I awoke in the middle of the night with a start.
I’d been dreaming that strange dream again: I was trapped inside a closet with a younger Will, my mother’s voice calling for me in the distance, but it was hard to get out, hard to find her. Don’t worry, I promised Will. I’ll save you. But the truth was, I didn’t know how. I was lying.
I opened my eyes, and there was actual Will, breathing softly and sleeping peacefully right next to me in the bed. I sighed and instantly felt calmer. Then I realized I was naked underneath the covers, and from what I could see with the sheet half draped on top of him, Will was too. Maybe I would’ve felt embarrassed if he’d also been awake, but instead, the shadowy shape of him in the darkness made me smile. He’d been worried I would hate him in the morning, but if anything, I felt the opposite.
It was almost strange the way I had felt so comfortable with him last night, at dinner, here in my room. Even after clothes came off, and the lights were still on, I hadn’t remembered to think about what my body looked like, or what he was thinking as he saw me naked like I did with Jase. I didn’t think about how to act. I was only thinking about how much I liked him and how nice it felt to be with him. How good his hands felt against my skin. Even now, hours later, I felt no embarrassment or regret. I just felt...happy.
There had been no discussion of this in the ground rules. What if I woke up the next morning and wondered if I was in love with him? What if I realized I wanted more than one night? Much more. What then?
I reached up now and gently touched his face, and he murmured a little in his sleep, reached for me and pulled me toward him as if on instinct. And then with my head in the crook of his arm, I drifted back into a dreamless sleep.
I woke up again hours later. The curtains were open a little to the balcony door near the bed, and sunlight streamed in, blinding me. The side of the bed where Will had been was empty, but I put my hand in the imprint of where his body had lain, and it still felt warm.
I grabbed my robe, wrapped it around myself and wandered into the living room. Will was sitting on the couch, drinking a cup of coffee, and I sighed, happy that he hadn’t left, run away, while I was still sleeping.
“Good morning,” I said softly, and he turned at the sound of my voice.
He stood up. “Oh, I can get out of your way, if you want?”
I shook my head, walked over to him and put my hand on his arm. “You’re not in my way. Sit down. Drink your coffee.”
He smiled and sat. “I made you a cup too.” He pointed to the counter in the dining area, where there was a coffee bar with a single-serve coffee maker. “It should still be warm. It hasn’t been that long. But I can make you another one.”
I walked over, grabbed it and took a sip. “It’s perfect,” I said, and we just stared at each other for a minute until we both started to laugh.
“This is awkward, isn’t it?” Will said when he finally stopped laughing. “I should’ve snuck out in the middle of the night.”
I shook my head, and I walked over and sat down next to him on the couch. “No, I’m glad you’re still here.” I took another sip of my coffee and then put it down on the table in front of me, next to his cup. “And maybe it’s a little awkward, but only because I really like you and I really liked last night, and I don’t want to mess this up.” I paused. “But don’t worry, all ground rules still apply.”
He chuckled and reached for my hand. He turned it over and stroked my palm softly with his thumb. “Okay, then I have one more rule. Starting now, we’re about to lie to everyone else about what’s going on with us. But let’s not ever lie to each other, okay? If you want me to leave, tell me to leave.”
“I don’t want you to leave,” I said.
“I mean it in a theoretical sense. Ever. Not just this room, this morning.”
After Jase, the idea of honesty felt nice, refreshing even. “Okay,” I said. “Then same for you.”
“Agreed,” he said. I heard his phone buzz against the coffee table, and he reached for it, read the text and frowned.
“Gloria?” I said softly, and somehow even saying her name in here, sitting with him like this, I felt like I was certainly breaking one of the ground rules we had established. I just couldn’t put my finger on exactly which one.
“Yeah.” He sighed. “She wants me to walk Jasper, and she tried calling my room and when I didn’t answer she became convinced I was dead.” His phone buzzed again in his hand and he glanced at it, then rolled his eyes. “Dead or hungover. She amended.”
I couldn’t help it, I laughed.
“She should be having Tate walk Jasper. I don’t know why she has an assistant at this rate.”
I remembered what he’d told me about the number of assistants she’d already fired this year and I hoped she hadn’t found out about Tate leading me to Emily and fired her. Everything had seemed perfectly fine yesterday.
“You should go,” I said to him. “We can text later and meet up tonight. I have to work on my lines today anyway.” Shooting would begin tomorrow, and the thought of that made butterflies erupt in my stomach. Was I really ready to become Gloria Diamond? I definitely did not feel ready.
I looked back up and Will was frowning. “You’re working on lines...with Cam?” he asked.
I was not dying to run lines with Cam, though I also knew I probably should. I’d pushed my simmering doubts from last night away the whole time I’d been with Will, but now they were bubbling back up. I had to figure out some way to get a handle on what I was doing before tomorrow. “Don’t worry,” I said to Will, though it felt kind of nice to think that maybe he was anyway. “I’ll suggest we meet in the garden or somewhere public outdoors.” Will’s frown creased deeper. “I can handle myself,” I said. “Really.”
He nodded. “I know. You know what you’re doing. I don’t mean to imply you don’t.” He gently kissed my forehead and then stood. “And that reminds me. I was going to show you those pictures my aunt sent last night but then we...” His voice trailed off, and I smiled, remembering exactly what we had been doing instead of thinking or talking about Gloria or the pictures his aunt sent. “Anyway, they’re in my room. I’ll take some pictures of them with my phone and text them to you before I forget.”
I nodded, but my brain still felt fuzzy, warm, thinking about last night. I did want to see the photos, but more, I wanted to cling to Will and whatever we had started for a few more minutes. So I stood and grabbed him in a hug, wrapping my arms around his waist and leaning my head into his chest.
“I’ll see you later,” he finally whispered into my hair, though he didn’t let go yet either. “Promise.”
I picked up my script after Will left, but it felt impossible to get into the Gloria mindset given how I was currently feeling about her son. Any former loyalty I’d felt toward the Method had kind of just flown out the window. I tried not to think about it all too hard—that I was supposed to be playing a young Will’s mother, and I had also slept with actual adult Will in my bed last night, because it felt confusing and made my head start to ache. And it occurred to me I might’ve truly fucked everything up in the last twenty-four hours.
But weirdly, thinking about Will again only made me smile. I loved acting, but it felt very clear to me now that what I said to Will last night was true: it was a job. A job I had worked my ass off to get this far, and I wanted to continue to do well, of course. But it was still a job nonetheless. Everything had been so entwined with Jase, our shared commitment to the Method—life and work, love and careers. Looking back, I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d felt like my real, honest self with Jase. Maybe I’d been putting on a show for so many years, on set and off, I’d almost forgotten that my life and my work could be separate.
But Will had things to do today and so did I. Whether I was ditching the Method or not, I still needed to finish preparing for filming tomorrow. Or else I needed to call Liza and tell her that I couldn’t do this at all. But I swallowed back that thought, and I forced myself to text Cam instead. We arranged to meet in an hour in the hotel’s garden.
Then I put the script down and went and took a shower, hoping the steam would clear my head, help me get into the mindset to work. But standing naked under the hot water, all I could think about was Will’s warm hands running across my body last night. And that didn’t help matters.
I turned the water off and wrapped myself in a towel. And then I heard my phone dinging from the other room. I dried off a little and walked out of the bathroom to find it. Will—he’d sent me the photos from Aunt Marge, and a text that said, As promised. Text you later. Last night was amazing. X
It was amazing. If I could just shut out all the other noise and focus on that, I realized I felt happier than I had in months. Years. I smiled at that thought and then I clicked on the photos to scroll.
The top one was Gloria, from about the same time in her life as the pictures Emily had, exactly as Will had said. She was eating a piece of pizza, smiling, though she wore a dark green sweater (not all black) that matched her eyes. Her hair was down and hit a little below her shoulders, and her bangs were teased up in an ’80s arch. She looked happy here in a way I hadn’t see her in most of the other pictures, or in real life.
Then there was another photo of her taken from behind from a distance, that same night, maybe, as she was wearing the same green sweater. And she was holding on to a little boy’s hand. But in the picture you could only see their backs. Still, it must be Will?
And then I scrolled to the next picture, only this one wasn’t of Gloria at all. It was another woman, and I gasped at the sudden and unexpected sight of her. She was standing in a colorless room, her head tipped back in laughter, her long honey-colored hair pleated to the side in a braid, her stomach round and swollen.
This woman, this beautiful, pregnant woman, was unmistakably my mother.