Falling Like Stars

Chapter Fourteen

THE FLASHBULBS ARE relentless. After more than ten years, I should be used to the seizure-inducing lights, but I’ll have a ripping headache later. This is part of the job; I go into automatic Red-Carpet Mode, posing without making it look like I’m posing. I make eye contact with as many photographers as possible to ensure good shots, and I obey their shouted commands to look left, right, and over here.

Eva’s hand squeezes the crook of my arm, her nails digging through the silk of my tux sleeve. “Fix your face,” she grits out through her teeth. She’s mastered the art of sniping at me without breaking her smile. “You look like you have dysentery.”

I ignore her, even though she’s right; my publicist is going to have to spin my dour looks later, but I don’t care.

What a colossal shit show.

I’d wrapped Midnight Skies and headed straight back to our huge house in Los Angeles where I told Eva I’d take her to the awards show. She was thrilled, but it caused the Oscar producers a last-minute hassle to rearrange our seats and sent my team into a frenzy. Normally, I’d try to avoid wreaking that kind of havoc, but I found I’d ceased caring about a lot of things since I saw Rowan step out of another man’s hotel room.

I’m not any better , I think as I pose with Eva for this endless stream of photos. Whatever demons Rowan is battling, I have them too. Running straight back to Eva at the first sign that she was her old self.

This fucking heart, I think as the flashes keep coming. I don’t know where to put it.

Eva took our master bedroom, and I took one of the other five spares, both of us agreeing we’d work out a division of property after the Oscars. She doesn’t have the cash to keep the house, so it was agreed I’d sell it.

But first, tonight. For four days, the house was filled with designers, stylists, and makeup artists, all rushing to put “a look together” for her. They’d succeeded; she’s beautiful. Like a flute of champagne: slender, her blonde hair piled on her head, her dress dripping in pale yellow crystals.

Eva was deliriously grateful and sweet and charming…right up until we climbed into the limo an hour ago. Now, the defeated woman in Anchorage is gone, replaced by the “celebrity” version, who fusses over her lipstick and readies herself for attention.

Her fingers dig harder into my arm. “Smile, for God’s sake,” she mutters. “Is it so terrible?”

“Zach! Zach!” the paparazzi call. “Just you! Just Zach! Eva, sweetie, do you mind?”

Eva’s smile freezes, but she steps aside so they can photograph me alone. When the onslaught is over, I return to her death grip on my arm.

“I’m sure you enjoyed that,” she hisses as we head into the Dolby Theater.

I stare down at her as we join the throngs of filmmakers, actors, directors, and producers. “Are you fucking serious?” I hiss back. “I’m doing this for you.”

“Right,” she says, her smile bright and plastered on, her eyes icy cold. “Just me, and not at all for that gold statue. Give me a break, Zach.”

The theater is electric with the chatter of Hollywood elite, all dressed to the nines. Oscar day is like Christmas, New Years, and—for the nominees—their birthdays, all rolled into one. I should be basking in it and taking it all in. Instead, I have Eva wrapped around my arm like a leech, sucking the joy out of the night.

Cry harder, Butler. You have no one to blame but yourself.

I clench my jaw and make it through a hundred small conversations congratulating me on the nomination as we arrive at our seats in the front row. Martin Scorsese shakes my hand and tells me, “We should talk.” When we finally sit, Eva is practically vibrating with rage beside me.

Now what? I wonder, watching the camera crews roll cable and clear off the immense set that is elegant and sleek. A scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off pops into my head: Ferris’ bitchy sister in the principal’s office where she’s greeted by his secretary. “Hello, Jeannie, who’s bothering you now?”

I stifle a chuckle, my shoulders shaking, imagining the fallout if I asked that of Eva.

“Something funny?” she hisses. “You’re unbelievable. Marty was right there . He’s going to ask you to be in his next project, and you didn’t even say a word about me.”

“What am I supposed to do?” I whisper back, laughter evaporated. “Tell him we’re a two for one? I’m not your agent.”

“I don’t need your charity, Zach, but you could have made an introduction.”

“He knows you, Eva,” I say wearily. “We met at his last premiere.”

“He meets a thousand people a day,” Eva says out of the corner of her mouth, her eyes scanning the rows. She breaks into a smile and waves at someone. Maybe at someone she knows. Maybe at no one.

I sigh. Serves me right for falling for the same old shit. If the role Marty has in mind for me is “gullible jackass,” it’d be typecasting.

Finally, the announcer tells the auditorium we’re going live in five. The seconds count down, then Jimmy Kimmel emerges onstage to uproarious applause. In the interest of keeping the show as short as possible, the first award—Best Actor in a Supporting Role—comes up before the laughter from Jimmy’s monologue even has time to fade out.

Last year’s winner, Robert Downey Jr., strides onstage with an envelope in his hand. One that may or may not have my name in it. I shouldn’t care, but I do. How could I not? This is the apex. The Big Dance, as Syd would say.

While a montage of snippets from the Best Supporting Actor nominees’ movies plays on the big screen, a camera man crouches in the aisle, his lens pointed at me. Eva is suddenly playing the role of supportive girlfriend; she wraps her hands around my arm, leans in shoulder to shoulder, beaming with the perfect mix of pride and love on her face.

They should give the award to her for tonight’s performance, since I’m not going to win.

“And the Oscar goes to…” RDJ opens the envelope. “Zachary Butler, Crazy 8. ”

Holy shit, I won.

Applause erupts throughout the entire theater. The sound mirrors the waves of shock coursing along my limbs. My personal life might be in the dumpster, but I just won an Academy Award. Gratitude washes out the shock and I manage to get to my feet. Eva, crying crocodile tears of joy, stands with me, grabs my face and plants a kiss on my cheek. I extricate myself quickly because Rowan might be watching. Then I remember Rowan slept with someone else after I abandoned her for Eva.

Then I have no room for thoughts at all.

I stride up the stairs. RDJ gives me a hug and a congratulations, then hands me the Oscar which weighs more than I’d imagined. It’s stupid to invest too much into awards that are wholly subjective, but I feel like all the work I’ve done so far is in that statuette. It’s heavy with it. I look over the audience and my heart fills to see they’ve given me a standing ovation.

“Okay, wow,” I say into the mic. “This is an incredible honor, but I know that applause is for Felix, not me, and there’d be no Felix without the incredible writing of George Gunn. Thank you, George.”

More applause, and I try desperately to say something from the heart and not make a fool of myself in front of the entire world.

“Uh, I have nothing prepared—clearly—so I’m going to wing it.” I huff a breath, gripping the statuette with both hands—at the base and around the middle—so it doesn’t slip out of my sweaty palms. “I’d like to thank our incredible director, Mike Petersen, our producers, my agent Chase, my manager Syd, my entire team, and the other incredible nominees in this category whose performances are the reason I have nothing prepared. Thank you too, of course, to the Academy for this incredible honor. I’m saying ‘incredible’ a lot. I know, I hear it too.”

This earns some laughter that lets me catch my breath.

“To the crew of Crazy 8 , and the cast…” I look in the crowd for their faces but all I see are the same smiling blobs and the red light of the camera that tells me millions are watching. “I need to thank the incredible actors I was privileged enough to work with: Tom, Margot, Mark, Jamie, Pedro, Dave, and Florence. Thank you for making coming to work every day feel like hanging out with family. Love you, all.” I look at the camera. “To my actual family: Mom, Dad, my brother Jeremy…I love you guys so much. This is for you.”

The music swells as does the applause. RDJ and I are guided offstage by a young woman in a glittering black dress. The actor and I chat briefly about how surreal the whole thing is. Someone hands me a glass of champagne, pictures are taken, and then I’m hurried down “Winner’s Walk” to a press room in the Loews Hotel next door, where I’m bombarded with questions I barely remember answering.

At a commercial break, I’m ushered back to my seat at the Dolby, and I set the Oscar across my lap. Eva is all smiles and hugs when the lights are up, but as soon as they dim and the show resumes, she’s a block of ice beside me, with a volcanic fire simmering somewhere within.

“Well, I hope you’re happy,” she seethes. “Unbelievable.”

I don’t know what she’s pissed about now, but I try to ignore her, focusing instead on the other actors and filmmakers and trying not to think that if I had someone I cared about sitting next to me, this moment would be perfect.

After the ceremony, I just want to go home. But according to Eva, the Vanity Fair Oscar party is where we need to be so she can “salvage some face time with important people.” I decide it’s the perfect place to get good and drunk.

It doesn’t take long; I’m not a big drinker. Five signature vodka cocktails later and three shots of tequila with my Crazy 8 cast, and I’m blitzed out of my fucking mind. The night is a blur of congratulatory handshakes and hugs, photographs, and conversations with everyone in Hollywood about upcoming projects—theirs and mine. Everyone is here.

Not everyone, I amend blearily, scanning the crowd for the hundredth time. I see a hundred faces but none of them are hers .

When it’s time to leave, Ezra Crawford, head of my personal security, pours me into the limo. I nearly clock myself in the face with the Oscar as I stretch out along one side. It’s a minor miracle I was able to hang on to it at all.

“So that happened.” The limo ceiling is seemingly spinning in the opposite direction of every turn the car makes to get us back to the Hills. “I think I said yes to a beer commercial in Sweden.”

Eva, who’s been icily quiet, makes a noise. “So many offers. Must be hard to keep track of them all.”

I don’t take the bait. I’m too drunk anyway.

At the Hollywood Hills house, the world looks as if I’m underwater and the ground wants to slip out from under my feet as I weave my way to the front door.

“You good, sir?” Ezra asks, glancing at Eva with dark eyes.

“Never better,” I say, then pat him on his huge shoulder. “Have a good night, Ez.”

Inside the house, I set the Oscar on a glass end table and slump onto the couch.

Eva paces in front of me, arms crossed. Sometime during the night, she’d changed into a slinky little cocktail dress in fire engine red. Her eyes blaze with just as much heat as she glares at me, her voice shaking with barely contained rage.

“You should have seen yourself,” she says. “Pathetic.”

Her sudden mockery should come as no surprise, but it still does. Still hurts. I snort a dry laugh. “Fool me twice…”

“You were a laughingstock. A grown man clutching that statue like a little boy holding his favorite dolly.”

I stuff a throw pillow under my head on the couch’s arm. “Whatever you say, Eva.”

“You really have no clue, do you? You are a selfish bastard!”

A second later, I feel wind blow past my cheek as a glass paperweight sails past my head and shatters on the travertine tiles leading to the kitchen.

I jolt to sitting. “What the fuck…”

“Your speech, so charming,” Eva seethes. “So humble and affable with a little bit of funny. So perfectly calibrated to seem unprepared when you knew exactly what you were doing.”

I haul myself to my feet and gesture at the glittering remains of the paperweight. “Jesus, you could have killed me. And just what the fuck are you talking about? I can barely remember my speech. Everything after Robert read my name is a blur.”

“Oh, is it?” Eva scoffs acidly. “Because I remember every word and I am humiliated! ”

She punctuates the words with a hard shove to my chest. It sends me back to the couch, where I try to mentally will myself into being less drunk. To keep the room from spinning and defend myself from the woman I once thought was going to be the mother of my children.

“You practically thanked everyone in that room but me. Me! I’m your goddamn fiancée, and you gave me nothing!” She’s screaming now, every word reverberating off our huge, empty house.

“You are not my fiancée. We are not together—”

“How do you think that makes me look, Zach?” She’s in my face now, leveling her finger at me. “You did that on purpose. You took me with you so that you could publicly embarrass me.”

“You don’t need my help for that.”

The stinging heat of her slap explodes across my cheek. Her left hand is coming for a second strike. I catch her wrist but she’s faster and not drunk. Like a frenzied cat, she’s clawing at my face; I feel the burning rents on my cheek and neck. Somehow, I grab both her wrists and shove her off me. She can’t maneuver in her tight dress, and her butt hits the carpeted floor. I stagger to my feet.

“Don’t touch me,” I say, breathing hard. Now it’s my turn to level a finger at her. “Don’t you ever fucking touch me again.”

There must be something in my eyes that scares her because her enraged expression collapses.

“I’m sorry, Zach, but I don’t know what else to do!” she wails, tears instantly falling. “You make me so frustrated! You’re like a brick wall to me now. It’s like I can never get through to you!”

I need to be in a room in this house that has a door that I can shut and lock, but I’m too fucking drunk. I collapse back down on the couch. Eva kneels on the floor beside me and takes my hand. I snatch it back but I’m running out of steam. I can’t keep my eyes open, and the room is still spinning…

“Everything’s going so great for you,” she cries. “You always get everything you want.”

“Not everything,” I mutter, and a flash of Rowan’s blue eyes dances over my watery vision.

“And I have nothing. Nothing! No offers… I may as well be invisible. It’s so unfair, but I’m not done yet. I have something to give, you know?” Eva runs her fingers through my hair. “You just need to be my partner. Give me a shred of the same consideration you give everyone else.”

“Nope. Don’t think I will. Show’s over, Eva,” I say against the pillow and drunkenly brush her hands off me. “Time to call it.”

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” she says, touching her fingertips to the scratches on my cheek. “It could be so much better. Like it was, if only you would just…”

I don’t know what else I need to do for her. What else I can give. What last part of my heart I can throw to her sharp teeth, because I slip mercifully into the black before she can tell me.

I wake up with a jolt, and pain assaults me. My head is thundering. I blink and sit up in bed with the vague understanding that something isn’t right. I’m in the master bedroom, and I’m not supposed to be in the master bedroom.

A slant of pale yellow light slips through the Italian designer drapes and illuminates a pile of clothes on the floor.

My tuxedo from last night.

Under the sheets, I’m in boxer briefs and nothing else.

“Don’t remember doing that,” I mutter, the vague sense of offness growing into an ugly feeling in the pit of my stomach. Something nameless and heavy. Then I look over and the feeling blooms into full-blown nausea because Eva is naked beside me.

She stirs and smiles. “Good morning, sleepyhead.”

“The fuck…” I breathe.

She sits up and wraps her arms around my neck. Her hair is a mess, makeup smeared, but she’s smiling. Triumphant. My skin breaks out in gooseflesh as she smacks a kiss on my cheek, awakening stinging pain.

“Sleep well? I’ll bet not. You really poured it on last night.”

Last night. Last night is a black hole. I can’t remember…

Before I can move or speak, she’s bounding out of bed and throwing on some yoga pants and a T-shirt. “This house has no food in it. I’m going to make a grocery store run.” She stops at the bedroom door and blows me a kiss. “brB.”

I stare at the spot where she was for a solid minute, then head to the bathroom. The light assaults my eyes and makes the scratches on my pale skin look even redder and angrier. There are three along my jawline and two on my neck that sting like a son of a bitch. Gingerly, I splash cold water on my face and stare at my reflection.

What happened?

The last thing I remember was coming home and making it as far as the couch. Eva screaming. Something breaking. I study the scratch marks, consider waking in the wrong bed with her beside me, and it takes a few minutes before I remember that I won an Academy Award last night. What should have been the highlight is an afterthought, as I try to find the lost hours and can’t.

I feel as if I weigh a thousand pounds while I shower, dress, and make my way downstairs. What was once a beautiful paperweight is now a shattered arc of sparkling glass across the travertine, like a comet. A one-of-a-kind piece I’d bought at a gallery in Las Vegas. The artist died before he even turned thirty and now another piece of him was gone forever.

“Fucking hell.” I rub my face and wince at the scratches.

My Oscar sitting on the end table gives me a flash of Eva screeching at me about my speech. I can’t remember what exactly. Maybe I don’t want to.

I spy my phone on the floor and pick it up. There are a bunch of congratulatory texts and calls from family and friends, and one text from Eva, left two minutes ago.

Coffee? I’ll get your favorite. xoxoxox 3

I try again—and fail again—to recall what happened last night.

“She didn’t…” The kisses and hugs and heart emojis stare up at me, innocent and cute, while my skin is scratched from last night’s fury. “Fuck.”

I delete Eva’s text. Then block her number. Then find my assistant and hit call .

“Good morning, Oscar-winning actor, Zachary Butler!” Andrew says too-loudly. “That’s how they’re going to bill you on every single project from now on. I’m so happy for you—”

“Andrew, listen,” I say, heading back up the stairs. “Are you listening?”

“Yes,” he says, instantly taking it down ten notches. “Are you okay? You sound terrible. Too much celebrating?”

“ Andrew .”

“Sorry. Go ahead.”

In the bedroom, I head to the immense closet, put my phone on speaker, and toss it onto the settee in the middle. Then I grab a bag and start packing.

“I need you to call my attorney, Jackson Smith and have him call Eva. He’s to tell her she has one week to get all of her shit out of the house. If she protests—which she will—Jackson should remind her that I bought it, she doesn’t have the financial means to keep it, and that I’m going to sell it. One week and then I change the locks. Are you getting this?”

“Yeah, boss,” Andrew says softly. “What else?

I throw pants, shirts, underwear, into the bag. “All communications from Eva now have to go through Jackson. She’s to have zero contact with me. Then I need you to block her on all my socials and clear my schedule for the next week. I’m unreachable.”

“Okay, but Zach, you have, like, ten meetings next week, including a pitch from that new exec at Warner Bros. and a message from Scorsese’s people. Not to mention, every major outlet wants a sit-down interview and photo spread with you since your Oscar win.”

“Postpone all of it,” I say, zipping the bag and hefting it over my shoulder.

“And post-production for Midnight Skies ?”

This makes me pause, a pang in my chest. “I need a week to get my head clear or I’ll be useless. Tell Roger I’ll be back next Monday.”

“Sure,” Andrew says hesitantly. “Hey, Zach. Are you okay?”

I stop in front of my drawers and pull out the box that holds my family’s antique engagement ring. “Not really,” I say, and stuff it into the bag. “But I’m wide awake.”

“Um, okay. Where are you going to be all week?”

“Chateau Marmont,” I say bitterly, and head downstairs. “Isn’t that where all the celebrities with huge drama go to hide out?”

“You admitted you’re a celebrity. Now I’m really worried. Can I bring you anything? Or do anything—?”

“Only what I told you,” I say. I’m in the living room now, and my Oscar is still on the table. Like a sentinel standing guard over what was.

“Okay, sure,” Andrew says. “Anything you want, boss.”

What I want…

I leave the house and let the door bang shut behind me.