“I’d like to review your questions before you leave. Make sure you’re asking the right ones. His fans want to know why he’s walking away from all this. There’s got to be a reason. Until now, he’s never given one. It’ll be your job to extract that reason from him and share it with the rest of America.” He hovered over me, speaking fast. Of all the interviews he’d booked for me, I’d never seen him so doubtful of my journalistic prowess until now. “Promise me you’re not going to back out of this.”
“You got your way, Harrison. I’m doing the interview. We don’t need to keep talking about it.” My words were bitter as I pulled my chair back up to my desk to turn my attention to my emails.
“You’re going to thank me someday.” He backed away, letting his hands fall to the sides of his tailored navy suit. Harrison always dressed for the job he wanted, and, in his case, he wanted to be a network executive so bad he could taste it.
The early afternoon sun passing through my office window set his sapphire eyes ablaze, and he wore the newly minted flints of salt and pepper on his temples well. It wasn’t fair how well men like him aged. He was a walking, talking, Ralph Lauren billboard complete with an old money pedigree and two Ivy League degrees adorning his office walls.
“See you at home,” I called after him, eyes still focused on my computer screen. I felt him watch me for a second before he left my office.
I shut my office door before pulling my phone out and calling my sister.
“Addison,” I breathed desperately into the phone the second she answered.
“What’s up?”
“I can’t do this.”
“Can’t do what?”
“Go back to Darlington.”
“Why would you be going back to Darlington?” I couldn’t see Addison, but I could sure as hell picture the scrunch-nosed face she was probably making. She hated going home just as much as I did.
“I have to interview him,” I said, attempting to swallow the balled lump of fear that had lodged itself in my throat the moment I booked my airline tickets. “Beau.”
Addison was quiet. Too quiet. “You said his name. I’m just shocked. You never say his name. You haven’t said his name in…”
“Ten years. You see why I can’t do this?”
“Coco.” Addison’s voice firmed up, and I could sense a speech coming on. “You remember what you told me a few years ago? After Kyle and I broke up? You told me I could do hard things. And you told me you would always have my back. Now it’s my turn to tell you. You can do hard things.”
I drew in a deep breath, summoning the inner strength that had gotten me through the greater part of my almost twenty-nine years. The mere mention of Beau had a tendency to dissolve it like rain on chalk.
My entire life had been hard. Hardness was nothing new. It had shaped and molded me into the woman I was destined to become. It tugged and gnawed and gnashed its teeth, nipping at my feet as I scaled mountains few people had the audacity to climb.
“You’ve interviewed plenty of famous people,” Addison said. “He’s just one more.”
It wasn’t that. His fame didn’t rattle me or intimidate me or make me place him on a pedestal of any sort. He was Beaumont Mason. My high school sweetheart. My first love. He’d been inside me in every sense of the word. My heart was permanently branded by the promises we’d made to each other when we were too young to know any better.
“You wouldn’t understand.” I shouldered my phone and gathered paperwork from my desk, organizing it into neat little stacks and darting pens back into the pen cup. Cluttered desks hindered my thought process.
“Try me,” Addison said.
I opened my mouth to speak, but the words got stuck. She didn’t know everything. She was a couple years younger than me – too young to remember how things with Beau and me went down in the end. And there were things she didn’t know. Things I’d sheltered her from. Things I neglected to mention to her because I couldn’t stomach the chance that she might look at me with anything other than pride. I never cared whether or not my mother was proud, but having a little sister who thought the world of me was something worth protecting. “I have to get back to work. I’m flying out tomorrow, so I guess I’ll get a hold of you when I get back.”
“I’m a phone call away if you need me.” Addison seemed to linger a bit, and I supposed she wasn’t used to me needing her. It had been the other way around our whole lives.
My fingers twitched as I ended the call.
Pull yourself together, Coco. Now.