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33
Chris dumped the last of the Cocoa Puffs into the bowl and poured in enough milk that it sloshed over the top when he picked it up, but as he sat back on his sofa, there was a pounding on his front door like the SWAT team had arrived with a battering ram. Curious, he put the bowl down and leaned over, peeking around the corner to see through the semitransparent window by the door.
“You better be dead in there, Chris!” Wes opened the door with his spare key and marched straight toward Chris. “What the hell, man?”
Chris crossed his legs on the sofa. “Nice to see you, too.”
“Don’t give me that. What the fuck are you doing?”
He swallowed a mouthful of Puffs and motioned to the TV with his spoon. “Watching Judge Judy.”
“Judge Judy? You don’t answer my calls or return my texts because you’re too busy watching Judge Judy?”
“I’m sick,” he said.
Wes shook his head. “What the hell is wrong with you? The last two days, you’ve fallen off the face of the earth.”
“Sounds about right.” Chris hunkered farther down in the couch.
“Well, there better be a good reason I’ve been covering for your ass. I’ve been getting calls every day asking when you’ll be back on set.” Wes held up his phone as evidence. “They’ve had to rearrange the filming schedule. So much for that stellar reputation you’ve been working on. You know how much is riding on this, and you’re throwing it all away!”
“Bronte left. She left me.”
With that, Wes leaned back, crossed his arms, and threw his gaze out the windows. “What happened?”
Merely remembering what she’d said made a crater open up in his chest. “She said it was too hard. All of this—” he circled his finger around to encompass his life “—was too hard.” Her words echoed in his ears, and the anger and frustration came back full force. “She said she didn’t fit in here, that she felt invisible.”
Disgust with himself bubbled up at the idea that Bronte could ever feel invisible, that he contributed to it in any way, and he threw his head back. Her anger he could handle, but her hurt? That was too much.
I have not broken your heart—you have broken it; and in breaking it you have broken mine.
“I need a recap here,” Wes said, his hands up in a time-out signal. “Start from the beginning with you two.”
Chris did. He recounted how they met by chance on the plane and explained the roller coaster that was their relationship. He listed the reasons why he fell in love with her, and how, in spite of everything, she loved him back, and how he stupidly believed they could make it work, even when days went by without being able to speak to each other.
When Chris finished narrating the last conversation they had, Wes reclined back against the sofa. “It must have been tough for her to be dropped in the middle of everything.”
Chris closed his eyes. “You know Bronte. She was so logical about it. One plus one equals two. I need to be here, she needs to be there, ergo we can’t be together. She was so sure of everything. I couldn’t argue otherwise.”
“Why couldn’t you argue? Because you’re afraid she’s right, or because you can’t do math?”
Chris sat up and looked at his friend. “You’re a dick.”
“I’m going to take a wild guess and say it’s because you’re afraid. You’re so afraid of screwing up, you’d rather walk away than take a chance. Am I right?” Chris didn’t answer, and Wes grinned like the smug bastard he was. “What’s holding you back?”
Chris shrugged. He didn’t want to admit he was scared.
“As your manager, I can tell you that something changed for you while you were out there. You were always talented, but you came back, and the work you’ve been doing on this project has been so, so excellent.”
Chris didn’t need to be told; he knew he was good as Roy.
“As your friend, I’ve never seen you healthier and happier than last week. It’s obvious she’s lit something inside you.”
Not just something, everything. She made him brand-new.
Wes continued when Chris nodded. “You said it yourself, that life was easier for you there, nobody chasing you around or stressing you out. People do the bicoastal thing all the time, and after you finish this project—finishing this project being the key because you cannot fuck this up any more than you have these last two days—you can do whatever you want. Pave your own way on this. You’re in the driver’s seat of your career. We could finally open the production studio, and we could make movies from your basement if you really wanted to. So, I ask again, what’s holding you back?”
Chris scrubbed his hands over his face before dropping them to his lap. He kept his eyes on his fingers as he said, “I don’t want to ruin her like I do with everything in my life.”
