Now Daxon
Now DAXON
I missed so much while I was pretending not to miss Wil.
When I was at Yale, all I wanted to do was put my head down and learn . I wanted to absorb everything like a kitchen sponge and then wring myself out on stage, on set. I did it, too. Starred in a few off-Broadway productions, booked a Judd Apatow feature in a supporting role, then a couple more supporting things, Greg’s limited series, and here we are: my first lead.
I wanted those roles to feed me, and they did, sure, but just enough to keep me alive. Not to nurture my soul the way my childhood years on Marnie did. That time was momentary in the hugeness of time and space, but it was ours, Wil’s and mine.
I remember going around back then thinking that there must be more, it must get better. In reality, there was more. It did get better. Bigger sets, bigger stakes. Better directors and costumes, and dialogue so purely delicious it was like filling my mouth with maple syrup. But there was something missing, too.
The last girlfriend I tried to make anything real with pulled me aside before the red-carpet premiere of our film, Son of a Gun , pushed her finger in my chest—not accusingly, but firmly, with intention—and told me, “She’s really lucky.”
I remember asking, “Who?” but I knew.
“The girl you’re in love with. Whoever it is you can’t let go of.”
I tried to deny it. There was no way something I’d felt at seventeen could stand untested, refusing to diminish as year after year tried to knock it down. But I knew we were done.
And now here’s that missing piece: Wil.
I get up obnoxiously early and try to fit in time to run. Iasked Wil if she wanted to come with me, but she squinted at me wordlessly for, like, forty-five seconds, so I took that as a no and headed out solo.
There’s a TV in the kitchen at Wil’s place, and after my run, I grab the remote and turn it on.
I scroll through a couple channels until, sure enough, there are my dads. Pop: handsome, Mexican, always so proud, with so much confidence, so much heart. Dad: half my DNA, tall and white and charismatic, talking a mile a minute about the exposed wooden beams in a living room they’re gutting.
Pick a renovation-related subject and they know everything. How to build a home. How to gut tile. Why fountains are almost always a mistake. This show is their entire world, their third child—their favorite child, I should say.
I don’t know why, exactly, but I pull out my phone and I call them. It rings and rings and rings, and finally, I get voicemail. Hanging up, I try again. Right to voicemail this time. Atext comes in from Pop:
Filming right now. Talk soon. Love you!
Having famous parents is a mixed bag, I know. Anything I want, it’s available to me. It’s privilege and connections and recognition without opening my mouth. But so much is missing—things like knowing my dads as people, rather than parents.
We’ve never had the time.
Suddenly, my fingers are sifting through my recent contacts and tapping on my sister Rainie’s name. It rings three, long, faraway-sounding rings.
“What?” she grunts. “It’s, like, two in the morning here. You better be dying.”
I work my hand through my hair. “I tried to call Dad and Pop.”
“Did you also try asking the Vatican for a ride on the Pope Mobile?”
“Believe it or not, that’s next on the list.”
I can hear the annoyed scrunch of Rainie’s eyebrows from her tone alone. “Why’d you call them?”
“I... have no idea.”
Rainie takes in a slow, highly unimpressed breath and sighs it into the receiver. “Where are you? Aren’t you on set somewhere? It’s late.”
I sigh back, the sound staccato and as exhausted as I feel. “I’m in”—I stop for a second, prepare myself for her response—“Wil’s kitchen. Or maybe it’s the dining room? This place is all one big room.”
“Did you just say Wil’s kitchen? Is that, like, some weird euphemism?”
“No. God. It’s—you know what, forget it.”
“What’s wrong?” The entire tone of her voice shifts from unamused to actual mild concern.
My teeth work my bottom lip. “I hate to say it, but I think I need advice.”
“And your first call was Dad and Pop?”
“It’s about a girl.”
“ And your first call was Dad and Pop? ” she asks again, drier this time.
“You’re right.”
I don’t tell her that I was thinking about them, and the enormous, Grand Canyon–sized hole between us. How talking to them, getting any time with them at all, feels like yelling back and forth across a huge crater in the earth and only catching every other word. And even then, demolitions and crown molding still lure their interest and enthusiasm away.
“Dad and Pop don’t know shit about girls. I would know, I lived it. If you need girl advice, you call me first.” My sister, a proud and out lesbian, is a magnet for gorgeous women—models, mostly. She may actually be the Queen Lesbian. And she’s right, I should’ve tried her first. “So, spill.”
My hand reaches to scratch slowly at the back of my neck while I work through the scattered, thousand-piece puzzle that is me and Wil. It’s like we’ve found all the edge pieces, we’ve got a border going, but the middle? Chaos.
“I hooked up with Wil.”
This is probably a conversation I should be having with a guy friend. Like Blake, an actor I met working on Son of a Gun . Blake is extremely chill. He likes hot yoga and spends his free time at his family’s ranch riding horses. Blake’s the kind of dude who doesn’t say much but, when he does, it’s wise. Unlike Rainie, who generally prefers to roast me.
Rainie’s voice has enough sarcasm to fill the Chrysler Building. “ What? No way. How? When? Where? ” She stops and snorts out a laugh. “I mean, that was a given. Go on.”
“Really? It was a given?”
“Daxon,” Rainie scolds, “you’ve been pining for this girl for most of your life. Now you’re making a movie with her where you’re cast as star-crossed lovers? I mean, come on. There will be banging. That’s a given.”
The hand at the back of my neck travels up through my hair towards my face, where I let it drag itself down to rest over my eyebrows, my finger and thumb pulling them in tight and letting go. “Okay, yeah. I get it. You’re right.”
“Of course I’m right. I’m always right. You had sex and then what?”
“I don’t know. It was...” I trail away. It was the same, sparkling. But it was different, better. The way the smell of her skin hadn’t changed, even after all this time, the way we broke together like crystal shattering and held on to each other for dear life. It was everything.
“I don’t know what we are,” I explain.
There’s a silent beat on Rainie’s end. My face tightens while I wait for her verdict.
“Hm,” is all she says.
“What, ‘hm’? What does ‘hm’ mean?” Beneath my ribs, my heart is contracting.
“Do you read the stuff about Wil?”
“Stuff?”
“Yeah, the tabloids, social media shit. Have you read any of it?”
The number of times I’ve googled her over the years is embarrassingly high. Frankly, if my account hasn’t been flagged for fervent stalking, I’d be shocked. I’m kidding. But I’ve looked her up. Scrolled her barren Instagram. Wil’s never been big on social media, and her account is about six pictures from a handful of years ago, mostly of delicious food eaten or a trip to the Bahamas with Margot and other glamorous friends. A selfie of her newly cut hair with a classic Wil half-smile, all at once confident and daring, bold, perfect. Not needing me.
Gossip sites like Wil because she’s a name people remember, and she’s usually out late, ducking in and out of nightclubs across the city, climbing into expensive cars, flipping off the paparazzi.
“I’ve seen some of it.”
“I love Wil, you know I love Wil. If I could trade you for Wil, I’d do it.” Rainie gives a chuckle that’s all air. “Wil is someone who’s got a front row seat at the shit parade. Do you know what I mean? She’s going through it. She’s been going through it for years.”
I nod, even though no one is there to see me do it. In the pit of my gut, something hot and sparking has started up because, of course I know. If anyone knows, it’s me. But, then again, I was gone for so long from her life. There’s probably a lot I don’t know. My voice is defensive. “I know. I know that.”
“Okay, then you know that when you’re living in fight-or-flight like she probably is, you do stuff you maybe wouldn’t do normally. Like bang your dorky friend.”
“It wasn’t that simple. We... we were gonna have a pact not to... hook up. Have sex. I don’t know, it was sort of nebulous. And really fucking easy to break.”
“A... pact? Like, what are you, a coven of witches? Was there a blood ritual, too?”
I sigh. “No. No blood ritual. That’s on Tuesday.”
“So you had a pact and you broke it?”
“Yeah. And then she re-established it, and then we broke it again. And... one more time. And a couple of times after that.”
“Okay, gross. I’m hanging up now.”
I run my fingertips along the cool countertop, scratching at the grout. “I just don’t know what to do.”
“Dax, I don’t know. Okay? I’m not there. I don’t have all the answers or anything. I just know from what I see online and read that she’s clearly in a bad place. Maybe she’s not thinking things through.”
“So it was a mistake. That’s what you’re saying.” That pit inside me is hotter now.
“Don’t flip out,” Rainie says, calm.
“I’m not flipping out,” I shoot back. My heart is racing.
The last thing I really want to be is one of Wil’s impulses that sound fun in the moment, like partying all night or stealing an engagement ring, but wind up with her barfing on Sunset Boulevard or getting herself thrown in jail.
“Look, I know you. You’d do anything for her. Be anything. Go anywhere. Climb something really tall and jump.”
My mouth opens to tell her that she’s wrong, but I shut it. Because she’s right and we both know it.
“Dax, breathe. I understand that you like to know where you’re going and what time you’ll be there and how many minutes it’s gonna take to get there, okay? But I don’t think that’s Wil. And if you’re gonna jump into something with her, pack a parachute, okay?”
“You look like you’ve been up all night.”
It’s a woman’s voice, a familiar one. Katrina Tyson-Taylor.
We’ve got a night shoot, and after staying up late into the early morning with Wil before getting up to run, I got a total of maybe two minutes of sleep. Worth it, though.
“Thanks,” I say. I’m not unkind; she hasn’t done anything to me directly. But I hear the walls going up in my voice. The gate coming down. Some loyalties you just don’t shake.
“Here,” she says, handing over a coffee in a to-go cup. “From crafty.”
I eye it for probably too long. Then I reach out and take it. “Thanks.” Me hungover has a stunning vocabulary.
“I didn’t poison it,” she says happily. I take a sip. It’s bitter and hot, but it soothes the ache in my head. “That much,” Katrina adds, winking.
For someone with Emmy awards for their sitcom performances, I never found her super funny. She’s got good timing, but she’s bland. Forced. If Wil’s dad’s funny flows smooth and easy downstream, carried by the current, Katrina’s is that one river rock standing straight up, water knocking against it, creating a splash without moving anything forward.
I force out a grunting laugh. How fast can I sneak away to craft services for a hangover-curing breakfast burrito? But before I can escape her, Katrina tips her head and makes a fond clicking sound with her tongue. “I remember you so well from all those years back,” she says. “You’ve really grown up.”
I splutter and nod, coughing. “Happens,” I say.
“I mean, congratulations on this,” says Katrina. She gestures around, her blue eyes impressed. “Big win. Everything’s going to change for you now. You watch.”
Awkwardly, because I think that’s my default setting, I toast her with the coffee, a little sloshing out of the lid and dribbling down the cup to land on my shoe. “Shit. I mean, thank you. Yeah, I’m really grateful this came along.”
“Have you celebrated?” she asks.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, have you gone out? Had a proper meal? Glass of wine?”
“I—” I don’t know how to answer this one. The past few weeks with Wil come to mind, though.
“Let me take you out tonight,” Katrina says suddenly. “My agent is in town visiting. You know him? Max Perry. WME.”
Do I know him? Name me one person in this industry who doesn’t freaking know him. Max is a star-maker. He’s ruthless, notorious, effective. He gives Jaws a run for his money.
“I’ve heard of him,” I tell her.
“I’ll introduce you!” She nods excitedly. “He’ll love you.”
What would Wil say? My heart sinks as I imagine the betrayal on her face. But then it’s rising, breaking through the atmosphere because this is Max fucking Perry. My career is flashing before my eyes, getting bigger, better, stronger, completely real by the millisecond. How many doors would open? Hell, screw doors. Windows. Chimneys. Gigantic, spontaneous holes in the wall.
There wouldn’t be a house anymore, just wide-open sky.
Directors whose films make me feel lightning-struck would call me directly with offers. Scripts would arrive at my doorstep and I’d open them up and sink into the possibility of being handed a golden statue in front of my peers.
Christ. It doesn’t get more real than that.
“He would?” I say. “I don’t want to get in the way or anything.” Except that I really do.
“No, no, no, no, no,” Katrina says. “He loves this kind of thing. It’s casual. Don’t stress about it. I’ll send a car for you around eight tonight and we’ll toast and celebrate you with Max.”
Last chance, say no .
I almost do. My mouth opens, I’m ready to let it fire, take the high road, the road that whatever I have going on with Wil is balanced precariously on, but I hear myself—or maybe it’s my ego—say, “Okay, thanks,” instead.
“Great! I’ll tell Max you’re coming.”
Then Katrina heads off towards costuming and I’m standing there, minutes from Nick and Lila’s teen-years breakup scene, trying to remember how to function. Because if Wil finds out, she’ll kill me. Or worse: leave.