Fade Into Me (8 page)

My cell phone rang. I got it out of my purse and looked at the screen. It was Max, of course, no doubt calling me about the story that had been broken by the tabloid. I let it ring three times, and then decided I needed to hear his voice. I needed to hear his explanation. Avoiding him wouldn’t do any good.

“Hello,” I said, flatly.

“Olivia. I need to see you.”

I stayed silent for a moment and then decided to play along. “Is something wrong?”

“We need to talk. In person.”

“Max, what is it?” I said, pulling off the fake surprise and worry pretty nicely, I thought.

He sighed, but didn’t say anything.

A part of me wanted to scream at him—scream that he had betrayed me, lied to me, kept something hugely important from me, as we spent more and more time together, and all the while he
knew
I was feeling closer to him. Bastard.

“I’m coming to pick you up,” he said.

“When?”

“Right now.”

My throat was starting to tighten up as I held back from crying. “I…I’m working.”

“I need to see you, Olivia. It can’t wait. I’m pulling into the parking lot now.”

He hung up. Fuck.

I immediately grabbed my purse, stopped by Kevin’s office and started to tell him what was going on. He was looking out his office window. “Go do what you need to do. Take the rest of the day off.” There was sympathy in his voice. I knew he was being genuine.

“Thanks. And I’m sorry.”

Kevin just shook his head. “Go.”

I turned to leave the office and thought about Kevin’s phrase: “…do what you need to do.” Hell, I didn’t know what I needed to do. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, either. What I really wanted was for none of this to happen. I wished I had never gotten involved with Max. Wished I had never trusted him. Wished I had never let my feelings for him grow.

When I got outside, he was standing next to my car.

“Get out of my way,” I said.

He didn’t move. “So you know.”

“Of course I know. And you want to know how? My fucking boss saw a fucking picture of us in fucking New York, then he showed me the picture of you and your pregnant…girlfriend or fuck-buddy or whatever she is.”

“Olivia, calm d—”

“No! You don’t get to tell me to calm down. You don’t get to tell me anything ever again.”

I pushed at him, moving him out of my way so I could get into my car.

“Jesus, Olivia. Let me explain!”

I didn’t respond. I closed the car door, locked it, put the key in the ignition, threw the car into reverse, and tore out of there as fast as I could.

Fuck him and his lies
, I thought.

TWELVE

I was so glad it was Friday and I had the whole weekend to stay in the apartment and not have to go anywhere. This was supposed to be a romantic stay-inside weekend alone with Max, and now it had turned into a stay-inside lonely pity party. Amazing how things can change in the blink of an eye.

I was pretty sure I’d have the place to myself. It was the weekend and Krystal would be off doing…whatever it was that she does. And, frankly, I didn’t care.

I didn’t sleep much. I spent a lot of time lying on my bed, looking up at the ceiling, wondering how much worse my trust issues would be after Max. They were already so damaged before he came into my life, and now he would be leaving my life, a path of emotional destruction in his wake.

I don’t even think I could have sorted out how much of my feelings were from anger and how much came from sadness. It was all a horrible blend.

I turned my phone off when I got home and left it off until Saturday afternoon. I expected Max to be knocking on my door, but that never materialized. Maybe he’d just given up altogether. Maybe it would be better that way.

Saturday morning, I did a Google search for Liza Carrow. She was an up-and-coming star in the soap opera world. I never watched them so I had no idea who she was at first. Her IMDb page listed no other credits. But there were lots of photos, and she was stunningly gorgeous. My heart wrenched when I thought of Max on top of her, fucking her the same way he did me, or her on top, riding him.

She was four months pregnant, so there was a possibility that Max hadn’t slept with her since that time, well before we met. I’d have no way of knowing, no matter what he said. Was he with her in public simply because he was the father? Or was he still sleeping with her?

I could find no other stories from the rumor mills pointing to anyone else as the father.

I wanted to vomit, but luckily I hadn’t eaten anything all day.

I closed my laptop and lay on the bed, once again staring up at the ceiling. I needed to close my eyes and go to sleep, but any hope of nodding off into escapism vanished when there was a knock at my bedroom door.

“Olivia?”

It was Krystal’s voice.

“Yeah?”

“Can I come in?”

Shit.
No, I need to be alone right now.
That’s what I should have said, but I’m not sure it would have made a bit of difference. When I didn’t answer, she said there was something she needed to give me.

I got up and opened the door. Krystal stood there looking rested and nicely dressed. I hadn’t been expecting that. She handed me a large manila envelope with my name on it. “This was on the front porch.”

My name was definitely written in Max’s handwriting.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Let me see what this is.”

“Okay, well I’m getting ready to leave, so I’ll see you later.”

I closed the door and went back to the bed. The envelope was thick and heavy. Did I want to open this right now? Not really, I thought, but I just had to look.

I opened it and pulled out what looked to be a movie script—typed, and fastened with the two brackets, as they always are.

Attached to the cover page was a note:

Olivia – Please read this. I wrote this script when I was 22, but the movie was never made. I never thought I’d meet anyone who was anything like the female lead character I made up for this script. Then I met you. Read it and you’ll understand.

You should let me explain everything that happened this week.

I’m not going to give up easily.

I hope you won’t, either. -Max

I spent the next two hours reading the script. I’d never read one before, so it was my first experience with reading something in that format. So much of it was dialogue, brilliant dialogue. It was a beautiful love story—a guy who is starting to feel lost in life, a girl who comes along and shows him that while there’s plenty of be cynical about, she is not among those things. She’s real. She’s genuine. She’s not corrupted by the world that the guy is so used to.

Near the beginning of the script, there’s paragraph explaining the female lead’s motivation, and in Max’s handwriting were the words: Manic Pixie Dream Girl. I wondered what that meant, so I Googled it and smiled when I discovered that it was a term used to describe the female lead in one of my favorite movies: “Elizabethtown.”

I loved that story and I loved the character played by Kirsten Dunst. I remember the first time I saw it, thinking it was the quirkiest and most romantic movie I could remember seeing. It was all real-life situations, but it truly was a fairy-tale love story and a story about a man finding out who he really is…with the help of a girl who appeared out of nowhere just at the right time.

When I got to the end of the script there was a note from Max, directing me back to that paragraph, just in case I had missed it. He wrote:

You’ll see why I never made this movie. Someone had already done one like it. But this remains my favorite thing I’ve ever written. You’re the only person on the planet who has seen it. – M

As much as I loved and admired her, I really had never thought of myself as anything like the character in “Elizabethtown.” But maybe to Max, that’s exactly who I was.

His dream girl.

That’s what he was telling me.

Shit. I had retreated too quickly. I hadn’t given him a chance to explain. Maybe there was nothing to the story. Maybe it was just another tabloid piece of junk journalism.

I felt so stupid. I at least owed it to Max to let him explain. I just had to.

I scrounged around for my phone, turned it on, and dialed his number. I waited through three rings….

….and then he answered: “Hello, dream girl.”

~~~

Olivia and Max’s story continues in the conclusion to the FADE series…

FADE INTO ALWAYS

(coming soon in September 2012)

~~~

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