—
ETHAN WAS VAGUELY aware of days passing. During his brief periods of consciousness, he had no idea whether it was light or dark outside. Not that it mattered, since he’d closed the blackout curtains over every window in his house as soon as he returned from Palm Springs. It had taken him an exasperating amount of time, since his house seemed to be nothing but windows.
By his rough calculations, he’d woken up alone thousands of times over the last five years, maybe tens of thousands over the course of his life. Why then did he now wake up expecting to find Grey in his arms, when it had only happened a handful of times, over the course of less than two days?
When it had dawned on him that Grey was trying to sneak out without waking him, part of him wasn’t surprised. That didn’t stop him from feeling like all the air had been sucked out of the room. He knew things would have to end between them eventually, but he hadn’t expected it to happen quite so soon. Not while he was still naked and half-asleep in their sex-rumpled sheets. So of course he’d panicked. Shut down completely.
He kept replaying his last glimpse of her face before she’d left. Jaw set, eyes distant, ready to hobble alone into the firestorm that awaited her like Joan of fucking Arc. Alone. Because he’d been too paralyzed by her rejection to do anything but lie there and watch her leave.
He barely remembered packing his things and making the drive home. Once back in L.A., he’d immediately called Audrey, ready to ream her out for allowing it to happen, for not protecting Grey. Once he’d reached her, though, she’d solemnly let him know that Grey had requested to be released from their contract.
Well. That was that, then.
Ethan woke up to the sound of his phone buzzing obnoxiously. He had passed out in his office chair, his neck stiff and sore. He scrambled to pick up the phone.
“Grey?” he slurred.
Nora’s voice, sharp and annoyed.
“Ethan? Where the hell are you? You were supposed to pick up the girls an hour ago.”
The words pinballed through his head before falling straight back out again. He struggled unsuccessfully to make sense of them. Game over.
“Nora?” was the best he could manage.
Her tone shifted to one of alarm. “Is everything okay? I saw the pictures. Do you need me to come over there?”
“No. No. No no no.”
“Are you alone?”
More alone than ever. He must not have said anything, because he heard her exhale in frustration. Elle and Sydney must have been within earshot, because she lowered her voice to a whisper.
“This isn’t supposed to be my job anymore, Ethan. I had plans, you know. The world doesn’t stop because you want to get fucked up and feel sorry for yourself.”
“Then leave me alone. I’m not your problem.”
He hung up.
GREY HAD BEEN INSTRUCTED TO lie low for a week or so, to give Audrey a chance to figure out their next move. Audrey probably hadn’t meant it quite so literally: sprawled facedown on her couch, surrounded by empty takeout containers and Diet Coke cans, Grey felt like it had been days since she had been vertical.
Normally she responded to stress or disappointment by leaping into action, setting her sights on the next goal on her list. However, somewhere between the months of waiting in limbo for Golden City and Kamilah’s absence pausing the momentum of their work on The Empty Chair, her ambition had atrophied. Her arrangement with Ethan hadn’t helped matters, either; with him, loafing around had become part of her job. It had happened so slowly, like a frog in a pot of boiling water, that she barely recognized the greasy, lethargic figure that stared back at her in the mirror on the days she remembered to brush her teeth.
To compound her suffering, her weekend of no-holds-barred sex had led to the worst UTI of her life. She’d thought about soliciting, interviewing, and hiring an assistant just so she wouldn’t have to risk being photographed picking up her antibiotics at the pharmacy. Thankfully, she’d survived the process unnoticed, a small mercy in what felt like an endless line of kicks to the head.
She wanted to text Ethan, that goddamn heart-eyes emoji taunting her every time she looked at his name. She didn’t even know what she would say to him. She wanted to apologize for trying to leave without saying goodbye, for breaking the contract without talking to him first. To tell him how much she already regretted it. How much she missed him. But every time she tried, she just stared blankly at her phone, the blinking cursor more mesmerizing than a hypnotist’s watch.
She couldn’t stop rereading his last text to her, barely even two words, when he’d been on the way to pick her up. 5 mins. Their text thread told the true story of their relationship: brief, transactional, as few details as possible.
Tomorrow’s no good.
Wednesday?
I’ll be over by 8.
Can we reschedule coffee?
She felt ridiculous at the prospect of ejaculating her messy, amorphous feelings all over such a sparse and impersonal exchange. A wall of vulnerable blue text pushing his five terse characters right off the screen. The idea of calling him left her even more overwhelmed. After three days without hearing from him, either, she knew it was time to stop torturing herself about what she should say to him. It was over. She’d been seduced by the fantasy of her and Ethan, Ethan and her, and she’d let it ruin everything. She’d fucked up, and she needed to move on.
Eventually she turned her phone off entirely and put it in the drawer of her nightstand like it was radioactive. There was nothing good on there for her right now. Though Audrey kept telling her that any attention was better than no attention, Grey found that hard to believe. No attention seemed preferable to the endless reposts and tags of the photos of her and Ethan, the supportive texts from friends and acquaintances doing nothing to mitigate the indignity of the nonstop stream of filthy and harassing DMs flooding every inbox.
Audrey had assured her that she was working overtime to get the pictures taken down, but beyond that, Grey’s legal options were limited. Apparently, since she and Ethan were public figures, California’s revenge porn laws did not extend to them. And now that they were online, trying to get the pictures removed was like fighting a pornographic hydra: take one down, and ten more spring up in its place.
Grey lay listless on the couch, unable to endure anything more stimulating than Planet Earth. Suddenly, her front door knob began to shake and rattle. She sat bolt upright. Was this the grand finale of her week from hell? Getting murdered in her own home? Her phone was too far away for her to do anything other than watch as the front door swung open to reveal Kamilah, laden with several enormous suitcases.
Grey took one look at her and burst into tears.
“Is this real? What are you doing here?” she sobbed.
“This leg of the tour is over next week, so I figured I’d head home a little early. Which you would know if you’d answered any texts for the last three days.” Kamilah’s voice was teasing, but her brow knitted in sympathy behind her wire-rimmed glasses. Grey knew she must look like a fucking mess. Kamilah, as always, looked gorgeous, showing little to no signs of her transcontinental journey. Her hair, which had been curly and voluminous when she’d left, was buzzed short, making her razor-sharp cheekbones pop even more than they normally did.
She put down her luggage and crossed over to Grey, embracing her. Grey clutched her tightly, her shoulders shaking. She had never been happier to see anyone in her life.
“You look so beautiful,” Grey gulped through her tears. Kamilah laughed.