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I wanted contemporary but with enough of a rustic lean to make the place feel comfortable. Nothing sterile or unapproachable, just open, welcoming, with enough color among the neutrals to liven things up.
Whereas Trevor ignored my wedding ideas, he was fully invested in the home. We went around to boutiques, art shows, and even thrift shops to find the perfect, unique pieces to make our new house a home. Of course, because of his vague job in “art,” Trevor had a keen eye for diamonds in the rough. Sometimes, a painting or two would just appear on the walls of the house, and when I asked about their origin, he would only shrug and say, “Work.”
It began to drive me up the wall, almost literally. I was supposed to move in with this man and eventually marry him, but he couldn’t trust me with even a speck of information about his job. I would pry, he would hedge, and it would either end with an argument or Trevor storming off, and even then, I wouldn’t get any answers. Apparently, I was supposed to just acceptart appraiserwithout pause.
Normally, I wouldn’t accept anythingthat easily, but with the rush of everything that was happening, it just fell by the wayside. I promised myself things would be different once we moved in together because how was he supposed to keep an entire job secret from me then?
When I wasn’t putting together the house, I was working. There were the expected exclamations of excitement and congrats when I announced my engagement and some playful envy about my new home from some of the performers I was closer to.
No matter how much I insisted that neither of those things would change my ability and drive to work, I was still given understanding, patience, and disbelieving nods from my coworkers. It pissed me off, and I wanted to make it clear that I would not drop off the face of the planet like other girls in our profession who got married, but I didn’t have the energy.
They’d turn out to be right in the end, anyway.
It was surreal to pack up my apartment. It felt like I had been there for no time at all, while it also felt like a home I was leaving behind. The apartment was a symbol of my independence, a base that I could return to night after night as I built my career. Leaving was the definition of bittersweet, and I had more than one moment of hesitation when I considered backing out of the whole Lace Elm idea, but I soldiered on until everything that I could call my own was in boxes.
We moved into the new house only a little over a month later. I felt the entire range of human emotions as we did so, but in the end, excitement won out over everything else. Seeing the home completed, filled with all the things I had chosen, made it feel truly alive for the first time. It wasn’t an empty shell anymore; it was my home. Ourhome. I was afraid everything would look odd or disjointed, but it was perfect. Leo was a genius, and all of my visions had come to life.
Except for Trevor’s office, of course, but I didn’t worry much about that. It wasn’t like it was a space I would be using.
The first few days, as we unpacked our things and settled into the space, felt more like the relationship I was used to. Trevor was lighthearted, his affections carefree, and he didn’t hesitate to back me against a wall or counter and show me exactly how happy he was to be living together. I had taken some time off work, and he had too, apparently, and we made our marks on the space and each other. It was a new beginning.
As a week or so passed, things began to change, but not in any way that I could easily pinpoint. Trevor would leave before the sun was up, only the emptiness of his side of the bed letting me know he had even been there at all, and I wouldn’t hear from him the entire day until he returned home.
It was fine for a while, with how busy I was, but the commute quickly started to wear on me, and I was becoming increasingly frustrated at the hours I spent driving back and forth to Dallas for filming or to pick up new outfits or props work shoots I did myself. It wasn’t like I could hire a photographer to film me out in the middle of nowhere.
Even when I flew to Los Angeles, Vegas, or Florida for shoots, I would still have to drive to Dallas to catch the flight. There wasn’t even a proper grocery store in Lace Elm, let alone a full-blown airport.
Having to be alone every morning only made it worse. I felt incredibly lonely on those mornings.
Trevor would try to make up for it in the evenings, but as the days went on, he also started to get home later. Some days, the only people I even talked to were the director at whatever set I was on and any other performers on the shoot. I woke up alone, spent my daylight hours without even a text, and then went to bed alone, too. My only interaction with my fiancé was all too commonly a kiss on the cheek or forehead when he crawled into bed or departed in the morning.
He tried to give me the weekends, but by Friday evening, I was so exhausted from all the driving back and forth to Dallas I hardly ever wanted to go on the grand dates we used to enjoy. Saturday mornings were spent going over everything that had happened in the week prior, those morning chats being the first time all week I was able to speak to Trevor.
I tried not to let it all get to me. I imagined he was working extra to make up for the extravagant house purchase, and once things evened out, he would revert to his normal schedule. The house was glorious, and if I had been more of an introvert, I would have loved spending the evenings on the patio overlooking the lake while I lounged in the hot tub, but there was no denying I was lonely.
Things came to a startling head one night when I brought home a friend from work, another performer named Tiffany. Tiff and I had crossed paths when we were younger at an industry show, so it had been a pleasant surprise for both of us to land in Dallas for the start of our careers as adult stars. While I was more of the girl next door, she tended to have a bit more of an edge and would do far more extreme scenes than I would, but still, we got along well enough that I considered her a friend.
I hadn’t seen Trevor during my waking hours for three days when I finally decided to invite Tiffany over to check out my new house. We'd been talking about making content together for a while now, so instead of going to Dallas to do the shoot in a hotel room like we normally did, she could make the drive to Lace Elm, and we could do it here.
She was suitably agog at the Lace Elm house, demanding I hook her up with any secret brothers Trevor might be hiding before we opened a few cans of hard seltzer and went to sit on the patio lounges.
It was a Thursday, which might have been why Trevor was so shocked to see me and another woman still awake and laughing with one another as he rolled up from work at the obscene time of 1:30 a.m. He hadn’t even gotten out of the car, choosing instead to blow up my phone even as I could see him in the driveway.
Trevor: Who is with you? Do you know them?
Trevor: Don’t you think you should ask before inviting people to our house?
Trevor: Are you Ok? WHO IS WITH YOU?
The rapid barrage of texts made my heart sink. They were so wildly out of character.
Rachel: Why are you being weird? It’s just a friend of mine. Come inside already.
Trevor: A new friend or an old friend? Someone you met after me or knew before you and I got together?
Rachel: You’re freaking me out. I’ve known her for years!
Trevor: You two didn’t go into my office, did you?
