Part of her was still waiting for Ethan to burst in the door at the last minute: ashamed, maudlin, drunker than ever, it didn’t matter. At this point, she would have taken any Ethan he had to offer without complaint. Finally, she couldn’t linger in the room any longer without missing her flight. In the cab on the way to the airport, she blocked his number so she’d stop checking to see if he’d tried to reach her—and to remove the temptation to reach out to him first.
Numb and exhausted, she flew back to L.A. alone.
GREY WAS COVERED IN BLOOD. She lay motionless on a hardwood floor, surrounded by furniture covered in white sheets, her eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. There were no sounds other than the whistling wind against the shuttered windows. Although she was inside, snow began to fall; a few fat flakes at first, then a deluge blanketing her naked body. As the screen faded to white, the scene cut to a split-second shot of her laughing, quicker than a blink, before returning to her placid, lifeless face. Once the screen was completely white, red words faded in on the screen: A Film by Kamilah Ross.
Grey leaned over and flicked on the light. She settled back against the couch, and she and Kamilah turned to look at Nora expectantly.
They were in a luxurious editing suite in a downtown Manhattan postproduction studio. The room was designed to provide the ultimate in comfort for late-night work sessions, and both Grey and Kamilah had logged serious hours there over the past month. But today, they were there at a perfectly reasonable time, screening a rough assembly of The Empty Chair for Nora over lunch.
Nora looked down at her pad, then up at them, smiling warmly.
“I hope you know you’ve done something really special here.”
Grey and Kamilah exchanged elated looks. Even their editor, Zelda, tatted-up and intimidating, had a grin on her usually impassive face. Zelda swiveled in her chair and tapped on her keyboard, and the screen went black. Nora continued, flipping through the pages.
“I have a few notes, nothing major. For a first cut, it’s in great shape. You three should be very proud of yourselves.”
Grey reached over and squeezed Kamilah’s hand.
An hour later, she and Nora took the elevator down together. Kamilah had opted to stay with Zelda for the rest of the afternoon to tackle some of the notes. They pushed through the revolving glass doors into the crisp October afternoon.
Grey tilted her face toward the sun and inhaled the sharp air deep into her lungs. She loved New York in the fall. She’d been there for almost two months, hauling her bags into her West Village sublet in the dog days of August, drenched in sweat and daydreaming about weather like today. Kamilah and Andromeda were staying in a spacious one-bedroom down the block from Grey, while Andromeda recorded their new album at Electric Lady Studios.
The two of them paused on the sidewalk.
“Do you have plans before your show tonight? Want to get a cup of coffee or something?” Nora asked.
Grey considered it. She was halfway through her six-week run as Yelena in a sold-out off-Broadway production of a new translation of Uncle Vanya, and the combination of the grueling performance schedule and the long days in the edit bay had begun to wear on her. She’d planned to head back to her apartment for a quick nap before her call time, but maybe the coffee would perk her up as much as the nap would have.
“Sure, I know a place around the corner.”
Fifteen minutes later, they slid into a secluded corner booth in Grey’s favorite coffee shop, clutching steaming lattes in oversized mugs.
“Is there something going on with you and that barista? That heart is awfully elaborate,” Nora said teasingly, peering into Grey’s mug.
“Who, Karl? No, I just come in here a lot.” She glanced up at the barista, catching him staring at her. He looked down and blushed. Nora observed the whole thing, smirking.
“He’s cute. Not your type?”
Grey dipped her spoon into her mug, dissolving the intricate steamed-milk heart.
“My type is nonexistent right now.” Though her therapist had encouraged her to break her habit of burying herself in her work after setbacks in her personal life, her schedule wasn’t exactly conducive to dating at the moment.
After things had imploded with Ethan, Audrey had offered Grey two ways to spin it: either she could set Grey up with an even more attention-grabbing rebound, or they could play up the “strong independent woman” angle. Grey had declined both options. She’d learned her lesson. From now on, to the extent that she had a say in it, her personal life was nobody’s business but her own.
Nora furrowed her brow sympathetically. Of all the strange turns Grey’s life had taken over the past year and a half, her friendship with Nora was the most unexpected. In those first blurry, excruciating weeks after she’d returned from New York, the two of them had been in constant contact. Nora had been the one to inform Grey that Ethan had gone straight from LAX into rehab, so she wouldn’t have to hear it from the tabloids.
The news had sent her into a tailspin. Part of her was relieved that he was finally getting the help he needed. But the bigger, more selfish part was devastated that he didn’t seem to care that he’d lost her in the process. He’d looked haggard and miserable in the pictures of him leaving the airport, the ones she’d sought out in a late-night moment of weakness. Those images had rattled her so much that she’d come dangerously close to breaking her vow of no contact, settling for unblocking his number instead. Unsurprisingly, she hadn’t heard anything from him. She dreaded the day she’d wake up to see his face splashed all over the internet, blissfully happy with someone decidedly not her on his arm, but so far, she’d been spared. It seemed like after leaving rehab, he’d returned to the same reclusive lifestyle he’d led before they’d met. She tried not to read too much into whatever that might mean.
But through it all, it was Nora who’d taken Grey’s late-night crying calls when she could tell Kamilah was tired of hearing about it. Nora who’d invited her on regular lunch dates to get her out of the house. Nora who’d listened without judgment when Grey confessed the true origins of her relationship with Ethan. Nora who’d sat beside her in the back row of the occasional Al-Anon meeting. Against all odds, the untouchably cool red carpet queen of yesteryear, ex-wife of the man who’d broken her heart, had stepped into the role of the big sister she’d never had.
When they’d started preproduction on The Empty Chair in earnest, Grey vowed to keep their relationship professional for the duration of the shoot, banning herself from all mention of Ethan—to Nora or otherwise. Nora followed her lead, and they hadn’t discussed him since.
Throwing herself into the work had been Grey’s salvation. She’d thought she’d been devastated after her breakup with Callum, but that had been a gentle breeze compared to the category-five hurricane that had raged in her heart in Ethan’s absence. It had been easy to cast Callum as the villain, her as the innocent victim. Black-and-white and uncomplicated. But things with Ethan were Gordian knot–level convoluted, solvable only by carving him out of her life cleanly and completely. She’d blamed him at first, but once her head cleared and she’d talked it out with her therapist, she realized that was a trap. Neither of them was at fault, really. The only villain here was human fallibility.
She’d done her best to channel her rage and despair into her performance. It helped that she and Kamilah had spent years tailoring the script to their own strengths, but Vivian—seductive, manipulative, capricious Vivian—was by far the juiciest role of her career. Between the shoot and the play, her love of acting had been revitalized in a way that made the loss of the paper-thin Golden City role seem like a blessing in disguise. If she’d signed on, she’d still have another two years of shoots and press tours ahead of her, with no guarantee that her career would be any better off on the other side.