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I glance at her as she rolls onto her back. Her chest rises and falls. My blood pounds in my ears.
Keep it together, Fitzpatrick.
“A-ha!”
I jolt. “What?”
“Finally, some quality programming.”
Roxie Roberts looks back at me from the dusty, old television screen. Her blonde hair tumbles in the wind as waves crash below her feet, submerging her up to her knees. It’s the ending of the first Night Trials movie. Tears roll down her dirt-covered cheeks and she waves her arms up and down. The rescue boat sits on the horizon. Music swells. She’s finally escaped… until Part 2, of course.
I cross my arms and lean against the wall. “Is that you?”
“Yes, it’s me.” She laughs. “How have you never seen this before?!”
I shrug.
“You’re pretty boring for a dead guy,” she says. “Hey! They’re showing it again. Sit down. The beginning is the best part.”
I stay on the wall. “I thought actors hated watching themselves on screen.”
“Only when I’m crying,” she says. “Or laughing. Or kissing somebody. I usually turn away then.”
“Why?”
She drops the remote by her side. “No one likes looking into the mirror when they’re actually feeling something.”
“But it’s not real.”
“It’s my job to make it look real, so it feels real.”
There she is. Little Roxie Roberts in the role that catapulted her to international stardom. I’ve seen this so many times, I could say the lines out loud. I’ve cried with her and laughed with her, but it wasn’t real. Not like now. Now, she’s real.
She speaks and her voice vibrates my ears without passing through a set of speakers first. She’s so close, I could reach out and touch her warm, apple-scented skin. My fingers tremble. My face explodes with heat. My cock twitches in my slacks.
“Fox?”
I flinch. “What?”
Dani sits up and plants her feet on the floor. “About that night…”
That night?
That night I’ve had repeating in my head since the moment she laid down?
I shift on my toes. “Dani, maybe we shouldn’t talk about that.”
She stands up off the bed. “I want to,” she says, her bare toes sinking into the carpet. “I’ve been thinking about it…” She lets out an awkward chuckle. “I think about it a lot, actually, but…”
“Dani.”
“I wanted to say I’m sorry.”
I pause. “For what?”
“Because it’s my fault,” she says, taking a few steps closer. “If I hadn’t… gone to your room that night then my father wouldn’t have kicked you out.” She looks down, her little eyes trailing where my tattoo lies beneath my shirt. “None of this would have happened to you if I had just… gone to bed alone that night.”
I shake my head. “None of this is your fault, Dani.”
