On Screen & Off Again

Now Wilhelmina

Now WILHELMINA

G oing from having everything—a thriving acting career—to every door being slammed in my face was a little like what I think getting whacked in the head with a shovel is like—sudden and painful as a motherfucker.

So, having this bridal party take turns leaning in for selfies with me, pushing drinks into my hands, tearing up as they tell me about remembered Marnie birthday parties their parents threw them, is a little like if that shovel held out its hand, shook mine and said you know what? I was an asshole and I’m sorry .

“Do you feel like Elvis?” Daxon asks me.

We wait out in the comforting darkness of the late night for our driver. His fingers brush the side of my hand just as the night wind kicks up. It’s a warm and soft breeze, whispering through our hair, fluttering the cotton of his T-shirt.

I ball up my hand into a fist and knock it into his side playfully. “Shut the fuck up, Avery.”

“This just in, Marnie and Dougie spotted fighting to the death in downtown wherever-we-are,” quips Dax, grabbing for my arm and twisting me around so that I fold into him, stomach to stomach.

“You’re drunk.”

“No, I’m just floating,” he says, grinning up and away from me to look at the stars.

I lean my head into his chest and shut my eyes. “You’re drunk,” I say again, fondly, but this time it’s muffled. His arms wrap me up. The street is quiet. After a minute or two, I lift my head and meet his eyes. “I’m sorry for the stuff I said. How I acted when you left. It was shitty and immature.”

Dax’s blissfully happy-drunk face shifts, fading into the pain of a memory. “I’m sorry, too. For everything. All of it.”

“You needed to leave. Yale was the best possible thing for you at that time in our lives. You did the right thing. I needed to grow up. And I don’t know if I actually did, but...” Ilaugh, but it’s empty-sounding. Tired.

“You did. Trust me.”

These words leave his lips in a whisper. It occurs to me that I really thought his heart was brittle glass, and that I enjoyed dropping it. Now, though, I want to sit down and glue every single tiny shard back together until it’s strong again, and then I want to pass him the glue bottle and say, Me next .

In the car, in the dark of the cool leather and tinted windows, we kiss each other like there was never any time spent apart. And also like we lost each other for a hundred years. A thousand years. A cool millennium. It’s sweet, slow, found. Desperate, ravenous, searching. Away from the cameras, from excited eyes and grabbing hands. Away from the world as it was and as we know it.

The skin on his arms and hands is so soft, so warm, and he pulls me to him. Holds me tight and close against him. Breathing is the last thing I’m thinking about, but every tiny breath in between kisses, my brain is filled with the smell of him. That good Daxon smell. Fresh laundry. Safety. Home.

Feverishly, I kiss my way down from his lips towards his jaw and along his neck, where I catch a sound escaping his throat good enough to make me forget we aren’t alone.

“Here we are, Miss Chase, Mister Avery,” says our driver, avoiding eye contact with us in the rearview mirror. I pull myself off Dax, blood rushing to my face as I smooth my hair and drag my thumb beneath my bottom lip to wipe away what I’m completely sure is smeared lipstick. The pair of us smile in the dark at each other like complete dorks. Dax brushes some of my hair behind my ear tenderly.

Then I reach out for a fistful of his shirt and pull him towards me, my other hand on the car door. “Come upstairs?” I breathe.

“If we make it that far.”