I opened the car door hastily, and when I looked at the person in the back seat, I took a deep breath.
“Amira Rose Farouk, what the hell are you doing here?”
“Hey, big sis,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Nice seeing you too.”
“Yes, I think . . . I think there’s more to it. It wasn’t just a one-night transgression just for the fun of it.”
“Amira, what are you trying to say? Are you gay? Bi? Confused?”
“Confused sounds about right.”
In her darkest hour, Amira had reached out to Declan, asking him to fly her out as close as possible to St. Martin. She had met him in London, and he’d flown her out to Edinburgh through the private jet company he worked for.
I had never asked Amira about her fling with Declan in the past, because I didn’t want to meddle in something she wasn’t ready to talk about, but given the circumstances, I had to ask her. When I inquired about Declan, she said she liked him all right, but they’d decided months ago to remain friends, for several reasons.
Distance was one of them. The fact that Declan had two little kids that required stability was another. In the end, they decided they’d be better off as friends.
I exhaled a deep breath, feeling a bit relieved. I had no idea what had happened between them after their hookup in Thailand and I felt reassured by the fact that Amira had called him in a moment of need. Clearly, they were on good terms.
But now, I had a different set of revelations to deal with. I scooted closer to her on the couch and smoothed her hair behind her ear.
“Have you always felt this way?” I asked in a soft tone.
“I’m not sure. I’ve always been so focused on my career. Guys were around, and you know that growing up I didn’t care much for them . . . but then something changed. I started noticing them, but lately . . . I don’t know. I’ve noticed how no one piques my interest at all, and I haven’t been in a relationship in a while. Even when I was dating that young producer, I wasn’t that into him. The sex was . . . just okay. I don’t know, Sam. I kind of got into a funk, and I started thinking maybe I don’t like guys that much in general.”
“Maybe you just had a lousy lover. Since then you’ve had other sexual encounters, right? Did no one rock your world?”
“Yes and no. I always felt . . . detached, in a way. Not present, not in the moment. Not completely connected or satisfied. And in the meantime, I’ve started noticing other things . . . about women. The way they look, the way they feel. I wanted . . . I wanted to explore that. I wanted to see how I’d feel . . . with a girl.”
“And? Has it happened yet?”
“Yes. A while back.”
“And it was a more . . . satisfactory experience?”
She gave me a shy nod. “It was.”
“Was it mind-blowing?”
“You could say that.”
“So . . . you and this woman are . . . in touch? Were together and didn’t work out?”
She looked away. “We are in touch, but it’s complicated. Her schedule is as busy as mine and we don’t live close. And now . . . this mess.”
I sighed. “So, you like girls. Big deal.”
“See, that’s the problem—I don’t know. I’m not a hundred percent convinced. I think I still like guys. I feel attracted to them. It doesn’t always happen, but sometimes it does.”
“So, you’re bisexual.”
“Maybe. I guess. God, I don’t even know,” she said, covering her face with her hands.
“I get that the pictures were not the greatest way to announce it to the world . . . but, if you’re bisexual, what’s the big deal? Are you worried about your career?”
“No . . . yes. Yes, of course I’m worried about it. Are you so wrapped up in idyllic Scotland that you forgot how ruthless Hollywood is?”
I narrowed my eyes at her.
“No, I haven’t forgotten, but I think maybe you’re exaggerating. I know it looks bad now, but when things calm down, no one is going to care who you fuck in the privacy of your own home.”
“You’re wrong. Everyone is going to care, and I’m going to stop getting roles. I will no longer be the darling Amira, and the press is probably going to murder me. Gahhh, I can’t even think about what they’re going to try to pull in interviews.” She let out a sigh and then rested her head on the couch, staring at the ceiling.
“Mira, come on, take a deep breath.” I took one of her hands in mine. “I think you’re losing perspective. There are quite a few bisexual actresses in Hollywood and they’re doing just fine.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Have you forgotten about Anna Paquin? Or Evan Rachel Wood? I don’t think their careers have been suffering since they came out as bi. It’s true, you had a certain image until now, but you’re growing up. You got into this business so young, and you were so focused on your career . . . how could you even have had the time to figure out what you want, what you like? If this is who you are, don’t try to repress it. Just be yourself.”
“Sam, you make it sounds so easy.”
“You’re right, it’s not easy, and it probably never will be, but if you try to repress your true nature, you will only end up living a terrible life, filled with regrets. You’ll never be at peace. I want you to be happy, sis.”
She gave me a soft look, and for the first time I saw a hint of a smile brighten her face. Her eyes, though, still looked melancholic. She curled up around me and placed her head on my shoulder, sighing again. I reached around her with my arm and caressed her back.
“This is going to kill Daddy,” she uttered.
I snorted. “Ha! Don’t think so highly of yourself. If Mom divorcing him and then coming out didn’t kill Dad, he’ll be fine. He might be shocked, and he’ll worry about you, but he’s a parent—he’ll always worry about you, and he’ll always worry about me, even though I’m doing fine. Same goes for Rob—though maybe Dad actually should worry about him. I have no idea why it’s taking so long for him to become the next Evan Spiegel.”
I snorted a laugh, and she started laughing too.
Our little brother Robert was one of the few handsome techy guys of Silicon Valley.
The problem was, he still hadn’t made it big. For the last couple of years, it had seemed he was on the verge of success, but it hadn’t come yet.
I knew he was working on a few different apps, but I didn’t know enough to understand the dynamics of the business.
“You’ll see, Mira, everything will be all right. Things may look bad now, but it won’t last. In the meantime, you’re welcome to stay here as long as you want.”
“Thank you, though I do hate to impose. It doesn’t feel right to crash your love nest.”
“Don’t worry about it. Hugh has four brothers, I’m sure he understands,” I said, patting her head gently.
I took off the rest of the day to take care of her, and even though I knew she needed me, I felt a pang of guilt for leaving the set and everything else behind. I was sure Nora wasn’t too thrilled about me leaving for the day, but I couldn’t leave Amira by herself. As soon as we’d gotten to the cottage, we’d informed our parents she was with me. She had a good cry with Mom on the phone, and after she hung up, she had a good cry on my shoulder. It had taken a while for her to open up, and we were finally touching the surface of the problem.
My chest tightened at the thought of my sister receiving any kind of backlash, and my heart ached thinking that for months, if not years, she’d been confused and hadn’t been able to open up to me, her sister and one of her best friends.
We sat on the couch, hugging and staring at the kindling flames in the fireplace.
A while later, I heard a car outside, and I knew Hugh was back.
When I got up and opened the door, I was surprised to find he wasn’t alone.
His costar Melissa was with him. What the what?
“Hey Sam. How’s Amira?” she asked, but when she caught sight of my sister on the c
ouch, she dodged me, heading for the living room. Amira, who had fallen asleep on my shoulder, was rubbing her eyes.
“Mel!” Amira said. Mel?
They stared at each other for a few seconds before embracing in a tight hug.
I could hear Melissa’s muffled, “I am so sorry, I am so sorry,” and I was so confused.
Amira and Melissa had met a few weeks ago when we were in Japan to promote the show. We’d had dinner together a couple of times since Amira had flown in for business herself, and we’d spent a day going around Tokyo. At some point during the day, though, we’d parted ways. Hugh and I had decided to go to Ueno Park and the National Museum of Art while they wanted to go to Shinjuku to check out a bar Amira had heard of.
Hugh and I stared at the two of them wrapped in a tight embrace in the middle of the living room. We frowned at each other, confused as to what was going on.
Melissa disentangled herself from Amira and took a step back to look at her. She brushed away a strand of her hair, caressed her face, and then took her hand.
She leaned in and whispered something to my sister.
A smile broke out on Amira’s face—the first I had seen since she’d arrived. She took Melissa’s hand and led her to her room.
“Well, that’s an interesting turn of events,” my fiancé said.
I turned around to look at him. He was laughing, but I, on the other hand, was even more confused.
“You can say that again . . . do you actually have any idea what the fuck is going on?”
“I guess in due time, they will let us know,” he replied, snickering.
SAM
A few days later, we were informed by my mother that things were calming down.
Amira’s publicist had been working relentlessly on getting the compromising pictures removed, and by some kind of miracle, there was a new scandal everyone was more interested in: some “it” couple from a popular show was calling it quits, and now all eyes were on them.
She didn’t seem to want to leave, and I wanted her to stay for as long as she needed to. Hugh wasn’t complaining about it, either.
“She’s your sister, Sam. She needs you right now. It’s not like I haven’t had to watch over my brothers before,” he said with a sad grin.
“Who? Ewan?” I asked. He was silent for a moment, his eyes drifting away, and replied with a solemn nod. Ewan MacLeod was the troublemaker of the family. According to Hugh’s mother Fiona, the youngest of her sons had a certain penchant for trouble. Like his namesake Ewan McGregor, the youngest MacLeod had a weakness for motorcycles—a weakness his mother wasn’t too fond of—but that was the least of the MacLeods’ problems when it came to the baby of the family.
“When Ewan was in high school, he got mixed up with some real bad people, ye see . . . he’d managed to make friends with the worst group of young blokes in Oxford, of all places. Small theft, drug use, you name it. It’s a miracle he was never caught, never arrested.” He caressed my face, his eyebrows pulled together, his eyes clouded by the memories. “Of course, that’s nothing like what your sister is going through right now, but with Ewan, it seemed that none of us could really get through him. There were a few months when we didn’t know how bad things were. He was despondent, hardly attending school, fighting with my parents constantly. I was already out of the house, so I didn’t live all of it firsthand, but one day, I found him outside my building, in Edinburgh. The look on his face . . . it’s something I will never forget,” he said with a low chuckle.
“Here he was, this young arrogant brat who refused to listen to his parents and obviously had been up to no good for who knows how long . . . but he’d come to me, at last, and he looked broken. He had gotten into a fight with someone, that was easy enough to tell. He had a swollen, bruised eye, face covered in bloody marks he’d tried to clean best he could, but his eyes . . . they reminded me of when he’d fall off his bike or wouldn’t get his way as a child. When we got upstairs, he told me what happened. He’d finally realized what we’d been telling him all along about these kids he’d been hanging out with. He’d seen their true colors, the ones of young criminals. There was more they were doing besides selling a little weed and coke, and Ewan didn’t like what he’d seen. He had tried to get out, and they let him, but not without beating him to a pulp. He was too proud to go back home and Declan had a family already, so he came to me. So, my point is, Amira came to you because she knows she can count on you, and I don’t care how long she stays. She’s family. My family is yours, and yours is mine,” he said, placing a soft kiss on my lips. His words and his warm breath eased the tension I’d felt ever since Amira showed up.
He broke the kiss and glanced down at me, as if to make sure his words had had the desired effect. I stared into his deep blue eyes, placed my hands on his strong shoulders, balanced myself on my tiptoes, and kissed him again, slow and deep.
Once again, he reminded me of how deep my love for him was, how deep it ran into my bones.
Passionate, brave, and steady, he seemed to have a gift for making me feel grounded when life threw curveballs that had me spinning. I was reminded that he was absolutely the one for me, the only one I wanted to build a family with.
He was the one who’d started making plans for our future, but it was now my turn to show him how much I wanted to be tied to him for the rest of my life.
Till death do us part.
My plan simply had to work.
The next Saturday, we were taking a walk on the beach. The weather had been great during the week, but we had to be at work. Now it was cloudy and a bit chilly, but it wasn’t raining, so we decided to get out and about. I asked Amira about Melissa. It didn’t make any sense to me why they were so close, but Amira told me they’d had a “moment” together when we were in Japan and had been in touch ever since. I’d known about Melissa for a while; she’d told me she was gay the previous year when the network was pressuring her and Hugh to pretend to be involved to create more hype about the show.
Even after Amira’s explanation, I was still shocked that the two of them had clicked so fast.
“Melissa is so sweet,” she explained. “We’ve been messaging and talking a lot in the last few weeks. She’s been trying to help me. She’s so gorgeous, and so down to earth, too,” she said, almost sounding star-struck herself.
I was glad my sister had someone to talk to, but I still felt a bit sad that she hadn’t tried to open up to me sooner.
“Wow, now I kind of get it,” she said wistfully.
“What?”
“I get why you weren’t the same when you got back to LA. This place . . . it’s like it gets under your skin. It makes you yearn for it, even if it isn’t your home.”
“I know. The longing . . .” I knew what Amira was talking about. When I had gotten back to LA, I had a terrible case of Scotland sickness. I missed it so much, more than I ever thought possible.
“It’s so . . . peaceful here.” She let out a deep breath, but when I looked at her, her eyes were dull, as if someone had sucked the life out of my spunky sister. I couldn’t stand it. I had always felt protective of her and it hadn’t changed growing up. Even now, I wished I could shelter her from all the pain, public shaming, and heartbreak. She was just a young girl like many others, having fun with friends, but now those pictures were going to come up in random conversations and interviews for who knew how long. The curiosity surrounding public figures was sometimes sickening. It seemed like people forgot that even actors and celebrities had feelings and were riddled with insecurities just like everyone else.
“If I were you, I would never want to leave,” she joked, and this time there was a dim spark in her eyes.
I took her hand and gave it a squeeze.
“Come on, let’s reach Hugh. He’s already up on the hill,” she said with a smile.
“I told you it was hard to keep up with him.”
“Race you up there!” Amira said in a tone as mischievous as the one she’d used wh
en we were kids.
“Come on, not fair!”
SAM
“What exactly am I doing here? Sitting on your couch, moping, interrupting your blissful premarital cohabitation?”
I patted her on the leg. “You’re just taking a break, Mira, and you came to your big sister because you know you can count on me . . . and because I kind of live on the edge of the world, or it feels like that sometimes. Plus, wasn’t I the one moping on your couch last year? You almost made it to your thirties without a scandal—give yourself a break.”
“I forgot what a great movie this is.” She sighed, pointing at the screen. We were watching 10 Things I Hate About You. We’d watched it so many times growing up, and it was definitely a favorite of ours.
“It really is. I’m kind of sad we both missed the Shakespeare craze of the late nineties. I was talking to Dad about it once, and I swear he named at least twenty different movies that were made between 1990 and the year 2000 that were based on or inspired by Shakespeare plays.”
“Gahhh, I would love to be cast in a Shakespeare adaptation. I’ve been dreaming about it forever. I have been actually thinking about doing a play, but I haven’t heard of any interesting projects.”
“Well, I’m not sure if anyone is doing Shakespeare movie adaptations these days, but if they did, why wouldn’t they cast you?”
“I don’t know, I can just see the casting director telling me I’m ‘not a good fit.’ I’m neither a Viola or a Juliet or a Katherine.”
I shook my head. “I think you’re overreacting. You’re definitely not a Juliet, but I can totally see you as a Katherine. If you want to do a Shakespeare adaptation, do a Shakespeare adaptation. If they won’t let you, do it yourself.”
“What do you mean, do it myself?”
“Write it.”
“Like Mom?”
“Sure, why not? And, I mean . . . write it, produce it, direct it. If there’s something you want to do, start now. It doesn’t matter when you get there. If it’s something you’re passionate about, it won’t matter if it takes a year or seven. Rome wasn’t built in a day and all that.”
A Scottish Wedding (Lost in Scotland Book 2) Page 9