Leo’s head bows a bit. “Then, what is he doing here?”
“I wish I knew!” I shout before realizing we could blow our cover if anyone on set overheard us. Good thing we haven’t been mic-ed yet. “He said him being here was a surprise, that he thought I’d have seen his name on the email, but we got...sidetracked.”
I catch Leo’s blush, spotlighted in these complimentary yet blazing lights. “Well, why do you think he’s here, then?”
I think back on the night in Manhattan and what I said to him as he left me high and dry in the restaurant. “I think I might’ve offended him the night we broke up. I said something to the effect of him being a stick-in-the-mud and that I couldn’t have won the show with him.”
It sounds dramatic and ridiculous, but the longer I consider it, the more I think it must be true. Buckley came out here to get back at me.
It’s hard to admit that toward the end there Buckley and I weren’t on the best terms. I was sad half the time. He was irritable half the time.
I started saving money, fixating on this trip, booking plane tickets and a hotel, all to block out the noise of the one stable relationship in my life that I didn’t know for certain but maybe sensed was crumbling down.
“Are you trying to tell me we’re in the middle of some sick revenge plot?” Leo asks, sounding disgusted.
“God, I really hope not.” I bite my nails just as the crew return to take their places.
“All set, guys?” the assistant director asks, holding tight to a clipboard.
We both shake our heads in stupefied synchronization.
Lights. Camera. Kill me now.
We need to talk.
That’s what Buckley’s text message reads when Leo and I arrive back at the hotel room, sweaty and run-down from a day of lying and worrying and running and jumping and, wow, it all looks so much more effortless when it’s someone else on TV.
Too spent to speak, I hand Leo my phone.
He considers the message longer than I do. “I guess you should go.” His eyes cast down but his jaw looks locked, as if sadness and anger are fighting an unseen battle that I have no way to put a stop to.
So, I don’t argue. I shower, change, and head back out, already dreading whatever awaits me.
The address Buckley sent me ends up being a bowling alley, one where the overhead lights are off, the neon lights are on, and the rental shoes are glow-in-the-dark. Orange orbs hang from the ceiling and star fixtures shoot across the walls.
I would like this place if I weren’t intensely nervous.
There’s a full-service bar across the way and an old Madonna music video is playing on big screens hanging down over the play area.
This is not the kind of place Buckley would ever suggest for a date night back when we were together, so I’m rattled when I notice him sitting on a faux-leather couch at a central lane. A pair of shoes sit on the seat next to him; two hot-pink balls are waiting in the return.
“You made it,” he says, but he doesn’t sound happy to see me. He passes me the shoes. Checking the heels, I notice he got my size wrong, like I got his shirt size wrong the night of our disastrous breakup. At least these shoes are too big and not too small, so I can be extra careful where I step and not have to call attention to the snafu.
“Where’s Alexia?” I ask. I assumed she’d be here. Back in college, they traveled as a pair almost everywhere, completely inseparable. Sometimes, on dates, it even felt like I was the third wheel because Alexia monopolized so much of the conversation, ate so many of the appetizers, and insisted on sitting between us at the movies so nobody whispered a thought without her hearing.
When she moved out to Los Angeles after graduation and Buckley and I moved in together, I always felt a bit like a consolation prize for her absence. Clearly, I’d misremembered all of that when I came out here and convinced myself she’d compete with me. My mind has a sneaky way of latching on to my worst ideas sometimes.
“Oh, she’s back at her place. I’ve been staying with her. She’s resting up for the taping tomorrow.” Buckley bends over to tie his shoe and every twist of the laces is so methodical, so precise.
“Isn’t that what we should be doing?” I ask, taking a step and trying desperately not to trip as the shoes slip in the back. I look up at the scoreboard where Buckley has already input our names and bowled his first frame before I even arrived. A power move.
“I figured we could unwind and have some fun,” he says with a smile that doesn’t reach his ears. “Didn’t you say I wasn’t any fun?”
Hearing it back, I realize how childish it sounded, but in my defense, I was caught off guard. That breakup was nowhere on my radar. We’d survived almost four years together. I thought we could overcome anything. Everything about that night went off the rails and I didn’t have the control to right it or filter my words. He doesn’t need to throw them back in my face at me like this.
“I honestly can’t remember. It was so long ago, and I met Leo. I haven’t thought about it since.” The lie dances so easily off my tongue as I pick up a bowling ball, line up my roll, and sail the ball down the lane, striking the pins right in the center but without enough umph. I end up with a split.
Buckley slides down a seat so he’s in my peripheral vision, outlined by hazy, neon red that gives him a devilish quality. A new Madonna song comes on—“Hung Up.”
