25
In retrospect, expecting a university’s Theatre and Drama Department to keep a celebratory event simple and subdued was stupid
beyond words.
It wasn’t, after all, the Theatre and Low-Key Introversion Department.
Peter wasn’t thinking too clearly these days, though. Not since last weekend, when Maria fucking left him after accusing him of leaving her . So here he was. All alone in a crowd of roughly a hundred strangers, flummoxed by the elaborateness of what he’d thought
would be a pretty basic event.
Endowing a scholarship—one! just one!—didn’t require this sort of fuss, dammit.
Regardless, a seemingly endless line of people had pinned him in place at the front of Vilas Hall’s screening theater. They
wanted to introduce themselves to him, congratulate him, thank him, remind him when and where they’d met before. They wanted
to have a pleasant, lively conversation with the man of the hour.
But he had no reserves of energy or goodwill remaining after an agonizingly solitary week, and he didn’t know how much longer
he could pretend he did.
In his own company, he hated himself.
In other people’s company, he hated them instead.
Either way: misery.
Then he saw two familiar faces standing right in front of him. And for a brief, very frightening moment, he thought he might
have to excuse himself from an event thrown in his honor so no one could see him weep.
“Nava. Ramón.” A single throat-clearing didn’t remove the lump there, so he tried a second time, then a third. “Wh-what are
you two doing here?”
Nava got up on her tiptoes to throw her arms around his neck and draw him close, and she wasn’t Maria. She wasn’t ineffable
softness wrapped around iron strength, wasn’t his missing piece clicking into place every time she pressed against him.
But she was so fucking warm, her hug affectionate, her eyes brimming with knowledge and concern for him. Ramón’s own embrace
included a fierce squeeze and several thumps on the back that somehow communicated both sympathy and fondness without a word
spoken.
“I’m an alumna of this department too. Did you forget?” Nava’s finger flicked his tie, and she wrinkled her nose at him. “But
even if I weren’t, we wouldn’t have missed your event for the world.”
He looked up at the ceiling and blinked hard.
When the department had asked for the names of family and friends he wanted to invite, he’d contemplated adding his father
to the list. Because maybe, when faced with such a concrete marker of financial success and professional prestige, Dad would
finally understand why his son had chosen to defy reason and escape to Hollywood. Maybe he’d look at Peter and say, at long
last, “You were right. I was wrong. You had to leave, and I’m sorry.”
Then, once Dad made that life-altering realization, maybe he’d say the same to the decorative urn containing his late wife, and Peter would finally, after all these years, be able to picture his mother at peace, wherever she was now.
Only that wasn’t going to happen, was it? Not ever. So Peter hadn’t invited his father, because it hurt to see him.
He’d meant Maria to be his family in this room, in this moment. And she was gone too.
But here were Nava and Ramón, and he loved them. Maria had brought the three of them together and forged his initial, tentative
connection to them, but Peter had earned their loyalty and affection on his own, just as they’d earned his, and he didn’t
love them simply as an offshoot of Maria, but because they were good, smart, kind people.
Loyal as hell too. He needed them, and they’d shown up. He didn’t even have to ask.
They were his family.
They loved him.
Even without Maria.
“Oh, Peter,” Nava whispered. She laid a gentle hand on his arm. “Honey.”
Somehow, they’d heard. They knew what had happened a week ago at that fucking hotel.
He swallowed hard. “Don’t.”
It was a plea in the guise of a gruff command, and they understood that. They understood him. So they gave him a minute to
get himself together without any argument or sign of offense at his tone, but Nava also didn’t let him go. And for that, he
loved them even more.
In this entire room, only two people truly knew him.
Turned out, that was enough.
“Thank you,” he finally choked out.
“You’re welcome, obviously, but you don’t need to thank us.” Back on her tiptoes, she planted a kiss on his cheek. “We want to be here for you.”
Before he could gather enough of his composure to respond, the lights flickered, and everyone began to settle into the rows
of seats. Without even a glance at one another to coordinate their efforts, Nava and Ramón each took one of his arms and marched
Peter’s reluctant ass to the little dais in front of the screen, depositing him alongside a couple of official-looking people
he’d met maybe twice before.
“You can do it, kid,” Ramón said quietly before they left.
But they didn’t go far. After maybe five steps, they sat in the very front row, directly in the middle, where he couldn’t
miss their presence. Nava smiled at him like a proud older sister, and Ramón gave him a little encouraging nod.
The speeches lasted far too long, especially given the modesty of his endowment: tuition and a small stipend for one in-state
department major per year, enough to buy their textbooks and class materials and maybe help them pay for a dorm room.
It wasn’t much. But it was enough to give another lost Wisconsin kid a chance to escape and a chance to succeed. Or, at the
very least, save that kid some student loan payments.
His own speech, he supposed he delivered well. He was an actor, after all. But other than his sincere good wishes to the scholarship’s
eventual recipients, it was mainly bullshit.
When the applause finally ended and he could collapse into a seat beside Ramón, he let out a long, heartfelt breath of relief.
Only to be confronted with his fucking face blown up ten feet high—holy shit, that never got less painful—as the event organizers
began playing a collection of taped testimonials from former colleagues interspersed with publicity photos and clips from
his various roles.
Those organizers were grateful to him, sure. But they were also bragging about one of their most successful alumni in hopes it would burnish their reputation and lead to more money for the department.
He got it. It made sense. It was still embarrassing as hell.
One by one, his Gods of the Gates castmates and crew appeared.
Marcus held forth on Peter’s so-called gravitas in the least-himbotastic explanation of acting technique ever, that big faker.
Carah smirked and called Peter “the fucking master of portraying tightly restrained but intensely powerful emotion, as well
as unbearable goddamn horniness with no outlet.”
Alex complained, “God, Peter’s the worst .
For three years running, he stole the top spot from me in Fan Thirst magazine’s ‘Celebrity Beard We Most Want to Ride’ poll.
Did you know that? It was a goddamn travesty .
” He pointed off camera. “You agree with me that I should have won, right, Wren? Tell me you agree with me.”
Jeanine grinned and flicked her hair behind her shoulder. “That man rocks a pair of torn-up leather pants like no one else.
His thighs did eighty percent of my work for me, and that delicious beard of his did the other twenty percent. Peter Reedton.
What a legend.”
Ramón and Nava showed up too, and talked as a duo about his professionalism and work ethic. Then added, “Peter’s one of the
most quietly caring individuals we’ve ever met, so we were completely unsurprised to hear about this scholarship. He’s not
only an incredibly talented actor. He’s also a very good man, and we’re proud to be his friends.”
After their segment ended, he glanced at the two of them, and they were smiling fondly at him in the dimly lit theater, their
incandescent pride practically setting it alight.
The video went on and on. His friends were entirely them selves. They made him laugh, and if he weren’t so emotionally repressed, they’d have made him cry. Again.
Between the interviews, short snippets of projects spanning the course of two entire decades played. In clips from low-budget
or indie films, he was sometimes the leading man. In scenes from higher-profile movies and television shows, his roles were
smaller.
All that had changed with Gods of the Gates . He was now considered a viable lead actor for a tentpole production, as the offer from FTI made clear. But that hadn’t been true for long, and before tonight, he’d never seen so many of his less-prestigious roles
laid out alongside each other for comparison.
Some of the early projects were ridiculous, of course, and the compilation’s creator made very certain to include his justifiably
infamous scene from Creekwatch. The one that featured Peter—“Drowning Guy #2”—nearly, yes, drowning in the titular rain-swollen creek while the lifeguard-slash-vigilante
hero, played by Marcus, fought to save him wearing only a Speedo and way too much self-tanner.
“I won’t let you die!” Marcus declared along the muddy shore, beside Peter’s utterly still body. “Not in the same place my
sister was killed! Not when I haven’t yet found her killers, even though I’ve been looking for so very long!”
The clear and somewhat disturbing implication was that if Peter’s character had chosen any other drowning location along the
creek, or if Marcus’s character had already imposed his spectacularly inept brand of justice on his sister’s killers, Mr.
Why Aren’t You Giving the Victim Mouth-to-Mouth Instead of Making a Speech would have let Drowning Guy #2 become Entirely
Drowned Guy #1 without a second thought.
So that clip made him laugh. It made everyone in the theater laugh, and for good reason.
But so many of his other performances still made him proud . The agoraphobic sculptor. The snootiest clerk at the record store, with the funniest lines of anyone in the entire cast,