CUTTING LOOSE

by Kristin Hardy

  "I don't want you gone."

  "It sure sounded like it to me." For the first time, her voice shook. "I've got to hand it to you, you move fast. From 'this means something to me' to 'I'm sick of her.' Forget about zero to sixty in three seconds, you go sixty to zero twice as fast." She dug in her purse for her keys.

  "That wasn't what I was saying, you heard it wrong."

  "My hearing was fine last time I got it checked," she snapped, fumbling to get the key into the lock.

  "Trish. Look at me," his voice softened, "I care about you."

  She turned to face him again. "Pardon me if I'm not convinced."

  "Don't go carting off because you caught something I said out of context."

  She gave a choking laugh and leaned against the car, crossing her arms over her chest. "Oh, this is good. So what, exactly, was the context?"

  Now his own frustration billowed up. "That I don't know what we're doing here. It's two steps forward and two steps back with you. I keep trying and trying, but I don't know what it takes. And after a while I start wondering if there's a point."

  "Besides, you're starting a new movie. Time for a change of scenery, isn't it?" The tip of her nose pinkened.

  "No, it's not."

  "Yes, it is," she returned, blinking furiously. "I'd be out of my mind to let myself really care about you, Ty. I know about you, you don't do long-term." She opened the car door and slipped into her seat. "Well, neither do I."

  "Sure, why get involved?" Anger coursed through him unchecked. "After all, if you did that you'd have to take a risk, and you can't do that when you're running. It slows you down."

  "When did you become such an expert?"

  He thought he saw the shimmer of tears in her eyes and his anger died. "Don't go, Trish." His words came gently. "This isn't the time to run."

  "Oh, no," she said, turning the key in the ignition. "The time for that was the first time I met you."

  * * *

  She drove too fast and a little recklessly down the winding canyon road, the tears, finally, slipping down her cheeks. She'd known, she'd always known it wasn't going to last. She'd thought she was being smart.

  She never thought she'd fall in love with him.

  She reached the intersection with Pacific Coast Highway, but home was the last place she wanted to go. She didn't want to cry for him in her stifling little apartment. She didn't want to be in the city at all. Instead, she turned right. The road ahead of her blurred a bit and she blinked as she passed the hummock of rock, watching for the turnout.

  And there, finally, she laid her head against the steering wheel and wept.

  How, after all the years, had she put herself in the same spot again? The betrayal by someone she loved, someone she thought cared for her. She'd always known it would end, but she'd expected to find out in a conversation between adults, not by overhearing a brutally offhand dissection. Open up, he'd said, and she'd told him some of what had formed her. And he'd understood so little of what she'd told him that he'd casually done the exact same thing. It had been day rather than night, they'd been drinking coffee rather than beer, but the words had been the same, the sickening feeling of humiliation and worthlessness had been the same.

  She lifted her head slowly. Or had it been the same? Before the tears had come anger. Something creaked inside her, like some floodgate long rusted shut. She wasn't worthless, she knew that deep down. The difficult part had always been believing it. Yes, right now it felt as if a hole had been carved in her, but she would get past it and go forward. She would. And eventually Ty Ramsay wouldn't matter anymore.

  Maybe nothing would.

  * * *

  16

  « ^ »

  "Have you ever felt ice so cold it was hot?" Ty asked, his fingers framing Caitlyn's face as he leaned over her on the couch. His voice was silky, his gaze intent.

  She stared back at him in a thrall of arousal.

  "That's what it's about," he said softly, "the point where the senses break down, the point where … where…" Ty stopped in midline, and cursed, his mind suddenly blank.

  "Cut!" Dale called.

  Ty shook his head. "Sorry. I just lost track there."

  Caitlyn still watched him with eyes that were slumberous and dark.

  "That was our twelfth take," Dale reminded him. "You need to get it together."

  Ty blew out an impatient breath. "I know. Give me five minutes and I'll nail it."

  "All right, but stop by makeup before you come back," he directed. "You look tired."

  Not sleeping did that to a person, Ty thought as he sat in the chair, ignoring the makeup girl's chatter. It was hard to know what was worse, lying in an empty bed and staring at the ceiling or waking in the morning and reaching for Trish in that first split second of consciousness.

  Only to realize she wasn't there.

  The days weren't so bad. Work gave him a place to go, a chance to put his mind on hold while he became somebody else. The problem was, thoughts of her kept intruding even there. What was the point? he asked himself. They weren't living out Wuthering Heights, it wasn't a foolish misunderstanding that had broken them up, it was real issues, trust, openness. And it wasn't just Trish's lack of trust in him. If he were honest, he'd lacked trust in himself. At some level, maybe he'd felt free to care for Trish precisely because she was always ready to run. That didn't mean he was happy now. Far from it.

  He couldn't remember feeling anything after his previous breakups except relief and guilt, but then again he'd usually distracted himself immediately with women and work. There was nothing like a tough action role for losing yourself.

  Except that it wasn't working this time around.

  In the makeup chair next to him, Caitlyn gave him a leisurely survey. "You're looking a little worse for the wear, there." As her confidence had grown in the weeks they'd worked together, so had her interest.

  "Worrying about keeping up with you is keeping me up at night."

  "I know some good ways to help you sleep." Her smile was warm with invitation.

  There was a time he would have taken her up on it without a thought. Now, he responded just as automatically. "I'll survive," he said lightly. "Thanks for the offer."

  * * *

  Trish walked through the lobby of Amber's Assistants. She barely glanced at Laurel, who was pushing back her cuticles and reading a book on the South Beach Diet. The familiar twinge of annoyance didn't hit; then again she hadn't been real good at feeling much of anything in the past several days except gnawing loss. It would get better, she told herself. She just needed to wait it out.

  And in ten or twenty years, she'd be right as rain.

  "Nice of you to stop in," Amber said as Trish walked into her office.

  "You wanted to see me?"

  "If I want to see you, all I have to do is look in the press." Amber slapped down an entertainment magazine open to the gossip page. And there, in living color, was a photo of Ty at the gallery, with a laughing Trish encircled by the curve of his arm.

  It took the breath from her lungs. She wouldn't react, Trish told herself fiercely. She wouldn't remember that night and she wouldn't, she absolutely couldn't cry. Looking away was equally impossible, though. It pulled her back in time, to the way it had felt to be with him, to the feeling of seeing his smile from across the room and knowing it was for her and her alone.

  And all she could think was that she couldn't bear it.

  "This is totally unacceptable, Trish." Amber's voice dragged her back to the present. "Even for you this is below par. As the company head, I'm humiliated to see this picture. Think how it looks to clients or future clients."

  "Amber, I didn't plan it," Trish said wearily, "it just happened."

  "Nothing can 'just happen' when you're an assistant," Amber snapped. "You start maintaining a respectful distance from the client. I don't care if nothing happened, the papers are reporting it as though something did."

  Trish blinked. Amber always had
been good at seeing only what she wanted to. It would never in a million years occur to her that the article might actually have been true. Trish as someone who might have a lover didn't fit into her world view. Or was she just jealous?

  "I don't particularly care for what you wore, although it's a cut above your usual. From now on, if you're going to be at a public function, I want you to look professional. Suits only, and I want you to do something about your hair. I won't have you making Amber's Assistants look bad."

  There was a roaring in Trish's ears. It was all about Amber, always all about Amber, salted with regular asides on Trish's many failings. For how many years had that been all she'd heard? For how many years had the echoes bounced around her own head? The occasional laughter and good times didn't make up for it by half. And suddenly, as Trish stared at the photo of herself with Ty, it all crystallized.

  "I quit," she said suddenly, cutting Amber off in midstream.

  Amber blinked. "What did you say?"

  "I quit. Sayonara, enough. You've got two weeks' notice, if you want, but I'm off the Ramsay job effective right now."

  "You can't quit," Amber spluttered. "I won't have it."

  "Nevertheless," Trish said calmly.

  "But the Ramsay contract's the most important one I've got."

  "Call him," Trish suggested. "I'm sure you can persuade him."

  Amber's eyes narrowed. "Is this about Laurel's raise?"

  "Laurel's raise?" Faint surprise and contempt were all she was able to muster up. "How nice for her."

  "I can look at the books," Amber said grudgingly. "It might not hurt to bump you up a bit."

  "Amber," Trish said gently, "I'm quitting. Period."

  Amber's face reddened. "Oh, sure, go ahead and leave me high and dry, after spending time job-hunting on my nickel."

  "No, actually. There isn't a new job. I'm just realizing that this isn't working for either of us."

  "It's working for me."

  And that pretty much said it all. Trish took a deep breath. "Okay, let me be clear about this. This is not working for me. It hasn't for a long time. It's best for me to move on." Habit and the sudden, desperate look on Amber's face gave Trish the immediate urge to fix things so that her sister was okay. She couldn't do it all, though. Finally, she'd realized that. It was time she stood up for herself.

  "But … I want things to stay like they were," Amber said, as if saying the words would make it so.

  This was real life, though. Nothing stayed the same, Trish thought, staring at the photo of Ty. Nothing at all.

  * * *

  The knock came on Ty's trailer door. "On the set, Mr. Ramsay."

  He looked up from the script he'd been reading, or rather staring at, for the past several minutes. He was supposed to be reviewing his lines, putting on the mantle of his role. It had always been easy for him to inhabit the exaggerated reality of a character living larger-than-life events and emotions. What had been harder was settling for the nuances of everyday life.

  He'd grown up with parents who'd met and married after just two weeks to start a life-long love affair. Their explanation had always been that they just knew. Ty had grown up expecting grand emotions. He'd thought that was what life was all about.

  And in film, he thought, walking out of his trailer and onto the set, it was. More than anything, that had been why he'd leaped into relationship after relationship that had started with a roar and ended in a whimper. On the set, everything felt immediate and real. The connection with the woman acting opposite him was always tangible and absorbing. How easy it had been to confuse those feelings with the romance of his parents' story. In the heat of filming, Ty had always been convinced that this was the one.

  The problem was, filming eventually stopped.

  He sat in the makeup chair for a last brush-up, nodding to Caitlyn and trying to evade her come-on gaze. That wasn't the tone they needed now. This was the scene in which his character dealt with the aftermath of finding a murderer in his inner circle, dealt with the betrayal of learning that the woman he loved had been lying about who she was, to him, to everyone. That, despite the flash and intimacy of their connection, she'd blocked him out.

  And now she was gone.

  "Places, everyone."

  Ty walked over to sit behind the heavy walnut desk in what was his character's Edwardian office. The continuity girl leaned in to adjust his collar.

  The thing to do was to take on that betrayal, that frustration, that loss, and channel it into his performance. To make himself go through it and then give it to his character. It would be easy, he thought.

  It was what he was feeling already about Trish.

  The thought hit him with the impact of a punch. The emotions his character was facing were nothing compared to what he'd been through over the past two weeks. Filming could stop right now and he'd still be feeling them, because they were real. This wasn't about life imitating art, this was about his art imitating his life.

  And that quickly, he knew what he wanted, no matter what it took. This wasn't where things stopped for Trish and him, it couldn't be. Their love story wasn't finished, it had scenes and scenes ahead. They just needed to revise it, to fix the dialog, adjust the character motivations.

  And find their future, together.

  "Everybody ready?" Dale said. "Rolling, and … action."

  And Ty began to turn life into art.

  * * *

  "Boy, you had that one on the first take, Ty. I've never seen anything like it." Dale slapped him on the shoulder as they stood in the twilight outside the sound stage. "I took a look at the rushes during lunch and that's the one I'm going to use."

  Now Dale told him, Ty thought, remembering the hours of retakes, reaction shots, and cutaways he'd endured when all he'd wanted to do was go find Trish. Because Ty was a professional, he'd stifled his impatience and given each take maximum effort. It hadn't been difficult. All the feeling was there waiting to be tapped, including the exhilaration at the end when Caitlyn's character comes back to him.

  The way he hoped Trish would come back. And now, all he wanted was to be gone.

  "Glad you're happy, Dale. I'm going to get cleaned up and head out."

  "Have a great weekend." Dale gave him an affable smile. "Don't forget, the night shoot starts Monday, up on Fairfax. It's on your production sheet."

  "I'll be there."

  But he had other places to be first.

  * * *

  Trish turned off Fairfax on to Sixth Street and headed toward the entrance of Park La Brea. In the dusk, the cars behind her were mostly glaring headlights that dazzled her eyes. Just more commuters heading home. She swung into the gate area and waited for it to open, not looking, particularly, at the car that got into line behind her.

  Of course, lately she hadn't been able to focus on much of anything. It was lucky that the temp job she'd landed required little more than consciousness. If it didn't pay particularly well, at least it didn't demand much from her.

  Then again, it did nothing to distract her from thinking about Ty. It would get easier, she told herself automatically. That had become her mantra. She'd get past it the same way she'd finally gotten past Amber, and she'd be okay.

  She was okay. Deep inside her, something shifted, that rusty gate opening just a millimeter. Her time with Ty represented just another of the experiences that had brought her to this point, she reminded herself.

  Trish chose a parking spot absently, mentally tabulating her list of job-search tasks to do that night. Turning off the car, she groped for her bag. She needed to get a dozen résumés ready to go out that night. The economy was picking up; she might be able to find something in PR, she thought as she got out of her car. Of course, jobs made her think of her script, and her script made her think of Ty, which she hadn't done in, oh, thirty seconds. A new record.

  She wondered when it would stop, this swamping gloom that rolled over her every time he came to mind. She wondered when she'd stop wishing
for the impossible, wondering how it could have turned out differently.

  She wondered when she'd stop loving him.

  And then she looked up and saw him standing at the nose of her car.

  * * *

  The sky was deepening to purple. The parking lot lights switched on, bathing the area in the bluish tones of fluorescence. Another commuter slammed his car door shut and headed to his apartment. Trish stood frozen, looking at Ty.

  He'd conjured her face up again and again in the nearly two weeks since he'd seen her last. The lips he'd seen curve so many times in pleasure were now parted in shock.

  Moments later, though, she unfroze, but the freeze was on in another way. Their initial eye contact had crackled with connection. Now, he saw, her eyes had chilled. Now, the walls were in place.

  "Hey, you," he said.

  She shrugged by way of answer. "What are you doing here?" The weather had turned cool again and the brisk wind made her shiver a little in her pea coat.

  "I was hoping to talk with you for a little. Can we go inside?"

  It took her a minute to decide. "Not long," she said finally. "I've got dinner plans."

  "It'll be quick," he promised, trying not to wonder who those plans might involve.

  They walked through the courtyard. "Amber told me you'd quit," he said. And the news had given him hope. If she'd found the strength to stand up to her sister, what else might have changed? "I think it was a good move for you."

  Trish threw him a surprised glance, then looked away. "It was time," was all she said.

  In her apartment, she rapidly flipped on all the lights, as though to banish any possible intimacy. Ty sat on the couch. There was room beside him; instead, she chose the chair.

  And waited.

  People always joked that actors couldn't talk outside of films because there weren't any lines written down for them. Ty had never had a problem with it. Now, though, he found himself tongue-tied. There was so much he wanted to tell her, but he didn't know how to get it across, how to make her believe it.

  How to make her believe in herself.