Selfie (12 page)

Jilly and I were wandering around numbly in the kitchen, and he ordered us both to sit while he pulled the leftover lasagna out of the refrigerator and started dishing it up. While he was waiting for the first plate to nuke, he pulled out some carrots and green beans and started to prep them. By the time he had three plates of lasagna melting on the counter, he also had some veggies with herbs and butter ready to serve with them.

Jilly and I couldn’t think of a word to say while he did this. Every thought we had centered around the guy who wasn’t here.

Noah didn’t ask us for conversation—not at first. Instead, he served everybody a plate of food and a glass of milk—
milk—
and then sat down across from Jilly and kitty-corner to me, and gestured.

“Dig in.”

“Thank you,” I managed. “This was really kind.”

“You guys would have been eating out of the casserole dish with a fork if I hadn’t stepped in to make things civilized.”

I shrugged. “Two forks.” Because it was true.

He flashed a ghost of his grin, and turned to Jilly. “Ms. Lombard, I sure was glad to see you felt better today.”

Her lips twisted, a smile’s wraith, drifting on by. “Thank you, Noah. I . . . Vinnie meant a lot to me. I don’t know if I realized . . . you know. How hard it would be to do the public thing—either of us—without him.”

Noah nodded like that was fair. “Yeah, I get it. Have either one of you thought of . . . you know. Grief counseling?”

I let out a bark of pain. Sounded like laughter. Close enough. “Junior, this
is
grief counseling for us. Welcome to the unhealthily repressed.”

I took a bite of lasagna because it was something to do.

Noah decided to take another tack. “How did you meet?” he asked, imposing. “The interviews all say it was at an audition.”

I nodded. Good. Well-covered ground. “Yeah. We were both auditioning for a commercial. Neither of us got the part, but you know. I was crashing in my car back then, and Vinnie had actually sold his”—
ass
—“soul for an apartment. But we enjoyed”—
flirting
—“talking at the audition, and we ended up having”—
sex
—“lunch at his apartment. He let me crash on his”—
cock
—“couch forever after.”

Noah heard the story with his head tilted, like a dog listening for the whistle.

“That’s not . . .” He took a deep breath. “I have a feeling there’s more to it than that,” he said quietly. “But still—that’s a long history. You can’t just expect to wake up and think it’s all going to be okay.”

“Do you think I did that?” Anger began to congeal in my chest. “Do you think I woke up two weeks ago and said, ‘Hey! Mourning’s all over—I can say good-bye to my . . . my
friend
and I’m going to be all okay!’? I woke up
hungover
, and Jillian was on the phone saying, ‘What did you
do
?’ and I was like, ‘Oh
fuck
, if I don’t change something, anything, someone’s going to find me here, dead for no other reason than I just didn’t get myself the fuck up!’”

I pushed myself away from the table then, my lasagna half-eaten, but I couldn’t take another bite.

“I’m sorry,” I said into the silence. “I’m sorry. You’ve been nothing but kind, and I’m being an asshole. I . . . I just need to go walking, okay? I’ll be back in ten.”

I trotted out of the house and down the road toward the same little prayer circle Jilly and I had visited the night before. The sun was starting to set—that read-through had gone really long—and I tried to remember what I was supposed to do tomorrow. I
thought
it was nothing, but I should probably ask Noah about it. I was happy that there might be something—happy, because I wanted to not have to decide what to do for myself.

I half jogged down the road in the pink twilight until I found the inlet with the fire pit. My blood was rushing just a tad in my veins, and I thought that I should pull out my running shoes tomorrow and give that a go. I could use the gym on set when I was working, but who didn’t love cardio? (I didn’t. I loathed it. If I could have exercised in my sleep to stay healthy and fit, I would have.)

I flopped onto the log bench, not caring about obesity even if it hit me in the ass
right now
, and stared out across the water, my mind a fuzzy blank. The mist was coming in with the cool of the night, and it rose off the surface, which gave the view the same emotional impact as looking at TV snow.

Perfect.

No hard thoughts, no hard decisions, no tripping over my tongue in an effort not to out myself. God, it had been easier when Vinnie was alive. We used to compare stories when we got home from a party, fill in the blanks for ourselves, laugh about a play on words or a joke that only the two of us got.

We had told each other it made up for sitting on opposite ends of the room during weddings, and escorting young models we had no interest in at all to events we cared a great deal about. Who needed to hold hands at the movies? We could wait for it to hit Netflix and fuck on the couch if we lost interest. Dinner parties with friends? Real married couples didn’t hang together during those things—wasn’t that the whole strategy? Split up and compare notes later?

We were actors. We lied for a living.

We lied to live.

I closed my eyes, hoping for snow, and what flashed behind them was the last thing I’d expected.

It was my parents’ wedding picture, Mom decked out in a traditional white wedding dress—meringue-y as hell—and Dad looking fierce and irritated in a tuxedo. But that wasn’t the only picture they had. One of them—the one they kept in their bedroom—was a close-up of Mom. She was feeding her best friend’s baby cake, laughing because the little brown face was smeared with icing, ear to ear. In the background, Dad was looking at her with this softness in his face. Every now and then, we’d see that softness there again, and we could figure it out, why Jack Mazynsky, redneck farmer, would marry an immigrant farm girl when his parents were so obviously against the match.

He loved her. Against everything his parents tried to tell him was true.

Weird, wasn’t it? How some people just couldn’t
apply
the knowledge life so cruelly dished out for free?

So that image behind my eyes—Mom being warm and vibrant, Dad being quietly, painfully besotted—that’s what I saw.

Except I couldn’t picture my parents anymore—not without seeing their faces when they kicked me out of the house. Instead, I saw Vinnie, laughing with that child, because God, he’d been good with kids. And I saw myself in the background, looking at him with this half-ashamed, half-hungry look, like the thing I wanted the most was right beyond my reach, and it almost hurt to stretch my body out to grasp it by the hand.

I wiped at my eyes with my shoulder to stop the burning.

Think puppies. Think kitties. Think wombats or aye-ayes, but for fuck’s sake don’t think about—

Who are you kidding, Con?
Vinnie’s voice sounded in my head again.
Pets just weren’t your thing. Neither were kids, remember?

I want a dog
, I thought stubbornly.

Yeah, fine, Con. Get a dog. I don’t give a shit. Just stop running away from every memory of me like I’ve got zombie makeup on!

Augh!
Because zombies really freaked me out—it was the one sci-fi trope I’d never done.
Jesus, leave me alone!

“No.”

My eyes flew open at the quiet voice in the evening.

“Noah?” I asked, squinting through the mostly fallen darkness. How long had I been out there?

That long-boned, lanky frame was easy to spot, even against the darkness. The too-large suit made identification a sure thing.

“Who else were you talking to?” he asked, crunching across the tiny pebbles of the beach and sitting down about three feet away.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “Just . . . you know. Having one of those imaginary arguments.”

“Yeah? Who won?”

“Zombies,” I muttered darkly. “Those fuckers
always
win.”

“Seriously,” Noah said. In the darkness I could see those loose, glossy curls bobbing as he nodded his head. “When I’m really stressed—deadlines or shit—I have zombie dreams.”

That caught my attention. “You too?” I asked, feeling pathetic. “You can
never
get away. You’re just running, constantly, and they keep popping up and trying to get you.”

“Right? And I don’t know what movies I’ve been watching, but the zombies in my head get scarier with every dream!”

“Oh, yeah, man, I know that. I won’t do a zombie picture.
Walking Dead
? Forget about it. I’d have nightmares every time I got a script.”

Noah’s soft laughter healed something in me, replaced that zombie picture of Vinnie in my head with the real Vinnie, and I was so grateful my eyes burned again.

“Yeah,” Noah said, when his laughter faded. “Zombies. Northern Washington has werewolves, but not a lot of zombies.”

I tilted my chin up, wondering if it was dark enough to see stars. “Well, it’s a selling point. I can’t imagine zombies are good for the real estate market, you know?”

“My dad says they’re hell on the carpet,” Noah said, and I closed my eyes and let a chuckle flow through me.

I had to swallow that chuckle down, because it was about to get out of hand, like Jillian’s laughter during lunch today.

An icy silence hardened around us, and I didn’t have the strength to break free.

“You know,” Noah said after two or three solar years had passed, “I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement to get this job.”

It was such a non sequitur. “I did too,” I said, because they didn’t like it when actors dropped spoilers.

Noah was quiet, like he was waiting for me to keep talking. I didn’t. Finally, he said, “So, like, if someone’s doing hookers and blow in the back of the car as I drive, I can tell the producer, but I can’t tell the press.”

“Has that ever happened?” I asked, not particularly curious.

“Nope, but I’m waiting patiently.”

I gave a courtesy laugh, afraid if I really engaged, things would get out of hand. “Well, if it ever happens, be sure to tell me,” I told him. “I won’t tell a soul, I promise. I just want to know so I can laugh at people behind their backs.”

“That’s sort of dealing dirty, isn’t it?” he asked, but he knew I was bantering.

“Yeah, well, that’s me. I have no moral compass. Ask anyone.”

“Should I ask Mr. Conklin?” he asked pointedly.

I had to think about that for a minute. “He wouldn’t know,” I said, trying to remember what he looked like. “We only just met today.”

Noah grunted. “Well, he’s interested in knowing you better,” he said, sounding disgusted.

I frowned. Was it possible Vinnie had told Conklin? Why wouldn’t Vinnie have told
me
? I shook my head. Who cared? If Conklin hadn’t told the press now, he wasn’t interested in exposing us, and if it wasn’t about keeping my gods-be-damned secret, I didn’t give a crap.

“I assume I’m going to get to know
everybody
better,” I said mildly. “Just, not, you know. Biblically.”
Please laugh, Noah, please laugh.
That ease of the day before, the lack of stress in our conversation—I wanted that back.

There was a short bark of sound next to me, and I closed my eyes and gave thanks. A laugh. But before I could silently beg him to just let it drop, he spoke again, lowering his voice to an intimate rumble. He had a
really
deep voice for such a lanky guy.

“Point taken. Mr. Conklin, not on the menu.”

“No,” I said firmly. I wondered . . . if I
was
out to Simon, and he
was
interested . . . but I got nothing from that thought but a friendly smile. “Not on the menu.”

I didn’t add, “I’m straight!” because . . . well, there was no way to say it that wouldn’t feel like a lie, even if it had been true.

“So, forgetting about Mr. Conklin and what’s for dinner—”

“Lasagna?”

“Shut up, Connor. I want you to hear me. I’ve signed an NDA. Now that you know that, you know that you can tell me pretty much anything. If you asked me to score drugs, I couldn’t tell the cops.”

“Would you?” I asked. “Because you seem a little wholesome—”

“Of course not!” Noah snapped. I fell silent, because the kid had that thing—that
thing—
in his voice, the thing that made you listen, even if he wasn’t wearing the director’s hat. “But if you wanted to, say, tell me something, something that was weighing on you, so when Jilly leaves you could have, you know, one person you can talk to, someone you see every day, you know who to turn to. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

He’s saying I can come out.

He’s saying I can talk about Vinnie.

He’s saying I don’t have to switch pronouns or fake it or lie.

He’s saying I can be free.

“Yeah,” I said, throat suddenly swollen with all the things I hadn’t said to anyone but Vince Walker and Jilly Lombard for the last ten years. “Yeah. I hear you. That’s . . . that’s . . .” Oh God. All the words I had in my head sounded stupid. “Kind,” I finished at last, the word a lamed leg on a swaybacked nag. “Generous,” I tried again, and that horse barely passed the first. “I’m grateful.”

And yes—
yes—
I was so terribly grateful.

There was an expectant silence then, thick and hopeful, but . . . but the dark wrapped weighty about me, and Vinnie was so close. He hadn’t gone away like I’d told him to. He was right there, over my shoulder, asking me if I really wanted to do this, really wanted to share this part of us, really wanted to expose him to even the frail starlight that was beginning to pierce the night.

I couldn’t. And after three or four solar years had passed, Noah knew it too.

He sighed and got heavily to his feet. “I’ll wait for you to get back to the house before I leave,” he said, defeated.

Fuck.

“Noah?” My voice sounded thin and childish in the dark.