They’re making a Breezeo movie.
You whisper this as you crawl into bed with the woman you love for the first time in weeks. It’s the middle of the night. You just got home from New York. You've been back and forth all summer, deep into the fall. You were due back days ago, the first of October, but you kept delaying your return.
Your arms slide around her from behind as you pull her to you, her back against your chest. You smell like your cologne. Too often, you come home smelling like booze or perfume. She makes you shower every time it happens before you can even touch her.
“Are you serious?” she asks. “A Breezeo movie?”
You hum in response as you tug at her clothes, moving just enough fabric aside to make her feel good. She’s only wearing her underwear and one of your t-shirts. She moans as you slide into her from behind. Your lips are on her neck. It takes no time at all before she’s crying out in pleasure.
You move then, laying flat on your back as you pull her on top. Sighing, you grasp her hips and slide right back inside, closing your eyes. “You feel so good, baby. I just want to lay here and feel you. I’m so fucking exhausted right now.”
“And you think I’m not?”
You open your eyes again when she says that. There’s a bite to those words. She’s not moving, staring down at you. It’s dark in the bedroom, but not so dark that she can’t see your clear blue eyes. You came home sober.
“I didn’t say that.”
“Didn’t think about it, either, huh?”
There’s that bite again.
“Come on, can we not fight right now?” you ask, and you even sound exhausted. There’s not a shred of anger in your voice. “I just got home ten minutes ago. I haven’t seen you in over a month. I… fuck, I just want to be inside of you right now. We can fight tomorrow if you want.”
She makes a face at you but slowly starts moving. You close your eyes again, relaxing. It doesn’t go on long before you pull her down to you, holding her as you thrust. You whisper in her ear, whispering how much you’ve missed her, how you haven’t been able to sleep without her beside you.
After you finish, she just lays there, still on top. Your hands roam beneath the t-shirt, stroking her back. It’s quiet. Used to be, the silence between you felt comfortable, but now it’s like an invisible barrier that’s difficult to get around.
“I took some meetings for it,” you tell her. “For Breezeo. They haven’t announced it yet. I’m not even supposed to talk about it. It’s still too early.”
“Wait, you’re doing it?” She moves, rolling over to look at you. “You?”
“I don’t know. I’m supposed to spend tomorrow going over it with Cliff. But that’s why I didn’t come home right away.”
“That’s… wow. You have to do it! Or you at least have to try. You’d be brilliant as Breezeo.”
“Now you’re pushing it. If I go for the movie, there’s no way I’d ever get the lead. I can't carry a franchise.”
“What? Of course you can! You’d be perfect, Jonathan. I’m serious! I mean, come on, nobody knows Breezeo like I do, and I’m a billion percent sure that it has to be you. So you have to try, okay? For me? Please?”
“You just want to see me wearing the costume, don’t you?”
“Well, I mean, I don’t not want to…”
You laugh, kissing her. “I’ll see if I can make that happen for you.”
“You promise?”
You never promise things. She expects you’ll laugh, but instead, you say, “I promise. I’ll try.”
For the first time in a while, she goes to sleep with a smile… and that’s the last smile she ever gets.
Ugh, that’s too dramatic. It’s also not true. What I really mean is it’s the last time she smiles with you.
Look, I’m doing this wrong again. I can’t keep distancing myself from reality… but then again, what happens after that last smile doesn't feel real.
When I wake up in that bed a few hours later, I’m alone. For a moment, as I lay there, I think I dreamed it, but the smell of your cologne is all over. As I breathe it in, I wonder where you are. It’s not even dawn yet and you’re already gone.
I find out that afternoon. You were spotted in the wee hours of the morning across town, sitting alone in a theater, watching a rehearsal for the stage debut of Serena Markson.
When you finally make it home that night, well after dark, the first thing you do is kiss me. But you taste like whiskey and you smell like a whore, and my chest is caving in on me because of it, so I push you off. Both hands pressed against your chest, I shove you so hard you slam into the wall. You look at me, and I can’t tell if you’re shocked, or hurt, or even confused, because you look numb. Your eyes are a void.
‘You’re overreacting,’ you say when I confront you. ‘It’s nothing.’ But it’s not ‘nothing,’ I know, because that was me once. Don’t you remember? I know what it’s like to be somebody’s lone captive audience. And maybe it would’ve been okay had you told me, had you not come home drunk, covered in perfume, when I worked all goddamn day to ensure you still had a home to come to. In three years, the only thing your dream seems to have paid for is coke.
I’m yelling, and the tears start falling, and you keep whispering, “I’m sorry,” over and over and over, and when I tell you ‘sorry’ doesn't cut it, you say, “I love you, more than anything, baby.”
And I believe you, because you’re good, Jonathan.
Something toxic grew between us. I thought the drugs were your Kryptonite, Superman, but I’m beginning to think it might be me. Am I destroying your dream? Are you free-falling because you’re being weighed down by me? If I weren’t here, would you be soaring?
We scream, and I cry, and you get high, over and over as the weeks carry on, a perpetual cycle fueled by all this stress. The tiniest things start triggering me, and it’s making me sick, so sick that I can’t get out of bed some mornings. And I just want to talk to you, really talk, and not argue. I miss you. I miss us. So I ask about the Breezeo movie, trying to bring us back to common ground, back to where we both still exist, and you say, “It’s not happening now.”
“They’re not making it?”
“Oh, they are,” you say. “I’m just not auditioning.”
Cliff talked you out of trying. I cry when you tell me that, and you lose your temper, telling me to ‘grow up’ because it’s ‘just a shitty comic,’ not realizing I’m upset because you promised, when you never promise, which means I don’t know how much I can trust your words anymore.
I think it was that moment that doomed us. It gets so ugly that we don’t speak for days. You sleep on the couch. The barrier of silence becomes an unclimbable mountain.
All I do is cry… cry… cry…
I’m at work when I realize what’s happening. I confirm it that night, but you’re already passed out on the couch. I’ll let you sleep. I’ll tell you in the morning. You’ll be sober. We’ll be all right. I stay up all night, not sure how to feel. When I hear you stirring in the morning, I hesitate. I’m scared.
I shouldn't ever be afraid to talk to you. What happened to us?
You’re sitting on the couch, putting on your shoes to leave. I stand in the bedroom doorway and ask, “Can we talk for a minute?”
“I have things to do,” you say, no affection in your voice. You sound like your father at that moment, but I’d never say those words to you.
“It’s important. I have something to tell you.”
You stand up, and you’re stone-cold sober, your blue eyes so clear, and I think maybe it’ll be okay, but then you stare me in the eyes and say, “Tell someone who fucking cares.”
And then you walk out.
You walk out on me.
And then I collapse.
My legs won’t hold me.
And you don’t know this, but that woman you don’t care about anymore? The one whose world you just shattered? She’s pregnant. She’s having your baby, Jonathan. And you don’t even know. You don’t even care.