26
Remy
I awoke early, before dawn, in my Venice Beach hotel. As I lay back, my eyes adjusting to the grey, I heard the little village awake around me—bikes bumbling past, neighbors greeting one another. Venice Beach had always been a favorite safe haven, on the outskirts of Los Angeles, stretched along the water. And unconsciously, when I’d fled San Francisco the night before, I’d parked there—getting a room to think, to read, to cultivate my next steps. Now that I had to create a new reality for my son and me.
He doesn’t want you, I told myself over and over again. He’s got Connie, he’s got Maria. He’s built a life with another family. And your son and you are null and void, just a memory he cannot escape. I wondered how often, throughout filming the movie, Wes had actively hid his affair with Connie from me. Counting back, I remembered the last time we’d fucked had been about two weeks before, after a particularly grueling night of shooting. I’d collapsed into him, kissing him as the last of the crew had fled the scene. Nothing in his eyes had shown me that he wanted to flee as well, that he had another life brewing elsewhere.
But we were all actors in this, I reminded myself. Including myself. I’d been playacting that I’d wanted nothing else but the film and our child. Rather, I wanted Wesley and me to put our misunderstandings aside. To become what I’d always longed for, as a younger girl.
Smile because it happened. These words echoed through my brain, something I’d told myself continually in the months, and even years, after I moved to Los Angeles. Wesley was now a part of two very big times of my life. He was something I was bouncing off of, continually. As if we were scientific chemicals, that simply caused an explosion whenever we mixed.
Tyler had grown wild, excited, via text the previous night. Explaining that he could meet as early as lunchtime the following day. That he couldn’t wait to see me. But with each message, my heart grew increasingly sour. I brought my hand over my stomach in bed, pondering the events of the day.
Could I possibly find myself at lunch with him—nibbling at a piece of avocado toast, trying to look him in the eyes past his aviator glasses? Always, he dressed so primly, as if he were cut from the pages of GQ, perpetually ready for the next spontaneous shoot. This had irritated me often. I’d wanted the spontaneity of Wesley. I’d yearned for the madness of blasting down the road, our arms wide to the excitement of living life, rather than photographing it.
I stood up and wandered out to the balcony to watch as the sun eased its first light across the waves. Venice Beach Boulevard darted just beneath my window, where a selection of performers, street vendors, and con artists had already begun to join together, analyzing how they could make their funds for the day. They’d rob, thieve from tourists. They’d hunt them. They eyed me from below, one of their potential victims. Wanting to appear brave, I gave them a small wave.
Tyler sent me another text while I was in the shower, arranging for our lunch in Santa Monica, around one. Again, his message stated how excited he was to “get back on track,” and to see what kind of movie I’d made. “I always knew you were so talented, and that maybe you just needed to get out of the city to get past whatever was blocking you here. Now, you’ve done it. And I’ll help you get it out to the masses. We’ll do it together.”
The walk from Venice Beach to Santa Monica was several miles, but it was doable. I strode down the beach, gazing out at the waves and counting the minutes till this lunch. It felt very much like walking the plank, finding myself with nowhere else to turn except the frothing waves below. I remembered, with a pang in my stomach, the strange, sour taste in my mouth that remained after my and Tyler’s first kiss. “Well, he’s not Wesley. But he’ll have to do,” had been the strange, otherworldly message in my brain.
When Wesley and I were eighteen years old, we ran away for a few days—skipping school, avoiding our families, choosing to be with one another, wholly, even when faced with high school graduation and all that came with it just six weeks later. We tore down the highway, toward Los Angeles, and made love against the sand on a beach towel immediately upon arriving. Our skin had tasted like salt, like waves, like freedom. I bit into his neck and loved the way he’d moaned against me. “You’re a force,” he whispered. “You’re so fucking strong, Remy. You’re different than anyone I’ve ever met.”
“Then don’t leave me,” I’d whispered into his ear, all the while knowing that was impossible. He had to go. And we had to part, to see what we could become, alone.
Eventually, one of our ragged fights had sputtered out between us, over a beach picnic. I lit into him, telling him that he wasn’t up for the kind of life I craved. And he admitted that he wanted to be a “lone wolf” for the rest of his life. That it was the kind of poetic existence he’d always seen for himself.
At first, he’d jumped onto his bike alone, tearing away from Santa Monica. I fallen back on the sand, sobbing and screaming out at the waves. But a half hour later he’d returned, helping me onto the back of the bike. We rode back to San Francisco that afternoon, crumpling into our homes separately and not answering our fathers about what we’d been up to. “I’m about to leave anyway,” I told my dad. “It’s not like it matters.” And, surprisingly, there’d been very little retribution from school. They’d let us walk on graduation day, in our swishing green robes. We’d taken a typical photograph together, neither of us smiling.
I remembered it so simply, so purely. And now, as I neared Santa Monica beach, where it had all happened, I felt my limbs turning into jelly. I’d avoided Santa Monica often, throughout my many years of living in Los Angeles, if only because it brought back anxious and burning thoughts of Wesley. Of what we could have done together, had we not decided to separate.
But now that Wesley had made up his mind to be with Connie and with Maria—taking the kind of life I so craved with him—it was like it was over. I could look at the beaches of Santa Monica, gleaming beneath the late morning sun, with a kind of distance. I was a thirty-year-old almost-mother, a baby growing beneath my dress. Someday soon, his needs would outweigh my own in nearly every capacity. My memories would have to take the wayside.
I collapsed near the pier and sat for a long moment, gazing out. Minutes ticked forward, inching toward one in the afternoon. Tyler sent a text asking why he hadn’t heard from me, saying he was on his way. I left it read but unanswered. Being so close to a potential life with him made images of our first life together flash across my brain. Him telling me that I would never be a screenwriter. That I didn’t have the snuff for it. That even my typing wasn’t fast enough. Any insult he could throw at me, he did. And he belittled me, until I was scraping at the bottom and eager to return to San Francisco. To regroup.
“You can come here,” Quintin had said over the phone. “You can work the bar and write the rest of your screenplay. You can breathe, for once. Ever since I can remember, you’ve been running yourself ragged, trying to be with Wesley. Trying to be an actress. Trying to make Los Angeles work. And now, trying to please this asshole, Tyler. Jesus, Rem. Just pull up a stool and sit a while.”
But it hadn't quite worked out. Life had continued on, tearing into me. I’d fallen into pregnancy, into love with Wes. And now, I was at the end of my rope, preparing for a baby I would never be fully ready for.
One in the afternoon came and went, leaving me stretched out across the sand, my feet digging deeper into it. Tyler’s messages grew angry, filled with vitriol. “I should have fucking known you wouldn’t come. I should have fucking known that you would yank me around like this. Well, you know what, Remy? Fuck you. You coming back would have been the biggest mistake of my life. Thank you for doing me a favor. And you know what? I bet your movie sucks. I bet it’s the biggest waste of film and time and acting in the world.”
I grinned to myself, reading these final messages. Tyler had proven himself as no kind of man. As a kind of flickering “what if” that I could immediately dismiss. He’d been nothing to me, except a potential escape. Now, fully out of the arms of San Francisco, nearing the description “dirt broke” and feeling the baby grow from apple to avocado, I could dismiss Tyler as an affliction of a greater problem. I wanted Wes, and Wes didn’t want me. Period.