I disagreed greatly that Lucy’s role in Elementary was sexless.
It was smart, but just her wardrobe, intelligence and no-nonsense, with-it attitude made me want to jump her, and I wasn’t a lesbian.
I also didn’t have a dick.
And it was dick that drove that business.
In too many ways.
In my career, I had successfully avoided the casting couch.
And to this day, I carried some shame that I had not done this because I was a strong and willing to put myself and my peace of mind above my career.
I’d done it because my first real gig was with Teddy, and Teddy was absolutely not that man.
But I’d also done it because I quickly got involved with Tom, and when this was intimated by a producer who held the reins of a movie role I very much wanted, and I told Tom, he blew his stack and went to visit said producer.
I did not get that role.
But I did get a call from a friend who was an actress who said, “I don’t know what Tommy did, girl, but thank him for castrating that prick.”
What Tom had done was what I should have done.
Told him that if he didn’t stop with that shit, “Bonnie is going in front the reporters and sharing what a schmuck you are in a way you’ll never sell another ticket to a movie.”
He was not wrong. The American public thinking that some creepy guy was going to make Bonnie from Rita’s Way suck his cock to get a job?
He’d be finished.
But it should have been me who had done it.
Actually done it.
Gone in front of the reporters.
But then, I would never work again.
Never.
I knew it.
Every woman in my shoes knew it.
And the lasting gift those kinds of assholes gave us was the shame we carried that we blew it because, in order to continue in our chosen profession, we never did anything about it.
Somehow, it was our responsibility to put our necks on the line to put a stop to it, not their responsibility to be decent human beings.
And when things finally blew up, no matter how awesome that was, I was not surprised that the fingers were pointed.
Why didn’t they say something?
No one really understood the power that was wielded and just how over you would be if you stood up against that power.
It was so easy to sit at home and cast judgment when you didn’t understand most those actresses weren’t living in nine-million-dollar homes in the Hollywood hills and their choice was work and eat…or not.
But we could just say, Tom doing that and me being with Tom for the next twenty plus years meant that never happened again.
At least not to me.
On this thought, my phone rang, and as if I’d conjured him, Tom’s picture was on the screen.
Needing to get down to finishing eating, and then showering, then getting to Chloe so we could ride before I met Duncan for lunch, I hit the screen to take the call and put it on speaker.
“Hey, Tommy.”
“Seriously, Imogen? I mean, fucking seriously?”
I was arrested by his enraged tone.
So much so, I couldn’t speak.
He could.
“We had a deal,” he bit out.
A deal?
I was scrambling to think about what deal he was talking about, when he spoke again.
“And him? Him? Christ, honest to fuck, you’re starting it up again with him?”
My back-together-with-Duncan happy daze mingled with my am-I-really-going-to-get-to-work-again confused haze shifted and it hit me.
We had a deal, Tom and me.
If we started dating, even casually, we’d share.
I did not share.
Things were so crazy, I didn’t even think about it.
But then again, no matter what that Insta picture showed, it had only happened yesterday.
“Tom, let’s talk.”
“Fuck you, Gen.”
My body jerked violently at his words and his call disconnected.
Duncan had an explosive temper.
Tom did not.
He was an athlete, and even when he retired from professional tennis, he continued being very active, played all the time, and worked out daily. Not to mention, he had a lock on a variety of mental practices that he utilized to keep calm and focused and was rarely even stressed. He could lose his patience with our kids, but that didn’t happen often, and considering Chloe (and I had to face it, Sasha), that was quite a gift.
He could definitely lose it.
But the only times I’d seen him do that was when someone he loved was hurt or taken advantage of or when he heard of things that angered him in the news.
He had never, not once, not even while we hashed out the issues in our marriage, coming to the conclusion it could not go on, lost it with me.
Even when I, who had advocated understanding the art of forgiveness to my children for years, could not find it in me to forgive him.
And yet again that morning, I had something on my mind that I didn’t know what to do with.