Chapter 52
Ryen’s movie was one of those dialogue-drenched indie romances that were all the rage in the nineties.
Milan and I reclined on Howard’s green, watching the production.
A light-skinned girl with short coils glided across the yard, a tube top holding back delicate B-cups.
The film’s star. Milan’s eyes tracked her, but I was still in Tristan’s apartment.
His words had climbed inside me, spreading like a virus with great speed.
His fist in my hair, the command in a low, low voice, aware of its own weight.
The way he looked after, like all I would ever do was raise his hopes simply to watch them fall.
Of course I’d lied during sex before! Had even said those exact words, delighting in the frisson of lying to a man’s face.
But with Tristan, I knew the declaration would blow everything wide open.
Which was what he’d wanted. To find a bug, a flaw, in my ideological system that would power down the whole machine.
Better yet, find an opening that would take him to a site that was off-limits.
In those thirty seconds during which he’d waited for me to give in, observing me with dominant need, I’d hated him just like every other man set on having me in the way I refused to be had.
To distract myself, I asked Milan, “What’s this film about?”
She tore open a bag of chips with her teeth, still glaring at the girl.
“It’s the day before graduation and the two love interests have been friends all through college.
One of them professes their love, the guy, and the girl isn’t sure.
Like, she loves him, but does she love him love him?
They spend the next twenty-four hours debating whether they should get together in a crazy, sleepless manner, asking random people, calling up friends, shit like that. ”
“Do they get together in the end?”
She shrugged. “It goes black before they decide.”
“What? Why?”
“Ryen says them getting together isn’t the point. The point is how their relationship changes over the twenty-four hours.”
That was actually smart. “Which scene are you in?”
“I’m one of the friends they call.”
“Oh, so, you’re not actually on-screen?”
“No, but my voice is.”
The main girl’s acting was shaky. Ryen removed his headphones, gesturing for her to step to the side. He said something with a measured air. Her performance was noticeably stronger afterward. She even produced real tears. Milan started crumpling the chip bag in her fist, but I grabbed her hand.
When the crew broke for lunch, Milan and I ducked into Chipotle and slid into a wooden booth. The table’s silver surface flashed light in our faces while we ate our burrito bowls. Someone came up to compliment her “LIVE, LAUGH, LUIGI” tee, and she was all smiles again.
“So what’re you gonna do now that you’re fucking Tristan all the time and Jay doesn’t want you fucking anyone?” she asked.
She didn’t know that Tristan and I were fighting. It would’ve just undermined what I was doing even further to bring it up. I cut my eyes at her from across the table, annoyed.
“What? Nobody here knows those men or your situation.” She said “situation” like it was an STI.
“I don’t know what I’m gonna do, that’s the whole problem,” I said.
She forked away the browning shreds of lettuce in her bowl. “It’s not like if you’re monogamous, you can’t think about other guys. Isn’t that enough? Also, Jay might be down to Eiffel Tower every now and then.”
I stared at the quivering blob of sour cream on my beans. The answer was no, it wasn’t enough because it wasn’t happening on my own terms. But maybe I was going about it too rigidly.
“I love Jay, you know that,” she said, “but honestly, babe, Tristan has you down baaad. Maybe you should just be with him if it’s that deep?”
The thought lodged a physical pain inside me.
It was a senseless suggestion, like telling a lesbian to just be with a man.
I raised my cuticle to my teeth. I had begun biting my nails again, an impulse I hadn’t had since lockdown.
It started after my aunt went back to New York, the reality of my home situation clarifying.
The past week had involved helping my dad change his bandages, reminding him to mind his pain meds, him not listening to me.
Stressed from work and her move, my mom had clocked out: dishes piled up, food was going bad, grime accumulated between the bathroom tiles.
If all this was a lesson, I was failing with flying colors.
I praised the actress’s performance, which I knew would shift the energy of the conversation.
Milan rolled her eyes. “Usually Ryen has his actors spend time together outside of filming, you know, to build a rapport, but the girl wouldn’t do it.”
“How much are they getting paid?”
She pierced a cube of chicken with her fork. “You don’t do this shit for the money. You do it to get credits to your name.”
I saw then she was angrier about not being cast for an on-screen part than she’d let me believe.