XVI Jack
XVI
Jack
The morning starts the way only one morning ever has before: with CJ in bed next to me.
Her eyes are closed, her arm is tucked under her pillow, and her hair is splayed out everywhere like an abstract painting. I’m too energized to fall back to sleep. I’ve been staring at the ceiling, motionless, watching as sunlight starts to stream into the room.
I feel CJ begin to stir.
“What time is it?” Her mouth stretches to say each word as she wakes up.
“Just after 6.”
She shifts to face me, and I kiss her temple, feeling the warmth of her against my mouth. She snakes her hand down my bare stomach, and I slip my hand under the covers to cup her butt.
“Waking up early means more time together before I have to leave,” she mumbles sleepily. “I hate that I have to go.”
I hate it too. But that she has other places to be and other people who need her is also a turn-on.
“Agnes is lucky,” I say, wondering what Agnes is like and what they’re like together as I reach for a section of CJ’s hair and twirl it around my finger.
“And I’m lucky,” she says, burrowing deeper into her pillow.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“You don’t have to ask permission for that.”
“You know, you’re such a careful and deliberate person... but isn’t deciding to have a kid a giant risk? Isn’t becoming a parent—a single parent—the ultimate relinquishing of control?”
CJ looks away, and I brace for her response.
“I guess... there is security and certainty in knowing she will always come first. That her school plays will matter more than a huge movie job. Also, doing it mostly on my own is, I guess, a way of retaining some small amount of control, or at least the illusion of it. I trust and know myself. It’s a lot of work this way, but it comes with fewer compromises, less shared decision-making.”
She drapes her leg over my hip, and I pull her closer and kiss her lazily, like relaxing into a warm bath after a long day.
“School plays, huh? Will Agnes act? Did you ever?”
“She’s dramatic, that’s for sure. But me? Please. Stage crew for life.” CJ pokes my chest for emphasis. “Stage manager for all four years of high school.”
“I would expect nothing less.”
“And you? Were you in your school plays?”
I run my hand through my hair, as if to tousle it into place. “It was my punishment. That’s how I got into this racket. I was kind of a troublemaker. Always mouthing off in class. And there were never enough boys signing up. So the nuns decided I would do that instead of cleaning chalkboards. I ended up loving it, so maybe the nuns knew something I didn’t.”
“Don’t they always,” CJ says drily.
“I think the reason I was acting out was because it seemed like every other kid had something they were passionate about or good at, and I didn’t have that yet. Once I found theater, film came right after. I was smitten. I went from the class joker to a movie nerd overnight.”
“My favorite kind of nerd.” CJ kisses my neck and closes her eyes.
I clear my throat and do my best to maintain a casual tone. “What are you and Agnes getting up to these next few weeks?” I draw circles on her lower back while I can still reach out and touch her. I don’t know when she has to leave, and I can’t bring myself to ask.
“Lots of playground time. The zoo and the aquarium. She loves the La Brea Tar Pits.”
“That sounds lovely.”
“We’ve sort of settled into this routine.” CJ’s eyes are still closed. “I work in really intense bursts, and then we get these wonderful long swaths of time together. But she changes so much so fast. There are days when I come home and she’s already asleep in bed, and I feel like I’m seeing an older kid than the one I’d left in the morning. Like she grows when I’m not looking. I hate missing any of it. But I also love the work. And I know it makes me who I am as much as being her mom does.”
“Do you have your next project lined up?”
“A few commercials. And a music video. Music videos were my first-ever official credits back in college. I don’t want to commit to another movie anytime soon unless it’s something big-budget again like Gatsby or I love the director’s vision. Ideally both.”
I nod, like I understand, though that hasn’t been my own approach to work at all.
“What about you?” A look of trepidation flashes across CJ’s face, one that I haven’t seen before.
I realize that I’d been so enmeshed in Gatsby and getting to the finish line of this shoot, having a good night’s sleep, going on a date with CJ, and shagging her too, that I hadn’t thought about exactly what comes after. My brain stretches to think.
“I have this Blumhouse popcorn thriller, Push It to the Limit , with Lily Collins. She’s the final girl, and I’m her boyfriend, so you know what that means.”
“That you’re the killer?”
“No, it means I die second to last.”
CJ laughs. “And is this a passion project?”
“Hardly,” I say before I think. It occurs to me that I can’t remember the last time I’ve been particularly passionate about a project or a person, before now. “There’s no rest for the weary, as they say. Or did my agent make that up?”
“Ahh,” CJ says, shifting to her elbows and taking a good, long look at me before sitting up. “The weary are the ones who need the rest most of all.”
“Do you have to? Go?”
“I have to at least get out of this bed to make it a little easier to go.” She slips into last night’s dress, and I put on the T-shirt of mine she slept in, still smelling of her. We meander downstairs, and I set about brewing a pot of English breakfast.
“So, for our proper date,” I say, turning over my shoulder to address CJ, who is perched on a stool at the kitchen island.
CJ picks up her phone. “Next Thursday? When I’m not on a project, that’s the night that Stuart comes by for Movie Club with Agnes.”
“Movie Club?”
“It’s very sophisticated. Absolutely no Disney princesses.”
I consult my phone as well. “I’m supposed to go to a Gucci party.” I grimace as I scroll through my calendar app. I’m bombarded by blocks of blue for press commitments, patches of purple for parties and events, and, in two weeks, a solid wall of red for Push It to the Limit .
“I don’t suppose you’d want to come to a Gucci—” I start, but CJ cuts me off.
“Not exactly my scene. And awfully... public.”
“Right.” I flip through, trying to find a worthy window of time.
“What about next weekend? Agnes is going to be with her father, actually. He’s back in town for a little while.”
“There is... so...” I stammer, at a loss. “I have these press engagements for the Bone Collector series. There’s a new Marvel premiere. A Men in Hollywood luncheon. I can get out of some of this—I just have to check.” I squint at my calendar again. When am I going to sleep? Or read the stacks of scripts Delia sent me? “On Tuesday, I’m going on Hot Ones , but breakfast before?” I cringe at myself for even suggesting it. How is there no time in my schedule for the one thing I actually want to do?
CJ shakes her head. “For the next two weeks, before she starts camp, my days are for Agnes. Plus, you really should do Hot Ones on an empty stomach.”
“You know about Hot Ones ?”
“Jack, I like old movies, but I live on Planet Earth.”
“Two weeks is when Push It to the Limit starts.” The kettle screeches behind me. I wince at it and myself. As I pour the water over the Fortnum and Mason tea bags, my gaze drifts to CJ, and I wonder when we’ll have our next opportunity for a morning like this. My God. Pathetic. I can fix this. “I’ll go to the Gucci thing early. Or skip it. I’ll figure it out.” I push out of my mind the conversation I’ll surely have to have with Delia about playing nice with brands for red-carpet priority and future ad campaigns.
CJ smiles, but it’s strained. “Next Thursday it is.”
I fetch a carton of milk from the otherwise empty refrigerator. “It’s not a proper cuppa without it,” I tell her, distributing a splash into each of our mugs and trying to shift the mood back to our morning-after haze.
But the bubble has burst. I watch as CJ’s eyes trace over my face, then down my forearms, before landing on the counter.
“I should probably get going,” she sighs, resigned.
I want to wipe the smudge of last night’s eyeliner from her face, but suddenly that gesture feels too intimate. My chest clenches. I’ve fucked this up before we even got started.
An hour later, I’m horizontal on Brent’s gigantic couch, wallowing. The birds are chirping so loudly outside that they nearly drown out Monica, Chandler, Joey, Rachel, Phoebe, and Ross on Brent’s also enormous television screen. This is my comfort watch; these are the friends I spend time with when I can’t be with my own.
I hold my phone above me as I scan everything stuffed into my calendar. Any plans I had to see Tom and his family, watch movies, boil a pot of pasta for myself, are all out the window. I’m not ready to be on set again. I don’t want to play with puppies for a digital magazine feature in hopes of manufacturing a viral moment. After the next project, I’m signed for a Reese Witherspoon movie about a mother finding herself against the backdrop of the women’s liberation movement. It looks like I’m set to play her son. That can’t be right. Can it?
Nick in Gatsby is the closest I’ve come to a real starring role in a movie with major studio backing. I know I have to leverage this moment. It’s hard to get on the carousel once you hop off , Delia once told me. Does that apply if the carousel is a movie about an AI ghost?
My phone buzzes. Tom.
“He’s free at last! How was the party last night?” his text reads, followed by a picture of his three-year-old daughter Sabrina with a colander over her head. “We got absolutely wild over here.”
I haven’t seen him since I got to town, but he understands what this life is like. In some ways, he’s jealous of all I’m juggling, and he’s said as much. But he has both a career as a working actor and the normalcy. He has an actual life— the actual life—that I professed to want over drinks with CJ at the fake Bemelmans: from bachelor party to wedding to streaming-series regular to house to baby. I try to will myself to text him back, but I can’t reckon with the feelings it surfaces, and instead, I turn my attention back to the show, watching Ross summon the courage to drink a glass of fat in order to convince Rachel to join him at his big science party.
That’s it , I think. I know what I need to do.