Off the Record

by Camryn Garrett

  “But not everything is like that,” I say, leaning forward. “Like, there are murderers or whatever—”

  “Murderers?”

  “I’m pretty sure this record producer from the eighties killed someone,” I say, waving a hand. “But if there’s a director who has, like, raped people or abused their wives, can you still watch their stuff?”

  He pauses. Swallows. I would’ve felt bad for pressing him so hard before, but not now. I need to know this.

  “I don’t think so,” he says finally. “That wouldn’t— I don’t think I could.”

  “Yeah.” I stare at my hot cocoa. I’ve barely touched it. “I think that’s a basic human response. But there are lots of people who hear about these things and act like nothing happened.”

  “I guess people might just feel so far removed from this stuff, you know?” He’s doing what he did when we first met: talking with his hands. “Actors and directors and singers and just—I don’t know—anyone you see in the news, it’s like you don’t really know them. So if you hear an allegation, you don’t know whether or not it’s true, and it’s in a different universe, so it doesn’t feel real. Does that make sense?”

  “I guess,” I say. “But there are people who stand up for those men when they hear an allegation, even if they don’t know the truth. I just don’t understand—like, when women get raped, a lot of people call them liars. And I don’t know why someone’s first response would be to assume a woman is lying about something like that.”

  “It’s easier, I think.” He stares into his mug. “It’s easier to think someone is lying than to think about something so horrible happening.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Or,” he says, “they just don’t care.”

  It seems like too simple an explanation, but it still adds up. At school, a lot of kids pick maybe three things to care about—prom, sports, and maybe student council or yearbook—and they blow off everything else. I guess it’s not wrong to focus on what’s important to you, but I feel like I care about everything. It seems like Marius does, too, so much that it bleeds out into his expressions. So why doesn’t he care about this?

  Asking these questions was a chance to retrace my steps, but his answers aren’t helping. There’s no magic quote to pull the story together. It feels like I’m missing something. With a sigh, I glance down at my notebook.

  “I have another question,” I say, pulling my mug toward me. “Completely different. Can you just get into character right away, or does it take you a while? I was reading about how some actors stay in character during the entire shoot.”

  “Oh.” His whole demeanor perks up, tension fading from his shoulders. “It’s sort of both for me. There’s a general mood for the day, usually. I wanted to take time to get into the headspace for each scene, so sometimes I’d isolate myself. But I wasn’t in character all of the time. It’d be cool to explore that, though, maybe on another movie.”

  “That’s interesting,” I say. “So you need time to prepare before you can immerse yourself in a character? Like, if I just gave you a scene right now, would you be able to do it?”

  “Well, yeah, that’s kind of what auditions are,” he says. “You practice as much as possible, but you become much closer to the character when you’re actually cast.”

  “What are auditions like?”

  “I’m pretty close to the character and the scene, because I’ve probably been reading it over and over again,” he says, gesturing with his left hand. I scoot his mug back so he doesn’t knock it over. “But there’s a deeper kind of immersion that happens once you’ve spent some time in the role. I don’t know if that makes sense.”

  “No, it does, it does,” I say. I like hearing him speak, especially about things like this. “I’ve never really thought about this sort of thing. I just pictured people walking onto the set and acting or, like, snapping out of it as soon as the director yells ‘Cut.’ ”

  “Sometimes,” he says, tilting his head to the side. The silver hoop in his nose catches the light. “In high school, I had this one teacher who made us memorize a monologue and perform it in front of the class. It was, like, freshman year. And people were talking and laughing, I guess because they were nervous, but I had to sit in the hall the entire period before it was my turn so I could get ready.”

  “Wow.”

  “I get nervous,” he says, blushing like the subject of an Italian painting. “But I also need time to just—transform. I don’t know. Maybe that sounds stupid.”

  “It doesn’t sound stupid.” I force myself to stare down at my notebook. “I like listening to you.”

  It doesn’t make sense. I’m frustrated with him because of Lennox, but he doesn’t seem evil. Most of the time, he seems compassionate. And he’s still the same person I like to look at and listen to and try not to think about too often. I want to know what he thinks about Lennox, if he really knows what’s happened, or if he’s just scared. I want to know what he thinks about everything.

  I glance up. He’s staring at me. I can’t read his expression—it almost seems like he’s surprised. Like the idea of someone caring what he has to say is a shock. But I know I’m not the only one. He’s Marius, after all. People from Indie Movie Twitter talk about him all the time. And once this movie goes big, he’ll have even more fans.

  “Anyway.” I clear my throat. “Sorry about all of the hardcore questions. This is probably the last time we’ll sit down together—”

  “Wait, what?”

  “Yeah, I mean, I’ll go to the LGBTQ event with you, but the story is officially due on the twentieth,” I say, suppressing my panic over the looming deadline. “And I fly home after that. I guess we could do more one-on-one interviews if you think I—”

  “No, I— Whatever you think is best.” He’s frowning. “I— Wow. I just didn’t think today would be the last day.”

  I don’t know why it matters. I’m not sure what else to say, so I just stare down at my notebook. We sit in silence for a few moments, looking at everything but each other.

  “Well,” he says after a while, “you can always call me. If you need to ask more questions.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you have my number?”

  I freeze. This whole time, I’ve been communicating with Ms. Jacobson, who has communicated with his publicist. Part of me thinks that calling his personal cell would be unprofessional. The other part is thrilled. It’s the second part I’m trying to push down.

  “Uh, no,” I say. My throat is dry. “But I can just call my contact and maybe—”

  He shakes his head. “No, I’ll just give you my number. Can I use your pen?”

  I slide my notebook and the pen over just enough for him to write at the very top of the page.

  “You always have this with you,” he says as he writes. It should take only three seconds to jot down a number, but it feels like he takes an hour per digit. “I’m going to press the pen down really hard so you don’t forget.”

  Something in my chest freezes. It’s like a panic attack caused by hopefulness. And I can’t let myself be hopeful. Hoping for things like this only works out badly for me. It only leads to going into Maggie’s room and trying not to cry, even though I always do.

  “So I won’t forget what?”

  I shouldn’t get my hopes up. I know I shouldn’t. But being with him is like when we danced on the bed together: everything else in the world went silent for a little while.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he says. It’s slower than usual. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do when I don’t have an excuse to talk to you anymore.”

  My mouth opens, but no sound comes out.

  I don’t know how it happens. Maybe I’m the first one to move. It could’ve been him. I know for sure it’s him who kisses me first because I register everything about it a few s
econds too late—his chair scraping forward a little, the fact that his lips are warm and taste like chocolate. It’s almost funny, the idea of this boy with chocolate skin tasting like chocolate. But then I remember what’s happening.

  I jerk away.

  “No.” My voice is trembling. His face is inches from mine and I can’t even look at it. “You can’t— No. Don’t play with me.”

  His lips pucker and his brow furrows. I wish he didn’t look so confused. He’s supposed to understand this. Marius has to know that pretty boys, especially skinny ones who can speak French and have nice smiles and hair and eyes, aren’t supposed to want awkward fat Black girls. It’s just how things have always been. I refuse to get my hopes up. If I do, it will be different than Tasha moving away or the boys at school laughing at me. It’ll be worse than falling off a horse. It’ll be like falling off a cliff.

  “I’m not playing,” he says, lowering his voice. “I’ve wanted to do that for a long time. And I thought you…”

  I’m staring at his mouth instead of his eyes. After a moment, it stops moving. I allow myself a quick glance up. I’m looking at his face, how open it is, like he’s laid all this in front of me and is waiting to hear what I’m going to say. Technically, I’m not the vulnerable one here. He is.

  “I like you,” I say. My voice is scratchy. “I really like you. So I can’t do this if you’re just going to fuck around. I can’t. I won’t.”

  He nods once. I reach a hand out, tracing my thumb along his chin. It feels like touching a door handle after zipping around a rug in socks. Electric. I’ve always made fun of people for saying shit like that. But I can’t believe I’m touching him. He’s putting his face in my hands for me to touch and isn’t pulling away. I can take, if I want, because he’s giving.

  The thing about thoughts is they don’t take as long as saying sentences out loud. So I can think about a ton of things—like holding his hand and kissing him for real, running a hand through his hair, actually looking at him instead of fleeting glances. It happens quickly, the thoughts blurring together like they’re being fast-forwarded.

  Even now, it feels scary to touch him, like he’ll disappear if I press too hard. I only trust myself to ghost over his face. I’m focused on remembering this moment, being in this moment and grounding myself the way my therapist taught me, instead of dwelling on my fears—what if he thinks I’m weird, what if he’s just doing this to be nice, what if he just wants me to write something nice about him? And God, this must be the most unprofessional thing in the world.

  “Josie?”

  I move my thumb under his bottom lip. He goes still—almost still. I feel him shaking. It’s odd that I could make someone else shake. I’ve thought about it in abstract moments, like when movies show people kissing for the first time, with big, dramatic scenes like in The Fault in Our Stars or Bridget Jones’s Diary. But I didn’t think this would happen for me. Not for a while. Not with someone like Marius.

  I still can’t really process that this is actually happening. Like, these are the lips I spend so much time trying not to look at. These are the lips I just kissed. The softest lips I know.

  “Josie?”

  I kiss him deeply, and this time, it lasts longer than a few seconds.

  @JosieTheJournalist: how long do you have to wait before falling in love with someone? asking for a friend

  New plan: instead of finishing the interview at the café, we go back to Marius’s apartment. The interview is all but forgotten; I just want to spend time with him. That sounds so corny, but it’s true.

  He hugs me when we reach the apartment, catching me off guard. It takes a second for me to really hug him back. I’m trying to remember everything about this moment so I can file it away for later. He’s soft and solid in my arms at the same time. He smells like too many different things for me to pin down one scent; there’s soap and sweetness and warmth.

  And then I’m kissing him, without any warning. Unlike me, Marius doesn’t hesitate in responding. I know I cry too easily, and although I’m not crying now, there’s something about the way Marius throws himself into everything he does, even something like a kiss, that makes me want to. I like his laugh, his pink lips, the narrow shape of his face, the soft hair at the nape of his neck. I like touching it. I like looking at it. I don’t know how I was going to convince myself that I didn’t want this. I would’ve gone home still wanting this. The ache in my chest would’ve only gotten worse.

  “Come on,” he says, pulling me inside. I draw back, pausing on the threshold. It feels wrong to be in his apartment without his parents around.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I blink, realizing that I’ve been staring at him. I’ve been doing it a lot lately. It’s like looking at an artsy photograph. I like the way he moves through space, the way his face rises and falls, the way his eyes are full of emotion. Everything about Marius feels so alive, like vivid colors in a painting.

  “Nothing,” I say. “I just like watching you.”

  He smiles. I love it when he smiles. My heart warms when he smiles.

  “I like looking at you,” he says, leading me over to the couch. It’s less like a real couch a regular family would have than a leather sculpture featured in a photo shoot for Architectural Digest. “And talking to you. And listening to you.”

  “I like listening to you, too,” I say. If we spend the rest of today listing the things we like about each other, I’ll have absolutely no problem with it. “Especially when you speak French. You should do that more often.”

  “You won’t even know what I’m saying,” he says. “My dad gets so pissed when my mom does it just to get out of conversations.”

  “Well, I like it,” I say, sitting on the couch. It’s not comfortable, but I didn’t expect it to be. “Sometimes the things I don’t understand are more beautiful than the things I do.”

  God, that was sappy. Everything about this is sappy. I’m not complaining.

  He stares at me again. I might feel like I’m doing all of the staring, but he does some, too. I look away after a while, cheeks burning, and feel his eyes on me. And when I look back, he’s still staring at my face, and I let my eyes roam over every part of him—long, slender fingers, the socks on his feet when we walk around his apartment, the mole on the back of his neck, the sharp curve of his cheekbones—everything.

  “Le jardin dans mon coeur fleurit pour toi,” he says. “The garden in my heart blooms for you.”

  Fine. He takes the prize for most sappy.

  “You’re beautiful,” I say, not to be outdone. “So, so beautiful.”

  “Shush,” he says, even though he’s still smiling. “I’m trying to look at you.”

  “You can look at me while I’m talking.”

  “I feel bad.”

  “Why?” I lift a shoulder, reaching for one of his curls. It’s soft in my fingers like it’s something delicate, something that could break easily. “For looking at me?”

  “No.” He scoffs. “Did you get the chance to explore the city yet?”

  “That’s not really what I’m here for,” I say. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll come back one day.”

  “But you’re here now.” He pushes himself up. I blink in surprise. “We should go somewhere. Do you feel like walking around?”

  * * *

  I’ve been to plenty of parks before, but they’re nothing compared to Central Park. It has a million different entrances—I’m not sure how the Uber driver picked one. There are people ice-skating, trees everywhere, and the smell of dog pee and roasting chestnuts. People stop to take pictures in the middle of the path or in front of statues of dead guys. Beyond the skating rink, there are dark hills everywhere. The edges of the park run away from my gaze. I doubt I could see the entire thing in a day.

  “In the spring and summer, people
race little boats,” Marius says, pointing toward the ice-skaters. “And there’s a restaurant at the edge of the park.”

  “It’s gigantic.” I can’t stop staring. “I didn’t think you guys had this much free space.”

  “Hey,” he says. “There are tons of parks in New York. This is just the biggest one.”

  There’s a grin on his face. I can’t really get over how much I love it when he smiles. I really do. His face already makes him look young, but when he smiles, it’s even better, like this rash expression of boyish joy I’ve always found annoying on everyone else. It makes me want to smile, too.

  We probably look odd to everyone walking past. We’re standing in the middle of the path and people have to step around us to get by and we’re both smiling like idiots. When I stare at Marius, he doesn’t look away like I do. He’s not uncomfortable with attention—giving it or receiving it.

  I grab his hand and start walking again. Something about holding Marius’s hand feels really intimate. It’s like the most I’ve ever touched anyone. Before this, I was so conscious of the way I touched him, trying to stay clear of every single accidental meeting of skin. It feels like electricity shooting through my fingertips.

  There’s a huge amount of space in Central Park, but that doesn’t stop some random woman from trying to walk right between us. Marius pulls me to the side. I’m still pissed off.

  “People are so rude,” I say, loud enough for her to hear. “We’re obviously walking here. I don’t know why they can’t just wait or walk around or something.”

  “Oh my God.”

  A group of white girls stops next to me, clogging up the path even more. There are about four of them, and they all have a variation of the same dirty blond hair. The one in the front clutches a pink phone in her hand. They’re staring, but not at me. I glance up at Marius. His eyes have widened slightly.