If for Any Reason (Nantucket Love Story #1) - Courtney Walsh Page 0,89
long story,” she said. “But I’m basically broke.”
Hollis straightened. “What do you mean ‘broke’?”
“I mean I have no money, broke.” She leaned back in her chair, acting nonchalant and Emily-ish, as usual. Inside, she had to be freaking out, didn’t she?
“What happened?”
She took a quick drink, set her water down, and went back to leaning in the chair. She glanced up at the sky and ran her hands over her forehead. Even without a stitch of makeup left on her face, with her hair all messy and unkempt, and wearing dirty clothes, Emily still looked beautiful in the moonlight.
Just friends. Just friends. Just friends.
The words raced through his mind purposefully, an important (if unwanted) reminder.
She pinched the bridge of her nose in that endearing way she did when they were kids. “I guess the short story is—”
“I don’t want the short story,” Hollis interrupted.
“Trust me, you do.”
He shook his head. “That’s not how this game works.”
“Well, whoever made up the rules was not thinking clearly,” she shot back. She picked up her pizza crust, stared at it, then dropped it back onto the plate.
“I travel a lot.”
“Yeah, I saw your collection of keys.”
“Really?” She glanced at him.
“Winny showed them to me,” he said. “He said you keep one from every place you’ve lived?”
She nodded. “Yeah, I don’t know why.”
“Take a little piece of each place with you, I guess? It makes sense.”
She shrugged. “It’s not cheap, traveling like I do.”
“I know,” he said, starting to sense she was procrastinating. He’d traveled at least a little bit, enough to know it wasn’t cheap, though he’d never paid a dime for his accommodations. “You know whatever happened, you can tell me.”
Her eyes found his for the briefest second, and he could see they were filled with tears. Knowing Emily, though, she’d refuse to let them fall. “It’s just . . .” She sighed.
“Emily?” Hollis set his plate down. “You don’t have to tell me. Forget it. I’ll ask you something else. What’s the best country you’ve ever visited? Or what’s the craziest food you’ve ever eaten?”
She hugged her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs. “No, maybe it’ll be good for me. I kind of want to tell you about it.”
His heart flip-flopped.
“I’d just finished working on a tour, living in Australia, having the time of my life, when I got this crazy idea that I could . . .” She looked away. “That I could launch my own show.”
“Like onstage?”
She nodded.
“What’s so crazy about that?”
“Well, it’s crazy when it’s a dismal flop,” she said.
His lip twitched. “I’m sure it wasn’t that bad.”
She raised her eyebrows. “No, it was.”
He didn’t say anything.
“It probably all sounds silly to a professional athlete, but that show was my shot to become something more than a former child star, and I failed. If I’d been smart, I would’ve workshopped it in a tiny venue that cost next to nothing, but I had to go all in. I thought I knew so much when really I was nothing more than a giant failure.”
“Don’t say that,” Hollis said.
“Oh, I don’t have to. The critics said it for me. The thing was, after traveling all my life and only working when I felt like it, I blew through a lot of money. I made a couple of bad investments, but I really thought this one was going to be solid. I thought I was going to be solid.”
“You had a project that maybe didn’t do as well as you wanted it to, but that doesn’t make you a failure.”
“It does, though,” Emily said. “I’m not even sure I’m qualified to be directing a children’s show. The critics were right—I should’ve kept the play in my desk drawer and never been stupid enough, arrogant enough, to think it needed an audience.”
“They said that?”
She nodded sadly.
“Well, critics don’t know everything,” he said.
“They know enough.” She looked away. “I just wanted something of my own, I guess. Something I was good at.” She turned back and met his eyes. “Do you think less of me now?”
“What? Why would I?”
“Because unlike you, I am not a huge, crazy success. I am a person who peaked at age eleven. The end.”
“Maybe you need to redefine success.”
She crumpled her napkin into a ball and tossed it onto her plate.
Hollis took another slice of pizza from the box. “So that’s why you’re here this summer.”
“It’s my second chance.” She turned to look at the house, lights filtering from the kitchen windows and spilling