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I was going to vomit.
No, wait. I was going to walk on stage. Correction, I was walking on stage. Somehow, my feet managed to take one step after another as my brain became dazed and confused about what was happening. I felt light-headed as I made my way toward Rob Gregory. Then Rob Gregory hugged me, congratulated me, and handed me the Oscar. My Oscar.
For fuck’s sake, I won an Oscar.
Rob stepped to the side, leaving me in front of a microphone with dozens of my colleagues and heroes standing in front of me. Hundreds of thousands of others watched the greatest moment of my life happen right before them. It was time for me to speak, yet at that very moment, it was as if my tongue was tied.
Bubbly guts and twisted tongues.
I cleared my throat. “This is quite the shock. For starters, thank you to the Academy for the ultimate gift. I am blown away that this is happening to me. A huge amount of gratitude for the other artists in this category. These men are some of the most gifted individuals in this industry, and I want to apologize to you all for them somehow picking me over you. Clearly, they don’t know talent,” I joked, getting a bit of laughter from the audience. I thanked everyone involved in the making of the movie and then moved on to those who meant the most to me. “To my father, who pushed me into this industry and told me I’d one day be standing right here. Thank you for believing in this moment when I couldn’t see it. To my dearest mother, the woman who raised me, the woman I first loved, the woman who taught me all about life and the beauty of living it to the fullest… Thank you, Mom, for always being my right-hand woman. Dad’s a lucky bastard to have you.” I paused. “Can you say bastard at the Oscars, or are they bleeping that out?”
Another eruption of laughter. As I worked through my speech, a woman’s name popped into my head.
Hailee.
Thank Hailee.
Screw her for showing up in my thoughts at that very moment. As a kid, I’d always practice my Oscar acceptance speech while holding my mother’s hairbrush in my hand. I’d performed the talk countless times in front of my best friend, correction ex-best friend. Hailee Jones was always a part of my life. She was my very first friend, then she became my first love. She followed that up with becoming my first heartbreak, too.
Back then when I practiced my speech, I always thanked her. If you had told me she wouldn’t have made it into my acceptance speech many years later, I would’ve called you a liar. In my mind, I always figured she’d be a forever piece of my story. I figured she’d be the woman sitting beside me in the audience, smiling at me with that big smile. Staring at me with stars in her deep brown eyes from the pride she felt for me.
I tried my best to shake off my nerves and stared out into the audience. I thanked the cast and crew and directors, yada, yada, yada.
After winning an Oscar, your world moved on autopilot. People directed you around to pose for photograph after photograph. You did press conferences. Then, there were the parties. The Vanity Fair gathering. The socializing. The smiles that were both fake and genuine, depending on who you were conversing with. I interacted with everyone who came my way. My personal assistant was close by, too, telling me who certain individuals were as they approached so I could appear as if I didn’t have the most forgetful mind.
Afterward, I got into a car, and I was driven home.
My chaotic world grew quiet.
I poured myself a drink and sat alone with my thoughts.
Winning an Oscar was supposed to mean something. It was supposed to have some kind of meaning behind it, yet after the win, I felt empty and alone.
I sat on the floor of my darkened living room with a bottle of bourbon in my left hand. In front of me on the coffee table was that damn statue. My parents had called me multiple times. I talked to them, of course. But everyone else? My agent, manager, and publicist? Fellow actors and people in the industry?
I didn’t answer their calls.
I didn’t want to talk to anyone.
I didn’t want to see anyone.
Well, there was one person who crossed my mind.
Pissed me right the hell off that she kept crossing my mind, too, seeing how she was supposed to remain in my past after she ended things all those years ago. Yet that was the thing about Aiden and bourbon being mixed—buried memories began to unlock. The words she’d spoken in our youth all flooded back to me as I stared at my award.
“When you win your Oscar, I better be your date or the first text or call you make,”she’d say.“After your parents, at least.”
“Of course, it would be you. Who else would I message?”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
I pulled out my cell phone and flipped through my contacts. There she was. Her name in my phone? It was clear as day:DO NOT TEXT OR CALL WHEN YOU’RE DRUNK AIDEN.
A long name but an honest one.
I opened our text messages from five years ago. The last thing she said to me still stung a piece of my heart. That pissed me off. I hated that after all this time, this woman could still hurt me in an odd way. I guessed that happened when your best friend ended a seventeen-year friendship over a text message.
