I kept checking my phone every few minutes, hoping she’d answer any of the messages I’d sent or voicemails I’d left. But there’d been nothing.
I needed to hear her voice, even if it was only a recording. And that was exactly what I got since she didn’t pick up when I called this time either.
“You’ve reached Lila Voss. Please leave a message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
I cleared my throat before the beep. “Hey, baby. I just...I know you’re upset.”
In Hollywood circles, I had a reputation for being a smooth motherfucker, but I couldn’t figure out what to say to the woman I loved. The last thing she probably wanted to hear from me right now was an explanation, so I kept it simple.
“I’m sorry. Can you call me back? Please?”
Instead of putting my phone down, I opened our thread again. The sight of her name at the top of the screen made my chest ache. But that didn’t stop me from scrolling through the texts, months of messages unfolding like a timeline I hadn’t paid enough attention to.
At first, the earlier exchanges made me smile despite everything. Playful good morning notes. Her sending me a mirror selfie from her station at the makeup trailer on set. Me telling her I couldn’t wait to get home to her. All simple but warm moments that reminded me how good we were together.
Then I noticed a shift over the past couple of months. The timing lined up with the distance I’d felt between us that I’d blamed on how busy we’d both been between work and wedding planning.
Lila
Are you almost done at work?
I hadn’t replied, and twenty minutes later, she’d sent another message.
Lila
I’m just going to head home. See you tomorrow.
It was rare that I missed a call or text from her, but a memory niggled at the back of my brain. Tapping out of our thread, I moved over to the one with Kaylee. Then I scrolled up to the same date and found a message from five minutes before Lila’s first text.
Kaylee
Sorry to be a bother, but I have a quick question on the new contract.
I’d been packing up, ready to head home for the night, when she’d sent it. But I’d stayed an extra half hour to go over everything, and by the time I called Lila, she was already driving in the wrong direction to spend the evening with me.
I hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, but now I noticed how Kaylee’s name appeared again and again at inconvenient times. Catching me just as I was about to leave the office. Late-night questions. Random updates. Casual check-ins.
I hadn’t seen the pattern then. I’d thought Lila was overreacting when she said something about how Kaylee had been perched on the corner of my desk when my beautiful fiancée had surprised me with lunch. But maybe Lila had seen something I’d missed.
All that time, I had dismissed so many of her concerns, convinced they were small things that didn’t matter. Then she stopped bringing it up, so I thought everything was fine until last week.
But she hadn’t stopped hurting. She’d just stopped believing I would listen.
And rightly so because I’d so easily dismissed what she said, making excuses for Kaylee because I was convinced I was doing the right thing by keeping the peace at work. Now I couldn’t escape the growing sense that I had been slowly pushing Lila away without even noticing. Until she finally broke because of Kaylee’s post about lunch yesterday.
I opened social media and searched until I found the photo.
Kaylee was leaning slightly inward toward me, her body angled in a way that created an illusion of closeness. The camera angle from above and her positioning made my hand on the back of the chair look like it was wrapped around her waist.
Fuck.This looked bad.
No wonder Lila had been so upset.
And I had stood in my living room and defended it. Worse, I’d actually had the nerve to tell her she was blowing things out of proportion.
I had dismissed her pain while this image existed for everyone to see and interpret however they wanted. And judging by the plethora of comments, a fuck ton of strangers on the internet thought something was going on between Kaylee and me.
I stared at the photo until my vision blurred, the full weight of my own blindness crashing down on me. Sitting in my dim living room, I finally let the memories from last night play out without trying to push them away.
