On Screen & Off Again

Then Daxon

Then DAXON

B ob’s house always has Christmas lights. I’ve helped him string them up the last few years. He likes the old, vintage, colored ones, and he likes them on every outdoor surface possible.

This year, it’s white lights along the frame of the house and tracing neat lines up and down the roof. The trees are wrapped in tiny golden lights with smooth, even lines. He’s upgraded; these were definitely done by a professional. White light-up deer graze on the lawn, and I notice the grass I’ve always known to be a little yellow and dead in places is lush and green.

The chunk of driveway Wil accidentally chipped that summer she thought she could skateboard has been patched up without a trace. I feel my skin prickle, up my legs and down my arms. It’s like someone else lives here.

But Wil’s upstairs window light is on, and the warmth of it, the familiarity, is enough to settle my rattled bones.

She has no idea I’m coming tonight. I didn’t even think I’d be home for winter break. And what I’ll say when I get inside... I really don’t know.

In the foyer, Katrina Tyson-Taylor is dressed like she’s about to present the Oscar for best candy cane, decked in rubies and a red skirt that sweeps along the ground. She greets me with a martini in each hand. I nod and say hi and then slip away as fast as I can.

As I take the stairs two at a time, my heart sloshes excitedly in my chest like an over-filled water balloon. It’s been weeks. Hell, it’s been months without Wil. I realize as soon as my eyes hit her just how badly the distance—physical, sure, but emotional, too—has taken a toll.

She’s been busy here with a crowd of new friends and I barely have seven minutes to myself between classes, performing in an off-Broadway production of The Importance of Being Earnest , and trying to stay alive. I get her voicemail when I try to call and my own mailbox is full of her voice, tired and annoyed that I’m not there to answer. We’ve both not replied to too many texts.

It’s not what either of us wanted or expected that day we held each other at the Connecticut airport and promised we’d make things work.

As I knock gently against the doorframe, Wil turns from the seat at her vanity, her mouth falling open. “No fucking way.” She scrambles to her feet, flying across the room into my arms. I lift her up, her legs locking around my hips. I even spin a little, giddy, laughing with relief.

I kiss her like I’m a phone with two-percent battery life and she’s my charger; she kisses me like someone who’s been fumbling terrified in the dark and finally finds the light switch.

“I missed you,” I say against her lips.

“You have no idea,” Wil whispers, her forehead pressed to mine. “Holy shit, I can’t believe you’re here. For how long?”

“Two days.”

“Damn it.” She frowns at me.

“Hey, just try and get rid of me for the next forty-eight hours.”

There’s a party downstairs. We hear the sound of silverware tapping purposefully on crystal, the din of voices and brassy Christmas music dampening as Bob’s voice cuts in. There’s laughter, because where there’s Bob, there’s automatically laughter.

“Come on,” I say, and set her back down on her bedroom floor. Wil extends her hand, grabbing mine and pulling me from the room towards the stairs.

We descend slowly. The partygoers have all convened in the living room just beyond the staircase, and through the railing, we have a perfect view of Bob holding a glass of champagne and Katrina perched on the arm of a chair to his left. Behind him, the fireplace roars. Wil crouches on the top steps and I follow suit, like we’re kids sneaking out of bed.

“You go through life, you don’t know what you’re gonna find. It’s tough out there. It is. This house was dark for a long time.”

A breath comes out of Wil, low and dangerous like a growl, remembering her mom. I watch as people’s eyes drop to the carpet, fingers absently adjusting shirt buttons. I don’t know what it is about death that makes people so fidgety. Better than the awkwardness of confronting your own sadness, maybe.

“This gal, this piece of stardust, picked me up off my ass and turned what I was thinking was the last chapter into a fresh beginning. I was lost and she found me.” He raises his champagne glass to her and Katrina beams around the room, blushing. Wil’s entire body stiffens next to me. I steal a glance at her and I’m pretty sure she isn’t breathing.

“I’d get down on one knee, but who the hell knows if I’d ever get back up again?” Bob chortles. He digs in his pocket with his free hand, pulling out a ring box.

“No,” says Wil, desperately, under her breath. Her fingers grab my arm, tightening.

“Katrina Tyson-Taylor,” says Bob, “how ’bout we add one more last name to your collection. Will you marry me?”

Katrina stands as Bob hands his champagne off to a friend, and we watch, Wil and I, as she wraps her arms around his neck and he dips her low and they kiss like the ending of some movie. I feel Wil’s grip on my arm slacken, her hand fall away.

“You okay?” I whisper to her.

“Come on,” she says. Wil charges down the stairs, and for a split second, I worry she’s about to burst into the living room and make a scene. But she goes right past, towards the front door and then out over the threshold and into the cold. Ifollow her as fast as I can, carefully shutting the front door behind us and jogging to catch up with her. She’s got her phone out and is texting furiously.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“Margot’s coming to pick us up,” she says, like I’m supposed to know who that is.

“And take us where?”

“Out. Barhopping. Dancing. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Just out. Away.”

Barhopping? Last time I checked, we were barely eighteen. But the look on her face is determined, hurt, so I don’t offer up this fact. I stand with her in silence and wait for a car to appear at the end of the driveway. It flashes its lights and Wil grabs my hand.

“Come on,” she says, so I do.

“This is Margot,” says Wil from the front seat.

“Hi,” I say. “I’m Daxon.”

“God, you’re right. He’s cute ,” says Margot to Wil like I’m not there at all. She revs the engine and reverses out of the driveway.

The radio blares and Margot plows through the narrow streets of the Hollywood Hills. I’m just starting to get a tingling feeling like death is tapping on the car window when she swings us up against the curb beside a valet stand and she and Wil pile out. All I can do is follow.

Margot knows the bouncer and he lights up when he sees her, practically throwing the velvet rope to the ground he’s so excited to let her pass.

Wil loops her arm through Margot’s and mine and we go in. To a nightclub. On Christmas Eve.

“How is this place even open today?” I ask Wil, yelling over the thumping of the music.

She shushes me “ Be cool .” Which, okay, we both know I’m not. That never mattered to Wil before.

She orders shots and martinis and cans of Red Bull. No one checks our IDs. Instead, they giddily usher us into the back, where things get dark and swanky. Supple black leather booths, velvet ropes and curtains to keep the non-child megastars at bay.

When I order a Coke from a server wearing thigh-high leather boots, Wil cuts across me and makes it a Jack and Coke. She squeezes my arm. “You good?” I tell her I am. But what I really am is crazy uncomfortable.

I have zero interest in being one of those tabloid child stars tripping out of nightclubs at four in the morning. Crashing my Porsche on the way to jail. I can admit it, I’m a complete square. And that’s fine with me. But the feeling that I might not fit into whatever world Wil is building here brings heat to the back of my neck and a slick to my palms.

Then there’s Margot. Is this who Wil is friends with now? Watching Margot flirting with waitstaff, daring Wil to take shots, I start wishing for a time machine; let’s skip ahead a couple years, outgrow this night.

Meanwhile, Wil has started ranting about her dad. “He’s an asshole. He’s always been an asshole.”

“I don’t think he’s an asshole,” I say, but Wil doesn’t seem to hear.

“But this really makes it all stick out, you know what I mean? Like, saying how awful things were before Katrina? Sorry your kid wasn’t enough to make you happy.”

I touch Wil’s arm. “Want some water?” There are three full glasses on the table, untouched by any of us, and I slide one over her way. But Wil shakes her head and tries to get whatever’s left out of a pink slushy drink she finished fifteen minutes ago. “We should probably get back,” I try again.

“I’m never going back.”

I don’t like the look in her eyes. This isn’t the alcohol talking. It isn’t even just the trauma of watching your father move on with his life well before you’re ready for him to.

She says it like it’s a fact, not a drunken whim. And that chills my bones.

A waitress appears with another cocktail, a tropical blue drink complete with pineapple wedge. Wil grabs for it eagerly and the fruit falls into her lap. I don’t think she notices at all. “They can have the house, the Barbie dream wedding, all of it. I don’t give a fuck,” she says to no one in particular, and downs it.

Margot’s up and dancing off towards the bathroom. As Wil starts to rise, too, I reach out and touch her arm.

“What are you saying?” I ask.

I swear the music is getting louder, the beat shaking the cups on the tables. “What?” asks Wil, frowning at me. “Why aren’t you drinking? Have something. Do you wanna do a shot?”

I shake my head. “What do you mean you’re not going back?”

Wil pretends like she didn’t hear me.

She sticks her arms up into the air and yells out a loud woooooo! then sways, precious and happy but so drunk, so completely drunk with this booze Band-Aid.

“Let’s get outta here,” I tell her, and I stand up from the booth, extending my hand and hoping she takes it. Surprisingly, she does, and I guide her out and onto the sidewalk under a cold moon.

“I want to dance,” Wil whines faintly. “Take me back inside. Let’s dance.”

“You said you’re never going back. What do you mean?”

“Daxon.” I frown softly, my eyebrows creasing low. “Don’t worry about it. It’s fine. Be cool.”

I shake my head at her. “I’m not cool, Wil. And this?” Igesture towards the club behind us. “This is bullshit. Getting wasted at nightclubs with models? This isn’t you.”

“It is me,” Wil says loudly. I see a few heads turn in the crowd waiting on the sidewalk to get in. Wil’s eyes take them in and a softness touches her gaze, an embarrassment, a guilt, a fear. She grabs my hand and marches us down the sidewalk away from their eyes, a camera flash going off in the distance.

The thing is, it’s not her. It’s not. I’ve never known her to run away from her problems. But, at the same time, I’ve never seen her come up against something as big as Bob getting remarried. “Look,” I say, “I’m sorry he proposed to her. It’s messed up. It sucks. But it happened. You gotta accept that and move forward. You can’t drink it away.”

“ No ,” says Wil, and her face is shadowy, her expression angry. I’ve overstepped. “It’s not that easy. He didn’t even wait to make sure I was in the fucking room before asking her, Daxon.”

“I know. That was shitty.”

“Why would he—I don’t understand why he—” But she cuts herself off as a sob comes choking out of her mouth.

I take her hand in mine and squeeze. “He fell for her. That’s all.”

Wil hiccups faintly, and even in the dark I can tell she’s flushed. “Why are you taking his side?” she cries. It’s a harsh sound, almost a shout, and I can only blink at her, at this new person transforming in front of me.

“I’m on your side always,” I say.

“Then be on my side, Dax. Let’s go back in. I wanna drink, and I wanna dance. Celebrate never going back home.”

“This isn’t you.”

“It is me!” Wil shouts. “This is what I want.”

Everything we built together, years of trust and friendship, murmuring secrets in the dark and then keeping them locked away tight, feels like it’s gone. My best friend, my girlfriend, is gone. “God, Wil, just— grow up ,” I hear myself say.

“Wil?” Margot comes tripping prettily towards us, assesses the tension, then takes Wil’s arm gently. “You okay?” She looks at me like I’m a creepy stranger and my heart sinks.

“Get me out of here,” Wil tells her, but she’s looking at me, right into my eyes, and I know we’re broken. “Anywhere but here.”

Margot nods and slides her hand down Wil’s arm until their fingers lock. It’s like the fucking changing of the guard. An era has ended, and the next one just ate the first one alive.

“ Wil ,” I plead. As much as I know we’re done, I don’t want it.

Wil doesn’t say anything. She shakes her head at me and drops my gaze and lets Margot lead her to the valet. Paparazzi have appeared now, and their shouts slice the frozen air. Camera flashes illuminate the sidewalk, the passenger door of Margot’s car as it pulls up curbside, and I watch Wil’s face, devastated, as she buckles herself in and stares straight ahead.

A shiver flutters through my body. She’s going to leave me here, stuck to this lonely sidewalk. I call out her name again as Margot pulls away from the curb. Wil turns at the sound, pressing her small hand to the glass, and the look on her face is enough to shatter me.

Alone, I’m swarmed and swallowed by photographers.