Page 132 of ClickBack

She sits. I take the chair across from her because getting beside her before we talk feels like asking for something I haven’t earned back.

“I spoke to Tori,” she says.

“Today?”

“This afternoon. She explained what she did and what she can’t do. I told her I don’t want another public statement about me unless I approve it.”

“All right.”

“She’s going to contact me directly about anything involving Rae or Zion. Rae has her number now, too.”

“Good.”

Giselle takes off her glasses and folds them in her lap. “I don’t need to be copied on every conversation about your career. I need to be included when the conversation is about my life.”

“You should have been.”

She looks at me, waiting to see whether I add a reason she wasn’t.

“I got scared,” I tell her. “Then I got busy so I wouldn’t have to sit with it. You were the person I should have called, and I kept finding somebody else to call first. I’m sorry.”

“Were you afraid of what I would say?”

“Some.”

“What did you think I would say?”

“That this was what you were worried about. That being with me wasn’t worth it.”

Her glasses move between her fingers. I let her think about the answer. I have spent the week thinking about it myself.

“So you tried to make it disappear before I could decide that.”

“Yeah.”

“And when you couldn’t?”

“I told you I had it handled.”

She sets the glasses on the table. There is nothing for me to improve about how that sounds.

“I would have liked to call you that night,” she says. “Before I was angry with you. I would have liked for you to be the person I could talk to about what I was seeing.”

I look down at my hands. That hurts worse than her yelling would have.

“I wanted to be.”

“I know.”

She says it gently. I deserve the argument more than I deserve that.

For a while, we sit with the room between us. A car passes outside. I hear it slow near her house and have to stop myself from looking toward the window. Giselle notices anyway.

“This is still my home,” she says. “People drive past it.”

“I’m trying.”

“I can see that.”