5. Selene #3
Dylan flinches at the sound of her name. “She was just doing her job. It wasn’t… this wasn’t about her, Selene. This was my fault.”
“I know.”
The two words hang in the air between us, tinged with finality.
Dylan stares at me, clearly expecting more. An outburst. Tears. Accusations. Anything he can respond to, apologize for, fix with the right words.
But I’m done giving him something to fix.
I turn back to the window and study the city lights below. There are fewer of them now. Even Los Angeles sleeps eventually.
“I sat here for seven hours, Dylan.” My voice is calm, almost conversational.
“I watched the restaurant fill up and empty out. I watched couples eat dinner and drink wine and celebrate their love for each other. I watched the candle burn down to nothing and the food go cold and the staff start to wonder if they should call someone to help the sad woman at table seven.”
“Selene-”
“I called you.” I continue as if he hadn’t spoken. “I texted. I waited, and waited, and waited, telling myself that you would come because you promised. Because you made plans with me. Because it’s our anniversary, and surely that means something.”
Dylan’s grip on my hands tightens. “It does mean something. It means everything.”
“Does it?” I finally turn to look at him, and my own devastation reflects back at me from his eyes.
“Because from where I’m sitting, it seems like everything means your production.
Your vision. Your career. I’m just… an afterthought.
Something you’ll get to later, when you’re less busy, when things calm down. ”
“That’s not true-”
“I’ve been hearing ‘later’ for five years, Dylan.
” My voice breaks slightly, the first crack in the numbness that’s been protecting me.
“Later we’ll plan a vacation. Later we’ll have that conversation about starting a family.
Later you’ll bring your scripts home and we’ll work on them together like we used to.
But later never comes, does it? There’s always another project, another deadline, another emergency that’s more important than your wife. ”
Dylan’s face crumples. “I know I’ve been distant. I know I’ve let work consume everything. But I love you, Selene. That hasn’t changed.”
“I’m not sure that’s enough anymore.”
The words come out before I can stop them, and once they’re in the air, I can’t take them back. Fear flashes across his face.
“What are you saying?”
I don’t answer. I don’t know what I’m saying. I just know that a wall collapsed inside me tonight and now everything feels unstable. Dangerous. Ready to break.
“Selene.” Dylan releases my hands and cups my face instead, forcing me to look at him. “Please. Tell me what you need. Tell me how to fix this.”
I stare into the eyes of the man I’ve loved for seven years, and I try to find the woman who used to look back at him with such hope and certainty.
She’s not there anymore.
Claudette’s triumphant voice echoes in my mind.
He chooses to be here. He spends every day with me because I bring a spark to his mind, while you just remind him of a passion he’s long outgrown.
Is that what I am now? A reminder of who Dylan used to be, before he became the golden boy director, before he outgrew the woman who helped build him?
The script on his nightstand, covered in Claudette’s handwriting.
The way he looked at me when I showed up at the studio with lunch, confused, inconvenienced.
All the promises he’s made and broken. All the laters that never came.
All the pieces of myself I surrendered in the name of supporting his dreams. It all replays inside my head, and I can’t find it in me to turn it off.
I gave up everything for this man.
And he couldn’t even show up for dinner.
“I don’t know, Dylan.” The words come out hollow, scraped clean of emotion. “I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t know if it can be fixed.”
His hands fall away from my face. He stares at me like I’ve just told him someone died.
Maybe someone did. Maybe the woman he married has been dying for years, and tonight was just the final breath.
“I think I’d like to go home now.” I gather my clutch and stand up from the table, my legs surprisingly steady beneath me. “Alone.”
“Let me drive you-”
“I have my car.” I step around him before he can reach for me again. “I’ll see you… whenever you decide to come home.”
I walk out of the restaurant without looking back.
The night air is cool against my skin, a relief after hours of sitting in the restaurant I no longer want to visit again. I make it to my car before the tears finally come crashing down my cheeks as I grip the steering wheel and try to remember how to breathe.
Seven years.
Seven years of marriage, and this is what it’s come to. Me crying alone in a parking lot at three in the morning while my husband stands inside a closed restaurant, wondering where he went wrong.
The answer is everywhere. He went wrong everywhere. And so did I, for letting it happen.
I start the car and pull out of the lot, and I don’t bother wiping the tears from my face.
What’s the point? There’s no one left to see them anyway.