Page 133 of When We Had Forever
“Okay. But why this one? Didn’t you once tell me that Nicolas Cage looks like a basset hound?”
“Yes. Because he does. But read the back. It’s about two people having lots of sex. In Greece. Basically the exact thing you’ll be doing by this time next week.”
I give the synopsis a skeptical once-over. “You realize this is a war movie, right?”
“Oh,” she says. “Hmm. I guess we can skip to the naked parts, then.”
I snicker. “Works for me.”
Ten minutes later, we’ve established that I definitely do not own a DVD player and are in the midst of googling which streaming service to use when my phone rings. A picture of my mother on a long-ago trip to Idaho flashes on the caller ID.
“Hold on.” I hand the TV remote to Kate. “Hello?”
“Mina?” My mother sounds breathless.
“Hey, Mom. What’s up? Are you okay?”
“Yes, sweetie, I’m fine. I just wanted to know if you’d seen it yet.”
I frown. “Seen what?”
“That Grayson of yours. On TV.”
Grayson. His name lands like a blow to the chest. Kate must notice, because she pauses her scrolling and mouths,What?
I wave away her question and hunker into the couch. “Mom, what’re you talking about?”
“Grayson. He’s on TV. Dad was playing around with the Netflix, and—”
“Just Netflix, Mom. ‘Dad was playing around with Netflix.’ It sounds weird when you put an article in front of it.” I wince when I hear myself. Jesus. Talk about stalling.
She makes an exasperated shut-up-now-dear noise. “Fine. Dad was playing around withNetflix, and we saw a picture of Michael. So we clicked on it, but it was that Grayson of yours. Doing an interview.”
A distant part of me registers surprise. Grayson may have had his stint on TV, but doesn’t do interviews. He’s friendly enough to starstruck girls outside coffee shops, but he doesn’t volunteer anything he doesn’t have to. “Please don’t call him that. He’s not mine. In any sense of the word. And who cares if he was on TV again? You already knew he was famous. It’s nothing new.”
Her voice softens. “No, but I think you should watch this. It’s about you.”
Everything drains away, leaving me with a head full of silver static. “What?”
“It’s about you,” she repeats, her patience infinite. “The whole interview. He didn’t say your name, but...Iknew who he meant.”
I glance over at Kate, who’s graduated to frowning with her whole body. She holds up her hands in aWTF?gesture.
“Just watch it, sweetheart,” my mother says. “It’s some show calledCelebrity Confessions.”
“Okay. I’ll think about it,” I hear myself say.
The moment we hang up, I ask Kate if she has any idea what my mother’s talking about.
“Celebrity Confessions?”Her nose wrinkles. “Ew. No. That show’s so trashy.”
“No kidding. Did you have any idea Grayson even went on it?”
“None. I’ve been ignoring him. Like you.”
I chew on my lip. I haven’t been ignoring him, exactly. Just trying to move past this, the way he wanted.
“But do you...maybe...want to watch it?” She sounds cautious.
