stories from the city; damon albarn

59-

The next week had been great, but also terrible. Chloe felt like she was in hell internally. From the moment she'd found Ewan, gone to bed, gone home the following day, to when she saw her kids. She just felt guilty. There was no way to say what she'd done, to explain it, or get out of it in any way shape or form. Chloe didn't want to damage her relationship with Ewan. Especially because of Damon.

That would start a real shit storm. And it was something Chloe didn't really want to do or get started up again. Especially knowing how Ewan was finally starting to slow down in his hatred for Damon Albarn, and even then, that was going to take a lot of time- considering he'd just beaten him up.

So, she'd decided on wallowing in her own guilt. She wasn't going to tell a soul. And was hopeful Damon would do the same.

Her father had asked if there was something wrong the following day at dinner, to which she'd just said that she was stressed out with her family's schedule at the moment, seeing how Ewan was stuck filming multiple projects in a row- both of them starting production within the next few weeks.

That was true. He was filming both Attack of the Clones, Moulin Rouge and a few other projects in the meantime as well. That meant the stressful thought of hurling their family down to LA again, or dealing with separating Ewan from Chloe and his kids for months on end.

They didn't want to do that. And Chloe hated going to LA. Ewan used to hate it. Now he seemed to be fine with that, despite the fact that paparazzi was so much worse in that disgusting town.

But- the one upside was that Ewan did not have to cut his hair for Star Wars again. She was relieved by this. More than relieved, thrilled to be accurate.

Maxis did seem concerned, as he started lecturing the whole dinner table on knowing when the right time to say no to work was, and why Chloe of all people shouldn't be taking an obscene amount of photography gigs at the moment.

She'd dismissed everything, managing to somewhat reassure everyone that she was fine.

Which most everyone bought.

Except for Ewan- who'd been thinking that there was something off ever since they'd gotten back from their trip and Chloe had chosen to not take the pictures for her upcoming interview for Hello Magazine, a routine they'd been doing for over 3 years now.

She'd claimed she was burnt out and didn't feel up to it, however, she'd asked why he hadn't pressed her to do it when she'd later seen the cover that had been done. And then upon reading it, she'd gotten bitter over his mention of how they split time between the UK and USA. And how he'd choose family over fame everytime.

When he had quite actually been the one to suggest Chloe stay in London with the kids while he filmed in LA for nearly a year and a half. She'd turned down doing a 5 month long tour across the USA for Pearl Jam, that had week long breaks, where she could fly home, but Ewan had thought it wasn't a great idea.

But yet he was going to publicly discuss how much he loved his family, where they went, why they did what. Right.

Chloe did feel guilty for kissing Damon. But she also didn't regret it. She felt like she was 25 again, touring with bands and taking photos without a string attached to her, and then she'd remembered she was 31. She had two kids and a husband.

A husband who she loved, but was growing irritated with recently. It was like his opinion on everything would change every few days and the only thing that was constant was how he acted towards Della and May.

He knew her better than she did sometimes, so he knew something was definitely wrong, so after their nanny had taken May off to Nursery School and Della was off sleeping, he made the decision to go follow her into her studio set up, where Chloe had been analyzing her archives recently, and prepping for a shoot she was doing for Elizabeth Hurley.