I feel like an asshole doing it, but I text Cliff. Serena’s in the lobby bar.
He replies, Distract her. On my way.
I grumble to myself as I walk into the bar, heading for her. This is the last place I want to be. Serena sips her drink as she looks up, spotting me. “Johnny.”
“Have you lost your mind, Ser? You’re sitting here drinking?”
A smile twists her lips as she holds the glass out, pointing the straw at me. “If you wanted a sip, all you had to do was ask.”
“You know goddamn well I don’t want any.”
“Oh, relax,” she says with a laugh, waving me off as she takes another sip from the glass. “It’s non-alcoholic.”
“Seriously?”
She offers it to me again. “Try it, you’ll see.”
“Thanks, but no,” I say, “I’m not risking my sobriety for some shit with a tiny umbrella.”
“Your loss.” Serena shrugs. “But I’m telling you, it’s just as virgin as that nerdy sober buddy of yours. What’s his name? Josh?”
“Jack," I say. “And I'm pretty sure he’s not a virgin.”
“Someone slept with that guy?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Well, then… my drink is more of a virgin, which really makes me wish it had alcohol in it.”
I lean against the bar as I eye her.
She seems to be in a good mood.
“Did you use today?” I ask. “What did you take?”
Her smile dims, the good mood gone, a bitter edge to her voice as she says, “Why are you even here? Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”
My eyes flicker past her, out of the bar windows lining the street, seeing a black sedan coming to a stop as my phone chimes. “Funny you ask that, because my ride just got here.”
I leave her sitting at the bar and pass by Cliff in the lobby as I head outside to climb in the car. I give the driver an address in Long Island, and I make a few calls on the way over, making sure someone is meeting me there. When we arrive, a man stands right outside the massive fence surrounding the property. He greets me, opening the gates to let me inside, before handing over a set of keys. “First garage.”
The garage is climate controlled, covered in layers of security like they're guarding the fucking Hope diamond—luxury car storage. The garage door opens and lights flick on as I stroll inside, running my hand along the glossy blue paint of the Porsche.
I bought it after rehab at Jack's insistence.
Well, I mean, Jack told me to give myself a celebratory gift to mark the milestone. It was my longest stretch of sobriety in a decade. So I bought myself a new convertible 911 Porsche, much like the one I sold when I moved to Hollywood.
When I told Jack, he called me a filthy fucking cocksucker. Apparently, for his celebratory gift, he'd just sent himself flowers.
I sign some paperwork to get the car released and climb behind the wheel. Less than a thousand miles on it, according to the odometer, and I'm about to add another two hundred.
It’s a long drive. Tonight, it feels even longer. I get to the apartment just shy of four o’clock in the morning. The door is locked, but I use the key Kennedy gave me to get inside.
Quietly, I head down the small hall, glancing in Madison’s bedroom along the way, seeing her peacefully sleeping. I keep going, not wanting to disturb her. The door to Kennedy’s bedroom is cracked open, the dim light of a small lamp illuminating part of the room. My chest feels tight when I push the door open and see her, fast asleep in bed, clutching a familiar old notebook, the one that holds her version of our story.
I’ve read parts of it. The beginning. I’ve been too afraid to see how it all went to hell in California. She wrote it like it was meant for me, but I remember things differently. To me, she was the center of the universe, the sunlight that burned so bright, but she writes herself in the shadows, secondary in her own life. Instead, she made me the hero, the center of this alternate universe she invented around her.
I always knew it, yeah, but I never really understood that I was her Breezeo.
And then I slowly disappeared.
Carefully, I pull the notebook from her grasp and set it aside before turning off the lamp and laying down beside her. She stirs as the bed shifts, her eyes opening. She blinks in confusion before a small lazy smile plays on her lips, her voice a sleepy whisper when she says, “You’re here.”
“I said I would be, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, well, you say a lot,” she mumbles, shoving against me, snuggling up to me.
I put my arm around her, pulling her even closer as I unfasten my wrist brace, yanking it off to toss it somewhere in the darkness. My hand slides under her shirt, her skin warm against my palm as I stroke her back, fingertips tracing her spine. A soft moan escapes her.
The sound, fuck, it does something to me. Arching her back, she shifts her body, and it’s instinct that I move, pulling her beneath me as I hover over her.
She stares up at me and lets out a shaky breath before I lean down and kiss her.
“I mean it all,” I whisper against her lips as my hands roam, getting rid of those pesky clothes. “Every single word.”
“You’ve said some horrible crap,” she reminds me.
“That was the coke talking,” I say, kissing her neck as she tilts her head. “The whiskey, too.”
“Tell someone who fucking cares.”
Her voice is quiet, unthreatening, but there’s that ‘fucking’ word. Pulling back, I look at her. “What?”
“Those were the last words you said to me.”
“The day you left?”
She nods. “You were sober when you said it.”
Tell someone who fucking cares.
If that was how our story ended for her, I seriously dread to know what’s written in the last few pages of that notebook.
I try to sit up, but she wraps her arms around me. “Oh, no, I don’t think so. You finish what you started, Mister Big Shot.”
She kisses me, hard, and just like that, I give in, pushing my way between her thighs. In one stroke, I’m inside of her, and goddamn if I’m not home again, so I show her, over and over, as she writhes, that I didn’t mean it when I said that bullshit.
Dreams aren’t always just dreams. Sometimes, they turn into wide-eyed nightmares, the kind where you’re screaming but nobody can hear you. They don’t want to listen. They’re drowning you out.
The first time you snort coke is at a club in LA. It’s a present from the Markson model. Serena’s her name. It’s your twenty-first birthday. Clifford throws a party in your honor and invites the who’s who of Hollywood, but the woman you love stays home. Clifford says she’s not old enough to come. The venue is twenty-one and up. So you tell her it’s nothing special, just networking. Part of your job is making connections. It’s ‘work’.
But the pictures that hit the tabloids don’t much look like you’re working, not when in most of them you’re snorting powder off of a table. Clifford’s whole entourage is there. Girls surround you. But some of them aren’t twenty-one yet, either. A few are barely legal.
You apologize. It was a mistake. You ask for a second chance. But you only do that after the evidence comes out. And when you start filming your second movie—another teen comedy, where you play the lead this time—the world tilts a bit. Your first movie hasn’t even released yet and there are already whispers. Clifford Caldwell’s newest client might be someone to consider. You get more inquiries. You’re juggling so much. Promo is soon starting. You need a little pick me up.
That’s what you tell yourself. No harm in a tiny boost. And you believe it, because my god, it makes you feel so good. It makes you feel like you can take on the world. You come home at night, and those blue twinkling eyes are gone. She stares into a murky puddle and slowly slips into the void, but you smile and tell her everything is all right where you are. She wonders where that is and how she can get there, because you’re not with her. You’re disappear
ing.
When she tells you she’s worried, you tell her you love her. You tell her you’ll stop, you will, but oh god, if only she could feel it.
So you pour yourself into her. You make her feel good. When you’re inside of her, when you’re making love to her, she truly believes she can take on that tilting world.
But love is only as strong as the people who fuel it. And you? You’re Superman, thinking Kryptonite makes you invincible.
And the woman you love? She… can’t keep pretending any of this is normal. She can’t keep writing this as if somewhere along the way the plotline will fix itself. She can’t keep acting as if this isn’t her story.
You’re on a collision course, Jonathan. You’re hurling toward something none of us can see in the darkness, but whatever it is, it’s going to hurt. You think you’re in control, that you’re soaring, but you’re in a free-fall, and you don’t hear me when I try to warn you.
As I write this, you’re 2500 miles away. You’re in New York City, so close to home... or where home used to be. You’re working on another movie. It’s still dark here in LA, but the sun will have risen where you are by now, another day dawning. It was our third Dreamiversary yesterday. I spent it here without you.
It has been a bad year. There’s no way to sugarcoat it, no pretty words I can conjure up to turn it into something sweet, not when I’m so bitter. You’re the caterpillar that went into the cocoon and emerged a glorious butterfly, but I’m the reminder that butterflies don’t stick around long, a few weeks at most before they’re gone.
I’m not going to waste time detailing everything. I’ll want to change too much to make it fit with my version of you, the one who walked into that American Politics classroom nearly four years ago and stole my heart, but that guy isn’t here anymore. Where has he gone? He took my heart with him when he left, but I’m going to need it back. I’m going to need it for what’s to come, so I can try to protect it, so it doesn’t shatter when this new version of you hits bottom.
Because it’s coming, Jonathan. Your dream has become my nightmare, and I’m begging you to let me wake up.
You don’t know this, but the woman you love? The one you hung around for in New York when she was still just a girl, even though you were suffering, and wanting to go, but you stayed because of love? That woman, right now, is doing the same thing for you.
Chapter 25
KENNEDY
“Take a deep breath. Speak loud and clear. If you forget something, improvise. Got it?”
“Got it!” Maddie exclaims, bouncing from foot to foot and grinning at her father as he sits in front of her on the living room floor. The two of them are ‘running lines’, as Jonathan called it. She’s dressed up like Breezeo at the moment—said if she was going to be an actor, she needed a costume.
“Okay,” Jonathan says, glancing down at the small stack of papers in his hands, clearing his throat as he reads, “The weather—”
“Wait!” Maddie yells, covering the papers with her hands. “I’m not ready yet!”
“I thought you said you were.”
“I was, but...” She pauses, brow furrowing. “What is improvise?”
He laughs. “It means make something up. Say anything. You just don’t want there to be any awkward silence.”
“Oh, okay.” She moves her hands. “Got it!”
“Uh, you sure that’s really what you want to suggest?” I ask, sitting on the couch, flipping through channels. The TV is on but turned down low. “I’m not sure that’s the best advice.”
Jonathan glances my way. “Hey, who’s the actor here—me or you?”
“Me,” Maddie says, motioning to herself.
“I’m just saying, you know, improv might be a little advanced for the situation.”
“It’s okay, Mommy,” Maddie says, grabbing the sides of Jonathan’s face, squishing his cheeks as she forces him to look at her. “I’m ready now, but don’t do that part. Do my part.”
Jonathan flips through papers, skipping ahead. “Once a beautiful, fluffy cloud, I’m starting to feel so heavy and cold. Brrr. Oh no! I think I’m going to snow!”
I try not to laugh as he delivers that line.
“Hey, guys!” Maddie says loudly. “What’s got six arms and is like nothing else in the whole world?”
“A snowflake,” Jonathan says.
“That’s me!” Maddie throws her arms out at her sides and spins. That’s not in the script. Improvising. “I’m falling and falling and falling. Where am I going?”
“Down,” Jonathan says, “to the ground.”
Maddie trips over her own feet as she spins, falling, but Jonathan catches her as she giggles, plopping down in his lap.
That’s it. That’s all the lines she has until the very end when she says, Snowflakes aren’t the only special things—you’re all special! She’s spent all day memorizing them at school.
“Again!” she says, springing back to her feet.
“Later,” he says. “Right now, we should do something about dinner.”
“I can make something,” I say, starting to stand up, but he stops me.
“I can take care of it,” he says. “You just relax.”
Relax. It’s the first time I’ve not worked on a weekday in a while. I’ve spent all day doing nothing, sitting around. I even napped while Maddie was in school. I’m not used to having nothing to do. It’s weird.
He heads off to the kitchen.
Maddie goes to her bedroom.
I flip through more channels.
I make it almost a complete cycle, back to where I started, when I flip to something that makes me stall. One of those evening entertainment shows, the equivalent of a TV tabloid. Jonathan’s face is plastered on the screen from an old set photo.
“Breezeo is a-go! After being derailed when star Johnny Cunning sustained injuries in an accident, filming for the highly anticipated third Breezeo movie is scheduled to resume next week. Sources tell us Cunning will return to set on Monday, while his co-star and on-again off-again girlfriend Serena Markson is slated to join him when production moves to Europe.”
“I, uh…” Jonathan’s voice cuts through the living room, his eyes going straight to the screen. “I ordered pizza.”
I flip the channel, a sinking feeling rocking the pit of my stomach. “Okay.”
He slips his phone into his pocket before running a hand through his hair. I know he saw it. Heard it, too. Not that it matters, because he would’ve already known.
They would’ve told him.
I stop on another channel, some pointless sitcom rerun, as Jonathan lets out a deep sigh. “I was gonna talk to you about that.”
“When? As you were walking out the door?”
“I would’ve done it before this weekend,” he says. “I didn’t know until last night. The doctor cleared me, and the studio wants to get a jump on it so they don’t have to push back the dates.”
I nod, so he knows I heard him, and pull my legs up, tucking them beneath me as I lay against the arm of the couch, staring at the television.
“You’re mad,” he says.
“I’m not.”
“Annoyed.”
“No.”
“Then, what? Indifferent? Because you’re sure not happy.”
I look over at him as he stands there, watching me, brow furrowed like he’s expecting some sort of reaction that I’m not giving him.
“I’m not mad,” I tell him again. “I guess I’m just... sad. I knew it would happen sooner or later. I knew this couldn’t last, that you’d have to go, but I thought we’d have a little more time.”
He frowns, coming closer. “It’s only a month. After that, filming should be over and…”
“And what?” I ask when he trails off. “What happens then?”
“Then I’ll come back.”
“Then you’ll come back,” I mumble. “For how long? A couple days? Another six weeks, maybe? But then you’ll be off again—shooting, promot
ing, doing interviews… meetings, auditions, classes… not to mention the red carpets, the studio parties, the networking.”
He makes a face when I say that last one, reacting as if it’s an accusation. And maybe it is, I don’t know. Other than sad, I don’t know how I’m feeling. I’m a twisted up mess, a broken once-hopeful romantic, holding my heart in a clenched fist and begging him to take it, yet I’m afraid to let go and give him that kind of control.
Because the last time I gave my heart to him, he crushed it.
“For however long I’m wanted,” he says, “so that depends on you.”
I shake my head. That’s a cop-out answer. “You don’t mean that. You might think you do, but you don’t. We don’t live in a box, Jonathan. The world still exists outside of these walls. And that world, it’s never going away.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?” I ask, genuinely wondering if he understands what he’s getting himself into. “When was the last time you stayed in one place for more than a week? When was the last time you slept in the same bed, night after night? Because I’m not sure you remember what that’s like.”
“Is that not what I’ve been doing? I’ve been here, haven’t I?”
“This doesn’t count.”
“Why doesn’t it?”
“Because it just doesn’t.”
He shakes his head, running a hand through his hair as he says, “This is ridiculous.”
What’s ridiculous, I think, is how much my chest aches when I look at him. How much my insides coil when I hear his laughter. How much his smile sets my soul on fire. What’s ridiculous is how lost I feel when I think about the future.
Jonathan always was a dreamer, walking around with stars in his eyes. Seeing that light dim as the drugs took over was one of the worst feelings in the world. There was nothing I could do to stop it. I tried and failed every single time.
But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from it all, it’s that we have to be our own heroes. No guy in a costume is coming to save us. We have to save ourselves.
“I forgive you,” I tell him, not sure if he knows that, but I think he needs to hear it. “And I know you came here to make amends, but you don’t owe me anything. The only person you owe anything to is that little girl in her bedroom. She deserves a father, and you leaving is going to scare her, because she’s gotten used to having you around.”
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