Exit Wounds

01 | girl next door

O N E

NEW YORK CITY, NY

          I started smoking when I turned twenty.

          It's a nasty, nasty habit, but my agent recommended it to deal with stress and because it makes me look unapproachable, which, according to her, is the desired effect.

          I've never been publicly marketed as a down-to-earth, girl next door type of person, so I don't need to look like I could be anyone's best friend, but it comes with the added consequences of being described as 'difficult' and 'not a pleasure to work with'. I remain employed and happily so, positively surprising everyone who works with me by proving all the gossip wrong. Turns out I am an absolute delight and not at all a diva on set, and no one understands how and why the whisper spreads like wildfire.

          I smile at the thought, knowing I'm responsible for most of them. I can't go too overboard with it, running the risk of fully losing my career, and I can't afford to lose yet another thing and deal with comments about how I threw it all away. I know what disappointment looks like—it's all I've grown up looking at—but I do it mostly for the money at this point, my career of choice lacking personal interest. It pays better than anything else I could have ever wished for, including whatever career I would've pursued with my former English degree, as my agent loves reminding me of, but it also only pays me as long as I'm actively working and get residuals.

          Sadie, my agent, often tells me I don't get to quit. It would be yet another thing I've dropped, next to my family and college, and I shouldn't want to be known as a college dropout. People give you the stink eye when you admit to that, but being an actor isn't that much better. They expect to know your name, to hear you're pulling huge numbers, and are a household name, but that's not me. I got lucky, after all.

          She got me into smoking mostly so she'd shut up. When I'm smoking, I successfully tune her out, immersed in the smoky haze, and focus on doing what gets me jobs and gets me paid. I mingle, smile mysteriously, attend parties hosted by people I don't know. I stay single.

          That's my own decision. As long as boys are boys, as long as they don't learn to keep their hands to themselves and don't learn they don't get to throw me sleazy smiles from across the room, I keep things strictly professional between me and them. It makes me desirable in a way I'm not comfortable with, unattainable so men enjoy the thrill of the chase, and it reminds me I'm only meant to be unapproachable to other women, my biggest competition.

          As I put out my cigarette, standing by the window of the apartment I can barely afford, I stare out into the horizon. It's times like these normal people will stop and think they've made it. Not many people can brag about living in New York, in a fancy apartment like this, being able to stare at the skyline as the sun sets whenever they want, knowing they'll get to experience that day after day after day until it gets stale and they find something else to occupy themselves with.

          I haven't done shit with my life. All I've ever done is run, but it's not the kind of thing you can brag about at cocktail parties.

⊹˚. ♡

          Theo calls when I'm going to bed, the last remnant of normalcy I've had ever since I left.

          She tells me she'll be close, traveling to watch the finals of the national college roller derby championship, and asks if I want to meet up. I lie and say I'm not available, I have to get up early to film and can't waste time going to New Haven, and I'm certain she sees right through my bravado, but she says nothing to prove it. I string her along for the hell of it—I'm supposed to be bitchy and unapproachable around women in case, God forbid, they attempt to take credit for my accomplishments—but every word that comes out of my mouth sounds as though I'm reading off a script.

          She's younger than me, four years my junior, the same age as my little sister, and she was still in high school when I left. She's the type of person to read between the lines, always poking into everyone's business, a dangerous combination for someone like me, and I tend to keep her on a need-to-know basis. If there's one thing I know how to do, it's lie and omit.

          I lie about what I'll be doing. I lie about doing just fine. I lie about my habits, my life, my diet. I lie about the state of my career. I push her away just enough to get her off my back, staring at the bright lights of the city in the distance, and swallow my regret, thick like gasoline. It nests at the bottom of my stomach, settling in right next to the space usually occupied by my guilt and my shame, but I need her to understand that there are doors I cannot afford to unlock.

          My front door is locked, key and chain, and the unbearable loneliness of a dark, silent apartment sets in. The moonlight dances around my living room, dusting the empty shelves where I thought I'd be placing my awards for the guests I stopped inviting over, and tiptoes across my uncovered skin as I pour the remnants of a mix of Diet Coke and vodka down the drain. I curse myself for not using a coaster, struggling to wipe off the glass marks from my coffee table, but it's yet another bad habit forced on me by my exile.

          I don't want to regret what I did.

          I've spent years of my life chastising myself for leaving, for throwing away everything I had, blaming myself for what happened to me, and it's taken me a long time to come to terms with it not having been my fault. Here, no one knows what happened, no one knows who I am, and they think I moved to New York with big dreams of acting, but that's a big fat lie. I was lucky to have gotten scouted, lucky that Sadie saw a semblance of potential in me and told me she didn't care about my past life. In New York, I get to just be Harley Kane, happy to bury the past where it belongs. I don't think of it, I don't speak of it.

          It comes back in waves sometimes, tidal waves, whenever someone looks at me the wrong way—when you're a woman, people always look at you the wrong way—or whenever I reach out for a drink. I don't let myself be taken advantage of, priding myself on not being that girl, but I am that girl, and she follows me everywhere I go.

          My phone rings again, in the distance, and I almost think it's Theo again, wanting to convince me to watch some stupid sports competition. When I look at the screen, I recognize the number, though I no longer have it saved. Like everything attached to my past life, I tried my hardest to flush it away from memory, but my subconscious likes licking my wounds sometimes.

          "How the fuck did you get this number?"

⊹˚. ♡

welcome to exit wounds! she is bebe.

i truly, truly do hope you guys like this one. the next full-length book i'll write WILL be much more light-hearted in comparison to all my ongoing ones, i promise.