Rock My World (24 page)

“Good
morning,” she said, joining Noelle at the table.

“Sleep
well?”

“Yes.
Thanks…for last night,” Jenna said.

Noelle
didn’t look up. She just made a “
pfshhh
” sound,
flicking off the compliment with a wave of her hand.

“Eat!
Manja
!” Noelle pushed a basket across the table, piled high
with croissants, muffins and bagels—a veritable feast of carbs. Jenna
looked from the feast in front of her to the lonely bowl of oatmeal in front of
Noelle. Noelle waved a hand again.

“My old body
won’t let me eat like I used to, but at least I can take pleasure in watching
someone else eat my favorite foods.”

Jenna
hesitated, part of her already pushing the calorie-ridden foods away, knowing
how long it would take her to burn off just one of the offending tempters. She
could hear
Airika
shrieking that one bite would add
ten pounds and at least as many cellulite dimples directly to her thighs. She
used to listen to that part of her.

Instead, she
smiled and picked up the biggest blueberry muffin of the bunch. She took a
satisfying bite off the top, her favorite part, relishing the airy texture and
sweet fruity flavor.
 
She followed
it with a gulp of cappuccino. Noelle watched, approving, and flipped through
the paper. Jenna ate the muffin, watching out the window where a squirrel
stripped a pinecone with its tiny hands.

Its
movements were quick, methodical,
purposeful
. She
studied it, transfixed by its determination not to waste anything.
I wish I were so certain
. She was
jealous of a squirrel’s purpose in life. That couldn’t be a good sign.

“I have
something for you,” Noelle said.

“What?”

Noelle
pulled a hatbox up from where it sat unnoticed on a nearby chair. She pushed it
toward Jenna, gesturing for her to open it. Jenna pulled at the large ribbon,
lifting the oval lid. Inside the box was a very large, very cumbersome looking
camera, just like the one she’d used the day of the
Vogue
shoot.

“For me? I
can’t accept this!”

“Of course
you can. Every photographer needs a camera. Plus, now I get to make my
stipulation.” Noelle’s face exploded in a huge grin, alluding to how she must
have looked as a teenager.

“Yes, this
is purely selfish,” she continued. “You must take photos every day and you must
use this one, prime lens. The 50mm is considered the most honest lens—the
closest to approximating the human eye—and I want you to record something
every day. No frills, just light and shadow. That’s how you’ll learn.”

Jenna opened
her mouth, speechless. She picked up the camera with its tiny lens dwarfed by
the massive camera body. She looked through the small viewfinder, finding
Noelle. The frame was only large enough for her head and shoulders. Jenna
clicked the shutter, capturing Noelle’s pleasure and surprise. The soft light
pouring in through the window lit everything else in the frame, allowing
Noelle’s sharp brown eyes to pop, silently conveying their message.

“I will.
Thank you,” Jenna said, turning her lens out the window to the squirrel, still
working on its pinecone. She looked at the image, frowned at the blurry shapes,
then adjusted the shutter speed and clicked again.

“Ah, voil
à
!
A photographer is born,” Noelle said, beaming.

***

An hour
later Jenna sat on the corner of her bed, phone in hand, working up the courage
to call Alex. She felt like a teenager, dialing the numbers she knew by heart,
stopping, and hanging up. Finally, she took a deep breath, dialed all the
numbers and waited for him to answer.

“Jenna?” he
said, answering on the first ring.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“You asked
me to call. I’m calling,” she tried to keep her voice from shaking.

“Yeah,
thanks. It’s good to hear your voice. I miss you.” His words sounded formal,
foreign. She was used to his easy-going confidence
. Why is this so hard?

“How are
you?” he asked.

“Fine. What
do you need to talk to me about?” She asked, not at all sure she could stay
strong if they fell into their usual banter.

“I wanted to
warn you about an article that’s coming out.” As he said it, her body
stiffened. She didn’t say anything.

“It’s in
Rolling Stone
. I did the interview a couple
weeks ago, just days after … you left,” he said. “I thought I recognized the
girl interviewing me, but I didn’t put it together. Do you know Rose McKenna?”

Oh shit,
w
hat did she do now
? Rose McKenna had insinuated herself into
Airika’s
circle of influence through her job as nanny to
one of Hollywood’s A-list actors. Her charge was nine at the time. Somehow or
other she got
Airika
the styling job when the
mini-celebrity got an Oscar nomination and, ever since, a bizarre friendship
had blossomed between them.

Jenna hadn’t
trusted Rose from the first time they met, when she had the gall to ask if she
could get a signed guitar from Shawn
Jax
. When Jenna
said “no,” she replied, half joking, “Relax, I’m not a stalker fan or anything.
I just wanted to sell it on eBay.”

Jenna
gripped the phone, holding her breath, waiting for her husband’s voice, wishing
he were going to say something she knew he wasn’t.

“I know
Rose.”

“Well, I
guess she spliced my interview and then did a separate one with
Airika
. So it looks like … but Jenna, I swear, it’s not
true … ”

Jenna’s
mouth went dry. Her heart thumped in her ears. Her breathing became choppy and
Alex’s voice muffled.

“ … It looks
like we did the interview
together
.”
He sighed, sounding defeated. The only audible response was a sharp intake of
breath and a small squeaking sound Jenna assumed must have come from her. She
was outside of her own body.
This can’t
be happening
, she thought.
But it is
,
said another, more annoying voice in her head.

“Let me get
this straight. You did an interview with Rose.
Airika
did an interview with Rose. And then Rose cut them and pasted them together to
look like you did the interview
together
?”

“Yes,” he
said in a small voice.

“And that’s
the absolute truth?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” he
asked.

“Has the
issue hit newsstands yet?”

He was
having trouble comprehending her line of questioning. He expected her to rail
about how stupid he was to do an interview without Mindy there and that nothing
was ever really off the record. And he would agree and then they’d make up and
go back to their isolated bubbles. But something was … different.

“I don’t
think so. I haven’t even gotten the mock-up,” he said.

“Have you
told Mindy?”

“No.”

“Call her.
Tell her what happened. Then call Frank.”

“Frank?”

“Your
attorney,” she sighed in exasperation. “Give them the details. Let them do
their jobs. If it hasn’t shipped yet, we can still salvage this.”

She heard
the assertive tone in her own voice. She felt a surge of power coursing through
her body as she gave him orders. Her whole life she’d been passive and let
other people do things for her—fix things for her, protect her. For the
first time, she took charge of her own life. A smile crept across her face, the
wild thumping of her pulse steadied into an
anthemic
rock beat.

“Thank you,”
he said, his tone unfamiliar.

“Call me
when it’s done.” She hung up, feeling a rush of adrenaline. Without giving
herself time to think, she dialed
Airika’s
number.

“Why did you
do it?” Jenna spat as soon as
Airika
picked up. It
was a loaded question and she didn’t mind how
Airika
took it.

“Jenna?”

“Why did you
do it?” Jenna repeated.

“Didn’t we
already do this?”
Airika
said.

“I’m talking
about the interview. With Rose.”

“What
interview?”

“Your
interview in
Rolling Stone
with Rose
McKenna. You can tell me what you said and help me fix this now, or you can
talk to our attorney later. Either way you’re going to have to explain.”

“Look Jenna,
I can tell you’re mad. I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. I never
did an interview with Rose.”

Jenna hated
to admit that she believed her.
Airika
may be a
conniving, backstabbing, atrocious friend, but she never out and out lied. This
assumption was not based on
Airika’s
innate
integrity,
it was based on the fact that
Airika
was a terrible actress.

“Why did you
pretend to be my friend all those years?” Jenna asked
,
surprised at how calm she sounded.

“I wasn’t
pretending. You’re my best friend.”
Airika
said.

“Then why
did you try to steal my boyfriend and then lie to me and then do it again all
these years later?” she asked, surprised by the lack of anger in her tone.

“I … I
wanted to know what it was like.”

“What it was
like to kiss Alex? You found that out in high school.” There may have been a
little venom in that one.

“No, I
wanted to know what it was like to be you.”

In a million
years, Jenna could not have been more flabbergasted by any single response.

“So you
don’t have feelings for Alex, you were just jealous of me?” Jenna asked.

“No, I do
have feelings for Alex. I’m in love with him. I just … I’ve always envied you. Especially
after you started dating the only guy I’d ever had feelings for,”
Airika
said.

Jenna fell
silent.
Airika
breathed on the other side of the
phone. Jenna’s mind swirled with years of memories rewinding and replaying, as
if shot from an entirely new angle. She couldn’t decide if this revelation
angered or depressed her. Suddenly, as if hit by the biggest “aha!” moment of
her life, Jenna felt a new emotion on the matter: sympathy.

Their
friendship hadn’t been a farce. The emotions were real. The perspective just
got skewed.
Airika
was born to have it all. But her
parents split up. Her dad disgraced the family. And despite finding
professional success, romantic love, and most importantly, happiness, eluded
her. Jenna had the things
Airika
wanted most in the
world-—not Alex, per se—but a loving family and a husband who was
her best friend and partner. All this time Jenna envied
Airika’s
style and self-confidence while she envied Jenna for her own reasons. Jenna
felt … free. Free of anger and hurt. Free from the conspiracy she thought
formed against her.

“Thank you.”

“What?”
Airika
squeaked.

“Thank you
for showing me how lucky I am,” she said without a trace of irony.

Airika
let out a garbled noise, choking on her instinctive
retort, uncertain how to proceed.

“I forgive
you,” Jenna said, hanging up the phone. She felt light as air. The switch, now
flipped, couldn’t go back. She was a new woman.

Chapter
40

Airika
held the phone in her hand, mouth agape. Many
minutes later, she couldn’t come up with a cohesive thought. Jenna sounded
sincere. But she couldn’t have been. How could anyone forgive her for what
she’d done? Terror gripped her heart as she thought about what Jenna might be
planning.

If Jenna was
that shrewd, however unlikely it seemed,
Airika
knew
she had to take an offensive strategy. She called Rose.

“What did
you do?”

“Hey Air,”
Rose said, sounding bored.

“Did you
fake an interview with me?”

“No.”

“Well,
that’s what Jenna thinks. Why does she think that?”
Airika
said. Rose smiled over the phone.

“You gave me
an interview.” Rose said.
Airika
could practically
hear her filing her nails and rolling her eyes.

“No I
didn’t.” Even as she said it,
Airika
knew it was
pointless. She knew that Rose considered everything “on the record.” Like
everything else in her life, she expected those rules didn’t apply to her.
Suddenly every conversation she’d had with Rose about Alex flashed back through
her memory.
She wouldn’t!
Airika
felt the walls closing in on her remembering their
conversation from Alex and Jenna’s driveway … after The Incident.