Fade Into Always Part 10

Krystal completed her rehab and is now living back in our hometown in Ohio. Grace recently told me that Krystal is pregnant and there's a hastily planned wedding in the works. I'm sure we'll go, and I'm fairly sure I'll be in her wedding. After all, she was in mine just over a year ago.

I'm not sure when Max and I will have another child, but we've talked about it. Having a one-year-old is enough work for one person, let alone two people who work from home all the time.

After his last movie, Max stopped producing and directing. He's now writing full-time, and I've never seen him happier. We go to his mother's house once a month for Sunday dinner. She does it just like back home-there's nothing like a traditional meal cooked by mom-and she can't get enough of her little grandson.

Max has sold two scripts and is working on a new one now. I haven't told him yet, but I don't like it as much as the last two. But I'll tell him. I'm brutally honest with him, and he always accepts my suggestions.

I love reading his work. The characters and stories that come out of his mind always amaze me.

I often think how all of this started one day when I was a soph.o.m.ore in college and decided I wanted to work in Hollywood in some capacity.

That girl-the young me-made a fateful decision back then, bucking her parents' objections, and going against all their advice for years to come. I couldn't have imagined in a thousand years that it would work out this way.

I also think a lot about what Max said after I read that script he left me when he made an effort to open up to me after the tabloid scandal. I remember his words verbatim: "I've never believed in fate," he said. "But honestly, when I was writing that-specifically her character-it was different from all the other things I'd ever written before. Or since, actually. I've always had to work on characters for a long time, getting them right, changing things about them. But she was different. She just...came to me...out of nowhere, already perfect. Just like you."

His words back then made my heart melt. I knew he meant them.

But in the time since, we've both learned that neither of us is perfect. What we are, though, is perfect for each other.

One day recently I asked him if he still doesn't believe in fate.

"I don't know anymore. But I do think almost anything's possible. Things are just waiting out there and if you have a moment of courage, you put your fear aside and go for it."

That's exactly what we've been doing all this time.

I had come halfway across the country to find the love of my life, and I didn't even know I was doing it. It wasn't an easy path, but then nothing worth having is easy. I'd have gone through even more difficult and dangerous things to find Max, and I know he would have done the same for me.

"Things are better when they're not scripted, anyway," he said. "Fate would mean it's scripted."

"Strange thing for a writer to say."

He pondered that for a moment. "Yeah, but that's fiction." He paused. "This is real."

And so it is.