Page 67 of Fragile Heart

The ride to my rental house is fine.

The evening sitting by myself is fine.

I start to get up half a dozen times, thinking I should take a casual stroll by the diner just to see if she’s there. To see if that smile is still on her face. I don’t know if I could live with myself if I was the cause of its disappearance.

But I don’t. It’s too soon. If I saw her now, I wouldn’t be able to stop from falling to my knees and begging her to forgive me.

I’ve got to remember, I did this for her. She doesn’t deserve the constant invasion of privacy that comes with knowing me or the toxic people that will always be in my life. She deserves better than that. She deserves better than me.

When I finally climb into bed for the night, I can’t sleep. I toss and turn, missing Quinn’s presence next to me. The way her long hair would tickle me when she moved in her sleep. The way her body curled perfectly into mine.

One more week.

One more week in this town, and then I can go back to LA and try to erase this time from my mind.

My alarm blazes to life after I only just started dozing off. I throw it to the ground as I rip the blankets off me. I have a four a.m. call time today. We’re on crunch time to get filming done, so I have some long days ahead of me. But maybe that will be good, and I won’t have time to think abouther.

When I get to set, everything annoys me. The way the hairstylist brushes my hair. The way the makeup artist dabs the concealer crap under my eyes, where my dark circles are out of control. The way the director directs me. All of it feels like nails on a chalkboard to me, and by the end of the day, my jaw is sore from clenching it so much. Even when people ask me questions, I just ignore them because I don’t trust myself not to explode.

Vaughn is the only one I talk to when I’m not actively working a scene, but even with him, I keep it brief.

“How was the meeting, man?” He claps my shoulder in a usual gesture for us, but today it makes me want to rip his hand off his arm.

“Good.”

“That’s it? No details?” he presses on.

“No,” I say bluntly. His eyes roam my face to figure out what’s wrong with me, but I’m expressionless.

“Everything else ok?” he asks slowly, raising one of his eyebrows.

“Yes.” I practically hiss. He nods and decides not to press his luck by asking anything else.

The next day goes much the same, except instead of just being in a bad mood, now I’m tiredandin a bad mood. The late nights and early mornings, plus my mind reeling, means I’m not getting much sleep.

My mood worsens as the day goes on, and Vaughn finally bites the bullet to ask me what’s wrong. He pulls me to the side after we’ve had to do take after take of the same scene because I can’t get my shit together.

“Hudson, what the hell is going on? Did something happen in LA?”

I rub my hands down my face and sigh. “I ended things with Quinn.”

“What? Why? I thought everything was going well.”

“It was, but then we got to LA, and everything changed.”

“Like, she changed?” he asks, confused.

I shake my head, not sure how to get my thoughts together. “No. I did. I realized the situation that I was putting her in. The paparazzi. The toxic Hollywood lifestyle. Then fucking Jessica was at the same restaurant. She started saying shit like Quinn couldn’t handle being my girlfriend because she could never survive the pressure. I started thinking that maybe she was right. I mean, you saw what the fucking paparazzi did to me over the years. How bad my drinking got because of the pressure from everyone. I can’t let that happen to Quinn.” I take a deep breath before finishing. “So, I said some really terrible things to get her to leave. Make her hate me. She’ll be better off without me.”

Vaughn stares blankly at me before slowly shaking his head in disbelief. “With all due respect, Hudson, that’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.”

“What?”

“You’re telling me you broke up with her forherown good? Is that what I’m hearing?”

“Yes. She deserves way better than me.”

“Well, that’s for damn sure,” he scoffs.

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