Someone I Used to Know - By Blakney Francis Page 0,116

met my eyes, and it was funny that I felt like I knew him better than almost anyone else. I’m sure loads of people felt that way after reading The Girl in the Yellow Dress, but the book had nothing to do with my feelings. By getting to know Adley, I’d gained an understanding of Cam that I never thought was possible.

“Isn’t it always?” he asked with a smile that seemed to me to be helplessly abashed.

I understood it perfectly. She was the center of her own universe, a sun that we are powerless to, as she sucks us into her perpetual orbit.

I said nothing. It had been rhetorical. We both already knew I’d joined him under her spell. He’d known it the day I’d shown up at his house, begging him to set her free, to let her love me.

“You told her that you weren’t going to accept Gone with the Wind, but you weren’t just turning it down for her, were you? I’ve always gotten the sense from you that you’re an actor because it’s what you’ve always done, and you’re good at it…But you’ve lost the thrill for all this, haven’t you?” He gestured around us, to where girls with posters and cameras hung over the guardrails, their mouths gaping open in an endless scream that was dulled to nothing but a hum inside the car.

That’s what it had felt like inside of my head, like all the fanfare and the roles and the next-big-things had become nothing more than a constant hum by the time they reached me where I’d retreated into the very back of my mind. It had been that way until the day Adley walked onto set with her anxious eyes and contradicting tongue. She’d drawn me out, brought me back to the surface; even if, at first, it was only to tease her or see how quickly I could make her brows crease with annoyance.

I’d always love her for that. She’d given me a piece of myself back.

I decided that Aurelia was right. Adley wasn’t coming back. I was Pluto, her rejected planet, but that didn’t mean I could stop her from being the center of my universe. I’d let her be, and I’d love from her afar until one day, maybe the love that had once made her the center of my universe could turn into a different type of love; an appreciative one or a nostalgic one.

Another roar ripped through the crowd. We’d moved up until only two cars preceded us.

“So why did you agree to do the film then?” Cam persisted.

“I’d have been a fool not to.” I couldn’t even count the number of times the phrase a role of a lifetime had been uttered to me over the last four months. “I get to be home, and working for Joseph isn’t like anything I’ve ever experienced…It’s challenging, and I needed that. Working on this film reminds me of all the good parts of my job.”

A sparkle of blue caught my attention farther up the red carpet as we moved up in the line once again. I watched Madeline, in her shining turquoise dress, posing, turning her back to the legion of photographers and looking over her shoulder at them demurely. She was a real star, an absolute pro.

I still couldn’t get used to the black hair. It suited her fine, but I had to do a double take every time she bounded into the room in full costume. I grinned, thinking of how we bickered back home. I hadn’t been the easiest bloke to deal with as of late, and Madeline was never shy about letting me know where she stood on the matter.

“You did it for her, didn’t you?” Cam had caught my gaze trailing after my costar. “In the beginning, before you could have known all those other reasons, you agreed to do the movie for Madeline.”

“It doesn’t matter.” And I meant it.

I had signed on to do the movie because they were right: it was the role of a lifetime. Only it hadn’t been my role that I’d been thinking of; it had been Madeline’s. She wanted it more than anything in the world, and more importantly, she deserved it. If Joseph needed me to play Rhett to give the right ‘chemistry’ to Madeline’s Scarlet, then so be it.

“Adley was right, you know.” It was finally our turn to exit the car, but I stalled. An unexpected truth I’d just realized sat on me heavily.