Ethan snorted. “God. Group projects. I was always useless at those.”
“Color me shocked.” She took another sip of coffee. “But it was fascinating. Putting it all into context. Like, I had been on set a ton, obviously, but I’d never really thought about movies as art, as culture, as history. Breaking them down from every angle, how all the different elements add up to the whole, beyond my part in it as an actor. It just reinforced that this was the only thing I wanted to do. Unfortunately.” She laughed sardonically. “And then I immediately booked a series, so that went down the drain. Not that I’m complaining. But I would love to make something that gets taught in film schools one day. Make it, not just be in it.”
She looked down and fidgeted a little in her seat, as if caught off-guard by her own earnestness. “Do you wish you’d gone? You still could, it’s not too late.”
Ethan laughed. “Yeah, I’d blend right in with all the freshmen. I think that window has closed.”
“You could do online classes or something. What else are you doing with your time?”
Something in the air shifted slightly. Grey seemed to realize that she had misstepped and quickly tried to recover. “I feel like I’ve been talking about myself for, like, an hour. What about you? What’s your big comeback project?”
Ethan suddenly wanted a cigarette. He let out a long exhale, practically a sigh. She toyed with her napkin, clearly unsure if she’d said the wrong thing.
He considered deflecting the question, but hesitated. If he was going to do it, he needed to be able to talk about it.
“Sam and I—” He cleared his throat, the words coming out more choked than he intended. “Sam and I…we’d started working on something.” He paused. She stared at him, very still, as if trying not to spook a wild animal. “We bought the rights to this Korean movie we both loved. The option expires next year.”
“What’s the movie? Would I know it?”
“Bitter Pill?”
He expected her to give him a blank look in return, but instead her eyes flashed with recognition. “Oh, yeah, the one with the brothers who murder their dad? I think we watched that in one of my classes. Kind of a bummer.”
Ethan snorted. “Yeah. I guess you could say that.”
Grey seemed like she was about to say something, but instead sipped her coffee. “What?” he prodded.
She shrugged. “Nothing. I mean…there are some good remakes,” she said diplomatically.
“It’s not a remake. It’s an adaptation,” he retorted, more defensively than he intended.
“Right. Of course. Sorry. I’m being such an asshole. You two have an amazing track record, I’m sure it’ll be great.”
“You mean had,” Ethan said softly, almost to himself. “It’s just me now.”
Grey looked at him with those big limpid eyes, dripping with that familiar expression of sympathy he’d long ago come to loathe. Somehow it seemed less cloying when it came from her. It transformed the pervasive ache inside him into something different, harder to define. She put her hand on the table and hesitated, as if she wanted to touch him but thought better of it.
“I’m so sorry, Ethan. I can’t imagine.”
He didn’t respond, just swallowed hard and stared out at the pool. Despite the best efforts of the coffee and sandwich, his hangover was beginning to creep over him, the sun glinting a little too brightly off the water.
“It’s fine. It’s been five years. It’s time,” he said, his voice hollow and mechanical.
“For whatever it’s worth, I…I think you’re really brave to finish it. If something happened to Kamilah…I don’t know what I would do. I don’t think I could even look at our script again. Ever.”
Ethan was startled at the tremor in her voice, the cordial distance that had been present since their disastrous dinner date nowhere to be found. He let himself meet her gaze, which was so full of compassion that it was almost physically painful.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice hoarse. He didn’t trust himself to say anything else.
They held their eye contact for a loaded moment before she looked away. She seemed as unnerved as he felt, and he sensed her walls immediately returning to their rightful place between them. She pushed back her chair and stood up, reaching over the table to gather both their dishes.
“I need to get going, I really should go for a run or something before it gets too late. Thanks for breakfast, see you soon?”
She swept into the house before he had a chance to respond. He sat motionless, listening to the sink running in the kitchen, dishes clinking in the dishwasher, and, eventually, the front door slamming and the sound of her car driving away.
He knew as soon as he got up he would head right to his freshly stocked fridge, tear into a new case of beer, and pop open one of the bottles before it had even had a chance to get cold yet. He craved the peace it would bring, the uncomfortable feelings swirling inside him fizzling and fading into easily ignorable background noise.
Slowly, he pushed his chair back and made his way into the kitchen. He took a glass out of the cabinet and set it on the counter. He opened the fridge and stared at the unopened cases of beer neatly lined up across the bottom. Looking at the cases, all he could see was the revulsion and disappointment on Grey’s face the night of the premiere, when he had leaned over her in the car and she had smelled the booze on his breath.
It was barely eleven in the morning.
He hadn’t been to Johnny’s since the night he’d gotten the call from Audrey. Now that he was out and about again, he was getting more than his fill of contact with the outside world—plus, his anonymity was less of a guarantee than ever. Though he hadn’t officially confirmed it, he was pretty sure getting publicly hammered would qualify as damage to Grey’s reputation.
But even so, maybe he’d been hitting it a little too hard at home lately. It couldn’t hurt to ease off for a day or two.
With a sigh, Ethan reached for his glass and filled it with water. He trudged to his bathroom and dropped two Alka-Seltzers into the glass, watching them disintegrate before chugging it down. It wasn’t a beer, but at least it was cold and carbonated. He felt the tension behind his eyes start to release as he opened the door to his office, settling behind his computer. He opened the document containing the last version of the Bitter Pill script, still untouched since Sam’s death.
He hesitated. Before he could let himself think twice, he was back at the fridge, carrying two cases of beer to unload into his office minifridge. For later, he rationalized as he knelt in front of it. He kept one bottle out and took it back to his desk with him. He left it sitting next to his computer, unopened, as he began to read. It would be his reward to himself once he made it through. Just one wouldn’t hurt.
Just one.
GREY’S LUNGS BURNED AND HER heart pounded. She inhaled through her nose and exhaled through her mouth, pumping her arms in time with the sound of her feet slapping the pavement. She spied the sign marking the spot where she had started her jog and willed her feet to keep going. Almost there.
She brought the edge of her tank top to her forehead, mopping up the sweat stinging her eyes. Some runs were harder than others, and today it felt like she was trudging through wet sand. It had been hours since breakfast, but the sandwich from that morning still felt like it was sitting like a stone in her stomach. That afternoon, she’d traversed the 2.2-mile loop around the Silver Lake Reservoir in a little over twenty minutes—not her best time, but not terrible. Once she hit her starting point again, she slowed to a walk, allowing herself a minute or two to breathe before she took another lap.
The Missy Elliott blaring through her headphones was abruptly interrupted by the sound of an incoming call. Grey pulled her phone out of her running pouch, snug around her hips, and checked the caller ID.