Ghosted

Slipping outside, she asks, “How’d it go?”

“You’re looking at a man under management.”

Her eyes widen. “You’re joking.”

“Nope.”

She squeals, doing a flying leap right into your arms, wrapping her legs around your waist, clinging to you. You hug her and laugh as she frantically kisses all over your face.

“I’m so proud, Jonathan,” she says. “And so, so happy for you.”

“For us,” you say. “This is for you, too.”

She loosens her hold, her feet back on the sidewalk. “You better not forget that when you’ve got all these rabid fangirls trying to get in your pants.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll always be the only rabid fangirl for me.”

She grins, nudging you. “Well, Mister Big Shot, I need to get back to work… you know, just until you hit it big and I can quit my job.”

She heads back into the diner. You go home.

And you don’t know this, but a few minutes after you leave, Clifford Caldwell walks into the diner. He nearly stole your moment again. He sits down in her section, brazenly ordering coffee, and slides a paper to her. “Sign it.”

Confidentiality Agreement.

She hesitates. “No.”

“Sign it, or his career’s already over.”

She doesn’t understand the point.

So she calls his bluff and he leaves.

She's not signing anything.

Everything goes back to normal. Weeks pass. You’re getting worried. You don’t know why your brand-new manager isn’t taking your calls.

She knows why, though.

So she shows up at Clifford Caldwell’s office and signs that stupid paper, swearing she'll never publicly disclose anything about you or any of this. Not that she ever would, but it worries her why the man is so fixated on keeping her silent.

The next day, your phone finally rings in the middle of the night, and things take off. Meetings. So many meetings. You need to sign with a new agent. You need to talk to some publicists. You need better headshots. There are classes to take and vocal coaches to see, not to mention prepping for auditions and creating a more appealing demo reel.

You get paid for none of that. No, you get billed. Clifford covers all the costs upfront, but it’ll be charged to you. Long hours, day and night. Your schedule gets so crazy you can’t keep up.

She does, though. A calendar on the wall in the living room has all of it scribbled down. She keeps you on track, even as she works overtime. She’s covering the bills. She’s buying the food. She cooks, and cleans, and she waits up for you the nights you’re late, even though she’s exhausted. Even when she just wants to get some sleep.

She smiles and tells you it’s okay when your first big audition falls on her nineteenth birthday.

Months pass, months of chaos. The days all meld together. Time slips away. You miss holidays, but so does she. You celebrate Christmas in January.

You book your first movie. It’s one of those teen romantic comedies. You play the best friend. No more Guy #3 or Heroin Dealer. Your character has a name—Greg Barlow. It films locally. She visits you on set a few times, but you're both so busy that she can only stay a few minutes.

The movie wraps on your second Dreamiversary. You take her out to celebrate, but every penny you earned from the movie went to reimbursement, so celebrating entails hanging out in a park together.

“Do you still love me?” she asks, sitting across from you at a picnic table. You’re holding her hands, gently stroking her skin with your thumbs.

“Of course I do.”

“More than everything?”

“Anything,” he says. “Why are you asking?”

“I just miss hearing it,” she says.

You stare at her. It’s been awhile since you’ve said it. It wasn’t intentional. Life just gets crazy, but she understands. Even writing time has been scarce. Whenever she gets the chance, her thoughts are a jumbled mess, the words a blur. The poetry is all gone. The metaphors. The symbolism. They’ve disappeared. It’s all become a hazy mass of stripped-down syllables on paper.

“I love you,” you say. “More than everything in this park. More than every line of dialogue I’ve ever spoken. More than I love Hollywood. Is that still enough, K? My love?”

She smiles. “Of course.”

You don’t know this, but that woman? Even as she smiles, she’s utterly terrified. Your love is more than enough for her, but she feels pieces of it slipping away. Something inside of her is disintegrating. Her dream. She’s losing it. She came here with you, not quite realizing what you were going through. You felt invisible, and you were desperate for an audience, but where does that leave your love? Because the more people who see you, it seems, the less you see her. And she can’t even tell her story now, not the way she wants, because her voice has been stolen and no one will ever get the chance to read her words.