Chapter 44 Ryan

CHAPTER 44 RYAN

February 2007

Los Angeles

I staggered home from Jack’s in a haze of emptiness. Heat behind my eyes, my throat with a fist in it. All the symptoms of brokenheartedness that I’d only played in scenes came on like a fever. The actor part of me was taking notes, in pure observation mode, while the rest of me wanted the feeling gone and needed Cass back so fucking badly. Thank God I had no way of reaching her. No doubt I would have made a fool of myself. Dozens of phone calls, banging on her door if only I’d known which one was hers.

Instead, as soon as I reached home, I called Janie and told her what had happened. My most pressing concern was the photographers. She assured me she had a friend at Vanity Fair—you did that Q&A with her? —who she was certain would buy up the photos at a premium in exchange for some future favor.

“Fine, yes, anything, of course, thank you,” I mumbled into the receiver. The rest of it, Janie said, we could deal with tomorrow. Then she said, “But more importantly, Ryan, are you—okay? I’ve never heard you like this.”

“No, I’m crushed,” I said. As I used that word, I realized that’s precisely how I felt, having flopped onto my bed. Like some invisible medic was attempting to give me CPR—pressing on my ribs so hard they might break.

Janie started to say something that she no doubt hoped would be reassuring. But right then I heard a knock at my back gate, where Cass had first shown up weeks before. “I’ll call you back, I gotta go,” I said as I scrambled off the bed and to my backyard. Hope was rising inside me for the happy ending. The final scene of the movie where the music swells and the miscommunication is ironed out and the love story continues.

I yanked open the door and standing there, holding a bottle of red wine, was… Sarah. The surprise appearance of this other woman, who just a month earlier I’d been so excited about, was disorienting. How quickly the brain rewires itself. “My friend who works the bar at Jack’s called,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to talk. Can I come in?”

“I’m not sure that’s a great idea,” I was saying and annoyed at myself as the words were coming out. Not sure? What was wrong with me? In a city of uncertainties, where everything was in a constant state of falling apart until it miraculously didn’t, the one thing I was sure of was that she was the wrong woman at my gate.

“Just five minutes, please,” she said. “Hear me out.”

Pure habit, a lifetime of yes, caused me to step aside. And then she was walking into my backyard.