Now Wilhelmina
Now WILHELMINA
D axon’s old room is pretty much how I left it a hundred years ago. Same bed, same comforter, same pillow.
“Jesus, Avery, talk about a time capsule.”
Dax hangs back in the doorway, watching me look around. “Yeah, I should really get someone in here. Know any professional decorators?”
I laugh and walk to the window, looking out between the curtains.
“Remember that summer when we found binoculars on set and brought them up here?”
“Oh yeah, you don’t forget that,” he says in his dopey Midwestern accent. Dax’s fingers lift to mess with his hair. My heart blooms from a bud to a full, perfect rose in the span of an instant, like some sped-up nature documentary footage, as I watch him.
“Oh no ya don’t,” I say back. “Mrs. Bangor in that lime-green velour sweatsuit?”
“How many cats did she have?”
“Eight thousand,” I say.
“And they all had matching lime-green velour sweatsuits,” says Dax.
I turn and cross to the bed, perching there before reaching for the bedside-table drawer. “Something embarrassing, something embarrassing, something embarrassing,” I chant hopefully.
It’s empty, except for a single cigarette smoked down to the filter.
Wrapped around it is a red lipstick kiss.
It rolls from the back of the drawer and I pluck it out, holding it in my palm.
I smoked this nine years ago at a Christmas party, after climbing out of that window right there and onto the roof of this beautiful house, Daxon by my side.
Something happens when you go from being a child star to a teen star. You catch eyes you didn’t before. There’s new media attention. More rogue cameras following you. Constant flashes and shouts, as you dive into your car and drive away as fast as you can just to get out alive. I hated it. I was coping however I could.
Not wanting my dad to catch me smoking, I tried to toss it, but Dax said he’d keep the cigarette here and then flush it when no one was looking.
Except, I guess he didn’t.
It’s so tiny. Trash to anyone else’s eyes or heart. But sitting in my palm, painted in my mother’s favorite lipstick, is a piece of time, frozen.
My blooming heart wilts a little.
“You... kept this?”
Dax looks at his shoes, then up at me and breathes out a laugh. “Weirdly enough, yes. Yes, I did.”
“Why?” I ask. Even though I know.
“Um, to clone you should anything happen. That way Marnie would go on. It was for the children.”
“Uh-huh,” I say, my smile widening until my cheeks ache.
“Wilhelmina, if there’s anything you should know about me, it’s that I’m a great philanthropist and renowned advocate for our youths.”
We smile at each other, eight feet apart. Close enough to easily close the distance but neither of us moving. I still feel New York on my skin. His arm around my shoulders, protective, strong, easy. So easy. Pressing my face into his neck and knowing, without a doubt, that I was safe. How it felt to sleep in his bed, Dax on the couch in the next room, and smell his good Daxon smell on the pillow.
I still feel seventeen in my skin. A parked car on a dark street, trust radiating between us like something nuclear. Laughing until we ran out of breath, trying to get dressed again in the back seat. Running around Los Angeles on borrowed time trying to slip past goodbye like it was a parent and we were sneaking home past curfew.
Beyond that, I feel the early years, too. Thirteen, bullying Dax into learning his lines faster. Fourteen, racing each other on set to see who could eat the most licorice in one sitting. Fifteen, feeling true fear as the crowds grew and the cameras closed in, but always having Daxon there to lean on, to prank with. Sixteen, Dad and Dax laughing over homemade dinners.
I miss those dinners. Dad’s pot pie. Chicken placemats.
I realize that a huge part of me is still missing. I can’t move on, can’t grow, if I’ve cut my roots.
My eyes fall to my palm where the cigarette sits, looking up at me. I want to keep it. But when I look back up into his face to ask, I know it’s not mine to keep. So I tuck it back into the drawer and close it gently.
And I know that, by leaving it with him, I’ve turned on a green light between us.
Except nobody hits the gas. We’re happy to sit here, idling.
“I think this’ll be a great Pilates closet,” I tell him.
Dax nods seriously. “Oh, yeah. Absolutely.”
“Hey,” I say into the phone when Margot, who’s been in Paris for work, picks up. “It’s lonely around here without you. Wanna come over for dinner? You and Cassie?”
I’m fucking awful at keeping in touch with people. They’ll put that on my tombstone. But what’s really happening is that I need another human to come over here and talk me out of all the things my floundering heart wants to throw itself at—Daxon. A life with Daxon.
I’m terrified. The timing’s all wrong. How many things are supposed to begin at the same time? Shouldn’t you space them out? A career resurrecting itself and a new relationship shouldn’t begin simultaneously. They both need too much of your soul. Or, at least, they do for me.
An hour later, when I’ve paced a solid trench in the plush lavender rug in our living room, the doorbell rings. “If you brought a guillotine with that wine, that would be helpful,” I say.
“Oh boy,” says Cassie, “it’s a crisis.” She follows Margot in, carrying a pizza.
“I told you I was cooking,” I say, my brow furrowing.
“Oh, we know,” says Margot. I shoot her a glare. She glares back. Then we laugh.
“How are you?” I ask her.
“Exhausted.” Her smile shows it, but her voice is full of its usual warmth. “So, what’s the crisis, Wil?”
“Where is Gorgeous McMovie Star?” asks Cassie. She starts looking around, like Daxon might appear out of thin air to sign an autograph for her.
“Cass,” Margot scolds, shaking her head. “ That’s the crisis.” Cassie’s eyes go wide and she pulls a face.
“Whoops.”
Laughing with my teeth clenched so that my soul won’t fly out of my mouth like a ghost, I take the pizza from Cassie and lead them into the kitchen. Margot heads for the cupboard and pulls down the wine glasses, filling one for each of us.
“Okay, so spill,” she says.
The cigarette. All I can see in my mind is that cigarette rolling around in his bedside-table drawer. Nine years, it’s been there. I poke at the soggy stew on the burner that I’ve been babysitting for the last hour. They were right to bring a backup. No sober person would trust me in the kitchen.
We’re friends, Dax and I, best friends. With years of silly, glittering memories taped together into a living, breathing scrapbook that I can flip through any time I close my eyes. If I’m going to do this career thing and do it right, we can’t be more. And that’ll have to be okay.
So I tell them everything.
“I want to go all-in, you know? Jump and be fine with that. I’ve got this second chance now. A redo.”
“On your career,” Margot adds, nodding.
“Yeah.” I sip from my very full wine glass. “I’m grown-up, I’m different. I want to put the past in a little box and push it to the back of my closet.”
“Okay, Marie Kondo,” Cassie says with a grin. “So, working’s gonna bring you joy?”
I nod. “Yeah. It will. But only if I...” I don’t know why, but I can’t say it.
“Do it solo,” Margot finishes for me. Again, I nod. But it’s slower, sober.
We’ve just left Stars behind us and I’m still drunk on it. Lila and Nick still swim in my head. But Dax? He’s on to the next. A real professional actor. Constantly moving, always focused. And he got there by putting work first.
It should be easy. So fucking easy. Walk away, make the choice, stick it out. But it’s like digging to the core of the earth with a plastic spork. Cassie and Margot exchange glances when they think I’m not looking.
I down the rest of my wine in one go. Margot refills it for me without asking.
“You know what I think?” she asks. My eyes hit hers. “You’re really good at what you do. That’s never gonna change. If you want to go all-in and take over the world, do it. I’ll help you. Cassie will, too. But that doesn’t mean you have to be miserable.”
I reach for the pizza and plunge a slice into my mouth. “Maybe it’s like ripping off a bandage,” I say, once I’ve chewed and swallowed. If I say this loud enough, maybe it’ll be true. “It’s gonna suck, and hurt, and be gross, probably, but it’s what I have to do, right? Let him down easy?”
Margot and Cassie exchange a look. They don’t agree with me, but likely because I’m shoving pizza and wine into my mouth at alarming speeds, they won’t say it. I love them for not saying it.
“Hey, how’s your dad?” Margot asks, pivoting. She’s always been great at that, reads people better than I ever will.
“I don’t know,” I tell her. Because it’s the truth. I don’t. Ishould—god, I should. But we’re not where we used to be, not by a mile. Really, I could say that Katrina fucked everything up. She didn’t dip her toe, she full-on cannonballed her way into the middle of our family. Then decided eh, you know what, I’m out . She left us with most of the water gone and no way out of the pool.
But that would be half the truth.
When she came, I left. I chose to walk away, to isolate. Istopped calling. Stopped visiting. And then, when she left for someone else, slowly, I came back. Not because I forgave, but because I couldn’t stomach the idea of my dad swimming alone with not even a shark for company.
But when I did come back, it wasn’t the same as it was. Iwas bitter, he was hurting. Stealing back that ring had felt like the thing that might patch us up.
Fuck, I can really be wrong when I want to be.
“You should find out,” Margot says. And I know as I walk around the kitchen island and hug her, thankful she’s here and on my side, that she’s right.
Turn right. Pull up the drive. Park. I’ve done this eight thousand times, easy.
I’m out of the car, my key in my hand, about to slip it into the lock and turn, when my auto-pilot feature fails. Which, oh my god, sounds like something Dax would say with a long-winded argument about which would win in a galactic starship race: the Enterprise or the Millennium Falcon. I literally shake my head.
I used to be cool.
Daxon Avery has made me into a nerd-lover.
My hand forms a soft fist and I raise it to knock. Dusk is settling on another hot October day. Melted-butter sunset streaks the door and the walls around it, pouring through the trees along the front walk behind me. I wait a minute. I knock again. I don’t bother to ring the bell. For years, you’d ring it and nothing would happen. Mom always said she’d fix it but never got around to it. Dad didn’t know how.
Finally, the lock clicks open and in the doorway is my dad, exactly like I’ve always known him. Just a little more tired at the eyes.
“Wil,” he says, clearly surprised to see me.
“Hey, Dad,” I say. A hundred thoughts and feelings cross his face as we stand there. Apologies, arguments, memories. Closeness and separation. My stomach is tight. “You got a minute?”
He nods. “Yeah, I—” I watch his face fall. “Oh shit,” he says and turns, hustling away into the house.
“What?” I ask, but he’s gone. Through the foyer, down the hall, into the kitchen and out to the back patio. I follow the chain of open doors until I find him swearing at a smoking barbecue. “Oh shit,” I say.
“Agh, fuck. I was making ribs. Hey, call Jim Cameron, would ya? Ask if he needs some charred bones for a Terminator sequel?”
I laugh. “I’ll do that.”
Dad closes the lid of the barbecue, turning the heat off and rubbing his brow. He grabs for the open beer bottle balanced on the grill and takes a sip. “Want one?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I can get it.”
“No, no, no, no, you sit, I’ll get it.”
Right, because I’m a guest here now. Even though it’s the house that built me, it isn’t mine anymore.
He gestures with the bottle to a patio set I’ve never seen before. Mom’s was a white table and matching chairs with chicken cushions and a chicken runner. Katrina liked lifeless, minimalistic things in shades of beige and gray. She replaced the chickens as soon as she could with a muted rainbow.
But this is new entirely. It’s turquoise chairs with cerulean cushions. The table is covered with a tile mosaic colored like the sea. It’s the kind of ocean you want to swim in. Soft water. Calm water. Like my last day filming in South Carolina, when we held hands and ran into the ocean, then floated in the gentle water, full of hope.
“This is really nice,” I tell him, running my hand over the tiles. He hands off the beer bottle and takes the chair opposite me. A pair of birds chase each other across the sky above our heads. He’s strung lights out here. It’s peaceful and pretty in a way I didn’t know my dad knew how to be by himself.
“It’s nothing,” he says. “Just wanted a place to sit that wasn’t... well, you know.”
I nod. I do know. “That’s why I moved out.”
After Katrina was gone, I came back slowly. I cooked the dinners. Rebuilt everything that had been torn down. And then I had to try to get the ring back, and it was ruined again.
“I figured,” he says. He’s not mad. Not really bitter. Just quiet. “House is good? Need anything?”
“No, it’s good. It’s good. I had Cassie and Margot over last night.”
“How are they?”
I love that he cares. He’s always been like that with any friends I’ve brought around. Anyone important to me immediately became important to him. Especially Daxon. “Good, they’re really good. We had pizza and wine and talked about the movie and... everything.”
Does he know? Everything sifts through my head like an old photo album. The kind my mom would get out sometimes and flip through. Point out people that weren’t here anymore. To the Stars , Katrina, the life we used to live together.
Dad’s face softens. “I heard a bit about... everything.”
“You did?” I want to breathe out the gulp of anxious air in my lungs but it won’t leave, so I hold it in, waiting.
“Daxon filled me in.”
I blink at him. “What?”
Dad takes a hit from the bottle and then sets it down, his eyes tracing the tile. “He came here looking for you. Told me about Katrina and Max Perry.” A laugh leaves his lips but it’s sad. Bob Chase the comedian has the best laugh in Hollywood. In the world. Big and barking and contagious.
This isn’t that.
“When was he here? Why?” I lean forward in my chair.
“When you left set. He looked freaked. He told me what happened. Was looking for you to bring you back. I’m guessing you finished the film?”
I nod and the air in my lungs finally slips out. “Yeah, I went back and we finished it.”
“How’d it turn out, ya think?”
“Really, really fucking good,” I tell him honestly.
Dad considers this for a little while, nodding to himself. He’s happy for me. I can tell. But there’s more behind those eyes and I swallow nervously. Brace myself for whatever comes next.
“You know how proud of you I am,” he says, and it’s not a question. I nod. “Even way back, I mean, hell, from the moment you were born , but especially those years when Mom was so sick and... you were like rubber, Wil. Seemed like everything bounced off of you. I wished so hard that I was rubber, too.”
It’s instantaneous, the influx of tears that build and break down the length of my face. Dad rubs at his eye. He’s crying, too.
“I’ll never love anyone like I loved your mom,” he says. “She was my best friend. She gave me you.”
“Dad, I know, it’s okay, you don’t have to—”
“No, I do. I do. I thought maybe I could move on after so many years and be happy. Well, fuck me, that didn’t pan out, did it?” He gives a wet-sounding laugh, hitting his fist lightly against the tabletop. “I didn’t think, Wil. Didn’t think that maybe you weren’t made of rubber after all. You’re an incredible actor. I was too thick to see it.”
“Dad...”
“I’m sorry that I was careless with our life together. We had our own clubhouse, just the two of us, and I made it a three without making sure you were okay with it. Worse, I thought maybe, if at first you weren’t okay with it, that you’d get over it. You didn’t. That’s okay. I lost you there for a while and I’ll have to reckon with that forever.”
My eyes stream and I wipe at them, coughing, sipping my beer just to try and calm my heart.
“I didn’t want to be lost,” I manage. “I don’t want to be lost.”
“I love you, kid. I’m right here. And, Wil?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m truly sorry.”
It’s a key turning in a lock I didn’t know was there. Istand up. I walk around the table. Dad holds out his arms and I fall in.
And right there is where we rebuild our clubhouse—just us two.