Or rather, I’m looking for someone.
Gabe’s dog.
She had been a puppy—just a dozen weeks old when we met ten years ago. A literal lifetime in dog years. It seems entirely possible that she’s gone now.
I follow Gabe through the house, heading to the same place we’d gone that first time I’d been here: the kitchen. On the way, I don’t see anything that indicates a dog lives here. There’s no dog dish, no leash hanging by the door, no dog bed in the living room.
I look out into the yard but it’s empty as well.
It makes me unbearably sad, the passage of time hitting me like a load of bricks. Ten years. Ten years have passed.
So much has happened. Madison at the restaurant has a ten-year-old kid. Gabe’s divorced, sober, and planning a comeback. I’m divorced, desperately wishing I wasn’t sober at the moment, and too scared to write anything outside the familiar brand I’ve created for myself.
And now Gabe’s dog is dead too.
I want to cry.
“Water?” Gabe asks.
“Sure,” I say, my voice embarrassingly thick.
I clear my throat before I speak again.
“I can’t stay,” I remind him.
It’s probably the fifth time I’ve said that. At this point, I don’t know if I’m telling him or telling myself. The addict’s version of “just one more.”
The truth is I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what this is.
I take the water Gabe offers me and the two of us drink, standing in his kitchen, memories of our last time here closing in on me until I feel like I can’t breathe.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
For what? I think. For feeding into the intense, unrealistic fangirl fantasy that I’d built up in my head? For being too good to be true and also human and fallible, which only made it harder to dislike you? For the seemingly unending ripple effects that our interview has had on my life—both professionally and personally? For all the moments I’ve replayed in my brain hundreds of times and all the things I’m unable to forget?
For all the things I don’t want to forget?
For my stupid, traitorous heart that hasn’t learned a single goddamn lesson in ten goddamn years?
“For what?” I ask.
Gabe blinks, as if he wasn’t expecting the question.
“For…” He pauses.
He thinks.
I wait.
“For lying,” he finally says. “I should have told you about Jacinda.”
“Yes,” I say. “You should have.”
I’ve seen her in person three times. Once at the premiere. Once in New York. And then once in a restaurant about twenty miles from where we are right now.
I’d been living in New York, but I would still come to L.A. for the occasional profile, always using the excuse to stay for the weekend and see my family.
We’d been out to dinner, the whole Horowitz clan, ordering everything on the menu at our favorite Taiwanese place in Mar Vista, when I spotted her across the room.
She was leaving, and even though it was a small restaurant in a neighborhood that saw its fair share of celebrities trying to have a quiet meal, people still stared. Most beautiful woman alive, indeed.
She had leaned over the bar, clearly familiar with the bartender, and the two of them exchanged cheek kisses. When she pulled back, her gaze found mine. Because I was staring along with the rest of them. For the same reasons and a different one as well.
We looked at each other, and then she tossed her head the way a famous international model who knows how to find her best angle might do.
“Was that…？” my sister had asked.
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“Wow,” my sister said. “She is gorgeous.”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
There had been a pause when she saw me. A pause, and a wrinkle—a beautiful one—had appeared between her eyes. I’m certain the expression on my face had been the same one that everyone else in the room had been wearing—one of shock and awe—the result of being caught in the sights of a truly spectacular being. But she might have recognized me. Might have recognized that beneath that shock and awe was something else. Something she might have seen backstage at a New York theatre not long ago.
Both times, I’d been the first one to look away.
Gabe runs his hand through his hair.
“It wasn’t fair,” he says.
“To her,” I say.
“To you,” he corrects. “To both of you.”
I shrug, even though his response hurts. I don’t know what I want from him right now, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t that.