22. “Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearthburn down your house, you can never tell.” –Joan Crawford
Chapter 22
“Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.” –Joan Crawford
Dylan
F our Months Later
A car door slammed in the distance, and I startled awake, bolting upright and automatically reaching for a baseball bat that I had taken to keeping by my bedside. An intruder had broken into a house down the street, While the residents had been home. The burglar had tied up a couple in their beds as he raided their home. It had also happened only three nights after Austin had moved the last of his stuff out of our home and loaded it onto a U-Haul, ready to be shipped to his new apartment in Hollywood.
We’d talked and talked for days after that first conversation. We had gone back and forth about what would be best for the both of us. I’d said that I would quit my job and try to get work in California, or maybe do some freelance work. Austin hadn’t been very amenable to that. He knew how hard I had worked to get to the position I am in, and how in today’s landscape, how difficult it was for a TV or film writer to get a steady paycheck.
He had said that he would turn down the studio’s offer and maybe consider renewing his part on the stage show when it came back around next season, and try to get on with another show during the break. That had also been a nonstarter for me. I couldn’t be the reason that Austin missed out on what might be the opportunity of a lifetime.
We’d both agreed that we didn’t want to split up. We were still so deeply in love with each other, and we both refused to let something like distance play a factor in whether we would still be together. It was only a five-hour red eye to get from New York to California after all, and only a three-hour time difference. We were convinced that it would not affect us.
We’d come to learn quickly, however, that it would affect us. It had only been a month since we had been apart, and things were not great. For that first week, we’d made sure to video chat every evening. After we’d done that consistently for nine days, small things had popped up, which meant we couldn’t. Austin’s production schedule, my work pattern. Commuting to and from the city, which took time. So, every night had become every other night, which became twice a week.
It had all led up to earlier that evening, after I’d finally walked through the front door after a very long day. Some scenes just weren’t working well, and the writers had been called down to the studio floor to workshop the scenes as the filming crew were doing their thing. The director was a tyrant, and since I wasn’t doing much in the way of ideas as a lowly assistant, he’d figured that meant that I was up for grabs as his lackey. I’d spent my day grabbing what seemed like hundreds of coffees, conferring with wardrobe for last-minute changes to costumes, or in one scene, an entire wardrobe change for the cast. I’d done more lunch runs than I could count, which made little sense since there was catering on set, and I’d been asked to just stand in video village just in case.
I’d finally been allowed to go home as production wrapped for the day, but had been forewarned by my supervisor that it would be more of the same the next day. I’d pushed through the front door of my house close to eleven pm and lamented that I would barely have time for a shower before crawling into bed for a measly five hours’ sleep before I would need to be up again and making the commute back to the city.
My butt had barely touched the couch when my cell began to ring. On the screen, I saw Austin was requesting to video chat. I groaned with a mixture of frustration and exhaustion. I loved my boyfriend, but he had the worst timing.
My thumb hovered over the button to answer, but I couldn’t bring myself to push it. The last time we’d spoken a few days ago, it had been ten minutes of an awkward back and forth, trying to figure what to say to each other. It wasn’t like Austin bored me, but we had been together for so long that sometimes there was just nothing much more to say to each other. We had lived in each other’s pockets since high school. Spending that much time together, you were bound to run out of interesting stories to tell each other.
A warning sound in the back of mind screamed at me that this wasn’t normal. Couples shouldn’t run out of things to talk about, and if that happened, then maybe there were deeper problems than both of you wanted to admit. Resolving to not let that happen between me and Austin, I smiled into the camera and clicked the button to answer.
“Hey baby.” His smile filled his face as he came into focus. I heard the rush of traffic behind him mixed with the shouts of people.
“Hey, where are you?” Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He craned his neck to look at someone just out of shot.
“Hey, yeah I will meet you at the bar.” He winked at whoever it was, and jealousy unfurled in my gut. “Gimme a few.”
“Austin,” he dragged his attention back to me as I watched a broad-shouldered man pass behind him and walk out of frame, “where are you? And who was that?”
“Oh Dylan, yeah, sorry.” He smiled back at me. Had the fucker just instantly forgotten I was here? “I’m just leaving the lot, and that was one of the cast. He plays an original character. He just started yesterday and is new to the city as well. He just got dumped by his boyfriend a few weeks ago when he moved here, so I’m taking him out to commiserate.”
“Oh, how thoughtful,” I forced out through clenched teeth.
“Anyway, listen, we need to talk about something.” Something in the way he looked at me told me this would not be a happy conversation.
“Many a breakup has started out just like that, Austin,” I laughed nervously.
“It’s not like that, Dylan,” he frowned. “But listen, the studio are nervous about public perception when we market this show. They are looking to do a nationwide press tour with stops in all major cities. They are thinking about talk shows, late night, press junkets, the works.”
“That’s awesome Austin, but I…”
“The studio has made it pretty clear they want the image to be the four of us leads, front and center. The keywords they are using are hot, vibrant, young, sexy, and available.” The last word speared me through the chest like a hot dagger.
“But you’re not available, Austin,” I muttered warily.
“No, I know that.” He smiled sadly. “But they don’t want the people who watch the show to know that.”
“Are you saying that you want us to break up?” I’m not ready for this conversation.
“Of course not, Dylan.”
“Oh good, I was worrying.” I breathed a sigh of relief.
“No, they just want to make it appear as though I’m single, so we need to disappear our relationship from the public sphere. So, deleting stuff from social media, maybe we don’t do any PDA in public when we see each other, and I will just be saying in interviews that I’m single and open to finding love,” he said it so cavalierly, as if he wasn’t packing up our relationship, shoving it into my arms and forcing me back into a closet.
“Oh, is that all?” I laughed, mirth missing from my voice.
“Dylan, don’t be like that,” he groaned. “You know I love you.”
“Yeah, but we just can’t let anyone know that.”
“It’s for the show.” He bit his bottom lip and looked around him. “It’s for my career.”
My mind flashed back to that first night on the dance floor at the prom so many years ago. “No friends, no enemies, no spotlights or footlights. Nothing.”
“What?” His brow furrowed in confusion.
“That’s what you said to me when you pulled me onto that dance floor at the prom. No spotlights or footlights.” I felt my heart begin to unravel as everything I knew began to fall away. “This life isn’t for us, is it?”
“What do you mean?” I saw him move until his back was against a high sandstone wall.
“I mean this, what we are doing now. This distance and hiding our relationship. It’s not for us. It’s for you.”
“That’s not fair, Dylan,” he whispered.
“So tell me, Austin.” I didn’t want to ask this question, but I knew I had to. “Is my face the first thing you think of every morning when you wake up? Do you wonder how I’m feeling when you are making these decisions which affect both of our lives? If you had to choose between this network deal and me, would you choose me every time?”
He looked up into the sky, his face pained as he mulled over my question. “I’ve worked so hard for this, Dylan.”
“I know you have.” I smiled sadly. “I know.”
“I don’t want this to end.” He dashed a tear away from his cheek. “But I know it has to.”
His confirmation was the final nail in the coffin that held the remnants of our relationship. Had I wanted him to fight for us? Had I wanted him to choose me every time? If he had given me an ultimatum of leaving this job behind and coming to join him in California, would I? I would have to answer yes to all those questions.
“Dylan…”
“I can’t,” I mumbled weakly, holding a finger up to my lips. “I just can’t.”
“But Dylan…”
“Goodbye Austin,” I whispered, clicking end on the cell, and an end to us.
I slumped down into the seat and let the emotions rage over me in a mighty squall. I shut off my phone and stumbled towards our bed, my bed. I looked around the room for traces of him, something, anything to hold on to so I didn’t crumble completely and float away on a strong wind. I fell into a deep sleep, only to be woken later by a car door slamming in the distance.
As I sat there in the dark, gripping the baseball bat, I realized that the intruder’s break-in from earlier was a metaphor for the intrusion that fame and the entertainment industry had on our relationship. But in this moment of clarity, I decided I would no longer let external pressures dictate my life. I wouldn’t be a pawn in someone else’s narrative. It was time to take back control.
I knew that days would turn into weeks, and the pain of the breakup would slowly begin to dull. I’d find solace in my friends, my work, and the things that had once brought my joy. Though the wound would still ache, I’d start to realize that this chapter of my life had to end for new ones to begin.