Page 84 of Hollywood, Ending

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, that part I’m really sorry for.”

“Like, being abandoned by people who say they love me is…it’s kind of, as the kids would say, triggering.”

“Right,” he says. “I know. I’m sorry. I panicked.”

We walk down to the ocean together and haul a two-person kayak into the water. We kayak through the lagoon. We see another sea turtle, and Kai keeps saying, “Wow,” as it swims beneath us in the transparent water.

We talk about acting, about how it felt on set and how it felt in the audition for Andromeda, and we talk about junketing, how it felt to be asked over and over how you survived something you haven’t yet survived. When we make it back to the beach, I tell him, “You should call Ellen.” I hand him my phone and he says, “Yeah. Right. Good shout.”

_____

I can’t overhear most of their conversation as he paces along the beach, but he sounds meek. He keeps saying, “Yeah,” and “No, right, I get it,” and “I know.” I do hear how the conversation ends, though. “I love you, Ellen. I’m sorry…I know. I know.”

He walks back and sits next to me on the beach. “Did you fire Katie?”

“I did.”

“Why?”

“She said what Matthew did was smart and that she would’ve done it if she’d known, so I fired her.”

“And you told her you don’t want to do a campaign with Matthew.”

“Yeah.”

“Even though it might cost you an Oscar nomination.”

I shrug. “I’m a long shot.”

“You really love me,” he says. He seems surprised by it.

“I really do.”

“It’s very easy to say ‘I love you,’ but very hard to hear it, to really hear it.”

“Kai, look at me,” I say as I stand up. He’s staring at me, his searching green eyes nervous and hopeful and above all real. “I love you, Kai. I loved you in Pittsburgh, and in LA, and in New York, and I love you in Jamaica, and I love you wherever you’re headed.”

“I don’t want them to fire you,” he says.

“There will be other movies.”

“But none where you can play Agrippah, Queen of the Realm.”

“True.”

“And none where I can play Gavinth, your occasionally cuckolded husband.”

“Also true.”

“You wanna run lines?” he asks.

“I do.”

_____________

At the villa, we’re standing together in the hardwood-floored living room, sparring again as Agrippah and Gavinth. “You dare disturb the lawful trial of Medivh?”

“I fear I must, for—”