by N. K. Smith
God, everyone will think I’m just a basket case loser who can’t get it together enough to get a date to the most important event of the year! Some actresses can pull off that I’m powerful and therefore don’t need a man thing, but I’m not one of those women. Everyone will see through me! I was really relying on having Jude there, and leaning on him for support. The glossy pictures in the magazines were going to be choice! They were going to show the world that I’m fine and not losing it like everyone seems to be talking about.
Now I’ll be alone.
Alone!
But why can’t I at least appear to be one of those elite Hollywood women who take the world by the balls and make no apologies for attending functions solo? Maybe I can even play it up. Like I’m too much woman for one dude to handle. Like I ditched Jude.
For a moment, I actually convince myself I can fake it. I envision myself with my shoulders pulled back, breasts jutting out, as I smile into the cameras and answer all the red carpet questions. Then I remember that my breasts aren’t big enough to make an impact, even pushed out, and I remember that my collarbone is too knobby and will take away from any small bit of perfection I may have.
Reality comes crashing down again, and I can’t breathe again. The walls of the large dressing room are closing in.
I reach into my bag for the lorazepam I haven’t taken in weeks. I twist off the top of the container and dry swallow two, but they don’t work fast enough. Something inside my head explodes into a scary nightmare of rockets and fireworks.
I need to get the hell out of here—shit, what store is this? I need to find my bodyguard—wait, did I come here with security? I need to find my driver—is he circling around or did he park? I need to get home—how the fuck do I get out of this building? I need to get someone to deliver me a fucking eight ball—do I still have Ron’s number in my phone?—because I am going to get so high I’ll be able to touch the stars with my fingertips.
I’m aware that I’m throwing open the dressing room door with so much force the knob buries itself into the wall. The saleswoman asks if she can help me. In my haste to find the exit I knock down a few displays, and when I can’t find it, terror bubbles up until I scream—or at least I think I do—and run back into the dressing room.
My bodyguard, who seems to appear out of nowhere, nears me, but I claw and kick at him before wrapping my arms around my head and rocking back and forth. Everyone was right. I am fucking losing it, or I’ve already fucking lost it.
There’s only one person I can think of right now, and that’s Peter—Peter will help me—but I can’t find my phone, so I keep saying his name over and over and over again until he finally appears. I don’t know how long it takes for him to get here or who calls him. This panic attack feels like it has gone on for hours, but when I see Peter it seems like only a moment ago that I asked for him.
He covers my hands with his own and pulls them away from my head. “What are you on?”
“How’d you get here?”
“Steve called.”
Steve? I look around for my bodyguard, but he isn’t in the small room. So I focus on Peter. I wrap my arms around his shoulders and take a deep breath when he moves his arms around my waist and pulls me to him.
“What are you on?” he asks again.
“Nothing. I mean, I had a panic attack, so I took the pills my doctor gave me, but nothing else.”
“Okay.” I can feel him nod against me. His breath is warm on my neck. “Okay. What happened, then? What triggered the attack?” Calm. He’s so calm. That’s why he’s good at this, at comforting me.
I press myself back into the wall and let my arms drop to my sides. Peter keeps his hands on me, keeping constant pressure on my thighs.
“I can’t do this,” I say. “I’m not cut out to do this.”
“Do what?”
“Be this perfect person that people want to be with. Be this Hollywood star with her shit together and—”
“You don’t have to be any of that. You just have to be Adra.”
A dark laugh erupts from my throat. “Adra is a loser. No one wants to hang with her. No one’s going to vote for her to win anything.”
“I want to hang with you, and don’t call my best friend a loser, or you’ll have me to deal with.”
My heart slows just enough for me relax a little, and I’m able to focus on Peter’s face. His open, honest, beautiful face, with his noble eyes, his elegant, straight nose, and perfectly shaped eyebrows. The concern etched on his features is almost breathtaking. “I trashed the store, I think.”
I center my stare on his lips and watch as they form his words. They are slow and deliberate when they move, as if Peter is a cop talking to a potential suicide victim getting ready jump. “Yeah, you did, but money can fix that. We need to work on you. Do you think you can walk out of here?”
I don’t move. I don’t want to be saved all the time. Why can’t I just be strong?
Even as the question bounces in my head, I remain paralyzed. “All the paparazzi will see. It’ll be everywhere in less than an hour.”
Peter tugs me into his arms and presses me to his chest. “It’s already everywhere,” he whispers, “but don’t think about that. Think about how it doesn’t matter, how you’ll move on and people will forget.”
I take a deep breath. “Will you walk out with me?” Even if my breakdown has made the gossip news, I can handle it as long as he’s with me.
“Of course. The car’s out back, so we can go out the back way, but Steve said there’s a bunch of photographers out there too already. But, you can do this.”
While I appreciate his vote of confidence, I don’t believe him. Now that my muscles aren’t aching from tension, I take in what he’s wearing—a Union soldier’s uniform. “Are you going to get in trouble for leaving the set?”
“Let me worry about all that Adra,” he says, and I can hear the slight annoyance in his tone. “Just focus on—”
I reach out to run the tips of my nails through his shaggy hair. “You’re my best friend, Peter.”
He takes my hand in his, kisses my fingertips, and just looks at me, the color of his eyes deepening. I can tell he wants to say something, but he doesn’t. And, I can’t seem to muster up the strength to ask.
Chapter 40
Apparently I fell asleep because I wake up safe in my bed. Maybe I took too much lorazepam. All I know is that I wake up feeling pretty good, but as I pad out of my room and head downstairs, I hear the television.
“While the damages were not substantial and representatives of Adra Willows tell Locker’s Confidential that the star has already written a check to cover both the damage and the labor to right them, a deep concern grows for all of us who love the Hollywood starlet. The pattern of destructive behavior from Adra keeps growing bigger and more complex. Is it just continued fallout from the recent death of her trusted manager, or is it something else? Could there be some mental illness issues affecting her, or just a clichéd Hollywood addiction to either traditional drugs or that harder, much more dangerous drug called celebrity?”
I follow the sound to the main room where Peter sits with the remote in his hand.
Jeremy Locker continues, “She is certainly not the first child actor to fall victim to this sort of problem. I, for one, hope the actress is healthy, and the pattern of erratic behavior ends. With her recent Oscar nod, it would be particularly painful to see such a talented young actress go the way of other unfortunate Hollywood kids.”
“Do you think Locker’s right? Do you think I’m going crazy?”
Peter jumps up, but then twists around to shut off the television with the remote. “Um, I think you’re—”
“Having mental issues?”
“No,” he says, before he lets out a breath. “I think you’re just putting too much pressure on yourself. You always have.”
“I feel like maybe he’s right,” I say, gesturing to the blank television. I’m surprisingly collec
ted as I gather my thoughts about it all. I’m calm as I wonder about the status of my mind. “I don’t know what happened but something did. Something’s changed, and I can’t control it.”
He tosses the remote onto the sofa and steps close to me. “Okay, so, maybe we start there. Do you remember when this something happened?”
I shake my head and press my lips together. My eyes water from the intensity of the idea that my brain might actually be sick.
Peter places a hand on my shoulder and then runs it down the length of my arm. He curls his fingers around the heel of my hand and squeezes. “Because I think it started when you didn’t win the Golden Reel award.”
I shake my head again to deny his words. “That’s the night I got high with Elsie, but something happened before that.”
“What?”
I feel lucid. Like I’ve awoken from a strange dream. I can see that something’s wrong, but I don’t know what. “I don’t know. It’s not like there was one event that started it. Maybe it was all of it.”
“All of what?” Now Peter brings his other hand up to my neck. The pads of his fingertips feel like electrodes pumping concern and reassurance into the back of my neck while he uses his thumb to caress my jaw.
“Doing everything I can to be what people want. Elsie said they wanted to see my ass in tight pants and wanted me topless.”
Peter grits his teeth. “Elsie was a user in more ways than one. People don’t like you because you have a nice body, Adra. People go to your films because you’re fantastic.” The intensity of his eyes cuts into me. It has always been so hard to hear negativity about Elsie before, but somehow the power behind his gaze softens his words. “I’ve never understood your choices. I’ve always thought it was her pulling the strings and talking you into doing those things, but the fact that she got you high—”
“She offered, yeah, but I accepted. I can’t put all the blame on her.” I turn away from him and press my hands to my head. I’ve brought this down on me, and I just want it to go away.
I can feel him behind me. I close my eyes and imagine myself as Shyla. I think of myself in his arms all the time, and how lucky she is that he doesn’t know everything about her. She can still be a bit of a mystery to him. She still has time to shape his perception of her with how and when she shares bits of herself. She gets to fall asleep in the warm comfort of his arms, and I hope she knows he’s such a beautiful human being. I hope she realizes and respects that.
Peter’s breath hitting the skin on my neck sends shivers coursing through me. He gently wraps his fingers around my wrists and pulls my hands away from my head. He brings our arms down together and crosses them over my chest. It’s like he’s hugging me and forcing me to hug myself.
I don’t know why, but it’s almost painful to do it.
“I don’t think you’re insane,” he whispers. “But I think you may need some help dealing with this.”
There’s that word again. Help. Help, like I’m some stupid child or challenged adult. Or worse yet, like I’m some struggling junkie who needs to be sent away to rehab. Leaning forward, I break out of his embrace and take several long steps away. “Help?”
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” The tenderness of his voice urges me to look at him, so I glance over my shoulder. The way his forehead creases infuriates me. The pitying lines engraved around his frown cuts deep into me. I don’t want sympathy or empathy or anything like that.
“When I was eighteen and got full access to all my money, my parents made me see someone. A counselor, and I swear I’d have totally messed everything up if I hadn’t seen him. I mean, beforehand, I was making all these plans. I thought about buying a nightclub just so I could party whenever I wanted to.”
I turn and give him an accusing glare. “You’ve never been into partying.”
“You know I’ve done E. I just worked hard to keep how much of it I did from you. I didn’t want your view of me to be distorted by it. It’s not like I had a problem, or anything; I never did addictive, hard drugs, but I was popping beans several times a week for a little bit.”
I tried to imagine Peter on MDMA; dancing, feeling the beats, rubbing up against other warm bodies. “Why didn’t you tell me? I wouldn’t have—”
“Because I didn’t want to expose you to something like that. Lili was already dabbling, but you were so sure of where you were going and what you wanted to do, I thought if I shared that piece of me, I might derail you.” His shoulders fall as if the tension of the situation has magically disappeared. “But the point is, I didn’t buy the nightclub, and I realized that partying is fun, and it got me laid, but at the end of the day, it didn’t push me any further toward my goals. So I stopped. Like totally stopped. I think you should talk to someone who is skilled in—”
“I’ll be in all the papers.” It’s different for me now. Whenever that happened to Peter, he was young and even now, he’s not scrutinized as much as I am. When he got help, no one paid attention, but for me? God, it’d be a headline for weeks.
Peter screws up his lips, then bites down on the bottom one as he shrugs. “Don’t freak out, but you’re already in all of the papers. I’m sure Elsie thought any press was good press, but that’s not always true. You want directors to think of Adra the kick-ass Oscar nominated, soon to be Oscar-winning actress, not Adra the drug addicted, attention hound.”
My stomach drops. “Is that how people see me? Is that how you see me?”
“No. Of course not. I know you, and I know you’ve gotten some shitty advice in your life, and I feel bad about that, but I want you to seriously listen to what I’m saying.”
Therapy isn’t something I want to think about, and neither is the possibility that Peter honestly thinks I’m nothing more than a drugged out starlet who loves the limelight so much, she’ll destroy a boutique to get it. This topic needs to fade away. We need to move on. “So how long have you been here? Did you stay overnight?”
“Of course I did. I wasn’t just going to leave you—”
“You’re going to get fired,” I say and then move to the window. The grass is green and lovely, but beyond it I can see my gate. It’s not a stretch to think about all the photographers out there waiting for me to eventually emerge and give them a version of myself: weak and crazy, or reserved and sane. Which one is truly me?
“I don’t think I’ll get fired. I haven’t abandoned the film. They’ve got plenty of other scenes to—”
“Fine.” The words leave and abandoned float around my head and make me feel physically ill. “Well, your girlfriend is going to dump you.”
The heat of his body is behind me again. His voice is rich in my ear. “Yes, well, she did give me an ultimatum. I wasn’t going to bring it up yet, but since you’re always determined to change the topic to her, let’s talk about Shyla.”
Facing him, I look up at his soft face. I can’t fight the impulse to touch his quickly growing beard. I run a finger down the line of his jaw. “An ultimatum? Nice girlfriend.”
This time, it’s Peter who steps away. “Yes. She is a nice girlfriend. She worries that I’m being used by an old friend.”
“Whatever.” I laugh it off, and then continue. “Forget it. Let’s talk about—”
“No. You brought her up . . . again, so let’s finally discuss it. She thinks you’re using me.”
“Me? Using you? That’s ridiculous.”
He’s got steely eyes right now, and I wonder if he’s using Shyla to shield how he really feels. He thinks I’m using him.
“I come when you call, Adra, and you’ve been calling a lot lately, but—”
“But what?” My pulse rises as my body begins to vibrate. Peter really thinks I’m using him. He doesn’t want me to call him?
His hard eyes go soft. He’s never been one to hold harsh emotions for long. “But there’s not much reciprocity. I feel like I support you and—”
“You don’t need me like I need you.”
“How do yo
u know?” he asks with challenge in his voice and stance.
“Because you have Shyla.”
It takes him a minute, but his neutral expression shifts into something more sympathetic. “You had Danny first.” His body seems to deflate, like he’s just given up a win. “For a long time, I held out, thinking maybe one day you’d see me as a man and not just a childhood friend.”
What is he saying? I do see him as a man. “I—”
He holds up one hand to stop me. “No. I’ve kept this down for far too long, and now that we’re here and it’s almost out there, I want it to be all out there, so I’m not letting you interrupt or change the topic like you usually do.”
He pauses to swallow hard and takes a deep breath. For a second, he looks back out of the window, but then he returns to me and flashes me a smile. It’s a smile I’ve seen many times, and it comes when he’s nervous or about to do something he isn’t sure of.
“I haven’t stuck by you all of these years because I only wanted more than friendship. Please know that. You’re my friend, and I’ll do anything for you.” The smile flashes again right before he reaches out to take my hands away from where they’re tucked around my body. “But,” he begins as he rubs my hands with his thumbs, “the truth is, I do want more than friendship with you. I always have. I want to be your friend and lover.”
I want to tug one of my hands from his and cover my mouth as it hangs open and I try to absorb the shock of his admission. But I don’t because that would break the connection between us. He’s never told me anything like this before, and if he has tried, he’s never used plain words like these.
I have no idea what to say to him. I should be shouting that I want those same things. I should be spilling my guts about how even when I didn’t want to acknowledge my feelings for him, I always knew I wanted him as more than just a friend. I should cry tears of remorse and regret for letting my feelings rot within me for so long, for letting my fear of abandonment control me to the point of never taking risks that now don’t seem like risks at all. “I . . .”