1. Raven #2
“Tell us about the wife at home,” Grant said, and there it was. The shift in Josh’s face. The microexpression I knew so well. Embarrassment, the face he made when someone mentioned an unfortunate rash.
“Raven’s in her comfort era,” he said, and the audience laughed along, in on a joke I’d never been told. “You know, when they stop trying with the hair and makeup.”
My hand went to my carefully styled hair, the whole morning I’d spent trying to look effortlessly beautiful. The dress that had seemed elegant an hour ago was suddenly a costume from a play nobody was watching.
Sloane touched his arm. A small gesture, familiar and practiced. How many times had she touched him that I hadn’t seen?
“She does these ADHD tangents,” Josh continued, warming to his theme now, playing for laughs. “Starts talking about groceries and ends up at Roman architecture. It was cute when we were dating. After ten years…”
He shrugged. The audience laughed harder.
The tangents he used to call brilliant. The way my mind worked that he said fascinated him. Now reduced to a punchline for strangers’ amusement.
“She never really understood the business,” Sloane added, her voice sympathetic in that way that was worse than cruelty.
Josh nodded. Actually nodded, granting her the point, when what she’d said was that I was too stupid to understand his job.
“Trading up from wannabe actress wife to a real leading lady?” Grant joked, gesturing between them.
Josh laughed. Laughed first, before his brain caught up to his mouth. Then: “Raven’s little acting hobby keeps her busy. Some people just aren’t meant for the spotlight.”
Acting hobby.
The callback I’d driven to that morning.
The seventeen callbacks this year that had gone nowhere.
And the self-tapes, filmed in our guest room while he was at real auditions for real movies.
The classes I still took, the coach I still paid.
The dreams I hadn’t quite let die even though they were clearly on life support.
A hobby.
I sat in my carefully chosen dress, at my perfectly set table, with my seventeen reminders scattered through his day, breadcrumbs he’d never followed home, and felt my heart break clean through, the sound of good china meeting tile.
My phone buzzed. A photo from Sloane at what was clearly an after-party. Josh’s arm around her, both holding champagne. Both glowing with that specific light of people who know they’re winning.
“Don’t wait up! Amazing night!”
I looked at the timestamp. She’d sent it the moment they’d walked off stage. She’d wanted me to see this. To know this. To understand my place in this new configuration.
I’d told her about the anniversary dinner two days ago.
She’d known. She’d known I was planning this, known I’d be waiting, and she’d taken him anyway.
Or he’d gone anyway. Did it matter who’d decided?
The result was the same. I was alone at a table for two while they celebrated together on national television.
I turned off the TV. The silence sat there, judging.
Walked past the cold dinner, the melted candles, the flowers that had started, suddenly, to die. Everything I’d spent the day making perfect, now evidence of how stupid I’d been. How desperate.
The stairs to our bedroom felt longer than usual. Each step an effort, gravity itself deciding to make a point.
Our bedroom. His and mine. Except it didn’t feel like ours anymore. His Oscar invitation sat on the nightstand, the one he hadn’t mentioned. The golden embossed letters might as well have said “Josh Gardner Plus Guest” with a footnote: “Not You.”
His passport was out. Another trip he hadn’t mentioned. How many trips had there been? How many times had he left without really telling me where or why or for how long?
And there, beside his side of the bed, Sloane’s script.
Pink highlighter marks in his handwriting.
The same pink from that four-in-the-morning kitchen scene I’d talked myself out of trusting.
Margins filled with his notes. “Emphasize the vulnerability here.” “This beat needs more tension.” “You’re brilliant, S. ”
S. A nickname. When had she become S?
Of course. Of course.
I pulled the divorce papers from the back of my underwear drawer. Hidden behind lingerie I never wore anymore because what was the point? I’d had them drawn up six weeks ago, after he’d missed my birthday for an “emergency meeting” that turned out to be drinks with producers.
His Instagram story had given him away. A bourbon that cost more than most people’s car payments, other people’s laughter in the background, his hand holding the glass steady and sure while I sat at home with a cake for two that I’d bought myself because I’d believed him when he said he’d be home.
The papers were practical. Clean. No-fault because California didn’t care why your marriage died, just that it was dead. I’d been heartbroken when I got them. Janet had sat across from me with professional sympathy while I signed where she highlighted.
“You sure about this?” she’d asked.
“No. But I’m sure about needing them to exist.”
I’d brought them home and hidden them. Then two days later, Josh had apologized. Real tears, real promises. Said he’d been stressed about the new movie, said he’d make it better, said he loved me more than anything.
“I know I’ve been absent,” he’d said, holding my face in his hands. “I know I’ve been a terrible husband. But you’re my whole world, Raven. You have to know that.”
I’d believed him. God help me, I’d believed him, and I’d left the papers in the drawer like a parachute I was too scared to pull.
Not anymore.
I wrote the note on his good stationery, the stuff his mother had given us as a wedding gift. Cream paper with our initials embossed at the top. R & J. Like the tragedy, he used to joke. Except Romeo and Juliet died in love. We’d died some other way.
“You wanted a wife who wouldn’t embarrass you. Now you don’t have one at all. The papers are on your pillow. -R”
Three sentences to end ten years. It should have been harder. It should have required more words, more explanation. But what was there to say? He’d told a million strangers exactly what he thought of me. The man who’d once called me his muse had reduced me to a punchline.
I packed systematically. Dresses first, even the ugly comfortable ones that he’d mocked by implication on national television.
The cashmere sweater from our trip to Aspen where he’d spent the entire time on calls while I skied alone.
The jeans that had cost too much but made me feel like I could still compete with women a decade younger.
The pearl necklace my mother wore to her wedding. The earrings I’d inherited when she died five years ago, Josh too busy with reshoots to come to the funeral.
“Send my condolences,” he’d said over FaceTime from his trailer. “You know I’d be there if I could.”
But I hadn’t known that, not really, not anymore.
Every script with my notes in the margins.
My handwriting getting smaller over the years, taking up less space, apologizing for existing on the page.
The photo albums from before he was famous, the ones I’d gotten from his mother.
Our history, but only the parts that belonged to me.
Pictures of us laughing at wrap parties for movies nobody saw.
Pictures from when we were poor and happy and stupid with love.
I left the wedding rings on the papers. The engagement ring he’d proposed with in the rain outside a terrible dive bar because he couldn’t wait.
The wedding band we’d chosen together, inscription inside: “Always.” What a joke.
What a specific kind of cruelty, to promise always and deliver ten years.
Left every designer dress he’d bought me for events where I was supposed to look like his accessory. The red Valentino from the Globes. The gold Versace that had made him whistle when I’d tried it on, then made him frown when photographers paid more attention to me than him.
And left the keys to the Tesla he’d leased in my name without asking. “Surprise!” he’d said, and apparently I was a woman who wanted a car she hadn’t chosen. A woman who wanted surprises that came with monthly payments.
In the car, my actual car, the Honda I’d had since before him, I broke again.
The photo was still up on my phone, and up everywhere else too.
The anniversary table at 6 PM, beautiful and hopeful and stupid.
“Ten years with my whole heart,” I’d captioned it and posted it, when the table still looked like hope.
Just for us, I’d thought - and for anyone who wanted to see what ten years looked like.
There was no us. Maybe there hadn’t been for a long time.
My brain started its familiar spiral, all the signs I’d missed or dismissed. The meetings that ran late, the calls he took behind a closed office door. The way he’d stopped asking about my day and started just assuming it was fine.
And underneath all of it, three weeks old and still unanswered: my sister and my husband bent over a laptop in my own kitchen at four in the morning, the guilty little jump when they saw me, Sloane’s hands already fluttering up around a story.
I never did decide what I’d walked in on.
I’d filed it under nothing, because nothing was the only drawer I could afford to keep it in.
But no. I wasn’t going to do that. I wasn’t going to pick apart the corpse looking for cause of death. It was dead. That was enough.
I drove to Mia’s apartment with my whole life in garbage bags in the backseat. Ten years, and it fit in a Honda Civic with room to spare.
Too late now to fix it.
Or maybe, finally, right on time to stop trying.