“Good to know you listened. And you can listen to me now again.”
“Please, Gran.” I sigh. “I’m not in the mood right now.” I flop back against the sofa, covering my face with my hands. “And you don’t know the full story, so you can’t pass comment on it.”
“Charly told me.”
I drop my hands from my face and sit up. “She told you what?” I ask carefully.
“Everything. About her marrying that gay Canadian friend of hers to get him a green card.”
She told my gran.
“Gran, you can’t tell anyone. It would get her in serious trouble if the authorities found out. She’d go to jail.”
“Good Lord, boy, I’m not dumb. Of course I know she’d go to jail. You, on the other hand, are looking pretty dumb to me right now.”
“Jesus, Gran. Kick a guy while he’s down, why don’t you?”
Even though she’s not wrong. I do look like a dumb fuck. First, Piper and Cain. Now, Charly.
“Do you know what your problem is, Vaughn?”
“No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
“You care too much about what people think of you. You never used to, but when you got out there in Hollywood, it changed you.”
“Of course I care what people think about me. My career depends on it. And, right now, I look like a fucking idiot—yet again. It’ll probably be inscribed on my headstone—Vaughn West, Dumb Fuck Who Didn’t Know His Best Friend Was Screwing His Girlfriend Behind His Back for Months. And the Next Girl He Met and Fell for Turned Out to Be Fucking Married.”
“That kind of wordage would be expensive on a headstone, Vaughn. And I don’t think they allow curse words either.”
I give her a droll look. “Then, I’ll ask them to use an asterisk in fuck.”
“God, you’re dramatic.” She laughs. “So, the world thinks Charly cheated on you? Big deal.”
“I look stupid.”
“You don’t look stupid. People, if anything, feel sorry for you.”
“I do look stupid,” I argue. “And this could affect my career in a negative way. The stuff with Piper and Cain was bad enough, but at least I was the victim in it. In this, I look like the wife-stealer.”
“Good Lord, Vaughn. Who cares what people think? Did you know that Eddie Fisher left Debbie Reynolds, his wife and the mother of his child, for Elizabeth Taylor, his wife’s close friend? He married her the same year he divorced Debbie. Do you think that did any harm to their careers? No. People love scandal. That didn’t do Eddie’s or Liz’s careers any harm.”
“Things are different nowadays, Gran.”
“No, they’re not. There might be all this social media now, but it’s just a different century with the same kind of people with the same opinions. And opinions are like assholes, Vaughn. Everyone has one, and everyone knows one. Stop caring what everyone else thinks, and think about what you want.”
“I don’t know if I can trust her,” I tell her honestly.
“Relationships don’t work without trust.”
“I know,” I sigh. “That’s why I let her go.”
“I guess you’ve got to think about if you’ll look back at this and think you made the right decision by letting her go. Or if you’ll look back and regret it.”
“Do you have any regrets?” I ask her.
“None. Because every decision I ever made brought me to where I am now, and I’ve had a damn good life.”
“You’ve still got a good life,” I remind her.
“I don’t have regrets, but I did have a choice to make a long time ago. And the one thing I do wish is that I hadn’t taken so long to make it.”
“But you made the right choice.”
She looks at me and smiles with a softness in her expression that I rarely see on my Gran’s face. “I made the best choice. Remember, you only get one shot at this life, Vaughn, so you gotta grab it by the balls and make the most of it.”
Hearing my gran say balls makes me chuckle. And also reminds me of Charly and the first time we met.
Pins.
My Pins.
I rub my hands over my face.
Is my problem that I don’t think I can trust her? Or is it about caring what everyone will think of me if I stay with her?
And I know it’s the latter.
I’ve been letting my head…my ego…rule my heart.
I look at Gran. “You’re right. I do care too much about what people think.”
“The wrong people,” she says.
And she’s right.
When the only person I should be caring about is Charly. What she thinks of me.