“And when all those vile media people asked all those questions last night on the red carpet . . .” He coughed again and Brooke wondered if he was choked up or just getting a cold. “It was brutal for me, and I can only imagine how hellish it was for you, and—”

He stopped talking, clearly waiting for her to say something, to save him from himself, but she couldn’t formulate a sentence through the silent tears.

They sat there for an entire minute, maybe two, before he said, “Baby, are you crying? Oh, Rook, I’m so, so sorry.”

“I’ve seen the pictures,” she whispered, and then paused. She knew she had to ask, but a part of her kept thinking it was better not to know.

“Brooke, they look so much worse than the reality.”

“Did you spend the night with that woman?” she asked. Her mouth felt like it was coated in wool.

“It wasn’t like that.”

Silence. The quiet on the phone almost felt alive. She waited and prayed for him to say that it was all a huge misunderstanding, a setup, a media manipulation. Instead, he said nothing.

“Well, okay then,” she heard herself say. “That pretty much explains it.” Her last two words were choked, muffled.

“No! Brooke, I . . . I did not have sex with that girl. I swear to you.”

“She was leaving your room at six in the morning.”

“I’m telling you, Brooke, we did not have sex.” He sounded miserable, his voice pleading.

And then she finally understood. “So you didn’t actually have sex with her, but something else happened, right?”

“Brooke . . .”

“I need to know what happened, Julian.” She wanted to throw up at the horror of having this conversation with her husband, this weirdly horrible version of “what base did you get to?”

“There was the removal of clothes, but after that, we just passed out. Nothing happened, I swear to you, Brooke.”

The removal of clothes. It was such an odd way to phrase it. So distant. She felt the bile rise in her throat at the mental picture of Julian lying naked in bed with someone else.

“Brooke? Are you still there?”

She knew he was talking, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying. She moved the phone away from her ear and looked at the screen; a picture of Julian with his face pressed against Walter’s stared back at her.

She sat on the bed for another ten seconds, maybe twenty, looking at Julian’s picture and listening to the rise and fall of his voice. She took a deep breath, brought the microphone panel to her lips, and said, “Julian, I’m hanging up. Please don’t call me back. I want to be alone.” Before she could lose her nerve, she turned off the phone, pulled the battery out, and stashed them both separately in the night table drawer. There would be no more talking that night.

15

Not a Shower Sobber

“ARE you sure you don’t want us to come in, even for a few minutes?” Michelle asked, eyeing the row of SUVs with tinted windows that lined the block outside Brooke’s building entrance.

“I’m positive,” Brooke answered, trying to sound definitive. The two-hour car ride from her mother’s place to New York with her brother and Michelle had given her more than enough time to bring them up to date on the Julian situation, and they’d arrived in Manhattan just as they started asking the sorts of questions about Julian that she wasn’t prepared to answer.

“Why don’t we just help you get in the front door?” Randy asked. “I’ve always wanted to punch a paparazzo.”

She gritted her teeth and smiled. “Thanks, guys, but I can handle this. They’ve probably been sitting here since the Grammys and I don’t think they’re leaving any time soon.”

Randy and Michelle exchanged a skeptical look so Brooke pressed on. “I’m serious, you two. You have another three hours minimum and it’s getting late, so you better get going. I’ll walk down the block, ignore them when they jump out of the cars, and keep my head high. I won’t even say ‘no comment.’”

Randy and Michelle were on their way to a wedding in the Berkshires and planned to arrive a day or two early for their first trip without the baby. Brooke sneaked another look at Michelle’s impressively tight belly and shook her head in wonderment. It was nothing short of a miracle, especially since pregnancy had replaced her formerly trim, compact body with a short, stocky figure with zero delineation between her chest and waist or waist and thighs. Brooke thought it would be years before Michelle would regain her figure, but only four months after Ella’s birth she looked better than ever.

“Well, all right . . .” Randy said, raising his eyebrows. He asked Michelle if she wanted to run into Brooke’s apartment and use the bathroom.

Brooke slumped. She was dying for a few minutes to herself before Nola arrived and round two of the inquisition began.

“No, I’m good,” Michelle answered, and Brooke exhaled. “If traffic’s going to be that bad, we should probably get going. You sure you’re going to be okay?”

Brooke smiled widely and leaned into the passenger seat to hug Michelle. “I promise. I’m more than fine. Please just focus on sleeping and drinking as much as possible, okay?”

“We are at risk of sleeping straight through this wedding,” Randy mumbled, leaning out through the driver’s window to accept Brooke’s kiss.

There was an explosion of flashbulbs close by. The man taking pictures from across the street had obviously spotted them before anyone else, despite Randy parking nearly an entire block from the entrance. He was wearing a navy hoodie and khakis and didn’t appear to be making the least bit of effort to disguise his intentions.

“Wow, he was all over that, wasn’t he? Didn’t waste a second,” her brother said, leaning out the window to get a better look at the guy.

“I’ve actually seen him before. Guaranteed you’ll see a pic online in the next four hours of us kissing with some sort of caption like ‘Jilted Wife Wastes No Time Taking New Lover,’” she said.

“Will they mention I’m your brother?”

“Most definitely not. Or the fact that your wife is sitting next to you in the car. There’s actually a distinct possibility they’ll call it a threesome.”

Randy smiled, a sad one. “Sucks, Brooke. I’m sorry. About everything.”