THE WESTSIDE MORNING traffic was already at a standstill. Sewanee was in no mood to fight something else that morning, so she headed west instead of east. She needed the ocean. She needed space. She needed to breathe, having done so little of it since the moment she entered Henry’s apartment. She easily found street parking she would never have found an hour later, grabbed the jacket she kept in the back of her car, and made her way to the cliffside walking path of Palisades Park. The nearest bench was occupied by a man cocooned in an overused sleeping bag, so she walked to the railing and leaned her elbows on it and looked through the morning haze at the ocean.
The sky was beginning to lighten. She inhaled deeply.
She allowed the thought of committing to the June French project to take root. She felt the rising sun on her back and closed her eye, letting the rhythmic sound of the waves caress her, letting the warmth and the breeze and the crashing surf carry her to a place a June French novel would describe in gleeful detail.
It was still slightly shocking she had these new memories to return to.
There’d been a few men since the accident, all casual, nothing relevant. Sex had been an exercise in nostalgia for her: a way to remind herself she could feel something. It hadn’t been a want. Until Vegas. Until Nick.
“What a pissah!”
The voice was more intrusive than it might normally have been, given where Sewanee’s mind had wandered. She tried to ignore it, hoping it would disappear as quickly as it had arrived.
“Sewanee Chestah! I’d recognize that backside anywhere!”
She hoped it wasn’t who she thought it was. She really hoped it wasn’t.
She turned around.
It was exactly who she’d hoped it wasn’t.
A decade older. Shirtless. Oakleys on the back of his head. Spandex running shorts. “Oh my God,” was all she could say.
“Just playin’，” Doug Carrey said in that smoky trademark Boston accent. And then, predictably, he laughed. Doug had always laughed at anything he said whether anyone else joined in or not. “Damn, girl!” His eyes swept her body. “Look at you!”
She lifted her hands marginally at her sides, an unenthusiastic ta-da. He moved in for a hug, seemed to think better of it. “Ah, I’m all sweaty.” So he kissed her cheek, grabbed her waist, and squeezed. It felt analytical, like he was measuring the reality of her body in this moment against what he maybe remembered.
He stepped back and pulled a voice. “Of all the gin joints, amiright?” It might have been charming were he not terrible at impressions. His Humphrey Bogart was closer to Gilbert Gottfried. “Shit, what’s it been? Five years?”
“I think at least eight.”
“No suh! Really?”
Really. Trust her, Doug.
“Well, you are wearing them well.” That Tiger Beat cover grin resurfaced.
“You too,” she said, then followed the lie with an unwritten law of Hollywood interactions: the stated recognition of an actor’s success. “Tommy Callahan.”
Back when they’d met, he’d been on the fast track to action movie stardom, but he overspent the money he’d made, lost his edge, and, desperate for cash, took a network family sitcom pilot that went to series. And now he would forever be Tommy Callahan, the Reformed Bad Boy Turned Single Dad Trying His Best.
She couldn’t stop looking at him. He wasn’t aging gracefully, was he? He wasn’t getting craggy or jagged or crinkly; he was getting blurry.
And yet: men. They kept working.
“Yeah, it’s a good gig.” He laughed. She didn’t know why, but she laughed along. “But I was sure if anyone was going big league it was you. Where’d you go? You like, peaced.”
“Oh, I, uh . . . I’ve been doing a lot of voiceover.”
He snapped his fingers. “Wicked smaht. Definitely the future. Everyone thinks they can just do it, but it’s a skill. It’s a whole nother talent. I’m getting into it myself.”
Sewanee said, “That’s great.” But Sewanee thought, now we should be laughing.
“Not that you got a face for radio or nothing like that.” He winked. Then he pointed at his eye, swirled his finger. “What happened here?”
“I had an accident.”
Doug winced. “Yikes. I got a mascara wand in the eye once. Makeup girl was all worked up and someone banged the trailer door shut and–” he clucked his tongue “–direct hit. I had to wear one of those for a whole month. How long you in fah?”