“She’s trying to get some video on her phone to play on the television,” Mama Pam explained.
“You okay in there?” I asked as I stepped down and walked over to Mom.
She wore a paper top hat withhappy new yearin glittering gold letters.
“Here,” she said as she handed me a feather headband. “I’m just trying to get this to—”
And then I heard three familiar words as her phone and the television synced. “Well, well, well.”
My head swiveled to the television, and I had to fight every instinct in my body to not rip the remote out of Mom’s hand and get Dominic Diamond off the screen.
But then I saw him. Nolan.My Nolan, sitting in a blank,totally white studio opposite Dominic. He wore jeans and boots—the kind you worked in—and he had faint circles under his eyes. But his posture wasn’t tense. Nothing about him felt defensive.
I sank down into Mom’s armchair, unable to tear myself away from the sight of him.
“I’m here with Nolan Shaw of INK and, most recently,Duke the Halls.” Dominic turned to face him. “Now this is quite the New Year’s Eve treat.”
Nolan nodded. “They say to end how you intend to begin and to begin as you mean to go on... so here I am.”
“The boys of INK have really found themselves in the news quite a bit this year: Isaac going all in on his reclusion after Brooklyn’s tragic death. Kallum’s sex tape. And now you with your new costar and her web of lies.”
My stomach clenched at Dominic’s mention of me. What was Nolan even doing? How could this possibly end well?
“Make no mistake. Bee never lied about who she was. She planned to doDuke the Hallsunder her real name whereas all of her adult content had been under a stage name. Actors change their names or go by different names all the time. Hell, Shaw isn’t even my real last name.”
“So you’re officially condoning Ms.Hobbes and her ties to pornography?”
My heart felt like it was pounding in my throat.
Nolan sat up straight. “I’m coming out in support of Bee Hobbes and Bianca von Honey and sex workers everywhere.” He shook his head, and I could see him trying to rein it in. To stay calm. “Our whole job is to sell the human experience.Actors, musicians, artists of any kind. But that’s not what people really want, is it? They want the idea of humanity, but they don’t want the real thing. That would be too messy, too complicated. And, Dominic, you’re part of the problem.”
“Well, I think we might be getting a little off—”
“No,” Nolan said sternly. “You said you wanted this interview, so here it is. You spent years of your life dissecting and picking apart every move I made. Isaac and Kallum too. And even with Bee, you framed that narrative of her. You made her out to be deceptive and manipulative when all she was doing—all any of us are doing—is trying to get by and maybe, just maybe, chase that spark of a dream that got us into this business to begin with.”
For the first time since ever, Dominic Diamond was silent.
I wiped at my cheek with the back of my hand, unable to catch all the spilling tears. I felt Nolan’s words at the very core of my being. Meeting and falling for him had been the ride of a lifetime, but the thing that brought me to Vermont to begin with was my dream. The dream that I could have it all. That I could be the love interest in a sugary, sweet story and I could also be the object of desire. And Nolan made me realize I could be both of those things and more. I didn’t always have to be either-or.
Despite all the pain and hurt I’d weathered over the last few days, I knew that Nolan was stuck in an impossible situation too. And if nothing else ever came of us, I could at least take comfort in knowing that I forgave him, and that, in the end, he’d stood by me.
“Dominic,” Nolan said, “I spent all those years in INKthinking I had to give my fans and the media every part of myself. That the only way to be true and worthy of the attention and adoration was to bare my soul. But even then, that was only a very specific, curated version of myself. If this second shot at my career actually pans out, then I can say I know better now. I don’t have to give everything until there’s nothing left of me, and I don’t have to fit into this very narrow label of who a studio or a manager thinks I ought to be. And I can promise that what I do share will be honest, and that honesty starts now.”
“Does it really?” Dominic asked, finally recovered from Nolan’s rebuke.
Nolan gripped the arms of his chair and turned to face the camera directly. “I love you, Bee Hobbes. I love you in front of the whole world.”
His words knocked the wind right out of me.
Nolan Shaw loved me.
And I loved him too.
This was the very thing I needed, and it was the one thing I thought he would never be able to give me. My eyes began to water all over again as the weight of what he’d just done hit me.
The doorbell rang.
“It must be the pizza,” I faintly heard one of my moms say.
