I guess they assume that, to a certain extent, I’ve been preparing for this for ten years.

They’re not wrong. Because the truth is, I’ve spent those years simultaneously profiting and running from that Gabe Parker interview.

From Gabe Parker.

“You have the paperback coming out,” Alexandra says. “He has a movie coming out.”

She didn’t need to remind me of either.

The professional benefits are clear.

The personal ones…

It’s impossible to ignore Gabe, and his career trajectory. The adage about car wrecks and being unable to look away has been true of him for the last five years or so. Everyone knows that he got fired after his third Bond film. Everyone knows that his marriage to Jacinda Lockwood reached an embarrassing, pedestrian conclusion. Everyone knows that he’s been in and out of rehab centers.

Everyone says that this new movie could either revive his career or end it for good.

“I can send over the screener,” Alexandra suggests. “See what you think.”

I bite my tongue, holding back what would have probably been a caustic, unwelcome response. I know Alexandra is being helpful. I know she wants this interview to be as successful as the first.

I know I’m being ungrateful to even consider turning it down.

But the thought of sitting across from Gabe Parker after all these years, pretending I haven’t replayed that weekend over and over in my head, pretending I don’t still think about the moments we shared, pretending that what I tell everyone is the truth and that nothing really happened between us…

Well. It makes me feel more than a little unsteady.

“I’ve heard the movie is good,” Alexandra says.

It’s a remake of The Philadelphia Story. My favorite movie. One of ten dozen things Gabe and I had talked about.

Back then, Gabe would have been perfect as Mike Connor, the struggling writer vying for the heart of socialite Tracy Lord. Now, at forty, he’s playing the ex-addict ex-husband, C. K. Dexter Haven.

There have already been a dozen think pieces about the choice—about how it’s so close to Gabe’s real life that it’s not really acting at all. How it’s nothing more than stunt casting. How Gabe is washed up and doesn’t deserve another chance.

No one thought he deserved to be Bond either.

I don’t need to see the movie to know he’s probably perfect in it. Just like I know that trying to fight my editor, Gabe’s management, and (if I told her about it) my therapist would be futile.

“He’ll be waiting at the restaurant at one,” Alexandra says. “But if you really don’t want to, I can send—”

“I’ll do it,” I say.

I’ve chickened out on only one interview in my career—I won’t do it again.