“He’s just upset,” I argue. “He doesn’t mean it. You know what it’s like having bad reviews try and tear you down.”
“Believe me, I do,” Dex sighs. “I’ve got a thick skin, I don’t give a fuck what some random critic says. But Blake? I don’t know, he’s always cared too much about the validation, the applause.”
I pause, uncertain. Part of what Dex is saying rings true.
The front doorbell sounds. “Pizza time,” Dex whistles. “You sticking around?”
“I should go…” I glance towards the beach, but it’s dark out, and I can’t see Blake in the shadows.
“Stay,” Dex insists. He opens the door, and grabs the boxes from the delivery guy, passing over some cash before joining me back in the living room. He spreads the boxes on the coffee table. “See? I can’t eat all this alone. And Alicia’s away, so we don’t even have to pretend to be civilized and eat with silverware.”
He yanks open a box and stuffs half a slice of pizza into his mouth. Cheese drips down his chin. He swallows and burps.
Despite everything, I laugh. I really don’t want to go back to the B&B alone, and maybe Blake will calm down soon and want to talk. “OK, OK, I’ll have some. But only to save you from terrible indigestion.”
“That’s the Zoey we know and love.” Dex sprawls back on the couch, “Selfless to the end.”
I grab some plates and a slice of pepperoni and join Dex on the couch. He puts on the TV, some cop show, and we eat in companionable silence like we have done a hundred nights before. Other people find Dex intimidating—that whole brooding tattooed rock-star routine—but we’ve always gotten along great. I know that deep down he’d do anything for his family, and he’s become like an adopted big brother to me too.
“So, you and Blake, huh?” Dex waggles his eyebrows at me. “Took you guys long enough.”
I flush. “Not really. I don’t know what we are. I mean, you heard him,” I add sadly. “He won’t even talk to me about this stuff. It’s like he’s still shutting me out—not just about this, but everything.”
Dex slowly finishes another slice.“You know, after our parents died, everything kind of fell apart,” he begins. I look over, surprised. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him talk about it; Tegan’s the only one who mentions it sometimes, but that’s more in a wistful way. She was the youngest, still barely a teenager when they passed.
“Blake was the one who kept us together,” Dex continues, looking thoughtful. “I remember, the day after the funeral, he wanted us to go to a baseball game. He wouldn’t shut up about it. And it was the last thing I wanted to do, you know, we’d just put their bodies in the ground, and he wanted us to go cheer and wave and eat hotdogs while a bunch of strangers hit a ball around. But, he insisted, so eventually Tegan and me went along. Ash was working,” he adds. “Ash was always working back then. Anyway, we went to the game, and I was feeling just…numb inside. Like I couldn’t imagine ever being happy again. But Blake did his thing, you know. He made us all wear baseball caps, and got one of those foam fingers to wave around, and joked around so much, that before we even realized, we were having fun. Like nothing bad had happened.”
Dex smiles, and I can see the memory in his eyes. “That whole afternoon, it was like we were normal again. Just a bunch of teenagers kidding around in the stands. That was his gift to us.”
Tears well up again, this time thinking about everything Blake—and the rest of them—have been through.
“That sounds like Blake,” I smile.
Dex looks over, his dark eyes quiet with memories. “I never saw him cry about it,” Dex adds, “not at the funeral, or after that. I never saw him yell or lose his temper. Me, I must have broken half the crap in the basement, I was so fucking hurt and lost and mad at the world. But Blake, he hid it all. He just kept pulling the rest of us out of our grief, pretending everything was OK, until we believed him.”
He pauses again. “What I guess I’m trying to say is that Blake has never let anyone in. He wants to pretend that everything’s OK, it’s his way of coping with stuff, I guess. And most of the time he gets away with it. But you shouldn’t give up on him. He needs someone like you, someone who won’t just let him brush it off. You both deserve more than that.”
I swallow, feeling moved. “I don’t know what I can do,” I admit. “I don’t even know if this means anything to him. Us.”
Dex gives a wry smile. “It does. Even if he hasn’t figured that out just yet.”
I wish I could believe him. But I don’t know what’s going on with Blake. He only lets his guard down for these brief moments, and then it’s back again, faking at being fine with that casual smile, ready for his close up.
I want him to let me in, but maybe he’s just not wired that way.
I hang out at the house a while longer, waiting for Blake to get back. Dex finishes his food and goes to call his fiancée, but I wait around, my hopes fading with every passing minute. I wonder if I’ve already screwed this up, saying the wrong thing and trying to reassure him when he just needed to get his anger out. But I don’t know what else I would have done.
Now, there’s nothing left to do but wait.
I look around, bored by the TV. Blake’s script pages for the week ahead are sitting on the coffee table, so I pick them and start to read again. This time, knowing everything I do about how Dash is shooting it, and how the characters are developing, I can’t help wanting to makes changes. As the time ticks past, I find myself scribbling notes in the margins and crossing out lines, writing new ones instead that fit Blake’s voice better. This script was written months ago, before Lila and Blake ever signed on, and although it’s good, it could be so much better if it used their strengths to really play up the emotion of the scenes.