Nora cleared her throat and stood up, collecting the pile of dishes. “Enough shop talk. We can worry about all of this tomorrow. Tonight is for celebrating.”
—
THEY CLEARED THEtable and decamped to the pool with another bottle of wine. The LED lights gave the bright blue water an otherworldly glow, wispy clouds of steam rising into the cool night air. Ethan was drunker than he’d been in months—but then, they all were. Grey cuddled against his shoulder on the lounge chair, legs strewn over his lap, playing with a strand of her hair. The weight and warmth of her body against his was nothing short of a miracle, he thought absently. He let himself zone in and out of the conversation without contributing, their voices dulling to a pleasant hum.
Kamilah took a fortifying sip of wine and sighed dramatically. “Ethan.”
Ethan looked up. “Hmm?”
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
He felt Grey’s breath speed up against him. He rubbed her shoulder reassuringly. “Go for it.”
“Where’s your Oscar?”
Ethan was so surprised he couldn’t stop himself from laughing. “I think it’s buried in the closet in my office.” He paused. “You want me to get it?”
Kamilah grinned. “If you wouldn’t mind.”
He untangled himself from Grey and went inside the house, his head spinning slightly as he reoriented himself upright. As expected, it was in his closet behind a pile of old screeners, some old enough to still be on VHS cassettes. His shoe nudged a crumpled pack of cigarettes on the floor, poking out from under his ski gear. They were months old, if not years, but the stale scent of tobacco triggered something in his bombed-out brain like a sleeper agent being activated. He dug a pack of matches from his desk drawer and had one lit and in his mouth while he still had one foot inside the house.
It wasn’t until he saw the confused look on Grey’s face that he realized what he was doing.
“Oh. Shit. Sorry.” He let the cigarette fall from his lips and stubbed it beneath his heel. He shuffled back over to Kamilah and handed her the Oscar before returning to Grey’s side, slightly abashed.
Kamilah’s arms immediately collapsed into her lap from the unexpected weight of it. She lifted it to her face to examine it, rotating it under the dim light.
“He’s kinda hot, right? Like, why is he sobuff? Was that necessary?”
“Um,excuseme, I’m right here.” Andromeda placed their hand on their chest in mock outrage as the rest of them laughed.
“What? You know I’ve always had a thing for bald guys.”
“Well, he’s not coming home with us tonight.”
Kamilah laughed and passed it back to Ethan. “Not tonight, but one day. I’m manifesting here.”
He rested it against his bent knees, running his thumb across the gold plate at the bottom, smudging his name with his fingerprints. He glanced up to see Nora watching him, leaning against Jeff’s shoulder.
“Do you remember that night?” she asked, softly enough that he almost didn’t hear her.
He nodded. “Of course.” Grey rested her head against him, tethering him to the present as he felt himself start to drift into his memories. “Nobody thought I would win. I sure as hell didn’t.”
Nora smiled. “You tried to get us to leave early. You were hungry.”
“Yeah, well. We all thought—” He stopped himself short. Sam had seemed like the sure thing that night, his consolation for being pushed into supporting while Ethan was up for lead with anequally sized role. Ethan had barely been paying attention when his category was called; it had taken Nora’s and Sam’s twin expressions of shock on either side of him for him to realize what had happened.
The exhilaration had carried him through the next weeks on a high. Only in retrospect did he remember Sam’s tight smile at the after-party, the way he’d left early without saying goodbye, been slow to return his calls for the next few weeks. They never talked about it, but Ethan always suspected that Sam blamed Ethan’s win for the opposite roads their individual careers had taken.
Despite his talent, Sam never had a success on his own that equaled anything he’d done with Ethan. But it wasn’t about the award: it was because Sam was a character actor in denial trying (and failing) to have the career of a leading man. Everyone seemed to understand that except Sam. But any time Ethan tried to bring it up tactfully, Sam brushed it off with a joke, like he always did.
He closed his fist around the statuette, his fingers overlapping across the narrow legs.
“It’s stupid,” he mumbled, almost to himself. Grey stirred next to him.
“What is?”
He rubbed his other hand over his eyes, his words coming out thick and sluggish, matching the slow churn of his thoughts. “That something this small can…mean so much.Doso much.” Open so many doors, cause so much damage. He hadn’t deserved it, hadn’t even wanted it, but it had created a rift between him and Sam that had never fully healed. Now it never could.
