I lifted my hand to my poor, poor scalp and came away with blood. Suddenly Shelley didn’t seem so silly. Vain being that I am, I rushed to the bathroom to check the hole in my hair. The. Hole. In. My. Damn. Hair! Argh! But she’d snatched it from underneath so the damage was only obvious to me and my pain receptors.
Coffee. I needed coffee to wash away the memory of Valerie, psychotic princess and friend to fink cats.
While I held a towel to my bleeding head and stared at my French Press as if my eyeballs would make it brew faster, my phone rang. The phone in the apartment—I had to search around a bit until I remembered where it lived. “Hello?” I asked in a terrified manner.
“Why don’t you answer your cell? I thought you’d been kidnapped!”
“Ellen,” I nearly screamed into the phone. “Oh, I need to talk to you.”
“You have been kidnapped. I told you!” She yelled that last bit away from the phone, so she must have been gossiping about me to Nicolette.
“No, no, I’m not kidnapped.” Merely tortured a little. Torture-lite. Ugh. I rooted around for some pain medicine. “I may have lost my phone…”
“Is it in the toilet?”
“I hope not.” But these things will happen.
My mouth opened to spill my heartache, but I bit the story down just in time. I’d vowed not to tell Ellen, or she’d rush back to London to help me, and I couldn’t have her or Nicolette on my conscience again. “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. I just miss you. Where are you guys?”
“We’re in the French Riviera! On the Riviera? I don’t know, but it’s spectacular and we look gawgeous in our bikinis.”
We talked about her trip so far, and she gushed over Versailles and Paris and everything that was happy. Tears slipped from my eyes, and I swallowed them silently. How I dreamed of taking such a trip with Sam, sans bad guys. I mean Danny. But also without bad guys.
Ellen served as a good reminder of why I needed to play along with Evil Princess. I told my bestie I loved her, and we hung up. That’s when I fell into a full-fledged crying fit, heaving and sobbing so hard and loud that Taco stalked closer to me and lay down a foot away, just watching, a sympathetic loaf of cat. I swooped him into my arms and held him while I cried it out some more, and he even allowed me to for five whole minutes.
Did I really believe that I would die soon? The fear—and the pain, dammit—forced me to do what she said, but still, in my heart, I knew I would never give up. I’d fight to the bitter end, and do my best to enjoy whatever time I had on this Earth, be it a week or a decade or five.
I don’t know how much time passed, but eventually I flopped onto my back, my tear-stained face staring at the ceiling. There’s an emptiness after a good cry that’s unlike anything else. I floated in space, not thinking, not feeling. The neutrality was the most delicious thing I’d experienced in days.
Knock knock!
The door again. “Are you kidding me?” I asked the universe. It did not deign to reply.
Whoever it was could just stay in the lonely hall. Samantha Corp., a subsidiary of Where Did I Put My Vibrator, Inc., was officially closed for outside business. There were much, much better things to do, like revisit that amazing dream.
Although why I’d given Sam a mean parrot is beyond me.
“Samantha?”
I bolted upright. This new person was not Valerie, returned. The truth was a horror so unreal, so unexpected, I ne’er could have imagined its dark revelation.
“Mom?”
The hall echoed with the loud, distinct echo of a North Carolina drawl. “Did she send me the wrong apartment number? Just like her! She was always terrible at math.”
Yup. Only my mother has enough confidence in my lack of abilities to think I don’t know where I live.
Why the hell was she in London? I crawled to the door, banged my head a couple of times and eventually made it to my feet. The door swung wide and there she was, the NASCAR queen of Vegas, Suzie Lytton—model, spokesperson, supportive mother figure.
Her Pepto-pink lips frowned. “You look terrible! Well, that’s what you get for spending so much time in Europe. Please tell me you’re still shaving what you ought to.”
I jerked her into a fierce hug. She smelt of powder and a perfume almost as assaulting as Valerie’s. But she felt like Mom, and I suddenly needed her immensely, insults and all.
“Hi, Diego,” I said when I finally let Mom go. My stepfather Diego was younger than me, but it was only creepy in every way possible.
“Young lady,” he intoned with the authority of a middle-school guidance counsellor. “Have you been crying?”
“Um…” I rushed them inside, taking a quick look down the hall to made sure I wasn’t about to get any more unexpected visitors. “I was rehearsing! For my film.”
“I thought it was a comedy,” Mom said, perching delicately on the couch. “Those are what you do, not real movies. I mean, Nicole Kidman isn’t in it.”
I rocked from that barb—a recent addition to her arsenal. If Nicole Kidman wasn’t in the film, my mother usually wasn’t interested. She considered the Aussie actress the perfect example of good taste and success. When I’d got my first big studio role, Sam had told me that Suzie would finally be proud of me. I’d known better.
I said, “There’s an element of tragedy in every work of humour. You know—a delight of sorts when life beats the heroine down.” I sat next to her. “It makes you feel better about your own life to see someone else flailing in theirs.”
“I’ve never had that feeling, but then again, I work hard to be a winner.” She shrugged, and her blonde hair fluttered in its attractive bob. “Anyway, Diego had the wonderful idea to surprise you with a visit! There’s a dance troupe here in London he’s always dreamed of seeing, so here we are.”
Diego is a hot, blond, handsome professional dancer. Yeah, my mom got game. Too bad game ain’t genetic.
I stood. “Let me get us some coffee.”
“I’ve gone off coffee. Diego recommended I try green tea instead.” Diego rushed to her side and kissed her hand. “It’s so much healthier. Do you have any green tea?”
In my opinion, green tea tastes like boiled ass. The only thing it has in common with delicious, beautiful coffee is that they both exist in this solar system. “No, I’m afraid not.”
“Mmmmmm. That explains why your teeth need to be bleached.”
My hand flew to my mouth, and then to my crusty, aching eyes. Urgh, why even bother? “So, do you want to do something tonight? My whole evening is free!”
“No friends here yet? It was always so hard for you.”
“But keep trying!” Diego added. “I’m sure there are some people who would be lucky to have you as a friend.”
Perhaps Valerie would be willing to return and improve my evening by putting bamboo shoots under my fingernails.
A series of knock-knock-knockety-knocks thudded upon the door.
I take it back! I take it back! Jesus Lord, it was just a joke!
My mother observed, “Someone is here, Samantha.” I turned panicked eyes to her, but didn’t know what to say. “Diego, will you be a dear and answer it?”
Diego’s muscles rippled a moment or two for the audience before he jumped to his feet to do his wife’s bidding.
Was there an open house sign outside? “Come one, come all to the Samantha Lytton Shit Show! See a grown woman drool Cheez-It crumbs onto the carpet! Hear her cries of terrorized sorrow! Experience her inability to function like a normal human adult!”
Where were these people coming from? And why would no one allow me a moment to put on a bra and check my hair for blood?
“Did you order Chinese food, young lady?” Diego asked, the door open a crack.
My mother tsk-ed. “So salty. That must be why you’re puffy. You’ve always been a bloater.”
Puzzled, I pushed aside Diego. “Danny! Wh—what are you doing here?”
I pulled him inside while he gave the stink eye
to Diego. My entire soul slunk into my feet—Chinese food. Even though the man carried no bag whatsoever and wore a suit and tie. Holy shit. Could this damn night get any worse? “I’m so sorry,” I whispered before saying, louder, “Daniel Zhang, this is my mom, Suzie Lytton, and her husband, Diego. They’re visiting me as a surprise. Mom, Danny is the co-star of my movie. He is one of many people of Chinese descent who don’t work in the food industry. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
This earned me a small, knowing smirk from my hunk. My heartbeat braked to a normal rate.
“Of course I know Daniel Zhang!” Suzie undulated to her feet, her hot pink pantsuit tight and her relatively new cleavage at attention. “You starred with Nicole Kidman in Moonlight in Morocco. I adore that movie!” She giggled and didn’t stop. Diego’s brow furrowed.
Danny’s shoulders released from their angry perch, and he smiled. “Thank you very much.” He turned to me, and his face relaxed even more. “I apologise for dropping in…unannounced.” Slowly, his gaze roamed from my head—rat’s nest—to my robe—old, tatty—to my enormous jammies—octopi/tacos, mismatched/stained. I remembered that I didn’t have a stitch of makeup on. Surprising that he even recognised me. I guess the height gave me away. My mother tittered some more.
Danny continued, “But I couldn’t announce myself, because I accidentally stole your phone this morning in the coffee shop.” He handed it to me.
“Oh! I was afraid it fell in the toilet.”
Everyone gave me a strange look for that.
“Thank you for running it by,” I recovered, excellently. Mom fluttered next to me, her eyes so large on Danny’s perfect face that I worried after her heart health. “Please give my regards to your grandmother. Although she has no idea who I am.”
“Yes, she does.” No one should be allowed to be that fine in a navy suit unless their brown eyes were twinkling all over me the way his were. “I told her everything about you.”
Mom snorted and said, “You did?”
Bang bang bang! The door shook from whoever the hell this new freaking person was.
My neighbours were gonna think I was a call girl. I was going to have that door replaced by a steel one three feet thick.
“Well, aren’t you a popular little miss tonight?” Diego sidled to the door while I plotzed in anticipation. He reached for the handle. He swept the portal open. “Look—it’s Doctor Sam!”
Oh, fuck.
Chapter Twelve
The Ex Files
Sam burst into the apartment and stopped, frozen, shock suffusing his face. His regard slipped from Suzie and darkened into a black cloud directed at Danny. Diego said to Mom, “You remember Samantha’s boyfriend Sam? The oncologist.”
That was the lie we’d spun the one and only time Sam had met my mother in Vegas.
Well and good, except that our current lie said his name was Zack, and he worked as my assistant.
Danny’s mouth hung open. His gaze ping-ponged from one of us to the next. Finally, he settled on Sam and said, “Good evening…Zack. You—are you—do you date Samantha? And cure cancer?” His brows tightened the more he spoke.
Sam glared at me. I stammered, “W—well… I don’t think that anyone can actually cure cancer.”
Crickets.
“Unfortunately.”
Crickets.
My face went numb, and I searched Sam’s eyes for the brilliant new fib that would disentangle us from the other fibs. He crossed his arms and dared me to get myself out of it, which was massively unfair. I’d never been forced to lie about a boyfriend before this asshole showed up.
“Sam is my ex.” I said it to Danny.
Mom sighed and muttered to Diego, “I knew she couldn’t keep a doctor. I win the bet!”
Bet?
I swallowed my rage…barely…and continued digging out. “His middle name is Zack, and that’s what he goes by professionally.”
“Professionally as what?” inquired Danny, whose arms were now also crossed.
This was the point at which Sam shook his head at me and jumped in to help. “I used to be a doctor, but I gave up everything to follow Samantha across the Atlantic and work as her lowly assistant in a last-ditch bid to work things out.”
Nobody knew what to say to that. Mother appeared sceptical. Danny finally began to look at me like I was the crazy person I was. Good. These efforts to appear normal take their toll.
Captain Taco ran from the bedroom and straight to Sam. He scooped up the cat and clutched Taco to his chest, a man clinging to a furry piece of wood while adrift in a sea of falsehoods and competing men.
“Why are you here?” I asked Sam, although I knew the answer was to join the parade currently ruining my evening and/or life.
Sam jerked his head out of Taco’s fur and glared at Danny. “I need to speak to you.”
Danny started. “To me?” He switched into Robert De Niro mode. If he’d have been a porcupine, every quill would have been erect for attack. “You have something to say to me?”
“I meant Samantha. But I could say something to you.”
My current flirtation inched forward. “I’d love to hear it.”
“I’d love to say it.” Sam put Taco down—I believe that’s the fighting cat-lover’s equivalent to taking off one’s earrings.
“Go ahead, then.”
“I will.”
“Spit it out.”
Sam took a step, his arms stiff, the cords in his neck vivid. “You don’t want me to do that.”
“Oh, I do. I bloody well do.”
I needed to end this before we descended into full-on poo-flinging. Or, God forbid—truth-telling.
“Stop!” I wedged between them, barely, as they were so close they’d either begin shoving or kissing, and my luck wasn’t nearly good enough to get the latter. “There’s no need for this. Jesus, I don’t even have makeup on, how can you possibly fight about my blotchy ass?”
Mom laughed. “Ha! I just said that to Diego. See, you can be funny.”
Danny blinked, retreated from Sam and curled his lip at my mother. “She’s so nasty,” he whispered. He glanced at his phone and cleared his throat. “I must go. I apologise for…bursting in.”
I grabbed his arm and walked him to the door. “I’ll call you later, okay? I’m sorry about all of this—it’s confusing, I know, and—”
“No, no.” He took my hand and held it. “You told me you were in an unusual place. I can’t be upset when it’s true.”
My guilt flowed free from my lying mouth to my horny lady parts. The fact that he behaved so gentlemanly, even in the face of my bullshit, shamed me. Fiercely. I smiled and waved while he shot a filthy look at Sam and left.
Whew. One down. Three to go. The dream of being reunited with Colin Firth, the lover who never lied or questioned your lies, was almost a reality.
“Sam,” I hissed, “I am spending the evening with my mother, who has flown all the way across the Atlantic to see me.” He ignored this and plopped himself on my couch.
“No.” Mom primped with a compact and lipstick. “My modelling agent in Vegas got me into a party tonight with an agency here in London. It’s models only, you know!”
I stared at the floor. “I am an actual film actress, Mom. Nobody is embarrassed to be seen with me, nowadays.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow—I want to visit your film set. I bet the director will adore me.” She was already halfway out the door, Diego in tow. “I got to meet Daniel Zhang!” she squeaked as the door slammed.
Why the hell had she even shown up tonight? I told myself she was concerned about me, that was what the self-improvement “suggestions” were about. But no. I think I finally landed a movie interesting to her, and she was here to ride my short coattails. That’s a kind of pride in me, right?
“If you’re not careful, she’s going to steal your part in that movie. She gave Zhang her card.”
I turned to stare in amazement at Sam. “No, she didn’t.�
�
He nodded, the dimple peeking out, like a groundhog sniffing at winter. His face was drawn, tired—he appeared as rough as I felt. But I couldn’t pretend that of all the people who’d traipsed through my apartment tonight, I was sorry that he ended up last. Hopefully last. There was no one else left, unless Parliament swung by.
At least I didn’t have to pretend with Sam. Not in any way. There’s a soothing freedom in being able to let your stomach loose after sucking it in for a long time.
“Want coffee?” I asked.
He nodded and took a deep breath, letting it out and unwinding a hair’s breadth. Taco joined him on the couch, and soon Sam sprawled across it to play with the cat. The entire scene of normalcy overcame the flimsy walls I’d glued around my heart, and I fled to the safety of the kitchen to avoid a total collapse.
I’d just ground fresh beans when his voice startled me. “You really have moved on.”
I knew what he meant by the hurt, defeated tone. “I just kissed him once.” Twice. Shh, stupid conscience! “We do that much in the movie.”
“Apparently, you do it on the street corner for the benefit of every single entertainment news show.”
A flood of memories flung themselves around my brain. “Oh, shit!” I turned and ran to get my phone, which Danny had left on the living room coffee table. Yup—hundreds of messages in my inbox from agent, manager, publicist, gossip sites, journalists, on and on. “I’d totally forgotten.”
Strange—I hadn’t thought of that kiss at all since it happened, but apparently the gossip sites had.
“How could you forget that? And how could you—” He’d followed me into the room and squeezed his eyes shut as if having an internal crisis.
I threw the phone on the couch. “How could I what?”
The Dimple Strikes Back Page 15