Charlie stayed for the weekend. Nothing was discussed. I knew my marriage was over, but it wouldn’t be right to just dump that on him (and we all know I wasn’t brave enough anyway). I just wanted to get through the weekend without talking. Luckily, I was working every day. Afterward we’d go to dinner with Marcel. We didn’t have sex—our sex life had waned anyway, to say the least, and I wasn’t about to resuscitate it.
On set with Dean, I was nervous, confused, and suddenly shy. I didn’t know him. I didn’t know if he hooked up with all his costars. On set the girls liked him. When I was getting makeup and hair done, I’d hear them talking about how cute he was and whether he was available. They’d say it in front of me—they had no idea. And I could see that he liked the attention he got from the ladies. I figured, He probably isn’t happy at home. Maybe whenever he does a movie, he finds someone to sleep with. I’m just another girl in a long line of conquests. I kept asking myself, If that’s all it was, just a hookup, then do you have regrets? But I still didn’t. It had been magical.
The night Charlie left, Monday, Dean asked me to get a drink. I invited Marcel along, and the three of us had a great time. We all came back to the hotel, and Marcel went to bed. Dean and I were talking in the living room of my not-so-fab suite. I fished for whether this was his MO, saying, “You’re probably just going to flirt with girls the whole time.” (“Flirt” was my euphemism for “hook up.”) He asked, “Is that what you think? I just do this all the time?” I said, “Yeah, maybe.” He said, “Well, I don’t.” He, like me, had never done it before.
Even if he wasn’t a philanderer, he was married and had a family. At the very beginning of the shoot, before I’d even seen Dean’s head shot, I had a meeting with the director, Chris. In the movie my character is sleeping with a married man. There’s a scene when I call the house and he’s dismissive of me on the phone because his wife is there. I hang up, upset. I told Chris, “In movies women are always dating married men, and they always think the men are going to leave their wives. But they’re just deluded. Married men never leave their wives for their lovers.” Chris disagreed. He said he’d known men to leave their wives. I said, “It never works out.” If you were going to have an affair, you should know what you were getting into. Each woman thinks her situation is special. I wasn’t about to fall into that trap. I assumed it couldn’t go anywhere.
I didn’t want to be naive. Nonetheless, from that day forward we were inseparable. I’d never had a relationship develop so quickly. There were no uncomfortable first stages of dating. It felt like we’d been together our whole lives. We practically lived together since we were staying at the same hotel. Funny thing is, I had a huge penthouse suite while Dean had a regular room, but 90 percent of the time we stayed in his room. I liked it because it was smaller. Like the laundry cupboard of my youth.
Dean and I hid our relationship from the cast and crew. I’d just learned how to text on my BlackBerry, and I taught Dean how to use his cell to respond. Texting was the medium of our early love notes. He was writing me poems in between takes, and nobody on set knew. Now, time moves differently when you’re falling in love. (Or maybe it’s just that time moves differently on movie sets, but that’s not quite so romantic, is it? So let’s say when you’re falling in love.) All I know is that only twelve days had passed when we were out to dinner with the producers and Marcel. Dean was across the table from me. Everything seemed fine, when I glanced down at my BlackBerry. Dean had texted me: I’m in big trouble. (Actually, it probably said I’m in bjg trouble, but who can blame him—secret texting is an acquired skill.) I looked up at Dean. He was staring at me but gave no indication that something was wrong. Did someone find out? A crew member? His wife? Much as I was dying to know, I didn’t want to pull out my BlackBerry and give us away. Later that night I finally asked him, “Why are you in big trouble?”
He said, “Because I’m in love with you.”
I said, “I love you too.”
It hit home. We’d been living in our own reality where we were together and we were meant to be together. We’d put the world beyond on hold. I hadn’t even talked to my closest friends in the world. Jenny, Mehran, and Zack (who played Mehran in So NoTORIous) would text me to ask how the filming was going. I was scared to tell them the truth, so I sent them responses like, I love it here. I never want to leave Ottawa. They were understandably confused. Ottawa? What was so great about Ottawa? (I’d really come around to Ottawa.) Eventually I ended up telling my friends what was going on. By text. That’s pretty much how I communicate.
In the beginning of the filming I called Charlie every night, but now I called him less and less. I’d e-mail him from Dean’s room to say it was late and I was going to bed. Dean and I had talked about our marriages and shared how and why they weren’t working. I told him everything I’ve told you about how I wasn’t myself with Charlie and how I worked so hard to convince myself it was right because I’d made so many bad choices in the past. As for Dean, his past isn’t mine to tell. All I’ll say is that he was unhappy in his marriage, but he loved his children deeply. Ottawa wouldn’t go on forever. In fact, Ottawa would last only fourteen more days. And then what? What were we going to do? This wasn’t home. There were other people and other hearts involved. I started counting down. At some point I had to deal with this.
After three weeks of shooting we finally had a whole weekend off. The movie producer was going back to his hometown—Montreal—and invited me, Marcel, and Dean to join him.
That weekend in Montreal something happened: Dean and I had our first talk about what would happen when we went home. He wanted to be with me and to spend the rest of his life with me, but because of certain circumstances with his family, he thought we should wait six months. His reasons, which I won’t discuss, made sense to me. But six months was going to be hard.
I kept asking myself, How do I know? How do I know we’ll be together? I didn’t want to be played for a fool. And it was so hard for me to imagine that I could actually end up happily married. Saturday night in our hotel room we were drunk and being silly. I told him that when I was little, our neighbor in Malibu was Lloyd Bridges. I used to play with his grandson—Beau Bridges’s son, Jordan—on the beach. When I was maybe four years old, we pretended we were getting married. We built our wedding cake out of sand, and he made me a wedding ring out of string. I knew it was a silly childhood dream, but I told Dean I’d take anything as a sign that this was real and we were committed. I said, “I just wish I had a promise ring, a string, anything around my finger so I could look down and know that it was all going to work out one day.” As if a ring would make a difference. Wasn’t I that foolish girl having the affair with a married man?
After we talked about a promise ring and parting ways for six months, Dean fell asleep. I went out to the living room of our suite and sat there for an hour, crying quietly. I was crying because I’d met the right person for the first, the only, time in my life, and I didn’t think it would work out. We were both married. And even though I knew I had to leave Charlie, Dean would go back home to his family and realize he belonged there. Even if this felt real and right, it was going to disappear.
After Montreal my hours on the movie kept me on the set later than Dean. The plan was for Dean to bring dinner over to my penthouse. When he appeared, he told me that he had something for me. It was my “unengagement ring,” the promise ring I’d asked for. It was only made out of yarn, but he’d worked hard on it. There was a braided black linen wool string—like the kind of string you’d use for gift-wrapping—and he’d sewn pink thread, my favorite color, through to accent it. (Remember, this is a guy who knows a fabulous bag when he sees one.) Where he tied the ends together, he frayed them out into a spray to look like a ring top. A string ring, a very slightly upgraded version of the one Jordan Bridges made me on the beach in Malibu.
Dean told me that this was my promise ring, the symbol that he was going to marry me one day. When I saw the string
ring, I started crying so hard, and I thought about how when Charlie and I got engaged, he’d put together such an elaborate, romantic night and it didn’t affect me this powerfully. Now I was in a jenky hotel room with burgers and fries and a ring made of string, and I was crying with hope and joy and love. This unengagement meant the world to me.
It was almost the end of the movie shoot when we decided to tell the director, Chris. He and Dean were friends—they’d worked together before—and we’d hung out with him a lot over the course of the filming. We figured he probably knew already. We were both giggling when we said, “We’re in love.” Chris said, “In the movie?” We said, “No! In real life!” He didn’t believe us (or he acted like he didn’t). He said, “For real? But you’re both married.” That sobered us up a bit. We told him, “We’re going to leave our spouses. We’re going to be together.” He said, “You’re both in for a lot of hurt. This is not an easy thing. It’s going to be hard for everyone.” Our bliss clashed—not for the first time—with harsh reality. We looked at each other and said, “Yeah, we know.” Then Dean said, “I’m in love with her. I have to be with her.” I said, “Me too.”
The night we wrapped the movie, everyone went out for drinks. At the bar we sat close to each other. Dean was on my right and my makeup artist, Sarah, was to my left. Dean looked at me and said, “Here’s me. Here’s you. I love you.” Right as he said it, I turned to my left and Sarah had a huge grin on her face. “I knew it!” she said. “I’m so happy! You two are so cute together.” She said that everyone knew. So much for all our efforts at subtlety.
Our work on the movie was done, but we weren’t leaving for two days, so I had a Hawaiian-themed wrap party in my penthouse and rooftop digs. Dean and I decided we’d just be together at the party. We were done hiding. We were in love. It was that simple. In Ottawa, at least. During the party I was dancing, and the ring that Dean made for me flew off. It was dark out. The entire rooftop was covered in little beige rocks. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. I was devastated. My engagement ring! I lost my engagement ring! Dean promised me we’d find it in the morning.
Because the hotel was in a residential neighborhood, we had to shut down our party at ten. Everyone was still feeling celebratory, so we headed to a bar. At the bar there was a private back room, and we knew everyone there—it was just cast and crew—so I was sitting on Dean’s lap, and at some point we were intertwined in a chair. Then I noticed that a cast member had two unfamiliar girls with him. One of the girls was taking photos with a disposable camera. She’d strategically positioned her friend to hide the camera. Clearly she was taking pictures of me and Dean in compromising positions. I went over to confront her. That’s right. Me! I wanted to show Dean how tough I could be.
“Excuse me, are you taking pictures of us?” I asked, in what for me was a pretty accusatory tone. She said, “No, I’m taking pictures of my friend. What do you want me to do, give you my camera?” Whoa. She was defensive. I backed right down. “Oh, sorry, I was just asking. It’s fine,” I said meekly. (Do I really need to tell you that those pictures would come back to haunt me?)
The next morning I was obsessed with finding my string ring before we flew home. It had been so meaningful to me that I was afraid losing it was equally meaningful. Maybe Dean and I weren’t meant to be. Our friends, Dean, and I all searched until we were in danger of missing our flight. Everyone except Dean headed inside to finish packing. Half an hour later Dean came in. He had the ring. He put it on me. Maybe it was meant to be after all.
The flight home was our last five hours together. Dean and I sat next to each other. It started off happy. Dean pulled out our airplane sick bags and we took turns writing down all the things we wanted to do together in life.
I wrote: I want to go wine-tasting in Napa and eat at French Laundry with you.
He wrote: I want to get a place at a beach in California with you.
I wrote: I want to learn Spanish with you.
He wrote: I want to travel the world with you.
I wrote: I want us to go to Maui together.
He wrote: I want to open a bar with you.
I wrote: We promise never to be apart for more than three days.
He wrote: I want us to keep in touch with our Ottawa friends.
I wrote: To love each other madly.
He wrote: To love our children madly.
As the plane descended, so did reality. I started crying. Again. Love was sure making me cry a lot. Dean said, “You have to believe. We’re going to be happy and be together and have lots of children together.” But I knew we had some painful confrontations between here and there.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Breaking News
Charlie wanted to come pick me up at the airport, but I wanted to be able to say good-bye to Dean. So I lied to Charlie and told him I was coming home a day later. (When you’ve already broken your wedding vows, lying about a flight arrival isn’t such a big deal.)
My relationship with Charlie was already strained. I’d stopped calling and e-mailing regularly. Before I left, he made it clear that he wanted us to call or e-mail every single day. The tone of the request was more practical than romantic. He said, “We’re married. You have to make that effort to make a relationship work.” He reminded me of that agreement in an e-mail to Ottawa. It said that he’d been trying to contact me for three or four days and only got short e-mails in return. He reminded me that relationships take work and I wasn’t working on ours. I just apologized.
When Dean and I landed, each of us had a car waiting. Our good-bye was short. We hugged and said we loved each other. He and his family were heading to Palm Springs the next day for a weeklong family vacation with another couple. He said, “I promise I’ll text you. I’ll call you when I can.” We parted.
Charlie was in his office on the computer when I came in a day earlier than he expected me. “Surprise!” I gave him a hug, then told him I had a headache from the flight (I often get migraines when I fly) and went straight to bed. Exhaustion. Avoidance. The two had completely blended in my head.
When I woke up, all I knew was that I had to get out of the house. I met up with Jenny and Mehran at the W Hotel in Westwood. Out on the patio I told them the entire story, down to the pink thread in the string ring. Neither of them seemed particularly surprised that my marriage had bombed in such short order. When Jenny said, “Well, we all knew it wasn’t right,” I had to respond, “Why didn’t you tell me?!” You sort of think that if you’re making the biggest mistake of your life, one of your lifelong best friends who have been surrogate family for years will stop you. But Mehran reminded me that he’d tried to tell me in subtle and not-so-subtle ways (yeah, I guess planning our dramatic helicopter escape from the wedding should have been a clue). It was then that they explained that Jenny had told Mehran to let me figure it out for myself. Something about that sounded so parental—protective and supportive, but, I don’t know, kind of like I was a baby bird they were pushing out of the nest.
The next day I told my other two best friends, Amy and Sara. Jenny and Mehran joined us for a summit on the patio of the Four Seasons. Again, no one was surprised. But they were wary of the fact that Dean was married with kids and that I was telling them we wanted to get married as soon as our divorces were final. Why so fast? What was the rush? We knew we were supposed to be together from the moment we met. We’d waited our whole lives to find each other, and we were hurting other people in the process. Why dillydally? My friends were suspicious and wanted to meet him. I wanted them to meet him too, but all I could do was show them photos of Dean and his kids—they were a part of him, and I loved them for that before I ever met them. But Jenny claims that even as I told them how much I loved him, I kept saying, “I know he’s not going to leave his wife. I know this isn’t going to work out.”
Three days passed during which I avoided Charlie as much as possible, staying out all day shopping with Jenny and Mehran, then pleading exhaustion
and forcing myself to crash at nine p.m.—not an easy feat for a night owl. Dean was texting and leaving me messages, reassuring me whenever he got a free moment. Nothing had changed. He was still in love with me. He felt as miserable and duplicitous as I did. Then, in one instant, everything changed. Mehran and I were hanging out, and my phone rang. It was Dean. He said, “I left her. I just left her. I’m on my way back from Palm Springs.” I’d been expecting to live this lie for six months. It had only been three days and here was Dean saying, “I have to see you. Can you meet me?”
Of course. Of course I wanted to see him right away. But my head was spinning. Oh my God, was this really happening? Oh my God, I had to leave Charlie. How would I tell him? What would I tell him? I knew it was unavoidable. I had already checked out. I couldn’t look him in the eye. In my head it was done, and there was no way I could spend six more months with him and then leave. I’d been so focused on worrying that it wouldn’t work out, that I’d lose Dean. Now I started dreading the confrontation with Charlie. I wanted it to be over with. Through the dizzy rush of hope and dread I heard Dean on the other end of the line saying, “Where are you going to be?”
I’m not one for a tête-à-tête. I do better surrounded by my faithful support team. Besides, I needed my friends to meet Dean. No part of me thought I was making another mistake, but I wanted them to meet him, to see us, and to—well, to give me their blessing. So I told Dean to meet me and Mehran on the patio of the Chateau Marmont on the Sunset Strip. (I seem to conduct all my powwows on the patios of hotel bars.) I called Amy and Marcel (whom Dean knew well from Ottawa) to join us.
As we waited on the patio, I kept looking at the doorway. I was nervous. Ottawa was one thing. We’d always have Ottawa, et cetera, et cetera. But now we were at home. Would seeing him through my friends’ eyes change how I felt? Would everything be different? Suddenly Dean appeared. As soon as I saw him, the fear drained right out of me. It all came rushing back. This was my love. He’d come for me. That imaginary prince I’d given up on years ago had finally shown up. This was right. It did and didn’t matter what my friends thought, but they all felt completely comfortable with him. It seemed like a natural fit, but they didn’t like the situation. They were worried about how it would all shake down, and so was I.
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