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“I want to hear you say it.”
“Fine, if you must. It’s Bryce, okay? And he’s very important to me, if that’s what you want to know.”
“Is he your boyfriend?” He had a lot of balls asking me that question after today.
“Were all the women you slept with on shoots your girlfriends? Was Julia your girlfriend?” I shot back.
“So you have slept with him.” His tone was quiet, and the playfulness that was once there was now missing. Terry was gutted.
“Yes, Terry, I have. I haven’t been a saint since you’ve been gone. I’ve probably had just as much sex as you. I just chose to do it with one man.”
My words shocked even me. Terry was silent on the other end of the line. I guess he was digesting my outburst just as much as I was.
“Wow,” Terry finally said.
“Wow, what?” I asked him, confused by his statement.
“I’m just surprised that you had a fuck buddy, is all. The Mia I knew didn’t do things like that. The Mia I knew tied sex to love. It seems like you’re using it as some way to release the tension. Was it me who made you this jaded, Mia? Or was it something else? Like that something else that you were asked about in the interview.”
My blood ran cold. I knew what he was hinting at, and I wondered how much he had pieced together. I didn’t want to think about that right now.
“I’m a different person from the girl you used to know.”
“Okay.”
“I managed to surprise you, huh?” I said, my tone teasing. I was hoping to bring this conversation up a notch, if that were even possible. I heard what sounded like liquid being poured into a glass. I guess he was refreshing his drink. I did the same.
“Are you getting drunk on me?” Terry asked. He must have heard me.
I laughed. “No, not drunk. Just trying to get through this.”
“So you needed to be numb to have this conversation too, huh?” Terry paused. I wasn’t sure if he had more to say. I heard his throat clear and he continued. “We’ve made a real mess of things lately, and they spilled out into work today. In order to have this conversation with you, I needed to be drunk to get through it. What about you? Is the alcohol all the result of me or your evening earlier?”
His comment stung.
“The wine is all because of you. Bryce doesn’t need alcohol to get me to have sex with him. I do that willingly.” As soon as the words left my mouth, my hand clamped across it. I couldn’t believe I had said that to him. “You have no room to talk. I saw you at those events. I saw you with all of those women, and it was never the same one. Hell, you went to Fashion Week with two dates. At least I always had the same one. You don’t get to make me feel guilty for doing what I needed to do.”
It was Terry’s turn to sigh loudly into the phone. “I know. Believe me, I know that I haven’t been that selective with who I take to my bed. I’ve been with many since we parted. Most of them haven’t managed to make it longer than a night or two—”
“Terry!” I jumped in, not wanting to hear the details. “I don’t want to know.”
“You think I wanted to know about Bryce?” Terry spat. “But I listened. So now you will. There may have been more women than you would have liked, and more than I thought there would be, but I was trying to cope. I was trying to get over you. I was healing. It helped numb the pain.”
“You caused it!” I shouted into the phone. I jumped up, unable to sit anymore. I began wearing a familiar path from my chair into the kitchen and back again.
“You love making me feel like the bad guy. I get it—you’re the innocent one and I’m the jackass who left you. But I was doing what I thought was best for you. I was trying to save you some of the pain.”
His words hit me like a slap. He was right in some ways. I’d always had trouble moving on when a relationship ended. Letting go never came easy. It was like someone opened up a vein and inserted him into my system. Over the years, I obsessed over him, looking at the photographs in the magazines and searching all the parties, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. In some ways, he was right. I had done this to myself. I made it impossible for me to move on or let go of my anger. And I didn’t know what to say.
“Terry.” My voice came out soft, chock-full of emotion. But I didn’t have the words or the will to finish my sentence.
“Mia, I’m sorry that our world is such a clusterfuck. I really am. I don’t know what I expected to happen when I got back to LA, but it wasn’t this. I didn’t want it to go like this.”
“That’s the thing: our worlds aren’t the same anymore. Too much has changed between us.”
“But, yet, here we are. We’re on the phone late at night, drink in hand, trying to have a conversation that we keep running from over and over again. How are we not in the same world? Look at the industry we work in. This was bound to happen at some point.”
“I don’t know that I want to talk about this anymore. Everything with us is so damn exhausting; it’s so draining. And it requires alcohol to get through.” I lowered myself back into the chair.
