“Then you found me,” Yanni said, still looking at me.
“I had no idea,” I told him again. “Well, I knew something was off with him, but I didn’t realise, and I’m so sorry to drag you back through this.” I looked at Andrew’s parents and explained, “Yanni’s ex-boyfriend contacted me to find him. It’s not what I usually do, but he lied so convincingly.” I shook my head.
Yanni almost laughed. “He’s a piece of work.”
“But you went back to college?” Mrs Landon asked Yanni.
He nodded sadly. “He took everything, but I couldn’t let him take that from me. Acting is what I do. It’s the only good thing in my life. I left the Actors Academy and started at Pol’s.” He looked down at his hands. “It’s not as revered or exclusive, but I’m doing it on my own, and that’s more than he gave me.”
Mrs Landon raised her chin and her eyes were glassy. She rubbed his arm. “Yanni, that is the sign of a true actor. One who fails to give up on his craft when he has nothing. That is a sure sign of strength and drive, and believe me, to make it in this industry you need both in spades.”
“I can’t go back to Pol’s,” he said. He shrugged again. “If he knows I went there.”
“I never told him,” I said adamantly. “I told him nothing. Actually, when I had a feeling he wasn’t what he seemed, I told him you had a job in a bookstore in the city. We went to see if he turned up there looking for you.”
“Did he?”
Andrew and I both nodded. “Yeah.”
Yanni nodded knowingly, and his eyes welled with fresh tears. “He won’t ever stop.”
“Did you tell the police?” Andrew asked.
“Yes. I filed a restraining order, but it doesn’t mean anything.”
So, that made sense. “That’s why he asked me and not the police or a detective agency.”
Yanni put his untouched coffee back on the tray and sagged back into the sofa, and for a while no one spoke. Mr Landon broke the silence. “Yanni, when did you eat last?”
He shook his head and tried to recall, which was answer enough. Andrew’s father stood. “I’ll go see what I can find,” he said as he walked toward the kitchen.
After a moment, Yanni shook his head and laughed in disbelief. He looked at Mrs Landon, and his hands started to shake as he wiped his face. “This is so surreal. I can’t believe I’m here sitting beside you, and the Allan Landon just offered to get me food. I don’t know what I did to deserve this, or is there a Punk’d camera hidden somewhere?”
Andrew snorted. “No cameras. They’re just my parents. Spencer said you needed help, so I helped.”
Mrs Landon smiled at Andrew lovingly. She put her hand on Yanni’s arm. “Yanni, I want to tell you something. I have been where you are. It was a long time ago before I met Allan. Actually, it was Allan who helped me leave my first husband.”
Yanni stared at her.
She smiled at him. “I’ve known the fear and hopelessness you feel. That exhaustion you feel in your bones, I’ve felt that. You will get through it, if you let us help you.”
He started to cry again, those silent, heartbreaking tears.
Mrs Landon kept on talking, “I’m on the board of directors at Acacia Foundation. It’s a centre for men and women who are going through the same thing. We help people understand their legal rights and help them with police proceedings. We help them get back on their feet, find them somewhere to live, and employment placement.”
Mr Landon came back into the room carrying another tray. Something on it smelled good. “It’s just leftovers,” he declared, putting the tray in front of Yanni. I doubted Yanni had seen that much food in days. It looked like a fajita mix of beef, rice, and vegetables with flat breads, and Yanni practically inhaled it. When he was done, he sagged back into his seat and closed his eyes.
“Come,” Mr Landon said, standing up, waiting for Yanni to do the same. “You can sleep in the guest room, and we’ll deal with tomorrow after breakfast.”
Yanni picked up his backpack and followed Mr Landon obediently out of the room, and me, Andrew, and his mother watched in silence as they left.
I waited for Mrs Landon to look at me, and I said, “Thank you.”
“You did the right thing,” she said to the both of us. “We’ll work out what he wants to do tomorrow.” She looked at Andrew for a long moment, whether it was because he was still holding my hand, I wasn’t sure. But it seemed to me she wanted a minute alone with him.
“I’ll just take these trays back to the kitchen,” I said, stacking cups and plates, then finally leaving them.
I placed all the dishes in the sink, then set about rinsing everything. Then I thought fuck it and filled the sink with hot water and detergent from under the sink and washed everything, and when that was done, I set about it drying it too. By then I’d run out of excuses for heading back in there, but I stopped at the door when I heard they were talking about me.