Illicit Affairs │Justin Bieber

During: There's many different ways that you can kill the one you love

hey! the title is a verse from taylor swift's song "High Infidelity" :)

POV: Isabela

Summer 2017

Los Angeles is basically hell. The air feels too dry, the people too shallow, and the sun too harsh. Even though I haven't lived in Stratford for five years, I can't help but compare the two. Maybe it's because with L.A.'s suffocating climate came the even heavier suffocation of being famous.

Stratford—a small, agricultural town with its perfectly defined four seasons—is a place where everyone knows your face. People stop you on the street, not for selfies or autographs, not to use your body or drain every inch of your spirit in the name of entertainment, but because they knew you when you were a kid. They knew your parents, saw you in the school play, or cheered for your hockey team. It's where the local business owners know you by name, and you can always count on running into familiar faces at the bar with your high school friends on the weekend.

But here? Here, people like Justin and me are nobody to anyone. We're foreigners, objects of desire and interest. Mainly, we're sources of money. Our faces, our bodies, our talents—they all have a price. In Stratford, we used to complain about being dragged to church on Sundays by our parents. Here, we're forced to worship money, and it's never enough. Your soul's condemned either way. Money is a much crueler god, demanding and punishing far more than that bearded man in sandals my grandmother said saved us. Out here, there's no salvation.

Even my name feels foreign to me now. My father, sister, and grandparents have always called me Isabela—simple, unadorned, without nicknames. Justin, however, calls me Bella. Here, I'm known as Izzie. In the early days of my career, shortening my name seemed like a smart choice; it felt more approachable, less imposing. But now, I sense a disconcerting distance between Isabela and Izzie, making it hard to reconcile the two versions of myself.

Sometimes, late at night when I can't sleep, Justin stays on the phone with me for hours, talking about home. He tells me about everyone on his old hockey team, every coach he's had, the time I helped him pass his math test, or when my sister broke her foot. He'll even mention that Christmas in 2004 when his grandmother made cinnamon cookies. And in those quiet moments, I'll ask if he misses home. He always says yes. Sometimes, if it's been a while since we've seen each other, he'll admit that he misses me too.

By this summer, my life had fully transformed. After my movie came out in 2014, everything changed overnight. I went from being the Stratford's girl who loved acting in NYU plays to "the next big thing." College fell by the wayside—I dropped out halfway through—and Los Angeles became my new home. Now, I'm filming the project that everyone keeps saying will "launch my career" once and for all. I've even been dating Noah Williams, my co-star in the movie, for a year now. He's charming, and everything about us looks perfect on paper. But despite the attention that brings, I've managed to keep my life mostly private. People think they know me, but they don't. I barely post on social media, and when I do, it's just enough to satisfy curiosity. No one knows what our relationship really looks like, what I'm feeling behind the smiles, or how much of my life I keep tucked away.

When interviewers ask about Justin—and they always do—I give them the same polished response: "Oh, we were in the same year at school, but we were never really friends." It's a line I've perfected. Then I throw in, "But us Canadians have to stick together! He's always left the way open for us to communicate, and he's an excellent professional." That's what they want to hear. They don't need to know the truth: that our lives have been intertwined for years, that we've spent countless late nights on the phone talking about home, or that we've met up in secret more times than they could guess. That we keep meeting up in secret. Keeping those moments private is my way of holding on to something real.