Page 71 of Anger Bang
Her mom waved a hand at her dismissively. “You say that like you never even wanted to act.”
“I didn’t.” It had always been her mom’s dream, never hers.
“That’s not right. It was your idea.” Her mom stopped straightening the fashion magazines on the coffee table, planted her hands on her hips, and cocked her head to the side as if she was really confused. “You came home with that flyer from the national casting call and said you would do extra chores if I just signed the permission form. You loved acting.”
“No.” Thea shook her head, her gut twisting as she pushed through the uncomfortableness of not just nodding along with her mom to end the discussion and instead telling her the truth. “I wanted to win the VIP behind-the-scenes all-access pass to theJurassic Parkset they were giving to one person picked at random.”
Her mom blinked several times before her gaze dropped to the floor and her shoulders slumped.
“But you sang the song about the hot dog,” she said, her tone so soft and sad that no one who’d ever tried to negotiate a contract with the momager from hell, as she was known, would have believed it. “You got the part. You danced all the way back to the car.”
Thea gulped and pressed forward. “Only because I saw how excited you were and how happy it made you.”
Her mom had been beyond thrilled. The way she’d looked at Thea? As if she was the rising sun? Nothing had ever felt like that before—or after.
“I don’t believe it,” her mom said as she sank down so she was sitting perched on the edge of the oval coffee table. “You would have said something. You would have told me—just like you did when you decided you were done with acting.”
As if that was even close to the truth. All the old insecurities and anxiety zapped her like the burning zing of bacon grease popping up out of the pan and landing on her exposed skin.
“Mom, the offers stopped coming in,” Thea said, holding on to that burning feeling, needing to let it blaze inside her so she could finally get all of this out. “You pushed me into audition rooms for years where I got rejected time and time and time again.”
“They were fools. They just didn’t see you like I did.”
“As what?” Thea choked out. “The wimp you could push around?”
She gasped and looked at Thea wide-eyed. “I’ve never thought of you like that. You’re amazing.”
“But never enough.” Thea didn’t even try to hide the hurt in her voice as she wrapped her arms around her middle. “Definitely not star material like Jackie. That’s why after I left for college we barely talked.”
Her mom pursed her lips together and inhaled hard enough that her nostrils flared. “I left messages. You never returned them.” She paused, looking up at the ceiling and blinking rapidly. “I texted. You sent back aK.” Her chin trembled, and she let out a shaky breath. “And the time I showed up on campus for parents’ weekend even though you hadn’t told me about it? The look of horror on your face when I asked if an acanthopholis could fly was like a knife to the heart, but I understood. I wasn’t smart in the ways you and your friends were. I’m sure that was very embarrassing.” Tears spilled over and slid down her cheeks, which she brushed away with the back of her hand. “I still don’t know the difference between a stegosaurus and a brachiosaurus. All I know about is how to get an actor paired with the part that will make their career. You didn’t care about that, so you didn’t care for me in your life. That hurt. But I’m your mom, and I love you no matter what, so I gave you what you wanted—space. Came to you only when you reached out first. Kept our conversations centered on what we had in common—Jackie. I did what I thought you wanted.”
Thea stared at her mom, seeing her—perhaps for the first time—not as a mom but as a human being. A person who made mistakes. Someone who did the wrong thing because they thought it was right. A woman who kept trying despite it all. The realization knocked her sideways, reset some old memories in more detailed context, and eased the ache in her chest that she’d always thought would be there forever when it came to her mom.
“I thought you were disappointed in me because I wasn’t made to be an actor,” Thea said, her voice wobbly. “That I was a failure in your eyes.”
“You could never be that. As long as you’re happy, I’m happy. I thought I was doing what you wanted by leaving you alone.” Her mom got up from the coffee table and came over to Thea, wrapping her arms around her and holding her tight. “You know it might be a good idea if instead of just assuming what the other one wants, we both actually asked.”
Thea chuckled at the simplicity of the solution that had somehow eluded them for years.
“That sounds like the best plan.” Heart hammering against her ribs, Thea asked the thing she never thought she would. “Maybe we could try it out after the wedding? You can come to Harbor City, and I can show you around the museum and we can go to the theater?”
Breaking the hug, her mom looked at Thea, tears—happy ones now—falling down her cheeks, and smiled. “I would love that.”
They hugged again, a brief, hard squeeze that didn’t change the past but went a long way to fixing their future. When they let go, her mom handed her a tissue from the box on the desk littered with Jackie’s makeup and looked around at the otherwise empty RV.
“There’s only one thing. There has to be a wedding first. Where could Jackie have gone?” her mom asked, frustration and fear clinging to each syllable.
Now it was Thea’s turn to look around the RV.
Jackie’s closet door was open, and her clothes were still inside. There was a script forStarship 3000laying on the bedside table, several of her character’s lines highlighted in different colors. Her shoes—including her collection of never-left-behind designer high heels—were lined up along one wall.
Thea’s gaze moved over to the open door of the bathroom but jerked back to the shoes. There was one pair missing right between the red-heeled stilettos and the bow-bedecked kitten heels. That’s where Jackie had her tennis shoes—the ones she only wore when she was either working out or needed to be Jackie the real person that most people never got to see instead of Jackie the Hollywood D-lister.
And that’s when Thea knew exactly where her sister was.
Well, notexactlylocation-wise, but she knew who she was with. Jackie was with Dex.
The question Thea had, though, was whether Jackie was breaking it off because she knew she couldn’t be married to a man who didn’t love her or if she was telling Dex she loved him and always had. No matter which way the conversation was going, Jackie obviously wanted it to be as far away from the live-streaming cameras as possible.
