If I'm Being Honest Read online

  Only moments later, Andrew rushes in. He looks at me. And I look at him. I walk forward, and his eyes widen when I run both hands up his chest. Whatever he was expecting from tonight, it wasn’t this. In the next instant I’m kissing him, and, finally understanding where we’re going with this, he wraps his arms around my waist. He has a natural talent for this, I find myself realizing.

  I draw him by the hand toward the couch and recline on the pillows. “I really like you, Andrew,” I whisper, pulling him down to me.

  “Funny.” He pauses short of my lips. “I always got the opposite impression. We’ve been friends for years, and you’ve never—”

  I cut him off with a long kiss. “I am now,” I say, pushing down the frustration in my voice. “Isn’t that enough? We could talk about it more, or we could . . .” I trail my hand down to his waistband.

  He kisses me this time. There’s no trace of hesitation in the way his mouth meets mine. Nothing but the momentum of months of wanting this, momentum I know he feels with me. I pull off his polo, exploring the stretch of skin I find underneath. He runs a hand through my hair, down my chest, and breathes, “You’re so beautiful.”

  It’s perfect. It really is.

  Until there’s a crash behind Andrew, and something heavy falls onto him. He’s rocked forward, his forehead ramming into my nose. My eyes water before I even feel the pain burst through my face.

  “What the hell?” I yell, standing up sharply and pulling my dress up over my now-braless chest. Andrew looks similarly stunned. When my eyes recover from the flash of light of the curtains parting, I realize there’s now a third person in this booth.

  Paige Rosenfeld.

  “Are you drunk or just severely stupid?” I snap. If she looked horrible before, she’s an abject mess now. Her too-heavy mascara runs in gunky black spiderwebs down her cheeks, and when she hauls herself off the edge of the couch, I notice honest-to-god snot on the front of her dress.

  I hear my dad’s voice in my head. Pathetic.

  “Sorry,” Paige says with a violent sniffle. “I didn’t think someone would be shameless enough to be screwing in a club with only a flimsy curtain hiding them.”

  I narrow my eyes. Paige isn’t as drunk as she seemed. What right does she have to say I’m shameless when she was flinging herself at Jeff in front of everyone? “Jealousy looks bad on you,” I sneer. “I guess it didn’t work out with Jeff, huh? Why don’t you find someone as pathetic as you are to hook up with?” I’m staring Paige down, but in the corner of my vision I catch Andrew’s eyebrows go up. It’s possible my resentment over her scathing review of my essay is seeping into my frustration over her intrusion. I don’t care, though.

  Fresh tears well in Paige’s eyes. “I’ve wondered . . .” she says, her voice shaking, “I guess you really are as awful on the inside as you act.” She strides past the curtains without giving her tears the chance to fall.

  I roll my shoulders, shrugging off the insult. Reclining on the couch, I place a hand on the cushion to invite Andrew. “Where were we?”

  He doesn’t move. His lips slip into a quizzical frown. “You want to go back to making out after that?”

  I still, working out what he’s just said. “I know she spoiled the mood,” I say, struggling to keep my voice light. “But I’ve waited too long for this to let Paige Rosenfeld ruin it.” I sit up, hugging my dress to my chest.

  Impossibly, his eyes never leave mine. “She was obviously upset. You didn’t have to insult her.” His voice is gentle, but not without a critical edge.

  “Excuse me,” I say. I’m honestly in disbelief we’re still discussing Paige. “She insulted me first. Remember? But really, the insult isn’t even the point. I don’t have much sympathy for girls like Paige.” I know I’m not exactly helping the mood, but this is what I’m feeling, and I’m not going to push it down. “Reduced to tears because it didn’t work out with some douchebag she barely knows? Please. It is pathetic.”

  I burn with defeated expectation when Andrew pulls on his shirt. “You know,” he says, “you’re really beautiful, and sometimes when it’s just the two of us, I feel like you might be worth it. But the truth is”—he pauses at the entrance—“you’re a bitch, Cameron Bright.”

  The curtain flutters closed behind him. I sit in silence.

  I’m a little shocked how harshly the insult stings. I’ve never been called that word by someone I care about, someone whose words have the power to hurt.

  I’m not going to cry, though. Crying is pathetic. It won’t help.

  It never does.

  Four

  I’M WOKEN UP THE NEXT MORNING BY my phone ringing, ruining my usual Saturday morning plans of sleeping in. I glance over to check the name on the screen—Elle. With a twinge of guilt, I hit mute, and she goes to voicemail. I hope she enjoyed her night with Jason. But I’m not ready to hear the gory details right now.

  Get up. Run. Deal with Mom.

  The list is enough to get me out of bed.

  I’m hurt by where Andrew and I left things, by what he called me. The thought chews the corner of my mind while I make my bed. What I said to Paige sounded bad—honestly, I could have been a little nicer. Andrew knows me, though. He’ll come around.

  Or he won’t, and I will have lost what I waited a year for. There’s nothing I can do now. Nothing but wait.

  I need a run.

  I keep my running gear exactly where I want it, the way I do everything else in my room. It’s impeccably organized, which I’m proud of. My room isn’t big—nowhere near the colossal square footage of my friends’—and I hear my neighbors fighting through the wall on a regular basis. The paint’s peeling from the cream-colored walls where I’ve hung design boards for websites I’m working on. But nothing’s out of place. Every scarf has a peg on the rack by my door, every sheet of homework a place on my desk. Every issue of the Economist is in order on my bookshelf.

  I put on my Beaumont cross-country shirt and pick up my shoes from next to the door on my way into the hallway. Inevitably, I wince.

  While I keep my room neat and organized, the opposite is true of my mom’s treatment of the rest of the apartment. I walk by her room, where piles of laundry—dirty or clean, it’s impossible to say—cover the floor. She’s left pairs of shoes in the hallway, pink plastic heels and slippers she stepped out of and didn’t pick up.

  I collect the shoes and take them into her bedroom. When I glance over at the bed, I’m thrown to find the sheets unfurled and the bed empty. Mom’s not usually up until closer to noon. I quietly reorganize my list.

  Deal with Mom. Run. Find opportunity to sneak into her bedroom and sort laundry.

  I find her behind the counter in the tiny kitchenette, stirring a spice of some kind into the blender. My hope she might be out of bed for a productive reason disappears when I take in her bathrobe and the foil folded in her hair. If she’s bleaching it, she’s not leaving the house for hours.

  Her hair’s blonde like mine, which is where the resemblance ends. My mom has round, full features—like a young Renée Zellweger, she’d say. She does say. I’ve caught her modeling expressions in the mirror with pictures from Jerry Maguire pulled up on her phone. I, on the other hand, have my dad’s long, sharp features, his blue eyes and thin lips. They’re the only things he’s given me other than tuition and the Economist subscription, which he seemed genuinely surprised I’d wanted for my sixteenth birthday. It’s one of the rare birthday gifts he’s given me. Generally his financial contributions to our family are only those that make him look good to his colleagues.

  “Is that cayenne pepper?” I ask Mom while I lace my shoes.

  “I’m trying something new,” she says brightly. “Lemonade, cayenne, and kale. Deb lost fifteen pounds on it! Which reminds me,” Mom glances up, looking surprised herself to remember, “Deb cancelled on coming over tomorrow.”


  “Wait, why?” I ask, pausing in the middle of knotting my shoe. There’s no way Andrew’s mom cancelled because Andrew doesn’t want to see me. Right?

  “She said something about her in-laws still in town,” Mom says, hitting the switch on the blender, which lets out a horrific whine. I nod in relief. I remember Andrew saying something about his grandparents not having a flight home to New Jersey. It’s probably a good thing Monday night’s not happening. The idea of sitting in stony silence with Andrew while our moms hoot and hiss over school-board gossip puts the kind of knot in my stomach only a run will release.

  Mom shuts off the blender, and it grinds to a shuddering stop. It’s a small miracle the machine still works, considering my mom’s had it since my dad lived in L.A. before I was born and she’s subjected it to innumerable cleanses in the past eighteen years. I finish lacing my shoes and eye the vomit-colored drink she’s pouring into a chipped glass.

  She must detect the skepticism in my look, because she meets my eyes. “This cleanse is different,” she says, continuing triumphantly, “Jared Leto uses it.”

  “Oh-kay . . .” I put my heel on the back of the couch and bend over to stretch my hamstring. “But you always start these cleanses and give up two days in. I just don’t see the point.”

  Mom’s smile vanishes, replaced by a hard and defensive frown. It’s one of the fundamental truths of my mother’s existence. There’s insecurity behind every smile. “I can start a cleanse and quit it if I want, Cameron,” she protests. “What does it matter to you?”

  “Nothing,” I say glumly, and switch the leg I’m stretching on the couch. This is the difference between her and me. My mother gives up on everything. First it was acting, the dream she moved to Los Angeles from Indiana for twenty years ago. Now it’s whatever kind of job she can get, whether it’s catering, cutting hair, or waitressing. Our lives might have been different if it hadn’t gotten harder to get roles when she hit forty. But aging isn’t welcomed in Hollywood, and my mom couldn’t take the repeated rejections. When the going gets tough, she’s gone—on to the next job or onto the couch. Rejection cripples her. I watched it happen after countless auditions, and I watched it happen throughout years of her trying to get my dad to marry her.

  “It’s not like everyone has your metabolism,” she goes on. “Have some sympathy for the rest of us.”

  Seriously? I swing my leg down out of my stretch, knowing she’s oblivious to how I’m in my running clothes about to go for a six-mile run. Instead of arguing with her, I change tactics. “What are you doing today?” I ask, even though the bathrobe and foil give me a pretty good idea.

  Mom’s quick glance to the side confirms my hunch. “You know I’m between jobs,” she says with clearly forced nonchalance.

  I recognize the edge in her voice, and I decide to walk it. “Yeah, but what about interviews? I could help you look—”

  “No thanks!” She picks up her drink, her cheery expression tight. “I’m not ready yet. Next week.” Glass in hand, she shuffles to the couch and eases herself down, pulling her favorite leopard-print blanket over her lap and flipping on the TV.

  I take a deep breath. I’ll have to email Dad for money, I know in the pit of my stomach. Even though he pays our rent—enough for us to live forty minutes from the school he pays for, no closer—he probably won’t respond well to emails requesting more. I can’t even blame him is the thing. It’d be different if Mom were looking for a job. But what incentive does he have to help her when she won’t even try to help herself?

  “Hey,” I venture, knowing before I say it that it’s a terrible idea, “what about the acting school Morgan took classes at over the summer? I bet you could teach there.”

  “Teach?” Mom echoes, her eyes not leaving the screen. “Teach those spoiled kids? No thank you.”

  I ignore the slight to my friends, even though I’m pretty sure she intended it. “But you’re good, Mom, really.” I overheard enough auditions and watched enough rehearsals to know that. “Morgan said you were the first to point out how she overused her lip twitch. I think you’d be great—”

  “Enough, Cameron,” she cuts me off, her voice hard and petulant again. “I said I’m not in the mood. You think I need to be reminded every day of how I failed as an actress? No thank you,” she repeats, definitive this time.

  “Sitting on the couch all day doesn’t remind you?” I snap, unable to contain myself any longer. I hate her on mornings like this. Mornings when I’m just trying to get to tomorrow and she’s trying to go nowhere. “Fine. Don’t try. Let me know when I should write to my dad to beg for more money.”

  I grab my keys and head straight out the door.

  Every time I have the urge to cry, I run instead. Tears reach your nose first, not your eyes. If you’re good, you can quench them before they ever touch your eyelids. You breathe in from your mouth once, then out.

  You get good eventually.

  I run in the opposite direction I usually do with Andrew, up the hill on sidewalks dotted with old gum. The apartments in my neighborhood have wrought-iron fences, and the billboards above them advertise dentists and DUI lawyers. I run onto Sixth and pass Chungmuro, the restaurant where Mom and I went for my birthday. Koreatown’s not a rough neighborhood—here I am, a seventeen-year-old girl running by herself on the street—it’s just not the nicest neighborhood. It’s certainly a far cry from the polished sidewalks and perfect lawns of Beverly Hills, where I run with the cross-country team on school days.

  I push hard into the second mile of the run, the pain in my chest changing from heartache to exertion. Mom never tries hard. Never. Not even when I’ve told her how fears I feel too young for—healthcare, rent, making ends meet—clutch at my throat when I drop my guard.

  I don’t want to ask Dad for money. Every time things get rough, it’s him she depends on. It’s not like there are no repercussions either. Begging him is bad enough, but in the instances he decides to come and check in on things, everything gets . . . worse. I’m no saint, but Dad has half my patience with her. He’s not kind. They’ve had an on-and-off relationship for years, off the great majority of the time, and the expectation of nights together when he’s in town for business does nothing to weaken the withering criticism he heaps on her.

  I stumble on an uneven curb but catch myself before my knees hit the sidewalk. My parting remark to my mom went too far, and now I feel guilty. I know the truth can hurt, even when you need to hear it. Which she does. She just refuses to listen. Every time she hears she’s unmotivated and flippant, she gives up a little more. She sinks into the couch, or she doesn’t leave her laundry-littered bedroom for days.

  Never does she think of me. Of what I need from a parent. Of the cross-country races and open houses she’s bailed on, the bills she’s neglected—the things I need to feel secure and cared for. I’ve never hidden from the truth of our relationship. The cold, hard reality is that I’m just her meal ticket, her excuse to wring my father for what she won’t work for herself. I’ll always resent her for it.

  The thought burns into me like fuel, and I push myself up the next hill. I’ll never understand why she doesn’t try to prove my dad wrong. He tells her she’s lazy and helpless, and she takes it, and then she puts herself right back in the position where she’ll inevitably hear it again. It makes me so mad sometimes I snap, and I find myself echoing the harsh words of my father.

  I stop on the corner of Sixth and Oxford, my side splitting. While I catch my breath, I pull my phone from my armband and write an email to my dad.

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: Carol

  Sorry to bother you. She needs help again. It’s been four months and she’s not even looking for a new job.

  Once I hit send, I start running. It’s times like these I wish I could live with my father. He’s been very
clear about that, though. He legally acknowledges I’m his daughter, he just doesn’t have room in his life for that kind of relationship. His firm boundaries were made apparent to me when I was six and asked if he could come to Disneyland with us for my birthday. He told me he was too busy for that kind of thing.

  I’ll never forget his exact words: “that kind of thing.” As if everything his daughter wanted and hoped for and needed could be casually compacted into “that kind of thing” and dismissed.

  Only when I was older did I learn that “busy” wasn’t a made-up excuse. He runs a venture capital firm in Philly where he handles a worldwide portfolio of technology investments. He graduated from Wharton at the top of his class, and his firm’s invested in over two hundred companies with a market value of $2 billion. I’m taking Economics in the Entrepreneur’s Market this semester to be eligible for his firm’s internship this summer. While working with my dad won’t be like living with him, it’ll be something. It’ll be a chance to follow in his footsteps, hopefully in the direction of success like his. It’ll bring me into his world, if not his life.

  Which I can’t help wanting. I’m not naive—I know he’s a jerk. But he’s the only other parent I have. To my mom, I’ll always be a tool to extort my father. To him, I could be worth more. I just have to earn his respect.

  I run through crosswalks and past parked cars, from Oxford to Olympic. I know the way home by heart. I’ve run probably every block of the neighborhood since my dad moved Mom and me into our current apartment six years ago, when I started at Beaumont Middle School. I pass two dumpling restaurants next door to each other, the smell wafting invitingly through the doors. Someone’s spray-painted a mural of Seth Rogen looking wistfully at what I think is meant to be a female Yoda. Three girls are taking selfies in front.