Grey paused to gather her thoughts, trying to keep herself as composed as possible. “I don’t believe this is the real you. I’ve seen the real you. I’m in love with the real you.” He didn’t move. Didn’t even open his eyes. “But it doesn’t matter what I think, ifyoudon’t believe that.”
He opened his eyes, his gaze blank. “I wanted to be him, for you. I tried. But…I can’t. I told you. I warned you. I’m fucking defective.”
Grey expected herself to cry, but instead, rage flared inside her, white-hot like a sparkler in her sternum. She threw her head back and dragged her hands over her eyes, groaning in frustration. “JesusChrist. You’re almost forty years old, Ethan, take some goddamn responsibility for yourself,” she spat, dropping her hands back into her lap with a dull thud.
Ethan seemed taken aback by her lacerating tone, but raised his voice to match hers, practically snarling. “Ido.You think I don’tknowhow fucked up I am? You know how much I fucking hate myself?”
“No. Fuck that. Blaming yourself, feeling sorry for yourself, hating yourself is not the same as accountability. It doesn’t help anyone unless youdosomething about it. You need to get it together and step the fuck up.” Grey hoisted her knee onto the seat and shifted so she was fully facing him. “People care about you. Peopleneedyou. Your kids need you.Ineed you.”
“For your career, you mean.”
Grey recoiled. “Is that what you think?”
He shrugged, unable to meet her eyes. Bile rose in her throat. “Just becauseyou’veforgotten what it’s like to have toworkfor anything—” She stopped herself before she said something she’d regret, sinking back into the seat and raising her hands in surrender. “No. No. I’m not doing this with you.”
He turned to face her again, the look in his eyes sending a chill down her spine. “I guess that’s that, then.” They were deep in midtown traffic at this point, and the taxi had slowed to a halt. He groped for the door handle and Grey’s eyes widened.
“What are you doing?”
He ignored her. She lunged across the seat and grabbed hold of his arm, bringing her face to his until they were practically nose to nose. His breathing was ragged and unsteady, bloodshot eyes darting back and forth across her face. The man she loved was in there somewhere, but she was running out of chances to reach him. She unclenched her jaw and lowered her voice.
“You think you don’t have a choice. You have a choice right now. You can either come back to the hotel with me and we deal with this like adults, or you can get out of the cab and it’s over.” Her voice was thick with tears by the time she finished, but she successfully kept them from spilling over. He wouldn’t walk out on her now. He couldn’t. Not if he really loved her. She prayed desperately to any deity that would listen for the taxi to start moving again.
Ethan had turned away from her as she spoke, looking out the window again. When he looked back, it felt like her heart stopped. She wasn’t sure when he’d started crying. He hadn’t made a sound. Even now, she thought maybe she was imagining it, his expression controlled and impassive to the extent that she could even make it out, cloaked in shadow in the darkened cab. But he turned his head again and a streetlight caught his cheeks, slick and streaming with tears. Her lips parted in a silent gasp. She was speechless.
He leaned forward, grasped her jaw in both hands, and kissed her—salty, brief, harsh. He released her and she gaped at him, dumbfounded, as he opened the door and stepped out into the street without another word. Her body was frozen, her brain indenial, unable to do anything but watch helplessly through the window as he wove his way through the stopped traffic and disappeared into the night.
Back at the hotel, she cried until her eyes swelled shut. She tried to get some sleep, but tossed and turned for hours, floating in and out of tormented dreams, half hallucinating that Ethan had come back, pliant and contrite, pledging his eternal devotion to her and prepared to do whatever it took to turn his life around. But of course every time she opened her eyes, she was still alone in that obnoxiously large bed.
When dawn broke, she booked the first available flight back to L.A. After she finished packing, she picked up a pen and poised it over the hotel notepad, then hesitated. At last, she scrawled:I’m not the one who ran away. She immediately tore it off the pad and crumpled it into the trash. Justified or not, it seemed too petty, too melodramatic. She’d already gotten the last word, and it hadn’t made her feel any better.
Part of her was still waiting for Ethan to burst in the door at the last minute: ashamed, maudlin, drunker than ever, it didn’t matter. At this point, she would have taken any Ethan he had to offer without complaint. Finally, she couldn’t linger in the room any longer without missing her flight. In the cab on the way to the airport, she blocked his number so she’d stop checking to see if he’d tried to reach her—and to remove the temptation to reach out to him first.
Numb and exhausted, she flew back to L.A. alone.
GREY WAS COVERED IN BLOOD.She lay motionless on a hardwood floor, surrounded by furniture covered in white sheets, her eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. There were no sounds other than the whistling wind against the shuttered windows. Although she was inside, snow began to fall; a few fat flakes at first, then a deluge blanketing her naked body. As the screen faded to white, the scene cut to a split-second shot of her laughing, quicker than a blink, before returning to her placid, lifeless face. Once the screen was completely white, red words faded in on the screen:A Film by Kamilah Ross.
Grey leaned over and flicked on the light. She settled back against the couch, and she and Kamilah turned to look at Nora expectantly.
They were in a luxurious editing suite in a downtown Manhattan postproduction studio. The room was designed to provide the ultimate in comfort for late-night work sessions, and both Grey and Kamilah had logged serious hours there over the pastmonth. But today, they were there at a perfectly reasonable time, screening a rough assembly ofThe Empty Chairfor Nora over lunch.
Nora looked down at her pad, then up at them, smiling warmly.
“I hope you know you’ve done something really special here.”
Grey and Kamilah exchanged elated looks. Even their editor, Zelda, tatted-up and intimidating, had a grin on her usually impassive face. Zelda swiveled in her chair and tapped on her keyboard, and the screen went black. Nora continued, flipping through the pages.
“I have a few notes, nothing major. For a first cut, it’s in great shape. You three should be very proud of yourselves.”
Grey reached over and squeezed Kamilah’s hand.
An hour later, she and Nora took the elevator down together. Kamilah had opted to stay with Zelda for the rest of the afternoon to tackle some of the notes. They pushed through the revolving glass doors into the crisp October afternoon.
Grey tilted her face toward the sun and inhaled the sharp air deep into her lungs. She loved New York in the fall. She’d been there for almost two months, hauling her bags into her West Village sublet in the dog days of August, drenched in sweat and daydreaming about weather like today. Kamilah and Andromeda were staying in a spacious one-bedroom down the block from Grey, while Andromeda recorded their new album at Electric Lady Studios.
The two of them paused on the sidewalk.
“Do you have plans before your show tonight? Want to get a cup of coffee or something?” Nora asked.
