Page 69 of Anger Bang
Yep. That cracking sound wasn’t a cameraperson getting closer—it was the sound of Thea’s brain breaking. “So this wedding is agoodthing?”
“It’s the biggest mistake of my life,” Jackie wailed. She gathered up her billowing skirt and started marching back and forth in front of Thea. “I’ve loved Dex since we worked onLaguna Beach Hightogether. We started dating, and my agent told me that if I didn’t want to lose my role, I had to focus only on the show. She said the producers were concerned that I wasn’t working out.” She paused long enough to wipe her teary snot from the tip of her now very red nose with a lace handkerchief she’d pulled out of another pocket in the never-ending skirt, then went back to pacing.
She had the pinched and pained expression that was a mix of bittersweet agony and self-directed thunderous rage. “I lost the love of my life because of a show that didn’t make it past the first season. So when the publicist suggested this wedding as a way to get ratings up forStarship 3000, and then Dex mentioned it might help get the indie movie he just wrapped a distribution deal, I jumped at the chance.”
She stopped and turned to Thea. Her eyes were wide and red-rimmed, but there was a hope there, just a tiny little shadow hidden in her eyes, that maybe somehow everything could work out. “Sure, I told myself it was for the show and so Dex and I could keep our jobs, but really, it was because this was the only way I thought he’d ever look at me again like he used to, like he loved me—even if it was only for the cameras. And you? I never wanted you to have to deal with all of this again, but the second the producers found out I didn’t want you to have to do it, they insisted. God, I’m such a selfish bitch.”
Thea threw her arms around Jackie’s shoulders and squeezed her tight, eye-jabbing sleeves be damned. “You’re not.”
Jackie scoffed. “Oh, I am. I know this.” She pulled back and then sat down on the ground, pulling her knees up to her chest, which left only her eyes visible thanks to that obnoxiously large skirt. “What I hadn’t known when I agreed to do this is that to make this wedding happen, I’d have to bring the big bridezilla drama. I couldn’t just be the bride, I had to be the bitchiest bride to have ever emerged from bridezilla hell.”
More tears spilled over as Jackie sucked in a breath as if to steady her nerves. “Yeah, everyone would talk shit about me, but they would watch. You’d have to give up your anonymity, but I told myself that it wouldn’t be that bad. You’d avoid the cameras. No one you work with at your job would watch some trashy reality show, so it wouldn’t negatively impact your career. Plus, I told myself thatStarship 3000would gain an audience, the movie would get picked up, and I’d be married to Dex, so it was okay.” She didn’t say anything for a moment, but her shoulders shook as she cried silently.
Then, with the kind of willpower it took to keep going even when you were perfectly manicured eyebrows deep in a world of shit of your own making, she pulled it together. Looking up at Thea, she said with a heavy certainty in her tone, “Now I’ve fucked over you, because there’s no way the people you work with haven’t seen at least one post about you being here, and I’ve fucked over Dex by marrying him when he doesn’t want to be married to me—not really. You see, I reallyama selfish bitch.”
Thea used her foot to nudge away a pile of pine cones and sat down beside her sister. “Jackie, you were put in an untenable position.”
“No, I put myself there,” she said, laying her head on her sister’s shoulder. “I’ve fucked it all up for myself, but it doesn’t have to be that way for you. Promise me you won’t follow my example. I’ve seen how happy you are with Kade. The whole world has seen it! But you’re too worried about everything to make your move with him.”
If only it were that simple. She’d made moves. He’d made moves. They’d made moves together. And that’s what had fucked everything. If she’d just been her usual self and had fawned about her sister’s now-understandable attitude, then she never would have gone over to him. She never would have asked him if he wanted to go have an anger bang. Then she wouldn’t have started falling for him, and her heart wouldn’t be a broken fucking mess.
“It’s not that simple,” she said, her voice barely loud enough to be heard over the din of the speed metal coming from Jackie’s phone.
“You are so full of shit,” her sister said with a snort. “It’s totally obvious that you’re head over heels for him, and yet you run for the hills?”
Thea collapsed back onto the grass with a defeated sigh. There was a pine cone sticking its little points into her left shoulder blade, but it wasn’t anything compared to the pain coming from her chest whenever she thought of Kade.
The mental image of his crooked smile was a shiv to the aorta. Her right ventricle ripped a little more each time she remembered the shiver of anticipation that went through her whenever she spotted him. Her left ventricle cramped at the ghost feeling of his touch or the phantom sound of his voice when he whispered in her ear or the stupid belief she couldn’t quite completely shake that there was something between them. She should know better. There was no fawn or fight or freeze or flight for this. There was only accepting the absolute jagged knife to the superior vena cava that was the reality that he didn’t give two shits about her.
He’d said so himself.
“He told his mom that I was just something to fill the time while he was here,” she said, her voice wavering as she did her best to hold her shit together when it felt like it was all crashing around her. “He said that he wouldn’t even remember my name in a few months.”
Jackie sighed and laid down in a wave of white satin and ivory lace next to Thea in the grass. She reached out and wrapped her pinkie finger around Thea’s, giving it a quick squeeze as they both looked up at the clouds. Despite everything, Thea’s pulse slowed and the weight pressing against her chest lifted a little, letting her fill her lungs with a deep breath. When was the last time they’d done this? Just sat together and allowed themselves to be there for each other? So long that Thea didn’t remember.
She may have thought she was always fawning with her sister, giving in, letting her roll over her, but in truth, it had been all flight. She’d run away from her years ago, way before she’d left for college, by othering Jackie, giving her the role of the always-on diva to play and never letting that change no matter how much they grew and matured as people. Thea finally exhaled, letting go of that typecast view of her sister, and squeezed her sister’s pinkie finger back.
On Jackie’s phone, the band switched to a song about recycling, which was very much not what Thea had expected. They were halfway through the chorus when Jackie spoke up.
“I’ve been around Kade for years, ever since I met Dex,” she said. “He’s a giant pain in the ass, and he has the absolute worst taste in soda, but he’s never looked at anyone the way he looks at you. He barely speaks to anyone besides Dex, but you? He can’t talk to you enough. And going by the amount of time you two have spent together thinking that cameras weren’t around, which they always are—why does no one listen to me about that—he doesn’t want to do anything but spend as much time as possible with you. Kade St. James isn’t a man having a fling. He’s a man rushing headfirst into the brick wall of love.”
Thea kept her gaze firmly on the cloud in the shape of a dick with three balls, because if she didn’t, she would cry, and if she started she wasn’t sure she could stop.
“I don’t even know where he lives,” she said after a minute of trying not to let the seed of hope in her chest grow into anything. “I don’t know how he likes his eggs or if he is one of those monsters who puts the toilet paper on so it rolls under instead of over.”
“Does any of that matter? Would it change how you feel about him?”
Thea didn’t even have to think about it. “No.”
“Then don’t make the same mistake I did.” Jackie sat up and dragged Thea into a sitting position, too, so they were eye to eye. “Be honest with Kade and tell him how you feel. Fight for what you want. You owe yourself that.”
“And what do you owe yourself?” Thea asked, desperately looking for a way to divert this conversation from Kade so that her whole chest would stop feeling like it was being pried open.
Jackie narrowed her eyes at her sister. “We’re talking about you here.”
Thea knew they absolutely were notonlytalking about her, but sometimes fawning was the best option when it came to waiting until her sister was ready to talk about the really important stuff.
“So what’s with the music?” Thea asked.
