then, I had just stewed quietly, bitched to Gemma when necessary, and cooed “How cute” when they showed me the stupid matching Goth bracelets they got on a shoot. He called me from the car that early morning in May and told me that he was on his way home to see his parents in Crystal Lake. An hour outside of Chicago, Crystal Lake is just as quaint as the name suggests, where the grocery store is family owned and operated, and the same newscasters have been on the air for thirty years. I was telling him how he had to stop by our favorite deli and pick up my all-time favorite roasted veggie sandwich when I heard a girl giggling in the background.
I’m not inherently a jealous person, and I knew it was probably Courtney giggling in the passenger seat. But for some reason I went all who the fuck is that on him. I couldn’t help myself. We had a huge fight, which I’m sure Courtney smirked her way through, and in the end I apologized for being irrational. Not because I thought I was wrong, but because I couldn’t express to him how or why it hurt me so much that he was sharing one of our things with her.
Since he brought her to Crystal Lake in May, I’ve felt like I was driving with no headlights in this relationship, trying to navigate the sharp turns and swerving to avoid his increasingly common mood swings. But this text just flipped on my brights, and now that I could see, I was angry. I was pissed. I wanted answers. He may be in jail, but I wasn’t going to work without answers.
I navigate to his recent calls log and there she is, straight down the page. Courtney, Courtney, Courtney. I pause for a second, then stab her name with my finger, and, before I can reevaluate, I’m holding the phone to my ear with a shaky hand.
“Hiiiiii, babyyyyyy!”
I hate this girl. “It’s not ‘baby’—it’s Guiliana.”
Silence.
“So, funny story. I was just getting ready to go to work and JR’s phone started beeping, and I thought I’d check it, since he’s out for the night.”
Silence.
I feel surprisingly calm. “So tell me. You love him?”
“I don’t know what he’s told you …”
“Well, I saw your text message and you said you loved him, so never mind that silly question. Does he love you?”
“I don’t know what he’s told you. It’s not my place to say.” She’s stone-cold.
“Does he say he loves you?”
“I don’t know what he’s told you. It’s not my place to say.”
“Cut the shit, Courtney. Really? You feel comfortable enough to text my fiancé at three o’clock in the morning, to tell him you love him, so it is absolutely your place to say.”
“I don’t know what he’s tol—”
I cut her off midrefrain. “Here’s what I’m telling you. Are you listening? He is my family. Do you realize what you’re doing here?”
Silence. Maybe I’m getting through to her.
“Is he okay?” she finally asks in a small voice. “He looked really scared when the cops got there. They just came …”
The blood in my veins feels like it is trying to choke me. “Wait, you were there? What were you …”
I stop myself. She was with him. She was with him? She was with him, and I was home alone, sleeping in our bed, with our dog, ring on my finger, and he was out with her. I feel tired again—tired and weak—too tired to even stand up.
“You still there?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Do me a favor and let me talk to him about all of this. Until we figure out what’s going on, please just leave my family alone.”
“Okay Guils. I can respect that.”
“Great. And don’t call me Guils. We’re not friends.” I hang up the phone, shaking. I’m almost laughing because I don’t even know what to say or do. In my head, I hear the voice of my old news director, Stanley Smith: “Stop smiling, G,” he always used to say. “This is hard news. You can’t be smiling in front of a burning building.”
Smiling in front of a burning building is actually why Stanley Smith fired me from that job in Miami. I spent three years at the NBC affiliate station there, running myself ragged, doing the split shift: early mornings from 4 to 10 AM, then back again in the evening from 3 to 7 PM. It was a schedule tailor-made to ensure I never got enough sleep. I said yes to every extra feature story they wanted me to cover because I thought every story was my big chance to build up my demo reel and get a job back in New York, back with JR and Zelda, where I belonged. Some days that meant doing the traffic on Good Morning Miami; running to interview Bradley Cooper on South Beach, where he was shooting his next film; then scarfing down a chopped salad with grilled salmon and touching up my eyeliner and mascara in the car on the way back to the station, just in time to jump back on air for Miami’s number-one evening newscast, The Sunset News, at 5 and 6 PM.
I saved up my vacation days to fly to exotic locales like Cincinnati or Baltimore—wherever JR was working that month. And even though he could technically make his home base anywhere, he chose New York, not Florida, which meant most of my paltry salary was spent flying back and forth on the weekends. It’s not so bad, I’d think while stuck in traffic in the back of a cab on the way to JFK trying to catch the last flight to Miami before my Monday morning traffic shift. The irony was not lost on me, but I thought of it as a means to an end.
I thought my luck had changed when Stanley Smith finally caved and let me work a hard news shift, which I’d been bugging him about since I started. He sent me to a house that had just burned down in a nearby suburb. I had my window open as we pulled up to the scene, and I still remember how strongly the air smelled of smoke. I remember wanting to gag but fighting the urge. The three-bedroom home was now a pile of burnt toast and there were four, maybe five fire trucks on the scene, plus all the police and emergency crews. I had always dreamed of covering breaking news, and this was my chance. The adrenaline was pumping through my body as I grabbed my microphone and introduced myself to the family members, all of whom had made it out safely.
After I got all the video and sound bites I needed, I got back in the car to head back to the studio. I could barely wait to call JR. No one knew how badly I wanted this as much as him. I used to nudge him all the time in bed in college when Christiane Amanpour was on TV reporting overseas, and remind him that was going to be me someday. But more than anything, I just wanted to hear his voice. Seeing all that family had lost made me want to check in on my own.
Ring, ring, ring.
“This is JR, you know what to do.”
I hung up before the beep. Guess I’ll tell him about it later.
The next day I watched the tape of that report in Stanley Smith’s office. I thought I’d done pretty well—that’s what I’d told JR later that night, anyway—until Stanley pressed play: Hi, Miami! I’m Guiliana Layne at the scene of a just devastating fire in Coconut Grove! Luckily the residents of 4269 Palm Avenue were able to make their way to safety, but, as you can see, they’ve lost everything! It was as though I’d asked for a My Little Pony for Christmas and gotten a real live pony instead. I literally could not contain my excitement about these poor people’s misfortune. Stanley pressed stop.
“Listen, I’m sorry Guiliana,” he said. “I can’t have you on our air standing in front of a burning house, and you’re smiling!” He shook his head. “If you ever want to do this for a career, you have to stop smiling, G.”
I nodded and gave him—what else?—a smile, as he assigned me back to my regular duty, the next day’s 4 AM traffic shift with a nervy follow-up email, saying, “The traffic is sort of perfect for you anyway. I mean … your last name? Come on.” As if that wasn’t