After I Was His

by Amelia Wilde

  “How’s it going, Wanda?”

  “Making adjustments.” Wanda doesn’t take her eyes off the front of my shirt. “It’ll be another five.”

  “Make it two. We need Whit onstage.”

  I cock my head to the side and keep my torso perfectly still so as not to disturb Wanda’s adjustment magic. I didn’t see what was wrong with the top when she fussed over it originally, but she’s been in the business for fifteen years, and I’m not the type to argue with a true professional.

  “Onstage?” I pitch the question as neutrally as possible. It’s been four—no, five—hours since I got here straight from work, and it was an intense rehearsal. “We wrapped, didn’t we?”

  “Oh, yeah. Yeah, that last run was great, but Rowan wants to run a couple scenes one more time. Get it super tight before we dive in to the more extended runs tomorrow afternoon. A couple of notes—”

  His notes tumble into one side of my brain and melt away under the stage lights. It’s the breakup scene Rowan wants to run, and I’m jittery with all the emotion, at all the blank seats in the front row. I normally don’t look at them, but tonight they’re drawing my attention like a laser beam is behind my eyes, tracking for that red velvet. And how empty it is. Empty, empty, empty.

  I texted Wes two hours ago, saying I’d be home soon. Jesus, was that off.

  When I get home, I’m going to jump him. I’m going to give him hurricane-force sex and jolt him right out of his worry. Because he will worry. Three times now, he’s taken the train and met me at the theater, so I don’t have to come home alone. He sits on the aisle in the train, bracing himself against whatever horrors the New York City subway might be saving for me. The man deserves a hot night, and I’m going to give it to him. And despite everything, despite Jason’s twisted face, three feet from mine, the heat from the lights and the raised voices curling around us, I smile.

  “What was that?” Rowan’s voice cuts in, analytical and amazed at the same time. “That was the craziest choice I’ve ever seen you make.”

  “I—” Honestly, she hasn’t seen me make many choices.

  Rowan takes the side stairs two at a time. She plants herself right on the edge and stares me down. Jason, who’s been roped into this through no fault of his own, watches with detached interest. He knows as well as I do that Rowan will want to work through this now if there’s hope of adding more sharp intensity to the scene.

  “Let’s see that again.” She crosses her arms over her chest. She’s going to watch this up-close, which means micromanaging every moment. It can be frustrating as hell, this method, but when she’s finished, we have these shining jewels of moments that don’t feel hard to access at all.

  But then—Wes.

  I open my mouth to ask for one minute—one text—but Rowan claps her hands. “From the top.”

  Guilt swoops down the back of my neck and settles in my gut, but it’s burned away in a flare of tired excitement. Usually, I’m the one driving these last-minute attacks on expectations and routine, but Rowan’s white-knuckling the driver’s seat, and all I can do is come along for the ride.

  I’m sure Wes will understand.

  I throw open the side door of the theater, trying to take my phone out at the same time, and run headlong into a chest that’s as hard as a brick wall. He’s moving so fast it knocks the wind out of me.

  “Shit. Fuck—” I reel backward, into the doorframe, and he catches me with sure hands. Wes. “Jesus, Wes, I thought you were a mugger.”

  “You don’t want to know what I thought.” His hands move over my arms, my waist, light touches everywhere, as if he’s confirming that I’m real and alive.

  I push into him, letting his arms fall heavily around me, and squeezing tight. “Rehearsal ran late.”

  “I can fucking see that now.”

  I take his hand and pull back, so I can look him in the eyes. “God, you’re sweet.”

  “I’m not trying to be—”

  “Let’s go to dinner.”

  Wes’s eyes flash. “What?”

  “Let’s go to dinner. I’m starving. And it’s a beautiful night.” I tip my head back and look up toward the sky. There’s too much light pollution to see the stars, but it’s an inky orange above Manhattan and I want to be out in it. I want to be eating and drinking and forgetting. I want to fill the last remaining void with food and laughter. “Let’s wake up Summer and Day and go out. Wasn’t that so much fun?”

  He stares down at me, face impassive, and then he squeezes my hand. It feels like pity. “Come on, Whit. Let’s go home.”

  “Are we really that boring?” I draw a fingertip down the front of his shirt—gray and plain and somehow one of the sexiest things I’ve ever seen on a man. “I want to go out. This day has been never-ending, and I’m so hungry, and—”

  “There’s food at the apartment.” He pulls away, toward the street. I can feel him, pulling toward home, and I don’t want to go that way. All of my energy sparks in the opposite direction. I’m not sure where, exactly, that is, but those are just details. We can figure the rest out on the fly.

  “But it’s not exciting.” The city is still awake around us. Taxis whip by on 45th, and someone’s bachelorette party whoops by on the sidewalk. I want to be in that. I need to be in that. I need to be far away from here, from the exhaustion settling in over my shoulders like a too-heavy coat, from that barren first row of seats. I know that sounds crazy. Of course nobody’s going to be sitting in the first row during rehearsal, but the sight of it— “We’ve got the whole city, right here at our feet, Wes, and—”

  The pressure disappears from my hand and Wes moves in close, so close that the air is full of him, that my skin is full of him. Hands on my face. Tension sings through his palms. They’re rough. Not desk-job hands. It sends a shiver racing over the curves of my shoulders. “I don’t give a fuck about the city. Do you understand?” I’m melting in his grip, even while a part of me—a part of me deep down inside that I can’t squeeze into submission—struggles against the ringing authority in his voice. “Do you get that, Whit? Why would I care about the city when I’ve got the entire world in my hands?”

  Me. He means me.

  It’s the rawest admission, straight from the center of his soul, and my next breath sears into my lungs. “Wes—”

  “Don’t argue with me.” Determination flares in his green eyes, reflected in the glow from the streetlight at the end of the alley. “You can’t keep doing this. You can’t keep waltzing off into God knows where—”

  “We both know where. We’re both standing in the same city. If you’d only come with me, you’d see that—”

  He presses closer and it’s so intimate that I half want to give in. We’re both wearing a surplus of clothes, and I want all of Wes’s body in light like this, murky and golden and glorious.

  I also want the loud crush of a bar, the din of people shouting over one another, that heady, drunk feeling where nothing is wrong and everything has always been right.

  “Do you ever listen?” Wes growls the words, his eyes searching mine. “Do you ever shut up for two seconds and listen?”

  “No. I never do. I thought that was what you liked about me.”

  “Jesus, Whit, you’re so—” He looks down into my face. “You’re so fucking frustrating. You don’t even know what you’re walking into. I came here to make sure—”

  To make sure I was safe. That’s what he’s about to say, and suddenly I can’t bear to hear it. I’m a grown woman. I can handle this situation. “I’m fine, Wes, I’m really fine.” I shift my weight back, pulling away, and he won’t have it. The excitement in my gut curdles to a fine, hot irritation. “I was going to get the subway and come home. Christ, you don’t have to be such a control freak.”

  He drops his hands away from my face and the summer air feels cold against my skin. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “You’re going to have to get over it, one of these days.”

  His
expression goes hard. “Get over what, exactly?”

  “The difficult schedule.” I run a hand over my hair. It’s a mess. I’ve had clothes tugged on and off all night, and not in the fun way. “I get that it’s hard for you to get out of your routine, but—”

  He backs up another step. “I’m not out of any routine. You haven’t been around for the last few weeks, so maybe you haven’t noticed, but that routine is the reason you always have food to eat when you come home at one in the morning—”

  “I can’t help that. They scheduled evening rehearsals to accommodate me, so—”

  “That’s not the point, Whit. The point is, I’ve built a life to keep us both afloat, and you’re here trying to convince me that heading out into the city in the middle of the fucking night is the responsible thing to do—”

  “I’m trying to convince you that responsibility isn’t the only way to live on the earth, for God’s sake, and if you never stop being so rigid and fucking boring—”

  “I’d rather be rigid and boring than an erratic idiot who doesn’t care about anyone else.”

  “You know what? You know what?” The hurt hits while I’m still spitting the words, a shockwave like a secondary earthquake, the ground lurching beneath my feet. “If I’m so erratic and stupid—”

  “You are!” Wes explodes. I can see him vibrating with the effort to maintain some sort of stillness. “Fuck. You’re not stupid. You know I didn’t mean that. But you spend half your time dragging us off into bullshit that I—”

  “Into bullshit that you’d never try on your own because you’re too obsessed with your precious routine! God, what happened to you in the Army, Wes?” I can’t wipe the sneer from my face. It’s ugly. I can feel it. I just can’t stop it, stop the bubbling hurt—

  “I hope you never find out,” he thunders. “That’s why I’m here, in the middle of the fucking night, because I don’t want you to find out what it’s like.”

  “I’m not in a war zone. What’s wrong with you?”

  He shakes his head. “You’re blind. You’re just blind to it. You think this is a fucking game. You think this is all a fun little game, and you don’t care what happens.”

  His words settle in, a dark haze, and I feel every single moment of work today, of rehearsal, of the emotionally draining work on the stage, those empty seats, everything. “Fuck off, Wes.”

  He shoves his hands in his pockets and looks over his shoulders, checking once, twice. “That’s what you really want? Me to fuck right off and leave you alone? Because fucking Christ, Whitney, I’ll do it.”

  “Yeah.” I spit the word at him like a curse. “Yeah, I do.”

  His jaw works, and the next instant, his hand is locked on my elbow, pulling me toward the street. It’s like I weigh nothing. Like I’m not dragging my heels, even though I most definitely am. I pound a fist ineffectually against his hand.

  “Hey, asshole, I said fuck off, and this isn’t—”

  He tugs me right along to the curb and one step into the street and oh, my God, am I going to have to scream? Am I going to have to make a huge scene in front of the theater? My colleagues are going to be walking out at any second—

  Wes looks into the street and swings his other hand into the air. The traffic rushes into my vision then—two blue cars and a yellow cab behind them both, its light on. The cab swings to the curb in front of us.

  “What—”

  He wrenches the door open with his free hand and then, with so much gentleness I almost die right then and there, he lowers me into the backseat. His face is a thunderstorm. Wes leans in behind me, almost on top of me, and tosses some folded bills up toward the cabby. He reels off our address—my address. “Get her home safely. I’ve got your cab number. Do you hear me?”

  “I’ve got it,” says the cab driver, and then Wes slams the door behind me.

  I can’t breathe.

  I twist in my seat, looking for him. I want to finish this conversation. It doesn’t feel finished. It feels like a nightmare. But all I see the line of his shoulders, disappearing from a pool of light into a pool of darkness down the block. He’s already gone. He’s done what I asked and fucked right off.

  “You all right?” The cabbie’s eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror. I’m crying. I raise a hand to wipe the tears from my cheeks. I’m going to need a towel. “I don’t have to take you where he said. I can take you anywhere.”

  I swallow a jagged sob and straighten my back. “No, he was right.” The words taste bitter, acrid. “He was right.”

  28

  Wes

  “—if you were doing okay.”

  I catch the tail end of the sentence, like it’s coming at me underwater, the sound waves distorted and strange. My head breaks the surface and instead of clean, fresh air, instead of the deep, cleansing breaths of childhood summers in Michigan, it’s the recycled air of my cubicle at Visionary Response. Greg hovers near the door. He’s watching me, and I’ve been—

  I don’t know what I’ve been doing.

  When I sat down forty-five minutes ago, I had every intention of preparing a summary of the rebuild of the client project in the suburbs. I was right about it—it wasn’t stripping out one thing and substituting another, it was a complete rebuild.

  I had it under control until I walked away from Whitney a week ago.

  A long, agonizing week ago.

  Greg is expecting an answer.

  “Yep. Yeah.” I turn around in my chair, hoping to look casual and probably fucking failing. “Everything’s good. I’m working on a summary now. On your desk this afternoon.”

  He considers me. “I hope you know that all these changes are client-side, Wes. It seems like it’s weighing on you, and I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

  “No, no. I got it. It’s good. It’s—” I’m about to say something to focus on but that would be a stupid thing to tell my boss, that I need something to focus on. I let myself sink into this project like a drowning man because Whitney is like the sun. Even though she’s not mine anymore, I can’t ignore her. She shines through the windows in the morning and sets in my heart at night. It’s fucking terrible. “It’s good to see things from another perspective.” It sounds lame and untrue and feels that way on my tongue.

  Greg just nods. “You were in early this morning.”

  “Yeah. I’ll have this to you any time—”

  “Did you eat breakfast?”

  I blink at him. “Uh, no.”

  “It’s almost twelve-thirty. Get some lunch. Come back fresh.”

  I want to ask him what it is, exactly, that’s making him think I’m not up to the job. I hadn’t planned on lunch out—I planned on working straight through and leaving early. And I know, I know, that if I push hard enough, he’ll leave me alone.

  But he’s my boss, and I’m fucking tired. I’m tired of everything. I’m tired of the cheap hotel I’m staying at, two blocks away. I’m tired of missing Whitney.

  I’m tired of fighting.

  The last thing on earth I want to do is eat lunch with Greg, so I stand up as if he’s released me from a sentence involving putting together this summary, and pat my pocket for my wallet. “You, uh—”

  He raises both hands. “I already ate. You go on.”

  Outside on the sidewalk, with the afternoon sun beating down on my face, I can’t stand it.

  It’s so fucking abrasive, the way Whitney always yanks me out of my plans, the way she’s always trying to stir things up, to make life unpredictable. It’s abrasive and dangerous. But right now, I wish she’d appear on the corner and drag me to some ridiculous, shady hole-in-the-wall and talk my ears off about the mayhem that is an Off-Broadway show. I don’t know how those people ever get anything done, and deep down, I don’t care, but if I could just see her lips move around those words—bright lipstick, dark hair, eyes dancing—she could talk about anything.

  God, I’m so fucking pathetic.

  There’s only one other perso
n who knows how pathetic I feel.

  I pull my phone out of my pocket.

  “Wes?”

  I haven’t even dialed Dayton’s number.

  I blink into the sun.

  It’s not Dayton.

  It’s fucking Ben Powell.

  “Is there anywhere on earth you won’t follow me, you fucking stalker?”

  He cracks a smile and hitches that damn backpack up on his shoulder. “You’re right about one thing. I was looking for you.”

  “We have nothing to talk about, man.” The bristles rise on the back of my neck.

  “That’s not what it looks like. You look like you just got kicked to the curb. Are you fired?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I told you. Looking for you.”

  “I never told you where I work.”

  “Well, you signed up for fucking LinkedIn. Don’t act like we’re in the nineteenth century, bro.”

  Jesus, he’s annoying.

  “So, is it still current? You look pretty forlorn out here.”

  I rub at that knot in the back of my neck. “I didn’t get fired.”

  “Then she left.”

  I stare at him. “How the hell are you so sure of yourself? You disappear for months, and now you want to be my fucking therapist?”

  He laughs, like everything in the world is fine. “I do not want to be your therapist. I wanted to give you something.”

  “Let’s not. Let’s not do a gift exchange outside my office.”

  “That would be a shitty exchange, because I’m sure you don’t have anything for me. Look.” He reaches around and unzips his backpack. I fight the urge to sprint in the other direction. I can’t see what’s in the damn backpack and every nerve screams a warning. I’m on edge like I’ve never been on edge, and it’s Powell—I should be able to trust him with my life. I don’t even trust the breeze.

  “Powell—”

  “Shut it, Sullivan, and look.”

  He withdraws his hand.