Chapter 15 The Hollywood Premiere #2
Aaron played David Liang, an architect trying to save his father’s modernist building from demolition while falling in love with Skye’s character, Vanessa Vale, a journalist profiling the redevelopment. It could have been sentimental. It could have been tasteful and dead. It was neither.
Aaron was warmer than he had been in his Hong Kong films, more open, perfectly calibrated for an American audience.
He was just foreign enough to be sexy while still being thoroughly American.
When he looked at a building, you believed he was seeing not concrete but loss.
When he looked at Skye, you believed he was seeing the love of his life.
Skye was perfect.
Natalie had known she was talented. She had seen the pianist film years ago and cried despite herself at the ending, which she had then pretended was because she was tired.
But this was different. Skye acted with her whole face.
In one scene, when Vanessa stood inside the empty lobby of the building David was trying to save, Skye touched the cracked marble wall with two fingers and said nothing but every single person in the audience understood why the building mattered.
She was enthralled. Everyone was.
She laughed where everyone laughed.
She cried where everyone cried.
When the final scene came, David and Vanessa stood on the roof of the half-demolished building as sunset turned every surface gold. The building would not be saved.
The love story was not so simple. Nothing was fixed. But they stood together in the ruin and looked outward, and Aaron’s face held grief and acceptance in a way that made the theater so quiet Natalie could hear someone breathe two rows behind her.
Then the screen went black.
For a moment no one moved.
Then the applause came hard.
The audience rose. Natalie rose with them.
Aaron and Skye stood together near the center of the theater, lit by a spotlight. Skye turned toward him, smiling, and Aaron took her hand and lifted it slightly, giving her the first bow. The room loved that. Loved him for doing it. Loved her too.
Natalie clapped until her palms hurt.
She meant it. It was that good.
The lobby after the screening was pure chaos.
People moved toward exits, after-party shuttles, restrooms. Studio staff with headsets tried to manage the currents to no avail. Guests leaned into conversations they would abandon the moment someone of more use to their career appeared.
A woman beside Natalie said, “I cried, I hate that I cried,” while touching up her lipstick.
Natalie stood near a side wall, holding her Bottega Veneta clutch with both hands.
There was an after-party. She had the card. She had the address.
But there was no way to leave.
“Hey.”
Natalie turned.
Skye Madison stood three feet away.
Up close, Skye was even more striking. Not flawless but better than flawless. There were faint lines at the corners of her eyes, the real texture of skin under makeup, a tiny shadow of fatigue beneath the glamour.
“Oh my God, Skye, your performance was incredible!” Natalie said without thinking. She smiled widely at Skye.
Skye’s expression did not change.
“Don’t do that.”
Natalie stopped. She felt the smile disappear from her face.
The hallway moved around them. No one seemed to notice.
Skye stepped closer. Her whisper was menacing.
“Stay away from Aaron, you little slut.”
Natalie’s mouth went dry.
“I’m sorry?”
“No,” Skye said. “You’re not. But you will be.”
Natalie looked around once, instinctively. A man in a tuxedo passed behind Skye. Two women were taking a photo by the poster. No one looked at them.
Skye smiled then.
Not kindly.
“I’m Aaron’s girlfriend. You’re just a little slut that he likes to fuck. Do you have any idea how dangerous to all our careers it is that you’re here?”
Natalie said nothing. She looked blankly at Skye.
“Years of getting this movie made. Tens of millions of dollars. Doing all the right publicity perfectly so Aaron can walk onto that carpet beside me and effortlessly become the Asian Idris Elba.”
Her eyes moved over Natalie again.
“And you just want to fuck it all up.”
“He invited me.”
“No, he didn’t. You forced him to bring you.”
Tears formed in Natalie’s eyes. “That’s not true.”
The contempt in Skye’s eyes was delicate. Almost polite.
“Oh, give me a break.”
“Aaron and I—”
“Don’t.” Skye’s voice sharpened, still quiet. “There is no Aaron and you. There’s only Aaron and Skye. Go back to wherever you came from. You don’t belong here. America is for Americans, not you.”
Natalie closed her mouth.
“I know what you are,” Skye said. “I’ve seen girls like you before. You think that a closet full of Hermès, Chanel and Dior means love. Fuckable enough to be brought along. Young enough to think that being a good fuck gives you power.”
The words landed one by one, each selecting a new place to hurt.
Natalie’s eyes burned.
She was not that person that Skye described.
Skye saw.
Of course she saw.
“Oh, honey,” she said softly. “No.”
The softness was worse.
“You don’t get to cry,” Skye said. “You don’t get to show up here, sniff around my guy, and cry, pretending that you didn’t know.”
“I didn’t—”
“You didn’t what? Know?” Skye’s smile thinned. “Please. You knew enough to sit in your assigned seat and keep quiet during the carpet.”
Natalie flinched.
Skye leaned in just enough that no one else could hear the next words.
“I don’t ever want to see you again. If I see you again, you’ll be sorry.”
The tears came then.
Natalie could not stop them.
Then Skye walked away.
Natalie stood beside the wall while the lobby continued moving around her.
Someone laughed ten feet away. Someone else said Aaron’s name. A headset woman hurried past with a clipboard. The poster behind Natalie showed Aaron and Skye leaning away from each other in golden light, beautiful and impossible, the entire evening compressed into one image.
Natalie could not breathe properly.
She made it outside somehow.
She did not remember how.
The night air hit her face, warm and dry.
The carpet was still active around the corner, the after-party traffic beginning, black cars sliding into place, drivers checking names.
Natalie walked away from all of it, down the side street, past equipment cases and cables taped to the pavement, past a security guard who glanced at her face and then politely looked elsewhere.
She stopped in the shadow beside a closed service entrance and opened her phone.
For a moment she could not see the screen clearly.
She wiped under her eyes with the heel of her hand, making things worse.
She needed to talk to someone. Anyone.
She opened her phone and saw Danny’s name.
She tapped the FaceTime icon before she had second thoughts.
It rang.
Once.
Twice.
Then Danny’s face filled the screen.
He was somewhere dim, probably a trailer or a back room. He wore a black T-shirt. His hair was damp at the temples. There was a strip of tape or makeup near one cheekbone, half-removed. He looked tired.
“Natalie?”
She tried to answer.
“Oh my God, Natalie! Are you okay?”
Natalie put one hand over her mouth and the tears started to flow, silently at first and then not silently at all.
Ugly crying. The kind that made her shoulders shake, her breath catch, snot fill her nose and huge breaths interspersed with erratic and out-of-control wails. She turned toward the wall because she could not stand the thought of anyone on the street seeing.
Danny’s voice came through the phone, low and urgent.
“Hey. Hey, look at me. Natalie, look at me.”
She couldn’t look.
“No, Danny, no! I’ve been so horrible to you!”
“Whoa, whoa, Natalie. That doesn’t matter. Just look at me.”
She looked.
His face was closer now. He had sat up or moved somewhere quieter. The background shifted.
“Where are you?”
“Los Angeles.”
“Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
“Is Aaron with you?”
“No.”
“Do you know where he is? Can he help you?”
“No, I don’t know where Aaron is. He can’t help me.”
“What happened?”
“The premiere. Skye Madison. She—she knew who I was. She told me to stay away from Aaron. She called me—” Natalie swallowed. “She called me a slut. She hates me!”
Danny’s jaw tightened.
“I hate Los Angeles.”
“I know.”
“I’m so lonely,” she said.
“Oh, Natalie.”
“Grace, Tessa, Constance, Alexis. They all hate me. We had a horrible fight. I called them bad names.”
“Oh, no.”
“I have nobody.”
“You have me,” Danny said quietly
Natalie didn’t know what to say.
“Come home,” he said.
Natalie closed her eyes.
The word hit harder than she expected.
Home.
Hong Kong.