Untamed: (Heath & Violet) (Beg For It) (30 page)

“Anyway, what I’m
trying to say is I’m proud of you for starting your own business.
And for getting so good at what you do.”

“Thanks.” I meant
it sincerely. And we had ourselves a brotherly moment. The first one
in our twenty-five years of being brothers. Not bad for a dinner at
the Harvard Club.

§

It was three days later
when I got the call. I’d been thinking it was about time to head
back up to Vermont. I knew the exposé wasn’t going to run. No new
promos had leaked, and the network hadn’t aired the old one again.
Even the most determined of paparazzi had to have gotten bored by
now. There had to be much more promising scandals afoot than boring
old me.

As for the good
townsfolk of Watson? I was ready to go back and face the music. They
might be pissed off, might give me some shit, but each day I was
feeling more confident. I was the simple man I’d represented to
them—and I was Heathcliff Kavanaugh surrounded by a crazy-ass
family. Maybe there’d be a few folks who’d be willing to try to
understand that I could be both at the same time?

My phone rang with a
number from L.A. Violet had the same area code. It wasn’t her
number, though. Thinking of Nelson’s directive—talk to no one—I
let it go through to voicemail.

Then I listened to the
message. It was Sam, Violet’s colleague who’d accompanied her on
location. I hadn’t had much to do with him. He’d struck me as
wily, always taking in more of whatever scene he was in than giving.

“Call me back,” he
urged in his message. “I need to talk to you about something. It’s
important.”

On impulse, and against
my better judgment, I did.

“I’m the one who
sold you out,” Sam blurted out right away. “Violet didn’t know
anything about it.” He explained that he was the one who’d
sniffed out my background and pitched the idea of the expose. He’d
given Violet the paperwork for me to sign off on. She’d had no
idea.

“Why should I trust
anything you say?” I had to ask.

“You shouldn’t,”
Sam agreed. “But I figure, why should the fucking Fame!
Network get to make all of us miserable? They fired
Violet. They screwed you over. Now that they can’t do the exposé
they’ve fired me, too. They don’t get to have all the fun.”

“They fired Violet?”

“Same day as the
pitch,” he confirmed. “She moved back with her mom in New
Jersey.”

New Jersey, huh? That
wasn’t far. Maybe I wasn’t headed back up to Vermont just yet
after all.

Violet

The thing about
Honeycomb cereal was you had to eat it at just the right moment. It
was an art and a science. Too soon and it tasted like little nuggets
of cardboard floating in milk. Too long and the whole thing became a
bowl of goop. Just right and you had yourself a whole bunch of honey
goodness, with the milk soaking up exactly the right amount of
sweetness and the cereal softened up just enough.

I sat on the couch in
my mom’s apartment watching and waiting for that moment. Just me, a
bowl of Honeycomb cereal, and the sweat suit I’d been wearing for
days on end.

“OK. Come on.” My
mom came into my room—aka her living room—and flicked on the
lights. I squinted up at her, blinking. So bright.

“Time to get up and
out!” she declared, opening a window next to me to let in a crack
of brisk, fresh air.

“What?”
Reluctantly, I set down my rapidly-transforming bowl of cereal. Not
yet, but close. My spoon still hovered at the ready.

“You’ve had enough
time on the couch.” Mom picked up a pillow next to me, plumped it
up, then put it back. “Come on with me now.” She extended her
hand.

“But wait! The
Honeycomb—”

“Nope.” My mother
shook her head, grasped my hand in hers and pried me away from my
treat. “That’s enough of that. I gave you ten days.”

“But, Mom!” Yes, my
voice did sound exactly like a whiney teenager’s. That’s what
happened when you moved back in with your mom, crashed on her couch
and ate breakfast cereal and Ben & Jerry’s for a week and a
half.

Slipping on sneakers
and tumbling after her out the door, I looked down and noticed my
sweatpants had a few stains. “Shouldn’t I change?”

“Yes,” my mom
agreed, not letting me head back inside. “You should.”

She drove me over to
her salon, the one I’d practically grown up in, watching her work
her magic. I’d moved away seven years ago when I was only 18 years
old, and I felt like I’d changed so much. But back home I
recognized almost every house and shop we passed. Everything looked
so much the same. My mom was even driving the same car, a beat-up
Honda Civic now with close to 200,000 miles on it.

“Still running.”
She patted the dashboard, maybe thanking it for getting her to work
that day.

“Look who’s here!”
the good ladies of The Beauty Mark sang out as I trailed after my mom
into the salon.

“My baby’s home!”
my mom declared, shining with pride over her hot mess of a daughter.
They cooed and clucked, circling around me and admiring my blond
tresses, my thin figure.

“Now, what you
wearing, Vi?” One of them finally got real, stepping slightly to
the side and gesturing to my neon melon-colored sweat suit with a
comb.

“It was on sale?” I
offered, wincing.

“Course it was on
sale!” she declared. “Who’s gonna buy that crap?”

“She did,” another
of them sang out, and everyone started laughing, myself included. And
maybe when I got home I’d need to burn the melon sweat suit.

“Vi, you come sit
here, baby girl.” Bess, a giant of a woman who’d known me since
the day I was born—she’d told me this any number of times—put
me in her chair. “I’ve known you since the day you were born,”
she told me yet again. “So I can look you in the eye and say you
need a little sprucing up.”

I saw myself in the
mirror and winced again. When was the last time I’d showered? I
couldn’t exactly remember. But Bess and the rest started taking
care of that, and I surrendered to the hustle and bustle, the gossip
and the laughter, joining in among the transformations happening all
around me.

“How’s Leo?” one
of mom’s weekly elderly customers asked me.

“He’s good,” I
answered. She was in her late 80s and the moment I’d moved to L.A.
she’d decided that I was dating Leonardo DiCaprio. I usually made
it home for the holidays and at first when I’d seen her I’d tried
to explain that not only was I not dating Leonardo DiCaprio, I’d
never met him. But my mom had finally told me to let it be. “She
likes the fantasy,” she explained to me.

“But who are you
really dating?” another of the women in the shop asked.

And you know what I
did? I was such a wreck, my eyes filled with tears.

“Oh, boy trouble.”
She nodded with understanding. “You have to kiss a lot of frogs
before you get your prince.”

“There’s a lot of
fish in the sea,” another offered.

“Don’t let them see
you sweat,” another advised. Pearls of wisdom swirled around me.

“There, now.” Bess
spun me around in my chair for my final reveal. She’d done a
fabulous job. I had cheerful, light waves of hair cascading around my
face in long, loose curls. “You’re a knockout!” she declared.
But then she did lean in and whisper, “Get rid of the sweat suit.”

“I will,” I
promised her, thanking her for her artistry, vowing to follow through
on her advice. They were right, all of them. There was a time for
sitting on the couch and contemplating Honeycomb. But that time was
over. I’d taken a punch to the jaw. A couple of them, really. But
now it was time to dust myself off and start all over again.

I hung out for the rest
of the afternoon while my mom worked, helping out as I could here and
there, working the register, sweeping the cuttings. It was
therapeutic, returning to my roots. I’d headed to the shop almost
every day after school growing up, doing homework in the back,
listening to the gossip, fetching coffee and treats on request,
straightening and tidying and checking inventory.

“You want a streak?”
Mom asked me as she was painting some blue into a woman’s hair.

“I’m good,” I
smiled. Maybe another day. But today I had plans. I’d start
thinking about next steps. I didn’t know what they were, exactly,
but I knew some people in New York. Maybe it was time to start
reaching out, see about arranging a meeting or two. Blue hair could
wait until after I’d found my next job.

“I’ll be done in a
half hour,” Mom assured me.

I wondered what Heath
would think of it all. I’d been around enough high-end L.A. glitz
and glam to see my mom and her salon with different eyes than I had
growing up. This wasn’t a high-end shop. Her clients were single
moms living paycheck to paycheck and taking a much-needed breather to
focus on themselves for a change, or older women on a fixed income
coming in for the social connections even more than the hair. Now
that I knew Heath’s roots, I wondered. Would he look down on it
all? Would it look cheap to him, the faded sign out front or the
slightly chipped flooring that needed to be replaced?

What would he think of
my mom? I watched her work and as always, I was struck with how
pretty she was, slim in her tight jeans and tasseled high-heeled
boots. But she was Jersey through and through, complete with big, big
hair like it was still 1985. It had embarrassed the hell out of me
when I was a teenager. I’d tried to talk her out of it, but she’d
just snapped her gum and told me to mind my own business. She was an
unabashed 80s girl and I could just deal with it. Would Heath turn
his nose up? Think she was low class?

Well, no point in
wondering about all that. He’d never meet her or step foot in this
salon, anyway.

“Let’s go grab a
slice!” Mom finally declared an hour and a half later. I was used
to salon time, where a half hour meant three times that. She’d
always take a walk-in, always fill in for a stylist if she had to cut
out early because her kid got sick in daycare. I linked my arm in
hers, and we set off down the sidewalk to go get some real East Coast
pizza.

“You wouldn’t
believe what they try to pass off as pizza in California,” I told
her, making her laugh over all the gluten-free, dairy-free variations
I’d been subjected to.

“Good to see a smile
on your face, bunny.” She reached over and lovingly touched a
strand of my newly-golden locks.

“Thanks for letting
me crash with you, Mom.” My damn eyes teared up again. There must
be something wrong with them. “I promise, it won’t be forever.
I’m going to figure out my next steps.”

“You take as long as
you want.” She gave my arm a squeeze, and I had to wipe my eyes a
little.

“I know I’m kind of
a mess,” I confessed. “I thought I had everything together. And
then it just all fell apart.”

“That happens
sometimes. Ooh, that’s cute.” She pointed to a studded jean
jacket displayed in a store window. “It would look even better with
Whitesnake embroidered across the back.” She gave me a wink.

She cracked me up.

“Seriously, though,
Vi. I’ve been watching you these past few years, off in L.A.
jet-setting, power-lunching, climbing up the corporate ladder. You’ve
put a lot of pressure on yourself.”

I nodded. I didn’t
know if I’d put it exactly in those terms, but I definitely agreed
about the pressure part. That’s what had felt so great about the
weeks in Vermont. It was like all the pressure had just evaporated
and I could breathe again. Well, that was one of the things that had
been so great about my time in Vermont. Also, the orgasms.

“You’ve spent a lot
of time being successful. Now maybe you can spend some time being
happy?”

I followed her into the
pizza place, thinking my mom was both a tough and a smart cookie.

§

Be happy. Be happy. The
words repeated in my head as my feet met the pavement. I’d laced up
and headed to Palisades Park for a run. We were having unseasonably
warm winter weather.

Breathing in the
sunshine, I picked up the pace. I hadn’t gone for a run in ages.
Back in L.A. I’d adhered to a strict exercise regimen, but never
anything so mundane as going for a jog. Typically, I joined in
whatever craze had taken the city by storm. It kept things fresh and
interesting, plus it always gave me something to talk about. Everyone
in L.A. was trying a new diet or excited about the latest fitness
trend. I’d tried classes with stripper poles, weighted ropes and
ballet bars. I’d devoted hours to the next big thing like Beat
(drumsticks + pilates + isometrics) or Monkey Jam (parcour + capoeira
+ breakdancing).

But right then, I had
to say, nothing beat a run. Just my sneakers and me, forging a path
alongside the Hudson River. This was what I needed to do. I needed to
strip away the gimmicks, the distractions, and figure out what I
really wanted to do with my life. Where did I want to head next?

Straight into Heath’s
arms, of course. I missed him like I had a hole in my chest. I woke
up at night shivering, missing his touch. I couldn’t even count the
number of times each day something made me think of him. “I’ve
got to show that to Heath!” I’d think, then remember. There would
be no more showing things to Heath, no more talking and laughing and
kissing.

It fucking sucked, and
some days I thought about trying to get in touch with him again.
Maybe as time passed he was feeling less angry? I sure was. I’d
yelled my head off when I’d last seen him, accusing him of lying
and tricking people. I’d called him names. I at least wanted to
apologize for that. I’d been wounded and frightened and I’d
lashed out, but when I really thought about it, he hadn’t lied.
He’d never told me things that weren’t true about his past. He
simply hadn’t talked about it.