CHOICES (Completed)

SHOWDOWN

“Then came the night. When you came to me. And everything was perfect. You delivered the amazing one shot take, I was quite impressed.”

You’re everything, Theresa.

Stay with me.

They’re bad, Russo, I swear.

Hardin-

Don’t leave. Please.

“Stop, pleas- just stop. I can’t-“ I sob out uncontrollably, I don’t have it in me to restrain it anymore. It’s so hard to let him see me like this, but I can’t-

Every touch, every feeling, vaporized away into a set up.

He leaves my wrists and I hold my head in my hands. I want to go home. I just want to go home. I want my life back. A life without him, because nothing else can hurt this much.

“And then the best part-“

“Shut up, Hardin!”

“Uh-uh, bit more. Come on, you’re a strong woman, Tessa you can take it.”

I shake my head, and try to gulp back the tears. I feel my eyes turning heavy, and my knees giving way, but I hold. I hold it together.

“After everything and all of that, finally, the ace in the deck. Trevor Reyleigh Matthews.”

I freeze. I raise my head slowly, cautiously.

Hardin stands, hands in pocket, smirking with a victorious satisfaction on his face. He walks up to me and slowly whispers into my ear. “Boom.”

I blink, repeatedly, trying to understand, to make out some meaning, some interpretation of this, where I don’t get hurt. And nothing comes out.

I look, at him, appalled.

“He can’t-“

“No, he can’t. He’s too good for this actually. This, not to brag, was all me. So, dear Theresa, your beloved Trevor, is a plant.”

My mind, can’t catch up. I can’t bring it to. I simply look sideways, and out of one of the window with shocked unblinking eyes, deciphering what he wants to say next, without actually hearing him say it, because that’s so much worse.

“I knew he was perfect. Handsome little blue eyed literature guy, two sentences from him, and you’ll be bleeding your heart out for him. This was my pinnacle you see. Hardin, then Trevor, then Hardin again, then Trevor; again.

Can you imagine the mental torment, the emotional trauma, the psychological fatigue, God spare me-“

You will have to lose one thing.

I feel like I’m hurting two of the lost important people in my life, and I’m hurting with them.

You feel a lot of things, Theresa. Not all of them, are real.

You can’t ask me to choose.

I need to hear its me, I am asking you to choose.

This is what you want, right?

Love me, stay with me and that’s your choosing enough.

I choose you.

I l-love you.

Everything, the whole- all of it, was, a lie. None of it- was real. All that agony, all tha- All, for nothing.

“The master stroke. And yes, for the record I was never jealous, frankly it’s a shame Trevor got attached. But I had to do that to make the choice… torturous, you know. And I couldn’t let you fall out of love with me, or it would’ve ruined… this-“