Page 7 of The Actor and His Secret

'Oh,' I snap, stepping forward to jab a finger into his sweat-coated pec. 'Turning this around on me, are you? It’s my fault that you’re home from work early so that you can bareback fuck me from five years ago in our bed?'

'I make all my sexual partners show me their test results,' Geoff mumbles, not looking at me.

'You’re saying there’s more of them?' I scream. 'That makes it not one fucking bit better!'

Geoff finally has the grace to look just a bit embarrassed. 'Plenty of people are in open relationships. Monogamy isn’t for everyone.'

I step back like I’ve been slapped. I can’t believe he’s trying to rationalise this away. It’s probably been going on the whole time we’ve been together. It’s probably why he didn’t want me to move to London, so he could fuck me on the weekends and fuck other people the rest of the week.

'Open relationships rely on consent, you prick. I cannot believe you.' My anger is starting to give way to tears, and I absolutely don’t want to cry in front of Geoff. Not right now. 'Get out of my sight. Go get a hotel. I’m sure you can find someone else to warm your bed.'

Geoffrey looks stunned, like he can’t believe I’m telling him to get out, his mouth dropping open. If he hadn’t gotten so much Botox, there might have even been a furrow in between his eyebrows.

I wish I had a dragon on hand to roast him alive. Instead, I turn on my heel, storm out of the bedroom, go down the stairs, grab the bottle of wine I’d left on the kitchen counter, and lock myself in the office. I realise too late that I forgot a corkscrew, so I distract myself from the angry tears running down my cheeks by using a pen to dig out the cork. It’s hard. I stab myself three times, but the pain is a welcome distraction.

There’s clattering coming from outside the door, and I can’t really breathe until I hear the front door to our townhouse open and shut. Geoff left his iPad here, and I’m tempted to open it to see if it has Grindr on it and just how many matches he’s made in the last year while we’ve been living together. But I start chugging the wine - no way am I going to waste a fifty-pound bottle, not when I’m probably about to break up with my rich boyfriend - and open Instagram on my desktop instead.

I’m crying and well on my way to being drunk, but even still I take solace in looking at the metrics on our latest ad campaign, the one I hit go on before I walked out of the office two hours ago. We’re doing well. Really well.

I’ll be going to my first-ever red-carpet event alone next Friday, but I feel like someone on RuPaul’s Drag Race once said that success was the best revenge. I’m going to give Geoff an enormous metaphorical middle finger by making this movie a smashing success, sending the book back to number one on all the lists, and earning every quid of my performance-based bonus. The one large enough that I could definitely move out into my own flat, now that that’s something I’m going to need to do.

There’s an indecent amount of snot coming out of my nose, which I wipe on the sleeve of my jumper because I’m a disgusting gremlin of sadness and rage right now. I click on Nikos Ridge’s Instagram account. His social media manager does a great job interspersing normal pictures - the star going about his day, making a smoothie or working out at the gym - with sizzling nearly-naked shots clearly done by professional photographers. I try to file away some tips from the latest caption, on a post from an hour ago which has already garnered eighteen-thousand likes, and yet my brain fails me.

How is it that I’m on top of the world professionally, about to have my greatest ever success, and yet my personal life has just gone to shit in an instant?

My head hits the keyboard with a thunk, my shoulders shaking. I cry into the arm of my jumper until my head is pounding and my body is wrung out. The wine is gone by then, and I’m well on my way to being shitfaced. I haul myself over to the couch, bury myself in a blanket that I wish could hide me from the world permanently, and pass the fuck out.

4

NIKOS

I can’t breathe wearing this four-thousand-pound Armani suit. Even though the cut fits looser then when I had it tailored - thanks to the loss of muscle that fell off me when filming finished, given the stress of everything and the lack of three-hour daily weightlifting sessions - I still feel as though I’m drowning in black silk, cotton, and polished leather shoes.

My room is so quiet I can hear the fans screaming from outside the window. The five-star hotel I’ve called home during press week is just opposite Trafalgar Square, giving a perfect view of the crowds waiting outside the film premiere. I wonder if I should dare look outside, or if the tiny lunch I had would rush up my throat and ruin Selina’s outfit of choice if I do.

Who needs to waste money on a stylist when your manager is Italian?

I step up to the window, hiding like a stalker behind the long curtains. I pull them back enough to see the sea of people outside. People waiting for me. There comes the urge to vomit again, which I quell with a long drink from the vodka in my hand. I told Selina it was water. She didn’t believe me, but she didn’t take it off me either. I’ve eased up on my drinking significantly since filming started, pulling myself out of the depths of what was probably a full-blown addiction, but I still need a drink when I’m nervous. I can’t steady myself without it, and if I’m not steady, the panic attacks are going to come for me.

‘I can’t do this,’ I say to the reflection in the window. It’s slightly tinted, enough that anyone looking up would see the outline of a figure, not the details. But that means I get a long, hard look at myself.

Tired brown eyes. My hair had been dyed pitch-black for the film and the director loved my long ‘I don’t care about my appearance’ hair length so much that he made me keep it. Since then, we’ve cut it back, still keeping enough length that I can effortlessly brush it away from my forehead.

I hardly look like the character I’d just embodied for almost a year. Between the hair style, normal brown eyes with no purple contacts, muscle loss, and untanned skin, I don’t even know who I am in the reflection.

Effortless. That’s the one word that’s been put next to my name in all the recent reviews remarking on my performance. It’s a word that I should carry with pride, and yet it makes me sick.

A thunderous clap of screams echoes from outside. I imagine the premiere is about to start, so I look out again. But the reaction is because a small portion of the crowd are looking up at my window, pointing, faces excited.

They’re looking at me.

I step back, breathless. The glass almost slips from my hands. I have the urge to turn my back on it all, head into the bathroom, lock the door, and stay in it for as long as I can keep Selina away.

But alas, tonight I can’t. Tonight, I’m Nikos Ridge, the lead in the world’s biggest predicted film release of the year - hell, of the past twenty years. That’s a lot of pressure to carry on my shoulders. It’s a pressure that I can barely withstand.

‘Two more days,’ I promise myself, finishing the vodka, pouring another and finishing that until my throat hisses with the burn and the panic fades just a bit. ‘Two more days.’

Contractually, I’m almost finished. All in all, it’s been a rewarding year with the filming, re-shoots and the publicity campaign. Work has kept me busy, diverting my attention away from reality to this made-up world of flashing lights, cameras, and adoring fans. But beneath it all is the truth of why I did it in the first place.

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