Page 194 of The Compass Series

AIDEN - FIVE YEARS LATER

I was convinced my heartbeats were built on loneliness. They thrived in the darkness of my solitude.

Everyone who surrounded me probably didn’t even notice the seclusion leaking from my spirit.

They’d never came close enough to exam the real me.

They only knew the character I’d presented myself as.

To them I was Aiden Walters, Hollywood’s it boy.

The happy-go-lucky people-person who thrived in crowded rooms. Yet my true self was the complete opposite.

I was Aiden Walters, the lonely boy. The boy who’d become too great at covering up his panic attacks on red carpets.

The boy who’d become a chameleon based on whoever he was interacting with.

People thought they liked me because when they talked, I listened without inserting my thoughts and opinions.

I laughed when they laughed. I grimaced when they did, too.

It would amaze you how many people wanted someone to simply listen to them and not give them feedback.

People liked me because they didn’t know me.

If they knew me, they’d probably be turned off by the level of sadness inside my soul.

Then again, who was I to be sad? I had fame, money, and success.

How dare I even question my mental health when I’d been given so many blessings.

At least that was how my father made me feel on the subject.

“You’re living everyone’s dream. You’re living my dream. Be grateful,” he’d say.

It turned out, living everyone else’s dreams didn’t make your own come true. It made you an overlooked side character in their life’s story.

My mind was spinning as my stomach rumbled like thunder.

I’d made it to where so many people wished to be.

I was sitting in the front row at the Oscars.

Cue the excitement.

It was hot in that room. It also smelled like overpriced perfumes and uptight egos. A big part of me didn’t feel as if I belonged in that room. Don’t get me wrong, I was glad to be invited. They said, “it’s an honor to be nominated.” Blah, blah, blah.

That summed up exactly how I felt—blah, blah, blah.

Every inch of my body dripped in perspiration.

My stomach rumbled like an old car engine trying to get a jump start.

The person sitting to my left glanced over at me with a raised eyebrow from the wannabe tune-up.

“Bubbly guts,” I murmured, patting my stomach. Right as I gave it a pat-pat, I burped on accident.

For the love of…

My body was shutting down on me as my old-school panics started to resurface.

Nerves.

You have to control your nerves, Aiden.

My parents were upset I didn’t bring one of them as my plus-one. Mostly Dad was upset. Mom was worried. She knew back then I said if I’d ever made it to the Oscars, my plus-one would be Hailee because Mom was my plus-one at the Emmys.

Hailee.

Shit. My fucking nerves.

I smiled brightly and focused my attention on the stage in front of me.

Rob Gregory was presenting. He didn’t look nearly as nervous as I’d felt, but then again, Rob had attended these events for over sixty-some years.

He was one of the best actors in the industry.

Hollywood royalty, if I may say. The guy was pushing mid-eighties but didn’t look a day over sixty.

He must’ve had solid genetics. Or an extremely talented personal trainer and cosmetic surgeon.

My stomach howled once more.

Rob held an envelope tight in his hand and said, “And the Oscar for best actor in a leading role goes to…”

Blah, blah, blah…

“Aiden Walters.”

Wait, what?

The crowd burst into a roaring celebration.

Aiden Walters.

That’s me.

I did it.

At the age of twenty-two years old, I’d won my first Academy award.

I was going to vomit.

No, wait. I was going to walk on stage. Correction, I was walking on stage.

Somehow, my feet managed to take one step after another as my brain became dazed and confused about what was happening.

I felt light-headed as I made my way toward Rob Gregory.

Then Rob Gregory hugged me, congratulated me, and handed me the Oscar. My Oscar.

For fuck’s sake, I won an Oscar.

Rob stepped to the side, leaving me in front of a microphone with dozens of my colleagues and heroes standing in front of me.

Hundreds of thousands of others watched the greatest moment of my life happen right before them.

It was time for me to speak, yet at that very moment, it was as if my tongue was tied.

Bubbly guts and twisted tongues.

I cleared my throat. “This is quite the shock. For starters, thank you to the Academy for the ultimate gift. I am blown away that this is happening to me. A huge amount of gratitude for the other artists in this category. These men are some of the most gifted individuals in this industry, and I want to apologize to you all for them somehow picking me over you. Clearly, they don’t know talent,” I joked, getting a bit of laughter from the audience.

I thanked everyone involved in the making of the movie and then moved on to those who meant the most to me.

“To my father, who pushed me into this industry and told me I’d one day be standing right here.

Thank you for believing in this moment when I couldn’t see it.

To my dearest mother, the woman who raised me, the woman I first loved, the woman who taught me all about life and the beauty of living it to the fullest…

Thank you, Mom, for always being my right-hand woman.

Dad’s a lucky bastard to have you.” I paused.

“Can you say bastard at the Oscars, or are they bleeping that out?”

Another eruption of laughter. As I worked through my speech, a woman’s name popped into my head.

Hailee.

Thank Hailee.

Screw her for showing up in my thoughts at that very moment.

As a kid, I’d always practice my Oscar acceptance speech while holding my mother’s hairbrush in my hand.

I’d performed the talk countless times in front of my best friend, correction ex-best friend.

Hailee Jones was always a part of my life.

She was my very first friend, then she became my first love.

She followed that up with becoming my first heartbreak, too.

Back then when I practiced my speech, I always thanked her.

If you had told me she wouldn’t have made it into my acceptance speech many years later, I would’ve called you a liar.

In my mind, I always figured she’d be a forever piece of my story.

I figured she’d be the woman sitting beside me in the audience, smiling at me with that big smile.

Staring at me with stars in her deep brown eyes from the pride she felt for me.

I tried my best to shake off my nerves and stared out into the audience. I thanked the cast and crew and directors, yada, yada, yada.

After winning an Oscar, your world moved on autopilot.

People directed you around to pose for photograph after photograph.

You did press conferences. Then, there were the parties.

The Vanity Fair gathering. The socializing.

The smiles that were both fake and genuine, depending on who you were conversing with.

I interacted with everyone who came my way.

My personal assistant was close by, too, telling me who certain individuals were as they approached so I could appear as if I didn’t have the most forgetful mind.

Afterward, I got into a car, and I was driven home.

My chaotic world grew quiet.

I poured myself a drink and sat alone with my thoughts.

Winning an Oscar was supposed to mean something. It was supposed to have some kind of meaning behind it, yet after the win, I felt empty and alone.

I sat on the floor of my darkened living room with a bottle of bourbon in my left hand.

In front of me on the coffee table was that damn statue.

My parents had called me multiple times.

I talked to them, of course. But everyone else?

My agent, manager, and publicist? Fellow actors and people in the industry?

I didn’t answer their calls.

I didn’t want to talk to anyone.

I didn’t want to see anyone.

Well, there was one person who crossed my mind.

Pissed me right the hell off that she kept crossing my mind, too, seeing how she was supposed to remain in my past after she ended things all those years ago.

Yet that was the thing about Aiden and bourbon being mixed—buried memories began to unlock.

The words she’d spoken in our youth all flooded back to me as I stared at my award.

“When you win your Oscar, I better be your date or the first text or call you make,” she’d say. “After your parents, at least.”

“Of course, it would be you. Who else would I message?”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

I pulled out my cell phone and flipped through my contacts. There she was. Her name in my phone? It was clear as day:

DO NOT TEXT OR CALL WHEN YOU’RE DRUNK AIDEN.

A long name but an honest one.

I opened our text messages from five years ago.

The last thing she said to me still stung a piece of my heart.

That pissed me off. I hated that after all this time, this woman could still hurt me in an odd way.

I guessed that happened when your best friend ended a seventeen-year friendship over a text message.

Hailee: I’m so sorry, Aiden. Our lives are heading in different directions. Maybe we can still be friends, but I think it’s best if we don’t talk for a while.

It had been a while.

Five years, eight weeks, and a handful of change.

Not that I was counting.

Back then, I tried to reach out, yet she all but ghosted me. Over a decade of friendship and one season of love down the drain for no real reason other than her thinking our lives were going in different directions. What a pile of horseshit.

I began typing out a new message even though her name in my phone told me to do differently.

Aiden: I won an Oscar. I’d promised you’d be the first person I’d text about it after my parents. So there you go.

I blocked her before she could reply.

Then I unblocked her to see if she’d replied.

Then I blocked her again because screw her.

Then I unblocked her because screw her .

I went back to my bourbon and pity party for one. It was odd to me how I could be in Hollywood’s spotlight, surrounded by people most days, yet still feel so eerily alone.

I’d spent the next few months in that same strange feeling of loneliness. I kept busy because that was the best way to keep her off my mind, but when I returned to my quiet house, too many thoughts would flood my mind.

So more bourbon, more quietness, more thoughts.

I felt as if I was going to go insane. That was when my mother called me and said she saw an interview with me from the week prior. She’d told me she saw it in my eyes—the sadness.

“I’m fine,” I lied.

“You’re not,” she argued. “You’re going to play Superman, Aiden, and this is a huge deal, but still… you’re sad.”

“No one else has mentioned me looking sad.”

“No one else is your mother, so come home for a while. Take a break. Winning the world over isn’t worth losing yourself, so please… come home.”

I disagreed for a while until I realized that she was right. I didn’t know who I was anymore. I felt so far from myself that I saw a stranger when I looked in the mirror. I didn’t even see a glimpse of who I used to be.

So I packed my bags and headed back to Wisconsin.