I told her, and I saw her expression change—there was a certain guilty look she got whenever she realized she’d missed out on something big in my life.
“Stop,” I said when I saw it. “I kept it from you on purpose. There’s nothing to tell.”
“What about in high school?” she asked. “I know you went to prom with Dean Blainey, but was there anyone else?”
It took some prodding, but I finally told her that yes, there was also Tony Baratta.
“TonyBaloney?” she screamed.
Yeah, the very same kid who had been teased mercilessly because he always brought a plain bologna sandwich for lunch. Like I said, kids are stupid. He was fine. In fact—oh god, he’s not going to read this, is he? He volunteers for the North Shore Music Theatre now, and we’re on friendly terms. And he ismorethan fine now.
I shouldn’t have said that. You’re not going to print that I said he was more than fine, right?
Okay. Anyway. I told Ryan to calm down and said that yes, Tony and I dated, but we went our separate ways for college. And after she got all the Baloney jabs out of her system, she was quiet for a long time and then said, “Do you think I missed out on having normal relationships?”
I shrugged. “What is normal?”
“Something that doesn’t involve the press literally following you around.”
“Maybe,” I admitted. “Maybe that will just be what’s normal for you eventually. I don’t know if a regular relationship would have been enough for you. Remember Justin? Didn’t you feel like he was holding you back from all the festival stuff?”
I shouldn’t have brought him up. I know that now. Maybe all this is on me.
But she said, “Oh yeah, William. He was sweet, though. I feel bad about what I put him through.”
And again, I opened my big mouth and said, “He’s here in town, actually. I think he’s studying film at UCLA.”
That’s all I said. I just offered the information. Nothing happened right at that moment, but she did say, “Oh, really? We should have him over sometime.” She thought awhile longer and changed subjects: “I don’t think I knew what I was doing with Nick.”
“How could you?” I asked. “You’ve never dated a celebrity before. I would have no idea how to handle that.”
“I guess I need more practice,” she said.
And I laughed, but that was how Ryan approached things: with laser focus. Dating was affecting both her quality of life and her career image. She needed to up her game, so she was going to do the damn thing.
Justin
Yeah, I was really happy when Ryan reached out. I honestly thought she was a scammer at first—she called and left a voicemail, and I thought it was someone pranking me.
But no, I called her back, and it was really her. After all those years.
Okay, okay, looking back at everything I said, I know I was kind of a dick the way I talked about me and Ryan in our early days. But I was genuinely glad to hear from her. Seeing her again for the first time ... I don’t know, it did jar me. I had this version of her that I remembered from middle school and this version I’d seen in the media since, and neither of them matched up with who she really was then.
Things had been tough in my first year at UCLA, I can’t lie. I felt like everyone around me had more money than me. I’d brought my cousin’s junker car out west, and it broke down the first week of school. Taking the bus in LA is a bitch, man. The whole city is built on cars, and while I was able to bum rides from my friends, it didn’t feel great. My parents said they’d help me pay for a new car, but I had to raise half,and the jobs I could find hardly paid anything. I was really hoping to land something with one of the film studios; I’d been working hard on my screenplay and, yeah, I know now that it was a naive dream, but I thought if I could just get some studio exec’s eyes on it, maybe it would have something. Instead, I found myself flipping burgers and working for the university’s telethon call center. I must have cold-called hundreds of alums that semester who rarely picked up the phone.
I was hoofing it in the meantime. When Ryan said we could catch up, I offered to meet her downtown and take her to the beach, to In-N-Out. I thought that maybe I could get away with just walking everywhere. That maybe she wouldn’t notice.
But instead she sent a car—a literal tinted-window sedan—that brought me to this big house. I still thought I might be getting punked.
But Ryan came out and smiled and hugged me, and said, “Hey, William!”
No one had called me that old nickname in years. I liked the way she said it, I don’t know. Like she’d been looking for me the whole time. She had a way of making you feel that.
Ryan had kind of a lot of guys in rotation, but that was fine. I was just glad to be able to spend time with her. And I wanted to be there for her when these other guys let her down.
Because something told me that they would.
Tyler Michaels,music producer
