Page 44 of The Sitcom Star
Jen looked at Maddie as though she’d been replaced by an alien lifeform.“You’re not drinking coffee anymore?You’ve gone from a dozen a day to…none?”
“I never drank a dozen coffees a day.”
“That one time, when we had to rewrite—”
“That wasonetime.Most days I was only drinking, like, eight.”
“So much better.”
“And I’m still drinking coffee.I had a cup this morning.”But her brain felt perfectly settled and relaxed, so there was no need to add more caffeine to the mix.
Jen nodded sagely.
“What?”Maddie said.
“You’re sleeping with him, aren’t you?”
“Who?”She was playing innocent only to get under her friend’s skin.
Jen responded with the biggest eyeroll ever.
They got their drinks and wandered over to a bench in the Music Garden.
“Alright,” Jen said, “tell me.Nobody’s close enough to hear anything now.”
“Mm-hmm.What do you want to know?”Maddie sipped her latte.
Jen merely gestured for her to continue.
Maddie released a dramatic sigh.“Yes, I slept with Adrian on the weekend and spent the night.Yes, it was good.”
“When I told you to take time off, I didn’t think you’d be efficient enough to get a boyfriend in a month.I should have known.”
“I’m always efficient.”
“Exactly.”
“But he isn’t my boyfriend.We ran into my parents while we were having bubble tea in my old area, then had sex to help us forget.”Maddie had been trying for a breezy tone, and normally she had no trouble pulling off whatever tone she was going for, but she knew she’d failed this time.
Jen rolled her eyes again, and Maddie didn’t even care.“It’s clearly not just sex.You want more than that, don’t you?”
Maddie nodded.“But sometimes my life gets pretty crazy.Can I really manage a relationship on top of everything else?”
“I think you can,” Jen said slowly, “as long as you don’t workquiteas hard as last season, and he understands that you’re not always going to be in the city, you’re not going to be home every evening.Some people have different ideas of what they want a relationship to look like.”
Maddie had never thought much about whatshewanted from a relationship.Because that had always come second to the other things she wanted.
Now she wanted the career she had, and she also wanted Adrian—those shouldn’t be incompatible, right?They’d have to discuss their needs, but she couldn’t see Adrian wanting her to give anything up for him.In turn, she’d use what she’d learned in the past few weeks and make sure she strived for balance in her life.Make sure he never felt like he wasn’t important to her.
Yes, this could work.She would talk to him about it soon.
Wednesday evening, Adrian went to see Maddie.They had sex, and when they were lying with sheets and limbs tangled together afterward, she made a startling confession.
“I was lonely,” she said.
“Lonely.”He didn’t know why he felt the need to repeat it.
“Yeah.Like, I’m around people—when I’m filming, on video calls.I see Jen, my parents on occasion.But I’m not close with my family, and with the pandemic and the other changes to my life…it’s tough.I used to have a close friend from acting class.We’d go to auditions together, celebrate each other’s successes and failures, butChu’s Restaurantwas a success she couldn’t celebrate for me.”Maddie’s voice became a little rough.“Although she didn’t actually say it, it felt like, deep down, she thought she was the one who deserved to make it over me, and later I saw her ranting online about ‘diversity quotas.’”
