Page 10 of How to Ruin Your Ex's Wedding
“Really? How’s it going?”
“Good, I guess. You know it skeeves me out they can ask for it now, right? So, it needs to be done. Plus, both have full mouths of teeth. Which just seems like a disaster waiting to happen. So, yeah, gonna be denying the girls the boobs. Michael will be happy to have them back to himself without the surprise milk squirt once I dry up. And we’ve been breastfeeding only at night for a while now, so it’s not like they are going cold turkey.”
“You make them sound like junkies.”
“They are. Twenty-seven-pound junkies, jonesing for a fix every night at seven o’clock. Speaking of babies and junkies, what’s Hunter going to do now that he sold his tech-baby?”
“Well, first he wants a great big splashy wedding.” I smile.
“Do you feel weird doing that your second time around?”
“A little,” I admit. “But he really wants it and it’s a small thing to do for him. He’s paying for it all and has already hired a coordinator. Outside of making a few decisions, it’s looking like all I will really have to do is show up.”
“He’s already hired a coordinator? Wow, who is it? Do you like her?”
“I haven’t met her yet. He hired her on his own—”
“You okay with that?”
“Yeah, I think I am. This whole big wedding thing isn’t as important to me as it is to him, so I’m happy to let him take the lead on whatever he wants.” Plus, he said the less work I had to do, the better. That my days should be spent by the pool eating grapes and lounging. If he has his way, I’ll never work another day in my life.
“That’s really nice of you,” Crystal says. “Most women would have a fit that he made the decision without them. So, who did he pick?”
“Liza Littleton.”
“Oh, she’s really good.”
“I know, her reputation is impeccable. How can I complain?”
“Yeah, you really can’t.”
The conversation stalls for just a moment. But it’s that comfortable silence you can only have with the closest of friends.
“Hey, how’s the book coming along?”
“Ugh. Not well.” I’m writing a book about my life as a child star. Well, I’m telling my story to a ghostwriter who is writing the book. For which I am grateful. Remembering the stories and retelling them is hard enough without having to also figure out how to make them entertaining. “The writer keeps trying to make it this salacious story of stage moms and demanding directors, parties and drugs, sex and alcohol, with Pax and me as star-crossed lovers thrust into the middle of it all.”
“I’d buy that book.” Crystal winks.
I laugh at her. “Me too. But that’s not the story I want to tell. That’s every child actor’s story, pretty much. I want to tell a different story, one of a young woman who worked hard and built a solid career after retiring from acting, which brought me to where I am now. No Pax, no stage mom, none of that usual crap.”
“I get it,” she says, taking a drink of her blended coffee. “But those are two very important aspects of your past and your success. People want to know about the dirty details. Especially since neither Pax nor your mom are in your life any longer and both of those break-ups were so public.”
“Everything people need to know about my mom, they can get fromherbooks,” I grumble. After cutting ties permanently, Mom wrote a tell-all consisting mostly of trumped up stories about what a histrionic—her word, not mine—pain in the ass diva I was. Her book release coincided with one of the movies I did after returning to Hollywood.
It was a bestseller.
She followed it up with a how-to on successful stage mom-ing.
It was also a bestseller.
The irony kills me.
Rumor has it she’s moved to Montana and is working on a third book about life after Hollywood.
And Pax? I keep hoping if I ignore that he was a part of my life, he will just go away. So, I refuse to let the ghostwriter include him in the book. Well, try to anyway.
“I never told you this, but I read her book,” Crystal says.
