Here Without You

Girl on the right isn’t about to drop this opportunity. ‘Was he really Reid Alexander?’

Before I can say a word, Claudia hoots a laugh. ‘Are you guys high right now? Reid Alexander, on campus, and no one noticed? Give me a break.’

Their faces fall. ‘Oh.’

Then left side girl rallies. ‘Then that guy – he’s goes here? To Cal?’

I shake my head once. ‘No, he doesn’t. He was just visiting.’

‘Aww,’ they say in unison, dismayed, and my scowl narrows on them.

‘And he’s my boyfriend.’ Whoa. Where did that tone come from?

Unbothered by any sense of diplomacy, left side girl snorts. ‘He is?’

Her friend tries to save face – by saying the most awkward thing possible. ‘Well, congratulations – I mean – he looks just like Reid Alexander, so obviously he’s hot. Aheh.’

‘Uh. Thanks?’

After they scuttle away, I say, ‘That was weird.’

I feel Claudia’s eyes on me. ‘So you’re dating Reid Alexander?’

I look into her dark eyes, and my lips part, but no sound emerges. I can’t think of a single thing to say.

‘Has anyone ever told you that you do not have a poker face?’

Lips twisting, I admit, ‘Yeah, I may have heard that one a time or two.’

She angles her head and smiles. ‘You’re the Habitat girl, aren’t you? From last summer.’

Oh, yay. I’d escaped two zealous Reid Alexander groupies, only to find out I’m in a study group with the most dangerous of them all. ‘And you’re … a Reid Alexander fan?’

‘Hell, no. My little sisters are. They’re rabid about him. He seems like a pretentious, untalented asshole to me.’

I blink.

‘Note I said seems. I haven’t actually seen any of his films. And he can’t be a total lost cause if he’s dating you. I think. Unless you care to refute that?’

‘Which part?’

She shrugs. ‘Any of it. I’m open-minded. Sort of.’

I laugh softly as our classmates finally walk up, shivering in their jackets.

‘Oh. My. Holy. Fucking. Hell,’ Raul says. ‘Can we please go inside to do this?’

‘A man after my own heart,’ Claudia says, bounding from the bench as though released from a spell and walking resolutely in the direction of the library. ‘Brr! Dayum. I never thought I’d say this … but I miss San Diego.’ Turning and pointing a finger, she adds, ‘You guys did not hear me say that.’

Afton mimes locking her lips and tossing an invisible key over her shoulder. ‘We all wanted to get the hell outta somewhere, dude,’ she says. ‘But some stuff we take for granted about home just isn’t better elsewhere.’

Claudia leans closer as we head towards the library. ‘Psychology majors, Jesus. And did she just call me dude? That’s so not going to endear her to me anytime soon – I don’t care how cute her butt is in those jeans. Although she does have a valid point about home and elsewhere. So … About the pretty boy –?’

I smile and meet her eyes. ‘He’s not a lost cause.’

She returns my smile. ‘Good enough for me.’

I have Reid’s fan sites bookmarked, so I can watch him from a distance, like everyone else has to. My annoyance is increasing, especially when sites claim ‘proof’ that he’s hooking up with random starlets or singers he stands next to at some event. Or a commenting fan proclaims her undying love and desire to have his babies. Or someone is trying to figure out who I am and where I’m from and why in the world Reid Alexander would even bother with me.

Looking at these pages feels a little stalkerish too. On the other hand, this is no different than going to friends’ Facebook profiles and browsing through photos of them living their lives apart from me. Curiosity is a compelling thing. Where Reid is concerned, I’ve been curious from the moment he called me a hypocrite for deeming him hopeless, days after we met.

With his mother beside him on the red carpet at his premiere, it’s a no-brainer where Reid gets his looks. Their colouring is exactly the same, as well as their features – with the exception of the angled jaw bestowed by his father. Lucy Alexander is stunning and elegant, her pride in her son evident in the way she watches him while he signs autographs and leans in to take photos with the beside-themselves fans pressing against the velvet rope.

When I came up with the idea of inviting his mother as his plus-one, I had a good feeling about it. He was unconvinced that she’d want to go, so I told him the only way he’d know was to ask.

‘You’d have thought I just handed her an Oscar,’ he said later, filling me in on their conversation. ‘First, she gasped and teared up, and I was thinking, Oh, great, I’ve upset her. And then she said, ‘Don’t you want to take Dori?’ So I told her you couldn’t get away that night. She stepped forward and hugged me, which she hasn’t done in – I don’t know – it feels like years, and then she said she’d love to go.’

‘I told you so,’ I sing-songed, and he laughed.

‘You just live for the times you’re able to say that, don’t you?’

‘Yeah, and lucky for me – with you, I get to say it a lot.’

‘Haha. Very funny, Miss Cantrell. I’ll have to try to hand out those little treats more sparingly. I don’t want you to get spoiled.’

‘Oh, so now you can control the frequency of your wrongness?’ I scoffed, trying not to giggle. ‘How will you do that?’

‘Well, I appear to have two choices. I can either be right more often – stop laughing – or I can stop saying things that turn out to be wrong. Hmm. This is a tough decision.’

REID

Me: We need to discuss something. In person. Important.

Dad: I’ll be home tonight by 8. Will that work for you?

Me: Yes. I’ll meet you in your study. I leave for the NYC debut tomorrow morning.

Dad is still dressed for work, with the exception of the suit jacket hanging on the peg and padded hanger he had installed for that purpose near the open door. His cufflinks are in a small glass bowl he purchased for the express function of holding cufflinks, his red-patterned tie remains knotted, but loose, and his shirtsleeves are rolled to mid-forearm.

I knock my knuckles twice to announce my presence, and his eyes snap up from the paperwork he’s scanning.

He pushes it aside and collects a pad and pen. ‘Reid. Come in.’ After I take a deep breath and sit, he says, ‘All right, what’s going on?’

Every carefully premeditated introduction to the grenade I’m about to toss into the room has flown out of my brain. Entire perfectly crafted explanations are just gone. I’m thinking in words, like a toddler. Or Tarzan. Me father. You grandfather. HELP.

I look him in the eye and he’s frowning, waiting for me to state my business. I haven’t been scared of my father since I was ten. Intimidated? Yes. Demeaned? Yes. Afraid? No.

Is this what his clients feel like, sitting across the desk from him?

And that’s when it hits me. No, this isn’t what it feels like to be his client. He doesn’t frown at his clients. He may wear a veneer of concern. He may even be concerned. But the face I’m seeing – the eyes I’m looking into now – he’s alarmed. Apprehensive. Worried.

His clients don’t get that puckered-brow expression. My mother does. And I do.

I rub my clammy palms against my jeans. ‘I have a problem, and I need your advice. Your legal advice.’

He takes a breath through his nose and his brow clears, the slightest bit. He’s still on alert, but he knows this crisis is in his territory – whatever it is – and I’ve brought it to him before someone else did. That’s possibly unprecedented.

‘I’m listening,’ he says.

I take another deep breath. ‘You remember Brooke?’

He grimaces. ‘Brooke Cameron?’ I nod, and he answers, ‘Yes, I remember her.’

Grenade time. ‘After we broke up …’ Pull the pin. Toss. ‘She found out she was pregnant.’

I expect him to speak, start sputtering or roaring, something. Eyes drilling into mine, he goes a little pale around the edges, but he holds his fire. He recognizes that there’s some reason I’ve brought this to him, and I haven’t voiced it yet. He hasn’t scribbled so much as a stroke on that pad.

Swallowing, I continue. ‘She had the baby, and gave it up for adoption. A few weeks ago, she hired a PI to look for him. She found him – in foster care. And now … She wants to adopt him. She wants me to sign relinquishment papers. I want to make sure I’m not missing something before I do it.’

He begins to write on the pad, and I sit, waiting.

Several minutes later, he begins to fire questions at me, one after the other. After each one, there’s a prolonged pause as he logs my answer.

‘Did she tell you she was pregnant at the time?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did she tell you she was giving the child up for adoption?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you sign anything – anything at all – taking responsibility for the pregnancy?’

‘No.’

‘No paternity test either, I assume.’

‘No.’

‘So you might not be the biological father.’

‘I’m the father.’

‘Reid, if there’s no proof –’

‘I’m the father.’

He scratches something on to the pad, and mumbles, ‘We’ll revisit that one later. Do you know if your name is on the birth certificate as his father?’

‘No – Brooke says she left it as unknown.’

He shakes his head a bit, exasperated. ‘Then how does she now all of a sudden know it’s yours?’

‘She always knew. I … I hurt her.’ He flinches and I throw my hands up. ‘Not physically. Jesus, Dad, don’t you know me at all?’

‘Sorry,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘Hazard of the profession – literal thinking. Carry on.’

‘We had an argument that turned into a screaming match. I thought she was cheating, and she was so indignant that she let me think it. Instead of talking about it or even arguing more, I just started going out. Publicly. With lots of girls. I didn’t call her. She didn’t call me. Until she found out she was pregnant … God, I don’t even know what I said to her – but I made it clear that I didn’t care. So she made her own decisions. I had nothing to do with them. I didn’t know until a few weeks ago that he was mine.’

‘A few weeks – Reid, why do you wait to tell me things?’ He closes his eyes and huffs a breath. ‘And how do you know he’s yours? Because she says so?’

‘She’s not lying –’

His placating lawyer-face sliding into place, he says, ‘Even if she’s not lying, per se, that doesn’t mean she’s right. She may wish it was yours –’