by Haley Jenner
The weak side of me sends off a quick message to Ari and Reid, asking them both to disable comments on their posts. Ari responds almost immediately with an already done, Roxy-Roo. Shit-cunts the lot of them. Reid demands to know where I am, I reply by telling him that I’m fine, that I’ll be out in a second.
The buzz I was feeling earlier has fallen away like melted ice. Pooling at my feet in the bitter reality of what used to be. I feel dejected. My excitement at being a part of this movie now nothing but a crestfallen dream. These strangers have succeeded in taking something I poured myself into and twisting it with animosity and uncertainty.
Exhaling on a quick burst of air, I remove the damp tracks of tears, pressing them into my skin.
Readjusting my clothes as I stand, I step from the stall, pausing at Reid’s appearance. Lower back pressed against the basin, ankles crossed in front of him, his hands are braced on the marble behind him. The picture of lazy calm, except for his eyes. He watches me with a look that would be impossible to decipher. A myriad of emotions shaded with hate and concern, apology and fury.
I walk straight into his body, head falling against his chest without a word. His arms fold heavily around me, pulling me into him more forcefully. We stand like that, his sturdy arms holding me up, his unspoken support filtering through my veins like an antidote for long drawn out minutes.
“Let’s get you home,” he finally speaks, the rough catch in his voice giving away the barely restrained anger still filling him up.
I nod. “Just let me wash my hands. Clean up.” I gesture to the mascara smudged under my eyes.
“We’ll go out the back,” he speaks to the floor. “Baxter’s made sure our driver is waiting.”
“Okay.”
“I’m gonna go for a smoke.” He swallows uncomfortably. “Unless you need me?”
“I’m okay, baby.” I force a smile. “I’ll only be a minute.”
He moves into my space, grabbing the back of my head to pull me in for a hard kiss. “I’ll meet you at the car.”
I watch him leave, a rod of tension forced between his shoulders, but his feet like lead, dragging in melancholy.
Twenty-Three
Take Two
Roxy
“Remember when I had the flu last month?”
Reid greets me with a kiss, handing me a Starbucks coffee while drinking from his own. “What about it?”
“The paparazzi caught me leaving your apartment.”
A thick line etches itself into his forehead. “How?”
I shrug. “Does it matter how it happened?”
“Yeah it does,” he combats. “You’ve been going in and out of the service elevators. If the pap caught you, it’s because someone told them.”
I slide my untouched cup onto the kitchen counter, my stomach twisting uncomfortably.
“I can’t do this anymore, Reid.”
“Can’t do what?” he tests quietly.
Unsure how to answer or what I’m even saying, I lift a single shoulder, turning away from him.
“Rox,” he pushes, but I silence him by handing him my phone.
Eyes scanning the page, he reads aloud.
“’Rivere has had enough, Roxy Monroe served with restraining order.’ The fuck?”
He glances up at me briefly before dropping his gaze back to my phone. “’Roxy Monroe has been seen leaving Rivere’s apartment building in tears,’” he continues. “The photo clearly shows you blowing your nose. Jesus. ‘A source close to Rivere has confirmed that he’s been pushed to his limit, serving Monroe with a restraining order to keep her away. It seems there is nothing this fallen Hollywood diva won’t do to win back the boy that got away.’”
Handing my phone back, Reid shakes his head in frustration. I throw it onto the couch, the necessity of breathing almost too much. Even my body wants to hide away from its responsibilities. It, like my mind, wants to fold into a ball, cower away from the arrows of spite constantly aimed my way. As soon as one falls away, another replaces the soaring sharp edge of malice; waiting for impact.
His chuckle is soft. A quick snort of laughter before he squashes the sound. But it happens again. And again. Until he’s bent over, thick laughter shaking his shoulders and echoing around the room like a bass drum.
“I’m glad you find this funny.”
Teeth catching along his bottom lip, Reid straightens, coughing around the bubble of laughter still threatening to spill over. “Roxy,” he placates. “Baby. It’s fucking hilarious.”
I see red. My vision blurring with a mixture of my tears and the burning hate I feel inside of me. I’m shaking, my heart skipping on beats with the way it races in my chest.
“Hilarious,” I echo quietly.
“Firefly,” he soothes.
Can he not see I’m bleeding? That the wall I am so intent on building is crumbling. I secure one brick in place to have another two fall away. I can’t keep up. Tear someone down enough and they begin stumbling, eventually falling flat on their face. The world is laughing at me. Just like him.
“Get out.”
“What?” He blunders over the word, taking a step closer.
I mirror his action, taking a step backward, away from him. “I said get out.”
“Come on,” he pacifies, the simple phrase dripping in condescension. “You can’t be serious.”
“As a heart attack.”
He moves closer again, but I lift a hand, stopping him. “You may find this amusing,” I accuse. “But I don’t. In fact, quite the opposite. Laugh at me once again being the laughingstock of Hollywood, but just do it away from me.”
“No one believes this shit.” He gestures to my phone lying face down on the couch.
“But that’s the thing, Reid. They do.” My eyes fill with tears. “They believe it all.” My voice cracks and I clear my throat. My life has morphed into its very own idiom. Fuck the piece of straw and the camel. Today was a goddamn fucking boulder that finally broke my spirit.
“Baby.”
“Don’t,” I warn. “I don’t want your pity. I just want you to go.”
“It’s not pity,” he spits. “It’s support.”
“I think you have them confused. Reid, the fact that you could laugh at something like this tells me everything I need to know about how you see me.”
“No, it fucking doesn’t,” he argues. “It shows not only how little your belief in me is, but also, how little I care about what these fuckwits say. It’s all bullshit, Roxy.”
I blink away the tears in my eyes. “To you and me, it’s bullshit. To the rest of the world, it’s the truth.”
“Who cares?”
“I do,” I scream, my finger stabbing at my chest. “I fucking care.”
He stands silently.
“You don’t get it,” I cry. “Their words, their horrible, hurtful lies are like tiny knives, slicing into me every time they’re printed or posted or said. They might just sting at the start, but eventually they build, and they build until there’s nothing left but scars that continue to bleed.”
Reid’s eyes blink in regret, the hopelessness he feels springing into his sockets in thick unshed tears.
“I’m tired of pretending I’m okay… I’m not. I’m not okay. All this hate, it’s changing the way I feel about myself. Every time something hideous is spilled, I start to think they’re right.”
“No,” he denies, head shaking vehemently.
“Maybe my dad is ashamed of me. Maybe I’m a slut. Maybe I’m a terrible role model. Maybe I’m a hideous actor. Maybe I’m fat. And ugly. Maybe I’m self-obsessed. Maybe I’m unworthy of everything. Maybe I’m a piece of shit. Maybe the world would be better off if I died. Maybe I should stop pretending I’m anything but a washed-up diva who needs to fade away.”
“You don’t think that.” The statement lacks belief.
“Don’t I? The entire fucking world believes it. Maybe I’m the only one who can’t see it.”
He looks hurt by
my words. “I don’t believe it. Brooke doesn’t believe it. Nor does Zara or Tim, or Bree or Eric. Ari certainly doesn’t believe it. Neither does James. Or a large percentage of the population that are sprinkled through those nasty comments praising you, loving you, looking up to you. The important people don’t believe it.”
Wiping my eyes, fresh tears appear.
“Roxy, you knew this was the life we choose. Our lives are out in the open, and as much as we want them to be private, they’re not.”
“I don’t see you being dragged through this life by your hair, shame scored across your forehead in an open invitation for ridicule,” I condemn.
“I should feel bad about that?” he rebukes. “I should feel like crap because I haven’t had to trek through shit like you have?”
I swallow my want to scream yes, you should.
He reads my silence. “Jesus fucking Christ, Roxy. I never picked you to be malevolent.”
“Have enough daggers thrown your way, you’d be surprised at the person you find in the mirror.”
“You can’t force people into loving you, Firefly. Accept that the people who want to will, and the people that don’t? Fuck ‘em.”
I say nothing.
Arms folding across his chest, uncertainty flanks him. “What does all this mean? You’re retiring? You’re running away?”
I shake my head. “But then they win.”
“I know,” he agrees easily.
“You’re going to turn your back on everyone? Shut everyone out?”
I shrug. “Maybe.”
He frowns. “Pitifully lonely existence.”
I bark out a laugh. “Better than the shit I live with now.”
“All this over a stupid fucking tabloid article? Dallas Montgomery is a cunt.”
I feel my heart sever in half. “Wow. You think I’d throw everything away because of one article? I wish it was one fucking article. Look at my life, Reid. Pick up my phone and open Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, any entertainment website. Read the incessant insults. Come outside with me, listen to the horrible words hurled at me as I try to get to my fucking car. You know someone was going through my trash the other day?”
He remains silent.
“It’s not just one article. The world works their hardest to dampen every positive moment of my life.”
“Where does that leave us?” he tests. “Are you going to turn your back on me too?”
“The world doesn’t want us together.”
“Fuck the world,” he bellows. “What the fuck do you want?”
Arms wrapping around myself, I let my tears fall. “I don’t know,” I admit truthfully. “I’m scared of losing something I never really had. I wish I was brave enough to take a chance on you, Reid. But last time I did that, I was left with the shattered pieces of my own heart.”
His feet stumble backward, his arms falling heavily at his side.
“Worse though,” I continue, ignoring his heart breaking in front of me. “My best friend walked away from me. I just don’t think a chance of happiness is worth that happening again.”
“I’m not worth it,” he hastens. “That’s what you’re saying?” he asks. “A maybe with me isn’t worth the gamble.”
Forgiveness was a virtue I was confident that Reid didn’t deem me worthy enough of. But in truth, maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe it was me who never deemed him worthy enough of.
“What? So I’m supposed to be punished because my heart is only just recognizing the importance of love?”
“Mine was punished for recognizing it too early.”
Hands gripping at his hair, he growls. “Who the fuck are you? I’m fucking sorry, okay?!” he yells, pacing back and forth; moving a few steps closer to me, only to move back again. “I’m fucking sorry that I fucked up. I’m sorry I broke your heart. I’m sorry I destroyed the us from once upon a time. You know, I may have made the decision to walk away from you all those years ago. But I had to live with it too. It wasn’t just your punishment. I had to live without you for ten years too.”
I look away, afraid I’ll say something I’ll regret.
“Don’t you get it?” he whispers. “Don’t you get that Firefly was my attempt at bringing you back to me. I couldn’t do it anymore, Roxy. Live without you. I couldn’t fucking do it anymore,” he confesses, the exhaustion in his voice leaking into the room like an open wound. “Firefly let me feel close to you, even though the weight of my failure was sitting between us.”
Neck tipped back, he sniffs. “I knew the moment I started this journey to bring this movie to life, it would bring us back together. It scared the shit out of me. But I needed it. I needed you. Not for the movie. For me,” he professes, hand pushed against this heart. “I needed you for me.”
My chin wobbles, but I bite my lip to stop it.
“I’m fucking sorry that I didn’t recognize you were my end goal at the age of eighteen,” he sighs sadly when I continue to choose my silence.
Still I say nothing.
“Cut me some slack, Roxy,” he fights, begging me to understand. “I was a kid.”
“You didn’t cut me any slack.”
I know I’m acting like a child. Proving Reid’s point that I haven’t matured past my eighteen-year-old bruised ego.
“You can’t find perspective right now,” he states, choosing to ignore the dagger I aimed directly at him. “Call your mom. She always seems to shine a light on it better than anyone else in your life.”
“Call Mommy,” I gripe. “That’s your suggestion on how to fix this giant clusterfuck.”
“No. Zara can’t fix this clusterfuck any more than I can. But for some fucked up reason, she’s the only one that can pull you from your self-sabotaging thoughts.”
I hate that he knows me that well. He’s wrong though. He was always the one that could fish me out of my pond of self-pity. His opinion was always the one that mattered most to me. I trusted him. Implicitly. But then he left, and I had to find someone else to lean on when I was readying myself to fall.
I want to tell him none of it matters. There’s no perspective to be found. Not right now. I haven’t just fallen face-first into my self-indulgent misery. I’m drowning, worse, I’m okay with that.
Because I’ve had enough.
I’m done.
Fucking finished.
I want the whole world to go fuck itself. It turned its back on me a long time ago, and now I’m returning the favor.
“I’m a big girl,” I retort. “I don’t need my mom to hold my hand through this. I’ve survived this far without a guardian angel.”
“We grew up promising one another that we’d never compromise ourselves for anyone or anything else.”
I scowl. “You adding that to the list of things I’ve failed at?”
He groans in exasperation. “No, Roxy. When are you gonna realize that you don’t need a fucking guardian angel? It’s you. You’re your own guardian angel,” he stresses. “It’s up to you to decide how you respond to all of this. Guardian angels don’t make all the bad things in the world disappear, they make you realize that even with all the shitty things this world seems intent on offering, you still have the power to paint your own ending.”
I stand there, stunned into silence.
“You’re compromising your happiness to feed their negativity. Choose you, Roxy. You are not what they tell you you are. You’re so much more. You’re everything good in this world,” he argues. “The fucking sunshine and the rain. The sweet taste of sugar and the right amount of spice. You’re fresh bed sheets and that first taste of whiskey on your tongue. You’re music and movies and the magnificence of being lost in something so fucking beautiful it stays with you forever.”
He sighs. “But while you offer the people with blackened hearts and empty souls power, you’ll never realize that and it breaks my fucking heart.”
I don’t stop him when he walks out. I don’t move as the door to my apartment slams with the fina
lity of a crack that shakes my bones.
But I cry. I sit, exactly where I stood and let the wooden floor catch my self-sabotaging tears. The tiny pools of self-reflection surrounding me.
Twenty-Four
Take Two
My faith is held in myself…
Roxy Monroe // 2019
Ladies, do you remember your teenage years, where insults about ‘loving yourself’ were thrown out like confetti and were enough to lose you friends and force people into a belief that you were self-obsessed? It’s funny that now, as an adult female, it’s the most important thing we strive for. To find love for oneself. Frightening, it’s also the most difficult love to find. We’ve been taught that from a young age. That loving yourself is somehow wrong. Add to that the disgusting reality that the world seems intent on making sure you’re very much aware of your flaws and love to remind you at how often and how significantly you’ve failed. I guess it’s easier to throw stones than stand in front of that mirror, right?
Currently, I’m alone. Sitting in my apartment after one of the worst emotional meltdowns I’ve ever experienced. It was ugly. Snot. Tears. Hurtful words. Self-pity. As I said, ugly. But it was real, and I’ve never been one to deny the worst parts of who I am. This entry may cause me, and god forbid, my image, more harm than good. But I’m tired. I’m exhausted. You’ve seen me naked, in the very literal sense. This is my soul in the same form. Bared. Take from it what you will…
I am Roxy Monroe. I’m twenty-eight years of age, and five-eight, not five-six, thank you very much. Yes, my eyes are mismatched in color, naturally. No, I don’t think it’s something that I should change. I’ve survived this long with eyes that aren’t the same, I think I can continue on in the same way. Yes, I live in ripped jeans and the simplicity of a t-shirt. No, I don’t think I need to dress a certain way because of who I am. I like to be comfortable - sue me. Yes, I make cheesy Instagram captions and laugh at my own jokes. Don’t like it? It’s simple, unfollow. I’m not asking you to like me. But don’t make me feel bad about it because you don’t.
