KLARISE DOESN'T ANSWER MY CALLS or texts for two weeks. And maybe because of that, I also don't bother answering any of Mason's or Cameron's texts. I stayed huddled in my hotel room, curtains drawn closed so it was almost always dark and I couldn't tell apart daylight from night. I rocked back and forth on the bed with blankets pulled all over me, somehow it felt really cold all the time ever since my encounter at Klarise's parents' mansion even if it's spring. I had gotten a bunch of "I love LA" shirts and pants or something along those in the hotel's souvenir shop and all the undergarments there since I left my suitcase and all my belongings—not that they were important anyways. And I didn't bother to go out to eat or anything, so I survived on room service. But most of all, my head felt like it might truly explode sometimes.
I can't believe I gave birth to such a disappointment. Such a disappointment.
"Stop it."
No, I won't stop. Because it's the truth. You are a disgrace and I should've aborted you. Too bad I didn't have enough money. You wasted so much of my money, so so much. I can't even count how much, because there are just so many! And then you left me, just like that, without paying me back.
I had the pillow over my ears but her voice wasn't going away. "I'll pay you back! I'll pay all of it back, just leave me alone for once!"
The voice finally stopped, and then I waited for it to come back as it sometimes did but it didn't.
I started washing my face in the sink, and even though I didn't want to, I got a good look at myself in the mirror. My parted bangs from All Eyes On Us still stayed, but now it's twirled into a bunch of mess and I'm starting to notice the split ends that's forming on my long hair that's all the way to my hips by now. So long. I don't think I've necessarily cut it since filming that movie other than trim it. I suddenly have the urge to cut it.
Because as I stared at my dark brown strands of long hair in my fingers and in the mirror, the person staring back at me looked unlike me and more like Chen Xing Xing. I hated her. And I hated my hair all of a sudden. Or more like, it just hurted to see all that hair.
I hurled everywhere in my hotel room, throwing over pillows and pulling open drawers, looking for a pair of scissors. I needed it. I wanted my hair out.
It was the amount of time since me and Klarise had been back together, those hair. And that was only two years. Or maybe even less, considering the one year long distance take we did. We called each other everyday though. But now, I don't even have the privilege to do that.
Suddenly coming to that realization, I collapsed to the carpet embedded floor, probably full of germs, and started to bawl my eyes out. It hurted. So much. I wanted to take back every mean thing I've said to her that has led to the results of this.
I wanted her back.
In the afternoon, or was it the middle of the night? I had a call from the lobby, or just some hotel service. And I was about to brush it away when I somehow got that phone next to my ear and I heard who it was. I never knew I needed her voice to survive until then.
I was too shocked to say much, but then all I received from her voice was this: "Stay in your hotel room, I'm heading over."
"Wait, how did you——"
She ended the call before I could finish.
So I listened to her instructions. Stayed in my hotel room. It's not like I've left it all that much.
There was some sound of shuffling at the door, then following with a knock. I opened it and I almost don't recognize her right away.
Her small curls she really liked which I knew she spent money and time on making it that way is straighter than, if it's possible, a stick. And it isn't brown mixed with highlights anymore, but dyed plain black. And when I say plain, I mean really plain and bland. It isn't the jet black she had when I first met her. Unnatural.
She almost smiles, her face never so strained until that moment, and her fingers twirl a little at her new hair. It looked so sad. She looked so sad.
"I know right? Great hair."
I don't dare to comment and let her in, closing the door behind us.
"How did you find me?" I asked her, though my mind doesn't really care, it was just my lips moving.
"Your phone. We have our location shared with each other."
"Right."
She doesn't sit down, instead she just stands there, almost awkwardly, in the middle of the room. I didn't feel like sitting either.
I examined her, without really meaning to, but she just looked so different all of a sudden. Her hair wasn't her, though she was wearing some old hoodie and leggings which doesn't make much of a change other than the fact her face. Her cheekbones are popping out more, and not in that good or pretty way sort, her eyes look small and swollen, her forehead is creased more than she ever would. She looked skinnier, like she hasn't eaten anything in days.
She is trying to smile, I think, but as she attempts that it slowly turns into a frown, and then she is crying. She tries to muffle it with her hand and I go over to her and take it away, letting her out almost.
Before she could say anything, I sum up basically everything I've wanted to tell and say to her for the past weeks in four simple words.
"I love you, Klarise."
But that only makes her cry harder.
"Please, if this was about what happened at your parents' house, I'm so sorry. Sorry might not even be enough, but please don't leave me because of that. Please, Klarise, I love you too much to let you go. We can figure something out, I promise you, I'll do anything. Remember, I'm famous, I-I have influence, I c-can do something. We can do something, they can't harm us anymore than you think they w-will." I was starting to stutter, panic overtaking me. I had never stuttered before.
She slowly takes my hands off of her, but gently, and then lets it rest near her. She's trying to calm herself, and I'm waiting, crying myself.
Then she looked up, at my eyes, and I think I haven't truly seen her say something she so badly wishes it wasn't true.
"It's too late, Maeve."
I felt myself sink down. Down down down. Reminds me of that song that used to go, down let's get it, down down down we go, weee!
There seemed to be a knife in my throat as I talked.
"What do you mean it's too late?"
She started shaking her head. "It's all too late, Maeve. I don't blame you for what happened, I love you too much to do that. But there is nothing you or I can do now. Nothing."
I was shaking my head myself, as if I shake it harder then all of this might be a big cruel joke that we can forget about tomorrow. I'm stumbling over on my words, because I know how this ends. I've been in enough heterosexual depressing romance films to know how it all happens. It never ends well.
"No, Klarise, no. I am not letting you do this to us again. Not again. Not this time."
She smiles weakly, eyes filled with water. "I came here to say goodbye."
I shook my head harder, biting on my lips, my tears making everything blurry. "No! I can't let you do this again! I can't let you leave me, you can't do this! Why are you letting this happen? The world will accept us if we try, maybe not every part of it, but there is a place that will truly allow us to be together. Just please, Klarise, please..." I broke out in more tears, sobbing.
She then, sort of cautiously, came over to me. Her hug felt more like a goodbye than warmth, but I still hug her back, wrapping my arms around her waist, grabbing onto every last part of her and wishing she'll be here forever.
"I wanted to tell you this in person, because you'll see it online soon."
I was shaking my head again, but I had no idea what she was about to say.
"I'm getting married, Maeve."
I pulled back immediately, and my eyes couldn't have been larger. "What?"
She nodded, her lips in a tight line. "Yeah, it's happening next year. Or maybe even earlier."
I stared at the ceiling, and in that moment I stopped breathing again like how I sometimes do when something I don't want to be true is happening. Well, it is. My head tried to process what she said, and all I could see was her in a beautiful white dress marrying a man. Not me.
I gazed back down at her, her hand on my arm shaking. Instead of getting mad at her, like maybe I thought I would, I dropped to my knees. I place her two hands on top of my forehead, feeling the hard fingertips of hers from cello playing. I'm taking in every last detail, and as I do I just start to realize all over again how precious she was and all the times we fought how ungrateful I was.
"I did this to you, Klarise. I did this to us. I should have never gone to your parents house that day, or else this would have never happened."
She slowly lowered her height to mine, and she leaned her forehead softly against mine. "Yes, you did do this. And I'm so mad at you for doing this. For all your acting skills and all that you've gone through, Maeve, you are so stubborn sometimes. But..."
I looked at her, and I don't blame her for not forgiving me. "But what?"
She gazed into my eyes, and I can't tell by then if I was more broken or if she was. There wasn't a thermometer or something like that to measure and compare this stuff.
"But it was going to happen sooner or later."
I laughed a choked out laugh that sounded more like a croak. "You're kidding."
"No, I mean it. My parents were going to marry me to someone to help build their company higher, since I wouldn't be the one taking over because that would be my brother's duty. I have no more fight in me, Maeve, and when my mother saw you that was the last string. I'm sorry."
I stood up as she did too, and suddenly every feature in her face made me ache, everything in the room felt too sharp.
I frowned so hard at her she might've flinched. "Why are you choosing them over me? I saw how she treated you, and how scared your brother was of his own mother. That isn't a life. That is abuse, Klarise, whether you think it is or not. Because it is, and now, they're making you choose something over your own happiness. How can you let them do that to you?"
"Because they're my family."
"That isn't family!" My voice raised so loud the both of us backed away from each other.
She has her arms crossed over her stomach, rubbing her two elbows with her thumbs. Maybe she felt exactly how cold this room suddenly felt like I did. "I don't think you can understand what family means, Maeve, because this is my family. You don't know them like I do, and I can't just abandon them like how you did to your mother."
We both just stared at each other, and her mouth hangs in the air, knowing she said the wrong thing.
I shake my head, tears springing out of my eyes like waterfalls. "Fine then, go to your fucking family if that's what you want. Go to them and chase them after heads and heels since you seem to love doing that. Go to them and never come back to me. Because it seems to me that there can only be me or them, and you so clearly love them more than me."
She stood there.
"I thought you loved me, Klarise. And I think you thought that too. But I guess we were both wrong, weren't we? You can't go against your family for me, and you're too scared to show the world who me and you are. And I guess that's that, because of you. It's all your fault. Go enjoy your goddamn marriage then. I hope you love whoever the hell you're marrying."
I wait for her to tell me I'm wrong, to deny me, to come into my arms. Or to even point out the fact that I'm being a hypocrite for saying she doesn't want to come out to the world. Because that's what I wanted her to do when I said those things. Even if half of them are true, I couldn't give a shit then or now. I just wanted her to stay, and I thought that the harsher I say things, maybe somehow that will make her guilty and unable to leave me. Or if I give her something to argue with me, that will also at the very least make her not leave. I didn't know what else to do, but thinking back, I think there wasn't really anything I could have done that would have made her stay. It's like one of those things that has to happen or nothing and no one can move on. She had to leave.
She nodded, and she didn't look mad at all. Passively and so peacefully, unlike how I had imagined the walls around us would come tumbling down, in the dark quietness she walked towards the door with no obstacle or anything stopping her. She opened it, and then looked back at me one last time.
"Goodbye, Maeve."
There's this saying that it's always the people closest to you who hurt you the most. Now I wonder why I ever thought that to be untrue.
The door closed without much of a sound. Her smell was gone. Any trace of her that she was in this room was gone. She was just simply gone. She had left me. All over again.