Page 84 of I Did Something Bad
“It doesn’t matter, Tyler! Your secret was about Jess, and Iabsolutelywasn’t going to print that.” I look over at the whiteboard, wanting to scream at the stupid words I’d stupidly written and that now stare back at me, taunting me in black and white. “And no, you weren’t a project—”
“Answer the question. You were offered something in exchange,” he says in a voice of steel. I swallow, but it all tastes like bile. “What was it?”
“A full-time position,” I finally admit, emotion distorting my voice. “She’d hire me as a full-time reporter.”
“In Singapore,” he clarifies. He can’t blink back the tears anymore. Neither can I. He doesn’t bother wiping them away. Neither do I.
“Yes.”
“I told youeverything.” His face is etched with uncontrollable rage,tears streaming down his cheeks, hair disheveled from how often he’s grabbed at his roots. “Everything. I’m so stupid. So fucking stupid. This whole time, I thought we were a team, but I was some… some…” He stumbles over his words like a kid experiencing anger—real, unfiltered anger, the kind that makes your veins expand with boiling blood—for the very first time. There’s no carefully crafted script that he’s memorized. This is entirely him, raw and feeling the full depth of emotions that he’s capable of. “Stupid… prized… farm animal. A… fucking golden ticket. Something that you… cash in at the end.”
“No,” I whisper.Like he’s a circus animal,May’s voice comes roaring back. “Tyler, none of that is—”
“You want your scoop?” He lets out a dark laugh. “Here it is. I’m retiring.”
I jerk backward, like a dog on a pulled leash. “What?”
He gives a quick, small shrug. “This is the last movie I’m shooting. There you have it. Tyler Tun is retiring from acting. Put it in the headline, baby.”
“But Bond,” I stammer. “I heard you and May talking in the trailer. She said the offer was going to come in any day now.”
“It did. Before I left LA. I turned it down.”
“Oh my god. That call the other week. The—”Studio stuff.
“As you can imagine,” he says in a monotone voice. “My team, as well as the studio, weren’t—aren’t,” he corrects himself, “thrilled that after years of careful deliberation, their first choice has said no. They keep roping me into calls to get me to reconsider, but I’m… not.”
“Tyler,” I breathe out. “You’re… retiring? To do… what?”
“Come home. Figure out whatIwant to do with the rest of my life. Maybe eventually open up a drama school here? I don’t know yet. All I know is that I’m done with acting. It was the Bond offer that made up my mind, actually. They said it’d be a minimumseven-year commitment, and instead of excitement, the first thing I felt was dread. There I was with an offer that actors spend their whole lives dreaming of, and the first thing I thought was,Fuck, I have to dothisfor at least seven more years?And that’s when I knew I was done. I love acting, but it stopped being about acting a long time ago. I don’t want to look back only once they’ve pushed me out and wish I could do things differently.”
The information overload is overwhelming, dizzying—but also makes such perfect sense that I can’t believe I missed it this whole time. Tyler saying hewasn’t making any plans. Asking about adopting a dog. Why he’d fought so hard to get this movie funded, and how he had meant it when he said he’djust wanted to shoot a fun movie with his best friend. My chest squeezes when I remember him in bed last night, asking me about what kind of couple we’d be, throwing out ideas for a hypothetical first vacation.Except,I realize, and my chest is now constricting so hard it aches,it wasn’t hypothetical for him.I remember his face, and now I can put a precise name to his expression then: hope.In this scenario, I don’t go back to LA.
“But what will you do instead? In the meantime. Like… day-to-day-wise?” I ask.
“I don’t know. That’s the beauty of it,” he says with a cautious joy that, despite the shock of all of this, still shines through. He sounds happy. Light. Free. “I have had my life planned out months,yearsin advance ever since… since a long time ago. Too long. And I don’t know what I’m going to do after this movie, but I’m excited to have nothing on my calendar. I’ll probably travel. Read a lot more. Maybe take up a sport. Every day that I’ve woken up here has felt increasinglyright. I want to be able to see my parents and cousins whenever I want, go over to my parents’ house for dinner, go on a family vacation for the first time in god knows how long. I want to be able to go to a restaurantwithouta baseball cap and sunglasses.” And right whenI thought the pain couldn’t feel any more acute, he adds, knowingexactlywhat he’s doing, “For a minute there, I was even considering dating.”
I want to tell him everything that’s been going through my mind over the last few weeks, every single embarrassing, stupid, infatuated thought that I refused to let slip out because I thought we couldn’t have it all. “Tyler,” I say, knowing that this is irreparable, and nonetheless still wanting to fix it somehow, some way.
“I would’ve told you, you know, if you’d asked,” he interrupts. “Fuck, it sounds so embarrassing, but one week by your side and I was a goner. And I know, I know that would’ve been foolish and reckless and it would’ve caused a hell of a shitstorm and I’m not someone who does reckless things, but that’s what you do to me, Khin. When we’re together, nothing makes sense except for you, and then you become everything and then itallmakes sense. It’s like the earth tilted on its axis the moment I met you, like my whole world as I knew it shifted, and I knew instantly that there was no turning back for me now.
“How could you of all people say that I don’t know what I want? Has it not been humiliatingly clear by the fact that I would do anything, literally anything, including help cover up a murder, foryou? I can’t stop staring at you when we’re in the same space, I think of your smile all the time. When I drop you off, it’s all that I can do to not kiss you goodbye or ask if I can come over. Hell, I almostdidtell you my secret last night. But—” His smile looks like it physically hurts. “—I thought it would’ve been more fun to surprise you,” he says, each glass shard of a word slicing me to the bone. “If anything, I wish I was someone who didn’t know what he wanted, because then I wouldn’t care this much, and just likeIam just another profile subject to you, you would simply be yet another reporter to me. IwishI didn’t want you as much as I do.”
My heart throbs with a pain that hearts weren’t built to withstand. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“I’m going to go now,” he states, moving past me. Helpless, I turn and watch his back, shoulders low, gait heavy. Right as he takes one step across the threshold, though, he pauses and looks over his shoulder. “Can you do me one favor? I feel like you owe me at least that.”
I nod feverishly. “Anything.”
He swivels so he can look at me, and it aches to simultaneously have him so close and know that he’s beyond my reach now. “Don’t tell May about my retirement. I want to be the one to tell her.”
The knowledge that not even May knows amplifies my shock tenfold. “She doesn’t know?”
“No, I didn’t want her to be sad the entire time we were filming. She doesn’t even know we’ve already turned down Bond. But don’t try to get a quote from her or anything, okay? Promise?”
The fact that he thinks that getting quotes for my article is at the forefront of my mind right now cuts deeper than I think even he intended. I rally for one last attempt. “Tyler, you… youhave tobelieve me. I wasn’t going to print anything that you told me in confidence. I wouldneverdo anything to hurt—”
“I don’t think Ihave tobelieve that,” he interrupts swiftly. “In fact, I don’t think I have asinglereason to believe that.”
