𝙎𝙐𝙉𝙎𝙀𝙏 𝘽𝙊𝙐𝙇𝙀𝙑𝘼𝙍𝘿

𝘾𝙝𝙖𝙥𝙩𝙚𝙧 𝙎𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙣

2024

It's our third day together. Irene Holt has become some sort of...friend. She provided company and humour, both of which I desperately need.

"Can you say that your crush on Y/N began forming after that day?" I pour myself a glass of wine, "yes. I admit that I've always had some sort of attraction towards Y/N. I mean who wouldn't? Even when she turned ninety she looked like she was fifty." Irene accepts the glass I poured her and she gets comfortable on my couch. "So who made the first move?"

"It definitely wasn't Y/N. I pined over her for two years and she never said anything about it." By the time I was seventeen, I had a full on obsession with my wife. I wanted to be near her all the time and I would call her at ungodly times during the night, asking if she wanted to go and get some hot chocolate. Y/N never declined my offers but she also never did anything.

"She also never did anything about it." Y/N always pushed me to take on fake boyfriends, she also orchestrated a lot of dates for us with other musicians who looked like they wanted to go home instead of sit at a restaurant with teenagers. There were also a few actors here and there that tried to kiss me and tried to have sex with me but I never was in the mood for it. Whenever I got ready for those dates, all I could picture was Y/N sitting across from me. Whenever they tried to kiss me, all I could see was Y/N.

I probably looked so pathetic pining over a woman nearly a decade older than me but for me there was no one else I wanted.

"There's many people out there who say that you were too young to be married especially to someone who was nine years older than you," back in the 60's, no one cared how old you were when you got married. It was normal getting married at such young ages to people way older than you. No one saw it as a problem but as the 60's turned into the 70's then to the 80's and to the modern day of 2024, suddenly it was a problem. "Everyone in 2024 seems to think everything is a problem. Before the 2000's, no one cared about age and it wasn't seen as a big deal. I wasn't the only one who got married young and I certainly wasn't the only one who married someone way older than me."

I down the rest of my wine.

"Some say that Y/N Astor was a predator."

I narrow my eyes at Irene and immediately fill my glass to the brim. "No," I state firmly. "She was not a predator. It may not make a difference what I say next but she was and never will be a predator. You know who the predators were? The ones who tried to touch me when I didn't want them to, the ones who forced me to kiss them on television shows because they knew I couldn't do anything to stop them on live television. The predators were the ones who forced girls to have sex with them and wouldn't take no for an answer. Those were the predators. Y/N, my wife, was one of the only ones who tried to stop those predators. She was one of the only ones who truly gave a shit."

I'm shaking by the end of it. I grab a cigarette from its case and light it. I haven't smoked a cigarette in nearly a decade but it did a good job at keeping me calm. I need calm right now.

If Irene was here to try to get me to change my mind or to try and get me to think that my wife was a predator then I would not hesitate dragging her out of the door.

I'm waiting for Irene to say another ill thing about my wife but she doesn't. She smiles and lights her own cigarette instead.

"How did you two get together? I mean, sixty-one years of marriage in Hollywood is literally non-existent. How did you two manage to make it to that milestone?"

"We weren't just in love, she was literally my best friend. My soulmate. And yes, we had our fair share of fights, some of them witnessed by tabloids and paps but just because we fought didn't mean it was over. Y/N was much older than me and she taught me many valuable things about love and marriage and friendship. I was so used to just giving up when things got hard but she wasn't like that. No....no she hated fighting but she never let me sleep without resolving things." I laugh when I remember a memory of nineteen year old Roseanne Park not sleeping for twenty-four hours because she refused to make up with Y/N.