Page 25 of Falling Like Stars

IT TAKES ME an hour to drive my BMW i5 back into Los Angeles. The house is huge and empty. I breathe a sigh of relief that Eva’s not here, but it’s mixed with that old pang of regret that echoes through all the things lost between her and me. It’s an empty house filled with What Might’ve Been.

Floor to ceiling windows reveal Los Angeles below—a sea of glittering, colored lights. It seems so quiet. Beautiful, even. Eva wanted this house in the Bird Streets neighborhood in the Hills overlooking Sunset because she said that’s where “the real ones” lived. Leo’s a neighbor. So is J-Lo. That sold it for Eva.

I hate it. It’s like a glass box—modern to the nth degree; all hard angles, clean lines, and modernist furniture that look stylish but isn’t welcoming or inviting. The only thing I like is the view. You can sit in the infinity pool and watch the city happen below.

I think about doing just that, but after spending all night in the hot tub with Rowan Walsh, the pool is going to feel cold. And empty.

I wander the huge, multi-level house to the master bedroom. Most of Eva’s shit is still here—she only took the basics for her prolonged sleepover with that fashion guru, Laurent Moreau. Typical. We’ve been over for weeks, but no one has moved out. It’s going to be a fight for the house. If we even get that far. Sometimes it feels like Eva and I are enmeshed, tangled up in knots that I can’t untie.

I put my head under the spray in our cavernous shower to wash off hot tub chlorine. Rowan’s face floats across my vision. She’s fucking beautiful. I dig her short bangs marching a straight line across the middle of her forehead with razor precision. Light blue eyes ringed with darker blue that are both unflinchingly honest and intensely private. She seems like the kind of person it would take years to fully know. Marathons of questions. But if she let you in fully, it’d be a kind of privilege.

I dry off and put on flannel sleep pants and a V-neck T-shirt. I grab my phone and sit on one section of our multi-sectional couch in the living room.

Nothing from Rowan.

Maybe it was a dick move to grab her phone number from the crew list. Maybe she felt like that wasn’t playing fair. Or maybe she just didn’t feel for me what I felt being with her. Like I could breathe for a fucking second without a crushing weight of regret on my chest. Or anxiety rolling in my guts; always on high alert for whatever the hell Eva was going to do next.

That anxiety kicks up to see I’ve yet another missed call from Eva and a new voicemail.

I listen to a snarky rant about how I’m too chickenshit to talk to her. That I need to man up.

My convo with Rowan echoes back to me in comparison. She was so damn easy to talk to—honest, funny, and couldn’t give a rat’s ass about my fame. She also didn’t push it when I opted out of the Oscars question. Eva grows instantly suspicious if I decline to share my every thought with her.

With resignation, I hit call because there’s one artifact of this broken relationship I have to salvage.

Eva picks up in two rings.

“Well, well, well. Look who’s deigned to call me back. Finally.” I hear a man’s voice, tinged with a French accent, speaking in the background. “It’s Zach,” Eva tells him, her tone muffled. “I’m going to take this on the balcony.” She comes back on, full volume. “So? Sent the fan club home? I hope you’re not fucking groupies on our couch. It’s Italian.”

“You’re screwing another man,” I remind her. “Like, as we speak.”

“We’re just friends.”

“Friends, my ass.”

“You leave me no choice!” Eva cries, her voice suddenly cracking. “You ripped my heart to shreds, Zach. I’m just trying to survive.”

I rub my forehead where a headache is starting already. “That’s bullshit, Eva. You can’t stop with the slapping—”

“Because you make me so crazy! I don’t know how else to get through to you. You just threw us away. Again.”

“I tried, Eva,” I say, though I know it’s useless to reason with her. And stupid. Like agreeing to take another ride on a broken rollercoaster that’s about to fly off the rails. “I tried and it didn’t work. It’s over.”

Eva’s tears evaporate, and her voice is hard again. “Whatever, Zach. If you say so. It’s your world. We’re just living in it.”

“I don’t even know what that means.” I take a deep breath. “Look. Let’s attempt to keep this civil—”

“I want the house.”

“Fine. I don’t care about the house. Take the house.”

“Because award-winning Zach Butler will just buy another ten-million-dollar mansion two doors down? I’m not a charity case, you know. I’m doing just fine.”

“Jesus Christ,” I mutter. “I’m just trying to make this as clean as possible. Take the house and everything in it but…” I suck in a breath. “I want the ring back.”

“What ring?”

“The engagement ring. My great-grandmother’s ring.”

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