Method(8)

My anger is overshadowing all of these facts as I gaze up at her astoundingly beautiful form. From her polished toes, her lithe frame, to bee-stung lips and almond-shaped gray eyes, she’s unbelievable. My anger doesn’t change my desire for her. I know I’m hurting her with my silence. We’ve never felt this far apart when I wasn’t on the job. Not for a single day in the last five years we’ve been married, and I can’t bring myself to try and fix it. I stop my rowing, exhausted as she kneels next to me, her chalk-white sundress flaring around her knees. She looks over at me through rain-cloud-colored eyes and thick black lashes, her lips still a bit swollen from all the unearned punishment I’ve been doling out. Most would consider our relationship a bit co-dependent, and they would be exactly fucking right. We don’t do much of anything without the other. We don’t need space to be individuals, because we’re the better version of ourselves when we’re together, at least I am. But when I got that call, something I didn’t know was thinning in me snapped, and I can’t figure out where it came from or how to tie it back together. I’m exhausted on a level I’m unfamiliar with, and I just want to get past it.

“Tell me what you need,” she says, running fingers through my sweat-soaked hair. “You’re pushing too hard.”

“So are you,” I let out gruffly, while contradictorily sinking into her touch.

She ignores my snark. “You’re restless.”

I pull her to me, dousing her clean cotton dress with the filthy aftermath of my workout.

Her eyes widen when she detects the evidence of my growing erection. I’ve been fucking her every few hours for the last couple of days. Maybe it’s a way of coping, but it’s also invigorating. Every time I’m inside my wife, I feel better, stronger, and worshipped, even if it’s short-lived. I am loved by her in a way no other woman could ever master. Mila is the answer, my answer. I’m lucky. Blake never found his. But this problem she can’t solve. This sin she can’t absolve me of. I’m guilty in a way I can’t be redeemed, and there’s no coming back. There’s no way to make it up to him.

I get to be happy. I get the career, I get to live. And the man I loved as a brother will never meet my future son or daughter because his instincts failed him. Life had disappointed him to the point he severed ties with it.

“What are you thinking?” she asks, looking down at me with a soft gaze.

“Baby. I want one.”

She shakes her head allowing me to soil her before pulling me closer. “We can talk about this in a few months.”

I kiss the skin of her throat as she wraps her long legs around me.

“You aren’t well, my love.”

“I’m fine. Stop it. He’ll still be dead in a few months.”

“Maybe so, but I want you to remember all of it.”

I jerk my head back and look up at her. “What?”

She pauses, eyeing me cautiously. “Thanksgiving, last year. How did we spend it?”

I wrack my brain but can’t come up with anything.

“I don’t remember.”

“Exactly.” She pulls away and stands to linger above me.

“We weren’t home?” Confused, I look up at her for an answer.

She slowly shakes her head. “You were working on Erosion.”

“Oh,” I say. “Yeah.”

“Yeah, you couldn’t repeat a word I said that whole damned two months you were shooting. This is a prime example of why I want to wait. You don’t even remember where we were. You barely came home at Christmas.”

“That I remember.” South of France. It was a good one. Immersion isn’t necessarily a bad thing; in fact, it’s what’s propelled me into the kind of actor I want to be, but my memory gets foggy in the weeks and months that I spend behaving as someone else. I find I have a selective sort of memory in those days. I’m not exactly somewhere else, but I’m most definitely not present. Mila’s never been a fan of my routine, but she understands, I made sure of it. She supports me and is the best imaginable partner, even though she sometimes feels neglected while I shoot. It’s easy to forget where you were and where you’ve been when you travel nine months out of the year.

Though we aren’t separated while I film, I often have to isolate to get into character, and ‘coming home’ is Mila’s way of letting me know when I was and wasn’t in a brain fog.

“What’s this script?” she asks, a trickle of accent kicking in. I love it when her mother’s French tongue thickens her voice. It’s one of the sexiest things about her.

“It’s a movie about Nikki Rayo.”

Her eyes widen. “The mafia guy?”

“Yeah. They’re already in pre-production. It’s going to move quick.”

“You just wrapped.”

“Mila,” I say on a sigh. “That was a month ago. And I know I freed up a few months for us, but I can’t pass on this, baby. It’s a golden ticket.” I’ve been waiting for years for an opportunity like this. I’d played the spy, the rock star, the superhero. I’d done some variation of it all. I’d just wrapped on a romantic comedy that left a bad taste in my mouth. I needed something to get my hunger back.

It was getting too humdrum, too comfortable and I hated it. Mila was right, I was restless, and this part could be just the one I needed to hit reset. The death of an actor’s passion has everything to do with getting comfortable. It’s one of the first things Maddie taught me. I was no longer testing my capabilities, and that was dangerous.