Page 34 of Fresh Start
"Dawson? Are you there? I can't hear you." Alice's voice broke up.
"Alice, can you hear me?" I raised my voice.
"Dawson? Are you still there? The line’s gone bad," Alice repeated.
"One sec. I'll move."
I walked around the room, closer to the windows, but without much luck. Alice couldn't hear me. Oddly enough, I could hear her just fine.
"Dawson? What's going on? Your reception is terrible," Alice said.
“Hold on,” I shouted and walked around the room again. Only when I was near the bedroom door was she able to hear me better. So I opened the door and went to the corridor.
Wasn’t this supposed to work the other way round? Reception should be even worse here than near the window.
"Yeah, that's good now. Where the hell are you?"
I opened my mouth to reply, but she continued.
"The studio is chasing me about your contract, hon. They are concerned that you are going to drop out. And I don't know what to tell them because you aren't talking to me, either."
"Alice, I really don't want to talk about it right now. I told you, and I’ve told Tracy. We'll talk about it when I'm back."
"I know, I know, but can you at least give me a clue as to what we're doing so I can plan accordingly?" she asked.
How could I tell her the truth? How could I come out to Alice, who was making so much money from the work I got, and tell her I was no longer interested in filming any more Detective Strong films, or any of the other movies in the franchise. I knew she was a friend, but she was my agent, too, first and foremost. We’d been working together for ten years. But for some reason, I didn't think she’d appreciate losing out on millions.
"I'm sorry, Alice. I'd rather we have this—" I started again, but before I could finish my sentence, my whole body crashed into someone else, and my breath hitched. My phone slipped out of my hands and fell on the floor.
As I bent down to pick it up, my head smashed with Leo's, who had also dropped his phone due to the impact of our clashing bodies.
"I mean, you can't stay away from me, can you?" Leo said. He wasn't exactly shouting, but for all I cared, he could have been. And I didn't appreciate the tone in the slightest.
"You're the one that bumped into me," I said, my voice shakier than I’d have wanted.
"No, I didn't. And you made me drop my phone." Leo pointed at the floor where our two phones were laid next to each other.
Leo dropped to his knees and grabbed his device, erratically pressing all the buttons and furiously tapping on his screen. I bent down and picked mine up.
I pressed a button to unlock it and noticed a little crack on the top right corner. Leo, on the other hand, wasn’t having any luck at all with his because his phone remained unresponsive.
"Is everything okay?" I asked.
Leo glared at me and turned back to slapping his phone as if his life depended on it.
"Why would you care?" he snapped. "We're not friends."
I knew we weren't friends and hadn't been in years, but it looked like Leo needed one, but if Leo didn't want my compassion, he certainly didn't deserve it. Why was it always me trying to be nice and go through all the effort to make up for my past? I’d grown up, but Leo? Leo seemed hellbent living in it.
"You're right. We're not friends. So I don't care," I snapped back and walked off.
"Yeah, you better walk away. It's what you do best, isn't it?" Leo shouted.
Yeah, Leo did live in the past. He still acted like a twenty-year-old. There was no rationalizing with a child. I’d made mistakes when I was younger. Who hadn't? That’s what life was all about. Experiment, live, make mistakes, fail, succeed. It wasn't my mantra, but it was something I’d witnessed in more than just myself. The heat in my body made me stop to catch my breath.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Leo mumbled, and before I could stop myself, before I could think of the consequences, I turned around and ran up to Leo.
"Okay, Mr. Perfect," I said and came head-to-head with him. "You might not have made any mistakes when you were twenty-one, but I did. And I've accepted them. I've embraced them and learned to live with them. It doesn't mean I'm proud of them, but it was what I thought I had to do at the time, and that's what I did. Now, if you, a thirty-eight-year-old man, doesn't want to accept that and wants to behave like a child, then be my guest. But don't blame me for growing the fuck up and moving on from the mistakes I made when I was a fucking boy."
