He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there when the pain mercifully started to subside. A fog descended over his mind and he felt an almost deathly fatigue settle upon him but he forced himself to stay awake. He had to help Kelly. Had to stop her from doing any more self-harm.
‘This has to end, Finn.’ Kelly was sitting opposite him. She rested her elbows on her knees and clasped her hands. She looked serious. Angry even. Her eyes red rimmed.
Finn fought as hard as he could to put coherent thoughts together. It was like trying to breach the surface of a dark ocean with weights tied to his arms. ‘What has to end?’
‘This. Us. This fucking disaster we’ve created.’ She leaned back in her chair and a fleeting look of sadness crossed her face. ‘I needed you tonight and you couldn’t help me. Couldn’t protect me from myself. I ended up looking after you, as I always do. I can’t do it anymore, Finn. I don’t have the energy to keep your life in one piece while I’m trying to stop mine falling apart.’
‘I’m sorry, Kel. It was just … the knife, and the blood—’
Her expression softened and she placed a hand on his knee. ‘I know. I wasn’t thinking straight. But that’s the problem, Finn. I can’t protect you from what your dad did forever. It’ll always be there, and no matter how much we try to push it down, it’ll always come back up again. You can’t rely on me any longer to be the one to rescue you when it does. So that means you can’t rely on me at all.’
‘What does that mean?’ Finn sat up straight to fight off the heavy blanket of fatigue.
‘It means we need to get our shit together. I’m supposed to be sitting a clinical exam in seven weeks but I’m not allowed to examine patients to prepare. How the fuck I’m going to do that is going to take every piece of mental capacity I have. I’m just not going to have enough left over to deal with your crises as well. Maybe I never should have. Maybe, by trying to protect you, I’ve just made it worse for both of us.’
Finn felt a deep sensation of dread. ‘What are you saying, Kel?’
‘I’m saying we should spend some time apart. Work on making ourselves better.’ Her voice was weak and raspy. A tear ran down her cheek.
Finn’s eyes filled with his own tears. ‘But you’re my best friend. How can I live without you?’
She sniffed loudly and wiped the tears from under his eyes. ‘I’ll always be your best friend, Finn. We’re the warriors, remember? We just need to fight our own battles for a little while.’
Finn sank back in the chair, dropping all his defences. The medication-induced fatigue swept over him and he let himself go under the waves. Before he closed his eyes, he saw Kelly watching him, tears running freely down her face. His Kelly, who he had known and loved for so long. Who he had now lost, perhaps forever.
The darkness overwhelmed him once more.
Chapter Twenty-eight
When Finn woke again, it was to the sound of his ringing phone. He was at Kelly’s place, but it was quiet, and he sensed immediately that he was alone. The fog still blanketed his mind and now his limbs felt as though they were full of heavy, dark mud, but his headache was gone. His phone continued to ring. It was Esme, his agent. She launched without preamble when he answered.
‘Finley, where are you?’
‘Um, I’m at Kelly’s.’
‘Well, unless Kelly is your new agent and you’re rehearsing your audition scene with her, get the hell out of there and over to my office immediately. You’re already fifteen minutes late.’
Fuck. The audition. He’d agreed to another day of rehearsals with Esme before the actual screen test tomorrow. ‘All right,’ he said, and hung up.
Finn rested his head in hands and breathed in and out deeply. He sat on the edge of the cliff, his legs dangling over, thoughts going to that old familiar place. Go or stay. Fight or surrender. Live or die. He sucked in a loud breath through his nostrils and looked around Kelly’s empty apartment. His muscles tightened. His insides hardened.
‘Fuck this!’ he yelled at the vacant room. ‘I’m not giving up yet.’
***
Finn didn’t get nervous at auditions. He couldn’t explain why. It made no sense when the slightest trigger could cripple him in his everyday life. But when he was someone else, the stakes didn’t matter. The stuff-ups, the betrayals, the losses – it was all predetermined by the creators, as though God had worked it all out in advance and no matter what Finn did, the result was not going to change. It was liberating to have a writer and director make every decision of a character’s life. Finn wished his own existence could be so preordained. Then none of it would be his fault.
He had rehearsed the audition scene so many times with Esme yesterday that, even though he was still reeling from Kelly sending him away, he could recite it verbatim, move with muscle memory and emote with no feeling at all. Pretending to be somebody else was the only way he’d managed to survive the last twenty-four hours. He’d sent Ashley a text to ask for some space and told her he’d call after the audition. He just needed to hold out a little longer.
Jessica Meadows was already there when Finn was ushered into the screen testing room. She sat calmly on a stool with a blank wall behind her and cameras, lights and busy men and women buzzing around in front of her. She looked serene, almost childlike, though Finn knew she was only a month younger than him. She was also every bit as beautiful as she looked on screen. Fair skin, thick red hair and deeply penetrating green eyes that settled on him as he walked over to greet her.
‘Hello, I’m Jessica Meadows,’ she said in her sweet southern American drawl.
Finn knew who she was, of course, but he hated it when people said that to him, and he was just a local TV actor. Jessica Meadows, or J-Med, as the media called her, was one of the hottest stars in Hollywood. Her last three movies had all been box office smashes and Finn could feel the tension in the air in the presence of such a cash cow.J-Med is big money, people, don’t fuck this up.
But when she extended her hand and looked up at him with a smile, Jessica seemed just as kind as the characters she played.
‘Pleased to meet you, Jessica. I’m Finn Walsh.’
