by April Fire
The talking dies down, the canapés demolished and eyes turning upon Richard. They’re waiting for him to give whatever speech his mom used to give whenever she got back from a successful pillage of another firm, and he looks up at them, his eyes flicking around at them and wondering how he even ended up among them.
“Richard?” she says, nudging him with her elbow.
He looks into her eyes and struggles to find the youthful woman who raised him. Time hasn’t been kind to her, and there’s a coldness to her glare. The decades of boardroom battles and legal disputes have taken their toll on her. Still, he knows that she wants him to be happy. He hopes she would some day forgive him.
Richard lets out a slow breath and shakes his head. Enough is enough.
“No. No speech today,” he sighs, wringing his hands together so it’s not as obvious that he’s shaking. “Kingswood is fine. Great, in fact. They want to make us all lots of money. But I don’t want any of it.”
A few chuckles emanate from around the table – they think he’s joking. “What happened to you in Chicago, son?” someone says, a large man opposite Richard who looks like a frog stuck on top of a potato.
“I met someone,” he says truthfully, not caring that their smirks widen, “and she made me see that all of this? It’s bullshit.” The gasps that a few of them let out are particularly gratifying. “I’m not excited by this,” Richard continues, “it’s boring. You’re all boring. You’re all boring, greedy, self-aggrandizing bastards and I hate that I’m one of you. But not anymore.”
He stands, his chair shooting backwards at the same rate as his audience’s eyebrows shoot upwards and straightens his jacket. “I quit,” he says, feeling his mom’s gaze bore into him like a drill, “I don’t want a share of the profits. I don’t want the company car, you can take me off the mailing lists. I’m done.”
“But Richard, I –”
“Mom, I know you had the best intentions. But find someone else. They’ll be much better at this than me,” he says. She doesn’t seem angry, just rather confused. He begins to walk away from her, buttoning his jacket and heading for the entrance. “Now, if anyone needs me, I’ll be in Chicago,” he informs them, “and by the way; I fucking hate caviar.”
With that, he walks out. He doesn’t look back.
As he hurries down the steps, he feels movement at his side.
“Emma?” he asks, “where did you come from?”
“I was at the bar,” she says, and Richard rolls his eyes, “did you just – are you – have you - ?”
“I quit,” he says triumphantly, ignoring his shaking hands. “I told them all to go fuck themselves.” He can’t quite believe he actually, finally did it.
Emma stares at him. “So – does this mean you won’t be needing a PA anymore?”
“Not exactly,” Richard hums, heading towards the main road where a taxi will surely be, “I’ll need an agent.”
“I could do that!” Emma pipes up like he knew she would, “I could totally learn how to do that!”
“Okay, well, first job, find an apartment for us. In Chicago,” he adds, and Emma stops him in his tracks.
“Are you doing this for Lauren?” Emma asks, but Richard shakes his head.
“No, I’m doing it for me. It’s just – y’know, if I’m gonna leave, I might as well go be with her, too,” he shrugs, hailing a cab and trotting towards it as it pulls over. He’s never felt more positive about anything in his life as he asks Emma to look up flight times.
A week later, he’s leaving LA for good.
***
Lauren’s been doing okay. Not horribly, not bad, but not brilliant either. It feels a little like she’s drifting through the days with no real motivation, throwing everything into her work rather than addressing the mess of her personal life. Richard calls often enough, but it’s never quite what she wants, it’s never quite enough for either of them just to hear the other’s voice.
But it’s Saturday today, and that means a whole day of sulking around her apartment, trying to persuade herself to do something vaguely productive. She tries cooking soup for later and fails miserably – the power of the blender always catches her unawares – and spends the next hour scrubbing soup from the stove with an irritable expression etched into her face.
She launders every item of clothing that’s currently spread over her apartment floor, so that at least it’s a clean trip hazard now, and tries not to think of what Richard might be doing right at this moment. Probably having drinks with some other millionaires and planning which massive yachts he’s going to buy once summer hits. She hates the fact that all those stupid rich people get to spend time with her Richard whilst she’s alone in her apartment, nearly crying over spilled soup. She bets they don’t appreciate him nearly as much as she would.
She almost breaks her phone in her haste to grab it when it buzzes at her later on that evening.
“Richard?”
“Hey, Lauren,” his voice buzzes. It’s never as nice over the phone as it is in person – plus, she can’t see his cute smile like this. “How are you?”
“I’m alright,” she says, leaning back on the couch and throwing her feet over the arm. “It’s been a dull day, so why don’t you tell me about yours.”
She can hear the sound of passing cars from Richard’s end of the line, and she wonders what on earth he’s walking for. “Oh, alright, I guess,” he says, and yeah, he’s definitely somewhere outside.
“Where are you going? Isn’t there some driver at your beck and call?”
“No, not today,” he says, “I’m not on business right now.”
“So where are you headed?”
“Oh, just somewhere I’ve been meaning to go for a while,” he says, his voice drowned out a little by the sound of a truck rumbling past.
“Where? Are you finally going to that art exhibition you were so excited about?”
“Kind of,” he chuckles, and Lauren frowns at the phone.
“What’s so funny?” she asks, “Don’t laugh at me!”
“I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing at – well, you’ll see.”
“Why, what’ve you done?” she giggles, when she hears a knock at the door. “Have you sent me muffins again?”
“Uh, kind of?” he says as she hurries down the stairs, eyes trained on her front door.
“Oh my God thank you,” she babbles, jumping the last few steps. Yanking her front door open, she searches for a parcel. Instead, Richard stands on her doorstep.
She gawks at him, the phone still held to her ear and the words still lingering on her tongue. Her mouth flaps as she tries to find something, anything, to say that quite sums up the happiness blazing in her chest. “I – um – I don’t –”
“Hi,” Richard says with a little wave, his smile bright and hopeful and right there in front of her.
She’d like to say she didn’t throw herself at him, but the truth is she can’t think of anything else to do as she hugs him tight and places kisses all down the side of his face. “What the hell are you doing here?” she gasps, “I thought you were in LA?”
“I bought an apartment here,” he grins, “I quit the firm.”
“No way,” Lauren says, pulling back to cup his face in her hands. “You’re here for good?”
“Yup, I’m no longer your millionaire boyfriend, I’m your struggling artist boyfriend. Provided I’m still your boyfriend?” he says, hope written all over his face.
“Huh, well…” she ponders, “I suppose so. Provided you kiss me right this instant.”
“So demanding,” he says with a smile, before leaning to press his lips against hers, his hands pulling her closer to him.
“Celebratory homecoming sex?” she suggests, taking his hand and leading him through the door.
“Definitely,” he grins, pulling her into another kiss and shrugging off his jacket.
Lauren smiles against his mouth. Perhaps today won’t be so bad after all.
&nbs
p; The End
Take the Leap
April Fire
Chapter One
Tennessee
“Dominic fucking Callahan? He’s going to be working here?”
My jaw hung open when I heard the news, my brain ricocheting around my head as I tried to make sense of the words. It was just a name, like any other, but to me, that name sounded something like a curse to my ears.
“Yeah, he’ll be starting sometime later this week. What about him?” Natalie, the woman helping strap me into the safety gear I’d need to perform the scene, replied. The safety harness, which usually felt comfortable, suddenly clutched at my chest and knocked all the breath from my body at once and now I was struggling to keep upright. I planted my hands on the desk in front of me, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth.
“Nothing,” I offered in response, but I knew she wasn’t buying it. She cocked an eyebrow at me in the mirror.
“Come on, tell me,” she urged me. “It’s been so boring around here today. I need some gossip.”
“He’s…” I trailed off. How was I meant to tell her about Dominic Callahan? She probably had her own opinions on him, anyway – she’d been working in the industry for years, and anyone with that much experience behind them had caught up with his reputation. It was impossible to ignore, even though I’d managed to avoid him up till then.
“We had a thing, ages ago,” I waved my hand, and found a lump in my throat threatening to make my voice crack. Where the fuck had that come from? It had been years since I’d last laid eyes on him, and yet here I was acting like a crazy schoolgirl with a crush.
“Oh, really?” Natalie grinned at me. “How long ago?”
“Back when we were both training,” I replied. I hadn’t let myself think about this shit for a long time, and now all the memories were coming flooding back to me. Some of them welcome, some of them not so much.
“So, what, seven, eight years?”
“Something like that,” I nodded.
“And how did it end?” she asked.
I turned around and stood up; the harness was on now, and I didn’t want to answer any more questions.
“Am I ready to go?” I replied as though I hadn’t heard her second question. She nodded, and her eyebrow flickered upward to let me know that she could see that I was avoiding the question at hand.
“Good, thanks.” I turned and walked out of the trailer. It was blazingly bright outside, the heat stifling through the layers of safety gear I had to wear to make sure I didn’t end up with a serious injury from what I was about to do. Back when I’d first started, I’d though the rules were tight, but now it seemed like I had to go through four hours of prep just to take a punch.
“Is that her?” I heard a voice squeal from a few feet away, and turned to find myself faced with Julia McMahon. Short, curvy, and ridiculously beautiful, she was the kind of woman people thought of when they pictured a movie star. She paused in front of me, arms spread wide, as the entourage lurking behind her came to an awkward halt and waiting impatiently for her to finish up her encounter with me.
“You’re my stunt double, right?” she remarked.
“That’s me,” I nodded, and she slowly walked around me. I caught the eye of one of her assistants, and we exchanged a look that said just wait till it’s over and she’ll get bored soon. Julia meant well, but being the enormous star that she was meant that she was often way out of touch with how the real world actually worked.
“That’s so cool,” she sighed as she found herself in front of me once more. “Good luck with the scene!”
“Thanks,” I replied, smiling at her tightly, and continued my journey over to set. Julie was a sweet kid and I did like her, but she always seemed to pick the worst possible times to appear and insert herself into situations that had nothing to do with her.
***
The scene didn’t take long, and soon enough I was back in my trailer being freed from all the safety gear they’d put on me to make sure I didn’t come away with so much as a single scratch. Natalie was the one unpacking me, and I could tell that she was bursting to ask me more about Dominic and our relationship but was too polite to bring it up. Thank God for her Southern manners – I cringed at the thought of running through everything that had happened to a stranger after I’d done such a good job putting it from my mind for the last seven years.
“So, what are you up to tonight?” Natalie asked, cocking her eyebrow at me teasingly. “I think Dominic’s going to be heading into town tonight. I could find someone with his number if you want-”
“No, I’m good,” I assured her. “I’m just going straight to the gym and then home. Thanks.”
I ducked out of there before she had a chance to say anything else – or to lock the doors to keep me from leaving until she’d gotten the amount of gossip that she deemed necessary to continue – and blinked against the sunshine burning into my eyes. I hurried to the sidewalk outside the studio, pulling my hood up over my head so no-one would see the insane amounts of make-up I had plastered to my face so I could closer resemble Julia. Maybe that was how I could avoid Dominic when he ended up on set; ask the make-up artists to keep sculpting me into a different person so he could never figure out who I actually was. Did he even know that I was working on the same set as him? Did he even care? I forced my eyes to the pavement and started counting the cracks under my feet, anything to get my mind off the paranoia currently pulsing through my head. How could it be that I’d spent seven years away from this guy and he still had this kind of power over me?
I arrived back at the apartment building where I was staying for the duration of the shoot and went straight down to the gym. It was pretty tiny, and nothing compared to the enormous space I usually trained in back home, but it had a free weights section and a TV showing some crappy reality show and that would do for now. The place was empty, which was a gift, as I planned to be as loud as humanly possible to work out all the fucking feelings that had come flooding back since I’d heard his name again.
Dominic Callahan. That name used to be something so good to me, so sweet and so pure and so hopeful. We’d met when I was eighteen and he was twenty, just a couple of young nobodies training hard and trying to get their break into the industry. I’d looked up to him so much – he had always been the most daring, the most hard-working, the most adventurous. He was the kind of guy who’d leap from the highest point of our training set just to see how the landing felt, and then go out and spend the night barhopping in LA with nothing but ten dollars in his pocket, just to see how many drinks he could get bought for him. He was savagely smart, the kind of gorgeous that stops traffic, and he knew both. And he was my downfall.
I wasn’t sure when he set his eyes on me specifically. Because he’d worked his way through most of the girls in our course, to the point where his name was usually met with an eyeroll and a knowing sigh. He was the kind of guy that I had dismissed months before he turned his attentions on me, because I wasn’t going to be the one to fall for him. I was going to turn him down and move on like a grown-ass adult and that was going to be it, because I had better things to do than spend my time pining after some playboy when my career was just getting off the ground.
And then, of course, we were paired up to work together on a project. It was the sort of shit you might expect to see in a fish-out-of-water comedy, the nerdy chick focused on her grades getting matched with the gorgeous jock who’d never really paid her that much attention before. I swore to myself that I wasn’t going to let this increased closeness get under my skin.
“Hey,” he sidled over to me on our first day working together. “So, you ready for this?”
“If you are,” I shot back, and he cocked an eyebrow and grinned – a megawatt smile that seemed to put every one of the stage lights around us to shame.
“Tennessee, right?” he confirmed, and I nodded. My name on his lips felt natural, obvious.
“Let’s get this done,�
�� he held his hand out to me. “I want us to be the best couple here.”
I looked down at his hand, debating whether or not I was going to take it. Because it felt like, right then, if I touched him, it would be giving in to everything I had promised myself that I wouldn’t. I had told myself I was better than this, that I was more than this, but there was something about being the center of his attention that seemed to wipe my brain clean. I reached out and slid my hand into his, and he pulled me off in the direction of the safety equipment and just like that I was falling for him.
The next few months were crazy. I was living by myself for the first time, something close to a real adult, and falling in love in a way that no relationship had lived up to before or since. Maybe it was just the intensity of working together on top of dating, but I fell for Dominic faster and harder than I’d ever fallen for anyone before in my life. He was exciting in a way that no-one had ever been exciting to me before – he made me feel alive, when he’d scoop me up in his arms and carry me to the bedroom and throw me down and fuck me senseless. I had never felt that full-body adoration for someone before, the very tips of my fingers tingling every time we were together as though my entire being was trying to tell me that this was it, this was the one. I couldn’t believe I’d been so lucky as to meet the man of my dreams at eighteen. I really, truly believed that Dominic and I were meant to be together, that some cosmic force had drawn us in and guaranteed us this future. He stopped dating anyone else, and soon we were the golden couple of our training group; people asked me what I’d done to tame him, and I didn’t know what to tell them because he hadn’t changed a bit. The only difference was that I was there with him now, and every time he slung his arm around my shoulders and planted a kiss on my temple I still couldn’t figure out what I’d done to earn a guy this perfect.