2. Nikos

2

NIKOS

Even in my lucid state, I know I should've drunk more. The dreams may not have been vivid, not as they usually are, but they're still playing out. Torturing me. They unspool in black and white, poisoning my mind, refusing me the rest I long for.

In my dream, I'm a child again. It's always the same when I'm sleeping. It isn't so much a knowing, but a feeling. Utter terror as I watch it happen, almost in slow motion. Broken glass and blood. Screaming until my throat bleeds. Screaming until my lungs puncture from the splinters of my fear.

Screaming from -

‘Nikos Ridge, I swear on all things holy and sacred, if you're high or drunk, I'll personally smack it the shit out of your system.'

Reluctantly, I open my eyes to the sudden glare of harsh light. Daylight sweeps across my room as the curtains are thrown open. I wince against the glare, my eyes aching. It takes a moment to settle, for the claws of that nightmare to ease, for me to see an endless blue view, ruined by the tops of a city skyline.

New York. Safe. Home.

My head aches and my throat burns. I need water, badly.

As suddenly as the light appears, a shadow blocks it out. It's enough of a reprieve to open my eyes and stare dead into the - extremely pissed off - glare of my manager, Selina Tate.

But she isn't glaring at me. Her eyes are pinned to the empty bottle of vodka tipped over on the floor, just shy of where my hand is dangling.

‘Get up.' Her two words are like the icy crash of sobering water.

‘Morning to you too,' I croak, feigning a smile, although my skull feels like it's splitting in two.

‘It's afternoon.'

Selina is dressed in her usual pantsuit combo, brown hair slicked back into a tidy bun, lips painted cherry red. She's Italian in origin, with the striking features to match. While no older than me, Selina still has the uncanny ability to scold me like a parent.

It was why she's my manager. I like her, but it doesn't mean I have to tell her that.

‘I must've missed my alarm,' I drone, stretching long arms over my head. Fuck, I stink. From the crinkle of her nose, even from a distance, Selina notices too.

‘Are you going to get up, or am I going to drag you out?' The air is driven from my lungs as something heavy is dropped onto my stomach. I clutch my chest, wheezing as the sudden urge to vomit passes over me.

‘I regret giving you a key,' I moan, picking up the pile of bound pages Selina has just dumped on me.

‘To an apartment which is days from being claimed by the bank if you don't pay up on your arrears? Really, Nikos. It's a fucking Wednesday and you smell like the floor of some dingy nightclub downtown.'

‘Are you flirting with me?'

I don't need to watch to know she just rolled her eyes. Selina always follows an eye roll with the kiss of her tongue over her teeth. It's an Italian thing.

‘I've come to throw you a bone.' Her heeled boot - red bottomed, most likely, she's got expensive taste - kicks the velveteen sofa I've fallen asleep on. ‘Are you going to be a good boy and take it?'

‘Go away.' I hoist the bound pages and drop them to the floor, right next to the puddle of vodka. ‘I'm vegan.' Well, if consuming nothing but alcohol counts as vegan.

‘Fuck you.' Selina kicked again, knocking over the empty bottle of spirits I had downed last night. ‘Up. Now.'

I pinch my eyes closed. If I can just tell the universe that Selina is going to leave, maybe the manifestation will work. ‘I don't pay you to give me orders.'

She leans over me, painted nails digging into the material of the sofa. Not that it matters – with the stains, sweat, and unknown bodily fluids matting the once soft velvet, there's no hope for it anyway.

As there's no hope for me.

‘May I be the one to remind you, you don't pay me.'

‘Then leave already.'

Selina chuckles, a deadly, dangerous sound. ‘Oh, no, you're not getting rid of me that easily.'

I don't open my eyes until the click of her heels disappears in the direction of my kitchen. Problem with these luxurious apartments is the architects think an open plan, modern design is more desirable. I suppose it would be if that didn't mean I could smell the rotting take-out food left on the counter from my place on the sofa.

My ears itch with the sound of running water. It's brief, shuts off, and then Selina is back in the living room. There's barely a warning before a cup of water is dumped on my head.

‘Okay, okay!' I bark, gasping at the icy bite of water as it soaks through my dirty white tee.

Selina has a terrifyingly pleased grin on her face, her arms crossed and sharp shoe thumping a rhythm on the hardwood. The empty glass is tinkering against the tap of her nail.

‘Enjoying yourself?' I ask, sitting up as the room sways violently. My living room really is a mess. It wouldn't be impossible to believe a tornado entered, unannounced and uninvited, but it's simply the way I've been living.

Beyond the wall of windows at Selina's back I have the perfect view of Central Park. Even from the height of my home, I can still hear the calls of runners, coffee vendors selling pastries from carts, and the bustle of foot traffic as New Yorkers continue with their day.

Is it really afternoon?

I rub the sleep from my eyes, still not bothering to look at the papers Selina had dumped on me. They now sit in a puddle of vodka and water, two opposing liquids - which is rather a good metaphor for the war currently waging inside of me.

It's a script, with the tell-tale typography of a catchy title plastered on the front page.

An Age of Dragons.

So it's not bank letters or an eviction notice - the same I've been dodging for almost a year.

‘No thirty-year-old lives in such a state,' Selina says, grimacing as she looks between the table covered in old pizza boxes and warped cans of beer. ‘If your Yiayia saw you now, she'd murder you.'

Yiayia, my weakness. My grandmother who I'd left behind in Thessaloniki, Greece. No, not left. Ran away from. I didn't go back to visit her a single time before she died.

‘Why are you here?' I'm not in the mindset for talking. Not with the drums pounding in my head and the snakes writhing in my stomach.

‘You got the gig.'

I look down to the script again, squinting as if that would help my mind make sense of where I'd seen the title. ‘Sorry, I don't think my thirty-year-old brain is awake enough to make sense of this.'

Selina smiles down at me, flashing every single perfectly placed tooth. ‘If I could say it in Greek, I would. You got the fucking job, Nikos.'

‘But it's been six months…'

‘Six months and a stroke of luck.' The sofa shifts as Selina sits beside me. She plucks the glass bottle from the floor and holds it, studying the peeling label with a grimace. ‘No more of this. Time to get in the shower and put on the mask of Nikos Ridge, America's beloved Greek god. The box office is welcoming you back.'

It's easier to focus on her than the reeling emotions storming within me. I can't believe it, won't believe it.

But it's there, in black ink on white paper. ‘How?'

‘Talent, but that would only be half a lie.' Her wink tells me she's joking, but I catch the faint whiff of truth beneath her tones. ‘Turns out the actor they hired dropped out due to a conflicting schedule. Enough time has been wasted, and pre-production is almost up. Filming starts by the beginning of next week. No other actor was willing to take it on, not with the wildly compressed schedule they'd be facing coming in at this point. Casting didn't want to spend time auditioning for another so…'

‘So, they picked me.'

Weak. Pathetic. You're worthless.

I pinch my eyes closed, pressing the heels of my hands into them. I don't say it aloud, but I whisper to the dark, telling my father's voice to shut up.

He doesn't, of course. He never does.

There would've been a time for celebrating such news but gone were those days. The world once felt like such a small place, but that was the perspective I had looking down from great heights. Now it's large, endless, and ready to devour me. I'm sitting in the middle of it, in an apartment I can't afford, pockets dry and opportunities always out of reach.

Until now.

Selina starts to cry. I hear it in the sniffling, in the way she wrings her fingers around the bottle of spirits as though she wants to strangle the life right out of it.

‘This is your last chance, Nikos.'

I know it before Selina says it.

‘I know,' I reply.

She grips my knee and squeezes. ‘You can't fuck this up. Not for you, not for me.'

I haven't worked in three years. Once I withdrew into myself, once what was going on grew too much to bear and I just started to hide, the opportunities dried up. Who would want a movie-star who'd rather be locked inside his apartment than promoting the film? Who has panic attacks so bad he has to lock himself away until they pass? Hollywood hasn't called, the press has left me alone. For the most of it, I've stayed in this apartment, festering like mould, sinking my future with every shot of vodka I drink.

This is your last chance.

I inhale deeply, feeling no different than fragile glass in careless hands. Selina picks the script up, and this time, places it carefully in my numb, shaking hands.

An Age of Dragons - I remember it now. The script was for some new book-to-movie adaption with a moderate budget. I trace my finger over my name, seeing it in black and white, dried ink, and still it doesn't feel real.

‘I don't… I don't deserve this.'

It's not me who speaks, not entirely. It was the little broken boy who had once been buried beneath the success, the fame. The little broken boy who clawed his way out of the cage I made. The little broken boy who ruined everything for me by trying to escape.

‘Yes, you do,' Selina says, laying a gentle hand on my shoulder. ‘There is no one more deserving I could see this happen to.'

The pause which follows draws out for a millennium. I dare to shatter it.

‘Is that Selina talking, or the fifteen percent fee you get if I accept?'

Her grip falters. ‘It's me, your friend before the manager. Now, your plane leaves from JFK tomorrow morning. You'll be out of state for eight months on set. A month for rehearsals, followed by seven months of filming - '

‘I can't…'

‘Eight months. That's all I am asking of you.'

I shake my head, burying it in my hands. ‘I can't do it, Selina.'

‘I wish it was a choice you had. But if you don't get the work, you don't have the money to pay for this apartment. Your lifestyle. Fuck, Nikos, if nothing else matters then perhaps knowing you'll have no more money for the drink and the drugs will. Eight months, that's it. Then you don't ever have to do it again. You'll be free.'

Helpless tears fill my eyes as the secrets fill my head. I wish I could tell her, but even she doesn't know. I look up at her, hating the pity in her brown stare. ‘I'll never be free, Selina.'

She'll never know just how true those words are.

‘This is big,' Selina says, catching her emotions and hiding them behind the closed door of manageress. ‘The team is thrilled. You may not have been the first choice of romantic lead, but this is exactly what your career needs. A fresh start. A new chance to remind the world who Nikos Ridge is, and what he is capable of.'

My knee bounces, my heart fluttering as though a flock of birds just took flight. I look to the empty bottle in Selina's hands and regret finishing it last night. I could've done with a swig now. Better to wash the anxiety away then let it drown me.

‘Eight months?' I repeat, trying to convince myself.

‘It'll fly by. And it's filming in the UK. You've always wanted to go, haven't you? Anyway, the agency came up with a deal, to ensure you got this role - '

‘There's no refusing this, is there?'

Selina shakes her head. I can almost hear it, the scratch of a pen as it signed me away in a deal with a devil. I'm all too familiar with the sound.

‘The production company have paid off your outstanding debts.' Selina speaks as though she is reading off a prompter. Emotionless, as a way to protect herself and me. ‘A second payment will be made to you once filming is complete. The final instalment will come to you once the run of press for the film is over. Eight months of work. Another two for media. Then it's over. No more films. No more work. If you decide to give it up, you can, no ties attached. But until then, you must do this.'

You must do this. It's as though I'm sitting in another place during another time. Urging someone else to do something, which all went wrong.

Selina brushes the creases from her trousers, giving her hands something to do.

I look up at her, feeling as though I'm watching the world through a lens isn't wasn't my own. ‘Please, don't make me do this.'

I shake violently, my chewed nails grasping my bare thighs until the skin breaks and bleeds. If Selina notices, she shows no signs.

‘My hands are tied,' she replies, looking around the messy state of the room. In seconds, her sadness is gone, replaced by the steel mask of the manager I'd become all too familiar with. There was once a time we were best friends, navigating the entertainment world together. Now, we're strangers with the thorn of money wedged between us.

‘It's five percent.'

I narrow my eyes at her. ‘What do you mean?'

Selina picks at her nails, looking anywhere but me. ‘You accused me of doing this for the fifteen percent, but that isn't true. I'm taking five. The extra ten is going to you.'

That shocks me back to silence. I open my mouth, close it again, and repeat that like a gulping fish for air. It's just extra for him to prey on, more stones tied around my ankles as I sink.

‘Have a shower,' Selina snaps, preventing me from saying anything. ‘Get a haircut. And tidy yourself up. A driver will be sent for you tomorrow. Make sure your breath doesn't smell.' Doesn't smell of alcohol.

There's no need for her to finish.

‘This is it,' I hiss, the pages crinkling beneath my fingers. ‘I do this last film. Then I'm done.' Because I know what this is going to mean. Doing this movie all but ensures that the demons of my past are going to come for me once more.

‘I know.' Selina glances up at me, sorrow pinching at the corners of her eyes. ‘I've already ensured it was included as part of the deal, Nikos. This is your great come back and farewell, all rolled into one, a publicity campaign to end all publicity campaigns. After this, you're free.'

You're free. There it is again. And yet, I know that will never be the case. Demons have long wrapped their claws around my neck, and there's no freeing myself.

‘I'll be checking in on you tomorrow. I expect to see you looking… looking more like Nikos Ridge the heartthrob, and not like this sorry excuse for the man I once respected.' Selina doesn't mean to hurt me with her words, but she does. Although she's right.

I've let everyone down. I always let everyone I love down. I always hurt them in the worst ways.

Selina waits a moment for a response, but I don't give her one. I sag forward, spine aching as her footsteps fade through my apartment, followed by the thud of a door slamming.

You‘re free.

Words I never believed I'd hear. Words I never knew I would crave so dearly.

I place the script beside me. Just looking at it makes my stomach twist with sickness, which has nothing to do with my hangover.

‘One more,' I say to myself, ‘this is what you've been hoping for. One more, then it's all over.'

It's a concept I've been willing into existence since the…incident. Over and over I visualised this very moment. But now I'm facing it and I feel nothing but dread.

Because doing this means I suddenly won't be able to hide from the world I ran from. Although I never wished to simply hide.

I wanted to completely disappear.

You're free.

Behind the pillow, where Selina had sat, another bottle waits for me. This one is half full.

You're free.

I pull the cork free with my teeth, eyes trapped to the tops of trees and buildings beyond my window.

You're free.

I lift the bottle to my mouth and tip it back, pouring the liquid down my throat. It burns.

You're free.

This time another voice registers in the far reaches of my skull. The voice that haunts me every single day since I tried to get free.

You'll never be free. Not from me, son.