by B. M. Sandy
“C’mon, Jake. It’s time to get going,” Lily, the key grip, said, urging him into the house and into the living room area where the scene was taking place. Alexa was poised against the couch, waiting for him. She didn’t smile; she was watching him curiously, as if she could sense the unease and turmoil within him.
“Ready?” Dan asked, from behind the camera. His eyes weren’t on Jake, but on the screen; the operator was adjusting something, his brow furrowed in concentration.
“Yes.”
Jake assumed his place, allowing his anger, his rage, his uncertainties to wash away, replacing them with the face of Christian Walters; a cool, calm exterior with a hidden bubbling, anxious interior. He looked at Alexa, who had fallen into her own role - Zoe Walters, his wife, his enemy.
There was a very drawn out hush as they waited to begin the scene. He heard the slate snap behind him; he heard his cue.
“Action!”
“Jake, wait up.”
The sound of Alexa’s voice caused Jake to stiffen; he’d been walking to his trailer for lunch and was so lost in thought about Drew and the Rage trilogy and the ultimatum that he hadn’t heard anybody approach.
Out of sheer politeness, he turned and stopped.
“Is something the matter?” he asked, shoving his hands into his pockets, the heat of the sun creeping through his shirt. He regarded her warily; he was in no mood to deal with round two of whatever argument she wanted to pursue.
“Can we talk?”
Memories of the last time they ‘talked’ raced through his mind - her explosive accusations, her anger. Her face bore no anger or resentment this time, though: he saw only concern, and apprehension.
“I suppose so,” Jake said then, quietly, turning toward his trailer again. She followed as he unlocked the door and stepped inside, quickly turning on the small AC unit in the window.
He busied himself with tea, those easy, fluid movements allowing him to momentarily lose himself in thought. He forced Drew out of his mind and nearly forgot Alexa was even there until he heard a quiet shuffle behind him.
“So...” he started slowly, turning even slower, resting up against the counter. Alexa, he noted warily, looked nervous, her brown eyes flitting back and forth in the small space. Jake swallowed, the movement deliberate, remembering Cassie, who stood exactly where Alexa stood, eyes alight with alcohol and desire.
“I rather know how this looks,” Alexa said finally, her voice a soft question mark between them. “I know I left you last time...out of sorts.”
“Out of sorts,” Jake repeated dimly. He wished there was something to do with his hands - the silence that filtered in and out of their words was too much; it left him restless.
“The truth is...” Alexa brushed her hair back, licked her lips. “I was jealous. I’ve never been able to forgive you for what happened between us.”
“Right.”
He wished he could find it in him to be more gracious - to feel something other than this dull, thudding rage that was building in his chest.
“Jake, I blamed you for what was my fault.” There was an incredible silence after that until he cleared his throat.
“Pardon?”
“It was my fault. I’ve never...well, up until quite recently, I’ve never been able to hold on to a good thing. It’s like I purposefully destroyed everything that brought me happiness. Except for acting, I suppose.”
He could see it now, he thought. The sadness in her - something he had never allowed himself to see before.
“So,” she continued, “I’ve come to say that I’m sorry for mucking us up, for ruining whatever it was we had. I realize you’re happy now, and I’m not trying to come in between that, but...for the sake of the film, at least, I want to be friends again.”
“Alexa,” he said, not quite sure what he intended to say. He ran his own hand through his hair, pulling at it, the sharp sting bringing him back to earth. “I’m sorry too.”
“For what?”
“For...for being such an ass to you, when we first got here. And then I was even worse when you came to ask me about Cassie. I felt terrible doing it, but it was like I couldn’t stop.”
The kettle began to whistle then, and Jake turned abruptly to pour his tea. His hand clenched against the handle as he poured, and then he pulled another cup down.
“Would you like some tea?”
He could hear the smile in her voice as she replied, “I’d love that.”
The next day, Cassie found herself pulling into the cemetery, Sam in the passenger seat. The sky threatened rain, and Cassie eyed the clouds cautiously as she drove down the paved path, looking for the statue.
She had only been here one time - when her father was buried - and had never come back. She knew it was childish and callous of her, but it was easier to forget this place existed. Before Jake, a lot of things were easier to ignore.
Sam had agreed to come with her without hesitation. Cassie explained to her the night before that she’d been thinking of coming here for a couple weeks now and could think of nobody else to come with her but Sam.
“I think that’s it,” Cassie said suddenly, pointing. Ahead there was a row of stones, marked by a rather grand statue of a weeping woman, austere and cold in a marble cloak. She belonged to someone long gone - Cassie hadn’t looked too hard when she was here last - but she remembered it simply because it stuck out in this cemetery of steel workers and housewives. Parking her car and shutting it off, she unbuckled her seatbelt and shot Sam a quick glance before getting out of the car.
Cassie made her way over to it, stalling for time as she looked at the base of the statue. Robert Samuel Grove, it read, etched in stone. 1947 - 1947. And below it, Those who walk uprightly enter into peace; they find rest as they lie in death.
She raised her eyes, meeting those of the statue’s, their dull hue unremarkable by themselves, but, coupled with the knowledge that this child died before he had even turned one, they knocked the wind out of Cassie as she realized what they conveyed. A weeping mother. A broken family. Torn up souls and dreams. She wondered just how many lives were lost - unnecessarily and without warning. How many were in this very place?
She made her way down the line, hearing Sam’s footsteps in the soft grass behind her. She looked at every stone, reading the names and seeing the dashes between the years they were born and the years they died. She fixated on those dashes, wondering what they entailed for the people depicted.
When she arrived at the end of the line, she knew she had found it. She heard the quiet rumble of thunder in the distance and looked down at her family’s plot. Two stones were there now; there were two more spaces, she knew, reserved next to it for her and her future spouse; no stones lay there as of yet. Her eyes glossed over the unused one for her mother - Jessica May Mills, 1967 - and landed on her father’s.
It was surreal, to see it now. She let out a breath she hadn’t been aware she was holding and felt Sam’s hand land on her shoulder, its grip strong and comforting.
Raymond Jacob Mills. 1966 - 2015. And underneath, in precise, small letters, Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.
Cassie stared at it for a long time. She wished, suddenly, she had brought flowers. Something to liven that sandy-brown stone. Something to mark that she had been here, finally, after all this time.
“Are you okay?” Sam asked, quietly. Her hand dropped, taking its warmth with it.
“Yeah, I just -” Cassie said, cutting off, looking away from the stone and into the angry clouds. A storm was coming; she could smell the electricity, the impending rain. She looked at Sam, who was watching her warily, a look of concern on her face.
“It’s okay to be hurt,” she said, softly. “It’s okay to feel.”
Cassie stooped down, wiping the stone off with the back of her hand, wiping some dirt and leaves off of it, avoiding acknowledging her sorrow as she did so. Sam understood, to some extent, what it felt like to lose someone. Her own dad had wal
ked out on her and her mom when she was only twelve. Cassie could still remember the hush that had gone around the school when kids realized it; in such a small town, that sort of thing was talked about.
“I was so mad at him,” Cassie said finally in little more than a whisper, resting her hand on the stone. She tried to remember what her dad looked like on that hospital bed. She tried to remember what he looked like before it, the cancer. She squeezed her hand into a tight fist when she realized she couldn’t quite get the details right. “For being sick. For ruining my life. That’s why I never talked about it.”
Another rumble of thunder sounded in the distance, this time louder and closer than before. Turning her head, she saw lightning in the distance and stood, slowly, uncurling her fist and pressing her open hand against her hip.
“You’re allowed to be mad. You’re allowed to feel whatever you want.”
Sam’s words were soothing, yet they had a quality of uncertainty to them. Cassie met her eye, holding that bubbling feeling of renewed anger down, instead forcing it into words.
“I - I know that,” she said, hating the thickness of her throat, the sting in her eyes. “But I’m...I was so ashamed. I still am. For feeling that way to begin with. For refusing to grieve properly. For worrying my mom, and you.”
Sam nodded. “You did worry me a bit for a while there. But Cassie - there’s no cut and dry way to grieve. There’s no...manual to tell you how to feel.”
“I remember waking up one morning, maybe two weeks after it had happened. There was a brochure that was slid under my door, from my mom.” Cassie leaned her head back, looking to the sky. The clouds were rolling in, the daylight dimming with each passing minute. “It was the glossy kind you’d find at a shrink’s office. ‘The Five Stages of Grief’, it said.” She laughed very suddenly, the sound bitter and sharp. She looked back to Sam, who was waiting for her next words, sadness on her face. “Denial was the first one. Then anger, then bargaining. Depression was next, and finally, acceptance.” She shoved her hand through her hair, almost pulling it in her frustration, her sense of loss. “I don’t know if I ever left denial, Sam. Sure, I felt angry, but that was while he was alive. I never bargained - I never thought enough about it to get to that point. Depression, sure...I guess. But I was depressed before, while he was sick. I was a walking zombie.”
“Are you still in denial?” Sam asked.
Cassie looked back at the gravestone, the words standing out so prominent and bright. She shook her head.
“No. He’s gone. And I’m finally in a place where I can say that, out loud, and not have the world come crashing down on me.”
She felt the first few drops of rain, big, wet pellets hitting her in the face. Looking at Sam, she gestured toward the road, and they began to walk quickly back to the car.
When they passed the statue of the weeping mother, Cassie didn’t linger, but she felt her marble eyes following her as she got into the car.
It began to pour just as soon as they got in and buckled up, a near miss. They looked at each other and grinned as the rain pelted down on the roof of Cassie’s car, the sound so loud and steadfast that it took up her entire head.
She turned the car on, flipping the windshield wipers on full blast, waiting for the rain to die down a little before she drove away.
“Are you happy you came?” Sam asked over the rain.
“I -” Cassie started. She turned her head, looking at her window, unable to see her father’s stone from so far away with the water rushing down. She could just make out the watery, blurry silhouette of the statue. “I am. Oddly, this has taken a weight off me. It was always in the back of my mind, that I had never come to visit, that I should. I would have these dreams...” she paused, remembering her most recent one, and the one before that, where her father had looked at her so cold, so lucid. You’re a failure. “I wouldn’t think about him during the day, so I’d dream about him at night. Nightmares, sometimes.”
“I’m sorry, Cassie.”
She turned to look at Sam, allowing a weak smile to break through. “Don’t be. There’s nothing to be sorry for.”
“Jake really helped you, didn’t he?”
There was no hurt in Sam’s voice, only curiosity, laced with a fair amount of wonder. Cassie understood, she thought. She’d spent fourteen months in a sort of fog, a haze, and somehow, miraculously, Jake had pulled her out of it; she had been drowning and he a raft.
“I don’t know how, but he did.” She wished she could give a clearer answer. “He...it was uncomfortable, that first date. He asked me about my dad, and I knew I couldn’t lash out at him like I did everyone else. Answering him forced me to see what I was saying. Forced me to face it.”
She thought of the way he had sat on the bench, the way he looked down at the path and told her about his sister. Emma. Going to a friend’s and hit by a drunk driver. The sister who helped him with homework, the sister he didn’t think about anymore.
The rain had relented enough that Cassie could see out the window. She put the car into drive and pulled around the cemetery.
“How much longer do you guys have?” Sam asked, quietly.
“Three weeks today.” She gripped the steering wheel tightly, turning onto the main road back to Sam’s apartment.
“How does it feel? I mean, are you okay with it?” Sam knew that Cassie and Jake had slept together at this point; she had told her those details on the way in. She’d been excited - ecstatic, really - that Cassie had taken such a big step with someone. But now she was worried about the implications of taking that step.
“I’m okay,” Cassie lied. She gritted her teeth, wishing she could shut off her emotions like Jake did sometimes, wishing she was a better actor. “It is what it is.”
“You hate that saying,” Sam retorted. “You’re upset about it. Don’t lie.”
“Okay, I’m upset,” Cassie said quickly. Too loudly.
“I don’t understand why you won’t just talk to him -”
“Because, Sam. Staying together is a fantasy. It’s not realistic. I don’t want a long-distance relationship, and neither does he. We would be miserable, always apart. He - he told me he might go filming in Australia yesterday. And then he has to travel all over for the movie he’s doing now. He’s in New York in the morning for Good Morning America and Chicago by evening doing an interview for a magazine. He’s never going to be in one place. It’s never going to work.”
At that, Cassie exhaled an angry growl, staring ahead at the road, refusing to give in and look at Sam who she was certain was staring at her.
“Can you please be honest about the fact that you are falling for him?”
Cassie sighed at that, rubbing her forehead briefly before answering.
“Alright, fine. I am. I have.”
Saying it out loud wasn’t so bad - it felt quite freeing, actually, in that she didn’t have to keep telling herself otherwise. She had only known Jake for five weeks, but her heart knew what it felt.
“Oh, Cassie. What are you gonna do?”
“Take it...take it day by day, I guess.” Cassie paused, turning onto Sam’s street, sweeping a quick glance her way. She looked nervous, and worried. “What else can I do? There was a chance this was going to happen - you warned me that this would happen. You warned me against this, actually.”
You’d be surprised what can happen in two months.
“I - I did, yeah. But that was before...before I saw how happy he makes you. Cassie, I haven’t seen you this happy since...” Since your dad was alive and healthy, she probably wanted to say. Tactfully, she didn’t. “For a long time.”
Ignoring her slip, Cassie replied, “Yeah. You’re right...I haven’t. Jake has definitely opened my eyes to a lot of things. And when he leaves, I’ll be okay. I’ll be sad, but I’ll get over him.”
She pulled into Sam’s apartment complex, driving toward her building. The rain was now just a small sprinkle; the brunt of the storm had passed by.
/> “I really hope so,” Sam said then. “For your sake.”
16.
Cassie woke up on the morning of the 25th with a terrible headache. She sat up in bed, clutching her face, realizing that it was her phone ringing that had woken her.
Looking over at her nightstand, she saw that it was Sam who was calling. It wasn’t even eight in the morning yet, but Cassie reached over and picked up the call.
“Hello?”
“Cassie! Did I wake you?”
“Uh...yeah. It’s okay though. What’s up?”
There was a brief silence on the other line, and Cassie got out of bed, looking out her window. The day was bright and blue, not at all the sort of day she’d imagined it being: she had expected gray clouds, an ominous sort of haze, as if mother nature herself had her breath held in, anticipating the sorrow. But no - someone was riding their bike down the street in a bright pink tank top. Someone else was walking their dog.
Just like any other day.
“I was just calling because today is wrap day. Jake...he’ll be leaving tomorrow.”
“Late tonight, actually. He said he has a meeting with his agent tomorrow, and he has to be back in London for it.”
The words felt heavy in her mouth - acknowledging them meant that it was real, in a way that it wasn’t yesterday. They’d spent as much time together as they could up until this point - she’d stayed with him as often as possible at night. They had even gone to Pittsburgh the weekend prior, spending all of it holed up in a fancy hotel room - watching movies, making love, eating room service. Cassie’s heart twisted in her chest as she remembered a perfect moment, legs entwined as they just looked at each other, breathing each other in.