See, it starts simple:
Cressida is just shy of sixteen and errs on the side of mousy and too bookish for her own good; Benjamin is a year older and terribly suave, sophisticated, with a car that she has been told is vintage and, therefore, incredibly cool.
It's the stuff cliches are made of. She recognizes this. It does not stop her from nearly melting into the floor when he asks her -- her -- on a date as he leans against her locker, watching her fumble with her books.
"So, what do you think? You wanna let me take you out?" he asks, lopsided smile on his face as he catches the chemistry book that slips from her hands.
"O-okay," she chirps, nervously smiling back at him as she adjusts her grip on the remaning books she hasn't managed to drop on the floor. He grins and tucks her chemistry book onto the top shelf of her locker, promises to pick her up tomorrow at six.
Two weeks later, they are inseparable.
This is where it gets complicated:
The sugar-sweet pet names melt into biting, condescending ones, so smooth and simple that Cressida is not sure she can ever pinpoint the moment that things shifted.
The first time he hits her, it is a Tuesday.
She does not understand what she's done wrong, but she will soon be conditioned to understand that it is her fault, and hers alone. She needs to be quieter, smarter, more malleable, better.
She learns quickly that it is easy to hide things from her mother.
It is not that Helaine does not care about her daughter, because she does, it is just that it becomes rather difficult to see the warning signs in wearing too much makeup and turtlenecks in eighty degree heat when you are teaching three different seminars and working on curating a new exhibit at the same time.
Helaine will blame herself, eventually, but this is never something Cressida will put on her herself.
"You're fucking him, aren't you?"
Her brows knit in confusion, feeling as if she's missed a significant part of his train of thought, and she shakes her head. "Who? No."
""
It ends like this:
The first time Aaron touches her, she flinches. He reaches out a hand to brush her hair away from her eyes, and she flinches, and he frowns. He does not understand what he did wrong; does not understand that it is not him, that it is the cloying fear of William pressing down on her. Christian is not William, but it takes her the better part of four months to realize this; he is patient and sweet and gentle, and she wonders.
The first time she meets Leonardo Dicaprio is 2009; it is brief, as she is simply reading lines with him for a part that eventually goes to Michelle Williams, but evidently he liked her enough to specifically ask for her to be brought in to read for Gatsby.
He asks her if she'd like to be in The Wolf of Wall Street over breakfast. She declines,
First things first: Brandon Rucco is the love of her life. This is something she has refused to acknowledge since things ended, but it is a constant, ever-present thought in the back of her mind, rearing its ugly head whenever she begins to get close to someone else. They can never quite live up to him, can never quite come close to making her feel the way she felt when she was with him.
This is why she categorizes this relationship as a tragedy.
For the first month and four days of their relationship, she lives in fear that he is going to tire of her and leave her; this is, of course (in her mind), because she refuses to sleep with him. She has strict rules, she explains, that require a) complete monogamy and b) the prescence of very real, serious feelings. What she does not explain is this: she does not understand why he has chosen her, because he is older and handsome and has been (if Google is to be believed) attached to stunning models and gorgeous actresses that she cannot hold a candle to, and so she drifts in and out of wondering whether this is simply some elaborate joke. But he is patient, and sweet, and does not poke fun at her when she talks too much or scold her when she drops a plate. This is a step in the right direction, she supposes. He says 'I love you' first, and that's it -- that's when she knows. That's when she realizes she'll never feel about anyone else the way she feels about him.
She falls even more in love with him -- if that is at all possible -- when he meets her parents for the first time. He tries to hide it, but he is nervous; he does not come from the same background she does, he tells her, did not grow up running in the same circles as aristocrats and royals, giving her a pointed look that makes her regret having mentioned that she had grown close with Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie at Marlborough. "You'll be fine," she tells him earnestly as she smooths down the lapels of his suit coat. He tugs at his tie, and she swats his hands away. "Daddy's not that bad, I promise. Neither is Mum. The only person you'd really have to worry about is Charles, and, well, he's not here. So you'll be just fine." This does not reassure him, of course.
She realizes early on that people do not understand their relationship any more than she does, and this pains her.
She decides to leave him, and this is important.
She is a planner, a controller, and so in the many ways she pictured this relationship playing out for them, never once did she imagine herself telling him: "I can't do this anymore." She imagined a house in Los Angeles, two dogs. Or maybe a nice estate in the English countryside, because he knows she does not truly care for Los Angeles. Holidays with her parents, holidays with Charles and Grace. holidays with Victoria and James. Three children: Heathcliff, Estella, and Aurora (because these are her dreams, he has allowed her to name them after some of her favorite Victorian literature characters). Sometimes, after a fight, she imagined him leaving her, bored and fed up with how boring she is. But not once does she ever imagine her being the one to end things.
It is the drugs, in the end. "You can't have the both of us -- it can't work like that. It's me, or this," she tells him, crying because she cannot have this conversation without tears. He does not immediately pick her; he does not pick either, to be entirely fair, but his attempts to soothe her and convince her to talk about this another day are enough. He will never choose her, she realizes. He will never prioritize her. She is not worth it. She is not worth anything.
Happy endings, she decides, do not exist.
Bea has never understood the idea of a rebound until it is the fall of 2014 and a friend casually drops the information that, according to Perez Hilton, Brandon is already seeing someone else. This will prove false, of course, but it is enough of a hit for her to
See, it starts like this:
He falls a little bit – no, more than a little bit – in love with her the second they meet.
She knows this because she is told as much by
She sees the ghost of the one who came before him, the one she cannot truly let go, and this is unfair. She knows this, she accepts it. It is not his fault, and she hopes she does not ever let him believe it is. She kisses him when he frowns, holds his hand when he drifts away in his thoughts, runs her fingers softly through his hair when they lie in bed. She pretends, as best as she can.
Sex. That is all Bea is looking for, and all he is looking for, when he texts her the morning of the Academy Awards, asking if she will be in attendance.
She is three shots deep when she spots Brandon; she saw him on stage, of course, but seeing him on an Academy Awards stage is a very different feeling than nearly locking eyes with him across a crowded bar. He is laughing at a table with Francis, and there is some blonde she does not recognize standing too close to him, laughing too loudly and emphatically. She lays a hand on his arm and something in Bea's stomach turns; she takes another shot, and then two more, and then she finds Leo.
She goes home with him that night; they sneak out the back, away from prying eyes, his lips on her neck as soon as they make it into the limousine. "Have you ever fucked an Oscar winner before?" he asks against her shoulder, and she tries to pretend she does not see Brandon's face swimming in front of her eyes as he slides a hand up her thigh.
She tells no one this time.
He makes her a vegan omelette in the morning in an apron that errs on the side of too flamboyant for him, and she promises to call later.
This is a lie, of course, and they both know it.
They do not care.