Page 39 of The Producer: Aaron

“I know. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have flinched from telling me you fucked her. That’s what puzzles me. Did you fall in love with her?” Hers is not an accusation but a simple curiosity to understand the full picture. With her clinical problem solving, she is the one who manages to put my ideas into perspective.

“In love, no, but that kiss did not leave me indifferent. When I am with her, I become possessive in a completely irrational way. When I found her crying because one of the characters in a book had died, I wanted that man to become a real person so I could punch him. What sick mind thinks such a thing?” I confess in a low voice, embarrassment crawling in my chest.

Tracy smiles and shakes her head. “So you’re human, too. I almost thought that you kept your heart in a glass jar on the nightstand,” she teases, but before I can answer the door to my office opens and my father enters with a smug smile that freezes the blood in my veins.

When he has that expression, it means that the person he is aiming it at is already dead. In this case, his victim is me. He slams a piece of paper onto my desk I can’t decipher, at least until I start reading.

“Do you know who Dakota is? Do the names Isabella Anderson and Robert Chapman tell you anything?” he asks smugly when he sees the blood flowing from my face.

I look at the sheet in silence, my heart pumping in my chest atan unsteady pace, as if one side of it wants to stop while the other keeps running away from my ribcage. I’m so dazed I don’t even know what I want: to know the truth or burn this paper before the words written on it change my life forever.

“How?” I keep staring at the paper, unable to read it. The names resonate in my chest like the echo of ghosts that I wanted to forget sixteen years ago.

“She is the daughter of Isabella and Robert,” he hisses in a tone that sounds like a victory hymn.

And so it is. My father won, he managed to revive the only memory that still makes my chest bleed, and he used it to crush me. It’s such surreal news that my body almost doesn’t seem to react. My hands feel numb, and the piece of paper between my fingers seems to become incorporeal.

“It’s not possible. The name of the kid is Melanie Chapman.” My voice comes out trembling, underlining my defeat. The smile widens even more on my father’s face, given my weakness.

“She changed her name, like most people who work in this industry.” His disdain toward me is so great that I look down, unable to withstand his judgment.

He doesn’t even bother to close the door behind him when he leaves victorious. I look up at Tracy and find her worried gaze on me. I almost miss my breath. How did I go from talking about the kiss with Dakota to being thrown under a train by such news? I believed that nothing could hurt me anymore. I built so many layers of indifference on myself over the years that I thought I had become immune to the suffering. It only took a girl thirteen years younger to take down every single wall I had built. Feeling so vulnerable makes me uncomfortable.

“I need to go and talk to Dakota,” I announce in a whisper.

“I’ll cancel your appointments for the afternoon.”

Finding Dakota with the other actors on their lunch break isn’t hard when I arrive on the set. Sitting at one of the tables in the parking lot, she is laughing with the others at some joke. I pause to observe her, to grasp similarities that have escaped me so far. She has nothing of Isabella’s dark hair and eyes, but I recognize Robert’s colors from the pictures Isabella shoved in my face sixteen years ago. A pang widens in my chest when her eyes rise to mine and widen slightly.

“Can I talk to you privately?” I ask her when I approach.

People at the table greet me and cast curious glances in our direction, but my attention is all on the woman in front of me. A woman I thought I was beginning to know but about whom I really know nothing. A sense of betrayal creeps into my chest like an illness that grows little by little, tearing my life apart.

“Yes, of course.” She gets up and beckons me to follow her to her trailer.

I hold the sheet with the truth about her identity until I crumple it. When we close the door behind us, the anger I have inside is almost uncontainable. The only thing I can do is stretch the piece of paper out in front of her and stay with my eyes glued to her face absorbing every reaction. Confusion, realization, surprise, and shame alternate on her perfect face, and the ice that spreads in my stomach freezes my every emotion. I don’t need to ask her if she knew who I was before she showed up in this city. I read the answer clearly on her face.

“Did you approach me for money? A career? What?” My hiss is so glacial that I take her by surprise, nailing her to the sofa where she sits.

She looks up at me, and I find in her gaze a mixture of fear and regret that makes me boil with anger. How could she use me likethis? How did she lie so well that she slipped under my skin and stayed there like a fucking tattoo?

“I…” Words die on her lips.

“You what? Was it all your plan to get something out of me?” I raise my voice and see her hesitate. For a moment, I would like to hold her in my arms and tell her everything will be fine, but then I remember how she betrayed me.

“I just wanted to know you…” The words leave her lips in a whisper, but it is as if she has shouted them.

Of all the answers I would have expected, this one hadn’t even crossed my mind. The sincerity with which she said it contrasts with the lies she told me so stridently that I need to get out of here. I came for answers, but I’m not brave enough to listen. I don’t know what will come from those lips I kissed, from that tongue I savored until I wanted more. She is the daughter of a man who died in front of my eyes. I cannot sit here and listen to what she has to say without knowing if what I am listening to is the truth.

I leave the trailer, hear her calling my name but don’t stop until I get to my car and leave the parking lot.

***

I drive for hours without a destination, following the slow Los Angeles traffic, thinking back to every conversation I had with Dakota. I retrace every expression on her face in search of some signal that could trigger the alarm and point me to some lies. I can’t find a single one, not even the semblance of a half-truth. It’s as if two people live together in my head: Dakota, the actress who makes me lose my mind, and Melanie, the little girl I’ve never seen. I wonder how I didn’t realize they were the same person. Maybe because I never saw Melanie, I just knew she existed like an abstract entity.

When I stop in front of the valet parking of the Club, I get out of the car without overthinking and go straight for the cigar room on the second floor. Raphael and Harrison are seated on leather armchairs, a glass of golden liquor in one hand, a cigar in the other.

There are only the two of them and a couple of other members playing pool on the other side of the room, out of earshot. When they raise their eyes on me, they stop midsentence, furrowing their brows. My face is probably giving away my mood because they don’t even try to make some joke about me going MIA for months from this place.

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