by Lily Craig
An average person, full of the ordinary cares and quirks that never reach the silver screen. What did Vanessa know about my life?
Enough. She knew the important details.
I’d let her in.
My breath was quickening, body warming to Vanessa’s touch as surely as the waves crashed down on the beach—still within earshot so that each minute was counted through nature’s steady repetition.
While I was still standing, she lowered her lips, kissing along the curve of my breast, down the side of my body, and then in to my sensitive inner thigh. She teased me, lingering at the spot nearest to where my thigh met my torso, knowing that I wanted her to move further.
I moaned, head tilted back, and she breathed on me, the rush of hot air tantalizing against my exposed skin.
“Please,” I heard myself say.
She glanced up at me. “Please what?” There was a spark in her eye, something devious and intent on teasing me. That look alone could have made me wet.
“Please lick me,” I whispered. Vanessa grasped my thighs, one in each hand, and breathed on me again. The sound I made in response was almost inhuman, full of need and lust.
“Where?” she said, biting her lip. The firmness of her grip on my legs grounded me, increasing my hunger for her to a point where I felt like I might burst.
“You know where.”
“Hmm,” she said, as if deliberating. Every moment was another second in which I longed for her to lick me, the time extended by her teasing to a pace that felt suspended in amber.
“Please,” I said, one more time. The desperation must have been obvious in my voice, the wetness between my legs palpable from where she kneeled. Something convinced her that the time was right, and I thanked every deity I could recall in my mind when she dove in and flicked her tongue against my clit, gently, delicately, almost as if she weren’t there at all.
Gradually, Vanessa firmed the pressure against me, her tongue even in its rhythm. I steadied myself. My arms found the back wall of the changing cabin so that I could roll my hips to meet each wave of pleasure she gave me. Even so, I felt unrooted, like I was soaring.
After riding the sensation for several minutes, Vanessa slipped her fingers into me, her tongue active while she began to curl her fingers, moving them inwards and then stirring me into a heat I had no idea could feel that good.
“Oh god,” I breathed, and then I bit my lip, hips rolling almost unconsciously, feeling every moment so brightly, so vividly, that I knew I’d soon be coming. It built up within me slowly at first, riding the waves of usual pleasure, until all of a sudden I felt a new burst of heat reverberate through my body.
And then I was at a peak unlike any I’d felt before, sharp and deep and intense to the point where I closed my eyes without realizing it and my legs shook violently. Vanessa helped me stay standing, supporting me through the all-consuming feeling.
When I opened my eyes again, it was a little darker in the change room than I’d remembered. The air was warm, sounds of the ocean still palpable in the distance. But it was like something had changed in the interior of the space, a small difference only noticeable if you’d just been through something incredible.
“I love you,” I said, murmuring the words more to myself than to Vanessa, though of course they were about her. Panic rushed through my veins immediately after speaking.
It was too soon.
“I know we haven’t been together long,” I added, avoiding Vanessa’s eye so I couldn’t see her reaction until I finished speaking. “And please, please don’t say anything in response. I just need to tell you, to let you know. It may have only been a couple months, but I’ve never felt this way around anyone before. You’re electric, you’re the person who stokes this need in me to be touched, you’re brilliant and talented and so much fun to be around. I probably shouldn’t have said any of this but something about right now just…it happened.”
“I,” said Vanessa, and I shushed her.
“I mean it, please don’t say anything. Not ‘I love you too’—cause I’ll just assume you’re saying it to make me feel better about spilling my guts. And not ‘thanks’ or ‘I appreciate your love’ or anything else. Let me have this?”
She nodded, clearly sensing the manic energy in my voice. She rose from her knees and hugged me, kissing my neck softly. And then she stood in front of me with a half-smile and kind eyes.
That was Vanessa, all beauty and class. She could convey emotions without saying a word. I mean, it was her damn job to do that.
She may or may not have felt like she loved me, but she let me be the wild and unpredictable part of myself without making me feel like I’d messed up, and that was priceless. We shared a special quiet feeling in that change room and then walked down back to our towels at the beach, swam, and sunned ourselves, and lazed about until it was nearly time to go back home.
“Do you want to stay over at my place tonight?” she asked.
Normally, I’d have assumed she didn’t want to see my sadness cave, the studio apartment barely taking up as much space as one of her washrooms. Vanessa’s request, though, wasn’t tinged with judgment. If anyone was judging, it was me. She just wanted me close by.
I could feel it.
And I wanted it too.
We drove back through the stop-and-go traffic, but I didn’t care about the time it took. Vanessa put on some music that relaxed me even further, so I felt like I was coasting along a cushy road full of bliss. Up the winding back roads to her house, through the gate, to the parking pad, it was all surprisingly relaxing.
Vanessa made pasta for dinner and we ate languidly, still feeling the beachy aura long after we parted with the ocean. After a movie and some chocolate, we fell asleep. Some small part of me had hoped she would say she loved me too that night, but as my head hit the pillow I mostly felt relief.
If Vanessa loved me, I wanted her to say it because she felt it. Not because it was an obligation.
That night, I dreamed of waves pounding the shoreline at a beach I’d never seen before, of Vanessa riding out on a surfboard to save me when I swam too far and began to drown. It should have been a scary dream, but the tone of it mirrored the feeling of coming home from the beach. I was saved. I was safe. I was with her.
“What the hell?”
Vanessa’s voice woke me from the residue of my pleasant dream. It was bright enough to be mid-morning, but she hadn’t left for her early call time. Something was clearly wrong. Well, obviously, given her exclamation.
“What’s going on?” I asked, rubbing the sleep from my eyes while I sat up. Vanessa barely looked at me. She was staring at her phone, the line between her eyebrows pronounced and her lips pursed.
“Jesus,” she whispered. If I wasn’t mistaken, there was a sweaty flush rising on her face.
“Vanessa, what’s wrong?” I said.
She jumped, eyes darting to me with the kind of expression you hope to never see on the face of someone you love. It was accusatory, suspicious. Guarded.
In the moment that elapsed while she regarded me with that crushing look, I felt my insides squash together as if I were being flattened. Visceral pain to match the wild emotions running through me.
“What is it?”
“You’re seriously trying to pretend you don’t know?” she said, the words cutting with the edge of a perfectly honed chef’s knife.
All I could do was shrug, looking deep into her eyes in the potentially vain hope that she might see my honesty. Whatever it was, she shoved her phone under my nose.
“Look,” she said. “Your little game worked. Happy?”
On the web page, the photograph of us at the beach glared up at me. My photograph. A headline about ‘lesbian lovers’ in a lurid pink font ran above it and there were several hundred words of gossip blog beneath it about my relationship with Vanessa. Or rather, Vanessa’s relationship with me.
“Oh god,” I said. “How did they get my picture?”
&
nbsp; “Selling your photos worked so well before, just looking for a bit more cash to start your business, Tara?”
Vanessa’s eyes were puffy and lined with red; she’d obviously spent the majority of the morning crying.
Why hadn’t she woken me? What was happening? Why didn’t she trust me?
“I don’t know what’s going on, but I promise you I didn’t sell those to anyone. I would never, ever do that.”
“I don’t know what to believe, Tara. You’ve done it before, what’s stopping you from cashing in on our relationship?”
“What’s stopping me?” My face flushed with anger; it felt like my scalp was crawling with fire ants. “Is that I love you. You know how I feel about you. And I know how you care about your privacy, even if I disagree with some of the things you want me to keep quiet. I respect that. I do. You have to believe me.”
Somehow, my voice had gone from rage-filled to desperate pleading in the matter of a few sentences. My chest felt like someone was sitting on top of me, breath coming in spurts and tightness closing in on my throat. Throughout all this, Vanessa perched on the desk near the bed, her eyes never quite meeting mine.
Outside, one of the windiest days I’d heard in weeks was ruffling the treetops vigorously.
Surreal.
“I don’t have to do anything,” Vanessa said after a pause. “But I’d like to ask you to leave.”
“Really?” Without a single ounce of trust. Without giving me the chance to explain…Well, I had no idea how to explain what was going on. But I knew what I knew, and that was that I’d never sell a picture of the two of us, even if it made me a millionaire.
Not that Vanessa could understand that. She already had all the money she’d ever need, and had spent years caught up in a business where people pretended to be your friend one minute and stabbed you in the back if it benefitted them. I was talking to someone who probably couldn’t see my perspective, no matter how hard she tried.
It hurt that she didn’t seem to be trying at all.
Did she even love me a little bit? For a moment sometime? Or was that all just me?
Vanessa’s curt nod resonated deep within me. I’d likely replay that gesture over and over in my mind on nights when I couldn’t sleep, which I expected to experience in bulk these next few weeks. So I picked up my bag, stuffed a few pieces of clothing into it, gathered stray toiletries, and stood. My visceral reaction to the news was met with Vanessa’s coldest, hardest surface. She had steeled herself to shutting me out, and boy was it working.
She stared at the space between my eyebrows rather than making eye contact, perhaps thinking that I wouldn’t notice. I pretended not to because my heart was shuddering and I needed somewhere to feel safe again. It nearly broke me that that place wasn’t here, in Vanessa’s arms.
While we stood across from one another, her phone kept receiving messages and buzzed with a few unanswered calls. The onslaught had begun. A deluge of attention she’d never wanted.
That I’d never wanted for her, either.
Somehow, I’d show her that I didn’t sell her out. Somehow, I’d piece myself back together.
Was it even possible?
My resolve weakened as I strode out of her house to a waiting cab she’d arranged for me while I packed. Though I looked out the window to watch her as the car pulled away, Vanessa had already turned.
As she went, she took my heart with her.
Chapter Seven
“What the fuck were you thinking?” said Steph. That she wasn’t screaming could have been good news, if I didn’t recognize a deeper, chillier frustration simmering beneath the surface of her words.
“Something along the lines of ‘I’m a lesbian’?” I answered. It was the wrong thing to say, and I knew it: combative, flippant, full of self-pity. Despite knowing this, I wanted Steph to have to fight to make me repent.
I’d lost so much already; I had to feel like at least something today was a win, even a petty one.
“You know that’s not the problem. Well, not the main one.”
“I love feeling like a problem to the one person who’s supposed to be out there trumpeting my successes and getting me new ones.”
“Your life and your career are my work. I’m passionate about my work, Vanessa, but it’s still work no matter how much you love it. And right now that work is giving me a cluster headache that rivals the Northridge earthquake.”
I breathed in, recognizing the tension in my belly. I shook my head and repositioned the phone on my ear.
“Ok, granted this hurts the narrative you were trying to have me live. I’m sorry for that. I refuse to apologize for who I am, though.”
I could picture Tara listening to the conversation and smiling at me for that one, her eyes alight with pride. Maybe she’d rub my back with her palm while sitting nearby.
Get rid of those imagined tender moments, Vanessa. They’ll only hurt you.
“Look Vanessa, it’s not your sexuality that’s the problem. It’s the wildly off-brand story being plastered all over the Internet. It’s the intimacy of that picture. It’s the way you’ve lived, and the fact Dream Time 2 isn’t out yet, plus that I’ve been trying to book you things you’re actually interested in afterwards. This is a hell of a curveball to throw into the mix, and I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about any of it.”
Steph’s tone connected with something in me, and I noticed that she was far more involved emotionally than I’d given her credit for. She sounded hurt, not just angry at my indiscretion.
“I assumed you’d be in favor of me dropping my relationship in order to focus on my career.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Some relationships have a kind of appearance that really hurts publicity. Train wrecks. Others aren’t so bad. You ought to have given me the benefit of the doubt and let me figure out how to spin this one, rather than hide it. We could have talked publicist strategies, you know.”
“That’s fair.”
“Glad you think so,” said Steph. “Now listen, do you know who leaked the picture?”
“It was only from yesterday, so it had to have been Tara.”
The words felt heavy on my tongue, my mouth almost numb as I spoke. Even now, I hated to think that that was all I meant to her: a ticket to money. Was that even why Tara took my picture in the first place?
Was it all connected?
I zoned out and then realized Steph was still speaking. The ache inside me wouldn’t let me focus, no matter how hard I tried. She was talking about strategies to manage the press, which was now entirely centered on my newly revealed sexuality. Although I wanted to be a good client, and I certainly wanted to help diffuse the avalanche of attention somehow, my mind was still preoccupied.
I was mourning my relationship. Tara was at the forefront of my mind even now.
“Listen Steph, I’ll do whatever you think is best. I’m sorry I wasn’t more forthright with you. Can you excuse me, though? I need some time to myself.”
Surprisingly, Steph was ok with that. Maybe she thought I’d do less damage on my own at my house than if I were involved in her plans. Whatever the reason, she bid me goodbye with little fuss.
And then I was alone.
My footsteps echoed throughout the house as I paced, thinking through moments with Tara despite my best attempts to ignore her constant presence in my mind. Glimpses of happiness, of lust, of quiet tender downtime, they all muddled the righteous anger I’d felt that morning.
Nothing could ever be simple, could it?
I finally resorted to taking an Ambien and eating nachos on the couch until I fell asleep, dreaming murky conversations I didn’t understand, but underneath which played the constant roiling sounds of the ocean.
A week after the breakup, I still woke up from dreams of Tara. How could I have been with someone for two months and still be reeling from the impression they left on me?
Simple: she was special.
My brain resisted the conclusion stubbo
rnly, though, and my subconscious kept pressing me with memories during the night. At least when it was daytime, I had work to do. Steph got me on a variety of podcasts and TV shows to talk about the fact that yes, I was gay, and though I wasn’t officially closeted before I had hoped to keep my private life out of the spotlight.
The conversations were tedious, to say the least. One night on the ride home from taping a talk show discussion about lesbians in film, love is love platitudes still spinning in my mind, I saw Steph was calling.
“Hey, hope you liked how that most recent podcast went down,” I said.
“Vanessa, check out Bitch Please right now.”
I opened the blog on my phone and scrolled through a few posts with Steph on speaker.
“What am I looking for here?”
“You’ll see it.”
“Oh,” I said. The word escaped from my mouth without premeditation. I was staring at a close-up picture of Dean Brady, his shirt off while he smiled in bed at the person taking the picture. It was an incredibly intimate moment, captured without posturing or posing. It almost felt wrong to be seeing it.
The post beneath the picture talked about Dean’s longtime partner, Christopher, a man he’d been seen around for years though the two had never confirmed their relationship. There was speculation that this was their relationship, finally revealed.
Underneath the text of the blog post, though, there was a correction posted in bold.
“Wait, what’s happening?” I said to Steph on speakerphone, my heart throbbing with each pulse of blood. I was thankful I was sitting down in a car, because otherwise I may have fainted. “This picture, among others, was leaked to Bitch Please. Other celebrities may have been affected by the leak. Story developing currently.”
“Take a screenshot,” Steph said. “I have one too. They might have to take it down if Dean’s lawyers press the issue. Point is, something’s happening. Word is Christopher got hacked.”
“Hacked?”
The word hung in the air, its weight still reverberating through my mind.