People like him know my real name. It’s written all over the paperwork. Jonathan Elliot Cunningham. I never legally changed it. But I’m always Johnny Cunning to them.
I shake his hand this time and we get down to business.
X-Rays. Examinations.
I mourn a bit when they cut the cast from my wrist, the saw slicing right through the spot where Kennedy signed it, annihilating her words.
“How does your wrist feel?” the doctor asks.
“Like shit,” I admit as I bend it. Looks like shit, too. “It's stiff. Feels weak, like it might snap in half.”
“I assure you that won’t happen. It will ache for awhile, but I can prescribe—”
“No.”
“Okay.” The doctor laughs awkwardly. “Otherwise, it’s healed nicely. No new damage. Must not have been a strong punch you threw.”
Cliff, sitting in the corner of the office, shakes his head. “Just strong enough to make my life a nightmare.”
The doctor finds that hilarious.
“So that’s it?” I ask, flexing my fingers.
“I’m going to give you a brace. Wear it for a few weeks, until you get some strength back. But it can be removed as needed, so there’s no reason you can’t get back to things. Just no stunts.”
“No punching, either,” Cliff chimes in.
“No punching,” the doctor agrees. “Take it easy until your strength comes back.”
The doctor slips a black brace on my wrist, tightening it so it fits snug, and then we’re gone.
“The studio will be happy,” Cliff says as we pull away from the medical center in the car. “I’m going to make some calls, get things rolling tonight so you can get back to filming.”
“What about Serena?”
“We’ll give her a few days,” he says. “Let her recuperate before pulling her onto set.”
“She needs longer than a few days,” I say. “She’s a mess.”
“I’m well-aware,” he says. “I just had her sent to rehab. I’ll send her again as soon as production wraps.”
He says that so matter-of-fact.
Like that’s just that.
“Do you even care?” I ask.
He cuts his eyes at me.
I touched a nerve with that.
“You’re the last person that ought to be talking,” he says. “You were living with your little runaway girlfriend and stealing from people when I signed you, and look at you now. So, do I care? Of course. But careers don't just happen. I have a job to do.”
I don’t know how to respond to that, wanting to refute it, but I can’t. So I sit in silence as he drives, realizing something is off after a few minutes in traffic.
“You’re going the wrong way,” I say. “You’re heading into Midtown.”
“I’m dropping you off at a hotel. I need to take care of things.”
“Well, I need to get back home.”
He swings the car up to the St. Regis hotel before looking at me. “Home? Where’s that? LA? That’s where your house is, isn’t it?”
“You know what I meant.”
“That apartment will still be there whenever you make it back,” he says. “So will the people who live in it. But this movie has been delayed for weeks because of you, so I need a few hours, okay? Just a few hours of your time so I can get your career moving along. Is that too much to ask for?”
“Fine, okay,” I say, getting out of the car. “Do whatever you need to do.”
He drives away before I even make it into the building.
I check in, not bothering to use an alias. It’s already late afternoon, working its way into early evening. I don’t go upstairs. I don’t have any luggage to drop off, so I pocket the keycard and walk out.
It’s New York City. You can get anything here. But yet I can never seem to find what I’m looking for, lost in the chaos. It takes almost an hour to find a phone charger. I grab some takeout afterward, since I haven’t eaten, and make it to the room at a quarter past five.
I plug my phone in and eat half a sandwich before the screen lights up. At once, notifications flood in, ping after ping after ping.
The first thing I see is a string of messages from Kennedy.
I’ve only been at work for ten minutes and this day is already a disaster.
How much of an a-hole would it make a person if they quit two days into a two-week notice?
Can you pick Maddie up from school? I have to work a double.
Ugh, are you napping?
Never mind.
Fuck this.
That last one came two-and-a-half hours ago. A ‘fuck’ from Kennedy is never good.
Tossing down the other half of my sandwich, my appetite gone, I send a reply, because she probably thinks I’m ignoring her.
Sorry, something came up. Phone was dead. Just got all your texts. Everything okay?
The reply bubble pops up right away, but it disappears again, over and over for damn near five minutes before a message comes through.
Define ‘okay’.
She’s using my words. That tells me all I need to know, but I answer anyway, giving her back her own definition. Nobody got punched and nobody cried.
Everything’s fine.
It’s clearly not, though, so I hit the button to send her a request to FaceTime, because the texting shit isn’t cutting it. I want to look at her.
She doesn’t accept right away. It feels like it rings forever before she picks up, her face popping up on the screen—surrounded by sheets, and blankets, and pillows.
“You’re in bed?” I ask, confused. “I thought you were working a double.”
“I quit.”
“Oh wow.”
“Yeah,” she mumbles, staring at me from the screen. Even through the phone, the look she gives is piercing. “Seems I’m not the only one currently in a bedroom.”
“Hotel room, technically.”
“Looks like a fancy one. What’s the occasion?”
“Had a doctor’s appointment.” I hold my wrist up so she can see it. “I graduated to a brace.”
“Well, good for you,” she says, pausing before adding, “I know that sounded sarcastic, but I mean it. Good for you.”
“Thanks.” I lower my arm. “So, everything’s okay?”
“Everything’s fine.”
“It doesn’t seem that way.”
It feels awkward right now, like something is being wedged between us, slowly pushing her away from me when I’ve been desperate to find a way to bring her closer.
“Just having one of those days,” she says.
“The kind where you want a drink?”
“More like the kind where I question everything.”
“Let me guess—you quit your job only to come home to me gone, which freaked you out, because you don’t like the idea of depending on anyone, much less someone so goddamn unreliable?”
“That’s a pretty good guess.”
“I thought so, too.”
“I just think maybe we should’ve started smaller. Give you a cactus to take care of first.”
I laugh. “Jack would’ve appreciated that. He told me to buy a plant.”
“Jack’s your sponsor, right?”
“Right.”
“Did you meet him in a meeting?”
“No, I met him back in rehab. We had these group sessions, and he’d always call me out on some bullshit and get yelled at for disrupting the environment. I was struggling after I got out, and I looked him up. He reminded me of you.”
She looks surprised. “Me?”
“Yeah, he didn’t hold back with me like everyone else. I still sometimes feel like I’m stuck back in Fulton Edge, surrounded by all these fake smiles, all these perfect people in this perfect fucking world. But Jack doesn’t pretend. You never did, either.”
“I’m liking the sound of this guy. Is he handsome?”
“He’s not your type.”
“How do you know?”
“He looks nothing like me.”
She makes a face. “Who says I like you?”