Page 98 of Play Room Actor

“What? I don’t understand …”

I had an inkling, but I didn’t have enough information.

“He probably didn’t tell you.” She sighed. “Anyway … what I wanted to ask … When did you see him last?”

Memories rushed to the surface, and I tried to hold myself together. “Friday night,” I murmured, my voice thick. “Just after midnight.”

“Did anything happen? I mean … was he acting different?”

I was speechless, not knowing how to answer. He had acted differently than usual—but there never really was a constant with Kilian.

“What’s going on?” I asked, sitting at the kitchen table.

I certainly wasn’t going to tell Yaël about the chemsex party.

“I feel like this time he’s really losing it. There wasn’t even a reason for it,” Yaël said, sounding like she was on the verge of tears. “He told me he’d stopped taking the pills—some time ago. And it seemed to be going fine, but something must’ve happened, because that wasn’t him who confronted me on Saturday morning.”

I felt deeply sorry for Yaël, and if I could, I would’ve comforted her. But I also knew that I wasn’t entirely blameless.

“We were at a party,” I said finally. “He was already pretty worked up when he got there. And then he … well … he did a line of coke.”

Yaël gasped. “Why is he doing this? Damn it! I knew something was wrong.”

I shook my head in disbelief, cursing myself for dragging Kilian into my mess. If only I’d been a little more attentive, I could have prevented this from happening.

“What kind of pills?” I asked after a long silence.

Yaël sniffled and cleared her throat. “He has an unspecified bipolar disorder.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, he … doesn’t fit the classic type. Kilian has his phases, with the manic ones happening more often than the depressive ones, which subside after two days. The manic episodes usually last about four days, but if you say he was already like that on Friday … Today is Tuesday! And as far as I know, he was completely off the rails the weekend before.”

The weekend before had been the wedding party, after which I woke up alone in his apartment. When I confronted him about his whereabouts, he refused to give me a clear answer.

“We’ll find him,” I said, partly to reassure her but also to encourage myself.

“When my parents found out he’d stopped taking his meds, they wanted to call the police, but I managed to stall them for another two days.”

“The police? Isn’t that a bit much?”

“You have no idea.”

“Looks like it,” I muttered. “What can I do?”

“Call him. Try to reach him somehow.”

“Okay. I’ll try, though I can’t promise he’ll want to talk to me. I really messed up.”

“He likes you. That’s the only thing I know.”

“Okay, I’ll get back to you if I hear from him.”

“Thanks.”

I hung up and stared at my phone for a while. I needed to process everything she’d said, because even though I had already started to figure out the truth about Kilian, knowing what was really going on was a whole different matter.

Had I ignored the signs?