the car, and I climb in before he has a chance to protest. In the driver’s seat, he sits idle collecting himself. He’s on the edge of breaking, and I can feel it in the dense cabin of his Ferrari.
I speak first. “This is a mistake.”
“I know,” he says. “But I can’t be married to her anymore.”
“What the hell are you talking about? You don’t love that woman any less than you did when you married her.”
“You’re right. I love her more, that’s why I had to set her free. I’m not what she needs.”
“Isn’t that for her to decide?”
He swallows hard, his eyes glazing over. “Things got bad behind closed doors. Six months ago, I got blackout drunk and destroyed almost everything in our house.”
“Did you hurt her?”
“She says I didn’t.” He turns to me. “But do you think she deserves that? You know Amanda, she couldn’t hurt anyone like that. There’s not a menacing bone in that woman’s body. She’s perfect. I can’t have a hand in destroying that. And I fucking won’t. I love her too much.”
“So you seek counseling, and you shrink it down to manageable, you don’t divorce a woman you’re still in love with.”
He laughs sarcastically. “There’s no cure for being me. Haven’t you learned that yet?”
I scoff. “Guess not, I’m still here. What makes you think she wouldn’t be?”
“I don’t want that woman to ever hate me.”
“I don’t hate you.”
He glances my way. “Yeah you do, a little. You resent me for the messes I’ve made. It was only a matter of time before she realized she wasted her youth, her beauty, on a piece of shit incapable of being who she wanted. I’m tired, Lucas. It was more exhausting being her husband than any other job. She’s the only woman I’ve ever had to answer to, and I couldn’t hack it anymore.”
“So, this martyring you think you’re doing is all about the asshole?”
“It’s freedom,” he says, turning the ignition, “to be exactly who I am without constantly having to apologize for it.”
“You honestly think you’re that toxic? This isn’t healthy.”
“Never said it was.” He pulls a cigarette from a pack on his dash and lights it up.
“So you divorced her to protect her? This is bullshit, man. She could help you.”
He shakes his head impatiently and glares at me. “All right, you want the skeletons? Here they come,” he says, taking a long drag of his cigarette before looking at me pointedly. “The day after I destroyed our house, I went on a coke bender and snorted lines off a whore for two days while I fucked her bareback. So, you tell me, Boy Scout. Is that a good enough reason to set her free?”
“Jesus Christ, Blake.” I’m sick thinking about it.
“Thought so,” he says, tearing out of the parking lot. He makes a hard right, and the rev of the engine draws heads our way. Paparazzi who were ready at the curb manage to get a few shots in. Blake is oblivious as he glances my way. “You love me with the same blind fucking eyes, Lucas. I’m never going to change, no matter how much I need to. She couldn’t change me either, that’s why I’m divorced,” he says, wiping at his face trying to hide the hurt that’s leaking from his every pore.
“This is destroying you, man. You just shot off your own fucking foot.”
“Whiskey…I think this is a whiskey kind of day,” he mutters before speeding down Sunset. It’s a different dynamic now than what it was for us years ago. We used to use our looks to try to charm our way into A-list places, and now we reign over them. Despite Blake’s bad boy rep, he’s still invited regularly to the old hot spots to further desecrate his image in the public. The street is a wasteland now in that respect, at least for me. The irony strikes me that while my life had completely changed, Blake is still working the same circuit, hanging with the same people.
A few minutes of silence ensue before he speaks up, his voice thick with a mix of guilt and hurt before tossing his cigarette and reaching for another, but the pack falls to the floorboard. “You don’t have to agree with me, bro, that’s the beauty of it. But you do have to drink with me, to her freedom.”
“Blake, if you need help—”
“I’m not using, and I haven’t since then.”
“Then why?”
His voice is gravel with his next admission. “Because