Authors: Amanda Heath
“Likewise,” he murmurs, his voice deep and very low. It flows over me like warm chocolate with little marshmallows in a mug. The kind I used to drink with Claire on the back porch while the sun rose.
I stop dead in my tracks, dropping Ryan’s hand. Chill bumps appear on my arms and I hope he doesn’t think they are for him. While touching him was nice and everything, I don’t think he’d ever get that kind of reaction out of me.
That’s how I found myself wanting to cry right there in front of a blockbuster actor who, at this point, is more famous than me. I hadn’t thought about Claire in years. I hadn’t thought about how close we once were. I didn’t think about how she used to protect me from Jason’s teasing or Beau’s tickle attacks. I clench my teeth because the tears want to spill and this is not the right time to be sad about this. It’s not the right time to think about the hurt or the anger or the confusion. The four of us were close, so close. They left me behind though. I wasn’t even an afterthought, not until it was too late.
“What just happened?” Ryan asks and I find myself looking into those eyes. The same pain resounds in his eyes. I guess we both got picked over by something someone else thought was better.
I take back all the bad things I thought about him earlier this week. Maybe he’s like me, living in a world of pain. “I got a chill I guess. Nothing to be concerned about,” I answer with a smile in my voice.
“Bullshite,” he says, that accent making the word sound completely different from when I say it.
I blink up at him and find something intense behind those eyes now. Something I’m not even going to try and deal with. “Well, seeing as we don’t know each other, I’d say you could believe what you want.”
“Fair enough.”
I raise both eyebrows and let out a laugh. “That was easy.”
“As you said, we don’t know each other. If you don’t want me to be concerned then I won’t be, Green Eyes.” That makes me turn and look up into his eyes for the thousandth time this day. They seem even more intense than they did earlier.
I’m about to comment on it when the casting director comes into the room. We move away from each other as one to sit across from each other. I smile at the casting director and she gives me a joyful one back. “I’m happy to meet you, Miss Michaels. We are hoping you work out, seeing as we are having trouble finding someone perfect for the role.”
I nod. “Well, I hope I have what you’re looking for,” I return, getting comfortable in my chair.
“Do either of you need a script to look at before we begin?” she asks, turning the camera on and getting it ready to record.
“I’m good.”
“No.”
Ryan and I speak at the same time. I make an effort not to look at him. I’m still confused by our meeting and it’s kind of driving me crazy not knowing what he was thinking earlier. I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone look at me that intensely.
“Okay, then let’s get started. Oh, do you know which scene we’d like you to read?” she looks at me and asks.
“The café scene, right?” I ask in return.
She smiles and nods. “Yes. We feel it can give us a taste of how you two would work together. It’s a very intense scene, so just go whenever you’re ready.”
I nod and take a deep breath. It’s been awhile since I’ve had to do any kind of acting. I hope it’s just like riding a bike. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.
It takes me awhile to look up at Ryan, who has been sitting patiently across the table. He lifts an eyebrow once I finally lift my eyes to his. It’s like he asks if I’m okay. I decide to just start instead of stalling anymore. There’s no point in it. Either I’m good, or I suck and I’ve lost my career forever.
I reach across the table and pick up his hand. I look down and trace it with my finger while I speak my line. Jessy, the character I’m reading for, she seems to be a hands-on kind of girl. She’s very open and honest with her life. She speaks her mind constantly and I find myself giving her a personality I think she’d be proud of. And I haven’t even said the first line.
“Wren, I know you’ve talked about it before. But, I just don’t know if I can go through with it. It would kill me to watch you leave. I promise it would,” I say as Jessy, never looking up at Ryan. His fucking eyes just throw me off.
“You remember that time we couldn’t get the truck out of the mud?” His voice has changed from his native accent to a southern American one. Just like that. I finally meet his eyes and nod. “You said it would just kill you then, too. You know, if you had to stand out in the rain any longer. Bout drove me nuts that night, girl.”
“I remember you getting us out of the mud soon after I made that declaration,” I respond, still tracing the lines and curves of his hand. It just seems so natural. I don’t know him, he doesn’t know me but here in this room it doesn’t matter. Maybe we really are Wren and Jessy. Or maybe I’m just psycho.
He laughs and shows off a grin. “Well, you were probably right that night. It was damn near thirty-five degrees and raining. You could have caught a cold, which could have turned into pneumonia. So maybe you were right.”
I give him a soft smile. “You just think telling me I’m right will get you somewhere. But it won’t, I promise you that.”
He sighs, “Jessy, baby, it’s just something I gotta do. My granddaddy, my daddy, hell, both my brothers, they went off and fought for this country. It’s my turn now. Can’t you just see that?”
I look down again, drumming up some emotion that could help me here. “Maybe I’m just selfish. Maybe I don’t want to see you get killed or hurt. Maybe I love you enough to never want anything to happen to you. You think you’ll know what you’re gonna see over there, but you don’t. It won’t be like you’re imagining. It’ll be worse, Wren. It’ll change you. You’ll come back another man.”
Ryan reaches over and puts his hand under my chin lifting my face until I’m staring into those icy blue eyes. “Then I guess you’ll just have to fall in love with me all over again.”
I wrench my face away from his touch and glare at him. “You think this is cute? This isn’t cute, Wren. It’s ugly. This whole situation is just ugly. You don’t have to go fight a war that you shouldn’t even be fighting. You can do good here. Hell, we all know how much you want to be a firefighter, yet here you are talking about going off to war. I’m sorry, it’s just ridiculous to me.”
“So me leaving, it’s ridiculous to you?” he asks, anger snaking a bit into his voice.
I nod my head. “Why do you have to be a hero? Huh? Don’t you see that you’re my hero? You’re my superman; you’ve always been my superman. Don’t go be someone else’s.”
“You just don’t understand, Jessy. I feel like I’m talking to a brick wall,” he sighs in frustration.
I stand up and tower over his sitting form. I muster up every bit of anger I have inside of me to deliver the last line of the scene, “You are talking to a brick wall. I will not budge. I will not bend. I’ll forever be sitting in this desolate town mourning the loss of you. You go, Wren. You go off to war. You go off to a place that ugly, you’re gonna die. Then I’ll be left alone because I’ll never love anyone the way that I love you. You throw it all away, that’s fine. I can’t change your mind or save your life.” Tears flow down my face because I’m feeling everything Jessy is feeling in this moment. “If you go, Wren, I won’t be waiting when you get back.” Then I look right into those eyes that I’m so afraid of and state, “I won’t be here when you get back.”
Ryan
Her things still litter my house.
It’s almost as if she’s still here. Her makeup still spilt across my bathroom counter. Her dirty clothes still all over the floor. The nasty yogurt she eats still sitting in my fridge. She even left her Emmy on the shelf with the spotlight.
She’ll be back for all these things, but only after I’ve left for Arkansas. My friends still can’t believe I’m going ahead to film this movie. Sometimes, though, you have to keep moving forward instead of living in the past.
Jason, my best mate in the whole world, walks through the kitchen doorway and sits down on my couch. His short blonde hair tousled from running his fingers through it after our run. He looks decidedly ridiculous. “So all her crap is still here? I would have thrown it all in the trash.”
I just stare at him.
He twists the cap off his bottle of water and just stares back at me. This goes on for a moment before he speaks. “It’s okay to be mad at her, you know.”
I nod my head. “I am mad at her.”
“See, I don’t think you are. I think you’re mad at yourself. You can’t just blame yourself,” he says before taking a huge drink.
“I don’t blame myself,” I say, feeling like I’m just repeating what he’s said.
Jas sighs and shakes his head. “She’s a cunt. She’s a bitchy, cheating, whorish cunt. Get that through your head. How many times has she even tried to apologize? How many times has she even called you?”
Cassie has pulled a lot of shit over all the years of our relationship. From the whining, to the tantrums that would rival a small child, and let’s not forget how she treated my friends. It was like she couldn’t stomach hanging out with Grammy Award-winning rock stars. I think it actually made her sick to her stomach. And she left me for a fucking personal trainer, hers not mine, like the news outlets are saying.
“She is a cunt, no doubt about that.” I sit back in my chair and try to keep my eyes off the damn picture of us hanging on the wall. I shouldn’t have let her decorate the place.
“You need to get out there and root,” Jas says with a wink. I just roll my eyes. I hate it when he uses Aussie slang when we talk. It took him a long time to even figure out the right things to say. I swear, for a couple of months there he just sat and listened to me talk. And that was a feat in itself, considering I’m not a talker.
“What? I know I got that one right.”
I laugh at him because he’s an idiot, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t the best mate a man could have. “You haven’t asked about little sister,” I murmur. I expected him to ask about her right when he saw me today, but he’s kept it to himself. What a miracle.
He closes his eyes and tilts his head down. It’s hard to see him when we talk about Alexis. He has a lot of pain when it comes to her. Currently, it’s like he’s been knifed when I say her name. Claire and Beau are the same way. They get this far off look, too. Like they remember what it was like when their family was whole.
“What was she like?” he finally asks, placing his face into his hands. It’s sad really, how he doesn’t even know what she’s like now. I’ve never once told him it was his own fault but from time to time I want to. He’s been open and honest about what happened with Alexis when they were younger. He’s always taken the blame. I don’t think it solely rests on his shoulders. He wasn’t the oldest.
“She was offsetting. I’ve seen her pictures and a few of her films but it was different up close. She looks so much like you. The way she moved and how she spoke reminded me of you, but mostly of Claire.” I remember the pain in her eyes though. I see it mirrored in Jas’s every day. Some days I just want to force all four of them into counseling, then maybe I could get some peace around here. “She looked sad, really sad. But she hid it well.” I smile at the memory of her audition with me. “She has such talent, Jas. She gave me chills. I don’t think I’ve ever met such a good actress and I only had that one scene with her.”
Jason lifts his head and meets my eyes. “She’s always had that talent. She used to put on shows for everyone. The rest of us wanted to rock out, perform that way, she was always putting on plays and acting out her favorite shows.” He gets a far off look in his eyes and laughs. “She once tied strings on all her Barbies and made me put on this stupid little play like they were marionette puppets. I think we laughed more than we did anything else.”
“She was nice to me, which I found surprising. She has to know we are mates.” I’m not even exaggerating when I say people have dedicated blogs to our “bromance”. Whatever the hell that means.
Jason shakes his head. “She’s a professional. She once had to present an award with Gray, and she pretended she had no idea who he’s married to.” Gray, being Reed Grayson, the king of country, who married Claire about two years ago. They were just dating when he presented the award with Alexis. “They both played it safe though. He said it was surreal because of how much she reminded him of us, but yet she wasn’t a part of us.”
“You could always just fix it,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest. I get a whiff of something stinky and realize I should probably shower. “Apologize to her face, don’t force her into anything.”
Jason turns his face away from me and looks out the window. “Sometimes you can’t go back. Sometimes you can’t take back the things you’ve done. We hurt her, deeply. You can see it when you look at her. The tension in her shoulders, the anger or depression in her eyes.” He turns back to me and gives me the most serious look I’ve ever seen come across his face. “We destroyed her. She’s had to put herself back together again, and those pieces don’t include an inch of relief for the rest of us.”
I study his profile and find he truly means what he says. They might have hurt her deeply, but you can always fix things. She just needs a little push herself.
“Did you see the ankle biter?” he asks with a smile in his voice.
I roll my eyes, which I seem to do a lot of when he’s around. “No, I didn’t see her little girl. We met in a room with a table and chairs, plus the casting director. Not the kind of thing you bring your kid to.”
That’s something Jason and the others can’t seem to get past. They’ve never seen the little girl. I don’t think they even know her name. Alexis was very private about the birth and she doesn’t show her off like some celebrities do. She seems to only want the little girl to be out of the spotlight. “Maybe one day I’ll prove her existence.” Jason says.
The three siblings have a running joke that the child doesn’t even exist. I don’t know myself. I’ve even seen several reports on the television that try to debunk the existence of Alexis’s child. Frequently it sucks to be famous, what with all the people constantly in your face, constantly in your business. While Jason thinks she’s real, Claire and Beau have major doubts. Mostly due to the fact that she didn’t have a boyfriend when the rumors started flying. They say they couldn’t see their little sister just getting knocked up from a one off. I think maybe she did, and that’s why she’s so secretive about the kid.
Or maybe she just wants everyone running around knocking their heads into walls because she finds joy in it.
“I say we take Cassie’s million-dollar wardrobe and burn it in the biggest bonfire the world has ever seen,” Jason says while getting up off the couch and moving towards my bedroom door.
I link my fingers together and set them across my stomach. He’s behind me now but I sit with a smile on my face. When I hear him bang into the door, I let out a laugh. “I got a lock put on it the other day. I had a feeling you’d try something like that. While it would be nice to set fire to all her stupid dresses and all that other shit cluttering my closet, that would make headlines because she’d scream it at the top of her lungs. I’d rather this shit end peacefully and without fanfare.”
“You suck the fun out of everything. Why do you always have to be the reasonable one?” he mutters, moving away from my bedroom door.
A loud clank sounds from the backyard and I get up from my chair, stretching my back muscles as I do so. I move to the back door and open it to find my border collie with a popped basketball in his mouth. “Joey, seriously?” I ask the two-year-old dog.
His blue eyes meet mine and he starts wagging his tail and panting. I named him Joey because he reminded me of a baby roo when I first got him. He was all legs and ears.
“Did he pop the neighbor’s ball again?” Jason asks from behind me.
I wave the dog into the house and shut the door, turning to face him. “I’m starting to think those little shits are throwing it back here on purpose. Probably so I’ll buy them another one.”
“Well, kids are evil little things with all this devious shit living in their heads.” He gives me a knowing look and I laugh.
“I’m starting to think you’re right.”
Joey stops at his dog bowl and starts munching down on his breakfast. Jason gives him a dirty look, which I laugh at. He hates the sound of my dog eating and I’m not sure why. He just eats like any other dog around.
“You are the strangest bloke I’ve ever met,” I tell him, shaking my head and turning away to head to my bedroom. I seriously need that shower now before I stink up my entire house.
“I think Beau is more strange than me.”
“Nah, he doesn’t look like he’s going to throw up every time my dog’s eating,” I yell at him as I unlock my bedroom door and head inside.
“It just sounds and smells so fucking awful,” he yells back.
I laugh before saying, “The smell is me!”
When I met Cassandra, I was just a struggling actor living with three roommates in a flat outside of LA. I had a small part on a series she starred in. It was actually kind of lame. It was one of those programs about rich kids in New York. It was trying to be a knock off of Gossip Girl but the storylines were so crazy and out there. It only lasted three seasons.
We had a love scene, the first one I had ever shot. I was crazy nervous but for some reason Cassie took pity on me. I had seen her being a crazy bitch on set, demanding things and yelling at crewmembers for not giving her the right light and I was kind of terrified of her.
Then we were kissing and I got hard. She noticed and liked it. From that point on, we were together. I moved into her nicer house shortly after, and before I knew it, it had been six years and I walked into my house to find her fucking her personal trainer.
It was like being slapped across the face. I was in complete shock for a long time afterward. I remember sitting in my favorite chair and watching her walking around screaming. I felt as if our roles were reversed because surely I should be the one yelling and carrying on. I shouldn’t be the one sitting in a chair calm as you please.
I can still hear the sound of her shrill voice in my head. “You aren’t ever home. I need someone to take care of me. You wouldn’t so I found someone who would!”
I had just gotten back from filming in Mexico for an action film that was a huge box office hit. At this point I was more famous than she was. I was getting calls constantly for new movies and promotional deals. She hadn’t had a call back in almost an entire year. And she didn’t even get the part for that. Her attitude had been talked about so much no one wanted to work with her.
You might be wondering why I even loved her. I’ll let you in on a little secret, I like bitches. I like women who yell and scream and carry on. I eat that shit up. I do not know why. My mother is a lovely woman who has never raised her voice a day in her life, so it’s not a mommy complex. I think it’s the sex. Cassie is an animal in bed. She scratched me, bit me, and pulled my fucking hair until my eyes rolled back in my head. I could fuck her into the bed and she’d scream for more. I’m honestly surprised we never had the cops called.
Then again, it wasn’t always about the sex. She tried to cook me dinner on several occasions. It ended in failure and she cried, but she was generally upset that she couldn’t make me food. Her tears those days weren’t crocodile. She’d buy me thoughtful gifts for my birthday or Christmas. Even for Valentine’s Day. Before it got bad, she’d call me while I was away filming and tell me how much she loved me.
I miss her hair in my face while I sleep. I miss the way she used to get out of bed, trying to be quiet because my dog had to go outside. She’d always wake me but I could tell she was trying to be quiet.
She drove me fucking crazy though with her needing attention constantly. Now and again she’d accuse me of cheating on her because I couldn’t answer my phone, you know, because I was on a plane. She made me angry with those remarks because I would never cheat on someone I love. And I did love her, maybe just not as much as I thought.
I was relatively numb for the first few hours. Then I went through the stage where anything said to me made me so angry I thought about choking people. I never did though, thankfully. Now, I’m depressed. I think leaving for Arkansas in a few days will help me get out of this funk. Or maybe if she came home and we pretended none of this ever happened.
“If you call that cunt, I might slap the shit out of you,” Claire says from across her dining room table. Her green eyes shine unholy light at me. Out of the three, Claire is by far the most evil. And crazy.