Chapter Twenty-Two #2
Roxy pressed her fingers to her forehead and massaged the sudden ache.
So tired. She was just so damn tired. It hurt to be back at square one, just another face in a sea of actresses.
Yes, her optimism over the part in Johan’s movie had been cautious, but she’d let herself hope just a little too much.
Part of her wanted to give up, but then she’d have time to think.
About Louis. About how long she’d been pounding the pavement with no success.
She just had to push through. This empty feeling would eventually pass. Right?
Irritated with her defeated attitude, Roxy snatched up her high heels and rose to enter the building.
“Hey, you.”
A rough Queens accent halted her in her tracks.
She turned on the top step to find two young guys looking up at her.
They were both good-looking in vastly different ways.
One was tall and muscular, head shaved, jeans threadbare.
The other, dark-haired one looked like he was hiding a whole lot behind his glasses and white dress shirt.
No mistaking it, they were both pissed as hell.
“Are you Roxy?” Shaved Head called up to her.
Oh, she so wasn’t in the mood for this. Whatever this was. “Who the fuck wants to know?”
“That’s her, all right,” Glasses said dryly.
She split a glare between them. “Mind telling me how you know my name and what this little ambush is about?”
“I’ll tell you what it’s about. We want our friend back.” Shaved Head rolled his shoulders uncomfortably. “I just got used to him, all right? I liked having him around.”
Glasses muttered something to Shaved Head that sounded like Simmer down, but he was looking at her as if taking her measure.
His gaze was so intelligent and discerning that she felt a little exposed being on the receiving end of it.
“We just wanted to talk. It’s not like Louis to be this messed up.
” He shifted on his feet. “He did what he did because he couldn’t help it, Roxy. ”
Roxy’s attention had snagged on the words messed up . Her heart twisted painfully. She didn’t like hearing that. Not at all. Out of necessity, she put it aside and focused on what else Glasses had said. “Of course he could have helped it. He made a decision. No one forced him.”
Shaved Head snorted, looking ultra-disappointed in her.
Which really pissed her off, since they didn’t even know her.
Nor did she know them. They didn’t have any right to come here and throw kerosene on her brittle emotions, then set them on fire.
Her feet wouldn’t move, though. She hadn’t heard Louis’s name spoken anywhere outside her head in a week, and hearing it now, hearing about him, was like a drug feeding into her veins.
Calming her down. It didn’t make any sense.
“Who are you two, anyway? His fan club?”
Glasses jerked a thumb toward Shaved Head. “This is Russell and I’m Ben. Nice to meet you.” He ignored Roxy’s frown and continued. “Look, you spent enough time with Louis to know that—”
“Too much time,” Russell interjected. “Valuable bullshitting and beer drinking time.”
Ben sighed. “Louis doesn’t know how to leave things unfixed. He saw you were having a problem, he knew how to fix it. So he did.”
“If you ask me, you’re ungrateful.” When her mouth dropped open, Russell shrugged belligerently. “I call it like I see it.”
“Then you need glasses more than he does.” They both laughed, but they sobered immediately, as if they’d been caught off guard and resented her sense of humor. “I didn’t want Louis’s help. Anyone’s help. He knew that, and he ignored me.”
“It’s not a reason to punish him,” Russell said seriously.
“I’m not punishing him,” she burst out. “I haven’t even seen him.”
Ben pointed in the direction of downtown. “ We have. And it’s not pretty.” He paused. “Look, whatever happened, he’d blaming himself for more than just going behind your back. He sent you to that guy, and he’s going through hell knowing what he subjected you to—”
“Please.” She held up a hand, not wanting to hear any more. Her throat felt dry and scratchy with the need to cry, her skin paper-thin. “What do you want from me?”
Russell threw up his hands impatiently. “Go fix him. We want you to go fix him.”
Footsteps pounded behind her in the building foyer. “Hey!” Oh shit. It was Abby, and she sounded livid. “You can’t just come here and yell at her like this. You didn’t even call ahead, like decent people. I should call Mark the super to handle this.”
“Rodrigo, you mean.”
“Dammit,” Abby whispered for Roxy’s ears alone. “Either way, he’ll make you leave.”
Ben looked unconcerned about being threatened.
Russell looked like the heavens had just opened up and spat out an angel. His lips moved, no sound escaping, but Roxy thought she read the words Pretty, so pretty .
She laid a hand on Abby’s arm. “It’s fine, mother hen. They were just leaving.”
“Yeah, we’ll leave.” Ben noticed Russell’s Abby-induced stupor and shoved his friend’s shoulder hard. The dude barely budged. “Just think about going to see him, okay? The guilt is killing him. He hasn’t left his apartment in a week.”
Russell finally shook his way free of his trance. “Yeah. Then maybe we could all hang out sometime. Like ... all five of us—”
Ben made an impatient noise and dragged his friend away from the stoop.
Roxy said nothing. She couldn’t manage a single word.
An entire week without leaving his apartment?
It didn’t seem possible, until she remembered her instinct had been to lay down in bed and stay there, too.
If she’d been weighed down with the guilt she’d heaped on top of Louis, she would have done it. Absolutely. Might even still be there.
She closed her eyes and tried to find the anger. The resentment she’d felt when her independence had been taken away. When she’d found out he’d been lying to her, letting her believe she’d finally gotten her big break. She searched and searched for the anger. But she couldn’t find it anymore.
LOUIS SWITCHED ON the lamp beside his couch so he could examine the Cheeto in the light. Unbelievable. The little orange snack looked exactly like Elvis. Forget the potato shaped like the Virgin Mary. In his hand, he held the Elvis Cheeto. He would be famous as soon as the media got a hold of this.
He tossed it into his mouth, crunching it between his teeth.
Without looking, he reached over and switched the lamp back off, bathing the apartment in darkness once more.
He’d finally, clearly, gone around the bend.
There had been a moment yesterday when he’d challenged himself to an arm wrestling contest that he thought signaled the change, but no.
Seeing The King’s face in a bag of Cheetos was definitely the beginning of the end.
Nine days. He’d been inside these walls for nine long days.
Immediately following the scene with Roxy outside Johan’s office, he’d put in a phone call to his boss, Doubleday.
Even in the midst of the horrifying realization that he’d lost Roxy, he’d had a moment of clarity afterward.
The words he’d said to her, sounding so like his father, had come back to him.
That’s not how the world works. People hire their friends, they make phone calls and repay favors.
It’s ugly, but it’s true. If he’d started to believe that, to rely on that, he’d failed himself. So he’d quit.
At some point, he would need to get up. Shave his face, maybe put on a clean T-shirt.
He would need to leave his apartment and walk to the store for food, like a normal human being.
He’d need to start sending out resumes to firms that would let him continue his pro bono work, even if it meant starting at the bottom of the ladder.
But first he needed to get up . Otherwise, the coroner would find him with a stomach full of stale Cheetos and flat ginger ale.
Not exactly what he would have chosen as his last meal.
What would he have chosen as his last meal?
Falafel. Definitely falafel.
He pitched sideways on the couch, his face landing in a throw pillow.
How long had he been sitting here? He had a brief recollection of Ben and Russell coming in and trying to drag him to the Longshoreman for a beer.
Had he really socked Russell in the face?
His sore knuckles told him the answer was yes.
It had been satisfying at the time, but like everything else—finding the Elvis Cheeto or beating himself in an arm wrestling contest—the shiny satisfaction dimmed almost immediately, replacing itself with absolute fucking misery.
Every time he closed his eyes, he thought of Roxy.
Sometimes a good memory would come to mind.
How her face had lit up when she’d seen the elephants.
Their first kiss, right over by his front door, before he’d even known her name.
Most of the time, though, he thought of her tear-stained face outside Johan’s office.
How she’d leapt into his arms, her body shaking like a leaf.
When he thought of that horrifying moment, he set himself back another hour, until his misery-sabbatical had stretched to a week.
This is what happened when you lied. People got hurt.
People you cared about so damn much that it hurt to be away from them.
But he didn’t have a choice. Why would she ever want to see him again?
He’d been responsible for every shitty thing that had happened to her in the last few weeks.
Why had she been dressed as a giant pink rabbit?
His one-night stand. Why had she been booked as a stripper?
His one-night stand’s wrath. Why had she been propositioned in exchange for a role?
Him and his ill-advised attempt to help.
He’d done nothing but screw up since she’d knocked on his door that first day.