My hands are shaking, the earth around us quaking, as every inch of me is consumed by him. Our bodies are tangled and my heart is so mangled that it doesn’t know how to beat the right way anymore, but some part of me must know something, because everything about this feels so perfect. Me and him, here, like this, and I don’t want to admit it, but ugh…
Ugh…
Ugh…
I love him.
He moves, pulling back a bit to gaze down at me, as if the man is psychic and knows I just thought the words he’s been trying to hear, but I can’t say them, not yet, not until I know this isn’t a fluke.
I’m in love with this reckless, starry-eyed fool who, in two days time, is going to walk out my front door, and all I can do is trust he’ll come back with that same look of love in his eyes, because if he doesn’t, it’s going to break more hearts than just my own.
And if he breaks hers, I’ll never forgive him.
Sunday night.
The sun is going down outside.
Every second that ticks by makes my chest feel tighter, my shoulders heavier as the weight of the outside world comes down on me. Jonathan has to go soon.
He hasn’t told her.
Maddie has no idea.
She sits at the kitchen table, surrounded by crayons, making a card for her Aunt Meghan—it’s her birthday tomorrow. Swinging her legs, she hums to herself, oblivious at the moment.
“Mommy, how old is Aunt Meghan gonna be now?” she asks, as I stand at the sink washing dishes... scrubbing the same glass for the past ten minutes.
“Thirty,” I say.
“Whoa,” Maddie says before mumbling, “That’s a lot.”
I turn, glaring at her for that. I’m not far off from thirty. I don’t say anything, though, because my eyes catch sight of Jonathan as he steps into the kitchen, carrying his bag.
Maddie looks up, hearing his footsteps. Her legs stop swinging. She blinks at him with confusion before asking, “Are we going away?”
He doesn’t answer right away. He freezes, so she looks at me, like she trusts that I’ll tell her since he isn’t.
“No, sweetheart, we’re not going away,” I say, wanting to shake some sense into him, because silence isn’t going to help. “But your daddy is.”
“Daddy is what?” she asks, and I know she already knows the answer, because she clutches her crayon so hard it snaps.
“Going to work,” he says, finally chiming in. “I have to finish making the movie, so I have to go away for a little while.”
“How much is a little while?” she asks. “'Till tomorrow?”
“Longer than that,” he says.
“The one that’s after that?” she asked. “Will you be back on that day?”
“Uh, no,” he says. “It’ll take about a month.”
“A month?” She gasps, looking at me again when she asks, “How many days is that?”
“About thirty,” I tell her.
I see it, the panic that flows through her. That’s a lot of days for such a little girl. She frantically shakes her head, throwing her crayon down. “No, that’s too many! I don’t want you to do that!”
“I’m sorry,” Jonathan says, but ‘sorry’ isn’t what she wants to hear, so it does nothing but upset her more.
Shoving out of her chair, getting to her feet, she shakes her head again as she rushes toward him, grabbing his bag. She yanks on it hard, trying to rip it out of his hand. “No, don’t go! I want you to stay!”
“I know you do,” he says, “I want to stay, too, but I have to be Breezeo, remember?”
“I don’t care!” she says, digging in her heels, pulling the bag so hard that he loosens his hold, surrendering it. She almost falls, but he catches her. The bag drops to the floor, and she tries to kick it away. It doesn’t move, so she shoves him, wanting to put distance between him and that bag. “You don’t gotta be Breezeo! You can just be Daddy, and it’ll be okay! It’s gonna be Aunt Meghan’s birthday, and you can walk me to school, and we have to do the lines together so I can practice, ‘cuz I’m gonna be a snowflake! And how can I be a snowflake if you don’t stay?”
Her voice cracks as tears fill her eyes. She’s still shoving against him, trying to get him to move, but he’s not budging.
She’s getting furious.
Sighing, he bends down to her level, gently grasping her arms when she angrily tries to shove his face away from hers.
I want so much to intervene. I want to grab her, and hold her, and make it all go away, but I can’t. So I just stand against the counter, trying to keep myself together, because me falling apart isn’t going to help anyone right now.
“You can still be a snowflake,” he says. “You’re going to be the best snowflake ever.”
“But how will you know?” she asks, the first tears starting to fall. “Will you still come see?”
“Of course,” he says. “Wouldn’t miss it for anything.”
“You promise?”
I inhale sharply, but he doesn’t miss a beat.
“I promise,” he whispers, wiping her cheeks. “I’ll be back for it. It’s just that, right now, the movie needs me to be Breezeo.”
“But I need you to be my daddy,” she says.
“I’ll still be your daddy, even when I’m Breezeo.”
“No, you won’t!” she yells. “You’re gonna go away, and then you won’t be here no more, and it’ll be just like before!”
“It won’t be like before,” he tells her.
“It will! You didn’t wanna be my daddy then, and now you don’t wanna again! You wanna go away and you’re not gonna live here no more, ‘cuz you have all your stuff and it’s gonna be gone and you won’t be here to tell Mommy she’s pretty so now she can’t never love you!”
Whoa. She blurts all that out in one frantic breath before shoving past him and running off, her bedroom door slamming.
A strangled silence sweeps through the room in her absence before Jonathan slowly stands and says, “I probably deserve that.”
Frowning, I shove away from the counter, stopping him before he can go after her. “Let me talk to her.”
I head to her bedroom, pausing outside to tap on the door.
“Who is it?” she yells.
Now she wants to know who’s knocking before she answers. “It’s Mommy.”
“Mommy who?” she mumbles.
I laugh to myself, straightening my expression out before I open the door, saying, “The only Mommy you’ve got.”
“Just one Mommy,” she mutters, “and no Daddy now.”
Strolling over, I sit down beside her on the edge of her bed. “Is that what you really think?”
She shrugs.
“Look, I know you don’t want him to go away, because you’re going to miss him, but you know how special Breezeo is. And I know it’s not fair to you, and it really sucks, because you finally got to have him as your daddy and now he has to go, but you can write him, and call him, and draw him all the pictures you want.”
She swings her legs, eyes on her feet. “It’s not the same.”
“I know, but he promised he’d be back,” I say, standing up. “Do you want to come say bye to him? Maybe wish him luck?”
She shakes her head.
I leave her there, in her room, leaving the door open when I walk out. Jonathan lingers in the living room, holding his bag. He frowns when he sees me. I don’t take that personally.
“Is she okay?” he asks.
“She’ll be fine,” I tell him. “Don’t worry.”
He glances at his watch, sighing. “I have to get going. The car’s here to pick me up.”
“Okay,” I whisper as he leans over, kissing me. “Be safe. And smart. No drinking. No drugs. No more jumping in front of moving cars.”
“You sure know how to take the fun out of things,” he jokes. “I’ll see you when I can.”
He opens up the front door, to leave, making it barely a step over the threshold when Maddie?
??s voice screeches through the apartment, loud and frantic. “Wait, Daddy! Wait! Don’t go yet!”
He pauses, and she runs right by me, nearly plowing me over as she rushes toward him, clutching the notebook she draws in.
She shoves it at him, hitting him in the chest. “You forgot to have this.”
He takes it. “What is it?”
“The fan-fictions I made for you,” she says. “Remember? I fixed it. If you’re gonna be Breezeo now, you should have it, ‘cuz it’s better.”
He smiles. “Thank you.”
She nods, and hesitates, the two of them awkwardly staring at each other, before she flings herself at him, hugging him. “I love you, Daddy. More than all the Breezeo movies ever.”
“I love you, too,” he says, hugging her back. “More than everything in the world.”
Chapter 26
JONATHAN
It’s strange how much perspective can change in such a short amount of time.
I’ve wanted to be an actor for as long as I can remember, but somewhere along the way, I lost the spark. Between the cocaine binges and rocky relationships, between the stints at rehab and the paparazzi confrontations, between struggling with sobriety and facing notoriety, I forgot what it was I loved about it all.
And it’s funny that an almost six-year-old could remind me in just shy of two months.
I laugh, sitting on the steps of the Hair & Makeup trailer on set. It’s barely dawn, and everyone else is gathered in the caterer’s tent for breakfast, while I sit here, reading through Madison’s notebook. It’s funny, this story she came up with. It’s mostly pictures with just a few words and reads like a Scooby Doo crossover, a literal ghost mystery getting solved by Breezeo. Because he’s invisible, she says that means he ought to be able to hang out with ghosts. It’s common sense.
So at the end, Maryanne gets blown up in the warehouse.
BOOM.
It’s a happy ending, though, in a twisted way, because now she, too, is a ghost, and they live happily ever after, invisible together.
The logic of a child.
“Well, well, well... if it isn’t Johnny Cunning.” Jazz’s voice calls out as she approaches the trailer. “Talk about a sight for sore eyes.”
I glance at her, grinning, as I close the notebook. “Jazz.”
“Is that…?” She grabs her chest, feigning shock. “Is that a smile on your face?”
“Maybe,” I say. “What, can’t remember the last time you saw one of those?”
“Oh no, I remember,” she says. “Five years ago, your very first day on the set of Breezeo. Only time I saw you genuinely smile was the first time you put on the suit.”
I stare at her blankly. “Jesus, what did you do, write it on your calendar like an annual holiday?”
“Johnny Cunning isn’t always a dick day. We used to celebrate it with a bottle of hard liquor but now we just sleep all day and avoid being around assholes.”
“Sounds nice.”
She smiles. “So what’s got you grinning at six o’clock in the morning?”
I hold the notebook up. “Somebody wrote me a story.”
“Somebody, eh?” She shoos me away from the trailer steps so she can go inside, motioning for me to join her. “And who would that somebody be?”
“My daughter.”
“Your daughter,” she repeats, not sounding surprised. She pats a chair in front of her big mirror, wordlessly telling me to sit down. Hair, first, so Jazz leans against a vanity to watch as one of the hairstylists gets to work. “So it’s true? What Hollywood Chronicles said?”
“Doubtful,” I tell her. “Most of what they print is bullshit.”
They get to work, because well, they've got their work cut out for them this morning. I need a haircut as well as a shave, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg of how I’ve let myself go since the accident.
Haven’t been to a single acting class. Certainly haven’t gone on any auditions.
Can’t remember the last time I saw the inside of a gym, and I damn sure haven’t been sticking to the diet. Hell, I haven’t even spoken to my therapist.
“They said you met a girl at some prep school you went to,” Jazz says. “The two of you ran away together, and you were some sneaky little criminal until Mr. Caldwell discovered you.”
My brow furrows. “It said I was a criminal?”
“Well, in other words.” She laughs. “Said you were stealing to survive, which is unbelievable, since your family is loaded. But it said you got your big break and the girl, she got pregnant, but she resented your fame and left you without telling you about the baby, so you’re just now learning about your daughter.”
There’s so much wrong with what she just said that I’m not sure where to begin. My mind keeps going to the stealing—which, ironically, is the true part. But few people know that. I kept that secret tightly guarded out of fear that it proved I was the failure my father said I’d be. So who the fuck told them?
Jazz doesn’t wait for an explanation. I never give her one. So she looks damn surprised when I say, “I knew about my daughter.”
She raises her eyebrows. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I say. “And she didn’t resent the fame—she resented what fame turned me into.”
She stares at me. “So, wait, you knew you had a daughter?”
“Yes.”
“The whole time I’ve known you, you’ve been a father?”
“Yes.”
WHACK.
I flinch when she picks up a hairbrush and smacks me with it. “Jesus, Jazz, what the fuck?”
“Why in the hell were you wasting your life away with all those sleazes when you had a family you could’ve been with?”
I just blink at her.
I have no good answer.
“Unbelievable,” she says, shaking her head. “So, what’s your daughter like?”
“She’s smart. Creative. Funny. Beautiful. She’s a lot like her mother, actually.”
“Her mother, huh?” Jazz grins. “Hate to break it to you, but it sounds like you might be smitten.”
“No might about it,” I say. “I love her.”
Jazz gasps. WHACK. She smacks me again. “Shut your mouth!”
I don’t have a chance to respond before someone clears their throat, stepping into the trailer. I glance over, seeing Cliff. Jazz is suddenly on high alert, completely professional.
“Johnny,” Cliff says. “I’m glad to see you. You weren’t at the hotel this morning for pick up.”
“Couldn’t sleep. Figured I’d get to set early.”
“That’s good,” he says, an edge to his voice that tells me he doesn’t think it’s good at all. Any break in habit is concerning. “Just tell me next time.”
He lurks, lingering, taking a seat to do some work on his Blackberry, so Jazz doesn’t bring anything up again, everyone just doing their jobs.
“Well, would you look at that,” Jazz says after half an hour. “You look like Johnny Cunning again.”
I stare at my reflection.
“Wasn’t sure it would ever happen,” Cliff says. “He was becoming unrecognizable.”
People come in and out of the trailer, greeting me and welcoming me back, being overly friendly. I don’t mind it. It’s kind of nice, being back at it, especially once I put on the suit. The material feels tighter than usual, and wardrobe works hard to get it to look how it should. I stand there, surrounded by mirrors, and smile.
“Boy, if you keep making that face, it’s liable to get stuck,” Jazz says, spinning around in an office chair as she watches.
“Don’t you have work to do?” I ask her. “Someone else to be fixing up?”
“Nope, just you, superstar.”
At eight-thirty, I’m called to set. We’re filming inside today, so I don’t have to worry about the gathering crowd. Excitement stirs inside of me. I feel hopeful. On top of my fucking game. I’m ready to take on the world and conquer it… until the camera starts roll
ing.
It moves in a blur. We have a lot to cover. Jumping from scene to scene, from moment to moment, trying to get my head right and channel the emotions. I’m out of sorts, out of breath, completely exhausted by the time we wrap for the day.
“Get to the gym tonight,” Cliff says, walking beside me on the way back to wardrobe to take the suit off. “Build up that stamina, or you’re going to have the longest month of your life. It’s not going to get any easier.”
“I know,” I mutter, heading into the trailer.
It takes another hour before I’m back in my clothes, ready to leave, but I can’t because the director is requesting a meeting and a producer wants a quick word and my script needs altered after my schedule gets updated. The excitement is wearing off as the pressure mounts. I grab a muffin from the caterer before he can pack up, and endure a few dirty looks because I’m supposed to stay in tip-top shape and that doesn’t leave room for shit like carbs.
Cliff, meanwhile, is talking to PR, and I want to have a word with them myself, but they leave before I can.
“You ever tell anyone how you discovered me?” I ask Cliff when we head for the car. “You ever talk about it?”
“No,” he says. “Why would I?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it just came up.”
“What’s this about?” he asks.
“Chronicles mentioned something about me being a thief.”
He sighs loudly. “How many times do I have to tell you not to read that? You shouldn’t even be looking at it. Stop worrying about them.”
“I’m not worried,” I say. “I just found it strange they knew.”
“This industry springs more leaks than the Titanic. People like to talk. That’s why I push for the confidentiality agreements—so we can control the narrative as much as possible.”
“But not many people knew what I did back then,” I say. “Me. You. My therapist.”
“Your girlfriend,” he says, not even looking up from his Blackberry.
“I never told her.”
“Come on, you think she didn’t figure it out?”
“Even if she did, she wouldn’t have said anything,” I say, “and my therapist can’t.”
“Okay, then, they made a lucky guess,” he says, that edge back to his voice again. “They’ve accused you of a lot. Throw a bunch of darts and something is bound to stick. But I don’t know why you’re stressing. You have people for this. Let the grown ups handle it.”