by Hattie Lou
“Nothing.” I lie. I have been finding myself writing more lately. Maybe it’s because I’m not busy acting. The words keep coming to me.
She smiles. “Well, it doesn’t look like you are doing nothing.” She whispers. “You look like you are in your own little world over there.”
I hold the notebook close to my chest, afraid she might be able to read it from where she is sitting even though she is across the room. “I’m writing down something about a movie that I might be starring in.” I lie.
“Cool.” She says, turning her attention back to the television to see if Mom can solve the puzzle.
Olivia
Luke left the house to go to the store to buy himself some food. Katherine is knitting in the living room as she’s watching “Days of Our Lives”. There isn’t much for me to do since I already cleaned the house yesterday.
I sit across from her as she continues to knit. Knitting has been her quiet time. I don't want to bother her so she can focus on the yarn and the patterns. The slightest noise can get her confused about the number of stitches she is on.
I lean back to stretch when I see a notebook on one of the end tables. It isn’t mine and I know Katherine doesn’t have one. It has to belong to Luke. The notebook is the same color as the book I saw him writing in a few days ago. He said it had something to do with a movie he’s going to be in, but I didn’t believe him. He was too protective of the notebook. It’s like he wants to make sure no one sees the notebook. Curiosity gets the best of me as I reach for the notebook and open it. The first page reads “Untitled”.
My eyes scan the next page. At first, I think it is a script from a film that he is planning to star in, but then why would he take the time to write word for word?
I take my time reading the script. It’s about romance. A woman named Marie meets a guy named Liam as she is driving across the country to find the birth father that she never met. They bond along the way. Liam finds himself falling for her.
There are only twenty pages written and I want to read more. Do they get together? Does Marie meet her father? What happens to them in the end? There are so many questions that are left unanswered.
The sound of the kitchen door sliding open gets my attention. I place the notebook back down where I found it and get up to see Luke unpacking the bags of groceries. I watch him from the doorway as he flexes his muscles while he puts the food away.
“Hey, I got us some takeout on the way home from the store. It’s not much, just pizza.” He says when he sees me walking in the room.
“There’s nothing wrong with pizza. What kind is it?”
“Extra cheese.”
“Perfect,” I say walking over to grab the plates. I feel guilty for reading his notebook without his permission. It was wrong of me, but I will feel really bad if I don’t confess to him what I did. “I have to tell you something,” I say, standing next to him.
“Is there something wrong with Mom?” He suddenly looks at me with a worried expression on his face.
I quickly shake my head. “No. Katherine is fine. I read your notebook.” I blurt out.
“You went in my room?”
“No. You left it in the living room. Are you writing a screenplay like your dad did?” I ask curiously. Katherine told me how his dad wanted him to follow in his footsteps one day, but Luke refused. She thought he would make a great screenwriter. In high school, Luke once written a school play. “The actors all took the stage one final time in front of the audience. Luke was the last one to walk on stage.” She told me not long after we met. “Everyone couldn’t stop clapping. The script he wrote was amazing. You wouldn’t have expected a seventeen year wrote it. As much as he loves acting, I think he likes to write. I remember seeing the fire in his eyes when he was writing the script.”
“I just was bored and messing around. I’m not planning on doing anything with the story. I will probably toss it into the trash can. The story’s not worth finishing.”
That makes me sad. The story is good. I liked reading how they met and how the story was leading up to something big. “You shouldn’t throw the story away,” I say to his surprise.
He stops what he is doing and looks up at me. “Why?”
“Because I think people would like to hear the story between Marie and Liam. What happens in the end? Do they stay together?”
He stares at me like I’m crazy for remembering their names. “I don’t know. I haven’t figured that part out.”
Before I know it, my hand is on his shoulder. He looks down at me for touching him. I have never seen the look in his eyes right now. They are burning with fire. “For my sake, please finish the story. I want to hear the ending.” I say quickly before walking out of the room.
It’s past midnight as I lie in bed. I can’t sleep. The way Luke’s eyes looked at me when I touched his shoulder keeps replaying in my head. There was a need for…wanting. Yeah, right! Like Luke really likes me.
When Matthew was here that day, he said that he believed Luke liked me. I thought he was just trying to be nice to me since he accidentally revealed that Luke called me an evil bitch, but now I’m wondering if he was telling me the truth and Luke does like me in some way.
I open my bedroom door to go to the kitchen to get a drink. The house is quiet so I tip-toe, not wanting to wake them.
I suddenly hear Luke’s voice. “Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred.” He says.
I turn the corner to see him in the living room doing push-ups…shirtless. My eyes immediately fall onto his shoulders. The same shoulder that I had my hand on just hours earlier. His arms seem so much bigger now. I figured his body was built since he is an actor, but not like this! His chest looks golden. He is tanner than I thought. He must spend his days in his LA mansion working on his tan or maybe at the beach.
“How long are you going to stand there watching me?” He asks.
My cheeks suddenly feel like they are burning. I didn’t know he saw me standing in the doorway.
“I can see your reflection in the television.” He says as he stands up. He reaches for a towel and wipes his face. There’s sweat coming down his neck onto his chest. My mind wanders to a dirty fantasy where I lick the sweat off of him drop by drop. I wonder how good he would taste on my tongue.
He clears his throat several times getting my attention.
“What?” I ask, not wanting to be pulled out of my dirty fantasy just yet.
He places his hands on his hips and stares at me. “What are you thinking about?”
I know he caught me staring at his body. I’m a woman and there isn’t anything wrong with checking out his gorgeous body. So what if he caught me? “I was thinking if I put the pizza away.”
He takes a few steps to me until he is standing in front of me. “The kitchen is that way.” He points to the doorway.
“What?” I ask, suddenly confused as I can’t seem to think straight, not when he is standing here, shirtless. It has been so long since I’ve seen a man shirtless this close to me. My body reacts like I’m a teenage girl all over again.
He chuckles. “You said you wanted to see if you put the pizza away. The pizza isn’t in this room. It’s in the kitchen, that way.” He once again points towards the kitchen. “Unless you were checking something else out.” He says with a smirk.
“Nope,” I say, embarrassed that he caught me checking him out. “I guess I will go and check on that pizza.”
He nods. “Okay. Goodnight.”
I smile at him. “Goodnight, Luke.”
“Olivia.” I hear Luke whispering my name in my dream. He looks so gorgeous as he is walking around the house without a shirt. I follow him just to stare at him. “Olivia, I need you.” He says with a smile. Before I can say a word, I am pulled out of my dream and into my dark bedroom as someone is shaking me repeatedly. “Olivia, I need you,” Luke says, looking down at me. He only got on a pair of boxer shorts. The loud banging noise makes me quickly turn my head from Luke to the doorw
ay.
"I need your help. Mom’s in the kitchen. She’s looking for something but won’t tell me what.”
I kick the blankets off and make my way to the kitchen quickly before Katherine hurts herself.
“Where is it?” She asks as I enter the room.
“What? What are you looking for?”
“The paper.” She says without going into any details.
“What was on the piece of paper that you want?”
Luke walks to the drawers and starts looking for any papers that might help solve the mystery while I stay with Katherine. I motion for her to take a seat at the table while we try to figure things out.
“The numbers and the cards.” She says to me.
“Bingo,” I say.
Luke stops shuffling through the stack of paper and looks at me. “You figured out what she’s referring to?”
"She is talking about how she wants to go to bingo,” I tell him.
Katherine’s face lights up. “Did we miss it?”
“No, it’s tomorrow.” I lie. We used to go to bingo until a year ago. We had to stop going because of how she used to get frustrated when she didn’t get the right numbers. She thought people gave her a bad card on purpose because they didn’t want to see her win the jackpot. Sometimes I host a game of bingo in the kitchen where it’s just her. She doesn’t seem to notice that we are in the house. It’s better this way.
“Should we leave now?” She asks.
“It’s too early. Let me get you to bed.” I offer her my hand and she takes it. “I will stay with her tonight in case it happens again.”
“I can stay with her if you want to go to sleep in your room,” Luke says.
I appreciated him offering to stay with her, but he doesn’t understand that Katherine isn’t big on changes. She’s all about routine. In her eyes, Luke is a stranger. She isn’t comfortable around him yet.
I shake my head. “I’m good. I will see you in the morning.” I say before walking away from him.
Chapter Fourteen
Luke
I’m already on my second cup of coffee when Olivia walks into the kitchen. She still got on the clothes that she slept in. Shorts and a tank top. She usually changes out of them before breakfast, but not this morning. I can stare at her curves all day long.
“Morning.” She says, walking over to the cupboard to get a cup.
My eyes stay on her as she walks across the room. I watch the way her hips move every time she takes a step forward. Olivia’s beauty comes naturally. She has flawless skin and the perfect shade of green eyes. She doesn’t need to seek attention with her looks. She looks this beautiful all the time. I shake my head for checking her out. I need to stop, I remind myself. I came here for Mom, not for a hookup.
“Morning,” I say, picking up the newspaper to distract myself from checking her out. I am trying to catch up on the latest baseball games. “How did she sleep?”
“It took a while to get her to fall asleep, but she did after an hour. Nights like that are so difficult. Her mind wanders all over the place. It’s hard to keep up with what she is talking about. She can be talking about a million things all at once.” She says, taking a sip of her coffee as she walks over to join me at the table.
“Does that happen a lot with her?”
“Not too often. A few times a year, if that. It’s so unpredictable. That is why I can’t let my guard down. I’m on alert all the time. Every little noise doesn’t sneak by me.”
“You sure looked like you were in a deep sleep last night. I had to shake you hard just to get you up. You must have been having a good dream.”
Her body freezes for a moment and her cheek turns a shade of pink like I said something to make her blush. “What makes you say that?” She asks, staring down at her cup as she refuses to look at me.
I chuckle. “You were mumbling something inaudible. That is probably why you didn’t want to wake up. It was too good of a dream.”
She shakes her head. “Weird. I don’t remember having a dream last night.”
Olivia
This morning at the kitchen table, I could have sworn that Luke was checking me out. I felt his eyes on me while I was getting a cup of coffee.
I don’t know what is going on with me. I was too busy dreaming of Luke and his amazing body that I didn’t hear Katherine in the kitchen. I usually wake up at the sound of a hat dropping, but not anymore. With Luke here, I feel like I’m distracted. It’s time for me to get back to the way life used to be before Luke Stewart came and messed it up with his good looks.
The rest of the afternoon, I find myself busy helping Katherine with her puzzles. Luke came into the room a few times, but I kept my eyes down and focused on the puzzle.
Avoiding him isn’t easy. The house isn’t big enough. We are going to have to talk here and there. I just hope I can find a way to stop having these fantasies about him in my sleep. It sucks that I can’t control what I dream about.
Luke has been staying in his room all evening. I wanted to check and see if he needed anything, but I didn’t want to interrupt him in case he was writing.
Katherine is in the living room, finishing the blanket she’s making for Savannah.
She wanted to play bingo last night so I decided that we will play tonight. I finish setting up the table and turn on Roberta Flack. Katherine likes to listen to her music. The music seems Sh and focused.
“Anyone up for bingo tonight?” I ask, sticking my head into the living room to find Katherine.
She places her knitting needles on the couch. “Is it Monday night already?” She asks, excited.
It’s actually Thursday but I’m not going to argue with her about that. If she thinks it’s Monday then I will let her believe it is.
I help her to the kitchen table and pick out her cards when Luke enter the room.
He looks at us with his hands in his pockets. “What’s going on?”
“It’s bingo night.” I inform him.
Katherine looks at him with excitement in her eyes. “I’m hoping to win the jackpot! I could use some new shoes.”
“Can I play?” He asks his mom.
“Sure. Do you need me to explain how to play?”
He takes a seat next to her as she helps him pick out his cards.
I watch Luke and smile as he’s going along with this. He has been coming around lately. I think he finally understands his mom’s condition. She may not remember who Luke is but that doesn’t stop him from spending any time with her.
Less than ten minutes into the game, I can see that Luke already has a bingo. He gives me a wink letting me know that he’s going to pretend not to have one so Katherine can win the game.
“B13.” I call out.
“Bingo!” Katherine shouts like we are in a room filled with a lot of people instead of the three of us.
I walk over to her and check her card. “Yep! We got a bingo.”
“Man, that was a good game.” Luke says holding out his hand to Katherine. “Congratulations on the jackpot.”
“I can’t believe I won!”
I reach into my back pocket to give her the money when Luke stops me. He pulls out his wallet and place two hundred dollars into my hand.
I can’t help but smile at how sweet he is being to his mom.
“Here you go.” I tell her, watching her face light up with excitement.
Chapter Fifteen
Olivia
I shouldn’t be listening to him give an interview on the phone, but I want to hear what he has to say. I lean in closer to his door.
“We are here with Luke Stewart, one of Hollywood’s hottest actors. Tell us what have you been up to? We have noticed that your social media has been silent lately. Is everything alright?” The woman asks as he has her on speaker.
“Yeah, everything is going good. I just finished wrapping up a movie and now I’m taking a short break. I’m going to enjoy this LA weather. It’s nice not to be busy. I’m just taking some
time off until I have to film another movie.”
Why is he pretending that he is in LA and not here?
“That’s good to hear. A hot guy like yourself needs to take a break once in a while.” The woman is clearly flirting with him on air. I can’t help but to roll my eyes back. “How are things with you and the lovely Erika?”
“Things between us are going stronger than ever. The relationship is hot and wild. We love each other as well as our careers.” He laughs.
“We haven’t seen any photos of the two of you together lately, why is that?”
“She has been busy with photo shoots and like I said, I’m taking a break. I feel like laying low for now.”
My body shifts as I lean forward on my other leg when the floor beneath me creaks making a noise. Luke gets quiet for a second. He must have heard me outside his bedroom door.
I decide not to wait around so I take off to the living room so I don’t have to face him when he opens the door. I shouldn’t have been listening to his conversation in the first place.
One thing about Luke that I don’t understand is his need to lie to people. I mean, him and Erika are faking a relationship for the world to see. A fake relationship isn’t a happy one. If he was happy then he would really be dating her instead of living a lie.
Luke
“Hey,” I say, walking into the living room to find Olivia sitting on the couch pretending to be watching television. I know she isn’t really watching it. She was listening to my interview on the phone that I was just doing. I didn’t know she was there until I heard the floor creaking in the hallway.
“Hey.” She keeps her eyes on the screen like she’s really into the show.
I walk over to the couch and join her. “What are you watching?” I ask.
“A paranormal show.”
“You’re into the paranormal?”
“A little bit.”
I don’t believe her. She doesn’t strike me as someone who would watch these kinds of shows. I reach for the remote and click the screen off. “I know you were outside my room when I was doing my interview.”