Porn Star(99)

But my feet move before my mind, and I’m jogging through the gate right as she shuts the door of her old VW Bug. She starts the engine but she leaves the car in park as I run over to her.

She rolls down the window, and on her young face is an expression of pain so poignant I can barely look at it.

“You’re hurting,” I say, bracing my hands against the top of the car’s window frame so I can lean down to see her better. “And I’m hurting. Devi, it doesn’t have to be this way; we don’t have to be hurting right now. Come inside, and we’ll talk. We’ll figure this out.”

“There’s nothing left to figure out,” she says quietly. “I can’t be with you when you can’t be with only me.”

I slam my hands against the window frame, rocking the tiny car and making her jump. Anger like hot acid fills my words when I speak. “You know it’s not like that! My heart would be with only you, so why the f*ck does it matter where my cock is?”

“It matters to me,” she answers, her voice trembling slightly.

I’m still furious, my hands clenching the window frame now, and I want to tear this car apart, rivet by rivet, until she agrees to stay. “You knew what you were getting into,” I accuse. “You knew exactly what it would mean to date a porn star. It’s not fair for you to change your mind now!”

Tears catch on her eyelashes as she shakes her head. “I can’t be in this porn world anymore, Logan. I can’t be in your world.”

“It’s our world,” I insist, her tears thawing my anger into a messy, guilty regret. “We both live in it, and we both love doing porn.”

“No, you love doing porn.” She takes a deep breath. “And that’s why I’d never ask you to stop. I love you exactly how you are, and part of who you are is porn. Doing what you love. Do you think I’m so cruel that I would ask you to give that up?”

“But…”

I don’t have anything to follow that word, though. I just know I need to struggle against this, fight for this, salvage something, anything, because Devi is the one thing I can’t afford to lose…

Except she’s right about me. I can’t afford to lose doing what I love either. If I’m not Logan O’Toole, World Famous Porn Star, then who am I?

“It just never occurred to me,” I finish lamely. “That anyone would want to quit porn. That porn would be an issue. I thought we both were on the same page. I thought we both loved each other.”

A tear finally falls down her cheek, a shimmer racing down her perfect face. “I do love you. More than you love me, and that is why I have to go—and why I’m going without asking you to come with me. Goodbye, Logan.”

She puts the car in reverse, and I have to step back so my foot doesn’t get run over. And it’s not until her taillights vanish around the corner at the end of my street that I manage to whisper, “Goodbye.”



* * *



Gutted.

I’m f*cking gutted.

The good angel on my shoulder tells me not to call her, to give her space and time, because she needs it and she asked for it, and if I invade her mental and emotional space, then I’m violating her consent in a way, and I don’t want to do that.

On the other hand, Devi Dare just broke up with me, and I’m practically hysterical with betrayed misery. I make it until about two in the morning before I call her, but the call goes straight to voicemail. Like her phone is turned off.

I call her three more times to make sure, and then I leave her a message. “Devi,” I say, clearing my throat because her name is the first word I’ve spoken in hours and my voice is hoarse from crying. “Please call me back. Please.”

After that, I finally roll out of my bed and search out my scotch collection. But after I pour myself a glass, I can barely force myself to take a drink. I don’t want to be drunk right now. I maybe don’t want to be drunk ever again, because it would mean numbing myself to reality, and I can’t cheat myself out of one second of feeling this pain. I don’t want to; if this suffering is all I have left of Devi, then I’ll hold onto it as tightly as I possibly can. I won’t disgrace the memory of the perfect thing we had by drinking myself into amnesia.

So I set down the drink and pull out my phone, not to call Devi again, although I want to, but to watch the video I took of her in my pool a few weeks ago. And I watch her swimming over and over again, her hair and her body and the water, and I fall asleep on my couch that way.

Alone. With my phone in my hand and my heart in my throat.



* * *



I wake up, not hung over, not exhausted, but dazed all the same. There’s that weird, floating moment between my eyes opening and me remembering, a moment where I feel like something bad has happened but I can’t remember what. When I finally recall Devi’s tears and her terrible, untrue (does she even realize how untrue?) words, I do love you, more than you love me, and that’s why I have to go, I’m destroyed all over again.

I call her several more times, I text her pages and pages of texts, because how could she think that she loves me more than I love her? But also how could she think about leaving porn? I text her long, stream-of-consciousness threads of thoughts, about how much I love her, how much I already miss her, all the things I would do to prove it to her, but she never answers me back.