Epilogue
Quin
I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with fireworks.
I love how they feel impossible, like magic or something from a dream. I love how they bring the world to a standstill, the way they force everyone to stop what they’re doing and look up at the sky. I love the way they sound, the relentless spray of pops and bursts.
I hate how they never last long enough, and how, when they’re over, the world seems so much less colorful.
It happens at the end of the Singapore Grand Prix.
Fireworks explode over the track, and everyone stops to look at them—or at least, they glance up at them while clapping for the race winner, Jacob Nichols—but the second they’re over, there’s a shift in the atmosphere, a return to mundane reality, like when the lights come on in a theatre after the movie ends.
The fans in the grandstands shuffle toward the aisles, and the people standing around me in the back of the Harper garage start talking about restaurants and clubs.
Even some of the Harper workers start to pack up the garage, before the podium celebrations have even finished. I suppose they’re used to getting podiums, with Travis Keeping as their driver. I know next to nothing about F1, but after watching him on track, even I can tell he’s something special.
Jacob Nichols got him in the end, though, with only three laps to go. I met him on Friday, when I was chatting with Travis. Jacob was pale and bleary-eyed and had a huge vomit stain on his t-shirt, and Travis Keeping looked at him like he hung the moon.
Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I doubt it.
I see Travis smiling on the TV screen in the garage, and I know, even before the camera pans out, that he’s looking at Jacob.
I watch them for a minute, the fall of confetti, the spray of champagne.
Then I turn away and join the rest of the world back in reality.
I thank the Harper social media folks who invited me to the race and give a polite, noncommittal answer when they tell me about an afterparty one of the team’s sponsors is hosting at The Ritz-Carlton.
I don’t really feel like partying tonight.
I haven’t felt like partying in years, actually.
Not since my career took off after my first Netflix series.
It was a breakout hit, a low-budget, six-episode historical piece that nobody cared about beforehand, which meant that nobody cared about me beforehand, and I didn’t realize how wonderful that was until it was gone.
Now, everywhere I go, there are people who want things from me.
Eyes track me across restaurants, phones swivel to take surreptitious pictures of me at airports, people dart forward with nervous smiles to tell me how much they liked my new movie or ask for a picture or autograph.
I don’t mind it when people are nice, but lately, it feels like the balance is skewing the other way.
The smiles are greedier, the fingernails are sharper.
Men in expensive suits press too close and talk loudly about brand partnerships I’d be stupid not to take.
Tech bros tell me they like my work, even the dumb rom-com they only saw because their girlfriends made them, ha, ha.
Younger actors chat with me eagerly until they find out I can’t hook them up with anyone at Netflix, then they flick me this disbelieving little look, like, He’s got so much, and he won’t even share.
Maybe I shouldn’t let it bother me so much, but I’ve been sort of down ever since I broke up with my boyfriend a few months ago.
His name was Lashawn, and he was a thirty-two-year-old policeman.
We met when I did a guest appearance on a police procedural, and he was consulting on the script.
From our very first date, I felt relaxed with him.
Everything was easy, everything felt right.
He was kind, thoughtful, attentive. He was everything a great boyfriend should be.
And then, after six months together, he made me dinner at home and told me he loved me, and I looked at him, this sweet, smart, beautiful guy, and I felt absolutely nothing.
I mean, not nothing. I’m not a lunatic. I felt guilty, devastated, furious at myself.
But I didn’t love him back. Just like I didn’t love the guy I dated before him, or the guy before that.
With my very first boyfriend, in high school, I actually said the words out loud, even though I knew I didn’t mean them.
I thought that if I went through the motions, I would eventually feel it. But I never did.
I know how to act like I’m in love. I do it all the time for my job.
I can shoot my female costars quiet, soulful glances that movie critics call “heart-wrenching.” I can manfully hold back tears when my brother-in-arms dies in a violent battle.
But I’ve never actually felt it. I’ve never looked at anyone the way Travis Keeping looks at Jacob Nichols, like he’s the axis on which his whole world turns.
I was actually jealous when Jacob showed up on Friday.
I was hitting on Travis pretty blatantly, I even asked him for his phone number.
But honestly, I’m glad it didn’t go anywhere.
If Travis had wound up looking at me like that, and loving me like that, I would have just ended up hurting him like I hurt Lashawn.
I would have had to explain to him that he didn’t do anything wrong, that the problem is me.
That there’s a flat, hollow space in my chest where the ability to love should be.
I make my way back to my hotel, The Ritz-Carlton, and curl up in my room with a script.
It’s for a dark, cerebral series about a guy who moves to a remote northern village where people keep wandering into the snowy woods in the middle of the night and coming out again just a bit different.
It’s creepy and strange and too slow-paced to be a hit, which is part of the reason I want to do it.
I wouldn’t mind fading out of the spotlight a little, even if my agent would prefer I sign on for a third season of the fantasy series I’ve been doing for Netflix.
I read a few pages, then I put the script down with a sigh and walk to the window to stare out at the city.
From the hotel, I can see part of the racetrack, the long stretch where Jacob got by Travis in the last laps of the race.
Or maybe it’s a different part of the track, I honestly don’t know.
I don’t know anything about Formula 1, except what I learned binge-watching the first season of Drive to Survive on the plane ride here.
But my heart was absolutely pounding in my chest for every lap of the race.
I cheered with the mechanics when Travis passed Jacob on the second lap, I groaned when his pit stop was slow, I bounced on my heels during the final, nail-biting battle with Jacob.
I felt things. I can feel things. I just can’t fall in love.
Okay, this is getting seriously depressing. I can’t stay in my hotel room all night moping like this.
I change into a t-shirt and jeans and head up to the top floor of the hotel.
Music thumps from the doors to the club, and the bouncers wave me in without asking for my name.
As I wait for a drink at the bar, a really friendly surfer-looking guy pulls me into conversation, waving over his dark-haired boyfriend and embarrassing the shit out of him by telling me he’s my biggest fan.
His boyfriend turns bright red and stammers out an apology, and we chat for a few minutes, raising our voices over the thump of the music.
They’re both professional volleyball players, which is interesting, and the dark-haired guy, Jonathan, is reading the same fantasy series I’ve been obsessed with lately.
His boyfriend Trevor makes us exchange numbers, so we can “nerd out about boring things together,” then he drags us both onto the dance floor with their other friends, Ben and Anne.
It's fun to dance with them, and to hang out with people who aren’t being nice to me just because I’m famous, but seeing the way Trevor and Jonathan look at each other, and Ben and Anne, too, I start to feel awful again, like something hot and scaly is trying to crawl out of my throat.
“I’ll be right back!” I holler.
“Bring back shots!” Trevor says.
I give him a thumbs-up and head to the bathroom, but there’s a huge line, even for the men’s room, and a group of girls catch sight of me and start exchanging glances like they’re going to come and talk to me.
I turn on my heel and walk through an unmarked door near the bar, which leads to a stairwell, which leads to the roof.
I don’t think there’s supposed to be anyone up here.
It isn’t part of the club, just an ugly concrete roof with a bunch of whirring air conditioning units and a layer of cigarette butts underfoot.
I go to the rail and take a deep breath of the warm, humid night air—then I nearly jump out of my skin when I notice someone standing beside me.
“Holy shit,” I say, laughing. “Sorry, I didn’t see you there.”
The guy doesn’t answer me, he just gives me a look like I’m bothering him and blows out some smoke from his gross cigarette. He looks really familiar, and after a moment, I realize who he is. He’s one of the Formula 1 drivers, the one that no one likes. Cole Milton, I think his name is.
I could turn right around and leave, but something in the guy’s face makes me want to dig my heels in.
I can’t help myself sometimes, like last week when a rich executive told me he thought it was really smart how I’d “cashed in on the gay thing,” and I told him I thought it was really smart how he’d cashed in on being a dickhead.
“You really shouldn’t smoke,” I tell Cole.
He glares at me. I smile back sweetly.