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From an outsider’s perspective, I’d been on top of the world for a long time now. I’d accomplished everything I set out to do when I was a scared shitless nineteen-year-old kid who felt like he had one shot to make a life for his infant daughter. My name was synonymous with success. It opened doors for talent I believed in and people I cared about. My infant daughter was now on the precipice of being a college graduate and being able to do anything. I had more money than I could spend and more houses than I could live in. I even had real friends, something that was harder to come by than success in this town. In fact, the two rarely coexisted. I’d known abstractly that I had plenty of reasons to feel cocky, but a small part of me always felt like I was putting on a show. The slick, successful hot shot with the five-thousand-dollar suit and thirty-thousand dollar smile and everything else that was designed to distract from what was underneath. Secretly, it had all felt like a giant sleight of hand. A lifelong game of misdirection. I had everything, and yet I’d always felt like something was missing. I was never sure what it was. I chalked it up to uncertainty. Told myself it would go away when I had a certain amount of money in the bank, a certain number of Oscar winners in my roster. When Halley got through those god-awful middle school years. When she got out of those sly, secretive high school years.
And at each milestone, I’d waited for the feeling to go away.
It never had.
As I waited for my friends at our favorite rooftop bar, my mind slid to it absently. Probed for it. And felt an electric current ripple all the way through my body as I realized it was gone. The dull ache, the vague frustration that came with it, the renewed determination to achieve more. It was all gone. Instead, I felt…
I frowned, trying to figure out what it was.
Relaxed?
No, that wasn’t it. The furrows in my forehead lengthened, and my frown deepened as I tried to put a name to the sensation.
Calm?
“You look pissed,” Landon observed, sliding into the barstool across from mine.
“I’m not,” I said, still frowning.
“Is he acting?” Garrett wondered.
Dominic and Julian snorted. They began imagining what role I might be preparing an audition for. I heard the names Heathcliff and Dracula thrown out.
“If that’s not your pissed off face, what is it?” Landon asked.
“Peace,” I said, finding the word suddenly. That was what I felt. Fucking peace. Like I’d just finished a ninety-minute hot yoga session after an ayahuasca ceremony followed by tree bathing or whatever new age shit promised to bring about peace these days.
“If that’s how you look when you feel peaceful, I’d hate to see you pissed,” Garrett said, raising his eyebrows in surprise.
I didn’t bother trying to explain further. They didn’t get it. They weren’t in love. The realization that I loved Lily bloomed, fully formed in my head, before my mind could yank it out by its roots. I pictured her heart-shaped face with the ocean blue eyes and the innocent beauty of a girl fresh out of college sprung into my mind in full, detailed, Technicolor.
Fuck. I really did love her.
While their conversation moved on, ebbing and flowing around me, I drank my beer and thought about Lily. The more I thought about her, the more the feeling intensified. I could lie by omission to the others, but I couldn’t deceive myself. For some fucked up reason, my mind had decided that Lily was the missing piece. Not any of the accomplished career women I’d dated over the years. Not any of the society women I’d been set up with now and then. Not any of the actresses who had made it all too clear what they were willing to do to get signed to The Walker Agency.
A twenty-three-year-old who happened to be my daughter’s best friend.
If I hadn’t been feeling so damn peaceful, I might have groaned out loud. Of all the fucked-up things to do to a man, the universe had really outdone itself with this one.
I pushed my empty pint glass away and shook my head when the bartender asked if I wanted another. I needed a clear head to figure out what the hell I was going to do. How I was going to get out of this without tanking my reputation, alienating my daughter, and generally ruining my fucking life.
I had to stop. The next steps played out in my mind. Telling her. Dealing with whatever emotions she threw at me. I’d deserve any of them. It made my guts clench, remembering that she had been a virgin before I came along. And when the storm had passed, and she had moved on…what then? That was where I stopped being able to visualize the next step. It was a slate gray wall that my mind refused to look beyond. Me, who had had a twenty-year plan since he was nineteen years old.
Frustrated, I tried another play. What if we just fucking went for it? Told everyone. Made it public. I’d find her another position—maybe one in an entertainment law firm. It would look shady as fuck if we were caught, but what if I just took her to the next big premiere? A couple of tongues would wag, but that was all. A few pithy comments, maybe a few nasty blind items on Perez Hilton with comments from Brand Development people thinly disguised as anonymous sources.
Yeah, that could work.
But then there was Halley.
My heart sank, and the peace shrank back as I pictured my daughter’s face screwed up in disgust as the realization that I was fucking her best friend. Because that might be all she could see, no matter how hard I tried to dress it up.
I was trapped between the two people who meant the most to me in the world, and the thing of it was, Lily had no right to be as important to me as Halley. I ground my teeth, trying to remind myself that Lily was not as important to me as my daughter.
Except she was, and I loved her.
“Is this your peaceful face again?” Garrett asked, pausing mid-sentence to study me with mock concern.
