Chapter 48
AUDREY
Explosive, he’d said. Lit up the sky. Dangerous, impulsive, electric. The protagonist in his film was all those things. And now he can’t handle me?
The music that bursts from me now has an edge of rage. Red tones. Fiery staccato. Turbulent, clashing chords over which a pristine melody soars that’s probably the best thing I’ve ever written, annoyingly, because it’s emerging from furious, unbridled disappointment and, worse, jealousy.
What did he mean, ‘You’ve read the tabloids’? First, I would never! My source is April, and she ignores salacious gossip. All my research is based on photographic evidence and statements from the verified accounts of people involved, Audrey. I’ve got you!
So what’s he saying, then? That I should believe that stuff? That I can’t trust him, despite having been cajoled into exposing everything, because Read the magazines, Audrey! He’s Lotharioing his way through the cast and crew of all the latest theatrical releases!
I fold in on myself, head down on the lid of the piano, emotionally exhausted.
I’d handed this man my whole story. He had stared at it, and at me, as if we were precious.
He’d looked for all the world as if he was about to step up and be incredible, only to flee the room with every last secret.
Even the stuff I’ve hidden from some of the people closest to me, because I couldn’t bear to disappoint them!
My head is starting to pound. Something about Beau and the way we’ve been together the last few days convinced me he could take it.
Ugh, the rawness of how I acted on that clifftop!
It just makes me cringe now, because my addiction admission was chased almost immediately by this brooding backtracking, which tells me everything I need to know.
I have scared him off. I was too much. I’ve literally run him out of this room.
Dragging myself upright again, I cycle through a steadying breath, press record on my phone, and start playing.
Having fought my way back here, I can’t discard my creativity again.
Not for some emotionally volatile, Alist cowboy with a Sydney penthouse and a story about writer’s block that might not even be true!
So it all bursts out of me. Everything, all at once, as I bash the keys, trying to expunge my distress, pushing through regurgitated shame, eventually sifting my way through to some mellow chords while I go all Drew Barrymore with myself about it: I am worthy of love.
Even the worst parts of me. Fraser would never have abandoned me like that! I deserve better!
I’m about four soundscapes into this personal music therapy session when the door bangs open again and I lift my fingers off the keyboard right in the middle of a climactic line.
He’s back. Disassembled. I pull myself to my feet as he crosses the floor and I back into the piano, jangled notes clanging as my body leans against the keyboard, his expression all regret and desire and everything I just conveyed in my frantic composition.
‘What were you just playing?’ he utters in a low tone.
I won’t tell him it was us, burning up on impact. A dangerous tornado that’s going to rip through my heart, upend my life, and come out through my fingers in a composition I know I’m going to be absolutely thrilled with. ‘It was nothing,’ I say. ‘Just a vague attempt to—’
‘There was nothing vague about that. It was explicit.’ He traps my gaze in a way that I can’t evade and don’t want to. ‘And don’t take this the wrong way, because I mean it with respect. But I don’t think that music was about your husband.’
My heart throbs, exposed. That music was so far from being about Fraser, I am consumed in equal parts by the unfolding of intense captivation and by remorse. And yet I’m desperate to play it again. Over and over. I can barely breathe with how much I want this electric new sound in my life.
‘I think I know what’s wrong with the screenplay.’ He’s pacing the room now. ‘My character needs to have suffered. Properly suffered. She needs to have been to hell and back.’ He stares at me: deep suffering represented.
‘But the character you had was all glittering perfection. Wouldn’t she make a more attractive lead?’
‘No,’ he growls, frustrated. Hands raking through dark hair.
‘Don’t we go to movies to escape our lives—’
He frowns at me. ‘She needs to be flawed. I don’t mean adorably quirky. I’m talking major flaws, Audrey.’
Major flaws? If this is some newfangled chat-up strategy, it needs serious work.
‘I want her heart on her sleeve,’ he says, the line echoing through the room’s acoustics as he moves closer to me.
‘All her open wounds exposed and so red raw it hurts to look.’ His eyes run along the lines of my forearm as he speaks, gaze burning along my skin, settling gently inside my wrist, despite the fierceness in his tone.
‘Is this really what you want, Beau? A majorly flawed, broken woman with exposed wounds, who’s been to hell and back? It sounds like a storm you’d want to outrun. I thought you wanted a supernova.’
He drops his arms to his sides. ‘Outrun?’
‘Your former muse lit up the sky,’ I remind him. ‘She burnt bright and exploded on impact. You’re describing a woman who might accidentally smoulder if she tripped in a pile of kindling and her phone fell from her pocket at just the wrong angle so the glass caught the blazing sun.’
He smiles at this, eyes sparkling. ‘The writer in me wants to hear you say that again.’
‘You can’t charm me into wordplay.’ He absolutely could. I would fold, instantly. ‘We’re having a serious conversation.’
He holds up both his hands and wipes off the smile, or tries to.
‘A flawed character could work,’ I press on. ‘But even with “major flaws”, surely she’s not a total flop. I mean, doesn’t she scrape herself up off the floor every once in a while and do something at least mildly impressive?’
‘Audrey—’
I pull him down onto the piano stool with me, discovering, too late, that it’s really not built for duets. Cue awkward reshuffling—mine, not his—as I attempt not to press myself against his entire side.
‘I’m sensing you have some notes for me, Hepburn.’
My posture straightens, clarity dawning on my key message. ‘I would not want to be defined by my suffering. Or by my addiction. I am so much more than those two things.’ I badly need him to understand this point, and I deliver the information like an orator—my tone unambiguously strong.
He doesn’t argue. Doesn’t speak, actually.
Does he agree with me or not? My hands are shaking and here I go again, hurtling into an awkward silence as I say, ‘Nor would I want to turn myself inside out and show someone everything only for that person to storm out and humiliate me because they cannot seem to handle my messy plotline …’
Glory, when did this workshop upgrade itself from fiction to reality?
‘I mean, if I was this character. And if you were my … Well, if you were the—’
How do I switch myself off?
‘I think the technical term you’re searching for is “hero”.’
The room sucks in its breath, piano strings taut, moment of truth having blundered across the floor. Beau repositions his body on the stool now, easily finding the room for both of us that seemed missing just moments ago.
‘The hero won’t know what has hit him, Audrey.’
‘Obviously I’m not suggesting—’
‘He won’t deserve her. He won’t trust himself around her. She’ll be all the things I’ve said, fused with this hidden strength and creativity and sex appeal that’s just … flammable—’
With his thigh touching the length of mine, hips, arms, shoulders, there is no hope that he doesn’t feel the way I am trembling.
‘Even in bright yellow Wellingtons …’
Is it possible to asphyxiate from a compliment?
He makes me look at him now, twisting me to face him, eyes piercing mine as he says, ‘The problem is that after she’s told him her life story—the whole messy plotline in three acts—and he understands just how much she has at stake, his public life will bring her undone.
Journalists will dig and pry, and they won’t let up until they’ve fed like vampires on all her secrets.
They’ll take the precious life she’s reclaiming and they’ll blow it all up again—’
This isn’t about not trusting him, I realise very belatedly. It’s about not trusting them. He’s not abandoning me; he’s trying to protect me.
‘And here’s the real kicker,’ he adds before I can collect myself, pain really searing across his face now. ‘All along, no matter how far she opens her heart and how much music they make, there will never be a time, for the rest of their lives, when she’s not still madly in love with someone else.’