Chapter 23
Sebastian
I thought I had understood just how much I had hurt Ara. I thought I had known enough about her life, her childhood, her relationship with her family to know her past. I thought I understood where her pain and anger toward me had come from. I could see now that I was wrong, so very wrong about so many things.
“Ara,” I said and tried to reach for her hands.
She lifted them toward her chest and moved away from me. I let her go, but I wanted to follow her; I wanted to pull her into my arms. I wanted to tell her how sorry I was. I wanted to go back in time and fix everything for her. I wanted to find her family and wring their necks.
“I won’t say it’s okay, because obviously, it isn’t. I just needed you to know. I don’t expect you to understand or try to change who you are or what we are. I . . . yeah. There it is,” Ara said.
“Thank you for telling me. That couldn’t have been easy. I never meant to hurt you. I never wanted to leave you. I never wanted any of this,” I said.
There was an ache deep in my chest that made it hard to breathe. I could feel tears in the back of my eyes and I quickly blinked them away. What I was feeling, how I was processing all of this was nothing compared to what Ara was going through. I needed to be there for her. I wanted to believe that by her telling me, she wanted us to move past it. I just hoped she would give me a chance to explain.
I sat on the couch and looked over at Ara. She wasn’t looking at me but running her hands up and down her arms as if she was suddenly cold. I thought about going over and putting a blanket around her, but I got the impression from her stance and words, she didn’t want anything from me. What I could give her was my sordid past and history.
It took everything in me to walk away from her, but I moved and sat on the couch and said, “The first memory I have is my mother telling me I was the most beautiful child she had ever seen. She said it so often that I had no choice but to assume it was true. I wanted to think that I wasn’t egotistical, that I didn’t let it go to my head but we both know that wasn’t true.
“I think it was my mother who first got me interested in doing movies. I was the most beautiful child, why wouldn’t I be on the big screen? She took me to acting classes and auditions when I was too young to know any better, much less what they were. I assumed that was what kids did with their mother after school. At first, I thought it was cool that she would take me out of class to go to an audition.”
Ara glared at me. Her look told me that she didn’t understand why I was telling her all of this and was annoyed that I was making it all about me.
“There is a point to this. A very important point. I want to explain my actions to you, but I need you to understand all of it, all of me. You told me your truth, your hurt, your anger, your fears. I want to do the same for you.”
Ara looked at me for a few seconds before she gave me the slightest of nods, telling me to continue.
“As you know, I wasn’t getting any offers. No one wanted to work with me. Mom told me it was because the people didn’t see how amazing and talented I was. She convinced me that we just needed to find the right person to work with me and then everyone else would be sorry.
“I believed her. I was a kid, turning into a teenager. I was naive. I thought my parents had the perfect marriage, that our family had the perfect life. I thought my parents were sending me to camp as a gift, not because they needed time alone and Dad wanted me out of the picture.”
“Bash,” Ara said, shocked. I had never told her because we weren’t talking by the time I figured it out.
“I won’t say it’s okay, because obviously it isn’t. I just needed you to know,” I said repeating her words. “Lucky for me, Dad had heard about Winslow Creek and thought it would be good for me to go. I had no idea how right he was going to be. If I hadn’t gone there, I never would have met you and I wouldn’t be the man I am now.”
Ara walked toward me but didn’t say anything. When she sat next to me on the couch, I turned to her and continued. “There was just something about you; from the moment I met you, I knew you were special. I knew you were someone I wanted in my life. I thought for sure you would feel the same way, that you would see what I thought everyone saw in me. I was this great guy that you would feel privileged to know.”
“You were so full of yourself; I had to put you in your place,” Ara said.
I smiled at the memory and it was probably the moment I fell in love with her. “And you most certainly did. You were the first person who told me to get my head out of my ass, not in so many words but close. You taught me something that is probably the most important thing about being an actor and the one thing I wasn’t doing.”
“What was that?” Ara asked.
“You taught me to be humble.”
Ara laughed. “Because I’m so humble and you most certainly are, too,” she teased.
“I’m more so now than I was when we first met. You have to agree on that.”
“You were fourteen. You probably didn’t even know what the word meant.”
“No. I probably didn’t.” I laughed and it felt good to laugh with Ara. It felt good to really be telling her everything that had happened and for her to be there listening to me. “You still showed me what it was. When I went back to California, I was suddenly getting call backs. I landed my first commercial. Mom, of course, took all the credit, and I let her. It took me a while to see that I had been different; I had changed and it was because of you.”
“That isn’t true,” Ara said and blushed.
“It was. I made more friends at school. I was happier. Things were looking up but all I could think about was going back to camp and seeing you. Mom didn’t want me to go and it turned into a fight between my parents. Mom wanted me to go to a Shakespeare camp. Dad wanted me to have a normal life; he didn’t want it to be all about acting and being a star. In the end, he won, as much because I wanted to go back. The main reason I did was because I wanted to see you again.”
“And we had a few pretty amazing summers,” Ara said.
“That we did. Until my career took off, everything changed, and I screwed it all up.”
Ara leaned back and waited for me to continue. I almost smiled that she didn’t try to reassure me that I hadn’t screwed things up. I had.
“It was incredible, exhilarating to be on a movie set. It was everything that I thought it was going to be. It was fun, busy, and so exciting. I took the time to walk around, talk to people, and learn the craft. Mom was on set and followed me around a lot but she soon got bored and left me alone. Which was great. I was starting to see she cared about my career and what it would do for her as much as for me.
“I thought I had gotten some freedom but it was short-lived. Soon after filming started, they hired a companion for me. And not what you might be thinking. It was almost a guardian or someone who watched over me. They made sure I got to set on time. They watched what I ate, they kept control over my phone and social media, they told me where to go and pretty much what to do.”
“That doesn’t seem fair.”
“I was a punk teenager who was part of a major movie. They didn’t want me to do something stupid and screw the production up. I get it now. At the time, I hated it.”
“They prevented you from contacting people?” Ara asked.
“Not completely. I called you when I could; between the schedule, filming, fittings, school, and my family, there wasn't much time for anything else. I wanted to go to prom with you. I had planned on it and even tried to talk to the director to make sure my schedule would allow it. He was really cool about it and understood why I wanted to go.”
“So why didn’t you? What happened? Why did you say you were scared to go if you hadn’t been able to go?”
“It didn’t seem fair to blame someone else for my problems. Maybe they caught wind that I was scared, or they were trying to protect my career or me. I’m not sure. I think Mom stepped in because suddenly, Eric, my companion, said I couldn’t go. I suddenly had all these appearances I had to do for the movie. It didn’t leave any time for me to go to prom or well, anything.”
Ara looked away from me and I wondered if she was remembering that time. I was sure she would have seen me doing interviews, looking like I was having the time of my life, when she thought I should have been at a dance with her.
Reaching over, I took her hands in mine. “I should have called you. I should have explained it to you. But they kept me so busy. There wasn’t time and when I finally could, too much time had passed and I felt like you needed more than just a phone call.”
“I would have appreciated the call,” she said.
“Yeah. I see that now. I thought you wanted more, you deserved more than another one of my apologies. I thought I would still have time with you, that I could make it right. I stupidly thought that you wouldn’t have moved on and found someone else.”
“What are you talking about, someone else?” She moved away from me.
“I turned eighteen right after the film came out. My obligations were done and my companion was no longer needed. I was free. My parents were in a trial separation and I was so angry at them that I didn’t want to have anything to do with them. All I wanted to do was go to you, to talk to you, and tell you everything.
“I had this huge plan figured out. I was going to go to your school. I wanted everyone to know that you were my girlfriend, and I figured you would have liked that grand gesture. I was growing in popularity and thought it would boost yours as well.”
“It would have. No one believed that I knew you,” Ara said.
“I’m sorry about that. That never should have happened.”
“So, what did?” Ara asked, telling me to continue with the story.
“I showed up at your school. I had flowers, the apology planned out in my head. I had wanted to take you to see the movie. I wanted to be there with you when you watched it for the first time. I wanted to tell you my plans and see if you wanted to be a part of it.”
“What were those plans?” Ara asked.
“I thought about going to school at NYU. You were hoping to go there and if you had gotten in, I wanted to as well. The acceptance rate was low but I thought I might have an in. I didn’t care. I just wanted to be with you. I wanted to continue with my career but I wanted to do it with you next to me.”
“So why didn’t you tell me any of this? Why didn’t you show up? What happened?”
“I saw you, but you weren’t alone. You were talking to Stephen Collier.”
“How do you know who Stephen was?”
“I found out about him later; I might have stalked him a bit. It was evident that he was your boyfriend and I had lost my chance. You did go to prom with him. When I saw you with him, you looked so happy. I just didn’t have the heart or the balls to go up and talk to you. I knew at that moment; I had lost you.”
“Stephen was my friend. He was only ever my friend. He was getting over a break-up at the same time. That was all.”
“Yeah, that whole hindsight thing is really annoying at times,” I said and gave Ara a half-hearted smile. “I was crushed. I loved you, I thought we had a future. After that, the only thing that mattered to me was my career. I figured if I couldn’t have you, at least I could have that. In some ways, it made me feel closer to you.”
“You could have called; you could have told me. I waited for you to call, to reach out, to do anything. You never did. You never told me how you felt.”
“I thought it was obvious. If you could move on so quickly, it made me think you didn’t feel the same way. I didn’t allow myself to think about you, or look you up. It was only recently, when I saw a picture of you with Ella and her guy, Dax, and I realized that you were single, that I allowed myself to think I could win you back.”
“Is this what this is all about? Is that why you moved to New York? Is that why you did the play? To talk to me? To sleep with me? To what?” Ara asked.
“To tell you that I love you, that I always have and I always will. I came to New York to try and win you over. To be where I always felt I belonged, with you.”