15. Anna
ANNA
I'm in the pool before I've fully decided to be. I don't think I slept. But I'm not tired. I'm wired.
I'm doing laps when Luke comes back from walking Zeke.
I stop. "Hey."
"Let's go to the beach for breakfast."
I get out.
He looks at me.
"New swimsuit?"
"Yeah." I towel off and go upstairs.
I come outside.
He's waiting for me. By the motorcycle.
I've literally been told never to do this since I was like eight.
"Let's go," I say.
He fits the helmet over my head and fastens the strap.
He puts his helmet on.
He gets on the Ducati.
I get on behind him. Wrap my arms around his leather jacket. Press my chest against his back.
The Ducati comes to life underneath us.
The front gate retracts.
I hear my mother's voice. "Have you lost your mind, Annabelle?"
We pull out of the driveway, and I hold on to his waist.
The city opens differently on a bike. No windows between you and it. Just air and speed and the particular sensation of Los Angeles moving past you at a frequency you can feel in your chest.
We take Mulholland west. The road curves through the hills and the city drops away on both sides and Luke opens it up and the engine screams beneath us.
I glance down at the speedometer.
Too fast.
Fast enough that my mother’s voice gets louder in my head.
Fast enough that I should tell him to slow down.
I don’t.
I press closer to his back and close my eyes for three seconds and feel the speed in my whole body and something that has been wound tight for months loosens slightly.
"You good?" he says over his shoulder.
My hands are locked around him. The muscles in his back against my breast. My hands on his abs. I’m holding on tighter than I need to.
In Santa Monica he wears a baseball cap and sunglasses, and it works for approximately four minutes before a woman with a stroller stops and stares and a teenager asks for a photo.
He's gracious about it. The switch flipping, the warmth turning on, the practiced ease of someone who figured out a long time ago that fighting it is worse than giving in.
The woman with the stroller looks at me after.
He puts his hand on the small of my back.
She smiles at me like I won something.
We walk to Shutters for breakfast. The hostess recognizes him. We get a table by the window. The ocean runs blue and indifferent outside the glass.
We eat looking at the beach.
We take selfies for social. He puts his arm around me. We kiss a few times for the camera. I make sure they're innocent.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah. This is perfect."
People stare at us the entire meal. Some subtle, some not. The particular weight of being next to someone the world has decided to pay attention to.
When he says my girlfriend I nod and remind myself it isn't real.
It keeps not working.
He takes my hand and we walk to the beach. Blue sky. Salt air. Waves breaking slow against the sand while tourists and runners and kids with boogie boards move around us like background noise.
We walk until I forget I’m supposed to be counting the moments as work. He tells me about the first movie set he ever walked onto.
I tell him about a play I did, where there were four people in the audience, a family of four, that was it.
For a while, nobody is filming us. Nobody is telling us where to stand. Nobody is asking us to look in love.
Which makes it feel real.
I have acting class tonight.
Joe puts me up for my scene — the one I did perfectly last week, the one that made the class go silent, the one Joe used as an example of what honest work looks like.
I keep trying to find the character, but all I can feel is Luke’s back against my chest, his hand on mine at breakfast, his mouth that night, and the space he’s put between us since.
I stand on the stage and say the words and none of it is real. The scene lands flat and obvious and performed, exactly what Joe has spent years teaching us not to do.
"What's going on with you?" he says. "You're better than this."
I shake my head.
"Where are you?"
"Not here."
He moves on.
I take my seat. I don't seem to care that much. Not about sucking.
The parking lot afterward.
Chloe and Alex walk me to the Mercedes because that's become part of the routine now. Like the car belongs to all of us somehow.
"I have to tell you guys something," Alex says. "I'm writing a one-man show about my journey. I'm going to put it up somewhere. I don't care anymore." A pause. "I'm going to come out."
"What do you mean?" I say.
"I'm going to tell everyone I'm gay."
"They already know," Chloe says.
"No they don't."
"Yeah, everybody knows," Chloe says.
"How do they know? Did you tell them?"
"They know cause they know you."
Alex shoves his hands into his pockets. Suddenly smaller somehow. Not physically. Emotionally. Like he's twelve waiting to be yelled at.
"You think people don't know you're gay?"
"You think they do?"
"I know they do," Chloe says. She looks at me. I nod.
His face shifts. Fear mixed with relief. A man spending years bracing for a punch that already landed and somehow didn't kill him.
"My family doesn't know."
"Are you sure about that?"
He looks concerned.
"Look on the bright side," Chloe says. "If they already know then it's easier. You've been living in fear for no reason."
He exhales.
Chloe looks at me. "And what's going on with you. You seem out of it."
"I couldn't focus."
I lean against the car.
"He hasn't touched me. Since that night. Not once. It's like it never happened."
Neither of them says anything for a beat.
Chloe looks at Alex. Alex looks at Chloe. The particular silent conversation of two people who've already talked about this without me.
"Nothing?" Chloe says.
"Nothing. He walks past me like I'm furniture."
"Maybe he's being respectful," Alex says.
"He's slept with five hundred women. Since when is he respectful?"
"Alex, can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"Can guys fake it?"
Alex blinks. "Fake what?"
I lower my voice. "An orgasm."
"Oh. Yeah. Guys can fake it."
"Are you serious?"
"Oh yeah."
"He's an actor," Chloe says.
I feel sick.
"What if he faked it?"
"You don’t know that," Chloe says.
"He literally said he doesn’t think we should do it again."
“It’s hard to be that bad at it,” Chloe says.
“No it’s not,” Alex says.
“A little support here,” Chloe says.
“Sorry.”
The house is quiet when I get back.
Luke is on the couch reading a script. He looks up when I come in.
"How was class?"
"Joe stopped the scene early."
He puts the script down.
“It was like a day I bombed in Professor Clarkson’s class.”
“Yeah, Amanda.”
“Amanda?”
He has a curious smile on his face.
“You slept with her?”
“I did.”
“You slept with your professor.”
“Last semester.”
“How many times?”
“I didn’t count.”
“So enough that you lost count. And you don’t question your grade?”
“No, she gave me an A because I’m a good actor.”
“How do you know if you were sleeping with her when she gave you that grade?”
“Well, for one, I got an agent right out of NYU and I started working.”
“Did you sleep with your agent too?”
“Steven’s the only agent I ever had, and no, I have not slept with him.”
“What about Delia?”
“Nope, I have not had the pleasure.”
“You think this is funny?”
“I think you’re overreacting to something that happened eight years ago.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“For what?”
“For sleeping with women and having it mean nothing to you. It’s like doing push-ups. How do you do that?”
“It’s a gift.”
“You’re hurting women,” I say.
“How?”
“By sleeping with them and then discarding them.”
“They’re fine with it.”
“How do you know that, do you tell them? Hey, this is it, we’re one and done.”
“I don’t have to.”
“Why?”
“Because I have a reputation. They know,” he says.
“You’re an asshole. You don’t know what love is.”
“Neither do you.”
“Asshole!”
I get up and go upstairs.
“You’re the asshole,” he says.
I come back down.
“And when I’ve seen you in movies and you’re supposed to be in love. I don’t buy it.”
He doesn’t say anything to that.