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“Just okay?”
“Work is work, I guess. Those events are always the same thing. Look pretty, pose for the camera, field questions no one would even consider asking an average person to their face because they’re far too personal. Accept an award if you’re lucky, which tonight, I was. Rub noses with the elite. Shake hands. Go home.”
His smile tightened as he set his glass down on the table across from him.
“Why do I get the feeling there’s a lot you’re not saying?”
He laughed. “Probably because there is. But I wouldn’t even know how to put these feelings into words if I tried.”
“Is it all you thought it would be?”
“What?”
“Fame,” I clarified.
He nodded slowly, as if thinking about the question. “Sure, it’s great,” he said, but he avoided my gaze.
“I’m not convinced.”
“No?” His piercing green eyes shifted to mine, and I shook my head, saying nothing, waiting for him to fill the silence instead.
After a moment, he leaned back in his seat and clasped his hands together. “You want the real answer? Because in my experience, people don’t really want to hear the truth. Either that or they don’t believe it. Most folks don’t have much sympathy for celebrities.”
I could feel his gaze hot on my skin, as if asking if I’d, too, judge him. So I raised my chin and said, “Tell me.”
A full minute passed before his voice cut the silence like glass. “It’s lonely.”
I raised a brow. “Being surrounded by hordes of fans and millions of people who worship you is lonely?”
When he merely nodded, I added, “Tell me how.”
“In the beginning, when you first become famous, there’s all these people around you. A whole team supporting you, fighting for you, and backing you up as you rise to the top. You’re making all these sacrifices and giving things up, or maybe losing them, I’m not sure which. All at the prospect of gaining one thing. And when you’re a kid like I was, you don’t even realize it, or maybe it’s more that you don’t understand it.”
He fell silent for a moment and his throat bobbed before he continued, “Friends. Family barbecues and picnics. Holidays. All your free time. Sleep. Sanity. Normalcy. All of them vanish. And then, out of nowhere, you get there. You’ve made it. You’re famous, doing what you love. You climbed the ladder and you’re at the top. Everything looks better from up there. Everything should be great, right? Totally worth it, just like they said it would be.”
His eyes met mine once more, and I nodded for him to keep going, even as my stomach clenched tight.
“But you look around and . . .” A sigh escaped his lips. “. . . suddenly, you’re not surrounded anymore. All your old friends, everyone from before you were famous, are long gone. And you’ve made it, so your team has dwindled, too. Only the ones still making money off of you—the ones with a vested interest—remain. That should be enough. You tell yourself itwillbe enough. But then you realize you have no idea what’s real or not because you constantly have to wear the mask that’s been forced on you. The one that everyone wants to see—that persona people pay to watch on the television screen. And you have all this freedom.”
He ticked his fingers. “No curfew. No regular nine-to-five. No school you have to attend because you have a personal tutor. You have enough money to buy anything you want. Yet the one freedom you want the most—the ability to just be you without everyone scrutinizing your every move and waiting for you to fail—is lost. The ability to make genuine friendships and form relationships is gone. It’s the strangest feeling. Like, you can be at a party with a thousand people or on a set or in a room with a hundred others, but you still feel totally alone because none of them really know you. Not like you want them to. Not the real you. Because no one cares. They only care about that guy on the screen and what he can bring to the table. All other connections that ever meant anything were lost in the process, and as a result, you have no idea who to trust because it seems everyone left and everyone you come in contact with has a motive, an angle, or agenda.”
The sadness in his words echoed between us like a choking mist, stealing my words. The world he described was hard to imagine, mostly because it was the complete opposite of mine.
“You probably think I sound ungrateful. Most people do.” He scrubbed a hand roughly over his face, and a weight settled on my heart.
“No. That sounds awful, actually.”
If there was one thing I’d never experienced in my life, it was the feeling of being lonely. Despite the fact that I had no siblings, I had a tight-knit family, and even though I spent most of my free time with Penelope, I’d never had problems making friends or filling my time.
“Thanks for saying that,” he said, his voice thick.
“If it’s that bad . . . why don’t you get out?”
He bit his lip. “I’ve thought about it, but I love acting.” He shrugged. “I love what I do. I only hate everything that goes along with it, all the extra stuff. When I first started, I was so young. I wanted the fame, welcomed it, even, because I didn’t know what came with it. That it meant losing everything else. Your friends, your identity, the ability to lead a normal life, privacy. But if I left, I’d miss filming, the creative outlet of acting. And though I’ve reconciled the two, that you can’t have one without the other, everyone wants me to fail. On one hand, they love Thorne Roberts, and on the other, they thrive off the negative stories. It’s like the biggest catch-22.”
“What about your dad?”
“What dad?” He huffed. “He was never in the picture. I’m not even sure my mom knows who he is.”
