27. Nate
It’s the last day of filming before we fly to L.A. for the rest of the shoot, and for the firsttime since I moved to New York, I’ve never been more excited to leave.
Not because I’ve fallen out of love with it, I don’t think that would ever happen. It’swhere I became who I am, where I learned to become someone I was proud of, and learned to balance my life in such a way that my anxiety became less of a burden.
I think the reason I’m itching to leave is because of how much this shoot has changedthings. Changed dynamics that I was comfortable with. Not happy, but comfortable. It’s brought people into my life I thought I’d never see again, ones who had no idea they played such a huge role in the worst years of my life.
It’s made me realise how madly in love I am with Addy, and just how much having heraround makes me… happy.
The only thing standing in our way now was the truth, from both of us. And maybethat”s the part that excited me about going to L.A.
I promised myself I’d tell her the truth about that day, when she thought I never showedup. I hoped she’d finally admit about her and Asher and finally let me let that part of our lives go.
The place where we fell in love might just be the place to do that.
“Well, everyone, that’s a wrap!! See you all bright and early next Monday in sunnyL.A.!” Sebastian calls as a round of cheers and claps echo around the set.
I don’t try to look for Addy in the crowd. I’m already regulating my breaths at thethought of catching eyes with her, being tangled up in those wordless conversations we had now and then. I haven’t talked to her since the kiss… both of them. I hadn’t been around her long enough to gather how she was feeling.
But if the way she looked when I ran off set, after her improved line that cast stars in myeyes and clouds in my head, my heart knew that she wasn’t happy.
As the cheers die down, everyone begins to filter out, packing up equipment andscurrying around to clear the space for the next movie that was happening at the lot. My feet take me back to my dressing room, stopping for a few selfies from crew members along the way, before I slam the door shut, rattling whatever was on my desk.
Too much had happened on this shoot. Too much had happened outside this room, that it felt like the memories would come banging on the door any minute. I felt the wretchedness of it all cement in my mind, wrapping me in a blanket made of barbed wire and regret.
I’d already known this shoot would be difficult. I knew it would test me. Test us. I knewall that as I scribbled my signature over the dotted line of the contract six weeks ago.
So why the fuck did you sign it?
“I…” The letter falls out of me, mingling with the heavy breaths I hadn’t realised I wastaking. I hadn’t realised how slumped my back was against the door, how my hands were gripping my knees, how my head had fallen like it had finally given up.
I missed what we used to be, was what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t find the strength todo it.
The way my hands took on that familiar numbness made my chest rise and fall in the way Iknew it would. And it’s sad… to think that I can map out every second of my attacks before they even begin. The routine helps me ride them out, I suppose. It distracts my mind for long enough that it’ll pass before I know it.
But what has me distracted from this attack, from the shakes and the tight pain in mychest, is the text tone of my phone sounding out from my jeans pocket.
I take a hand away from my knee to glide it out, the ice block of pain in my chest meltingaway the second I read the word Firefly.
Firefly
Today 3:43 PM
Hi.
I have to wipe my forehead before I even think about what this means.Casual greetings weren’t what we did. So where was this one coming from?
I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to figure out how to bat the conversationback, and in the end only coming up with,
Hi.
The chair at my desk was calling my name as I padded over to it, clutching my phone likea lifeline, before sitting down at the same time Addy replied.
Wanna go for a walk?
Together?
If that’s okay.
I blinked at my screen, before firing back,
What about the crowds?
I don’t care.
Then neither do I.
I meet her outside, down a street just behind the lot. Hidden away from the few men withcameras who like to manifest out the front, allowing us to slip away without a hitch.
I find her as I round the corner, blue jeans and a white linen crop top covering her body, hercurls sitting just below her shoulders with a pair of tortoiseshell sunglasses resting atop her head. Pretty as ever. Breathtaking, like always.
A glimmer of a smile appears on her lips when she sees me, and that does nothing butmake me smile too. A big one. One I used to give her all the time, but now I rarely ever let anyone see. She shuffles on her feet, staring at the tips of her toes for a second before her head comes springing back up.
“Hi.” She whispers, looking up at me with her lashes practically hitting her brows.
“Hi,” I say back down to her. And when I realise her mouth is gaping and her eyes aresearching mine because she doesn’t know what to say next, I spare her the task and hold out my arm. “Shall we?”
After a moment or two, she nods, the corner of her mouth peeking up and dimpling hercheek, as she locks her arm around mine.
Then we fall into step, as she slips on her sunglasses and I pull mine out of my backpocket, which, paired with the cap I’m wearing, makes for a handy disguise.
I got a tonne of shit from Jacob after I told him to wear the combo, murmuring somethingabout plotting my murder because he”d been stopped a thousand times.
All it took was for me to remind him that he met Flo the day I suggested that… and thenhis goofy smile took over and he never mentioned it again.
But he was fussing for nothing, it’s a staple. Not only does it hide who we are, but it doeswell to block out the harsh glare of the golden hour that we’ve stumbled into. I feel the warmth wash over me as we turn onto a busy street, the crowds that we navigate through not bothering me like they usually would.
Any guesses as to why?
“Why’d you say yes, to walking with me?” She breaks the silence. “I thought after lastweek you would’ve… you know.”
“What?”
Her shoulders roll back, the brush of her skin against mine crowding my arms with goosebumps and filling my stomach with butterflies. “Ignored me.”
I shrug back at her, dodging a group of tourists on a walking tour before merging us intoan open patch of the sidewalk. “You asked.”
I felt her look up at me. “You can go on a walk with someone you hate just because sheasked?”
“I’d probably do anything you asked, Addy. Regardless of how I felt about you.” I replyto her, her eyes falling off me as we stop ahead of a crosswalk, cars zipping past us.
“So you’re not denying that you hate me?” A laugh that held nothing but disappointmentweaved through her words, as she kept her eyes ahead.
“I think I’m still confused about how I feel. Especially after… recent events.” I say to thetop of her head, her stubbornness to meet my eyes radiating off her. But I keep talking anyway. “Why did you want to walk with me?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the sign switch to walk, causing the body of peoplesurrounding us to shuffle across the street.
She shrugs back at me as we start to walk. “We haven’t spoken since the morning after you found me.” Finally, she brings her eyes, still covered by the sunglasses, to face me. “I thought we could clear the air before we go home.”
Home: where all this began.
“You know, it still feels weird talking to you like this… so… normally,” I admit, as wedip down a side street, mingling with more crowds. “Is it the same for you?”
“No,” she shoots back, quick as anything.
“Why?”
“Because I never wanted to stop talking to you, I never wanted you out of my life, Nate.”And while she’s saying all this, she squeezes my arms tighter as we push past a group of males, her grip loosening when we clear them. “It was you who cut contact with me, remember?”
I suppose it was, but…
Like she wanted to get her train of thought back on the right track, she shakes her head.“That doesn’t matter right now. We need to talk about what happened the other day.”
“The kiss?” I ask her, getting only a small nod in return. “Which one?”
She slowed our synced steps as I watched her head tilt in my peripheral. “The real one.”
“I don’t think I was pretending with either of them, to be honest.”
That gets her attention, ripping the sunglasses from her face as her feet halt in the middle of the sidewalk, the swarms of people still moving around us. “So why’d you run off after we stopped filming?”
My silence and wide eyes tell her better than I could.
“An attack?” I nod, hating the way her eyes dulled. “God, Nate, I’m sorry.”
I shake my head, not caring about anyone else but her as I tore away my glasses too. “It’sprobably the only time when having you near me hasn’t helped to kill it.”
The weight of that memory pulled my head forward, honks and the sizzle from the steam grates lathering my ears. Addy’s arm slid off me, her surprisingly cold hand trailing down my forearm, skating over my pulse that gave away how what I’d just said had been a lie.
Having her here now was making my heart break every speed limit imaginable.
I see the moment she feels it, my erratic pulse pounding through her delicate fingers. Herlashes flutter as she interlocks her hand with mine, and for a moment, were eighteen again. That image of us made my eyes catch hers as they pried open, the memories of too many hours in the sun and pruned fingers from our swimming breaks painted on the fiery canvas of her eyes.
I licked my lips nervously as I muttered, “I’m sorry, if the kiss, the one at my place, upset you… or if what I’d done—”
“You don’t have to apologise for it.” Our fingers pulsed. “It was a reflex, for both of us, Isuppose. Muscle memory and all that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…” her eyes fell to the sidewalk before they met mine again. “Okay, rememberwhen I’d come to you when I was upset, after a day of filming and I was just… I needed you?” I nod. “And then you’d hold me, and… kiss me, and then suddenly everything would be okay again?” I nod, the memories making me smile unconsciously. “That’s what I mean, it was a reflex, something we couldn’t control.”
She nods as she says that, like she’s trying to convince herself that that’s all it was to her.
So I have to ask. “Was that what it was to you? A reflex you couldn’t control?”
Addy looks at me like she knows I’ve caught her, before her eyes dip, scanning the fewpeople around us before her shaky eyes find their way back. “Well… I guess, I…”
Without a thought racing through my head, I lifted my palm to her cheek, holding her likeI had that morning. The tips of my shoes meet her, and after a second of skating my thumb across her soft skin, I tuck a strand of flames behind her ear.
Her stare doesn’t leave mine, and something about that makes me smile down at her, asshe practically whispers. “No, I don’t think so.”
“So you wanted me to kiss you?” The question leaves my lips before it can fly throughmy mind.
But, like she didn’t have to search for the answer, her lips popped open. “I think I’ve spent thelast seven years trying to guess what it would feel like if we kissed again, and in that moment…” she shrugged. “My curiosity won.”
She’d wanted this. How long had she wanted this? I found myself ditching her stare whileI thought about how long I’d wanted it, whether I knew it or not.
Before I can deny that I’d always wanted to kiss her again, her head tilts, those fierywaves falling past her shoulder. “Did you really mean what you said, at the premiere?”
I think we need to talk. About everything.
“Yes…” I nod at her. “But, not here.” The way her eyes dipped before they met mineonce more… told me that she knew… knew that there was only one place we had to talk. The corner of my mouth tugged up into a smile as I told her, “When we’re home.”
She bounced her head at me a few times, the words sinking in as she muttered. “Okay.”
And as she let her hand drop from mine, the warmth her touch brought left; it was like all the sunlight had faded from the world, like the biggest star in the universe had lost its spark.
Her eyes smiled at me as she took a step back. “See you at home.”
And before I knew it, she got lost in the crowd.