Dieter Bravo had been alone for what felt like a lifetime.

Not just single—lonely. For years, he'd searched for someone to fill that void, chasing one night stands like candy. He didn’t care who they were, what they looked like, or what they had between their legs. If they smiled, if they laughed, if they said yes, he was game.

“Do you want to have sex with me?” he once asked a front desk assistant without so much as a second thought. Another time, he tried to flirt with a fitness AI hologram during a really bad trip. It wasn’t funny. Not really. It was kind of sad.

It was the height of COVID, and they were locked away in that gilded prison of a hotel, filming Cliff Beasts 6. Lush scenery, luxury everything—yet it all felt like a nightmare. Like a play he couldn’t stop acting in. Dieter was unraveling behind the scenes. He passed the time getting high, drunk, spinning through chemically enhanced highs and lows just to blur the edges of the world. The isolation was unbearable. The fear was constant. He’d lay in bed, stoned and shivering, wondering if the next cough would be the one that killed him. Wondering if the world outside still even existed.

He distracted himself with TikToks, with cast drama, with absurdity. But it was all a distraction from that gnawing emptiness. And then—then—he saw them.

Not in person. Not on set. Not in the glamorous, self-congratulatory way most people meet someone in his line of work. He was 16 hours into a shroom-fueled spiral, scrolling endlessly on Instagram when her photo stopped him cold. A smiling face. Soft eyes. Some kind of aura. Okay, maybe the aura was the shrooms talking—but still. There was something real in her that pierced through the haze.

He messaged them. Of course he did. Dieter was never shy. He tried to be charming—tried being the operative word. She wasn’t having it. Left him on read more times than he could count. Called him out when he messaged them high. Didn’t put up with the “I’m rolling so hard right now lol” texts. She was grounded. Smart. Kind. A breath of fresh air in his chaos.

And slowly… something changed.

It wasn’t overnight. It wasn’t easy. But messages became longer. Calls started happening. Jokes. Secrets. Silences that weren’t uncomfortable. She became the only real thing in his life. The one person who saw him, even when he didn’t like what he saw in the mirror.

Years passed. Somehow. The world started again. He got clean—mostly. Weed stayed, a little alcohol now and then, but the hard stuff? The dangerous stuff? He left that behind. For her. For them. Because he couldn’t imagine a world without her in it.

Now, here he was. Back from filming. Back from pretending. Back to where he was real.

“Babyyyy, I’m homeee,” Dieter called out, his voice echoing with a kind of theatrical grandeur that only someone like him could pull off. He tossed his bags onto the marble floor of their shared home—yes, his home, but she made it feel like something better. A haven. A life.

The rooms were quiet.

He paused, listening for footsteps, a laugh, anything. God, he had missed her. Missed her voice, her scent, the grounding feeling of her palm on his chest when he spiraled. Filming had been brutal. His role had grown more serious—he’d started being cast in things that weren’t just for laughs. His agent said it was because he was easier to work with. More focused. More human. He knew it was because of her.

She’d changed him—not by trying to fix him, but just by being. By loving the scared, scattered, broken pieces of him and never letting go. Even when he tried to push her away, sabotaging things in the way only Dieter Bravo could. She stayed. Kissed him. Told him it would be okay.

And it was.

Eventually.

He set down the bouquet of crushed daisies he’d picked up on the drive home, his fingers curling anxiously around the wrapping. He wanted to see her smile. To hear that quiet laugh she always made when he acted like a fool. To kiss the one person who made him feel safe enough to be still.

But where the hell were they?