by Jane Galaxy
If Rufus Eccleston hadn’t visited, she probably would’ve come over and squeezed in next to him on the loveseat, or draped her legs across his lap and laughed while he told her about the café where he’d gone and who’d been in line. But Sophie stood in the archway as Tristan leaned his head over the back of the seat and looked up at the ceiling.
He hadn’t said anything to her, and so still had the opportunity to fix the silence, somehow—the indentation pressing in the middle of her chest was like a big invisible thumbprint only threatening to turn into a hole, not quite there yet.
She sat across from him, on another couch.
“I’m sorry he came here,” Tristan said to the ceiling. “The least he could have done was give me the book some other time, but of course he had to make a point of coming all the way here like that.”
Sophie waited, but he didn’t go on. Of course it was more pressing to him that his father had shown up unannounced and caused very studied drama, but—then again.
She was that, the thing which would cause the press to eat Tristan whole.
And Tristan hadn’t said anything to that.
Sophie realized that she was dressed in… well, not bespoke wool clothing. She looked down at the pair of “faux sueded” leggings she’d bought at Walmart for $5.88. Five dollars and eighty eight cents was partially clothing her body. It was weird, to be able to remember the exact amount that had been on the price tag, an unnatural number. She wondered how many square inches of Rufus’s outfit $5.88 would pay for. Maybe a few threads.
“I’m sorry too,” Sophie heard herself say in a low voice. “That was… not the start to the morning I wanted.”
Tristan sighed and gathered himself up before standing and coming over to press his lips to the top of her head, warm and fleeting.
“I don’t blame you if you don’t like him,” he said. “No one should be subjected to a thing like that.”
That was better, Sophie thought. But she wasn’t sure if the thought would stick.
Later that evening, she wrapped her thighs around his hips and pressed hard to work herself over him, threading her fingers through his loose curls and then sliding them down to link her hands over the base of his neck the way she’d taken to doing. It was reassuring, and when they gasped and grabbed each other in shock and pleasure, Sophie felt it all come rushing back in, and it was all alright. He kissed her mouth and brushed his fingertips over her parted lips, and her pulse went thready the way it did sometimes when she looked at Tristan in profile, wearing his long overcoat and looking like someone particularly handsome, neither a celebrity nor a star, just a human being, and she liked him, liked him with a ferocity and definitiveness as if she’d grown a new little organ inside her chest just to accommodate all the ways she felt and thought about him.
Tristan turned and sank into the pillow on the other side of the bed, and the rising tide pulled away from her, sank back and took everything with it, leaving her heavy and cold unexpectedly.
Just like that.
She knew his apology hadn’t been enough, that she had every reason to call him out on letting his father talk about her that way. But she was more surprised and dismayed that the glow had drained out of her that quickly.
“Hey,” she said, and it surprised her how small it sounded in the dark of the bedroom.
“Hmm?”
She slid closer to him and laid one arm over his. They hadn’t left the windows open, but she was a bit chilly anyway.
“We should actually go to the café where you got the croissants. It’d be nice just to sit and eat instead of bringing it all back.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Tristan said, clear as day, not muzzled or slow like he was falling asleep. He was just thinking, she thought.
And then she rolled onto her back and looked up at the ceiling to think, too.
Chapter Seventeen
Tristan leaned back in the set chair and stared off into space.
It was bad enough that his father had even shown up in the first place, but it seemed that everything was conspiring to go wrong altogether, based on the sum of the individual parts.
He couldn’t very well pace here on the bit of street they’d blocked off. There wasn’t enough room for the amount of pacing he’d need to work out what was going on in his head.
He couldn’t go to a trailer to think—there wasn’t enough room, and they were between very quick takes.
And he couldn’t talk to Sophie. God, no. For starters, she didn’t need to be dragged into any of this. That much he had to make certain of. He could stand telling her a little about what had happened with Gabriella, but his family, especially his father—that was literally years of confusion, repression, a dash of self-loathing, and more icy silences than Lucius could ever give. Sophie was bright and sweet and smart, and… those two halves of his life weren’t compatible. Sophie couldn’t possibly expect any kind of a welcome from either of his parents, and certainly not his sisters, so why bother? It would only make her feel small and awful, and maybe even resentful, and there was already too much judgment and negativity directed at her online as it was. He could hold back this much for her.
Except that part of what was eating away at him was what she and Rufus had been talking about before he’d come to the front door.
Tristan had risen early the morning that Rufus had come round and decided that going to the French café in Soho was a good idea. It wasn’t possible to bring the tea home—the two ladies who ran the place made it Russian-style, with a very thick tea base to which they repeatedly added hot water. It wasn’t properly British by any means, but it had proven amusing to friends and girlfriends in the past. Two chocolate croissants and café au laits, and he was set for the morning.
He’d had it in mind to go for a walk, take Sophie to see the top of the London Eye while they still had a chance. Touristy, sure, but a good view, and his manager could get him a private gondola this time of year. Filming wasn’t exactly wrapping up, but they were ahead of schedule by a couple of days and he wanted to make the most of it before all the post-production began—the automatic dialogue recording, or ADR; any reshoots that Card One would order at the last second; any last little bits to tie up before the aggressive publicity campaigning would begin.
And then Tristan had walked through his own front door, which he’d finally begun to think of as his own front door and not merely an overpriced property in a city he loved and dreaded in equal measure, and there was his father, standing like an Oxford tutor without the robes, in a godforsaken tartan scarf and overcoat with his little round glasses, frowning like it was Time to Have a Chat.
Poor Sophie—hugging her arms about herself and looking very unsettled at the whole exchange.
When she’d disappeared to dress, Rufus had looked up at the ceiling and listened to her light footsteps upstairs as she moved about.
“You know this isn’t your house anymore, don’t you?” Tristan said, to preempt the old man from opening his mouth, which he did anyway. He felt furious suddenly that his father thought he could simply show up, unannounced, and command control of everything, the way he’d always done. Tristan had gone all the way to Los Angeles to get away from it, and now he’d voluntarily gone right back into the thick of it. Visiting Battenmire wasn’t enough, and would never be enough.
“I paid for part of it,” Rufus said in a warning tone. “Unless you’d like me to collect on past debts you happen to owe. With interest.”
“What did you say to her?”
Rufus cast an eye over the state of the sitting room, then almost imperceptibly raised his eyebrows.
“Gabby’s been asking about you.”
Of course his father would play a hand like that. A power move to completely wipe away the topic of Sophie’s intrusion and evidence of her existence in his life. Tristan felt his breath go short, and suddenly hated himself for it. It was like an earthquake had shaken Islington, utterly against his will and nothing he could control. He was no stra
nger to Gabriella’s plotting, and this time, he had the vaguest feeling that if his father was traveling into the city to tell him about his ex-girlfriend, it did not bode well.
“Has she? You two are starting a campaign to reunite us and start an empire, no doubt. Why else would you have a reason to talk to her? Oh,” Tristan made a fairly good impression of innocently stopping himself, “Let me guess—you’re dedicating an entire chapter to how splendid she is, with a footnote at the very end about what an awful mistake it was to let her get away.”
Rufus narrowed his eyes at Tristan. It was the sort of hairy look he’d received frequently in youth, and often accompanied by lengthy interrogations on whether he understood the importance of his family name, whether he took it seriously, and didn’t he care about anything apart from himself?
It was his house, Tristan thought. He’d already paid back the first year with interest, as much as Rufus liked to conveniently forget that, and still kept the place at his mother’s request. He would not allow this old man to bully him.
“So much wasted potential,” his father bit out between his teeth. “At least with Gabriella you know you can accomplish something. You take that—” He jerked his chin toward the ceiling, and Tristan sucked in air sharply, “To an awards red carpet, and the press will unhinge its jaws and swallow you whole. And don’t think I don’t know about your little adventures in common theft from the Blue Room bureau, or about your ludicrous aspirations to be a writer,” he said, dropping his voice dangerously low.
Tristan’s face went hot and then cold, a combination of anger and confusion pressing in on him. His father went on.
“Hollywood Trade had some silly little reporter call me up, for Christ’s sake, asking me for a quote about it.” Rufus straightened up. “I told her on your behalf she must be utterly misinformed, but you had better get this little jaunt out of your system and put everything under control before you can’t come back from it.”
The old man sighed and tossed his head, straightening his shoulders and looking very regal suddenly. Tristan was suddenly drained as he felt the rage receding into a hollowness. His father held up the paper-wrapped package expectantly, and Tristan took it in his hands.
It was the family biography, Rufus said, the first edition back from the printers’, and if Tristan had any sense—his tone clearly conveyed—he’d quit this senseless foray into popular culture, settle for some nice Shakespeare or British theatrical productions, but only the right ones, the ones his parents approved of, get back together with Gabriella, and slowly watch his life be taken away piece by piece and put into the hands of managers and those who had the best interests of the family’s money and name in mind.
Now back on set, Tristan looked over to his right. Sophie was also sitting in a set chair, hers without a name, frowning in concentration as she looked down into her phone. She tapped something, scrolled slowly down a page, and looked very thoughtful as she read.
They’d both been more distant over the last few days.
She just spent more time on her phone. It was likely she was working—Sophie did have a full-time writing job in addition to being the script consultant on this film, and he certainly couldn’t fault her for pulling double duty while abroad. He did feel guilty for not being able to take her to more places while they were in a city with so much history and entertainment.
He felt guilty for a lot of things, actually, and it was here that Tristan shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Even reflecting on guilt for something else brought him back to the topic that he’d been worrying over in his mind like a sore tooth, making it hurt worse but somehow satisfying a dark little part of himself that forced him to go over and over it.
Lying to Sophie about the work he’d done on the script was not his most defensible act. And it was starting to make him feel like the fake relationship that had turned into something real was fake all over again.
Which brought him to the obvious conclusion that he didn’t deserve the real version of any of this, that being unable to come clean with someone who trusted him to do the right thing was another symptom of the way that his heart felt like it was made of a black hole and would consume anything regardless of whether it was good for anyone, whether that was him or just an innocent bystander.
Or maybe he was overthinking all of this and simply sabotaging himself. It was one of his flaws, Gabriella had told him once. He didn’t appreciate the opportunities he’d been given—the lead in Richard III had caused a great deal of self-doubt he hadn’t been able to understand or even articulate at the time—and how could anyone be so sullen about such a step up? If he was going to behave like he didn’t want the role, he certainly hadn’t earned it, she’d said, hadn’t put in the necessary work because none of this was important to him.
“Why even bother, if you hate it so much?!” Gabriella’s voice at the door of his dressing room echoed in Tristan’s head. She’d punished him by storming out of the theater and skipping opening night altogether, putting him in the uncomfortable position of trying to figure out how to apologize for something he wasn’t entirely sure he needed to.
And his fans online didn’t help with any of this. Sophie had been right—it was a clash of the fans between the two of them, with his side doubting whether Sophie was good enough for him, and her side complaining that the EcclesFans were obnoxious and even dangerous.
Running to them to gain some sort of thin and meager validation of how the set still photos looked seemed pathetic at best and probably a foolish career move at worst. Or maybe it was the other way around.
God, this was completely maddening.
Sophie was tapping away at her screen quickly, holding it up in front of her with an intent expression. He couldn’t see what she was looking at. Surely she was working, and not doing something horrible like moving on, or texting Prasad about what a prick he was for allowing his own father to ruin the sanctity of the time they were spending together in his flat?The obvious solution was to try talking to her about it.
“You’ve been very interested in that,” he remarked.
Sophie murmured something and kept typing.
He wondered if Rufus had said something to her—something about the Hollywood Trade reporter calling him. Cold anxiety began to seep in through his Canada goose coat. Was she texting Prasad to decipher the truth?
“What are you doing, anyway?” said Tristan, leaning over to try to get a look.
Sophie leaned away and reflexively held her phone to her chest, looking surprised, and then like he’d caught her. Tristan waited.
“Oh, just passing the time,” she said, and wedged the phone beneath her knee against the chair. He stared at it, hot with secrets and the inside of her thoughts.
It was so easy for her, he thought. Sophie could simply sit and focus, work anywhere. She didn’t need things like getting in touch with fans to fuel her work, or do warmup exercises, or be interviewed by magazines to keep her career going.
At least not to the same degree, anyway.
He tried again.
“If we manage to get some free time, we should go to La Dame De Pic,” he said, and reached over to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear.
Sophie thought it over and actually paused before she nodded and hmmed, a bit too late to seem natural or nonchalant.
“You don’t want to be seen with me?” He joked, and she turned to smile at him.
“You’ve all been working so hard the past few days to get this all wrapped up,” she replied. “I could just go get some takeaway, or we could make popcorn and fall asleep in front of the television.”
It wasn’t that it didn’t sound like a nice idea, especially with how chilly it had been lately—perfect season for sleeping under huge fluffy duvets and letting yourself sink as far as possible into the mattress. But something about it felt off, as though he couldn’t allow it to happen, as though he had to be putting on his best performance for her. She needed the best London had to offer—a long-r
unning play and glimpses of landmarks wasn’t enough, he could do better.
He couldn’t understand why she wasn’t going for it, why she’d never been particularly receptive to the way he flirted with her. Sophie was a tough one to crack. He almost wished he could be so detached, so unbound to the volatile stock market of public opinion.
And then he tried calling up that image from a few days ago while he’d stood in his old bedroom at Battenmire, the one of the two of them together, by a pond, on a picnic, strolling arm in arm past clusters of daffodils in early spring. It wouldn’t come up—all he could see was Sophie sitting here flicking her eyes down to the phone still wedged beneath her leg, which was jiggling up and down with anticipation.
They were opposites, he thought. She craved the intensity of internal work, of a private life where her work didn’t directly involve her face, just her mind and ability to construct worlds from words. How much sense did it make for two people whose lives and careers were so different? Wasn’t it just another way for the two of them to grow apart?
Sophie deserved happiness and success, a creative, happy, and fulfilled life away from the drudgery of a desk job.
But that creativity and life didn’t need the burden of dealing with all the baggage that came with celebrity, a life that constantly demanded more adoration, more tributes and interactions, more something every time, just to feel anything. Everything she seemed indifferent to at best, and scornful about the rest of the time.
Eventually she’d grow tired of having to share the burden of all that, and he’d be disaffected by the disappointment of having thrown himself at something he shouldn’t have gotten involved in.
Tristan heard the director call his name and rose from the set chair, a frown still on his face. As he made his way over to his mark near the false door of the Toluma’a, he thought what a shame it was that Sophie had everything and represented everything he’d ever wanted, and was ultimately just out of his reach after all.