He surprised himself with how easily the answer came to him. “Yeah. I would. I loved being married. Can’t say I recommend divorce, though. I’d like to only do that once, if possible.”
He’d barely even admitted that to himself before. His thoughts about his romantic future were typically limited to ensuring no one else would be put through the gauntlet of being with him. But now, after the seamless intimacy of these past few days with her—maybe thiswassomething he would want again. One day. In theory.
She was silent. She stopped making circles with her fingers and moved on to stroking his hair.
“It’s funny,” he said. He felt her shift, tense.
“What?”
“Your best memory is about work, and your worst memory is about love. That explains a lot about you.”
“Well, I turned down a movie to have the privilege of finding out I was being cheated on, so it’s still sort of work related. And also…” She hesitated. “The Sister Switchwasn’t all good, either.”
He opened his eyes, looking up at her.
“What happened?”
She shook her head a little. “Never mind. It’s stupid.”
“Tell me.”
She exhaled. “They flew me out to L.A. for the premiere. I was so fucking excited I couldn’t sleep the night before. But when the movie started…I don’t know if I can explain it. I mean, IknewI wouldn’t actually be in it. But it felt like everything I had worked on, everything I was so proud of, had been erased. Or never even existed in the first place. I don’t know. It feels silly saying it out loud. I was just a kid; I couldn’t really wrap my head around it. I had to go into the lobby and cry.”
Ethan took her hand out of his hair and kissed her palm. His heart broke for tiny Grey—or rather, tiny Emily—for her hard work, for her big dreams that would never come to pass.
“It’s not silly. It makes total sense.”
“It all ended up being okay. Carol, the director—you know Carol Hayes?—she came out to comfort me. She got it right away. She told me that even though my face wasn’t on-screen, I was there in Morgan’s performance, in her reactions. Her physicality. Some of her line readings, even. We created those characters together. She told me they could never have done it without me.” She bit her lip. “It was exactly what I needed to hear.”
He didn’t say anything, just kept holding her hand. She shifted, suddenly a little uncomfortable.
“That’s enough about me.” She looked down at him, her eyesseeming to bore straight through him. “Do you want to tell me about Sam?”
Her directness shook him, but not as much as the realization that he did, in fact, want to tell her. He’d barely talked about it with anyone, now that he thought about it. Nora had begged him at first; to talk to her, to anyone, but he had stonewalled her. Eventually she’d given up. After that, there had been no one left to beg him.
“Can we get in bed first?”
She nodded, and the two of them set about cleaning up their dishes. When he came back from putting the cart outside, she was already curled up under the comforter, her robe discarded on the floor. He slid in next to her and shut off the bedside lamp, plunging them into darkness.
He wrapped his arms around her, gathering her smooth back into his chest. Even though her body was no longer a mystery to him, he felt like it would take a lifetime before he stopped being amazed by it, before the sight and the touch of it stopped triggering the most primal reactions in him. He considered forgetting all about the stupid questions and just taking her instead. By the way she arched her back and shifted against him, he could tell that she was thinking the same thing. It would be so easy to just slide into her right there, straight into blissful oblivion, where nothing existed except the two of them.
He was tired of oblivion, he realized. He wanted to be here. With her.
He took a deep, calming breath of her hair, making a mental note to check the ingredients in her shampoo to see if there was anything hiding there that would explain the narcotic effect it had on him.
“Nora and I were fighting. I don’t even remember why. Wewere fighting a lot in those days, even before…I think we would have split no matter what, eventually. I was holed up in some bar somewhere and I begged Sam to come meet me. I must have called him a hundred times. I don’t remember much after he got there.” He burrowed deeper in her hair, trying to muffle his voice as much as possible so she wouldn’t hear it crack. “That’s the worst part. The last time I ever saw him, and I was in a fucking blackout.”
She tightened her grip on his arm, draped across her chest.
“We were there for hours. I think I had some Oxys, too.” He felt her tense. “I don’t do any of that anymore, though. No drugs. Not since that night.”
She relaxed again, her lips gently pressed against his arm.
“I don’t know why he tried to drive himself home. I was too fucked up to do anything. There were so many things…”
She was silent. He could feel her heart hammering against his chest, her deep breaths helping to keep his own slow and even.
“You know that feeling…maybe you don’t. The morning after a blackout. You’re just waiting to get that call or that text about what horrible thing you did the night before. And even if you do, it’s usually nothing. Maybe you accidentally insulted someone, or you broke something expensive.”
