And They Had a Great Fall

Chapter Twenty

chapter twenty

J ake opened his eyes and quickly shut them again. His head was pounding and felt heavy. He sat up, rubbed his eyes, and felt like he was going to be sick. Blowing out a breath, he realized that he was going to be sick, so he ran to the bathroom as all his bad decisions came violently out of him. It’s fitting , he thought, I deserve all this and more . He sat on the floor, knees up to his chest.

Kat knocked and opened the door. She came walking toward him as if he was some sort of wounded animal. “Hey,” she whispered, “you okay?”

He couldn’t take the pity he saw in her eyes. He nodded but remained silent. Just then, he was sick again. He felt Kat’s gentle hand rubbing his back.

“Just leave me,” he said, sounding terser than he meant to. His stomach threatened to lurch again, and he could feel the back of his neck tighten. He didn’t want her to see him like this. “I just need to lie down a bit longer.” He stood up, shuffled over to the sink, brushed his teeth, and brushed past her to the bedroom where he flopped down on the bed.

“Jake, we should—”

“I don’t want to talk about it … Not yet. Let me sleep,” he said, his face turned toward the wall. He heard the door shut as she left the bedroom.

He felt relief. He couldn’t be around her. He’d felt many things in his life, but complete failure was a new feeling. It destabilized him as he felt every emotion coursing through his body and mind. Every thought reminding him that he was broken. The emotional victor was guilt. The guilt of not saying no. Not saying no to Cindy had said everything. Functionally, it allowed her to move on to Plan B, but it also showed he wasn’t strong enough to put Kat before his own fame. And for that, he hated himself.

Knowing Kat was on the other side of the door, Jake sat up again and checked his phone. He saw the text from Cindy letting him know she’d taken care of the email. He threw his phone across the bed in frustration. It would only be a matter of time before the story broke, and he couldn’t picture a scenario that didn’t include Kat hating him. The anticipatory dread consumed him. He hugged his knees to his chest and closed his eyes, hopeful that he would somehow sleep through this daytime nightmare.

He was barely asleep when his phone rang. He grabbed it off the nightstand, trying not to alert Kat. It was Garren.

“Hey,” he answered, sitting up in bed.

“Jake, this is all so out of hand. I’m sorry this is happening,” Garren spoke.

“Thanks. Why are you calling?” Jake asked keeping his voice flat.

“Jake, I needed you to know I wasn’t planning to replace you. The studio just wanted to know my backup plan should I need to. I always believed you’d be a great lead in the film, even when it wasn’t going so well,” he said. “I am issuing a statement, alongside the studio, about the health of the film.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it. I feel like I’m giving you what you want now. I just had a rough start,” Jake said quietly. He felt the weight of his initial struggle and was hoping for reassurance that he was not a failure.

“Yes, Jake, you are doing an amazing job. You are a gifted actor,” Garren said with an uncharacteristic softness in his voice. “Can I ask what was blocking you? You don’t have to tell me, but I wonder if I could have directed you differently in the beginning.”

“A lot of things,” Jake paused and took a moment to collect his thoughts. He’d thought about this a lot over the last few days. “I’m finally learning that, between roles, I need time to find myself again before I can turn around and transform into another person. Transforming too many times in rapid succession, at least for me, is dangerous. I mean, mentally. I only had a few weeks in between projects, and it was too little.”

Jake paused as he walked back to the bathroom and pulled a bottle of Tylenol out of the cabinet. He downed the pills quickly.

“And, Garren,” Jake started. “You’re one of the best directors I’ve worked with. So no, there was nothing you should have done differently. Not letting me get away with a bad performance and giving me a few days off—telling me to get my shit together—was the gift I needed.” He meant every word. Garren could have just replaced him as soon as there had been a problem, but he hadn’t. He’d given Jake a wakeup call and a second chance.

“Thanks, but I’ll think twice before forcing any of my principals to start a project before they’re ready,” Garren said. “If you’d told me, we could’ve tried to adjust the schedule. Jake—a word of advice. You have a long career ahead of you, and you’ve got to ask for things you need to do your best work.”

He focused his brain and listened to the advice of a man whose career length he envied. At the end of the call, Garren gave him the next morning off, and they agreed to put it behind them and start fresh. They hung up, and Jake leaned back on the pillows. For a moment, he felt at peace as he reflected on Garren’s advice. His body and his ego still ached, but at least his headache was beginning to subside.

For the tenth time, he refreshed his social feeds to see if the story had broken. It wasn’t there, giving him momentary relief. Maybe Cindy was able to bury it without releasing anything , he hoped. He typed in the web address for TMZ and as soon as the website loaded, he saw it, splashed right on the home page. Plan B. It had broken fifteen minutes ago. He closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and started to scan the post. He expected a quick news alert or half-page gossip post, but when his eyes scanned the screen, what he found was not minimal. He saw a near feature-length article, complete with photos—photos of them together in the rain, kissing the morning they had agreed to stop running from each other. It was their entire story, complete with Kat’s past, Ben, Becca, and her reasons for being in Copenhagen, which identified her as a key leader at Path. All of it. Right there for everyone to read. Jake’s heart raced and stress brought bile into his throat. He pulled his knees to his forehead, closed his eyes, and waited for his world to crash around him.

I t was all Kat could do to leave him alone. Every instinct she had told her to march back in the room, make him feel better, control the situation, and solve it all. It went against everything in her nature to give him the space he requested, but ultimately, she didn’t know how to fix this situation. She only knew how to love him through it, and she was going to do just that. Once he got some rest and sobered up, she was going to make sure he understood she loved him with or without fame. She believed he would land on his feet, even if it meant he stopped being the it boy of the moment. It would actually be easier for both of us if he wasn’t famous , she told herself.

While he slept, she calmed her mind by working on the revised forecast for holiday production cycle. She could do these forecasts in her sleep, so it was a welcome diversion from the situation with Jake. As she was double-checking her calculations, her phone chimed in rapid succession, pulling her attention away from her spreadsheet. She picked up her phone.

E: OMG. Wow!

E: Those pics are so beautiful.

E: Did you know??

Kat cocked her head and wondered if Emily was texting the wrong person. She was typing a reply when a text from Linda flashed on the screen.

L: Call me when you get a minute …

Below Linda’s text was a link, and she immediately clicked. Her mouth fell open. She let out an audible gasp at the headline in front of her.

A NEW LOVE AND NEW START FOR JAKE LAURENT . And there it was. All of it. She scrolled through the article and read through it as fast as she could. It was the first site to deliver breaking news of Jake’s new relationship with a woman named Kat, a young widow of a New York firefighter and single mother of an adorable and precocious child. The details were all there: they had been family friends for years; she was currently with him in Copenhagen and had helped him through a mental crisis brought on by stress; it explained the rumors of his meltdown on set and every detail in between. She gritted her teeth as she forced herself to read every word.

She put her hand over her mouth when her eyes landed on the gallery of photos. There were three photos, capturing them the morning in the fog after they’d committed to try to bring their lives together. They were shots of them kissing under the store awning, Jake’s lips on hers, their hair damp from the mist. It even included one with her hand on his cheek at the exact moment they’d decided to stop running. The pictures were stunning and looked like they could’ve been part of an actual photoshoot. It was their most intimate moment, and now the entire world could see it. How could this have happened? The photos. The details in the article.

“It’s done” reverberated in her mind. Kat felt sick to her stomach.

She slid off her chair and walked the few feet into the bedroom. She walked slow, knowing once she opened that door, if Jake had authorized the article, there was no going back. She turned the knob and silently pushed open the door to the bedroom. She looked at Jake sitting on the bed, knees raised to his chest, phone in his hand, eyes red, and she knew. She stood in the doorway and held up her phone, the article filled the screen.

“What did you do?” she whispered. “Why?”

“I didn’t know.…” he said, and she could hear the panic in his voice.

She shook her head back and forth as her disappointment began to transform to anger. It flooded in fast, making her ears buzz. “It’s not possible you didn’t know. The details they have … the timing.…” she said, her voice rising. She was hoping he wouldn’t lie to her.

“I didn’t know it was going to be … this,” he said, his voice resigned.

“You didn’t know what they would leak? Are you kidding me? They work for you , Jake,” she yelled, her tears burning her eyes. “They shouldn’t do anything you don’t approve first. I saw Cindy’s text. ‘It’s done.’ I’m not a fool.”

His hesitation told her everything she needed to know.

She stormed into the bedroom, yanked her suitcase out of his closet, and began shoving clothes into her suitcase. She wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. For a second, she thought about just running right out the door, leaving all her stuff and Jake’s entire world behind.

She paused for a moment to look at him. He hadn’t moved an inch and just watched her, seemingly paralyzed.

“So that morning under the awning was staged? Two lovers, in the mist, on the stone streets—you must have known those would be gorgeous photos.” She stopped to wipe her tears. “Good job, Jake, they’re fucking cinematic. I’d think they were beautiful if they didn’t make me sick.”

His eyes flashed with anger. “No!” he hissed. “Do you think so little of me that you’d believe I would stage those photos? That morning, of all mornings?” His voice was angry, and he clenched his jaw tight. “That morning, after we … That you would even think for a minute—”

“But you knew they had photos,” she said, cutting him off, “and they were going to release them?”

He looked resigned and nodded, so imperceptible she almost missed it, but Kat already knew the answer. She just wanted to see if he would be honest with her.

“There was an email. From Garren to the studio about replacing me. It was the kind of thing that would destroy my reputation. Cindy traded the story so they wouldn’t release the email. Honestly, I didn’t know they had pictures of that morning. It was the last resort, and even Roger said it was the only leverage we had to keep the email from going public. I thought she was going to release minimal information.

“I have to trust them. They know this industry better than I do and have always taken care of me. Kat, I believe she did it for us. If she hadn’t changed the narrative, my career would tank at twenty-five. Where would that leave me, leave us?” He was rambling, and instead of having its usual charming effect, it grated on her.

“Tell me this: did you give Cindy all those details? Did you know how deep the article was going to go? They mentioned Becca. And Ben, for fuck’s sake. He has a family. How do you think that is going to affect them? This isn’t just about us now!” She was yelling now, but she didn’t care.

“No! Kat, I swear. Cindy told me she had information and photos, and I trusted her to do the minimum to bury the email. I didn’t see it before it broke. I really thought this would be a quick alert, a paragraph or two at most. I know Cindy didn’t mean to do anything to hurt you, to hurt us.” He tried to move closer to her, but she moved to the other side of the room.

She was reminded, again, of how young and naive he was. Starting his career as a teenager, he had developed a blind trust of those who played parental figures during those formative years. He’d yet to grasp the business behind his art and was easily manipulated. It would make her sad if she wasn’t so angry.

“Jake, grow up. Your entire team exists to make money selling a product. And their product is you . Don’t kid yourself. You’re their golden ticket, and they would destroy us—destroy me —in a second if it meant keeping you in the spotlight.”

He had his head in his hands. He rubbed his hands over his face and looked up. “Kat, at some point, we would’ve been a story. At least now we’re controlling it. Using it to our advantage. It’ll blow over, be a blip in the news, and then everyone will move on. We can get through this. I know we can.”

“Advantage? Blow over? Maybe for you. Maybe for me, too, if I’d had some warning and could’ve prepared, even a little bit. Did you ever think ‘controlling the story’ would mean I would also have at least some say? Have you seen the social comments?” She thrust her phone in his face and waited for him to respond.

“You know I don’t read that stuff, and I’m not going to start now,” he said, and she could hear the irritation and hesitation in his voice.

“Let me read them to you. It’s been live for, let’s see … sixty-one minutes. Hmm … where should we start? Instagram. Yes, let’s start there. I have twenty-two DMs, each one worse than the next: ‘You’re too ugly for a man as fine as Jake.’ ‘Why did he ever choose you? I bet you’re a bitch.’ ‘I wish you would die.’ Who the fuck are these people?

“And look at this, someone posted a picture of Becca already, on a fan account with over twenty-two thousand people. Twenty-two thousand strangers have a picture of my child. You cannot begin to understand how frightening that is. Okay, let’s go to Twitter. People don’t DM there, they just outwardly call me horrible things—”

She went to go on, but he interrupted. “I’m sure it’s not all negative Kat, you’re just focusing on the bad. Ignore the trolls. They’ll go away,” he said. “Cindy believes that this will trend positively for both of us.”

She almost threw her phone at him. “Fuck that woman. And you know what? This isn’t some story; this is real life. And in real life, these things have consequences.” She went on, “I’m not done. Did you know that #SwitchDaBitch is trending? Some psycho created a hashtag telling people to switch your mobile device from Path to anything else. Why? Why would someone do this? Oh, God. I’ve created a situation that has people boycotting our devices. Jake, I could lose my job over this.”

Kat noticed the tears on Jake’s face that matched her own. Good , she thought, he needs to feel the weight of how bad this is . She wasn’t just angry about the story. He didn’t trust her enough to tell her about the email. The mixture of hurt and anger waged a war inside her.

“Fuck. There has to be a way to fix this, I’ll get a team on it. I will do whatever I can to make this go away,” he started, and she put her hand up, motioning for him to stop.

“Yes, do anything you can, but I know this stuff never really disappears. I need to get to Becca, back to real life and away from this circus. Away from you. I trusted you, Jake! I was so stupid. God, what was I thinking?” And with that, she grabbed her backpack and roller bag and began toward the door.

Jake darted out of the room and stood between her and front door. He put his hand on her arm. “Come on, Kat. Don’t do this,” he pleaded. “Your flight is in two days. Stay until we figure this out, get it under control. I’ll make this right. I love you … doesn’t that matter?”

“Get the fuck out of my way,” she said, her voice shaking. She pushed his hand off her.

He bowed his head and stepped to the side. “I thought you said you wouldn’t run,” he said, and she could hear the challenge in his voice.

“I thought you said you would protect me,” she replied, knowing the phrase to cut him the most. “I guess we both lied.”