Page 8 of How to Ruin Your Ex's Wedding
“Ditto, babe.”
ANNOUNCER VOICEOVER: And the rest, as they say, is history.
1
Tabatha
TEN YEARS LATER
“In other news, actress Tabatha Seton (formerly Baldwin) has announced her engagement to tech genius, Hunter Simpcox, who just sold his social media app, Face-to-Face, for a cool twenty-five million dollars. This will be the second marriage for Seton, who was previously married to award-winning photographer, Pax Baldwin. The two were married after a tumultuous multi-year courtship, before citing irreconcilable differences and splitting for good close to ten years ago. This will be the first marriage for Simpcox. No word yet on when the nuptials will take place or where.”
I use the remote to switch off the TV, taking a moment to admire my five-carat, cushion cut diamond with platinum pave band engagement ring. Loving the way it sparkles in the overhead lighting of our den. I am somewhat pleased with the news clip. I would have rather they not mention Pax, but I suppose it’s better to have media attention with Pax than no announcement at all.
“Hunter,” I call out to my fiancé. “Did you see the news clip about the engagement?”
“I did,” he says, coming in to the room. He takes me in his arms and kisses me once on the lips. “They said I was a tech genius.”
“Well, you are.” I smile.
“One sold app does not a genius make,” he says.
“It does when you sell that app for twenty-five million.”
His eyes shine. “It’s a lot of money, isn’t it?”
“It is,” I agree. He likes to talk about his money. I think it makes him feel important. My mother would do the same thing as my stage manager. She’d grown up poor, so I think once she finally had money—mine—the need to talk about it helped to make it more real. At least that’s what my therapist says.
It’s the same with Hunter. The more he talks about it, the better it is for him and the more he believes it’s real.
“More money than you’ve seen?” he asks.
“Yes, I believe so,” I say, because he also likes it when he can impress me. “What time are we meeting for lunch?”
“How about twelve-thirty?” he asks.
“That’s perfect. I’m off to my yoga class, see you in a couple hours.”
“It will be hard for you to improve upon perfection, my queen,” he says, referring to the yoga and me. “Until then.” He kisses my cheek and is out the door. I’m not far behind him.
I kind of hate it when he calls memy queen, but I’ve never told him. Hunter can be delicate when it comes to any form of criticism or what he perceives as criticism. So, I refrain because he is good to me, we never fight, and he wants to marry me.
We met a little over a year ago. I was a guest judge on a reality talent show and his niece was a placing contestant. He was visiting LA for a few weeks and asked me out for coffee, and then dinner. It was at dinner he admitted he was a long-time fan of mine.
I started as a child actor with a TV variety showTabby is so Gabby. I solo-hosted the show spanning from age seven until we could no longer hide that I’d grown breasts. Then I had a string of hit movies as a pre-teen. The variety show made me a household name, but the movies made me a star. My mom worked me every day, as many hours as she could. I was burned out by seventeen, and in true teenage melodramatic fashion, I had a monumental breakdown.
After a stint in arelaxation facility, Mom moved us to Washington. We bought a house in the suburbs and pretended to be normal, living off endorsements, my fledgling makeup line, and residuals from syndication. That’s how I met my ex, Pax Baldwin. The good-looking boy who lived next door. But he’s a story for another time. Or not at all. Because my life works better when I don’t think about Pax.
I attended a public high school in the Seattle suburbs, tried my best to fit in, met my best friend Crystal, and pretended I was equipped—emotionally and otherwise—to be normal and live a regular life. I’d thought the move to Washington took me out of the industry forever, so no one was more surprised than I when my (ex) agent called a few months after my high school graduation with a movie offer.
By then, Pax and I were practically engaged, so I left my mom at home and he and I flew to LA to see about the role. It was almost as though it had been written about me. Child/teen actress who has a breakdown and moves away, then tries to make a comeback. Granted, I wasn’t the one trying to make the comeback, it was more the comeback trying to get me to make it happen. I did the movie and launched myself right back into the spotlight.
Pax and I moved to LA permanently, causing my mother and me to become estranged. It wasn’t a big jump for Mom and me, we’d not been getting along already. Pax worked on his photography career and I started trying to write and produce a pilot in between movies. The pilot was about my life but focusing on me as an adult. One year turned into two, and pretty soon we’d been in LA for almost four years.
It was at an industry party that we met the talent scout for a major online streaming service that often produced its own shows and movies. We’d just gotten married and were all starry-eyes and positivity. After interacting with Pax and me for an hour, the scout said we needed to have our own show. We laughed it off at the time. Six months later, it became a reality.
Of course, there was only one season ofKeeping Tabsthat aired, because once I kicked Pax out and we didn’t reconcile, the concept was pointless. I didn’t really want to act after that, and no one was interested in my pilot, so I just kind of drifted for a while. Not literally, just mentally. Somehow, I always ended up at the right place at the right time and just before the divorce, I was able to put my name on a clothing line that’s in all the major department stores. Shortly thereafter, my makeup line from when I was a teen got a total revamp.
That kept me busy for a while, until it didn’t. Being a face or figurehead doesn’t take much effort, so when the offer to guest judge on a reality talent show came up, I jumped at it, met Hunter, and now I’m here.
