So Much More

The Way I Love You

There's an art to living in Hollywood. For one, nothing's really new or exciting ever happened. But there was thing that even the veterans got excited over; the Academy Awards. It usually took place in January or February, in the middle of winter and stars from all over the world come dressed in their finest. Not exactly true as usually none of the things they wore were theirs to begin with but rather a rather generous loan from the biggest fashion houses. From Chanel to Dior, from Giambattista Valli to Tom Ford. Not only for tuxes or gowns, all of their accessories cost more than an average family would make in a year. It was the time to celebrate the award-winning performances and to party like there was no tomorrow. The food was always so delightful, the atmosphere buzzing with excitement throughout the whole award ceremony and it only got wilder from there. Numerous after-parties are being thrown all over town and the guest lists consisted of only the most famous in the world.

The moment the list of the nominees hit the media, his PR team got a swamp-load of calls from various designers. No matter how long he had left Northern Ireland, you still couldn't part him from his collection of white sneakers and comfortable tees. He wasn't a suit and designer-label kind of man but he was under contracts with both Dior and Burberry. So that limited his options. Not that there was anything wrong with both brands. He actually liked working with both of them.

The endless process of getting measured were painful and long but he knew the women had it worse. He'd seen it first hand on some of his costars and occasionally when his ex-wife had the sudden urge to care about how she looked on the red carpet, she'd spend the time getting fitted so her gown could be altered to her size.

Even after two decades in Hollywood he didn't see the difference between a hundred-dollar tux with their thousands-dollar counterpart. Maybe he just didn't have the eye for it, or maybe because simply it wasn't that big of a difference.

The weeks leading up to the oscars was nothing special of sorts. Since wrapping up Flightless Nation, he'd gone on auditions, did interviews to promote one of his movies that would be gracing the silver screen in two weeks and then some. Life was good, it was going too well – that was the skeptic part of him felt like, but he also wouldn't change it for anything – they'd signed him on as the leading role in Ben Affleck and Matt Damon's newest project, they'd green-lighted his upcoming Christopher Nolan blockbuster and his team had finally been contacted by the James Bond people. The last one fucked him up a little bit, he could recall promising Dakota he'd tell her as soon as he got offer up the coveted James Bond role. His hand reached for his phone countless times but he reminded himself he'd hurt her deeply and she'd asked for a time off. He owed her at least that, even if it pained him that he was hurting her. Maybe that was why he hadn't decided whether he was going to take the role or not; he couldn't discuss it with her, she was the one who was excited for him to take on the role.
He was starting to sound like a sappy bastard, it was both revolting and shocking how that little lady of his managed to intertwined her life into his own so deeply that talking things through with her became one of his source of happiness. How ironic, she was his source of happiness while he became a source of misery for her.

Shai was the first one who noticed how miserable he'd been. They'd been sitting on a shaded patio on the backyard of his Los Angeles home, sipping scotch on the rocks at eleven in the morning.

"You know I love you like my own brother, right?

With his sunglasses shielding most of the sunlight from his eyes, he turned his head slightly towards her. One of his eyebrows was cocked as he watched her. "Nothing good ever came out with a starting sentence like that."

She grinned, pushing up her cat-eye sunglasses atop her head which she'd fashioned into a blob of some sort. Maybe it was meant to be a bun, what did he know? "Well, don't take this the wrong way but you look like hell."