Now Wilhelmina
Now WILHELMINA
O ut of hair and makeup, standing across the hall from me with two coffees in his hands, is Daxon. He’s got the beginnings of a smile on his lips. The small kind. The intimate kind—the one where only he and I know something.
There are so many somethings only he and I know.
Butterfly wings swoop low in my stomach. “Thanks,” I say, taking the cup he extends to me.
We fall into step, heading towards set. And then it hits me, like reality likes to do, that I need to be careful here.
It’s been seven years . And this whole time I thought he was the one with the scissors behind his back, so fine with severing the tie between us for cold brick and columns and ivy, and whatever else they had at Yale that I didn’t.
But he was right to leave. Plays, musicals, short films, action movies—he’s done all of that because he made the choice to walk away from what was comfortable.
“This call time,” he says, rolling his eyes.
“ Ugh .” I add an overdone laugh and Dax laughs along with me, but there’s an underlying tension between us, a strange kind of awkwardness that wasn’t there earlier. I raise the coffee to my lips and drink, my throat tight. “Thanks for this, by the way. Perfect. Exactly what I needed.”
I want to pull him into the nearest closet and forget for a while that anything bad has ever happened anywhere. But I don’t have time. There’s a script in my trailer with new lines I need to learn. We have blocking to rehearse. I can’t sit around idling with Dax; I have to prioritize my own success. Especially with Katrina crouched just out of sight, ready to pounce on me the second my guard is down.
“You okay, Chase?”
“What are we doing?” I ask him. My eyes dart down the hall, checking for listening ears. Nobody’s there.
“Drinking liquid sugar and trying to stay conscious?” says Dax.
“No,” I say. “You and me.”
His eyes darken a little and they drop mine. “I don’t know. What are we doing? ’Cause Wil, I... it’s been so long, but I never... it never... I still—” But he cuts himself off with a sigh. “Do you know what I mean? If you wanted to... I don’t know—be something? I want that, too.”
I’m not looking at him, because I can’t. Because if I do, I think maybe I’ll burst into flames and melt into a bubbling puddle. My lungs suck in a deep, steadying breath, and in an exhausted panic, I push what we could be further from me.
“You know what you mean to me. You’re my best friend,” I say, instead of what I want to be saying. Which is that even after the sun has swallowed the earth, and the stars start blacking out, and the universe begins to shatter, I will love him. That is my only constant.
“Don’t do that,” Daxon breathes. His eyes are big and soft and sad, so sad. They’re full of sudden tears. “Let’s be more than that. This is real to me, it means something. Everything.”
“Dax—” My bottom lip begins to tremble. It’s too early to rip myself apart from the inside out like this. The look on his face is enough to bind myself to him forever.
But, god, I’m so terrified to lose this chance that I can’t let myself have him.
“I can’t,” I breathe. Which is a lie, because I could. So easily, I could. Like spreading butter across hot bread, I could. “Everything I’ve ever wanted... a comeback, my chance to perform again, those have to come first this time.”
“Okay,” says Dax, “then put them first. I’ll happily be second. But I don’t want to be nothing.”
I shake my head at him. “It wouldn’t be that easy.”
Two crew members carry a ladder past us and we both straighten up and nod a greeting their way. When they’ve gone, Dax turns to me again. “It would be easy.”
“I have to go learn my lines,” I say. “I’ll see you.”
“Wil.”
But I don’t turn around.
TO THE STARS – OFFICIAL SCRIPT
INT. LILA’S BEDROOM – EVENING
It’s goodbye. The thing that’s been tapping on their shoulders since that first night on the pier. Inevitable and cruel, of course, but also slow. Taking its time about things. Ripping through them inch by inch. She can’t stay. He can’t go. And there’s nowhere for them to find equal footing here.
NICK
So, you’re going to school. So what? We can do long-distance. I’ll write you. You can come back on breaks, or I’ll visit you. I’ll save up for it. It’ll be just like it is now.
LILA
(angry)
Stop it. Stop it. No, it won’t. It won’t. I’ll be thousands of miles away and you’ll be here with an entire life to live without me.
NICK
I don’t want a life without you.
LILA
Forget me, okay?
NICK
How the hell am I going to forget you? Huh? Tell me just how.
LILA
(crying)
I don’t know just how.
NICK
Can’t forget what’s carved on your goddamn soul, Lila. You think you’ll be easy to get rid of? You won’t be. You’ll take me eight hundred years just to stop thinking about, let alone forget. I will love you forever.