Page 86 of Hollywood, Ending

“It’s not like we can just take roles together for the rest of our lives. We’ll work on different stuff.”

“Yeah, I know, but we could take this together. My point is just, they tried to threaten me by saying I can’t do it without you. But I don’t want to do it without you. Without you, it’s just a movie.”

He looks at me. One of the nice things about Kai is you can tell when he’s processing information, but you can’t actually tell what he’s thinking. He’s too good of an actor to get an easy read on. I like that.

_____

After working out, we make our way down to the beach. Jamie has sent me an advance readers copy of the second Andromeda book, so I’m reading that while Kai swims in the ocean. For an Indiana boy, he’s comfortable in the water, periodically diving under the surface before reappearing again a few yards away.

_____

As I read, I’m also thinking about what I actually want, and how to even figure out what I want. I know I want to act. I love and crave the feeling of becoming someone else, of playing with others in the hopes that our make-believe can bring forth something real. I miss being on set—not just because they tell me when to wake up and what to say, but also because I miss being part of a team creating something bigger than any individual on that team could ever make. I open my journal.

Someone told me just after it happened that when a parent dies, you are released from their care, for better or for worse. But I still don’t feel released and expect I never will. I miss my mom. I miss when I was little, when I called her mama. I miss when I was scared and cuddled into her. I miss when I would book a commercial and she’d take me out for pizza. I miss being loved by her. She did love me in some fucked-up way, and that’s the worst part of it. Not that I was abandoned by my mother, but that I was loved by her AND abandoned by her.

Kai’s shadow appears over my journal and I look up at him, dripping wet from the ocean. “God, you’re gorgeous,” I say.

“Can I borrow your phone?” he asks.

I unlock it and give it to him. He sits down on the beach recliner next to me and stares at me as he holds the phone to his ear. “Todd Simons, please,” he says.

“Hey.”

“…”

“Todd, let me tell you what’s going to happen. I’m gonna do Andromeda, but I will not participate in an awards campaign for Warhol and neither will Juniper. Also, you will pay for Juniper and me to stay here in Jamaica until we fly to Vancouver in ten days. In exchange, I will not make an Instagram video telling the world that Matthew Malone is a conniving little bitch.”

“…”

“You don’t understand, Todd. We’re not negotiating. I’m informing you of what’s going to happen. You don’t own us. The truth is, Matthew owns you. You need him for the next Matthew Malone joint, and the one after that, and the one after that. And me, I just realized I own Matthew.”

“…”

“We—and I can speak for Juniper here—don’t give a flying fuck if you recast Gods of Andromeda.”

“…”

“Good doing business with you.”

Kai hangs up. “We’re making Andromeda together,” he says.

I laugh and hug him. “I don’t care if we make the movie. I care if we’re together.”

“I know,” he says. “That’s what I need. I need you to want me, not Gavinth.”

“Oh, I want you,” I tell him. I kiss him, then walk him up to the villa, where we have sex, which Kai—somewhat charmingly and somewhat cringingly—calls making love.

I don’t feel self-conscious or even self-aware; I’m just in my body, entangled with his, in rhythm with each other such that neither of us needs to speak, only to feel each other. Afterward, I convince him to stay in bed. I turn on the TV and find a movie playing. I don’t recall the film, but I remember just how it felt to watch it with Kai.

Epilogue

In the end, Kai and I both squeak out nominations for Independent Spirit Awards, but we get shut out of the big prizes, not least because we don’t play the game. Ellen is our publicist by then, not the studio’s anymore, and she revels in telling the studio, No. No, they meant it when they said no campaign.

Andy Warhol Never Gets Old keeps chugging along, eventually making over one hundred million in global box office. The trades call it the most profitable movie of the year, and even though most of that profit goes to the producers and Matthew, a bit of it trickles down to us, enough that with the Star Catcher money Mom didn’t spend, I can get a little bungalow in West Hollywood.

Matthew doesn’t win many awards, but he gets nominated for all of them. On one late-night show after his Oscar nod, he says, “I always wanted to make stuff that people would actually watch, but it turns out you can make films people watch and films where nothing blows up.” He is always careful to extend credit to us, to say what geniuses we are, and even once mentions how much we sacrificed in the process, without acknowledging who made us the sacrifice.

We ride out the success of Andy Warhol Never Gets Old mostly in Vancouver, where we prep for Gods of Andromeda by eating lots of grilled chicken and working out for 150 minutes each day. We keep separate apartments for the movie, because we don’t want the world to know. We want a secret, Kai especially—a truth that belongs only to us.