by Roxy Reid
“Please, Sienna,” he says, and his eyes are so intense I can barely breathe.
When I don’t say anything, he slumps and looks down at his hands. “Right then,” he says, his voice dull. “I’m sure you’re on track for the launch. Email Darian if you need anything–”
“Ok, fine,” I say, because that dullness is like a physical pain in my stomach. I can handle him angry, and entitled, and — God help me — loving. But I can’t handle him lifeless.
It’ll hurt to hear whatever explanation he has, and I can’t imagine it will change my mind. But he needs to get this off his chest.
“Say what you need to,” I say.
“I didn’t cheat on you,” Joshua says immediately.
My hands shift restlessly on the table, and I look away, “It’s fine, Joshua.” It’s not. “We weren’t even dating. Brittney’s the mother of your child, you have history. I mean, I would have liked it if you just told me, but it’s not like I ever expected this to work.”
“Don’t say that. I told you the truth when I said it was business,” Joshua reaches across the table and takes my hand. His grip is warm and sure and for some reason I feel like crying. “Sienna, look at me.”
I do, even though it hurts.
“Darian called in the middle of the night and said we were about to lose the Ouranos script.”
I gasp, “What– but you– did your check bounce?”
Joshua snorts out a grim laugh. “No, my check didn’t bounce. The widow selling the script got uncomfortable with the idea of selling her husband’s last work to an anonymous buyer. I had to drive up and tell her the whole truth and convince her to trust me. But I needed an introduction to get her to even see me. That’s where where Brittney comes in. She knew someone who could get me in the door.”
“Did you get the script?” I ask, on the edge of my seat.
“Yes. I got her to trust me. Only to find out that in the seven hours it took to win that trust, I’d completely lost yours.” He squeezes my hand. “I swear I’m telling the truth on this. You can check with Darian.”
“I can check with your longtime employee who’s founding a company with you and owes you everything?” I ask, but it’s mostly for show. I believe Joshua. I always believe Joshua.
“Darian’s on your side. He kicked me out of the group chat.”
I laugh a little at that, feeling an enormous weight lift off my chest. He told me the truth. He told me the truth.
Joshua catches my smile, and it’s like I can see a weight lifting off of him. His smile is brighter, he sits taller. It feels so good to sit here, bantering with Joshua. Holding his hand.
Maybe. Just maybe this is going to be ok. My heart sings at the thought that maybe I won’t have to get over Joshua King.
“Believe me,” Joshua says. “This will never happen again.”
That’s when the back of my neck prickles. Because of course as soon as he says “this will never happen again,” my practical mind starts running the scenarios. What is he never going to do? Never let a paparazzi take a misleading photo of him again? Even Joshua knows that’s completely outside of his control. Maybe he means he’ll never ever pick a business emergency over me? But if this production company is a success — and I know it will be — there will be plenty of business emergencies. I know he’ll pick business over me some of the times.
But I’m terrified he’ll pick business over me all the time.
“How? How will you make sure it never happens again?” I ask, desperate to be convinced. “I can’t ask you to pick me over projects you’ve been working on your whole life.”
Joshua laughs, the sound rich and confident, “I don’t have to pick. This happened because I lost control. I got swept up in the moment. I didn’t call Darian. I didn’t turn the clock around. But I’ll fix it. I’ll never lose control like that again.”
My stomach sinks. I’ve been here before. When he thought he lied to me about what the launch party was really for, because he was scared to lose even a sliver of control by telling me what he really needed. When he needed to control the paparazzi outside of Elinor Swift’s apartment, and used me as bait, without thinking of how it would hurt me.
If I believed that people could change, I’d focus on how he did eventually tell me what the launch was for. I’d focus on how he apologized for using me against the paparazzi. I’d think of how he’s here now, explaining everything trying to make it right.
But I don’t think people change, not really. So I’m looking at Joshua, and I’m seeing a brilliant, well-intentioned man who won’t admit that the world is not his to control. No matter how many times I end up as collateral damage. I’ve been here before, and I know how it ends. With me lonely and alone, while he rushes off to protect some project or other that’s worth more than I’ll ever make in my life.
I look at him, and for the first time that little voice inside of me says, Not him. Not this one.
“Please believe me,” Joshua says quietly.
“I do,” I say. But I pull my hand from his grasp. It feels like the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
He lets go reluctantly, searching my face. He can tell something’s wrong.
“Thank you for telling me. You’re right, this will help me work with you until the launch,” I say, doing my best to keep my voice calm. I’m ripping off the bandaid, but hell if I’m not going to be a goddamn professional while I’m doing it. I might be breaking inside, but I still need his business, or I’m fired.“And that brings me to the subject of our engagement.”
“You’re not wearing your ring,” Joshua says immediately. Like a man who noticed a problem as soon he walked in but was trying to pick his battles.
“No, I’m not wearing your ring,” I say. “I assume Elinor Swift hasn’t signed her contract yet.”
“No,” he says.
I lace my fingers together, keeping my face blank, “Then we’ll keep the engagement story going until the launch. At this point we’re close enough that if we break up before the launch we’ll lose the media narrative. I’ll go back to wearing the ring in public. And you can tell Darian to add you back to the group chat. I’ll attend any events you need me to. Although hopefully not too many. I do need to be available to finalize the launch–”
“I want you wearing the ring in private too,” Joshua says and there’s something dark and hungry in his voice. He looks at my fingers laced together, and suddenly I’m thinking of his fingers tangled in mine as he presses me into the bed and takes me, thoroughly and unapologetically.
“Joshua,” I say, and my voice breaks a little. “I can’t do that.”
“Why?” he demands, his voice rough and urgent. “I told you I didn’t cheat. And that night…” Joshua stands and paces, frustration in every line of his body. He stops, and turns to face me, “Didn’t it mean anything to you?”
Oh Josh. “It did,” I say, rising out of my seat. “But that doesn’t change anything.”
“Why not?” he half-shouts, then catches himself, and lowers his voice. “Why not, Sienna?”
“Because we’re from different worlds, Joshua!” I throw my arms wide, exasperated. “You’ve got these high powered business deals, and you’ll do anything to win.”
“Are you saying that’s a problem?” Joshua asks, confused.
“It is if you never stop to think about the cost of winning!” I rub my forehead, trying to put this in a way he’ll understand. A way that won’t reveal too much and leave my heart open and bleeding on the table between us.
“Your career is everything to you,” I say finally. “This production company is more than money. It’s a dream. And I love that about you.”
Joshua stills, “Love…?”
“Like. I like that about you.”
His shoulders sag.
“If I was your employee, I could support your career one hundred percent. But as your partner… if this were real, there would come a day when I’d want you to choose me first, even if i
t means you lose control over how a business deal goes or over what the media says about you. And you’re never going to do that. It’s not you.”
Joshua comes around the table to crouch at my feet. He reaches up a hand to cup my cheek, and I close my eyes briefly at his touch.
“I can give you what you need,” he says, and I can tell he thinks he can. “How can I prove it to you?”
“Joshua, you can’t…” I stand, and turn away from him.
“I can,” he says. “Tell me what you need, and I’ll give it to you.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I can see everyone in the office watching us. Goddamn this fishbowl.
I need to get out of here. I need to get out of here fast, before I start crying in front of everyone. But Joshua is waiting for a reason, something simple and concrete and fixable.
So I blurt, “I’d need you to tell everyone this started as a fake relationship.”
“Done,” he says. “Right after the launch party–”
“No, before the launch party. Before Elinor Swift signs the contract.”
“But I’d lose–”
“That’s the point. What I need is to know you’d pick me when I needed it, even if it means losing control on something that matters to you.”
Joshua’s face is stormy, “Sienna, I love–”
He sees my face, and corrects himself.
“–like you. I like you. So fucking much. But this isn’t doing fucking arithmetic during sex. This is my dream. That I’ve been working toward for way longer than I’ve known you. It’s not fair of you to ask me to do this.”
“Which is why I’m not!” I come to him and take both his hands in mine. “I’m not asking you to. I never would. I’m just explaining why this is fundamentally impossible. I can’t choose you over my own self worth. And you can’t choose me over this dream that you’ve worked for your whole life.”
Joshua lets go of my hands, abruptly, “So that’s it then.”
I don’t know what else either of us can say, so I just nod.
He half turns to go, then swears, and turns back to me, “I have to kiss you.”
“What?”
Joshua indicates the peanut gallery outside the conference room, “They’ve seen us fight. If we’re going to keep faking the engagement, they need to see us make-up. I need to kiss you.”
“That’s not the only way–”
“If we had a fight. And you stopped wearing my ring. And I thought I’d lost you. But then I got you to listen, and you agreed not to leave…”
As he’s talking, it’s like I can see that parallel world spooling out before us.
“If I actually got to keep you,” he says. “If I thought I’d lost you, but then I got to keep you, I’d kiss you like my life depended on it.”
I feel my heart rise and my pulse speed up, because he’s right, he’s exactly right, and knowing what I’m giving up is breaking my heart.
I clear my throat. “Ok, then,” I say. “One peck, to sell the bit–”
Joshua kisses me like his life literally depends on it, his hands cradling my face like I might vanish if he doesn’t hold on. I clutch his arms, my knees weak, and it’s everything I can do not to start begging.
Keep me. Kiss me like this. Don’t let me go. Convince me people change.
There’s cheering and applause on the other side of the glass. Of course they believe that we’ve made up. That’s what happens when one of the best actors in Hollywood decides to convince the world he’s in love with you.
Slowly Joshua pulls away, his dark eyes searching my face for something.
“I… I think we sold the bit,” I say.
“That we did, Sienna. That we did,” he sounds so bitter my heart breaks for him. For me. For us.
Joshua closes his eyes, and it’s like I can watch every real emotion he’s feeling disappear. When he opens his eyes, his pain is hidden, locked away behind a fake grin and a cocky mask.
He takes my hand and kisses it with an easy possessiveness, before turning to the rest of the office and lifting our raised hands like we both won a boxing match, and deserve applause.
People laugh, and oblige him, cheering harder, because how could they not?
He’s Joshua King. He’s impossible not to love.
He let’s go of my hand, “I’ll tell Darian we’re on again for the cocktail thing tomorrow?”
I nod, watch him leave the office. If you just watched the way he moved, you’d think he was a triumphant king leaving his newly conquered territory. But either his acting is getting sloppy, or I know him better than I think. Because when he looks back at me one more time before getting on the elevator, I can tell he’s miserable.
Then he leaves me behind, alone in a cold world of glass and gossip and people who don’t know me at all.
18
Sienna
The rest of the month passes by in a dull blur. Between planning the last stages of the launch, and attending public events together, Joshua and I see each other fairly regularly. We’re both polite and distant and it’s hell. I’m seeing him often enough that I can’t get over him, but not often enough to fill the Joshua shaped hole in my life.
In an effort to shake him out of my head, I call Jax and beg her to go shopping with me to find a dress for the launch party. Which is how I end up in an upscale boutique in Santa Monica, trying on a slinky red dress I can’t afford.
I mean, I can technically afford it. But where am I ever going to wear it again? There won’t be any more movie premieres after Joshua.
My throat gets tight thinking about it, and I start to take off the dress.
“Daaaaaaaamnn, girl. Look at that ass!” Jax comes up behind me and slaps my but. “You have to get this dress. You have to.”
Jax is a gorgeous, husky voiced redhead, who is an incredibly talented actress. But she has a hard time getting leading lady roles since she tends to be half a head taller than most of her potential co-stars, and Hollywood is a worthless hellhole filled with men who break your heart.
I meet Jax’s eyes in the mirror, “Remind me again why we live in this horrible city?”
“Because I’m still waiting for my big break, and you need a city with at least 46 shoe stores per capita to be happy in life.”
I roll my eyes, and head back behind the curtain to take off the dress.
“You’re getting it right?” Jax calls over the curtain.
“Not really in my budget right now,” I say.
Jax peeks around the curtain, “Yeah, but it’s in Joshua King’s budget.” She does a salacious eyebrow wiggle.
And suddenly the dam bursts, and I start crying. I sink to the floor in a dress that’s worth half a month’s salary, and I just start sobbing.
“Oh honey! What did I say?” Jax crouches down next to me. “What’s wrong?” Thunderclouds gather over her face. “Is he really cheating on you?”
“No! No. Joshua isn’t like that,” I wipe my cheeks dry with the heel of my hand.
“Then what is it?”
I sigh. I’m so tired. I’m so damn tired. It’s been a month of feeling like my emotions are bruised. Which would be bad enough. But I can’t let anyone know that I’m hurting, because then I’d have to let them know why I’m hurting.
But I need to tell someone at least part of the story. And I can trust Jax to stay silent, even if she does give impractical advice. She’s the kind of friend you can go half a year without seeing, and then pick up exactly where you left off.
I take a shuddery breath, “I can’t tell you the whole story, and what I can tell you, you can’t repeat to anyone. Not yet, anyway.”
“Ok,” Jax says cautiously.
“Joshua and I are broken up. We have been for a while. It’s complicated. We’ll tell everyone after the launch. But I can’t get over him.”
Jax rubs my back, “Well, sometimes it takes a while to get over men when they dump you out of nowhere.”
And I start crying again.
<
br /> “What? What did I say?” Jax, asks, frantic.
“I dumped him!” I wail.
“Wait. Hold up. You dumped Joshua King? My girl dumped Joshua King?”
I wail louder.
Once she gets over her glee that her best friend dumped a celebrity, Jax helps me stand up and get out of the dress. Then she passes me a water bottle and tissues and we camp out on the dressing room floor until I’m all cried out.
“So, um, do you want advice?” Jax asks. “Or will that make you cry again?”
I square my shoulders, “Advice. I’m ready to move forward. But practical advice only.”
“Why don’t you get him back? You obviously care about him.”
But I’m already shaking my head, “I do care about him. I care about him so much. But the reasons I broke it off haven’t gone away. And I don’t want to go back to him just to do this all over again in a couple months. I’d rather make a clean break.”
“But it’s been a month and you’re not making any progress getting over him.”
I aim a finger gun at her, “Bingo.”
Jax wraps her arms around her knees, thinking, “In my experience, you can’t force yourself to get over someone, until you want to be over them.”
“I want–”
“You want to be over him up here,” Jax taps my forehead. “But your heart doesn’t want to stop caring yet.” She taps my chest. “Once your heart’s ready, I’ve got a foolproof ten step plan. Delete his number, rant about his flaws, tequila, ice cream, clubbing, setting things on fire, social media purge, rebound flirting, the works. So you tell me when you’re ready, and I’m there. But until then…” Jax shrugs. “You just have to feel it, babe.”
I heave a heavy sigh, “Yeah.”
Jax stands and offers me her hand. I take it, and she hauls me up too.
“You should absolutely get the dress though,” Jax says.
“What?!”
Jax coyly inspects her nails, “Your last event as a couple is this champagne launch party, right? Then it’s kind of your goodbye party, except only you and he know it. And a goodbye party with an ex absolutely requires an eat-your-heart-out dress.”
