It's All Mine

The air was chilly on the beach. Spring was approaching, and while it never grew too cold in this part of California, it wasn’t as warm as it would be in the summer. Ella was glad she’d put on jeans and a long sleeved T-shirt before they’d made their way to the oceanside. Rome was wearing short sleeves, but then he was always warmer than she was.
It was nice, sitting there, eating their picnic lunch on a blanket, listening to the seagulls crying to one another overhead. The wind pushed the tide in a little more aggressively than usual, which made the waves breaking over the shoreline a little louder, a little foamier, a little more distressed. Ella could empathize with them. She was a little more distressed than usual too, though she was hopeful Rome wouldn’t notice. His revelry at being nominated for his first major award had created an air of contentment about him she hadn’t seen since they ran off to Las Vegas to get married, almost a year ago. A lot had happened in that year. It was difficult to believe it would be their anniversary soon enough. Yet, it wasn’t thoughts of being with her husband that had her mind preoccupied; it was something--someone--else.
“El, what are you thinking about?” Rome asked, moving the mostly empty picnic basket from between them and reaching for her hand.
“I don’t know,” she said, her hand limp in his grip. “Nothing. Everything.”
Rome sighed. “Let’s not think about Henry today, okay? Today is a good day in spite of him. He may be forcing me to turn out a slew of crappy movies, but today, he has no control over my life.”
“Okay,” she murmured, her hand springing to life in his as she worked her fingers between his, even though she didn’t mean what she’d said. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to follow his lead and leave Henry behind, but the situation with the movie producer was starting to heat up, and she was running out of options. If she were going to persuade the man that she--Juliet--had genuine feelings for him, she was going to have to stop dancing around the fact that he expected their relationship to become more physical. He’d been handsy the last few times he’d kissed her, and that had been in public locations with only the shelter of a restaurant booth or the pillar in a club…. What would it be like the next time she found herself in the back seat of a limo with him?
“You don’t have to do this,” Rome whispered. She turned to look at him. All of the joy from earlier was gone from his face. His lips barely moved as he spoke, his blue eyes narrowed. “You can just… walk away.”
Ella swallowed hard. “It’s not that simple, Rome. He needs to be held accountable for what he did. What he’s doing.”
“Ella, is this about me or you?” His voice was even, not accusatory. “Are you mad that Henry is forcing me to make shitty movies, or are you mad that he didn’t stand up for you?”
“Both.” Why was he asking her this again? They’d been over this enough times; she couldn’t even count how many times they’d had this conversation. “Both.”
Rome looked away, his eyes focusing on something in the distance, far beyond the curve of the earth that obscured the vastness of the ocean. He didn’t believe her. He was of the opinion that this had more to do with her own vengeance than it did releasing him from the contract. Ella shook her head, but deep inside, she had to wonder if maybe he was right. Was this one last effort to attempt to take some control over her life, to stretch her hand back in time and grasp some authority over a situation that was out of her domain?
He still wasn’t looking at her when he said, “I don’t see how your plan can work without you sleeping with him.”
Ella dropped her eyes to the sand to her left, away from him, away from the edge of the blue and checked white blanket. He was probably right.
She said nothing, so he continued. “Ella, if you do that, it isn’t something you can undo. You don’t want to create a situation you regret more.”
“You do it all the time,” she said, frustration clear in her voice. “You sleep with girls on the set, and it means nothing.”
“That is different.” He was looking at her now, his eyes slightly wider than usual. “That isn’t actual sex. That’s fake sex. And it’s part of my job.”
“This is part of my job!” She didn’t address the first part. She understood that Rome hadn’t actually ever had intercourse with any of the actresses he had had love scenes with in the movies. It was all pretend. Henry on top of her--Henry inside of her. That would be real. Too real. He was right to think that might be more of an issue than the one she was trying to correct now.
“I don’t want you to do it.” He looked away again. He would never tell her not to, even though he was her husband and he could threaten to leave her if she did.
“I don’t want to do it,” she countered. “But I want that company. I want him to gladly hand it over to me.”
“There are other ways!” he reminded her. “We can probably buy it after your next show. You don’t need the whole damn thing, just my contract. Just the part he’s using to make shitty movies. Can’t you just… see if he’ll sell?”
“We’ve talked about that,” she said, meaning herself and Henry. “He is wishy washy on the subject. Besides, I don’t want him to profit from this. I want him to fall on his face. I want him to realize he’s been outdone by someone he thought cared about him who was really just using him.”
“The same way you felt about him?” Rome asked. She nodded. “Ella, you only knew him for a few weeks. Why are you so hung up on the fact that he didn’t help you?”
“Because he should have!” He was beginning to get under her skin now. “He shouldn’t have let any of this happen to me! He should’ve cared enough about me to do whatever it took to make sure my father didn’t force me to marry him!”
Rome was shaking his head. “Ella, don’t you see what you’re doing? You’re projecting the anger that you have for your father onto Henry! It’s not Henry’s fault that your dad abandoned you, that he chose his wife, his feud with my father over you. That’s what you’re holding against Henry, not the fact that he decided to go along with it. You’re going to have to come to terms with the fact that your dad is an asshole who did you wrong. Otherwise, you’re going to keep blaming other people, and eventually, you’re going to be so consumed by your anger, you’ll drown in it.”
His poor choice of words caught up with him a second after that last statement came out of his mouth. Drown. Like her cousin had. Ella swallowed hard, so fixated on that last phrase, she didn’t even want to think about anything else Rome had had to say. All she could think about was how wrong he was. “I would like to be alone,” she said, clambering to her feet, leaving her shoes behind and heading off down the shore.
“Ella!” Rome called after her. “Ella, I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have said… that.”
She kept walking, knowing he wouldn’t follow her. She also knew the only part of what he’d said the word “that” applied to was the last part--the word drown. The rest of it, he’d meant.
But he was wrong. She knew exactly how she felt about her dad and how she felt about Henry. There was no blurring or assignment of guilt where it didn’t lie. She’d handled the situation with her father the best she could when she faked her own death, hoping he’d hold himself responsible for that. Now, she needed to deal with Henry the only way she knew how, and if that meant she’d have to give him a little bit more to take away everything, then that’s what she had to do.