“Kallum, are you crying?”
I sniffle for a moment. I feel like Icouldcry. “No, man. I’m pretty buzzed though. Winnie’s husband showed up today. Well, her ex-husband. The ink on the divorce papers probably isn’t even dry.”
“I’d be shocked if it’s even signed,” Nolan said.
I let the pillow fall to my chest with a whimper. There was certain shit you could only do in front of a guy who’d known you since you were in sixth grade and helped you hide a surprise boner with his KC Royals binder. “You think she’s still married?”
Nolan wore a shiny gray blazer with tissue paper tucked into his T-shirt collar. He was definitely in the middle of a makeup retouch. I forgot about the time difference between here and California. “Sounds like you got it bad for Winnie.”
I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter anyways. She knows what she wants and it’s not me.”
“One minute, people!” someone behind him yelled.
The makeup person ripped the tissue from his collar, and Nolan held his face closer to the phone. “Listen, man. Winnie and Michael have been together since they were teenagers. Sure, people can change, but this whole divorce could be a publicity stunt for all we know.”
“It’s not. Why would she even do this movie if it was?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Let me ask the Christian media gods.”
“Don’t they only have the one?” I reach forward and take a swig of my Nutcracker IPA from a local brewery here in town. “I don’t know, the trinity thing confuses me, man.”
Nolan ignored me. “All I’m trying to say is you’ve had a crush on Winnie since we were kids, and crushes are fun... until they’re not.”
I didn’t want to tell him about everything Winnie and I had done and how we were way pastcrushstatus now.
“If you’re taking her ex showing up this hard now, imagine how much worse it will be when she leaves the movie to get back with him.”
“She wouldn’t leave the movie,” I said. I might not know Winnie as well as I wish I did in some ways, but she would never cut and run on a film shoot in process with tons of people relying on her.
“You think Michael, Jesus’s homeboy, is about to let his wife release a soft-core Christmas movie?”
“Ex-wife,” I clarified. “You’re right. It’s just a crush. I’m not husband material. Fuck, even boyfriend material.” Preparing myself now for disappointment would make it easier when it eventually came. It was better than letting myself have hope.
“Nolan!” someone said. “We’re ready for you.”
“I gotta go,” he said. “But just pop a couple ibuprofen, eat something greasy in the morning, and let’s talk about this for real.”
“Okay,” I said, knowing full well that I didn’t have it in me to go down to the lobby and find some meds.
“And Kallum Lieberman?”
“Yeah?”
“If you were even a little bit bi, I’d have taken you off the market a long time ago.”
“Don’t tell Bee,” I said with a grunting laugh.
“Oh, she’d be so into it,” he said. “In fact, let’s just count that as an open invitation. Gotta run. Love you, pizza boy.”
“Love you back.”
The phone went dark, and I polished off the rest of my beer before falling asleep right there on the couch. The warming amber liquid dulled me enough so that I didn’t have to think about why or how this could hurt so bad.
When I woke up the next morning, three things immediately became apparent:
I should have taken the ibuprofen.
I was too fucking old to sleep on a love seat. Or really anything that wasn’t a bed.
