Devi’s quiet when we approach her apartment, and I’m not sure what to say.  I’m not sure I can say anything, because I’m still hard as a rock, and every time I breathe, I breathe in the smell of her.  It lingers everywhere—my hands, her thighs, my lips—and it’s driving me fucking crazy.  When she reached for me earlier, her hands fumbling eagerly with my zipper, I had almost climaxed right then and there.  I may be a man renowned for his control, and my scenes usually highlight this about me, but with Devi, I have nothing.  Nothing.  No shred of patience or restraint, and going down on her on the hood of my Mustang had already driven me into a fucking frenzy.  (Because what man doesn’t fantasize about that at some point—a beautiful woman spread open on the hood of a muscle car, cunt exposed, hair like tousled cascades on the sleek metal?)

And fuck if getting caught hadn’t made me harder, sent my mind spiraling into the filthiest, most depraved fantasies possible—watching Devi try to “convince” the officers to let us go, first with her mouth and then with her pussy, the kind of fantasies I would never admit to anyone else.  And then we got on the highway and she dove for my dick like a madwoman, and I hope God was watching what a fucking gentleman I was, because it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life to push her away.

Except now I’m in her driveway saying goodbye and I’m throbbing with misery and I can tell she’s a little hurt, and shit.  Why did I push her away?

I wasn’t lying when I told her that I thought it would be better for the show for her not to reciprocate tonight.  I do think that, and also I’d like to plan another visually dynamic venue for the blowjob, not just the interior of my goddamn car (even though it’s the best car in the world.)

But that’s not the real reason, and the real reason is so fragile even in my own mind that I know I have no hope of explaining it to her.  Because those thirty minutes with her on my hood, when I tongued her to orgasm over and over again while she told me Persian and Greek fables in that breathy, faltering voice, the big feeling had come, and I was drunk on it.  It came with my mouth on Devi’s silken skin, with her words drifting into the desert, and it was more powerful than I’d ever felt with anyone, ever.  More than my first scene, my favorite films, or my most elaborate and creative ideas.

No, this was something beyond anything I’ve ever felt, so powerful and elemental that I could feel it coursing through my body and into the rocky ground underneath me and into the speckled, glittering sky above me, and the world dissolved into pure, celestial magic.  

Sparkling.

Atomic.

Holy.

And then the world came together again, normal once more but still charged with the ionized memory of our magic, and we sped into the dark, laughing at our near-miss.

So why did I push her away?

Because I couldn’t bear the thought of something so unbearably sexy, so indelibly perfect, being brought down to earth with something as mercenary and trite as forcing her to suck me off in my car.  I mean, I knew at the time that I wasn’t forcing anything, that she would have been happy to do it, but it would have ultimately been me leading the transition from the stars to the slurping, and it felt wrong.

It still feels wrong.  I chose the right thing, I know it, even as I sit here listening to Devi gather up her things and unbuckle herself.  

“I’ll walk you inside,” I say suddenly, unbuckling too.

“Okay,” she says.  Her voice betrays nothing, and this is one of the strangest things I’ve learned about Devi in the past few weeks.  She can be so friendly, so straightforward, so adorably young, that it would be tempting to think that she’s an open book.  But she’s not always, only when she chooses to be, and there are times when she’s just as unreadable as the stars.  More Queen Cassiopeia than Layla.

We get out and I follow her up the walk, up to her front door.  The moment is pregnant as she unlocks it, as we both recall our searing first kiss here, and I wonder how she remembers it.  She wanted it, I know, just like she genuinely wanted to blow me tonight in my car.  Devi is a modern, sex-positive girl; she enjoys having sex and she likes me as a friend.  And there have been a few moments where I’ve thought I’ve glimpsed something more, kernels of yearning in her voice, a bite of the lip or a quick blink as she looks away from me.  

But I still think it might have just been a hot kiss for her and nothing more. Not the revelation it was for me.

The moment passes and then we’re walking up the old wooden stairs to the upper floor and unlocking another door there.

She flicks a light on, and a yellow CFL bulb illuminates a cozy living room lined with bookshelves and dominated by the ugliest couch I’ve ever seen in my life, a hulking thing of orange velvet.  It’s either the kind of couch you find in your great-aunt’s basement or the kind of couch you pay too much money for at a place like Anthropologie.

I walk over to investigate it further, and then I hear Devi clear her throat like she’s going to speak, like it’s easier for her to speak when we’re not looking at each other.  I brace myself for whatever it is she’s going to say.

“Why wouldn’t you let me blow you in the car?” she asks softly.

Dammit.  The one question I would pay real, American money for her not to ask.

I turn to face her, my filmmaker brain having tiny seizures when I see how sweet and vulnerable she looks framed against her sagging, overwhelmed bookshelves.  “Devi, it’s just about the show, it’s not because I don’t—”

“Bullshit.”  There’s no menace or heat in her voice right now, just the matter-of-fact voice she would use to tell me about star formation.

I hesitate.  She tilts her head at me.  

I speak after a long moment, trying to fumble my way towards the truth without exposing how deeply, crazily, ridiculously I am caught up in her.  “I didn’t want to use you, Devi.  I didn’t want to cheapen what we shared in the desert.”

She raises an eyebrow, and I realize suddenly I’ve said something wrong.  

“For one thing,” she says, using her fingers to tick off her words, suddenly not looking like a girl at all, but a confident—and irritated—woman, “there’s nothing cheap about my choosing to do any sexual act with you.  I make the choice—I choose to use my body, either for work or for pleasure, and tonight I was choosing to go down on you, even though I knew the cameras were off.  When you call that choice cheap, it makes me feel cheap.”

Shit shit shit.  

“That’s not at all what I meant,” I hurry to explain.  “I just meant—”

“And for another thing,” she continues, as if I haven’t spoken, “I feel like you’re holding yourself back from me, and I don’t get it at all.  Logan, your body isn’t a machine, and I don’t expect it to be—I don’t expect you to turn yourself off like a switch when the camera turns off.  You’re human, you’re going to keep needing and craving even after a scene ends.  Of course, you don’t want to use women, and of course you aren’t the kind of guy who tries to fuck around with girls onset when the cameras aren’t rolling. It’s one of the things I like best about you.”

I don’t know what to say to this, because I’m so floored and grateful that she has noticed those things about me, but I also know that she’s not finished talking yet and that I’m still in trouble.

“But Logan—” she steps forward “—I offered.  I was offering because I wanted to.  I wanted to and I chose it, and you wouldn’t have been manipulating or even coaxing me into it.  Please...as we move forward...please open up to me more.  I’m your friend and I think I’m—” she breaks off, swallowing and glancing away.  “I’m so turned on for you all the time,” she finishes, and it makes my dick ache and my heart beat hard, even as my mind recognizes that she changed course at the last moment.

She changed course...why?  My heart beats harder and faster.  What was she going to say?  Because what if she was going to say that she is falling for me?  That she has feelings for me?

What would I say back?

The answer rises to my lips immediately: Me too me too me too.

She drags my mind away from those thoughts with a soft sigh, the kind of sigh that makes me remember the noises she made on the hood of my car.  Something snaps inside of me, something big.

“Sit on the couch,” I command.  My voice is firm, loud and a little harsh in the small, warm space. Some distant part of me wonders if I’ve crossed a line.

But she sits.

I walk over to her.  “On the edge,” I say, and she obeys, and then I kick her legs apart, so that she’s not only sitting on the edge but has her legs splayed wide.  Her skirt rides up, baring her pussy.  

She peers up at me with those golden eyes at the same time that I smell her scent again.  My pulse thuds in my neck and wrists and groin, and it hits me.

I’m not just caught up in Devi, I’m truly, honestly falling for her.  I have feelings.

Capital F Feelings.  

Somehow my crush has gone from “casually obsessed with” to “move in with me,” and I have no idea what the fuck to do with that, much less what Devi would do with it if she knew.  She’s obviously attracted to me, but that in no way equates romance, especially in our line of work.  It’s too soon for me to feel this way, and it’s not right to drag that into the middle of a project. And if I’m being honest, I’m scared.  Not a little scared, but a lot scared, because the last time I had capital F Feelings, I lost my dog, my heart, and my sobriety in one fell swoop.

But I can’t just ignore this, and clearly, I can’t hide it from Devi, nor do I want to.

There has to be a middle ground, right?  Between pretending it away and proposing marriage?

I drop to my knees in between her legs, not missing her small shiver as I do.

“You’re turned on for me all the time?” I ask her.  “Well, I’m worse.  I’m fucking miserable with the need to touch you and taste you.  I’m obsessed with it.  I’m obsessed with you.”  I meet her eyes.  “You have to tell me if that makes you uncomfortable.  Because the way I think about you, the way I crave you, it’s not just like two performers. It’s not just like two friends.” My hands find her ankles and wrap around them, more to keep myself from touching her in more interesting places while she answers. I can see her pulse hammering in her throat as she swallows.

“Do you understand what I’m saying to you?” I ask tentatively.

“Yes,” she whispers.

“And are you okay with it?”

A pause.  And then a nod.

Well, it’s not the most enthusiastic response I could have hoped for, but what did I expect?  Even holding back from going full Romeo on her, it’s still a lot to lay on a girl, that I think about her all the time, and not in a friends-only way.  I start to get up from my kneeling position, but she stops me with a hand on my shoulder.  It drifts over to my throat, where her thumb caresses lightly across my Adam’s apple.

It’s my turn to shiver.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, “you just took me by surprise.  What I mean to say is that it’s more than okay with me.  I’m...I’m a little obsessed with you, too.”

I feel like my chest is going to explode.  “Really?”

She smiles.  “Really.”

“But you also understand why I want to bottle up some of...whatever this is...and use it for the show, right?”

She nods, but the smile fades.  “I understand.  We want it to feel real.”

“Because it is real.  The heat between us, it’s special, Cass, and if we play our cards right, everyone who watches us will feel it.”

“I get it.”

But something is off in her voice, and I don’t know how to fix it.  Except to do what I planned on doing originally when I made her sit: lean down and bury my face between her legs.  

She lets out a low noise—half moan, half sigh—and I go easy on her, knowing she’s probably a little sore from all the times I made her come in the desert.  I go soft and steady, long strokes of my tongue and light flicks over her clit, and her build-up is slow but inexorable as she squirms in front of me, her fingers laced in my hair and pulling hard.  And when she comes, she cries out my name, and I nearly lose all my resolve and fuck her right there.

“I just needed another taste before I went home,” I explain as I straighten, wiping my mouth.  

“I like that,” she mumbles dazedly.  “I like when it happens without the cameras...it makes me feel like you want me.”

“Jesus, woman.  I can prove that I want you every second of the day, if you want.  But for tonight, I’ll be happy with my taste.”

She falls back against the couch with a tired laugh.  “You can have all the tastes you want.”  

“I might take you up on that, Cass.”

And later that night, when I’m undressing, I discover that I still have her panties—pink, silk, teenage boy’s wet dream panties—in my pocket.  And so I finally, finally relieve the ache, stroking my neglected cock with the silk until I erupt in thick ropes of cum.  I film the entire thing on my phone and I send it to Devi.

Told you I was obsessed, I text right after it sends.

Can’t type, my fingers are too busy, she responds after a few minutes.

I fall asleep to the image of her masturbating to a video of me jacking off with her panties, and maybe my depraved porno heart has never been happier than it is right now.

---

I can’t stop humming.  It’s becoming a problem, apparently, at least according to Tanner, who has started grumbling about staging a humming intervention.  I hum in between takes when filming scenes, I hum while I’m editing, I hum when I crack open a beer for Tanner at the end of our workday.

“You okay, man?” he asks, taking a drink of his beer.  

It’s Wednesday, four days since I went down on Devi in the desert and told her that I had more-than-friends feelings about her.  We’ve been texting every day, mostly banter and industry gossip, but at night, our conversations devolve into absolute raunch, usually ending in us sending each other naked selfies and videos of us masturbating to said selfies and so on and so forth until we fall asleep.  I’ve been importing some of the selfies and texts and videos to incorporate into the Star-Crossed series (Vida and Marieke both loved Devi’s idea for the name.) All with Devi’s permission, of course.  

But even as I work our late night messages into the series, I feel like we’re edging into this exhilarating gray area where the rules don’t apply; where what’s happening between us happens off-script, off-camera first, and then makes it into the project later.  We’re skidding off the road in slow motion, and all I want to do is press down hard on the gas, barrel headlong into this thrilling thing together.

And to that end, I’ve been desperate to see her, but I had to stay in Las Vegas for a few nights for an extended shoot, and she has to work tonight.  But tomorrow I get to see her again, and I feel like someone has injected me with pure, uncut happiness.  Even right now, while I’m on my knees with leather upholstery cleaner wiping down the couch I just had sex on this morning.

“I’m more than okay, dude,” I reply to Tanner’s question.  “I’m magnificent.  I’m brilliant.  I’m—”

“Are you using drugs?” he cuts in.  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so...animated.”

“The only thing I’m high on is life,” I say with as much dignity as I can muster while scrubbing semen off my couch cushions.

“It’s that girl, isn’t it?” he asks.  “Devi.”

Thinking of Devi sends my thoughts tumbling down a spiral of affectionate depravity.  I want to do the filthiest things to her and then I want to take her to meet my parents.  Is this normal?  Is this how normal relationships work?

Can we even call it a relationship, given that the only thing we’ve actually admitted is how desperate we are to fuck each other?

“So let me ask you a real question,” Tanner says, setting down his beer and walking over to me with a fresh roll of paper towels.  “I don’t have sex with women for money, so I’m not sure how this all works—but do you feel weird at all about fucking other women while you like this girl?”

His question burrows into me, sharp and shaming, joining the other thoughts I’ve been suppressing for the last few weeks.  I’m a typical man, I’m good at compartmentalizing, but I’m also this sentimental bastard with all these gooey feelings, and I’d be lying if I said this doesn’t bother me when I think about it.

“I don’t know how I feel,” I start, not really sure how to frame what I want to say.  I stop wiping at the couch for a minute and sit back on my heels.  “Sex isn’t love, Tanner.  It’s not even about liking someone.  I respect all the girls I fuck, and I enjoy fucking them, but I don’t always want to hang out with them when the shoot is finished or wake up next to them in the morning.  No more than eating a good sandwich for lunch makes me crave my actual dinner any less.”

“But sex isn’t food,” Tanner points out.  “It’s not the same as scratching an itch or taking a nap—it’s not purely physical, and even you can’t deny that.”

I sigh.  He’s right.  “I know.  But this isn’t my first time falling in love as a porn star.  Even she—” we both know I mean She-Voldemort here “—wasn’t my first girlfriend in the industry.  I know how to do this now, and it’s to have really clear boundaries and to keep some things special for each other.”

He looks doubtful.  “Most couples have ‘no sex with other people’ as a boundary, you know.  That’s like...a super-common boundary.”

“But that’s what I’m saying—porn people aren’t like other people.  We’re not common.  I mean, on some level, don’t you think that maybe we’re more evolved because we can separate sex from love?  Don’t you feel like that’s noble?  That I can have sex with so many different partners but still set aside my heart for someone else?”

The doubtful look hasn’t left his face.

“Okay, and yes,” I concede, “it does feel strange.  All I think about, all I want, is Devi, and so it felt weird to fuck Candi and Ang today and it felt weird to fuck Jen and Nina yesterday in Vegas, but at the same time, my job is to fuck beautiful women.  I can’t just abandon my job whenever I meet a girl I like.  And I love my job.  My feelings for Devi don’t change that, and I would never expect her feelings for me to change her own career path.”

“If you say so,” Tanner says, draining the last of his beer and walking over to the recycling bin to chuck in the can.  “I just don’t think I’d even want to touch another woman if I was in love with someone else.”

“That’s very chivalrous,” I say, and I don’t say it mockingly.  I mean it.  I admire that, because despite my warm, gooey center, despite my fantasy to love and be loved, I also know that while it’s still my job to fuck women, I’ll do it happily.  Maybe with some complicated feelings, but never with any regrets.  It’s not as if I’m going to start going limp on set because my heart’s in another place.

It’s just that I don’t think my heart and my dick have to be connected, at least not all of the time.

“And I think you know yourself pretty well, Logan,” he says, grabbing his keys and phone off the kitchen counter.  “I don’t doubt that you’ve got it all figured out.  But what about this Devi girl?  Do you think she feels the same way?  You think she’ll really be cool letting you fuck your way up and down and sideways around the Valley?”

“Of course,” I scoff.  “She’s a professional!  And I guarantee she won’t stop fucking other people either.  I know for a fact that she’s ramping up her career as we speak.”

Tanner shrugs.  “Alright, man.  Whatever you say.  I’ll see you Friday?”

“Yeah.  Whenever you want to come over is fine—we don’t have a scene booked and I’ll be editing all day.”

“And don’t forget to ‘gram those pictures you took of Candi and Ang today.”

“When have I ever forgotten to post on social media?”

He laughs.  “Okay, okay, you’re right.  But you do have to occasionally promote yourself, you know, not just talk about the lunch you’re eating or whatever show you’re bingeing at the moment.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

He tosses me a wave as he leaves out the front door, and I throw myself onto my newly-sanitized couch, digging out my phone to post the pictures on Instagram and Twitter, and tease up the scene a little, even though it probably won’t go up until next week.  

When I’m done, I check Devi’s Twitter feed on a whim.  We follow each other, but Devi doesn’t leave much to follow...her most recent tweet is from last month, and it’s a selfie taken inside the flagship Good Vibrations store in San Francisco, where she’s giving a giant dildo an exaggerated, adorable wink.  No hashtags, no caption.  Her Instagram feed is equally sparse, usually shots of the beach or the desert, never with any words attached.

What was she thinking when she posted those pictures, I wonder.  How was she feeling?  For all that we’ve done together, for as intimate as we’ve been, I have no idea what her inner life is like.  I don’t know if she felt lonely when she looked out at that ocean sunset she posted, or if she felt complete.  I have no idea whether her lack of online presence is because she’s shy or because she lives so fully in the moment that she doesn’t even think about sharing it publicly.

I stare at that Good Vibrations selfie for a long time, at the way her hair tumbles around her shoulders and her mouth opens playfully.  And then my chest squeezes hard and my mind floods with uncertainties and doubts, and I jam my phone back into my pocket.

I wish Tanner hadn’t asked me all those questions, even as I also realize that they’re necessary.  I’ve been avoiding thinking about it, trying to put Devi in a mental box as I filmed my usual scenes, as I leaned down to whisper all my dirty, intense thoughts in the ears of other women, as I came on them and inside them, as I wrote monologues inspired by them.

But it was messier than that.  The boxes I’d put Devi and Star-Crossed in were porous, and they seeped into everything else, creating these confusing scenarios where I fantasized about Devi as I fucked other women but I was still turned on and completely engaged by the other women.  Is that a thing?  Being able to want one person so utterly and consumingly, but also being able to throw myself into sex with other people without missing a beat?  If porn wasn’t my job, I have no doubt I’d be monogamous.  But porn is my job, so where does that leave me?

I stand up, suddenly determined not to think about this anymore.  I don’t even really know that Devi has capital F Feelings for me; I don’t know that she’ll want me after Star-Crossed is over.  Right now, the only thing that we’ve established for certain is how much we want to fool around with each other and that we maybe like each other in a more-than-friends way.  Hardly the time to start thinking about the future.

Even if it’s all I want to think about.

God, she’d look good in my house.  Sleeping in my bed, swimming in my pool.  Sharing my life…

But no.  I’m not going to think about this anymore.  For all I know, I’m just setting myself up for heartbreak when I discover she doesn’t feel the same way.

My phone rings, and I fish it back out of my pocket, hoping against hope that it’s Devi and then letting out a world-class sigh when I see that it’s my mom.

Dutifully, I answer.  “Hey, Mom.”

“Hi, honey.  Am I interrupting...anything?”

I can’t help but smile.  My parents have been mostly supportive of my career choices—not as enthusiastic as Devi’s parents seem to be—but supportive enough.  Except that neither of them, Mom especially, like to mention anything about my job by name.  The words porn, sex, scene, and even adult as an adjective coupled with anything else, are never words you’ll hear around my family’s dinner table.

“No, Mom.  I’m not working right now.”

“Good, because I need to talk to you,” she says briskly.  “Dad and I are selling our house.”

I frown.  “Why?”

“Dad got a job offer near Portland and he’s decided to take it.  We never meant for California to be our forever-home, you know.  We thought maybe we’d head back to Boston, but then this Portland offer came in, and we’ve always loved Oregon.”

I’m still frowning.  “But…”

“But what, honey?”

“But I kind of like you guys being here and stuff.  What about when I want to come visit my old XBox?  Or my high school computer?”

She laughs.  “Well, of course we will give you a chance to go through all your old stuff.  Which reminds me, Phil from down the street said his grandson is about the right age for that old game set you had, the one with the plastic guitar and drums and stuff.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose.  “Rock Band, Mom.  It’s called Rock Band.”

“Anyway, I gave it all to Phil.  It’s got to be almost ten years old now—isn’t that like ten thousand years in technology time?”

“Yes, but still!   I don’t like this.  The giving stuff away and the moving stuff.  What am I supposed to do for Thanksgiving?  I can’t make a turkey by myself!”

“You’re supposed to book a plane ticket to Portland, or accept that you are almost thirty and that your dad and I have lives outside of being available for your turkey needs.”

“I guess.”

“Are you really upset about us moving?”

I think for a moment, standing up and drifting over to the huge window that looks out from my living room onto my sparkling blue pool.  “No, I’m not.  But I’ll miss you guys,” I say honestly.  

I know.  It’s gross and un-masculine.  But I like my parents, and I have dinner with them at least once a month, and I guess I’ve also never really thought about my childhood being so ephemeral—that the biggest fixed geographical point in my life could shift so suddenly.  

Plus, this means my mom is really right.  I am an adult, and fuck, I hate being reminded of that.  It makes me start thinking of questions I can’t really answer, like what am I going to do with the rest of my life?  Will I ever really pursue film as a dream?  And don’t I someday want to have adult sons of my own whining on the phone about Rock Band?

“We will miss you, too,” Mom assures me.  “I’ll call you later next week to set up a time for you to come by and go through your stuff, okay?”

I decide to put my parents moving into a mental box, just like I’ve done with Devi.  I’ll figure out how I really feel about it later. “Okay, Mom.  Love you.”

“Love you, sweetie.  Goodbye.”

She hangs up, and as she does, I hear a strange clicking noise, clicking like little dog claws on the hardwood.  It’s a sound that used to be as familiar as the washer running or traffic outside. Out of habit, I squat down and pat my leg, not even thinking about what I’m doing until Prior is actually butting up against my hand and giving me tiny, effeminate yaps to let me know how happy he is to see me.

As I pat his furry gray and blond head, my mind gradually catches up.

Prior.

My old dog.

The dog She-Voldemort took.

Here in my house.

I look up towards the entrance to the living room, already knowing whom I’ll see there.  And I hate to admit it, but she looks as gorgeous as ever, pale skin accentuated by a red crop top and a yellow tulle skirt, dark hair in a tight ballet bun on the top of her head.  As always, she looks a hundred percent New York, a hundred percent fashionable, and a hundred percent unattainable.  There used to be a time when I felt like the luckiest guy in the world.

“Hi, Raven,” I say, scooping the Yorkie up in my arms and standing.

“Hi, Logan.”

They’re literally the first words we’ve said to each other since she left.

She steps forward into the light, and I see her face clearly.  Delicate, almost European features.  Bright red lips.  Eyes limned with the blackest kohl.

“So did you just let yourself in or what?”

“I still have a key,” she says primly.  “And I thought it was time that we finally talk.  After all, you didn’t come find me after you saw me being fucked at Vida’s.”

Entitlement, manipulation and a dose of guilt, all in three sentences.  

Yep, it’s definitely her, all right.

“What is there to talk about, Raven?” I ask, willing myself to put down the dog and escort her to the door.  Except I can’t put the dog down because I’ve fucking missed the shit out of this dog, and I’d bet everything I own that Raven knows that, and brought him for the sole purpose of throwing me off-balance.

She takes a step forward.  “Don’t act with me, Logan.  We both know that you were never a good actor.”

Jesus.  Going for the balls already.

“I’ve never pretended to be a good actor,” I say as pleasantly as I can while still gritting my teeth.

“Oh, that’s right.  You wanted to be Logan O’Toole, erotic auteur, am I right?”

“What did you want to talk about again?” I repeat, my eyes sliding away from her to the door, wondering how I could make her move towards it.  “Because if you came here just to make me feel shitty, I think I’d rather you left.”

Raven glances down at the floor, rubbing the back of her right calf with the toe of her left foot, encased in some expensive ankle-boot thing that straddles the line between haute couture and Skid Row.  “I didn’t come here to make you feel shitty,” she says after a minute.  “I’m sorry about that.  I guess I’m feeling defensive because...well, you know why.”

There’s silence.  If this is her apology, her actual play to win over my time and energy, then it’s not enough.  “I think I do know why, Raven.  You left me.  You didn’t talk to me about it, you didn’t leave a note or a voicemail, you just left.  I couldn’t even tell people that we ‘broke up,’ because you did all the breaking.  You broke my heart, you almost broke my career, and you certainly broke my mind, at least for a little while.”  Prior reaches up to lick my neck.  “Oh yeah, and you took my fucking dog.  And all so you could gallivant across Europe and fuck some Italian?”

“It wasn’t that simple,” she insists.  “And it wasn’t fucking easy.  Do you think I woke up one day, and was like, ‘Oh, I’ll just throw away three years of my life because I want someone who can read the menu at a pasta place’?  It was the hardest decision of my life, walking away from you, and I thought it would be better for me if I left with a clean break.”

“Well, I’m so glad you made the decision that was better for you,” I say bitterly.

Raven throws up her hands.  “You’re deliberately twisting my words.  I only meant that if I had tried to talk it over with you, if I’d lingered in your house—in your bed—then I would have ended up staying.”

“And what would have been so terrible about that?” I say, and it comes out broken and hushed, a deathbed whisper, and I hate myself for it.  I don’t want to show her a single iota of weakness.  She doesn’t deserve to know how thoroughly she wrecked me.

But as soon as it’s said, her face changes.  Not into an expression of pity—I probably would have lit my own house on fire if I’d seen even the barest trace of pity on her face—but of pleading.

“Logan,” she says, begging.  “Please understand.  I had to leave for my own sanity, for my own life.  Everywhere we went, I was your girlfriend.  Every industry party, every joint shoot...every solo shoot for that matter, I wasn’t Raven Fleur, I was Logan O’Toole’s fuckdoll.  Rumors started that I was only getting jobs because of you, that I would never be able to work if we broke up, and I started to think they might be right.  I’ve been working in this business since I was seventeen, and for the first time in twelve years, I doubted every decision I made.  I started to lose a sense of who Raven was, the work she liked to do, because it was so hugely eclipsed by your…” She gestures to me, to the freshly cleaned couch behind me.  “Just you.  Not only your business—I could have handled that.  But your vision.  Your you-ness.  You didn’t leave any room for me to create my own world.”

I am immediately defensive.  “I never, not even once, told you what kind of jobs to take or what kind of scenes to film.  I never pressured you to be any more involved with O’Toole films than you wanted to be.  And I would certainly never—”

“Logan,” she interrupts.  “You’ve never had to pressure anybody in your life.  Don’t you fucking get it?  People fall all over themselves trying to make you happy.  One tweet reply from you, one smile across the room at a party, and you win friends for life.  And me?”  Her mouth twists up in a rueful smile.  “I was so desperate for your smiles, to be inside that playful but intense inner circle, that I was sacrificing myself in advance.”

“You should have told me,” I maintain.  ‘“You should have talked to me!”

“And said what?  Exactly what I just said, and then have you say exactly what you’ve just said, and then feel both reassured and ignored at the same time?  Or worse, ready to go willingly back to my personal prison?”

I turn away from her, walking back towards the window overlooking the pool.  I’m too angry and hurt to think clearly, even though I recognize the grains of truth in her words.  I can be a little monomaniacal about my projects, and I do have a bad habit of wanting everyone I care about to be involved with all the same things I care about too.  And maybe if I’d been a more sensitive boyfriend, I would have seen that Raven felt stifled in our creative partnership even as our domestic partnership still sailed steady atop smooth seas.

But it doesn’t excuse her cowardice.  Or her infidelity.

“You did so much more than try to renew your career when you left.  You didn’t even pay me the courtesy of a goodbye, not to mention the Italian guy.”

She clears her throat, and I realize she’s come up very close behind me.  “I was wrong to do that.  Luca and I...we were seeing each other for a while before I left.”

I know this.  I have known this for months.  So why does her admission spark so much rage inside of me?  It should be old news, and besides, it took some courage for her to admit that.  She never did like admitting she was wrong.

Once I can trust my voice, I speak, still keeping my eyes on the pool.  “I wish you and Luca the best.  And I suppose I feel more enlightened now than before we talked, so thank you for that.”

“Luca and I broke up,” she says quickly, before I can get to the part where I ask her to leave.  “It wasn’t real, Logan, it never was.  He was just in the right place at the right time, able to tell me all the things I wanted to hear.”

I swivel my head to look at her.  She’s standing beside me now, her eyes on the pool as well, one pale hand pressed against the glass.

And then she says it.

“I’m still in love with you.”  Her dark eyes meet mine.  “I know I’ve fucked things up, but I’m not too proud to beg.”

For a moment, I remember why I loved her once.  Her sharp beauty.  Her stubborn pride.  “You don’t still love me,” I tell her.  “You’re here because things didn’t go according to plan, and I’m the last person you remember being happy with.  Whatever you’re looking for though, I can’t help you.  I’ve moved on.”

She takes this on the chin, her only sign of disturbance at my rejection of her a slight sucking of her top teeth.

“You’ve moved on,” she echoes.  “Who is she?”

Devi flashes to mind, but no fucking way am I willing to tempt fate like that.  Instead I say, “There’s not another girl.  I just mean that I’ve moved on personally.  I’m past what happened, and I’m looking to the future.  I’ve got a great new project lined up, too.”

“A new project?”

I have no interest in pitching Star-Crossed to her, but my latent enthusiasm for it bleeds into my words anyway.  “It’s a new project with Vida and that Dutch studio Lelie, like a reality show where two people are falling in love, but all the sex is also open-door, which makes it better than reality TV.  Plus I’m making it with Devi Dare—remember that girl from Real Playdates?  She’s fucking amazing.  Like, her body melts my brain, and her actual brain could melt my brain, she’s so smart.”

Raven chews her lip.  “Sounds like quite the project.”

I shrug.  “I’m super pumped about it, but yeah.  It’s needing pretty much all of my free time.”

“That’s a shame.  I was kind of hoping we could at least work together while I’m in L.A. this month.”  She drops her hand from the window and smooths her skirt.  “You know, some clear-the-air kind of fucking.  Even if we don’t get back together, it would still feel good, wouldn’t it?”

She steps so close to me that I can feel her breath on my chest.  Prior squirms to get down, but I hold him tight.

“Don’t you want to fuck me?” she asks in a low purr, her mouth in that performance pout I witnessed at Vida’s.  “Aren’t you mad enough at me that it would feel so good to pin me down and take me hard?”

I hate how well she knows me; hate how well she knows I itch for exactly that.  But what she doesn’t know is that even as I itch for it, I’m also repulsed by the idea of ever touching her again.  “No, Julie,” I say, using her real name.  “I’d rather not.”

Her jaw drops and I can’t tell if it’s using her real name or my outright refusal to work with or sleep with her again, but I don’t care.  I keep going.  “I’m sorry that you felt lost and I’m sorry that you felt like you couldn’t talk to me.  But for future reference, that’s only a good reason to cheat on your partner in indie movies and book club novels.  It doesn’t excuse what you did, and while I will work on forgiving, I would be an idiot to forget.”

I put Prior back in her arms.  Her stunned expression is slowly giving way to fury.

“Fuck you,” she hisses.  “Fuck you, D—”  And I see it coming, hear it on the tip of her tongue, but I block it out.  She can say my real name in all its twangy and possibly ironic grandeur, but it doesn’t change anything about how I feel.

“Goodbye, Raven,” I say, and then she shoots me a look of such livid fury that I actually feel its acidic heat prickle against my skin.  

She leaves without another word, and after a moment’s thought, I shuffle into the kitchen and root around for some scotch.  I finally said goodbye to Raven, I finally got all the closure I had once so desperately craved, but I don’t feel satisfied.  I don’t feel at peace.

I feel like getting drunk.