ALPHA || TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET

032

It's like I didn't hear him when he said it.

Maybe he told a joke or something. Maybe he's kidding. But the fact is I know he's not kidding, because there is no look of kidding anywhere on his face. He stares down at the white duvet, hair hanging in his face, his bony back hunched.

Confusion. Disbelief. Shock. They help to describe, yet don't even scratch the surface of the million mile emotions suddenly dumped over me like a bucket of paint.

"How long?" I muster out, my voice fumbling in breath, like I didn't hear him the first time.

"Five months." He says it just under his breath. Like the words are some sort of curse he's afraid of speaking into existence.

Nausea has begun to tighten in my gut. I am flipping through the million questions and thoughts in my head, the gears which have begun turning at an accelerated speed. My fingernails dig deep into my palms.

I'm unaware of how long we've both been silent, overcome in a wave of shock and confusion. When he looks up to meet my eyes, the expression on his face lets me know he's well aware. Aware of what he did. What he just said.

In turn, it makes me aware of what he's feeling right now. He's searching my face for a response, what I'm thinking, what I'll say.

And I want to understand. I want to try. But there isn't time; I lost that kind of hopeless, useless effort a long, long time ago.

"You don't—you don't think to tell me?" It's like I'm pushing the words out from my tightened stomach. "You can just...drop a bomb like that?"

"I wanted to," he defends, but in that gentle, raspy tone that would calm my most worrisome nerves. "Last night, I was going to tell you — then I just, I just wanted to be with you, you know? I just wanted to be with you." He lets the words resonate. "But I was going to tell you—"

"But you didn't."

"I was going to. Marley, I was going to. But then last night everything just...happened, and I didn't — I didn't want to touch it."

My hands have tightened into fists in my lap, and he's reaching for them. Taking one of my hands as I sit in shock, clasping his hands around it to ease the tension inside of it. He sits directly in front of me with his legs crossed, and I can't move my eyes from the duvet below me.

"I didn't want to ruin it, Marley, last night. I just wanted to be with you."

"Big fucking whoop," I let out under my breath.

"Marley. I'm so sorry. I'm a fucking idiot, I know, I'm so sorry."

Finally, I look up, and the expression on his face threatens to break me, one of pain and regret and guilt that I've never seen on him before. Anger is fuming inside me, my thoughts beginning to scream things like it's not fair, it's not fucking fair, but I want to understand. I want to understand. I want to understand.

I shut my eyes, pressing my lips together. I feel his hands move to either side of my head, and I gently take his wrists, moving his hands away.

"Is it for a film?" I whisper, trying to stay calm, trying to counteract everything else that I want to scream.

He nods.

"What's it called?" I say, although I don't want to know anything about it at all.

He seems to sense this. "The King," he responds, and it's all he says about it. Had the circumstances been different, I would've asked him to tell me all about it and more.

London. He never told me. He'd only mentioned that he had upcoming projects, that he was going back to filming soon, but he'd never gone into the specifics.

"Of course I didn't know about this," I say, thinking out loud. "God, I've barely known you for two months, of course we don't talk about these things."

He's staring at his lap, hands cupping his elbows. I'm staring at his hair and going through every memory I have of him in my head, like they're files in a cabinet drawer. Like I'm looking for something I must have missed.

Dancing drunk in his living room. Sitting next to him on the subway. Our naked bodies like magnets, kissing in the moonlight of his bedroom window, how he touched and felt and kissed every part of me in ways I've never known. Everything he's ever told me; from when we sat at that round table at Robbers, to all the times he's stared down at my naked body from above me, in his bed.

How much I'd told him about me, and how much he'd told me about himself. How it felt whenever I was with him; those strange feelings of safety I'd developed around him, feelings which only grew in strength since then. And the fucking fear I'd overcome just to feel that kind of safety around him, trusting him, looking at him, god I loved to just look at him. All the times I'd listened to him talk, or simply looked at him, and wondered how in the world I'd gotten this fucking lucky, to experience something I'd felt at times was too good to be true.

And all the times I'd sit in my room, wondering if all of this really was too good to be true.

With reality placed suddenly into perspective, it seemed that now I'd gotten an answer.

"When...after you left. What were you going to do?" I'm struggling to string my mess of thoughts into words. "Were you just...were you just going to leave? And that's it?"

Fingers scratch at his neck; his nervous tick. He continues to stare down in silence.

I want to ask the biggest question in my head: whether or not I'm actually important enough to him. The words are too difficult to place into existence.

"Please say something," I say instead, my voice cracking.