Page 36 of Take 2

Chapter Thirty-Three

Preston - Five Years Ago

L isa is going to give me hell for being late.

The term work-wife was created for people like her.

Fortunately, she puts up with my shit. Unlike my actual wife.

Two years later, and I still hate calling her my ex.

The sane thing to do was definitely to lock away the phone, which still has her saved as My Wife Bella, and continue paying for it even though I exclusively use my new phone with my LA number.

There are pieces I’d like to hold onto of my old life. Bella can’t be one of those, so I hold onto the Wisconsin phone number.

I’m an idiot.

When we arrive, I avoid touching Nicole, the pretty woman I’m seeing at the moment. If it weren’t for the casual nature of our situation, I couldn’t be with her on Oscars day. Still, it’s agitating. I’ve avoided most human contact for this day every year. Romantic contact has always been a hard no.

Lisa’s party looks like it should host the winners of the Academy Awards, not her clients who are trying to get there. I walk in and catch her eye. She lights up and waves me over.

Then, the world stops turning.

Her hair is shorter, but even from behind, I’d recognize her anywhere.

And fuck if it isn’t in an Oscars dress.

The back is open to reveal the skin I’ve massaged, scrubbed in the shower, and scratched when she had an itch she couldn’t reach.

Her legs are incredible in spiked gold heels, but her feet are going to hate her later.

Does she have anyone to rub them for her?

There’s a guy with her as she talks to Lisa.

Seeing her with someone twists my stomach.

It’s impossible trying to reconcile wanting her to be happy with the nausea that’s always assaulted me when I think of her being with other people.

Her chocolate brown curls swing over her shoulder as she turns around. For the first time in over two years, I look into the eyes of the only woman I’ve ever loved.

Those eyes bulge, and her face turns pale so fast I have to suppress the urge to grab her arm to make sure she doesn’t collapse.

“Mirabelle Sheridan, this is Preston Greene.” Lisa’s words are in an echo chamber. They’ll haunt my dreams.

Bella’s chest heaves and her red-tinted lips tremble. She’s even more gorgeous than I picture her in my mind, and it’s way too soon for us to meet again.

There are moments when I think she and I are done for good.

Moments when I’m even glad for it or wish we had never been together.

But those are as rare as rain in LA. Usually, I know we’ll get back together.

Eventually. We met too young. We got married too young.

We needed time to live. We should have met in our thirties.

It’s an idea I’ve held onto. She’s still five years away from her thirties, and I’m three years away from mine.

My legs are poised to run like I’m waiting for a football to be snapped.

But Bella extends a shaky hand to me. “Nice to meet you.” So that’s how we’re going to play this.

Her hand is clammy in mine. “You too.”

“And I’m Nicole.”

I press my eyes closed and my lips together as my date leans around me to shake my ex-wife’s hand. My lack of awareness of her presence is pretty telling of what draws me.

“A pleasure.” Bella’s smile is tighter than an A-lister’s NDA. “This is James.”

I tense, but as James shakes Nicole’s hand, then mine, I relax. My gaydar tells me he’s not her date in that way.

“I was just telling Mirabelle that Missed Opportunities is a big reason for my big move,” Lisa says.

I clear my throat. “The credit is all yours, Lisa. You’re awesome at what you do.”

“You’re too sweet.” She loops her arm through mine. “Let’s get you a drink.”

Robotically, I let her lead me to the bar.

Lisa waltzes away while I wait for my whiskey on the rocks.

The ‘always champagne’ rule only applied to watching the awards with Bella.

I’m glad to see she’s still keeping her traditions …

I guess. I watch as she finishes her champagne and hands the empty glass to James.

The smile on her face is so fake it’s laughable as she talks to him, but it’s still the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in years.

I’m so fucked.

She disappears down a hallway, and I mumble something about the bathroom to Nicole.

Is it going to make everything worse to talk to her? Possibly. But really, how much worse could it be? We’re in the same industry, we have the same agent— How the fuck did I not know that? —so we’re bound to run into each other again. Better to clear the air now.

I pass a dark, empty bathroom and a closet before I get to a closed door with light glowing from underneath it. “Bella?” I knock lightly.

The door unlocks with a click , but the handle doesn’t turn.

It takes a second to muster the balls to open it.

When I do, she’s sitting on the floor in the far corner of what I guess is a guest bedroom with her knees up to her chest. I shut the door and lock it, reminding myself not to look at the view under her skirt.

“Bella, I—”

“ Do not call me that.”

I put my glass on the dresser and scrub my hand over my face. Anything else I’ve ever called her would be decidedly worse. “I had no idea Lisa was your agent.”

“Well, you wouldn’t.” Her words drip with rage.

“No, no. When you told me you signed with an agent, it was someone else.”

“Interesting that you would know that since you never answered my text about it.” She says it like I just didn’t want to talk to her. Before I can respond, she keeps going. “It shouldn’t be such a huge shock that my agent dropped me. You’ve done it too.”

Blood drains from my head, and I lean back against the wall.

“You don’t get to make it sound like I left you.

” She was the one who suggested we divorce.

Not that she didn’t have good reasons, but I didn’t think it would go there.

Bella was always the one who knew what she wanted, so if it wasn’t me, I wasn’t going to try to force her to stay.

“We’re not talking about that again,” she says. “There are far crazier things going on here, aren’t there?”

“So, I wrote a movie.”

“You don’t say!” Her voice is high-pitched in a way that’s bordering on hysteria. “Not just any movie. A good one. It’s Oscar bait. Or so I hear.”

“I really doubt—”

“Oh, don’t sell yourself short, Ryan. I’m sorry. Preston. What the fuck is that about?”

“It’s my middle—”

“I am very aware it’s your middle name. It was on my fucking marriage certificate!”

I wasn’t informing her it’s my middle name, but what the fuck am I doing?

I’ve imagined telling her all this a million times.

It would appear the time has come. “I didn’t want to be the transformation of the jock story.

I didn’t want to be pigeonholed to write sports stories.

And I didn’t want us to have a public rivalry or Kathryn Bigelow-James Cameron type situation.

” My manager’s first job was to make sure no casual Googler could put screenwriter Preston Greene together with Wisconsin football player Ryan Greene.

I owe Bella that much and so much more. She had already wiped her social media of any mention of me, and I didn’t have much of any.

She narrows her eyes at me. I stay in the opposite corner from her, so the need to hold her face and see her eyes up close can’t beat out my sense.

“To be clear,” I say, “the speculation would have to be that I rode into this on your coattails.”

“Sure it would.” She clasps her hands together and stretches her arms out in front of her.

“Are you okay?” It’s the stupidest question on earth, but my brain isn’t fully functioning.

“I really need to bury my face in something. But makeup. And …” She drops her hands onto the top of her lowered head, and a muted scream screeches from her like a long note on a violin.

“I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t have signed with Lisa. I wouldn’t have come here. I wouldn’t have brought …”

“Nicole, who you’re fucking now?”

I blow out a breath. “Can we not?”

“Of course.” She stands and smooths her dress.

The ones she wore the last two years looked like Oscars dress sex was off the table.

She looked great, of course. The yellow one last year was cute and made me miss our college days.

That jumpsuit thing from our first year apart was nice looking, but I wasn’t upset there was no access for my favorite tradition to take place without me.

This year’s is sexy in a way that strains muscles in all the wrong places.

Don’t look at the bed. Don’t look at the bed.

Don’t look at the bed. “Well, I brought a date too, so …”

“He’s gay.”

She sneers. “That’s presumptive.”

“It’s true.”

The sheer panels down the sides of her dress go on display when she plants her hands on her hips. “Here’s what we’re going to do. As far as everyone is concerned, we just met tonight. Okay?”

“All right.”

There’s so much I want to ask her. So much I want to tell her. But it’s not the time. Not just because this is a nightmare. It’s too soon.

“What about as far as we’re concerned?” I ask.

“I don’t foresee us being alone ever again anyway,”—I wince at the word ever —“but I did say everyone. Shouldn’t be a problem because I really don’t feel like I know you at all. So again, Preston, it was nice to meet you.”

She puts her hand out, and I shake it. I want to pull her hand to my chest. I want to wrap my arms around her and feel her heartbeat against me again.

I want to tell her Nicole means nothing, that I’m just killing time so time can’t kill me, because when it isn’t spent with her, I feel like the biggest fucking failure on earth and no goddamn movie is going to change that.

I don’t do any of that. Instead, I say, “Nice to meet you, Mirabelle,” and listen as her heels click out of the room.

Alone, I ball my hands into fists and take a deep breath.

I knock back my entire drink and rejoin the party.

There’s not a single thing I catch about the awards, but I notice Bella eat a raw oyster.

and I bite the inside of my cheek. She’s not drinking champagne anymore.

The clear rocks glass in her hand makes me wish I hadn’t ruined her bubbly mood.

When I get my next drink, I ask the bartender what she’s drinking and feel like I don’t know her anymore when he says it’s a double Grey Goose on the rocks.

I probably make mindless small talk, but I pay more attention to James flirting with a guy.

Did she try to play him off as her date to make me jealous?

Would that be a good thing or a bad thing?

Was it just because she was pissed to run into me for the first time and see me with a woman?

An earthquake would be really great right about now.

The wrong film is announced for best picture, and the awkward correction during the victory speech is going to be talked about forever. But it’s never what I’ll remember about tonight.

When I drop Nicole off, she whines that she thought I’d change my mind about spending the night.

I wouldn’t have seen her at all today, but I didn’t think I could show up to Lisa’s party alone.

As it turns out, that would have been extremely fucking helpful.

Either way, Oscars night is off-limits. She says we’ll talk soon, and I know we’re never going to talk again.

When I get home, I text my sister.

Me: You seriously need to be with me for every Oscars.

She’s going to kill me. I told her I’d tell Bella about the script, and I was going to … eventually.

Anna calls instead of texting back. “What happened?”