Costars (New York City Bad Boy Romance) (14 page)

“Mostly after the phrase ‘Hey,
Em
,’” she answers.

“I’m just feeling totally overwhelmed
right now and I need to be here for my sister. I’m kind of all she’s got right
now, and I need to be able to work and still have time to take care of her when
I need to.”

“I’m not arguing with you,” she says.
“I’ve got a spotless record: I’ve never tried to keep someone in a relationship
against their will. I’m asking if you’re okay because you don’t sound like you
are.”

“I’m not,” I tell her.

Honesty every once in a while clears the
palate, you know.

“Where are you?” she asks. “I’ll come and keep
you company.”

“I don’t think that’s the best idea,” I
tell her. “Why don’t we just talk tomorrow when we’re in the chair?”

“Because I don’t know if you’re going to
be okay tomorrow when we’re in the chair and I
do
know that you’re not okay right now,” she says. “I’m not saying
I want to come in there and get relationship juice all over you, but we can
still be friends, right?”

“Yeah,” I answer.

“Well, don’t friends help each other out
when one of them is having a hard time?” she asks.

“Well, yeah,” I answer.

“Then let me know where you are so I can
come and help you through it,” she says.

Nobody’s said anything like that to me in
a very long time, not with that level of altruism anyway.

“Danna’s sleeping right now,” he says.

“Then just give me the name of the
hospital and I’ll meet you wherever you want me to meet you,” she says.

“Why are you doing this?” I ask.

“What do you mean?” she returns.

“I kind of just broke up with you there
and you still want to come down to the hospital because I’m having a rough
time,” I tell her.

“Yeah,” she says, “so?”

“That’s crazy,” I tell her.

“Not when your friend is having a hard
time,” she says.

“I can’t leave the hospital,” I tell her.

“I know,” she says. “Just tell me where to
meet you and I’ll come there. You can be as close or as far away as you need to
be.”

I don’t know what to tell her. I don’t
know what to say.

“Thanks,” I finally mutter and I tell her
where to meet me.

While Danna’s sleeping, there’s no reason
I can’t spend a little time talking to Emma.

Before her diagnosis, Danna was in school,
training to be a ballet dancer. She was really quite something.

I never really understood the ballet, but
Danna loved it. Every time we talked, that’s what she wanted to talk about. I
think that’s why it’s so much harder to see her stuck in a bed or struggling to
get around the house.

It’s not always like that, though.

With relapsing remitting MS, Danna
actually spends most of her life symptom-free, at least to the largest degree,
but even with her long bouts of healthiness, Danna had to give up her dream.

Since Jamie, I’ve dated a bit here and
there. I even tried being the Hollywood swinger type for a little while, but
Danna always needed me more than I needed to be with someone.

A little time passes and I spot Emma
walking toward our designated meeting place, so I set off to meet her.

“What’s going on?” she asks when we’re within
conversational distance. “Is everything all right?”

“Yeah,” I tell her. “Danna’s going to be
fine.”

One of the things about Danna is that she
loved Jamie. The feeling was mutual. In fact, I’m not entirely sure that Jamie
liked me more than she liked my sister.

That was all well and good, but now that
Jamie’s gone, as far as Danna’s concerned, nobody will ever measure up.

It took me years before I realized what
was really going on.

After Jamie died, Danna didn’t grieve.
Because of my own sorrow, I hadn’t allowed her to grieve.

It wasn’t a conscious decision, it was
just the way things played out and so Danna took the role of pillar while I was
allowed to let loose with my emotions whenever and however I saw fit.

I think, more than anything, Danna talks
down every woman that comes around because she is afraid of getting attached to
someone new only to end up losing them as well, whether to death or to a break
up or whatever the case may be. She never got to grieve and so she’s had to
stifle that sadness, she had to channel the hurt. It had to go somewhere.

Anyway, there are a lot of reasons I don’t
think right now would be the best time for Danna and Emma to meet.

“I’m glad to hear that,” Emma says. “You
sound a little better than you did on the phone,” she continues. “Are you doing
better?”

“Yeah,” I tell her. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me
what happened, are you?” she asks.

“It is what it is,” I tell her. “I just
wish there was something I could do.”

“Maybe there is,” Emma says. “You’re a
rich and well-known, if not well-respected, actor. This is what we do, isn’t
it? When we want to see something change, we find a cause and we get behind
it.”

“Yeah, the problem with that is that a few
million here or there isn’t going to change anything,” I tell her. “Look, I
know how this whole thing is going to go. I’ve been through this with her
before, and I don’t really think we’re going to make all of it feel better or
that we’re going to make me magically stop caring.”

“I know,” she says. “I just know that sometimes
it can help me feel better when I talk about what’s going on with me. It
doesn’t necessarily solve the problem. It doesn’t have to. Some problems aren’t
just going to go away by talking them out. All that you can do when there’s
nothing else that you can do is to try to get through it without running
yourself down mentally, emotionally or physically.”

I tell her, “I really don’t want to talk
about it.”

“Then let’s talk about something else,”
Emma says.

“What did you have in mind?” I ask.

“It doesn’t matter,” Emma says. “What do
you want to talk about?”

“Right now,” I tell her, “I don’t know
what there is to say. I mean, Danna’s sick and she’s not going to get any
better in a permanent kind of way. There’s no reason to think she won’t live a
happy and full life, but times like this make me just wonder how she can wake
up in the morning and decide that life is still worth living.”

“She’s still got a smile on her face after
everything, huh?” Emma asks.

“Oh no,” I tell her. “Danna’s one of the
most cynical people I’ve ever known. She always has been in one way or another.
That’s the comforting thing, really.”

“How so?” Emma asks.

“It hasn’t changed,” I tell her. “She was
cynical before her diagnosis and she’s cynical now. I guess the things that
make me feel more hopeful aren’t the occasional improvements or the long stretches
when she’s symptomless, they’re the things that just haven’t changed.”

“She’s still your sister,” Emma says.

I haven’t shared too much about Emma with
Danna, nor have I shared that much about Danna with Emma. In my life, there are
two separate and distinct worlds. In one world, I am me, Damian Jones, actor,
extraordinarily handsome gentleman, etc. In the other, though, I’m Danna’s twin,
and in that world, nothing is more important.

“I know she’s still my sister,” I tell
Emma. “I’m just sick of losing so many little pieces of her. This thing, it
just chips away at a person, bit by bit, until even when symptoms aren’t
relapsing, life and the drive to continue living it just starts to make a
little less sense.”

“Have you ever wondered why this happened
to her and not to you?” Emma asks.

I’m not entirely sure what to say to that.

“Listen,” I tell Emma, “I told you that I
didn’t want to talk about any of this. Now that we have, is there any way we
can just let the whole thing drop?”

“I guess so,” Emma says. “It’s a shame,
though. It’s a real, real shame.”

I sigh and ask, “What’s that?”

“You almost sounded like you were on the
verge of saying something that was going to make you feel better,” she says. “I
haven’t the slightest idea what it might have been, but I saw that little gleam
in your eye. Come on, out with it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,”
I tell her.

“I think you do,” she says. “I don’t know
if you were going to answer my question or if you were going to tell me the
rules to seven card stud, but whatever came into your mind right then—that was
important.”

“That’s the thing,” I tell her. “I wasn’t
thinking anything that I wasn’t saying. I don’t know what you want to hear.”

“What happened to your parents?” she asks.

“You’ve seen the magazines and the talk
shows,” I tell her. “You must have heard the story at some point, if nothing
else, at least on the set.”

“We don’t have to talk about it if you
don’t want to,” she says.

“I really don’t want to,” I tell her.

“That’s all right,” she says. “So, why’d
you break up with me?”

“Can we maybe do this another time?” I
ask.

“Well, we’re here. We may as well talk
about something,” she says. “We may as well work out any issues remaining
between us before they overtake and kill the friendship I hope we still have.”

“We’re still friends,” I tell her. “The
problem isn’t you. The problem isn’t even Danna or me,” I continue. “The
problem is that I only have so much capacity for some things before I get
filled up. The problem is that I feel guilty about starting a torrid love
affair while my sister’s lying in a hospital bed, okay?”

“She wants you to be happy, doesn’t she?”
Emma asks.

“Yeah,” I answer. “I guess.”

“Then what’s the problem?” Emma asks.

“The problem is that I don’t know how to
be with anyone while I’m still taking care of her,” I blurt, and as soon as the
words are out of my mouth, I know I’ve crossed a personal line.

“That’s some heavy shit,” Emma says.

“Tell me about it,” I respond.

Emma starts again, “Are there any new
medications coming out, or—”

“There’s always supposed to be something
on the horizon,” I tell her. “They’re always so close to an answer, if not a
full-fledged cure, at least that’s what they keep saying, but it never happens.
Either the drug ends up not working or it kills the test subjects. Either way,
empty words float heavy on the wind.”

“Yeah,” Emma says. “That they do.”

“Listen,” I tell her, “I’ve got to get
back in there, but I am glad that you stopped by.”

“Of course,” Emma says. “Any time. We’re
still friends, right?”

We’re still friends, right?

How am I supposed to answer that question?

In a lot of ways, I really don’t know Emma
all that well. We’ve been kind of forced into close proximity and so we’ve
gotten to know each other at an increased pace, but at the same time, right
now, I’m not sure that I’m in a position to make long-term predictions about
where this could go and where it will go.

“You know,” I tell her, “no. Emma, I don’t
want to be your friend. I want us to be together in a real way, but that just
can’t happen with everything else that’s going on. It’s not fair and it’s not
simple, but it is reality.”

Emma’s bottom lip rises for a moment and
then retreats back into its normal position.

“Really?” she asks. “You’re going to give
up on having your own relationships because you think your sister will think
you’ve deserted her? Shit, that was a mouthful. It doesn’t matter; look,” she
says, “if you’re not happy, how is it that you think you could really hope to
make someone else happy?”

“Actually,” I tell her, “it’s really not
that hard to do. People get behind self-sacrifice pretty easily. I’ve always
wondered where we got the idea that in order to make another person happy, we
also need to be happy—not just that moment or that day, but in our lives, in
our careers, with our family and friends. A great deal of my life has been
spent feeling miserable,” I tell her. “That’s never stopped me from making
Danna smile.”

“Okay,” Emma says, “but if she smiles when
you’re ‘feeling miserable,’ who’s to say that she wouldn’t smile more if you were
happy.”

“I don’t know,” I tell her. “It’s
complicated.”

“Well, there’s a cop out if I’ve ever
heard one,” Emma scoffs.

“What do you want me to do?” I ask.

“I want you to quit thinking that you have
to give everything up to be there for your sister,” she says. “You can be there
for her and still live your own life.”

“I should get back in there and see how
she’s doing,” I tell her.

“All right,” she says. “I’m not going to
hold a gun to your head and say ‘have a relationship with me.’ If us being a
thing isn’t going to work out for you, that’s that. I just don’t want to you to
think that in order to be there for your sister you have to live the rest of
your life in a hole. So, why don’t you think about where you see the two of us
on the spectrum between stranger and lover and you let me know. Until then,”
she says, “I really do hope that your sister gets feeling better real soon.”