4. Dylan
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Dylan
The calls from Selene stack up on my phone screen.
Three missed calls on Monday. Four on Tuesday.
By Wednesday, I’ve stopped counting, just letting them roll to voicemail while I focus on the chaos erupting around me.
We’re behind schedule. The lead actress is having creative differences with her scene partner.
The weather forecast threatens rain for our exterior shoot next week, which would blow our budget into orbit.
I’ll call Selene back tonight. I always think that, and then tonight becomes tomorrow, and tomorrow becomes next week, and the missed calls keep accumulating. Pieces of evidence of a crime I don’t have time to examine.
“Dylan, we need you in the editing bay.” Lance, my assistant director, appears at my elbow with a tablet full of problems. “The dailies from yesterday aren’t cutting together. Something’s off with the coverage.”
“On my way.” I drain the last of my cold coffee and toss the cup toward a trash can, missing by a mile. Someone will pick it up. Someone always does. “What about the crane issue?”
“Still working on it. The rental company is being difficult about the insurance.”
“Tell them we’ll go with another vendor if they can’t figure it out by the end of day.”
Lance nods and hurries ahead of me, and I’m already mentally cataloging the seventeen other fires I need to put out before lunch.
This is how directing a production of this scale feels.
Constant triage. Constant compromise. Constant forward motion even when everything around you is threatening to collapse.
I love it. God help me, I love every exhausting second of it.
My phone buzzes again. Another call from Selene. I silence it without looking and keep walking.
The evening before our anniversary, I finally make it home.
The mansion is quiet when I push through the front door, the kind of silence that makes me still.
I’ve been at the studio for three days straight, catching sleep on the couch in my office, surviving on craft services and adrenaline.
Every muscle in my body aches, and I want nothing more than to shower and collapse into my own bed for a few hours before tomorrow’s shoot.
“Dylan?”
Selene’s voice reaches me from the living room, and surprise colors her voice. And hope. My chest tightens at the sound, but I push past it and head toward the stairs.
“Hey, baby.” I call over my shoulder without stopping. “Just grabbing some stuff. I need to head back to the studio tonight.”
She appears in the doorway of the living room, and I make myself pause long enough to actually look at her.
She’s beautiful, as always. Her dark hair loose around her shoulders, her face bare of makeup in a way that makes her look younger, softer.
She’s wearing one of my old t-shirts, the faded gray one she used to steal when we were first dating, and the sight of it triggers a memory I don’t have to unpack.
“You’re going back?” The hope in her voice curdles into disappointment. “Tonight?”
“We’re at a critical point in production.” I start climbing the stairs, and she follows me. “The night shoot schedule is a disaster. I need to be there to supervise.”
“But tomorrow is-”
“I know.” I push into our bedroom and head straight for the closet, pulling out my overnight bag. “I know tomorrow is… something. An event, right? Did you have anything planned?”
The silence that follows my question stretches until I can barely breathe.
I turn around and find Selene standing in the middle of the bedroom, her arms wrapped around herself, her expression a careful mask that doesn’t quite hide the hurt underneath.
“Our anniversary, Dylan.” Her voice is quiet. Controlled. “Tomorrow is our seventh wedding anniversary.”
The words land with physical force. I actually stagger back a step, my hand tightening on the strap of my overnight bag.
Our anniversary. Tomorrow.
How did I forget our anniversary?
“Selene.” I set the bag down and cross to her, reaching for her hands. “Baby, I’m so sorry. I’ve been so caught up in production that I completely lost track of the date. You know how I get when I’m in the middle of a project.”
She lets me take her hands, but she doesn’t squeeze back. Her fingers lie limp in my grip, and her eyes search my face with something that looks almost like defeat.
“I’ve been trying to talk to you about it for weeks.” Her voice doesn’t waver, but I can hear the effort it takes to keep it steady. “I called you. I texted. I came to the studio with lunch, but you were too busy to even look at me so I didn’t bother mentioning it anymore.”
The lunch. I remember it now. Selene showing up at the studio, Claudette making some comment, me being too absorbed in the footage to pay proper attention. I thought I’d dealt with it gracefully at the time. I thanked her, didn’t I? Told her I loved her?
But I can’t remember what happened to the food she brought.
“I know I’ve been distracted.” I release one of her hands to cup her face, tilting it up toward mine. “This project is demanding everything I have, but that’s no excuse. Let me make it up to you.”
“How?” The question is simple, but it carries the weight of weeks of neglect.
“Tomorrow night.” I’m thinking fast, trying to assemble a plan from the scattered fragments of my attention.
“That restaurant we used to love. The one with the view of the city. You make a reservation, and I’ll meet you there.
I’ll take a few hours off from the shoot, and we’ll have a proper anniversary dinner. Just the two of us.”
Selene stares at me for a long moment, and her expression shifts, hope replaced by resignation. The hope that flickered when I first walked in the door gutters out, replaced by a dull resignation that I don’t have the bandwidth to analyze.
“You want me to make the reservation.” It’s not a question.
“You know the restaurant better than I do.” I’m already turning back toward the closet, pulling suits off hangers and folding them into my bag. “And my schedule is insane right now. I’ll be lucky if I can step away for a couple of hours.”
“A couple of hours.” She repeats the words flatly. “For our seventh anniversary.”
“It’s better than nothing, right?” I offer her a smile that feels thin even to me. “We can do something bigger when production wraps. A weekend getaway. Paris, maybe. You’ve always wanted to go back to Paris.”
Selene doesn’t respond. She just stands there, watching me pack, her arms wrapped around herself again in that self-protective gesture that makes my chest ache without understanding why.
“Baby.” I stop packing and turn to face her fully. “I know this isn’t ideal. I know I’ve been a terrible husband lately. But this project is going to be the best thing I’ve ever made, and once it’s done, I’m going to spend the rest of my life making it up to you. I promise.”
The promise hangs in the air between us. I’ve made so many promises like this over the years. Later, when things calm down, when I’m less busy, when the project wraps. I’ve always meant them. I’ve just never gotten around to keeping them.
Selene’s shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath. When she speaks, her voice is carefully neutral.
“What time should I make the reservation for?”
“Eight o’clock?” I’m already calculating the shoot schedule in my head. “That should give me enough time to get the key scenes in the can before I leave.”
“Eight o’clock.” She nods slowly. “I’ll be there.”
“Thank you for understanding.” I cross to her and press a kiss to her forehead, quick and distracted. “I’m going to grab a shower before I head back. Can you make sure I didn’t forget anything important in the closet?”
I don’t wait for her response before heading into the bathroom and closing the door behind me.
***
Selene
The bathroom door clicks shut, and I’m left standing alone in our bedroom, surrounded by the evidence of my husband’s priorities.
His overnight bag sits open on the bed, half-packed with suits he’ll need for the next few days at the studio. Days that include our anniversary. Days he apparently forgot existed until I reminded him.
Let me make it up to you.
The words echo in my mind, hollow and familiar.
He’s been making things up to me for years now, promised getaways that never happen, romantic dinners that get rescheduled indefinitely, quality time that always loses to production emergencies.
I’ve become an expert at accepting his apologies and swallowing my disappointment, telling myself that this is what it means to be married to a creative genius.
But tonight, standing in this beautiful, empty bedroom while my husband showers before returning to the studio that has consumed our entire marriage, I don’t feel like a supportive wife.
I feel like a woman who has been slowly erased.
The sound of running water fills the silence.
I move through the room on autopilot, checking his closet for anything he might have missed, arranging his packed suits so they won’t wrinkle.
The motions are familiar, comforting in their banality.
This is what I do now. I take care of the domestic details so Dylan can focus on his art.
His phone buzzes on the nightstand.
I shouldn’t look. I know I shouldn’t look. But the screen lights up with a name that sends ice through my veins.
Claudette.
Before I can stop myself, my hand is reaching for the phone. I don’t answer it. I’m not that far gone yet, but I watch the screen until it stops buzzing and the notification appears.
Missed call from Claudette.
A moment later, another buzz. A voicemail.
I stare at the phone in my hand, my pulse pounding in my ears. The rational part of my brain is screaming at me to put it down, to walk away, to not become the kind of wife who snoops through her husband’s messages looking for evidence of betrayal.
But another part of me, the part that’s been watching my sister inch closer to my husband for weeks now, needs to know what she has to say.
I tap the voicemail notification.