My hands were shaking and I was rooted to the spot. I was quiet, letting him continue.
He cocked his head to the side and regarded me carefully, then said, “As long as I kissed him, I could escape from all of this. I could avoid thinking about the issues with my family, the drama happening with Reese at the time, and the pressure of being the star of this show.”
“What was the drama with Reese?” I asked, hoping my voice sounded more confident out in the air than it did in my head.
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Leo said slowly. “What I want you to know is that there’s nothing between me and Oliver, though he keeps trying.”
The thought of there being even more drama with Reese that I didn’t know about was too much for me. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and suddenly I was done with all of the secrets and the lies and the tangled drama that was tearing the cast apart.
“It was hard for me to see him kiss you,” I said, the words spilling out of me.
Leo looked at me in silence.
It felt like I was dying inside.
“Say something,” I begged. I couldn’t bear for my feelings to be left out in the open like that, vulnerable.
“I don’t know what I can say,” Leo said. “I came in here to set things straight. To undo some of the damage that has been done to you, Charlie.”
“Why do you care?!” I nearly shouted. I was angry — angrier than I’d been in a long time. It felt like I was so close to catching him — this iridescent, shiny firefly. I’d closed my hands around him, but then when I opened them to check, they were empty. He eluded me again.
“I care because when I look at you, I see… I see myself. We’re both from the midwest, thrown into a cage with all of these big ego drama queens from Hollywood. I’m just telling you… what I wished someone told me when I first started. This is what you need to know. This is how you survive.”
He’d completely glazed over my feelings from earlier; skillfully redirected the conversation to some kind of fucked up mentorship lecture.
Under any other circumstances, I would have appreciated the gesture. But right now, when it felt like I was completely alone in the world, I wasn’t having it at all. My mind took his words and twisted them into a patronizing tone.
I was so incredibly done with everything right at that moment. It was like all of the feelings inside I’d been shoving down were all coming out at once. And they came out in the form of a boiling hot anger.
“Get out,” I said.
Leo raised one thick eyebrow in disbelief. It was clear that he was the one used to calling the shots. “Sorry?”
I looked down at my tea. “I want you to leave my trailer.”
I don’t know what I expected; maybe yell at me, tell me that he was staying as long as he damn well pleased, that he would threaten me with spreading rumors or something. What I didn’t expect was for his shoulders to sag and say, “If that’s what you want, Charlie.”
I watched him stand up, set the nearly full mug on my kitchenette counter, and step down to leave my trailer.
“Thanks for the tea,” he said flatly without looking at me.
And just like that, he was gone.
As soon as he left, the tension in the air broke. It was just me and myself now in the silence.
I took another sip.
Was I unnecessarily rude to Leo? It was such a shame he had to put up with someone like me — someone so bad at managing their emotions.
I dunked the tea bag in the pink liquid and looked down at my reflection sadly. Where had all that anger come from? I hadn’t felt like that since…
Since high school. This felt exactly like high school; in fact, I could remember a situation where it had been pretty much a mirror of what was going on now. My best friend was mad at me and refused to speak to me. There was some popular, hot guy that I’d hooked up with the day before, who treated me like I was something to be used and discarded. The guy I had a crush on was completely oblivious to my feelings, and tried to avoid talking about it once I made a pass at him. There was one bully that I thought was kinda hot, but he tried to sabotage me and my crush. And then there was my super hot theater teacher, who was almost exactly like Reese…
A chill crept across my skin as I recognized the parallel in my life.
Just like back then, I had to come to terms with my own mistakes; my self-hatred. I’d come home from high school and feel so out of control almost every day, cursing myself for making terrible decisions.
This was just like that.
I reached for a blanket near the couch and wrapped myself in it, sipping tea and contemplating.
Just like back then, I felt alone. And just like back then, I longed for someone that would be able to properly listen to me, to understand me. To be able to reach into my head and pull me out of my swirling, self-hating thoughts.
That’s when I remembered my journal.
I burst out of the blankets and lunged over to my suitcase, which the crew had dutifully moved into this space last night.
It was right where I left it; between some folded shirts.
I opened it with a ravenous hunger and turned to the spot where I’d listed all of the qualities of my perfect man: My heartmate.
My face pulled into a scowl as I flipped through
