t sound okay, do you have a cold?”

I’m so bad, Mom. I’m so scared and so in love and … unhappy. Deeply, terribly unhappy, and I can’t pretend I’m not anymore. I can’t pretend that being Maddy Cornish is satisfying. I can’t keep living like this
.

The words were a scream in her throat. The same scream she’d been holding in for fourteen years. But letting it out … oh, she couldn’t imagine the power of that scream. How it would change her life. How she’d never be able to look at herself in the mirror again if she released it.

It had been bad enough telling Billy she loved him. Close enough to hitting some terrible dark spot of no return.

She opened her mouth to tell her mother that Billy had been on the show. That he was back in Maddy’s life, but suddenly she couldn’t do it. She didn’t want to listen to her mother’s old poison about him. And she really didn’t want to think about what that meant.

“Are you happy, Mom?” she asked, instead, rolling onto her side and pulling the duvet up over her body.

“Sure. I mean, I wish you were closer. I wish your father were still alive, but yeah, I’m happy.”

How does that feel?
she wondered.

“I’m glad, Mom,” she said.

Tears leaking silently from the corners of her eyes, she made the right noises about weather and bridge games
and taking a trip down there in the winter. Maybe for a week this time, she was owed some vacation.

“Honey,” Mom said. “You really don’t sound like you’re okay.”

“I’m fine,” she lied, the words, like so much of her life, a candy coating over something very, very rotten.

Having pulled herself back from the brink, Maddy decided that if her life was unhappy, it was her own damn fault, and she threw herself into the revamp of the show.

Who the hell was Billy to tell her what mattered? She’d show him a fight.

Every day for a week she woke up thinking it would get better, that the thoughts of Billy and the kids would fade and the pain would ease. But every day it was there, like glass just under her skin.

And every day she tried to get past that pain with work. It had been the right medicine once, but it wasn’t working anymore.

Empty, she thought, as she lined up guests and story ideas.

I don’t give a shit
, she thought as she listened to theme music options and discussed brand marketing.

Ruth slapped her notebook against the conference room table and everyone jumped. “Clear out,” she said to Sabine and the rest of the crew, who were all in there working on the last of the presentation they were going to give to Richard the next day.

Maddy pulled together her stuff and started to stand.

“Not you, Madelyn,” Ruth said and Maddy sat back down and waited for everyone else to clear out.

“What the hell is going on with you, Maddy?”

“Nothing.”

Ruth leaned back in her chair. She was wearing a red sweater today, her black-on-black theme seemed to have
been derailed over the past week. Color looked good on her.

“You’re a liar, Maddy. And up until now you’ve been pretty convincing. But today, I can see right through you.”

“I’m not a liar!” she cried, appalled at the notion.

“Please, we both are. In fact, I’ll reveal a lie I’ve been telling for three years.” She threw her arms out, as if throwing something away. “I don’t want to move to New York. I don’t want a network job.”

So that explained the red sweater. “Really?”

“Really. I like it here. And now that we’re working on the new format, I have no desire to go anywhere. Here’s another piece of honesty for you.” She leaned across the table, suddenly razor sharp, suddenly more present than Maddy had ever seen her. She was sparkling with purpose. Confronted with all that energy, Maddy felt like a burnt-out lightbulb. “If you don’t get your head out of your ass, this show is going to flop. And flop hard. You want to host a show like this, then you need to
connect
, Maddy.”

“I connect.” Her protest sounded stupid. Weak.

“Bullshit, and you know it. We need you to really connect, and the person you are right now, this shell, I don’t think she can do it.”

Maddy wished she could deny it. Wished she could be outraged. But part of her knew Ruth was right.

“I’m not saying you can’t do it; you can. You could be great on this show. But not like you’ve been the past week. You need to think about that before the pitch meeting.” She pulled her papers into a stack and slapped it against the table, lining up all the edges with one sharp bang. Maddy flinched. “Now, let’s go get a drink.”

“I think … I think you just insulted me, Ruth. I’m not sure I want to get a drink with you.”

“I know.” Ruth winced. “I’m not very good at this
friend thing. But I think you could probably use one—a friend, I mean. And a drink, too. And I know I could. So? Drink?”

Now, this was weird.

But weird was okay. Weird might bring her one step closer to being happy. At least with weird she might feel something.

“I thought we were friends once,” Maddy said.

“I know.” Ruth nodded. “But let’s try again. For real this time.”

For real. How funny those words sounded. How true.

Maddy stood. “Let’s do it.”

The next day when they were pitching to a table full of executives, Maddy stood in the middle of a storm. A whirlwind of branding and promotion. Marketing and editorial meetings. Richard sat at the top of the conference room table, his face illuminated by the yellows and greens of the new logo, flashing bright and beautiful across a PowerPoint presentation.

She watched his every facial reaction, knowing that a frown would signal that this new effort of theirs—the blood, sweat, and tears that she and Ruth had put in over the last week—would die before it even had a chance.

But there were no frowns. There weren’t any smiles, but there also weren’t any frowns.

She and Ruth exchanged panicked looks as Ruth turned on the lights and everyone blinked like owls in a barn.

“Nice work,” Richard said and Maddy watched Ruth let out a deep breath. But Maddy had the sinking feeling they weren’t out of the woods yet.

“Billy’s your first guest?” Richard asked.

“We can tape on the new set on Monday.”

“And after that?”

Ruth listed the other guests they’d contacted.

“We could just as easily have them on the old format,” Richard said.

“But the new format—”

“Loses money in advertising dollars,” he said. “And costs in promotions. You want me to double the budget—”

“Just for the next few months,” Ruth interrupted.

There was more discussion, but Maddy heard it from a great distance. This was it, her dream dying.

Connect, she thought. Maybe he just didn’t feel the connection. And that was her job.

“Maddy?” Ruth said, her tone pinched. Her eyes had that wide
help me out
look.

“It’s this format or I’m out,” she said, surprising even herself. “Let’s stop informing our audience, Richard. They get information everywhere, the Internet, magazines, and their friends. Let’s educate. Let’s entertain. Let’s change lives. Let’s matter to the people of Dallas, in a way that isn’t just weather and traffic. Let’s make an impact.”

How about that for a fight!

But blank looks greeted her around the table.

Oh, what a mistake. What a giant, career-ending mistake. She looked over at Ruth, her friend with a drinking problem, and to her great surprise Ruth winked.

“Me too, Richard,” she said. “This is the show, or I’m out, too.” Slowly Richard pushed away from the table and stood.

“Then this is the format.” He looked around the room, at all the folks from PR and marketing, legal, and HR. “Let’s make it work.”

Richard left and everyone in the room filed out, people walking by Maddy and shaking her hand. Congratulations all the way around.

She accepted them all, feeling like she was floating three feet off the ground. It had worked. It had actually worked.

“You’ve got big giant brass balls,” Ruth said when the room was empty.

No
, Maddy thought,
I’m just looking for a reason to care. A reason to give a shit about my life
. Billy blew it apart when he came back and nothing was ever going to be the same, she couldn’t pretend that it would.

“Yours aren’t too shabby either,” she said.

“Let’s get to work,” Ruth said. “You want to contact Billy, or should I?”

“You.”

Ruth didn’t audibly sigh, but it was there just the same. “Maddy?”

She wanted to be oblivious to the concern, but she’d spilled the whole damn story yesterday, halfway through the third round of vodka sodas, so Ruth knew everything about her and Billy.

“Just … you talk to him.”

“You know you’re going to have to interview him, right? Talk to him for, like, an hour?”

“I know,” she said, and she also knew she had no idea how she was going to make it through that.

Sunday morning Billy
was putting syrup on Charlie’s toaster waffles when Victor called.

“You little minx,” Victor said. “Going behind my back to talk to Hornsby.”

Billy slapped the syrup top down with his palm before putting it in the fridge. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“Damn right you’re sorry. But Hornsby and the GM want to have a meeting with us.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you’re not dead yet.”

Billy watched Charlie eat the waffles, shoveling them in two pieces at a time, syrup running down his face. He bounced in his chair, more excited than anything to have another bite.

I used to feel that way about hockey
, he thought.
A million years ago. Before the scar. Before I was really any good at it, I just wanted to play. Just play
.

And he wanted a chance to play that way again. “Let me know, man. I’ll do whatever they want.”

“Billy? Billy Wilkins? Is that you?”

“It is. But there’s some other stuff going on you should probably know about.”

“What’s the story with
AM Dallas
?”

Ice settled over his body, the ice he was going to need to survive tomorrow morning.

“I tape the show on Monday.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Yep.”

“And Dom?”

“I’m going to talk to him tomorrow afternoon.”

“And what’s … ah … what’s happening with the kids?”

“We filed the paperwork on Friday,” he said, running his hand over Charlie’s hair. His pinky got caught in a giant clump of syrup. Billy was going to have to take this kid out back and hose him down. “We just need to wait and see.”

“You’ve been busy,” Victor said, recrimination in his voice.

“I know, man, and I’m sorry I didn’t call, but some of this stuff I had to handle on my own.”

“I understand. But from now on, let me do my job.”

“Happy to, Super-Agent Man.” They said goodbye and Billy hung up.

“Where’s Becky?” Charlie asked for about the hundredth time.

“She’s sleeping.” Billy had checked on her just a few minutes ago, half expecting to find an empty bed and a curtain fluttering in the breeze from an open window, but instead she was sprawled out over half the bed. Snoring.

The last five days had been like that. He didn’t want to think about how long it had been since she’d slept through the night.

And the thought that she was catching up on it here, under his roof, made him content.