Want Your Bad Romance

I woke to a high-pitched ring followed by an annoyed groan.

“Yours,” I managed to say and smacked him lightly. The only response I got was another ring and groan.

“Hey,” I protested, propping myself up on an elbow and flicking his nose. “Answer or change your ringtone.” This time the groan was accompanied with movement as he sat up and reached for his cell. I flopped back onto the pillows.

“Hello?” he said, sleep still in his voice. “Well you did wake me up,” he said into the phone. “Yes, it’s four there, but that means it’s only seven here. I don’t have to work today.”

I tried to fill in the other side of the conversation when I figured out who was on the line, but I wasn’t very successful.

“No, we’re both making public statements as soon as we can.”

My mind snapped to the topic she’d obviously brought up. A long silence on his part followed.

“Vanessa, I really don’t want to talk about this right now.” A pause. “How about when we’re not oceans apart? This isn’t a conversation I want to have over the phone.”

I wondered if she was buying the obvious sincerity in his voice.

“I’m not going discuss this right now.”

Apparently not.

“Can I speak to my kids?”

After a considerable pause, his voice changed completely and I could tell he was talking to his children. I couldn’t help but smile at his warm demeanor with them, despite the distance.

When he hung up, he simply sat in silence and I felt I should say something.

“So... how’re you holding up?”

In response, he fell back onto the pillows, staring at the ceiling. I propped myself up again and rubbed his shoulder in what I hoped was a comforting way. “Hey. You okay?”

“It’s over.”

“What?” I asked, confused and suddenly terrified. As much as I didn’t want him to mean us, it was incredibly plausible. The scandal of simply being seen together was taking a toll.

“Me and her.” My heart began to slow as I exhaled with relief. “We’re over. We both know it, it’s just a matter of saying it out loud. She’s agreeing with the tabloids, apparently. I think she’s had some trust issues ever since she started her affair. If she could do it then why couldn’t I?”

“That makes sense,” I offered in helpless support, still rubbing his shoulder.

“But the thing is, I wasn’t. I think she’s been waiting for me find someone else before she told me she’d moved on. It’s just -” He shook his head. “I wanna know what I did wrong.”

“Oh, sweetie,” I couldn’t help but mutter. “Some people just aren’t good for each other. She wasn’t good for you.”

He simply stared at the ceiling.

~

“Lunch,” I told him rather cheerfully as I brought the plates into the living room.

Before I could put them on the coffee table, Johnny grabbed me by the waist and pulled me where he sat on the couch. He kissed my stomach, just at the hem of my shirt, then looked up. “Have I told you recently how much I love you?”

I pretended to deliberate. “Maybe not so recently...” I trailed off.

He placed more kisses at my hemline.

“Hey hey hey,” I interrupted. “Lunch.” I put the plates down and plopped onto the couch next to him, giving him a quick kiss to the cheek. He smiled and we both reached for our plates. Just then his phone rang.

“I swear, you have got to change that ringtone,” I protested as he stood to answer it.

“Yeah.” He answered, then paused. “That’s a long time. We need to set this straight.” Another pause. “Is that really the best idea?” Another pause, followed by a shallow sigh. “I guess you’re the expert.” I watched him nod, even though the other half of the conversation couldn’t see him. “Fine,” he agreed reluctantly, said a goodbye, then hung up the phone.

“What was that?”

“My publicist. He said he set up an interview in a month.”

“That’s... that’s a ways away.”

“I know. But he said given all the factors that was the best time.”

I nodded a little baffled. As I returned to the food, I wondered what “all the factors” were.

~

A week later, he was back in France and I was floundering about a now awkwardly empty home. I spent my allotted mandatory hour at the computer each day, but never stayed longer. The most I saw in those hours was a blinking cursor.

Kenni was busy, her restaurant booming incredibly. Johnny hadn’t called me and I didn’t want to bother him if he was at work or around his kids. My days were spent flipping mindlessly through channels of infomercials and home shopping networks or trying - and usually failing - to concentrate long enough to read a book.

I wasn’t merely bored, I was anxious.

Johnny and I hadn’t spoken directly about the paparazzi incident since his publicist had called. He seemed to be avoiding the subject and before I knew it, enough he was halfway across the world again. I didn’t have an interview date set but I supposed it was only a matter of time. The rumors had to be circulating by now.

One morning I was meandering through my kitchen pointlessly, already having eaten, stared at the computer screen, and channel-surfed, when the phone rang. I lunged for it.

“Hello?” I answered, my breath caught in my chest with anticipation.

“Hey, Jen. I think it’s time we talked.” The breath I’d been holding rushed out when I heard my agent’s voice on the phone.

“Hey Mike,” I answered, not bothering to hide the disappointment in my voice. “So what’s up?”

“We need to get you an interview and soon. We need to figure out how to address this. It’s already been quite a while.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said noncommittally.

“This is a big deal, Jen. This could ruin both your career and his.”

I tried unsuccessfully to bite back my scoffing laugh. I knew Johnny’s fans wouldn’t revolt at rumors he hadn’t confirmed and I doubted mine would.

“Um, yeah.” I cleared my throat, trying to cover my slip-up. I heard Mike sigh, exasperated, but he made no further comment.

“What do you think about the first of next month?”

I halted in my meaningless wandering. Putting a date on it changed things. Johnny and I hadn’t exactly set things up. We had our basic story, but we hadn’t discussed how to present it or how to respond to certain questions. “That’s two weeks before Johnny’s interview,” I began cautiously. “I think his should be first. He’s got more fans, he’ll make a bigger statement.”

“Jen, I really think the sooner the better with this kind of stuff. The tabloids are inventing things you wouldn’t believe even as we speak.”

I doubted they could invent something that far from the scandalous truth, but one could never tell with tabloids. They were desperate for stories.

“But we should put up a united front. Johnny and I should at least react similarly to the accusations, right?”

“That’s a fair point.”



“Let me see if I can get ahold of him, then I’ll get back to you, okay?”

“Sure.”

I flopped onto the couch as I hit the end button on the handset and let out a huge sigh.

~

I waited a few hours before calling to clear my head. I had to be ready to go into this with a completely business-like mindset. I knew he didn’t want to talk about it, but it had to be dealt with, and, as Mike had said, as quickly as possible.

I heard two abrupt rings before his voice. “Hey, listen - “ he began.

I cut him off before I could lose my business-oriented nerve. “We need to talk about interviews. Do you have any sort of strategy for answers, anything prepared for threatening questions?”

“Do we really need to talk about this now?” he asked quietly. I could practically hear him glancing around furtively, looking for a room to duck into. My suspicions were confirmed when I heard the click of a door latch.

“My agent is trying to get me an interview for the first of the month and I need to know if we’re on the same page. Even he agrees we should respond similarly to the pressures of the press.”

“Jen,” he began again in a tone of voice that made me wonder if he’d been listening to a word I’d said. “I - “ he took a long pause and my mind went blank, unable to discern his intentions. Finally, he continued. “I think we should take a break.”

“Take a break?” I squeezed out when I began to breathe again. “From what?”

“From us. I don’t think now’s a good time for us to be,” he paused again, obviously trying to think of a fitting word. “Uh, you know, together. Complicating things.” His voice trailed off in uncertainty.

I felt my breath stop short at his words and suspected my voice would catch in my throat, but I pushed through anyway. “What would you call this, what we’ve been doing while you’re in France then? If that’s not a break from being together - being ‘complicated’ - then I’m not entirely sure what is.”

“Jen, you know what I mean,” he countered quietly, and that was even more painful.

“Yeah,” I answered. “Yeah, I do. I just really don’t want to believe it.” I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. “I thought we were - “ I tried to finish with “more than this” but my voice broke and I couldn’t go on. Still, when I heard him take a breath to speak, I forced myself to continue. “Fine. So this is it. We’re splitting up - “

“Taking a break,” he interrupted gently but adamantly.

“Same thing,” I bit out. A silence followed until I spoke again, my tone now level. “I’d tell you to say hi to Vanessa and the kids, but I don’t think that would help much. Take care of yourself Johnny.”

His responding pause was too long, so I hung up. I calmly set my cell phone on the arm of the couch with shaking hands and quietly began to cry.

~

Two weeks later, past the first-of-the-month interview deadline, I still hadn’t written a word. I couldn’t even look at the computer without wanting to fling it across the room, so I’d decided that for the sake of both it and my health to avoid it entirely, giving up my daily hour vigil. I’d also still not taken an interview, despite Mike’s prodding. I was far from confident in my ability to pull off the lie, given my emotional state. I didn’t want to ruin either of our careers so I had decided privately to wait until I’d returned to a relatively normal mental and emotional capacity.

I ignored the phone when it rang and perused my bookshelves in vain. Another week passed without my notice.

One morning, stark reality hit me when I turned on the television to see his face. It was his interview.

My breath had hitched and I wanted more than anything to just forget all about him, about it, to turn the television off and find a book to occupy myself, maybe even force myself to clatter pointlessly on the untouched computer keys, but I couldn’t.

Once more I was transfixed by his voice, his gestures, his face - him. I sat and watched the interview hoping that with this, it would finally end.