METHOD

by Kate Stewart

  For any of our problems, for any miscommunications. I am exhausted with worry and fretting over the decisions he’s making, his actions. His actions are his own, and he can’t convince me differently. And if he is attracted to her to the point that he acted on it, what does that mean for us? Furious tears trail down my cheeks as I try to again catch my breath. It’s too much.

  A saint wouldn’t have the patience to deal with this. Career or not, he broke promises, and I deserve some answers. But I have to wait for those.

  For the first time in all our years together, I’m ready to abandon our relationship.

  No excuse will be good enough. He knew, beneath whatever layers he’s constructed, he knew beneath the madness he’s surrounding himself in. He also knew before the premiere he would have to come clean about that kiss. So why? Why do it? Maybe if we’d discussed it and I hadn’t been blindsided, I would have reacted more rationally. Or perhaps he did it to end us because he knew that would be what it took.

  “You’re gonna have to be the one that walks away from this, because it won’t be me.”

  Did he purposefully push me out of his life?

  Halfway down our walkway, I pause when Amanda’s words from our conversation at the diner strike me like lightning. “It was like whiplash. Blake was smiling one minute and screaming the next. He was never comfortable on set or off while filming. The only time he wasn’t restless was when he slept, and that too was rare. I’m telling you, Mila, it’s the job that drives them crazy.”

  “I don’t know what the hell he’s doing, but he’s pushing too far—himself, me.”

  Amanda eyes the waitress who refills her coffee before taking her leave and then leans over the table. “Sometimes, I think there was a lot more going on behind the scenes than I thought.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He drank a lot on the set of Buzzed, a lot. I remember smelling it when we filmed, and no one said a word, not even his mother. It was as if they were giving him permission. It was just weird. They constantly argued between themselves—the producers, the directors. It was a hot mess. I think that’s one of the reasons the show got canceled. But they never said a word about his drinking and they didn’t fire him—they just let him do whatever he wanted. Mila, he was only thirteen-years-old. You don’t give a thirteen-year-old that much power.”

  I was in and out of my thoughts as she spoke, but it was one sentence in particular that had my whole body shuddering.

  “He was so nervous back then, had these crazy habits, juggling, shuffling cards, oh and this coin trick that used to drive me crazy. He was just erratic. Lashing out one day, happy the next. It was unreal. I steered clear of him during the show. We weren’t close then. When we got together years later, he had chilled out some. But that’s Blake. And Lucas isn’t Blake.”

  “Oh my God,” I say, as unease settles over my bones while I pull my cell from my purse and frantically scroll for Amanda’s number. Filled with trepidation, I stare at our front door, thankful when she answers on the first ring.

  “Hey girl, did you get home okay? I was worried tha—”

  “Amanda,” I say with a jittery voice. “You said Blake did a coin trick.”

  “Yeah,” she says, her tone a question. “Why?”

  “Wh—what color was the coin?”

  “What?”

  “The coin Blake used for his trick. What color was it?”

  “Gold. I think it was some European coin. He used to flip it constantly between his fingers when he was reading his script, you know, like Val Kilmer does in that old movie Real Genius? Yeah, Val was one of Blake’s heroes. Come to think of it, I couldn’t find it when we packed.”

  “Oh, God.” My stomach rolls. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  “What? Mila, you’re scaring me.”

  “I’m scaring myself,” I whisper as I gaze at the door, fighting the threatening nausea. “Did anyone else…do you know if Lucas had a key to Blake’s condo?”

  “I’m not sure. Probably…why? What’s going on?”

  “Amanda, I can’t…oh God,” I slump against the side of the house all the fight leaving my body. “I’ll call you back.”

  “Okay, love. I’ll be here.”

  “I’ll call you back,” I repeat, fixated on our front door in a daze, afraid of what I might find lurking behind it. I take deep breaths to try to calm myself. Finally finding the courage to turn the knob, I step inside far too leary for what I’m about to face.

  Immediately, I hear Blake’s voice fill the living room which sends a chill up my spine. “You’re such a fucking square, Walker.”

  “And you’re an asshole, Iceman.”

  Iceman.

  My stomach rolls again as I do my best to inhale the breath I can’t seem to catch. Walking into the living room, I see Lucas is fully absorbed in the home movie the four of us made in Mexico years ago. We’d vacationed together in Baja on a borrowed yacht. It was one of the best trips we’d ever had. Lucas had just wrapped a film, and Blake was still in demand but was on a filming break of his own. The trip had been thrown together in a matter of days. I was filming the movie on one of Blake’s old handhelds and had just caught Amanda as her eyes rolled. You could see the shake of the shot due to my laughter as I recorded our husbands, who were drunk off their asses, busting each other’s balls. Lucas looks on at the movie, rapt with glazed eyes, agony twisting his features.

  How could I not see it?

  Staring at his profile, I note the cracks in his posture, heavy sorrow etched in his face. He’s watching a life he’ll never get back.

  A life he threw away.

  A life he ended.

  Treading lightly until I’m just a foot away, I softly speak his name. “Blake.”

  My suspicions are confirmed when Lucas looks up and over to me as if he’s been answering to that name his whole life. I have to fight myself not to scream out in reaction with the way he so easily responds. Swallowing, I take a step forward, engaging him. “Blake, what did you have to do to get roles like this?”

  He shakes his head adamantly, and it’s then that I see it. Shame. Along with profound sadness, it’s written all over him as I approach the couch cautiously. It’s there, the unease I feel, that I’ve felt every time I was in Blake’s presence when he was alive. “Tell me, what did you have to do to get roles like this?”

  His silence speaks volumes as his eyes dim of all light, and he reverts his gaze back to the screen.

  “You did…favors for them, right? You didn’t want anyone to know, did you?” I say, rounding the couch. “Am I right? Is that why you did it?”

  “I don’t answer to you.”

  Covering my mouth, I bite my lips as my tears flood. “What did they do to you?”

  He leaps from the couch at warp speed, his hands clenched at his sides.

  “I don’t answer to you!”

  “Fine,” I manage calmly, “If you won’t tell me, then call Amanda and answer to her. She deserves to know.” Ending the stand-off I could never have prepared for, I walk down the hall and into my bedroom. Grabbing my suitcase, I stuff a few things from my bathroom I can’t get on the fly and turn to see him standing at the door with his arms crossed. His face is blank when he surveys my packing. He can’t possibly care that his wife is leaving because I’m not his wife.

  “This isn’t smart for the image,” he snaps.

  “Because that’s what it’s all about, right?” I shrug as I toss a few sundresses in. “Not my problem.”

  “You think this is easy?” It’s the same accusatory tone he’s used for months, and I’m done with it, done catering to it. It’s exhausting being Blake West’s anything. I’m still shaking inside with the unveiling of the truth, but I reply with my own. “Easy, no. But I think you’ve done the perfect job complicating things on your own. You’ve made one selfish decision after another. These are your sins. You created them, and we are all suffering for it.”

  “I’m not try
ing to hurt you!” Lucas is somewhere in there, but it’s too late. I can’t take the deceit, no matter how many clues I missed.

  “You’re destroying your best friend and his life. Isn’t it enough you ruined your own?”

  “He’s doing this for me, he owes me,” he insists, pressing a finger to his chest.

  Closing my suitcase, I look up at him and clear my eyes before zipping it up. I walk over to where he stands. “I’m sorry, but you’re not the one I’m supposed to save.” Pushing past him, I walk down the hall with my bag in hand, and he follows. I turn back just before I reach the door.

  “You always hated me,” he snaps. “I saw the way you looked at me.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Well, you won, happy?” A sinister grin covers his face, and I sink further into despair. He plays him so well, how could I have missed it?

  I was too close. I saw what I wanted to see, my grieving husband playing a madman.

  “Am I happy?” I repeat, making my way toward the front door. “No, far from it.”

  “Who’s breaking the rules now?” I snap my eyes to his.

  Rule Number One: Don’t take the process personally.

  Rule Number Two: Go with it and trust.

  Rule Number Three: All parts belong to me.

  Rule Number Four: Only in grief do we leave the other.

  Does the grief that’s seized me count if it’s not literal? What about his, does his grief count? It may not be the exact definition of the rule we made but grief is most definitely the reason we are breaking it.

  It’s then with our eyes locked I see the burden of our expectations, and just how miserably we failed each other.

  Briefly, I see my husband’s emerging emotions running rampant in his eyes before he schools his features and the menace is back. “He’s been a good husband, hasn’t he?”

  “Yes,” I sniff, sucking up the rest of my composure. “The best.”

  “You can’t leave him because he’s protecting me!”

  Maybe it should matter that it’s the first time he’s come close to breaking character, but it’s too late.

  “Why not?” I fire back, lifting my chin to fight Blake’s ghost head on. “You did.”

  Opening the door, I glance back at him and decide to draw the only weapon I have left. “Do me a favor, when you can, let my husband know I’m pregnant.” I don’t bother looking for his reaction because it will break what’s left of me, so I pull the door shut.

  “Mila,” erupts from deep within him before his palm hits the closed door between us.

  Mila

  On my way up to the cottage in the hills, it all begins to make sense. Lucas must have been the one to go through Blake’s things before Amanda and I got there. He must’ve unearthed the truth and the reason for Blake’s demons. The more I scramble for clues, the more that strikes me of what had been apparent all along. The morning after Blake had committed suicide, I rose from sleep early and found Lucas fully dressed in the living room, shrouded in the dark. He didn’t speak, hardly a word that day or the day after. And since then, Lucas became more and more absent. He’d found the answers to why Blake took his life, and it had only spiraled him to put on the mask he now wore.

  Lucas isn’t acting as Nikki Rayo.

  Blake West is playing Nikki Rayo, and it’s damn near cost my husband his sanity. I’m at a loss, dumbfounded by both his audacity and his brilliance. The characteristics I recognized while Lucas was home were all Blake. Things I should have caught onto much faster. It wasn’t Nikki who bought me that necklace, it was a manic Blake.

  All of it was Blake.

  “Jesus, Lucas, what were you thinking?”

  But he told me. It’s as simple as guilt. He said he owed Blake. He was too buried inside his grief to realize how positively crazy this idea was. Or maybe he thought utilizing Blake’s villainous traits while playing Rayo would help his process.

  It’s genius and crazy and nothing less than what I should have expected. My husband is a risk-taker and has been since he set foot in Hollywood. He goes to great lengths to prove a point, and he’s demonstrated that time and time again. I should have known, I should have seen it, but as his wife, I feel violated and manipulated.

  Maybe he thought if he could convince me, he could do a better job convincing everyone else. Whatever his reasoning is, it’s torn us apart. And I let it. I broke my own rule after ostracizing him for the same. We’re unrecognizable because I didn’t trust him. We’re unrecognizable because he broke my trust.

  It’s. Too. Fucking. Much.

  I’m thinking on the defensive, and I don’t want to hate Lucas. I don’t need any more reasons to be angry. Shifting my thoughts another way I try to reason with the side that harbors the guilt. We’d lived twenty minutes away from Blake. Twenty minutes. Could we have saved him? Could we have done more?

  Absolutely.

  Lucas needs closure for that guilt, that’s apparent. He’s waged war on himself because of it. How do you make it up to your best friend for the fact you weren’t there for both his downfall and ultimately his demise? How do you turn his tragedy into something you can make peace with?

  Lucas had colored every part of himself in the insignia of Blake West.

  Mind scattered, I pull up to my cottage as the weight settles. I may have broken my own rule but I’m pregnant, and I have more than myself to think about. So far, every part of this revelation has felt like a betrayal, but I will not subject the well-being of myself or that of our child for any part in this lunacy. I’m breaking apart piece by piece trying to sift through the ashes of three lives. My husband is sacrificing himself and our marriage in some sort of effort to redeem Blake. He’s gone much too far, and maybe he trusted me too much. But it isn’t Lucas I’m leaving, it’s Blake I’m abandoning. Or perhaps it’s both.

  And what a performance.

  Lucas

  “Hey, man, you want another beer?”

  “Yeah,” I say, sprawled on the large beach mat next to him looking across the water. It’s hot but the bleached sand is deflecting it nicely, and there’s just enough of a breeze where it’s comfortable. “This is beautiful.”

  “Not bad,” Blake says, taking a sip of his beer. “Peaceful.” He pops the top of a Corona and hands it to me as he looks on at Mila and Amanda frolicking in the ocean. They’re wearing brilliant twin smiles and occasionally looking back at us. I bite my lip at the sight of my wife’s beautiful ass in her new bikini, the curve of her hips, the lines of her neck, the loose tendrils of hair that have escaped her sloppy bun. She’s in her element in the sparkling surf.

  “You really do love her,” Blake says, eyeing me as I admire her. “Like soul-deep love.”

  “I do. And you’re one to talk,” I nod toward them, “that redhead has you by the balls.”

  “That she does. I didn’t like her at all when we met. She had those fucking judgy eyes. I thought no way in hell would she be the type I’d get along with. And back then, on the show, I don’t think she was. But meeting her the second time, she was the opposite, just so laid-back, with dancing skeletons in her own closet, and she was honest about it. Didn’t give two shits who knew about them, and I love that about her. She’s beautiful, and she’s brave. I admire her. I truly do. I just…I just, damn, I fell hard. There’s no going back.”

  “I’m relieved.”

  He smirks. “Why, because you’re done babysitting?”

  “It’s not that, man. It’s just so much easier when you find someone that understands you.”

  Blake is already nodding. “Yeah.”

  “I don’t think I’ve been honest enough with Mila about my past life.”

  Blake’s eyes train on a seagull. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve told her some about the conditions but not all. The circumstances of when I was young. When she asks for more, I shut her down. I save it for film. And in a way, I feel like she doesn’t need to know.”

  “Then don�
�t. You don’t want her pity. You don’t have to always put a voice to the shit that hurt you. Therapy is a fucking joke. Especially for actors, when we get enough of it every day. We get to work through our own shit. That’s the beauty of it, we get to hide in plain sight.”

  “I’ve never looked at it that way.”

  “No, because you do it every day already.” He swallows. “Just don’t let the therapy spill into your real life too much. Save the rage for the stage.”

  “Nice,” I say, tipping my head toward him as we clank bottles.

  “That’s a West original, you can borrow it.”

  “I just might.”

  Another minute of waves and seagulls lulls us into where we are, a piece of paradise.

  I broach the subject that’s been bothering me for years. “It may be a West original, but you don’t follow it.”

  He takes a sip. “That’s true.”

  “Why do you let yourself spill over so much?”

  The breeze drifts over us, grabbing the hair away from his forehead as he stares down at his bottle. “I think the better question is: why haven’t I ever heard my internal director?”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning, mine has never once yelled cut.”

  Frowning, I go to speak when we’re bombarded by two soaking wet beauties. I fight to reach Blake, to grab his attention, but he wrestles his wife into his lap before he looks back at me with a million-watt smile. It’s one of the only times I’ve ever seen him smile like that, so at peace. “It’s a good life,” he mouths as he trails his fingers down Amanda’s bare skin. My questions fall away as Mila throws a leg over me and lays her head on my chest. Seconds later, we fall asleep next to the soothing sound of waves.

  I’m being dragged by my collar into the garage. The gravel digging into my skin beneath my suit.