"You want to talk about Len?"
Phoenix couldn't appear more dumbfounded if a parade of dancing kittens barged into his kitchen and tangoed across the counter. Or is it a different emotion he's trying to hide? It could be the lighting, but his face looks a shade paler than usual.
"Yes."
"Right now?"
"Yup."
A vein in his forehead visibly pulses. The only sounds in the room while I wait for him to speak are a quiet buzz from the refrigerator and the hum of a fan that powers his central air conditioning.
"Is it background for your book?" he finally asks.
"It's background for me, the person dating you."
"I'm not sure I'm following."
He fiddles with his watch's wristband and keeps his gaze focused somewhere to the left of me. Is he sincere in his confusion, or is he buying time?
"I've actually felt your energy shift somewhere else any time Len's name has come up over the last week, ever since you heard that news report. It makes me wonder what I don't know."
"About her case?" He squints, and I don't think it's from the overhead lights. This seems more like acting.
"You tell me. It's like you space out into another world and you get tense and distant with me in this one. Is it something about how she disappeared, or is it being reminded of her that does it, or something else? I want to understand where you go and what I can do for you when you go there."
I also want to understand more about why Phoenix was so stunned when he learned Nash talked to me about Len and offered to answer questions about her. He said it was because Nash rarely talks about her, and I accepted the answer, but is that really it? Is there something about Len that Phoenix is keeping close to his chest and that he thought Nash might expose? I don't know how to ask this in a way that won't come across as me being jealous of someone I've never met, because I'm not sure that's how I feel. Mostly, I'm confused and missing a few pieces to a larger puzzle.
"Knowing there could be an answer any day to what happened brings up a lot. I apologize if I haven't been myself this week."
"Is that all it is?"
"Is there a reason you don't believe that's all it is?"
I should be annoyed that he's answered my question with a question, but something in his voice doesn't let me. He doesn't sound angry or defensive. He sounds sad.
"You've owned up to hiding things you felt the first time we dated, and those were important things that sent your life spiraling. Our relationship ended because of it. You may not drink or use drugs to cope with things anymore, but I'm not about to get shut out a second time. I promise you I will walk out of this house, block your number, and not look back, unless you tell me the truth. That means all of it."
His shoulders and neck stiffen, and now he hardly blinks at all for what's probably under a minute of silence, but seems to stretch on for an eternity. Then he nods.
"Where would you like me to start?"
"At the beginning. Or with why losing Len was the incentive you needed to get and stay sober when salvaging our relationship wasn't. Why did she mean more to you?"
I didn't intend for the last part to come out, but there it is. I've steered this exactly where I didn't want to go before we've even started.
"Del."
There's actual pain in his voice when he says my name. Now I'm the one who can't meet his eyes.
"Motion to strike my last question," I mumble.
"Look at me, please."
I'm frozen, though, unable to move a muscle until Phoenix gently tilts my chin toward him so I have no choice but to do what he's asked. Heat rises to my neck and cheeks, and lord, I just want to hop off this stool, crawl under the table in the corner, and hide.
"The night I met Len, it was because she intervened when Torin was getting ready to rearrange my face and probably most of my limbs. It was outside a bar I'd gone to where he and his old band from back then were playing. I think I told you that part already, and how I didn't know he would be there. Len worked at the bar, and it turned out she'd had the bartender cut me off and had been keeping an eye on me. She saw when Torin approached me and things got heated, and she followed us on a hunch when we stepped outside. I don't remember much about fighting with Torin, other than what Len told me later. She'd threatened to call the cops and get him banned from the bar, which included getting his band's next gigs there canceled. Then she drove me home. Somewhere in that, she got my phone number and called me the next day to check in and ask about you."
"About me?" This already doesn't make sense. "Why?"
"She heard Torin mention your name before he was about to punch me, and then she listened to me talk about you the entire drive home. I'd had so much to drink that she couldn't understand most of it."
"What did she want to know? If I was your girlfriend, or if we'd recently broken up?"
My writer's imagination is great when I use it for books, but now it's working at warp speed to fill in the blanks and make up their phone conversation and what happened next. Len probably realized Phoenix was a celebrity, because that would have been around the peak of his acting career. She called him, trying to find out if he was single, confirmed he was, and then asked to see him. They spent more time together, she healed his heart, and he got sober for her. Meanwhile, somewhere in LA, I still felt the pangs of heartbreak most days. I'd rebuilt my life, but once in a while I would see him in a movie trailer or spot his name in a headline and wonder why I was so insignificant to him that he couldn't just answer a text.
"Where to find you." I'm so in my head that Phoenix's reply might as well come from another dimension.
"Find me?" I repeat.
"She thought you should know how sick I'd made myself over the things I'd done and that I really did love you. Somewhere in that drunken mess of a conversation the night before, I'd told her a few halfway understandable things about why I left and why I wouldn't reach out to you. She thought it would help for us to talk and for me to come clean, even if it only meant closure."
There's a piece of the story missing here. There has to be.
"Len cared that much about the broken relationship of someone who got drunk at a bar she worked at?"
"She cared because I said something about it not mattering if I lived or died. Her brother once said the same thing. He was a recovering alcoholic who didn't make it. His body finally shut down. She said it would haunt her forever if she didn't try to do something before I met the same end, and she was convinced her brother's spirit played a role in making sure she was at the bar that night so our paths would cross. She'd actually switched shifts with someone else that morning, and that was normally her day off."
"Oh."
My less-than-adequate answer slips out without me meaning for it to, and then I'm fumbling in the dark for something else to say. It turns out I don't need to, because Phoenix keeps talking.
"I wouldn't tell her your last name or anything else that would help her find you. Why would you want to hear anything about me after everything I did? You deserved peace. I told Len that, and she let it drop, or so I thought. She went on to tell me more about her brother, and then said she knew about the tabloid rumors that I'd been drunk or high on movie sets just as much as when I went out. She asked if it was true. It was weird to talk about it with a stranger, but it was also easier and less confrontational than spilling my guts to my family or anyone else I knew. She asked if I'd considered getting help, and I ended the phone call there, not expecting to talk to her again."
"But you did." Clearly he did.
"I ran into her again the next time I went to the same bar, intending to do the same sorry shit I'd been doing the last time, minus Torin being around. She saw me there and wouldn't let the bartender serve me. I wasn't happy about it, but I was still sober enough to keep my anger under wraps. I thought I would go somewhere else, but then Len called out your full name as I walked to the door. That made me stop. She'd done some sleuthing and figured out from older entertainment news that the Del I'd sobbed about was you, author Delaney Sharpe. She told me I had a choice. I could leave, get shitfaced somewhere else, and hope I made it home, and she would reach out to you on every social media platform you were on about her encounters with me and everything I still felt for you. Or I could stay there, not drink, and sit with her fiancé and a few other friends who'd come by to hang out while she worked. One of those friends was Nash."
I register the part about Nash, but I'm stuck on what came before it. Her fiancé. Len was engaged to someone when they met? Nothing I've come across while researching her case for my book mentioned this or that she was even seeing someone.
"Why didn't her fiancé come up in any of the news stories?" I ask. "I don't remember reading or hearing anything about him."
"She and Matt ended their engagement before she went missing, but it was on good terms. They realized they wanted different things for the future. It happened the same week as everything with Chaz and me in Newport, and then I checked into rehab in Antigua. Len didn't tell me they'd broken up until I was nearly at the end of my program. I pretty much existed in a bubble at the facility, with most outside news never filtering through. The few people who knew I was there wanted me focused on getting and staying sober, and not on anything else."
He pauses to drink some water. I mirror him while absorbing what he's said so far and piecing it together with what I already knew. Len befriended him because he reminded her of the brother who couldn't be saved. She had a fiancé for what sounds like a lot of the time they knew each other before she vanished. Phoenix agreed to rehab as part of a deal with Chaz that kept my name from being dragged into the tabloids, and somehow this program worked when the one he'd tried before didn't. Weeks ago, he said losing Len was the catalyst for him getting and staying sober. Except it sounds like she was around the whole time he was in rehab. Something doesn't add up.
"The program in Antigua just worked for you, then, even after the previous one didn't?"
"It was a good program, and being in another country made it more of a challenge to walk out and go home. My agreement with Chaz was also a reason for me to see it through to the end, even on the days I felt like Satan had come for me. In a lot of ways, I wanted to do it for you and be the person I should have been when we were together, even though I thought it was too late for us and I'd never see you again."
His hand drifts closer to where mine rests on the counter. He hooks his fingers with one of mine, but it's not where my attention is. There are more gaps I still need him to fill in.
"You told me weeks ago that losing Len was your wake-up call to get your life together," I remind him again. "Now you're saying she was still present and talking to you when you were in rehab and that it was your agreement with Chaz and wanting to do it for me. Am I missing something?"
"No." His voice is soft, and he keeps his hold on my finger. "All of that is true. Len disappeared a few days after I finished rehab. I stayed sober and didn't relapse after because I promised her parents I would do everything I could to help find her. I couldn't do that if I was drunk all the time, and I couldn't take the thought of failing Len or failing them. They had already lost their son, so to not know where Len was? That was devastating. The shock of her being gone and not knowing what happened shook me out of my personal pity party. My focus became bringing her home. I spent a long time convincing myself that we'd find her alive, until months passed, and then a year, and then longer."
He's gone from linked fingers to covering my hand with his again, like he did a few minutes ago when he said he would tell me everything about what he's working on in Vegas when he's able to. The tremble I noticed in his hand the other times he's talked about Len is back now. It doesn't flood me with sympathy or prompt me to move on to another subject. Not yet.
"You told me once that you accepted she might not be alive, and you still don't know either way. Everything got so tense during our drive to Willow Beach when her name came up, though. The same thing happened last night when I asked if you'd seen anything else about her in the news. Both times seemed like you didn't want to open up to me about what you were thinking and feeling, and I'd like to know why."
"I did tense up," Phoenix admits. "I thought I'd accepted it, but it was easier to convince myself when there weren't updates on the news about Len and it was still the endless unknown. Deep down, I still had hope of her being out there somewhere, and that all of us looking for her didn't fail her. Hearing something changed in her case made everything real again. It forced me to realize I'll finally need to face the truth, whatever it is. That's where my head has been at this week, and I'm sorry. I didn't want or intend for any of this to make you question things about you and me."
He moves his hand off of mine and strokes my hair, then runs his fingers along my cheek. The tremble is still there.
༺â༻ ༺â༻ ༺â༻
I'm proud of Del for standing her ground, but wow. That's a lot. How are all of you doing, and what do you think about Phoenix's account of his friendship with Len?