Chapter 16 Breakthrough
Breakthrough
Sage can’t sleep.
She flips lazily through Netflix, skimming over the few shows she keeps on rotation, the few films she revisits when she needs a distraction. None of them feel like enough to keep her out of her head.
There’s something to be said for how she’s reaching for Theo’s preferred leisurely activity to soothe her, but she absolutely cannot examine that.
Not when she can still feel the ghost of his lips against hers.
Not when she’s wondering if maybe they should have had the Casual talk, if only so her heart gets the hell on board.
Sage lets out an aggravated noise.
A Christmas movie, then. She’s usually hardwired to feel festive as soon as Halloween passes, but given everything that’s been going on, she’s behind.
She’s a few letters into typing the name of her favorite holiday flick when something catches her eye.
No—someone.
Oliver Sharpe is staring just off-screen, frozen in time on the thumbnail image of what Sage assumes is his final film, because he looks the same age as the last photo she’d seen just the other week in the Sharpes’ home.
Sage swallows.
In a bout of morbid curiosity or masochism—or both—she’d watched Theo’s summer hit a few days after Comic Con.
She’d drawn the line there, unwilling to be so pathetic as to make her way through the rest of his filmography.
She’d been curious, though, about the films that had been stepping stones to get him where he was today.
The ones people ignored, as if he hadn’t been putting in the work for years.
By now, she could probably recite Theo’s IMDb better than Emerson. But Oliver’s …
She hadn’t looked into Oliver’s at all.
Sage hovers over the thumbnail, her eyes scanning the description of the film. She should click back to the home page.
She doesn’t.
She does heave the mound of blankets off of her as she pads into the kitchen and pours a knuckle of the scotch Edgar recommended, downs it, and pours another. Then, before she can talk herself out of it, she sits back down and hits Play.
Seeing a movie in this way is still a new enough experience to scratch Sage’s constant itch for novelty. But this time, she’s not just studying the plot, or the speech cadence, or the setting. She’s studying Oliver, her eyes narrowed and chin resting on her hand as he steps onto the screen.
Sage may know next to nothing about film, but she knows that even at such an early stage of his career, he is—was—mesmerizing.
He throws his entire self into the role, his expressions communicating more than his dialogue ever could, his face shifting subtly to display the roller coaster of emotions his character is experiencing, and Sage can’t stop watching, can’t stop dissecting, can’t stop her mind from cataloguing just how far ahead of the other actors—the more seasoned ones—he was.
There’s always that X factor for people—that unknown variable of what he could have been. They’re not just comparing me to what he was, but his potential, Theo had told her.
If his last movie is any indication, Oliver would have been a star. A supernova. She can easily envision the listicles: The 10 Biggest Actors to Watch Now.
#1 Oliver Sharpe.
Sage sits in silence once the movie ends.
The credits are rolling and there’s an ache somewhere behind her sternum that feels so familiar she can almost taste the name of it.
Her finger taps an unintelligible rhythm on her leg, the silence around her ringing as she lets that feeling rise to her throat.
Theo is talented. She could see that in the first five minutes of Legends. She doesn’t believe, for a single moment, that he can’t match Oliver line for line. Maybe even surpass his trajectory, if he wanted. And yet …
What do you do when your greatest might never live up, not because it can’t, but because people’s imaginations are boundless, and so the comparison is impossible?
When your own father’s imagination, his dreams for his lost child aren’t just being projected onto you, but are impossible to reach because they’re filtered through grief and loss and chances unfulfilled?
What about Theo’s dreams? What about his wants?
She thinks of his deflection about the real estate agent. About the way she hasn’t seen a single moving box or hint that he’s readying to sell his family’s home.
She thinks of how he tucks things away whenever they risk tangling in the thorns of his grief.
She thinks, and she aches.
She leans her head back against the couch, her mind whirling.
Margot often waxes poetic about the universe.
About strings of fate and vibrational frequencies and manifestation and the art of attraction and a whole host of other things that often leaves Sage with a bemused smile on her face because she’s always approached her own life in far more concrete terms.
Facts and game plans and odds—those have been Sage’s guiding light for as long as she can remember. Even when the data is against her. Especially when the data is against her.
But that’s never extended to thoughts like maybe there’s a reason she and Theo crossed paths again. But as she sits basked in the light of the TV, her eyes stinging as she’s faced with a context that makes the picture she holds of Theo so much more, she can’t help but let her mind drift there now.
A different sort of what-if for her overactive brain.
What if the inspiration she so desperately needs is matched by the encouragement he’s so desperately looking for.
What if in helping her get unstuck, he’s helping himself, and vice versa.
What if I’m making all of this up because I want there to be a reason for even thinking about Theo this much, she thinks sardonically.
Because what if she’s been lying to herself when she says things like friendly because she’s known, all along, that being friends with someone like Theo Sharpe is impossible.
Casual. Casual. Casual.
She repeats it like a mantra, like a spell warding off the desire to shuffle closer to the edge of the precipice she’s on and leap.
To take these questions that have flooded her mind and tug out the answers.
To snap new pieces of his puzzle into place not because she found them hidden in TV screens and articles or her own assumptions, but because he willingly handed them to her without hiding behind edges he may fear are too sharp.
To know him—truly know him.
What if.
What if.
What if.
She doesn’t know.
She picks up her phone.
Are you up?
Wow.
Never would’ve had you pegged as the booty call sort.
Sage snorts a laugh and hits the Call button. Theo answers on the first ring.
“This isn’t a booty call,” she says before he can get a word in. She can nearly hear the stretch of his smile across the line.
“I wouldn’t object. Though I would have recommended you stay had I known you were this insatiable.”
Heat licks down her spine at the low drawl of his voice, but it’s tempered by her fixation on the word stay. She pushes it away and tries to focus.
“Not why I’m calling,” she reminds him lightly.
“Right,” Theo says easily. A long silence fills the line, but it’s not the type that typically has Sage squirming in the stillness.
Instead, it’s comfortable, something to curl into.
She sinks further into the couch cushions, her fingers toying with the cuff of his sweatshirt she’s not sure he remembers she has.
Her breath is deep as she sucks steadying air into her lungs.
“I watched Oliver’s last film.”
There’s a pregnant pause, and then:
“I think most people have?” Confusion draws his sentence up at the end, and Sage rolls her lips inward.
“No, like … tonight,” she corrects him. “I watched it tonight.”
“Ah.” She hears Theo shift, and she imagines him straightening from whatever lounging position she’s interrupted. But his voice is calm and unbothered as he says, “Sorry, why do you say that like you’re confessing to a crime?”
Sage shrugs even though he can’t see her. She feels like she peered in on something she shouldn’t have and cracked something open in herself in the process. It’s rubbed her raw in a way that lingers just like the feeling of his hands on her.
“I sort of feel like I should have asked before I did it.”
“Collins,” he says earnestly. “It’s out there for the public to see. And … it’s quite good.”
She huffs a laugh. “It’s great,” she admits, her eyes fixed on the blank TV screen. She bites her lip. “I watched yours, too. Legends, I mean. After the Con.”
“Did you?”
“You’re amazing, Theo. Truly.” The words press against her chest as she releases them, as she tries to impart some of the truth that’s stirring inside of her.
It feels important to her that he know this.
That he believe it.
“You’re passionate, and visceral, and …” She sucks in a breath. She can feel the avalanche of words threatening to burst from her—every single quality that has nothing to do with his acting.
Kind.
Funny.
Patient.
Safe.
“And incredible,” she finishes, her voice cracking gently against the word. “You’re so incredible, and I just … I wanted to make sure you know that.”
She can feel the way her cheeks flush, the echo of too much in the back of her head.
God, Sage, don’t you ever stop?
She doesn’t. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe Theo can handle some of her edges, too.
Theo clears his throat, but there’s still something rough in his voice when he speaks. “Thank you, Sage. That …” He clears his throat again.
“Just … thank you.”
There’s a strange sort of peace about her when she sits down in front of her laptop the next morning. Her mind is quiet in a focused sort of way, her fingers hovering over her keyboard, tapping lightly with anticipation as she stares at her manuscript.
Sage chews on her bottom lip as she thinks.
She closes out of her existing draft.
Slides on her headphones.
Turns up the volume so the binaural beats are heavy and steady in her ears.