A Curse

Baela has made you breakfast. On the kitchen counter is a plate holding a single slice of wheat toast with a transparently thin smear of peanut butter. You’re already nauseous; the smell of toast in the air is enough to make your stomach lurch and the caustic burn of acid rise in your throat. In their vase, the sunflowers are perky and radiant, like the nuggets of gold that beckoned settlers to the West Coast in the mid-1800s, the hope, the possibility, the indomitable dream.

“I don’t think I can eat anything,” you say.

“Try,” Baela insists, pushing the plate towards you. Jace isn’t shuffling around lackadaisically or sprawled across the orange couch; he must still be asleep. “You aren’t going to make a good impression if you’re all woozy and retching everywhere. You don’t want to look half-dead when you meet Maroon 5, do you?”

“Oh my God.” You chuckle languidly, rubbing your forehead. Your eyes ache; you’ve barely slept. “I completely forgot they’re going to be there.”

Baela grabs a can of La Croix out of the refrigerator and sets it down beside your toast. “You’re that freaked out about the bathtub thing?”

“I guess so.”

“You wanted to be an actress. You’re getting your wish. It’s a blessing.”

And a curse, you think before you can stop yourself. You nibble at your peanut butter toast reluctantly. “I shouldn’t complain.”

“No, you shouldn’t,” Baela says.

You crack open the La Croix and take a sip: icy, sharp, oddly dry, Strawberry Peach, pretty awful. “It could be a lot worse.”

“Yeah, it’s not like it’s a Harvey Weinstein situation.” And in her tone is a quiet condemnation: you don’t belong here, you don’t have what it takes.

“What are you doing today?” you ask to distract yourself.

“Gym, the farmers’ market, practicing French.” Because Baela is leaving for Paris in a few weeks, and her agent didn’t even have to forge her a resume to get her the part. “Maybe you’ll meet a guy on the music video set, like a camera dude or a boom operator or something, and then you can finally have a real boyfriend and stop fantasizing about your elderly engaged agent!”

I doubt it. Nonetheless, you smirk weakly as you nurse your La Croix. “Let’s hope he’s not a hobosexual like Jace. We’re running out of room.”

“Hey,” Baela says as she admires your sunflowers with a soft, fond smile. “Jace isn’t so bad.”

“No,” you agree. “No, he’s not.”

You are standing on the sidewalk outside your apartment building when Aegon rolls up in his white Chrysler Sebring convertible, just a few minutes shy of 8 a.m. Hair stylists, makeup artists, and costume designers will reinvent you when you get to set, so you are dressed for comfort: an olive green floral sundress with large buttons down the front, your trusty TOMS wedges, just a blur of eyeshadow swept across your lids with a fingertip so you don’t feel naked, sparkly gold Bold Moves by Huda Beauty. Aegon is already blaring Lose Yourself and rapping along loudly, wearing his aviator sunglasses and flashing gang signs, his sandy blonde hair brutalized from the wind:

“I’ve got to formulate a plot, or end up in jail or shot,

Success is my only motherfuckin’ option, failure’s not,

Mom, I love you, but this trailer’s got to go,

I cannot grow old in Salem’s Lot,

So here I go, it’s my shot,

Feet, fail me not,

This may be the only opportunity that I got…”

“I told my dad you drive one of these,” you say as you climb into the Sebring. “He said they’re super unreliable.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Aegon replies. “But I have lots of money and very few responsibilities, so repairs aren’t a problem. And it cruises so smooth.” When he passes you a venti-sized iced vanilla latte, his right hand is shaking.

“You okay?”

Aegon flashes a grin. “Too much caffeine.” He whips away from the curb and drives towards the interchange of the 405, five chaotic lanes that fly northwest towards Beverly Hills. He is wearing his haphazard suit again, his jacket too big and his tie too skinny, reminding you of the Jehovah’s Witnesses who used to come proselytizing to your parents’ house until one day Tripp got fed up and told them you were Satanists. That is apparently sufficient to get a family on some kind of blacklist. Mom was mortified.

You are slurping your vanilla latte—very slowly, so your queasy stomach will not rebel—and trying to think of how to bring up the new scene situation when Aegon gets a call. Eminem vanishes from the Sebring’s speakers, and Aegon unplugs his phone from the aux and lifts it to his ear.

“Hello?” Aegon is merging onto the 405, crossing dotted white lines until he reaches the High Occupancy Vehicle lane along the concrete barrier. “Hey, Brando. What’s up?” A pause. “Why, what’s on Monday?”

You look over at Aegon: one hand on the steering wheel, hair whipping in the wind, black sunglasses that the early light glints off of, thoughtful creases etching into his forehead and around his eyes as he listens, endless blue sky above and miles passing anonymously below. It’s the morning of Thursday, July 3rd, and you have known him for three weeks, and you—who once made Mason wait months to do anything more than kiss you—think that if Aegon laid his palm on your thigh right now, only a whisper-thin layer of cotton between you and the warmth of his palm, it would feel not just good but right, safe, destined, and your drumming heartbeat would turn calm like the sea after a storm, and you would believe you were capable of anything he asked for.

I don’t want him to think I’m weak. I don’t want him to be disappointed in me.

“Right, yeah, I have to go to that,” Aegon says. There’s a lull as Brandon asks him something. “Because they keep trying to get Steve to do his own stunts and I don’t want him to end up with a broken back like Brendan Fraser. Uh huh. Sure. Oh, and remind Steve that he’s invited to the charity gala thing. Yeah. I don’t know, call Aemond and ask. No, I don’t want to call him, that’s why I’m telling you to do it. Okay. Cool, thanks. Hey, I have no idea when we’ll be done with the Maroon 5 thing so no need to wait at the office, you can take off at three or four or whenever. Sounds good. See ya.” Aegon hangs up and glances at you. “You’re invited too, by the way.”

You startle; your thoughts had been drifting. “Invited to what?”

“The gala in a few weeks. It’s to raise money for UNICEF. All my clients are invited.”

Just like they’re invited to his wedding in Turks and Caicos, you think, and you are hit by another pang of nausea so strong you put your latte down in the cup holder next to Aegon’s drink, something topped with whipped cream and a swirl of chocolate syrup. “I’d love to go! It’s like grown-up prom!”

Aegon shakes his head, but he’s smiling. Again, you are mulling over if and how to mention the new scene—does he already know? will he think I’m complaining?—but now traffic is thick and a Tesla cuts Aegon off, and he is focused on driving and reading the directions on the screen of the GPS mounted on the Sebring’s windshield, and you don’t want to distract him, and when he plugs his phone back into the aux there is a Red Hot Chili Peppers song that comes plucking out of the speakers as the mid-70s breeze ghosts across your skin like feather-light fingerprints: She Looks To Me.

The mansion is perched on the cliffside of Bendict Canyon, red-gold earth that glows under the rising sun, gnarled trees and shrubs twisting skyward from arid soil. The circular driveway is already crowded with trucks and vans, along with a few BMWs and Range Rovers. Aegon parks his convertible near the end of the driveway and then walks with you into the building: mid-century modern, glass walls and sand-colored marble floors to match the accents of amber and warm teak wood, jewel-tone velvet furniture and shag area rugs, statues that pretend to be gold and plants made of plastic. There are attendants brushing exotic cats, Ragdolls and Himalayans. There are people picking over trays of fruit and sandwiches, and others setting up light fixtures and placing marks on the floor with tiny Xs of white tape. You imagine yourself standing on them, and your knees and ankles feel weak as you toddle in your wedges.

Dan is here, and he parts a sea of assistants and sound technicians to cross the living room to greet you and Aegon, beaming and energetic and showing no indications of deception or malpractice. You watch as he and Aegon chat and laugh at each other’s jokes, tales of their most disastrous filming experiences, and you think: If Aegon trusts him, shouldn’t I?

Dan waves Maroon 5 over, and you meet the band but even as it’s happening you can feel yourself not committing it to memory, your skull too full of rattling anxiety, fog-like doubt. They are here to tour the set, but they seem halfhearted about it, and soon they find an excuse to leave; the band is filming their scenes on a different day and presumably have more interesting things to do. If I had millions of dollars, you think distractedly, I would want to be on a film set every day of my life. You are also introduced to the male actor, and he is very attractive in a tan, gym rat, California sort of way, and he seems perfectly polite as well. Aegon hovers nearby until the actor casually mentions his husband, then Aegon slides his sunglasses into his suit jacket and wanders off to pet the long-haired and ill-tempered exotic cats.

A copy of the script is placed in your hands and an assistant leads you upstairs to a small bedroom filled with racks of clothing and a station set up for hair and makeup. The costume designer and stylists work on you, and you make small talk so you won’t think too much about what’s about to happen and start hyperventilating. The first scene, blessedly, is fully-clothed: blush pink Prada ballgown, four-inch heels, your updo gracefully falling loose, dramatic fake eyelashes and inky mascara tears snaking down your cheeks, a screaming match with your supposed soon-to-be-ex lover. You and one of the makeup artists chatter about favorite eyeshadow palettes as she paints your skin like a canvas: a base of matte pink Love Letter by Anastasia Beverly Hills, the sheen of dusk-colored Brink by Natasha Denona.

When you’re ready, the costume designer says: “I don’t think they need you quite yet. You can stay in here, if you’d like.” She smiles, believing she is doing you a favor. “I know you actors need your space to get into character.” And then before you can think of how to protest, she herds the stylists out of the bedroom and you are left alone with the poltergeist of the near-future, cold pockets that make you shiver and the racket of furniture being rearranged in other rooms. You leaf through the script and then, when your hands start shaking, leave it on the low platform bed with a geometric print blanket.

Knowing you shouldn’t, you go to the racks of clothing and paw through garments until you find the lingerie for the bathtub scene: all black lace, all semi-transparent, and while clever camera angles and post-production editing will conceal anything elicit from the audience, there will be no such discretion here. And even if only the essential crew is present for the scene—though there’s no indication it will be a closed set—that’s still a cinematographer, a key grip, a camera operator, a sound technician…and Dan the director, of course.

Your family’s words come rushing back to you, a chorus of skepticism and caution and an underlying conviction that no one could want you for the right reasons:

If she wants to embarrass herself, let her.

Well, be careful, darling.

Who knows what his intentions are.

Men can be so creepy.

You walk towards the bed in a daze and then sink to the floor, backing up until you hit the mattress, hiding there in the small shadow, a sanctuary from the daylight that is flooding in through the glass walls. You feel like you can’t breathe, like your vision is going dark, like the chambers of your heart are splitting open, and yet you know from all your father’s stories of people showing up at the ER erroneously believing they are dying that this is all in your head, and you force yourself to take deep, slow breaths so you won’t pass out.

I can’t do this.

But you have to.

Everyone’s right. I’m not the kind of girl who makes it in Hollywood. Not exceptional enough, not bold enough, not beautiful enough, not willing to do what it takes.

But you’re not ready to give up yet.

There is a knock at the door. “Hey, you camera-ready, sunshine?” Aegon says from outside.

You press your curled index fingers just beneath your eyes to try to stop them from watering. “Yeah. Two minutes.” But your voice cracks, and now he knows something is wrong.

“Are you naked?”

You sniffle. “No.”

Aegon opens the door, and then he has crossed the room and is kneeling down on the floor beside you in his black suit, and he’s completely mystified because he’s never seen you this way before, and he’s half-reaching for you but he’s also hesitating, not knowing if you want to be touched. “What happened? What’s wrong with you?”

“I think…um…” Another sniffle. “I guess I’m just a little freaked out about the scene they added.”

Aegon is confounded. “What scene?”

You reach up onto the bed behind you and fumble around until your fingers grasp the script. You give it to Aegon and he hurriedly skims through the pages. When he stumbles across the scene in question, he goes entirely still and his murky blue eyes turn dark and hard and focused in a way you’ve learned is rare for him.

He asks without lifting his gaze from the paper: “When did you find out about this?”

“Yesterday night. Dan brought the script to my apartment.”

Aegon looks at you. “He showed up at your house?”

“Yeah,” you whimper pathetically.

“Did he touch you?”

“What? No, nothing like that. He stayed in the hallway.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m sorry. I kind of assumed you knew.” A pause. “And I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

Aegon, still clutching the script, stands and bolts for the bedroom door.

“No!” you beg in a whisper, lunging after him and grabbing his empty hand. “Aegon, no, I can do it. I don’t want to lose the job. I’ll do whatever they want. Aegon? Aegon, please, I don’t want to give up, I don’t want to go home a failure—”

“Don’t talk,” Aegon says, low and violent. “Let me handle it.” And before you can reply, he has ripped away from you and is through the doorway, down the staircase, into the living room where people are gathered under bright lights and making last-minute adjustments to furniture, décor, equipment. Exotic cats lounge on the velvet sofas. Your faux lover paces in a flawlessly-tailored white suit; he smiles when he sees you, then it swiftly dies.

Dan is chortling with two other men and leaning against a wall. Aegon rages to him, shoves him so hard Dan stumbles, strikes the wall two inches from his face. Aegon’s knuckles come away bloody; there is now a dent in the wall marred with a stain of crimson. An assistant screams; everyone in the room is gawking.

Dan is not just stunned by irate. “What the fuck, man?! That’s coming out of her paycheck!”

“How about we take it from your life insurance policy?”

“What is your problem?!”

“No, you know what you did!” Aegon shouts, and Dan is bigger than him but Aegon is seething, fearless, unrelenting, giving him no space. He balls up the script and pitches it at Dan; it bounces off his temple. “You knew any changes to the script were supposed to go through me and you hid this, and that’s fucked up, and it’s not happening. Take the scene out.”

Dan throws his arms wide in disbelief. “You said no nudity and no sex scenes, and this is neither. I didn’t con you, man.”

“Don’t act stupid. You went to her house and you sprung this on her and you thought you could get away with breaking the rules, and maybe you’ve done this before and no one stopped you because it’s just innocuous enough for you to have plausible deniability. But you’re not going to do it to me, and you’re not going to do it to my girl.”

“You think I need her?!” Dan yells, as if it’s preposterous. “She’s a nobody, she’s nothing special! She should be down on her knees thanking Baby Jesus that she’s on this set right now. You think I don’t have ten other actresses I could call?”

“So call them,” Aegon says. “But you’ll have to reschedule the shoot, and I know you’re paying a thousand bucks an hour for this place.”

“Hey dumbass, I spent over a thousand dollars on wine last night—”

“And I will never work with you again. And neither will Aemond, or Helaena, or Daeron, or any of our people.”

For the first time, Dan looks uncertain, stymied, wary. He studies Aegon as his crew avert their eyes awkwardly. On the sofas, the Ragdolls and Himalayans lick themselves and swish their fluffy tails. Aegon glances back at you. Your eyes are wide, glossy pools of pleading.

I don’t want to lose the job. Please, please, don’t make me give up on the dream yet.

“Look,” Aegon tells Dan, now level and diplomatic. “Do the right thing. You fucked up, you own it. Take the scene out and we’re cool. You get your music video shot on schedule. We get the originally agreed-upon terms. Everyone goes home happy. You’re a very talented director and I’ve only ever heard great things about you. I’d hate to have to start correcting people when they’re singing your praises.”

There is a long stretch of silence, and then Dan chuckles and holds up his hands as if surrendering. “Fine, no problem, we’ll axe the scene. It was just an idea, and maybe I got carried away. That was my bad. I had no idea you’d be so touchy about it.”

Aegon smiles, thin and tight and ingenuine. “I’ve been known to be sensitive.” He holds out his right hand; blood drips from his knuckles. An assistant drops to the marble floor and scrambles around wiping up the mess, viscous and scarlet. “No hard feelings?”

Dan shakes Aegon’s wounded hand. “No hard feelings.” Then he marvels at the blood in his palm and an assistant descends to disinfect him. Another moves an abstract painting so it covers the damage to the wall.

Aegon returns to you, and your pulse is slow and hushed, and your breathing is effortless, and you are transfixed; you cannot look away from him, you cannot believe he’s real. “So, uh,” he says, quietly so the rest of the room won’t hear. “No need to worry about that anymore. You want to take ten minutes to chill and get in the zone, and then we’ll get started?”

“No, I can go right now,” you tell him.

“Okay.” Aegon turns to Dan. “She’s ready.” Then he points at the male actor. Aegon probably doesn’t mean it to, but it comes out sounding like a threat. “You ready?”

The actor nods frenetically. “I’m ready!”

“Great,” Aegon says, and he steps out of the shot, and you step into it, and by the time the camera rolls you aren’t you anymore. You are a woman who desperately loves the man in front of her—instantly transformed from a stranger to a soulmate—and you are betrayal and jealousy and loss and wrath, and while your pink Prada dress is formal and wondrous your body is ever-contorting to be weak, vulnerable, breaking as you realize he is leaving.

Then you are clawing your way up the staircase in a heavy fur coat that seems to swallow you, then you are in a bedroom making unanswered phone calls in a lavender silk nightgown, then you are in the kitchen shattering plates and glasses in a neon green mini-dress, then you are in a leopard-print robe petting the exotic cats in the living room, then you are drowning in the swimming pool in a black empire-waist evening gown. Aegon follows you around the mansion and stands wordlessly in corners, chomping on his Juicy Fruit gum, holding the towels that assistants bring him against his knuckles; during every wardrobe change, he waits just outside the bedroom door.

The shoot isn’t done until after sunset, and you thank everyone profusely before you leave: the crew, the male actor, and especially Dan. You still need him to promote and release the music video, and assuming he doesn’t hate you after Aegon’s outburst, he’ll be a valuable reference.

When Aegon speeds his Sebring out of the mansion’s circular driveway and onto winding cliffside roads presided over by the towering shadows of palm trees, the first thing he says to you is: “You are never working with that man again.”

“Okay,” you agree immediately. And before you can say anything else he has put his phone to his ear. Faintly, you can hear ringing, and then a voice that you think you recognize as Brandon’s.

“Hi,” Aegon snaps. “What do I pay you for?”

“Aegon, please don’t be mad at him,” you say quietly. He’s driving very, very fast. The streetlights race by in a blur, the night wind tears like talons through your hair.

Aegon ignores you. “Why was her address on the stuff we sent to the Maroon 5 video people?” A moment passes. “No, it clearly wasn’t redacted because Dan Sacco showed up at her apartment last night. Yeah. That’s what I’m saying. Well, open your email and find out.”

“Aegon, he’s supposed to be off work right now. He’s at home, I’m fine, it’s not important.”

“Shh.” And then, after a long pause, Aegon says to Brandon: “Oh. I get it. Okay, yeah, my mistake. Sorry about that. Enjoy the 4th tomorrow, I’ll pay you extra for this conversation. Alright. You too. Bye.” Aegon sighs and looks over at you, as if he’s asking for forgiveness. “I mislabeled the PDFs. Brando thought he sent them the redacted one but he actually sent the original. He should have double-checked anyway, he usually does, but I was rushing him to get it out because I was trying to make sure you got the job. So…it’s my fault and I’m really sorry.”

“It’s fine, Aegon,” you say softly.

“It’s not fine.” And you don’t have the opportunity to correct him because Aegon is scrolling through his contacts, and despite his earlier aversion to calling his brother Aemond, soon Aegon is recounting what happened and warning Aemond to never work with Dan, never recommend him to actors, never sell him a script, that Dan is dead to all of them as soon as the music video is officially released.

Aegon merges onto the 10 and heads east towards his office in Elysian Park. You don’t wonder why he’s not taking you south to Harbor Gateway, because you don’t want to go home yet. It’s well after 9 p.m., and the freeway is vast and open, silhouettes of skyscrapers and palm trees, reflective green signs indicating routes to Pasadena, San Bernadino, Santa Ana, San Pedro. Under the streetlights that arch overhead, you can see that the knuckles on Aegon’s right hand have turned violet and maroon, bruises down to the bone. When he reaches Downtown, Aegon’s Sebring takes the 110 north, and you are reminded of the route you drove to Elysian Park on the day you first met him, a girl with no prospects that he believed in anyway.

Aegon doesn’t hang up the phone until he’s at the curb outside the half-duplex he rents, a blinking blue neon sign that reads Targ Talent Agency in one window. He rests his wounded hand on the back of your seat when he twists around to look as he’s parallel parking. In the lobby, he goes to the minifridge behind Brandon’s desk and gets two green glass bottles of Perrier, passes you one of them, continues to his office and collapses into his chair, staring up at you as he swigs his Perrier and drops of condensation fall down onto his suit. He thumps his shoes up onto his desk, characteristically littered with gum wrappers and manilla folders and loose papers, framed photographs and his recently-acquired ceramic bowl of Honeycrisp apples. You are still standing.

“That happens sometimes,” Aegon says after a while. “Just so you know going forward, because I failed to make it clear before, script changes always go through me. I negotiate with the other party and if any modifications are approved I tell you about them, not the other way around. And unless you’ve cultivated some kind of working relationship with them, directors and producers should not be reaching out to you personally.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why are you apologizing?”

You aren’t really sure. “I guess I should have known better.”

Aegon smirks, tired and cynical. “I told you this place is a curse.”

“You tried to warn me,” you concede.

“Do you believe me now?”

“No. I still want to be in Los Angeles.” I still want to be here with you.

He considers you, his head tilted thoughtfully to the side. “You did a really good job today, sunshine. Despite everything.”

“I hope so.”

He gives you a wry half-smile and takes another gulp of his Perrier. You haven’t opened yours yet. You are wearing your street clothes from this morning, TOMS wedges, unceremonious olive green sundress. Your hair is still damp from the scene in the pool and smells like chlorine. Aegon sighs deeply and kneads the area just above his right eye with his fingertips, as if he has a headache.

“Aegon?” you say, and he looks up at you. “Thank you for what you did for me.”

“I’d do it for anyone.”

“You’d almost break your knuckles?”

He glances at the back of his hand as if he had forgotten about the damage incurred there: clotted blood, subterranean bruises. “No, that was just for you.”

You set your unopened bottle of Perrier and your purse on his desk. Then you step out of your wedges, reach beneath your sundress, hook your thumbs under the waistband of your panties and pull them down to your ankles. You kick them away and leave them on the scuffed wood floor with your wedges. Aegon is watching you, his lips parted and his dark blue eyes amazed, as you walk to his desk and sit on the edge, pluck a Honeycrisp apple out of the bowl there, and take a large, famished bite. When saccharine juice spills down your lips, you don’t wipe it away.

Slowly, Aegon’s own mouth blooms into a smile. “I was wondering if it was mutual.”

He stands, harvests the apple from your hand, buries his teeth in the wet yielding flesh in the same place where you bit it. Then he lets the apple tumble to the floor as his hands rise to your face and he kisses you, and if you once discovered that this was easy with Mason then here it is instinctive, necessary, sheltering, and you have never felt so safe, and you have never been so sure of anything. You are unfastening the large buttons that run down the front of your sundress. Aegon is shrugging off his suit jacket and opening his shirt, his chest and belly soft and warm, no distance between you as you lie back across the desk and Aegon climbs on top of you, tasting like apples and Juicy Fruit and night air. Folders and papers cascade in a flurry. The bowl of apples is shoved off the ledge and shatters. Photographs are knocked to the floor, their glass panes splintering.

You are afraid only once, when Aegon unclasps your bra and tosses it away, but then he’s touching and kissing you there, lips and tongue and teeth, and his need is so palpable, and you can’t believe you ever considered scalpels and stitches. “I knew you were perfect,” he whispers against your throat, and when his war-torn hand travels between your legs you are already slick and starving, and you tell him you can’t wait.

You glance down as he rummages around in a drawer of his desk and eventually—seconds that feel like an eternity—finds a few condoms in silvery wrappers. “I’m sorry you have to use one,” you say, breathing heavily as you lie beneath him, not wanting to ruin this. “I’m sorry I’m not on the pill or—”

“I’d wrap up anyway. I’m serious about the no kids thing.”

And then he’s easing himself into you, and it’s better than it’s ever been because you’ve never wanted it more, and you’re trying not to moan too loudly because you don’t know if there’s anyone home in the other half of the rundown little duplex, and when your eyes flutter open you see flashes of the mint green walls, beams of headlights raking across the windows, gleaming emerald shards of your Perrier bottle that has tumbled to the floor and broken there, hemorrhaging a sea of carbonated water. It’s not a climax but a plateau so high you can’t think, can’t speak, your fingers in Aegon’s hair and your hips moving with his, your legs linked around him and his voice in your ear, is this okay for you, is this good, and you are nodding and gasping and letting him take you to a place where you can have everything, magic that usually only exists on pages and screens.

Aegon finishes—too soon, with some embarrassment—then pulls back and is alarmed to find tears on your cheeks. He wipes them away with his hands, bewildered, concerned. “What are you doing? Don’t cry, sunshine.”

You laugh shakily. “I’m fine, I swear, it’ll go away. I just get emotional.”

“Always?”

“When it’s good.”

Aegon kisses you, sweet and slow, and then he climbs off the desk and flings the condom somewhere, grabs your hips, drags you towards to him. You sit up when you realize what he’s doing.

“Oh no,” you say. “Wait, no, you don’t have to. Don’t worry about it.”

Aegon furrows his brow at you impatiently. “Do you want to come or not?”

“Well yeah, but it can take a while. So I’ll just do it myself later.”

“Shut up and put your legs over my shoulders.” He yanks you closer and you fall back onto the desk, now damp and slippery with perspiration, and you are grinning up at the ceiling, astonished and euphoric and a little sheepish, not expecting it to work but then being overwhelmed by him, coaxed into it like tumbling down the crumbling wall of a canyon, plummeting into inevitable and effortless gravity, the earth disintegrating beneath your clawing fingers when you try to catch yourself. Then Aegon takes your hand and shows you that he is hard again.

“More,” you plead in a whisper, and you go with him down to the floor, careful to avoid jagged flecks of glass and fragments of the shattered ceramic bowl, and you are helping him roll a new condom on because he’s taking too long and you can’t wait, and you’re both laughing as you straddle him, and then it becomes something quiet and slow and indelibly heavy, imprints in sand that eons of waves could not wash away, and afterwards you lie together on the floor for a long time, not saying anything, not tethered to reality, drifting in a bone-weary mirage of nightscape chemicals until the sun will rise and paint the world in color again.

You get up and start looking for your wedges. You have to shake them to get pebbles of green glass out. Aegon, still lying on the wood floor, watches you; you smirk guiltily. “I should probably go home soon. I have to be at Cold Stone tomorrow morning.”

Aegon seems surprised. “You’re working on the 4th of July?”

“Only until 6:30. Then Baela and I are going to see the fireworks.”

“And you’re driving to work, right? Not walking?”

“Right,” you promise.

Aegon groans as he drags himself to his feet, pulls on his suit and misbuttons his shirt, surveys the damage done to his office and runs his hands through his disheveled blonde hair. He shakes his head and looks a little sad, vacant, meditative. Does he regret it? you worry; but then Aegon turns to you and smiles. “Let’s get going.”

The long-gone daylight has been replaced by streetlights and headlights and coils of neon, glowing through the darkness like manmade stars, young synthetic constellations. As the Sebring sails down the ghost town of the 110 at midnight, Aegon passes you his phone. “Listen to whatever you want.”

You scroll through his Spotify playlist; there are five hundred songs, lots of Alanis Morissette and Pearl Jam and Third Eye Blind and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. You remember listening to one of their songs on the way to the mansion in Beverly Hills this morning; Aegon must really like them. You choose another Red Hot Chili Peppers song at random, one you’ve never heard of before, Hard To Concentrate. The hypnotic guitar chords spill from the speakers, and as you gaze dreamily over six abandoned southbound lanes, you can see on the periphery of your vision that Aegon keeps glancing over at you, his hair flying in the wind and his bruised right hand resting on the steering wheel.

Aegon parks illegally in a fire lane on the curb outside your apartment. “Hey,” he says when you open the passenger’s door, and you stop and return to him. “I’ll see you soon, alright?”

You check the analog clock on the dashboard, a black box of green numbers. It’s just after midnight on July 4th. You murmur as you kiss Aegon one last time, your lips curled into a smile: “Happy Independence Day.”

Then you float up the concrete steps and into your apartment building, higher than the sun at noon.