MARCH, 2001, ST. LOUIS, MO
FOR AS LONG as Reagan could remember,
she had wanted to explore the world, to see the beauty of every corner of the earth until she'd been run ragged by adventure. It had been a product dream of being holed up in Olympia for so long, burdened by the hum-drum tenor of her life. It had been optimistic.
It was a different feeling now, being sent criss-crossed over the United States for the sole purpose of her job. Fun wasn't the proper word she'd use to describe it, when for a reason she couldn't come to terms with, she felt like an imposter in her career. Someone who hadn't even gotten the luck of the draw with sheer talent, but simply because of who she knew.
As soon as Dave crossed her mind, she propped her chin into her hand, balancing her elbow on the sill of the backseat car window that she was being driven in. He'd teased her mercilessly when she'd left for St. Louis just a day earlier, smirking as he'd asked, now who's leaving the state for work?
The comment had irked her. He'd only been playing, but Reagan had wanted to point out that she was only leaving for three days, whereas he'd always left for months at a time, sometimes overseas where he was farther out of reach than mere state borders. She'd bared a tight smile though, thankful that he was keeping Gracie company while she was away. It was her spring break, and Dave was taking her to Virginia for a brief trip to see Ginny.
She re-crossed her legs on the car's leather seat, feeling sticky and hot as she remembered more of what she'd felt when he'd unknowingly irritated her. What he'd seemed to miss, even in the overall joke, was that he wanted to leave when he was gone. It was a slice of heaven for him to tour because it meant playing shows, interacting with the stadium-load of fans who knew every word to the lyrics that he'd previously crafted.
Reagan, on the other hand, hadn't wanted to leave. She detested when Geffen sent her packing across the country and not only because it meant leaving Gracie behind.
She was sick of her job, and the heinous guilt that followed after thinking so was miserable.
She felt snobbish to complain when she'd been handed on a silver platter what most people, even those who'd worked their asses off, would never attain. She made great money, met both famous and upcoming celebrities, and wielded a kind of power at Geffen that made her respected. She got to work in the field of music, a lifelong source of happiness for her.
Yet, despite working almost every day with musicians and piloting them into notoriety, Reagan couldn't confidently say that it was about the music anymore. Over the years, her work in A&R had tripped on the curtain that had once shielded the mechanics behind what she was doing and how money hungry labels really were.
It made her think of Kurt, who'd always been counted on to shit talk the big labels of the industry without fail. If he could have seen her then, she imagined he would have been giving her an 'I-told-you-so' look, like she'd finally dipped her toes into the difficulties that had plagued him towards the end of his life.
Reagan knew that she was being ungrateful, but she told herself that it was acceptable if she at least recognized it. She wasn't qualified for her position and no matter how much Dave said otherwise, he'd single-handedly wheedled her into DGC and then into Geffen. He'd dialed up the charm he was so well-known for and gotten his way, which was always geared towards making her happy.
The irony was that she wasn't. She was up to her eyeballs in responsibility that centered around making Geffen look good, honing in on the aesthetic that they preferred over the style of musical artists that she actually liked. She fumbled trying to meet budgetary expectations, sat in droning meetings with label executives that reminded her of devious snakes in the grass, and oversaw a whole department of people who were counting on her to do things right when she couldn't even count on herself.
It was a constant cycle that she'd grown sick of. Dealing with finicky musicians who argued with her on every last detail of their careers, trying to find the ones that Geffen claimed had talent when she thought otherwise, and pulling together marketing strategies that even she was only first learning about in the wake of zero experience.
Reagan rubbed her forehead in hopes that it would knead away the headache she felt coming on. Someone outside of Dave had seriously fucked up in making her the department head of A&R at a major label when in all actuality, she was just a girl who'd been plucked from an auto shop out of Olympia, Washington.
None of it added up.
"Miss," her driver said, turning in his seat to face her. "We're here."
Reagan jolted, having not realized that the car had stopped. She didn't even know how long she'd been sitting in the poor driver's backseat, wearing an expression that suggested she was walking to her death rather than into a meeting.
"Thanks," she said. She tipped him a wad of money, Geffen's money, and got out of the car to walk into the restaurant she'd been directed to go to.
The agenda that day wasn't too complicated. She,
along with two A&R managers, was meeting with a new and upcoming artist they'd discovered based in St. Louis. From what she understood, it was supposed to be a big meeting — the artist, an annoyingly pompous twenty-five year old guy with bleached blonde hair and a nose ring, was bringing his manager, agent, publicist, and lawyer.
The fact that the lawyer was included on the guest list made Reagan want to roll her eyes. It wasn't as if any legal documents were being signed. They were just going over the impending release of the dickhead's first album.
The meeting went as planned, though she admitted to herself that she could have played her role better. Her coworkers from Geffen had done most of the talking while she'd cut the shrimp linguini she'd ordered into tiny bite-sized pieces, far past being able to care about the discussion. It must have looked bad and she knew it, but she was tired. She wanted to go home.
"You okay, Reagan?" one of the A&R managers asked as they exited the restaurant, stepping outside into the chilly air. He shrugged into a jacket as he spoke, looking concerned.
"I'm fine," Reagan replied distractedly. She was searching for the town car that was meant to take her back to her hotel, though it looked as if she'd be waiting awhile. It was nowhere to be found.
"I think that went pretty well, huh? Cut and dry." The manager fixed the sleeves of his jacket with a proud smile that Reagan wished she could match. "Want to grab a drink with me and Leslie? We're just going down the street."
A drink sounded nice, even if she didn't feel like being social. Plus, her car wasn't there, and waiting at a bar would have been better than waiting in the gusts of wind that were starting to make her teeth rattle together.
Before Reagan could accept the invitation, her eyes locked on a woman across the street, walking out of a restaurant with her wrist flicked to the side, caught in the middle of checking her watch.
It was embarrassing, but she would have recognized that face from anywhere. It was the same striking, beautiful face that had haunted her for several months after she and Dave had filed for divorce. It was a doll's face, alluring in a way that had left Reagan groveling in a puddle of her own insecurities.
Louise Post, she thought, her brain rearing anxiously.
Louise Post. Louise Post. Louise Post.
The woman that Dave had effectively picked over her.
"I . . . I can't," Reagan said numbly, taking one unconscious step of the curb. "Sorry, Darrell. I'll see you tomorrow."
"My name's Derrick," the manager told her, but she ignored him, whipping her head side to side to ensure that traffic wasn't coming before she started walking. Without thinking any further, she started towards Louise, her heart hammering.
Reagan had imagined that same scenario many times in the past. She'd never blamed Louise for what had happened between her and Dave in Mexico, but a part of her had always vied to hear the story from another source besides Dave. She'd wanted to see Louise in person, to inspect her in order to understand why she'd assumed her place as the chosen one.
It was masochistic to a fault, but Reagan wanted to see up close the woman that Dave had slept with. In a sick way, it would have made the picture clearer, even though it was still something out of a horror movie for her to revisit.
Louise looked up when she saw Reagan coming. Her eyes squinted in confusion, then in fear at the stranger making a beeline straight for her, but they finally opened wide with recognition.
Reagan's heart pounded. So, Louise knew exactly who she was.
"Louise?" she asked, coming to a stop in front of her. She swallowed, her throat having become painfully dry in the seconds it had taken her to cross the street.
Louise took the smallest of steps back, gripping the messenger bag that she was using as a purse over her shoulder.
"Yes," she answered tentatively. "You're . . . Reagan."
Reagan assessed Louise in a quick once-over, noting her bootcut jeans and jacket that slouched partially to the side, revealing the delicate ridge of her collarbone. Her hair was blonde, which was not how Reagan had remembered her looking in the pictures she'd once obsessively searched for. It didn't matter. Blonde or brunette, she was still incredibly pretty.
She looked down at her own stuffy outfit, her panty-hosed legs and stiff skirt that despite hitting mid-thigh, was still an old lady-ish shade of beige. And she looked stupid on top of it all, nowhere near equipped for the cold weather.
"You know Dave," she said stupidly, meeting Louise's eyes once again.
Louise glanced away briefly and caught a flyway piece of her hair in the wind, tucking it back.
"Yes I do."
Those three words covered everything that neither of them wanted to say aloud and that was enough for Reagan. She hadn't wanted Louise to introduce herself as the woman who'd slept with her husband, especially not when Reagan held no grudge against her.
"Can I talk to you?" she asked after a deep breath. "About . . . Dave?"
"I don't know if that's a good idea, Reagan," Louise said uncomfortably. She stepped to the side, like she was about to make a run for it, and Reagan staggered forward feeling helpless.
"Please," she said. "I'm not here to chew you out. It's just . . . I've always wondered. About what happened. What he did. And you're here. And I'm here."
"I live here," Louise said cautiously.
"I'm on a business trip."
"Oh." The tense line of Louise's shoulders fell slightly. "For a second I thought you were here to actually get a hold of me."
Reagan widened her eyes. "Oh, god no. It's not like that. I'm not that crazy. I, um . . . I don't blame you. I'm not mad at you."
"That's . . . good to know."
"There are some things that I've wanted to ask. Ask you, not him, I mean. I want to talk about what happened."
Louise's face tightened painfully, giving away every coherent hint that she most definitely did not want to discuss the subject.
"Reagan," she said gently, "I'm not sure that's a good idea."
"Why not?" Reagan pleaded. It was grating to hear herself begging, knowing that her desperation had finally hit a humiliating peak.
"Because it was a shitty thing that happened. I know it hurt you. It hurt him. And please don't take this the wrong way, but I really don't want to step into that role of 'the other woman' again."
"I don't want to make you feel that way. I promise. All I want is to hear about it from the only other person who was there when it was happening."
Reagan tried to project the sincerity that she felt into her voice. She'd envisioned that moment for so long, even when it had felt next to impossible in actually happening. She'd heard the story from Dave, but his version had come from a place of anguish, an attempt to keep her as his wife and not dig his own grave any deeper. It wasn't necessarily that she'd thought he lied, but the need to have the complete idea of what had transpired in Mexico was as poignant as it'd been almost three years earlier.
Louise hesitated, measuring the truthfulness behind Reagan's expression.
"What do you want to know?" she finally asked.
"I know that you guys . . . had sex," Reagan struggled to say, watching as Louise's face pinched in discomfort at her choice of words. "But . . . how? How did it come to that?"
"Can I say one thing?"
"Of course."
Louise tucked her hair back again against the wind, steeling her eyes and straightening her posture.
"I would never sleep with a man who I thought had a wife," she clarified. "That's not me. That's not who I am."
"But you knew he was married to me," Reagan hedged slowly, not wanting to offend her with what she presumed to be the obvious.
"That's not what he insinuated. He made it sound like you both were actively going through a divorce," Louise replied, her voice softening with a note of pity.
Reagan felt the wind in her chest exit in one breath.
"He . . . said that?" she whispered.
"In general, yes. He never said those exact words but that's what he alluded to on the first night we were there. I assumed something was up. He was walking around, carrying a bottle of liquor and acting like someone had died. You weren't there, either, so when he implied that he was going through a divorce, things seemed to click."
"I . . . we weren't . . ."
Louise kept her face straight, crossing her arms. "I know that now," she said bitterly. "I only found out it wasn't true when I saw in the news almost a year later that you guys were divorced. I summed it up to be that I was the one who'd ultimately broken you guys up. And let me tell you, that wasn't easy to accept."
"It wasn't your fault," Reagan whispered. Her head felt cloudy, like she was teetering on the verge of passing out. "He didn't tell you the truth."
"I was pretty pissed at first," Louise said, looking away with thoughts swirling behind her eyes. "But then I figured he must have been really going through it. Dave's not a bad guy. I could kill him for that shit he pulled, but he's also never been the type to do that. Whatever made him do it must have been pretty bad."
"We were fighting. Not speaking, really. It was . . . it was me."
Louise fixed her stare back onto Reagan, taking her by surprise when she gently reached out to lay her fingertips on Reagan's arm.
"Don't blame yourself," she said tenderly. "He still shouldn't have done it. I'm not easing the blame off of him."
"Did he say anything else?" Reagan mumbled. "About him and I?"
"Reagan . . ."
"Please. I have to know. It's important."
"Isn't it in the past?" Louise's voice was soft and understanding as she tilted her head down, trying to grab a glimpse of Reagan's face that was facing the pavement.
"I'm seeing him again," Reagan responded bluntly. "We're trying to work on things."
Her confession made Louise stiffen and take another step back.
"If that's the case, then don't let me be the reason you guys separate again," she said. "I don't want to do that. I had to live with it once and once was enough."
"It'll never be your fault, whatever happens," Reagan interjected. She wasn't ready for Louise to disappear, not yet, when there was clearly more that hadn't been uncovered. "Listen, I really need to know. Whether or not him and I are together, I need to know. I can't get fully past it without knowing."
"You think it'll actually help?"
"It might give back some lost sleep at night."
Louise sighed and closed her eyes, pausing to collect the memories that Reagan knew she was conjuring. They must have been difficult to say, otherwise it wouldn't have been such a burden to get them out, and that was precisely what made Reagan's stomach clench in dreaded anticipation.
"The second night," Louise began uneasily, raking a hand back through her hair, "he was drunk. Again. We hadn't talked about it anymore on the first night, but the second night he brought it up on his own. He was fucked up. He said . . . he felt betrayed by you. That you'd blindsided him."
"He did?" Reagan swayed on her feet, watching as her surroundings blurred into a Monet-esque meltdown of colors.
"He was just out of his mind, wasted on everything he drank. He was venting. Maybe trying to justify being with me, I don't know. He said . . ."
Louise stopped, catching herself mid-sentence with an arm that she loped around her midsection, as if it would physically prevent her from continuing.
"Said what?" Reagan pressed.
"He said that he'd never regretted anything in his life except meeting you."
"Oh."
It was the one thing that Reagan felt capable of uttering as her locked knees wobbled, threatening to give out. She tried to breathe, but the inhale of icy air locked in her throat, seizing before it could reach her lungs.
She was a regret. He regretted her. His drunk thoughts had manifested into the ones that he'd harbored while sober and he had told someone else, someone who wasn't her, that she was the one, singular regret in his life.
"I'm sorry," Louise said, pain flashing across her face. "I'm really, really sorry."
"You . . . didn't do anything," Reagan mumbled.
"Are you okay? You look like you're about to be sick."
"I don't know."
Louise grabbed Reagan's arm, steadying her, and Reagan let out a shaky breath.
"Do you have a cigarette?" she half-gasped. It physically pained her to even speak.
"I don't, but I can go get you some," Louise said. It was clear that she felt awkward, even anxious, holding Dave's ex-wife up on the streets of St. Louis, but through her despair Reagan was impressed by the front-woman's kindness.
"You don't have to do that."
She didn't realize she was crying until Louise fished a tissue out of her bag, leading Reagan away from the street and under the awning of a restaurant. She held it out to her and when Reagan didn't take it, she forced it into her hand, guiding it up to her face.
"I wish you hadn't heard any of this from me," she said softly.
"He would have never told me," Reagan whispered. "He already felt guilty enough. He wouldn't have added to it."
"Then I hate to have been the one to add."
"You did me a favor."
Louise took the tear-sodden tissue from Reagan's clenched fist, folding it up and disposing of it back into her bag. Reagan watched, feeling oddly detached as a murmur of gratitude bubbled up on the tip of her tongue. Louise didn't know her from Adam and yet she'd stuck her used tissue into her things, trying to erase the fact that Reagan was going to pieces.
She's so nice, Reagan thought miserably. Of course she'd be this nice.
"I know it's probably a stupid thing to say, but you didn't fuck up entirely when you married him," Louise said. "He really is a good guy. I can't believe I'm saying that, but I know it's true."
"I'm not sure," Reagan admitted, touching her hand to her cheek and feeling the wetness of her tears. She really wished that she hadn't started crying.
"Dave does this thing, as I'm sure you know, where he tries to project being happy all the time," Louise said, hooking her thumbs through her belt loops. "It's not a bad thing. Half the time he's doing it for the sake of the people he loves, if not for the cameras in his face. He wants everyone to be happy. He doesn't want a thing to be out of place."
Reagan listened carefully. She automatically understood what Louise was getting at, having experienced that portrayal of Dave face-to-face for the last eleven years. It was odd hearing someone else, a stranger to her, nail it down so accurately.
"But then when he feels fucked up," Louise continued, "when things really go to shit . . . he doesn't know what to do with that. If things aren't going accordingly to whatever plan he's got mapped out in that head of his, he self-destructs. And he even tries to cover that up. But it eventually catches up to him. This . . . what happened in Mexico . . . that was everything catching up to him."
She touched Reagan's arm again, this time gripping it with a deep expression of sentiment.
"Do you get what I mean?" she asked.
Reagan pressed her lips together in a line that was stark white, looking anywhere but into Louise's eyes.
"I do. Right now, it's just hard to see it that way."
"Trust me, I get it. I spent a lot of time thinking he was a piece of a shit for what he did. But then I remembered the true person that he really is. And . . . I think you should do that, too. If that's what you want to do."
"I'm sorry you got dragged into it," Reagan said, hanging her head. It was embarrassing enough that Louise had seen her lose every ounce of her composure, all in the span of their first meeting.
"It's history," Louise reassured her. With a small smile, she held her left hand up, showcasing a diamond ring on her finger. "I'm married, now. It's out of my system. Though I'm truly sorry that you still have to deal with it."
Reagan sniffed, wishing that Louise would summon another tissue out of her bag so that she could prevent any more snot from running down her face. She thought about the precarious position that she now found herself in, going home in twenty-four hours to Los Angeles where Dave would be meeting her two days later.
What would he expect? No doubt the same impression she'd been giving him since January, that their relationship was rising from the ashes and that she loved him.
And she did love him. Even after hearing Louise's testimony to the night that had ruined everything, Reagan still loved Dave, befuddled by how that could be possible when every facet of the truth had been revealed to her.
He'd sank lower than low. He hadn't just cheated on her, but he'd said things about her, about their relationship, that she never would have guessed he'd felt. He had painted her as a villain during that time when the reality had been that she was in pain, grappling with an experience that she'd never prepared herself for.
His betrayal suddenly felt so much more prominent. It was a knife plunged just a little deeper into her heart, opening up the sutures she'd painstakingly woven when it had all first taken place.
But she had needed to know.
"Thank you," Reagan said thickly. "Thank you for telling me. I appreciate it."
"You're welcome. I'm only sorry to have hurt you," Louise replied gingerly.
Reagan rolled her shoulders back, reminding herself of where she was and what she still had to do. Her hotel room awaited her, where she could cry out the rest of her heartbreak in private, but another day's work was still in her future. Life would continue to go on, even as ridiculous as it seemed then.
"Louise?" she said, staring fully into Louise's face.
That face was not the face of someone heartless. It was sweet and understanding, empathetic in the raw way that it shared her pain. It was the face of someone good at heart who'd unfortunately found themselves in a situation that didn't reflect their true self.
"Yes?" Louise prompted gently.
"I . . . really like your band. You're . . . um, you're a kick-ass vocalist."
Louise laughed, even though it rang out with sadness that matched the compassionate melancholy in her eyes.
"Thanks, Reagan."
a/n:
Sheesh, I really hate to publish another chapter of Dave slander after the heartbreaking show he just gave us last night in honor of Taylor, but . . . you know. I felt like writing and this was the next notch in the plot line. Instead of us being pissed at fictional Dave and his fictional actions, can we just talk about how fucking beautiful his tribute to Taylor was?