by N. K. Smith
He coughs and steps out from the table, only to step back in on the other side of his chair. Peter pulls my seat out for me, and as I sit, he whispers, “You look lovely.”
“Thank you.” I should tell him he looks handsome, but it feels too clunky, so I look to Liliana. “That dress is amazing.”
Usually Lili loves compliments and uses them as a way to talk about herself at length, but tonight she only smiles at it. “Yours is, too. Gardiner?”
“No. A young designer still in college sent me a sketch months ago, then she kept sending me updates and prototypes, and finally I loved it so much, I bought it from her. She’s going to start her own design company when she graduates.”
“That’s great. What’s her name?”
“Mia Burton.” I’m filled with pride when I say her name. I wouldn’t call her my protégé, but I am a bit of a benefactress to her. One of my new goals is to help those who need it and to polish those hidden gems and bring them into the light of the world.
“I can’t believe you organized all of this,” Lili says as she motions to the room.
I tilt my head in modesty as I feel the blush creep up on my cheeks. “There was a lot of help.”
“But you’ve done something awesome,” Peter says. “Lili and I were just talking about it. The charity is beyond anything we thought any of us would do as a kid, and with the clout you have now, I’m sure it’s going to thrive for years to come.”
Apparently my dinner plate is stunning because I can’t seem to look at anything else. Receiving a compliment from Peter seems to trump any other honor I’ve received. “Thank you. I’m pleased with how much of an impact it’s having.”
A voice breaks in. “Adra, you ready?” Natalie’s standing behind Peter, and when I look up at her, he fills my vision. I can see how handsome Peter truly is. A little piece of my heart breaks at his constant grin. It’s not a fake smile, but it’s not as bright as it used to be.
“I have to do the whole introduction thing,” I say to Lili and Peter. “I’ll be back.”
The speech goes as planned. The audience laughs, sighs, and murmurs thoughtfully at all the right places. Natalie and I describe our travels, we show some footage in the background, and highlight some of the still photos with stories about the women. We introduce the speakers and performers who will accompany the dinner, and then walk away from the microphones to our respective tables.
One of the event’s organizers, Josie, rushes over to me, a clipboard in hand. She gives me a rundown of the performance schedule, and as I look at her and keep walking, I bump into someone. “Sorry.” I try to continue on, but hands envelop mine, and I look up. “Peter.”
Turning to Josie, I give a quick glance at the clipboard. “Nothing’s changed, right? All the performers are here and ready?”
“Yes.”
I smile at her. I want to dismiss her so I can talk to Peter but I don’t want to seem like a bitch about it. “That’s great. Everything’s perfect. Let me know if something happens.”
Josie takes a quick look at Peter and then retrains her eyes on me. “Absolutely.”
Thank God she’s taken the hint. When she turns to walk away, I twirl around to face Peter again.
“We’re always bumping into each other.” His eyes are guarded and something in the set of his lips makes me ache inside.
I chew my lip, and then remember that my lipstick will stain my teeth. With a quick swipe from my tongue, I hope I get all of it off my incisors, and give him a closed smile. “I guess it means we should have some kind of deep discussion, huh?”
Peter widens his eyes as if he doesn’t understand, so I say, “It’s just that every time we bump into each other lately, we start to have a big discussion about, you know, us.”
With his hands still linked to mine, he guides me away from the performance area and into a small, unoccupied space near the serving door. His voice is deep and saturating. “I know we said we should be friends, and I want to be, but neither of us is upholding our end of the deal.”
Although I know what he means, I ask, “What exactly are our ends of the deal?”
“Being friends. Friends call each other. They talk, and well, we haven’t in a long, long time, and I hate it.”
I nod. “Me, too.”
Some of the reservation disappears from his eyes, but his expression still seems cautious. “Then why are we being stupid? We’ve been friends far too long to—”
“Maybe it’s because we can’t go back now?”
“Back where? Being friends? Why?”
I shrug, but resist the temptation to look at the floor again. “Because now that I know more is possible, friendship isn’t enough.” It feels good to admit it. Not just to my journal but to Peter himself. Even if he said he couldn’t be with me, he said it wasn’t because he didn’t love me, but because he didn’t want to lose everything we had—friendship and more.
Peter looks away. He scans the crowd, but I can tell he’s not looking for anyone. He’s thinking. When he looks at me again, he lets go of one of my hands. He uses his index finger to push away a strand of my hair. It’s supposed to be there. My stylist crafted the wispy strands for effect, but I’m not going to ruin the moment by telling him that. Besides, I like the feel of his fingers on my face.
“What if instead of thinking about being friends as a step backward, we think of it as a step forward? What if, maybe, we say the end goal is to see if we can be together, as a couple, you know, with love and lust and passion and the whole nine? But we have to take that step to be friends again in order to get there.”
I widen my eyes and place my free hand flat against my abdomen. “You still want that from me?”
“I want everything with you.”
The way he’s looking at me is intense. He may be just staring at my eyes, but I know he’s really searching my soul. I shift on my feet.
“Nothing has changed just because we spent some time apart. I know what I said at the Golden Reels, but obviously it was dumb to have said it. It didn’t free us up to be friends again; it just ended up being another thing to come between us.”
“You want to be my boyfriend again?” I almost cringe at the hope in my voice. It sounds weak and vulnerable to my ears, but maybe it’s what I’m supposed to be. Maybe this is the way I need to lose control. All those times I gave up my will to other people, it wasn’t the right thing, but this, allowing myself to be open, to be free, to be exposed to someone I care so deeply about, this feels right.
He cups my cheek in his hand. “I want to be your everything again, but friends first.”
I nod and bite my lip again, lipstick be damned. “I think I can do that.” I glance over my shoulder at the room of people and remember that this is my shindig. I can’t stay in this little corner with Peter all night, even though I’d like to. “So, friend, would you like to come sit down with me?”
“Yes.” His grin blazes and is like a beacon to me.
“What are you doing tomorrow?”
“Ordering pizza and watching the game on TV. Do you want to come over?”
“Is that something a friend would do?” I ask.
“Yes. Come over, please.”
Even though I’ve been riding high on the beauty of life lately, I am lifted even more by this moment. I glance over to our table and see Lili fiddling with her phone. Maybe Lili is a part of my journey with Peter. The three of us started as friends, and if Peter and I are going to grow closer, perhaps she needs to be included in that. “Should we invite Lili? I think that might be the friendly thing to do.”
He screws up his lips in a comic fashion. “I don’t know. She gets crazypants when her team doesn’t win. A little too passionate for me, but I think it’ll be nice to spend time, all three of us, like we used to.”
Hand in hand, we walk toward our friend.
Chapter 64
Continuing my trend of connecting with my past, I did what I’ve been thinking about doing. I called
my dad.
I wish I could say I feel better about it, but I really don’t. I mean, he sounded old and tired, and yeah, maybe a little happy to hear from me, but I could tell he was hiding the conversation from my mother. I could hear her in the background, and then I heard rustling, and the opening and closing of doors. I didn’t ask, but I’m pretty sure he left the house and hid in the garage as we talked.
As for the content of our conversation it went a little like this:
Me: So, yeah, how are you?
Dad: Can’t complain, I guess.
Me: (Silence)
Dad: How about you? You look happy on the TV.
Me: Yeah, I am happy. Lots of good stuff happening.
Dad: That’s good.
Both Dad and Me: (Silence)
Me: So, you still like reading mysteries?
Dad: Yeah, it drives your mother crazy.
Me: I’ll send you a book my friend Natalie just wrote. I think you’ll like it.
Dad: That’ll be nice. Thank you. (Silence, again) Did you want to talk to your mother?
Me: Not really.
Dad: Okay.
Me: Does she want to talk to me?
Dad: I don’t know. She talks about you sometimes.
Me: Oh.
Dad: I think about you all the time.
Me: Oh.
Dad: Maybe I can fly out there sometime, and we can have dinner.
Me: Yeah. That’d be cool, I guess.
And then there was more small talk, and we said goodbye. Neither of us told the other we loved them. I think I sounded too hopeful when I asked if my mother wanted to talk to me, but again, neither of us acknowledged that.
So nothing big happened, but I guess establishing a relationship, no matter how tentative, with him is a good thing, right? I sent the book the next day. I hope he likes it.
***
Peter and I have called each other every day, and had dinner twice a week for the past month. Today he picks me up on his newest toy—an Italian street racing motorcycle—around ten in the morning. As he parks the bike and pulls the helmet from his head, I do a little fake stretch. “What’s with getting me up so early? You know I need my beauty sleep.”
“You couldn’t get more beautiful if you tried.”
“I’ve got a sea of plastic surgeons out there in LaLa Land that say differently.” I wave a hand in a grand gesture to the security fence and gate. “I guarantee they’d make me prettier if they tried. Or at least their version of prettier.”
Peter’s long legs make it easy for him to be next to me quickly. A giggle bubbles up in me as he slides his hands around my waist and lifts me up. “They couldn’t make you prettier, Adra.”
“You’re right. What do those guys know about real beauty, anyway?”
He places a light kiss on my lips. “Nothing,” he murmurs.
I love that he doesn’t take his lips away from mine to say it. I love that I can taste his breath, and that it’s incredibly sweet. “Have you been eating chocolate in the morning again?”
He makes a ppppffffft sound and he tightens his arms around me. “It’s my life; I can do what I want!” Peter sets me down and breaks away to jog back to the bike, but he’s next to me again in no time. “I brought some for you, too.” Peter holds out the box of gourmet dark chocolates to me. “I had to make sure they were good enough, you see.”
I nod in an exaggerated fashion and then sit down on the steps. I eat one chocolate and I can’t stop until I hear the sounds of a helicopter overhead. We both look up and see the press ’copter circling.
Peter turns to look at me, but I stretch out on the steps, crossing my legs at the ankles and leaning back on my elbows on the step behind me. I take one last chocolate and pop it into my mouth.
“That doesn’t bug you?”
I squint up at Peter. He’s pointing at the helicopter. “Nope. I’ve decided the whole hiding out thing isn’t for me. I mean, being in the public eye is already lonely as hell, but I’m not going to let a little flash photography dictate what I do in a day.”
Lifting a hand, I give the helicopter a little wave. I can’t take all the credit for this progress. I’ve been seeing a therapist religiously. Every four or five days, I’m in her office unleashing the past and accepting help on how to deal with it. With her guidance, my anxiety has become manageable. The freedom has been amazing.
“We’re going to be on Locker’s Confidential tonight, you know.”
“Yes, because us eating chocolates on the front steps of my house is endlessly fascinating. So, where are you taking me? Am I dressed appropriately for this secret date?”
He stretches out like I am, but he’s angled toward me, almost lying on his side. When he leans in closer so that his face is centimeters away from mine, I ask, “What are you doing?”
Peter puts a hand flat on my belly. “Giving Locker something better to show than us eating chocolate.”
My eyes immediately close as I feel his soft and full lips press against mine. He slides his hand over to my hip and tightens his fingers until he’s gripping my flesh through my shorts. If he really wanted to, he could slip his hand up under the shorts and have a handful of my bare flesh, but he doesn’t move his hand beyond the continual squeeze and release.
I can feel his heart pumping as he shifts his body even more so that his chest is on mine. The steps cut into my back but not in such a painful way that I would risk stopping the kiss in order to readjust. I bring my hand up to his chest, then his abdomen, and then finally, I’m able to snake it around Peter’s side and to his back. I bring it up his strong shoulder blade and then tickle the short hairs on the back of his neck with the very tips of my fingers.
I can’t tell which is sweeter, the lingering taste of the chocolate on his tongue or the actual chocolate I just ate. The taste of Peter is enough to make the hair on my arms stand up as the quick moving stream of molten desire flows from my brain down my body and pools in that little spot low and deep in my abdomen.
When the flood of sensation grows to be just a little too much, I moan and turn my head to the side so that he’s kissing the line of my jaw.
“What?” His whispered voice is so full of hunger and desire that the passionate, lustful, and shameless sex deprived woman within me wants to wrap my legs around his waist and become one being with him right here.
“What?” he asks again while still kissing my jaw. He takes my earlobe into his mouth, then chuckles when the action causes my body to arch up and another little moan to escape.
“I’m having very dirty thoughts right now, and I—”
He cuts my words off with another deep kiss. Just when I’m about to let go and allow myself to give Locker’s Confidential viewers a very interesting show complete with blurred out bodies and dirty implications, Peter pulls away.
“I could kiss you all day, but then it wouldn’t really be a date, would it?”
I press my lips together and get my breathing under control. “I wouldn’t mind, you know? I think we’ve worked enough on our friendship to take it—”
“Nope. Not going to hop into bed with you.”
“It doesn’t have to be in a bed.”
Peter laughs as he stand ups and extends his hand to help me up. When I’m upright, he presses me to him, and with his lips next to my ear, he says, “I’m going to make love to you again, but we’re going to do this right. It’ll be like in the movies when the young hero courts the girl of his dreams.”
He starts moving us down the steps and toward his bike. I’m walking backward, so all I can do is keep my arms around him and trust that he’ll get us there in one piece. When my ass hits the motorcycle, Peter presses his groin into me, and the floodgates open again. I can’t control myself. I kiss him with all of the longing I’ve harbored within me for him, Peter Truelove, my true love who makes my insides sizzle and gasp and yearn for more.
Peter pulls away again, and when I look at him, I see that young, shy boy fit to be the m
ain character of a romantic movie. I see the blush on his cheeks, and I stroke it with my thumbs. “You know what that just made me feel like?”
He shakes his head. “What?”
“When I was seventeen, I did that movie where my character had sex for the first time in the back of a car. It made me feel like I think she would have felt. Like I’m young and new to everything and so full of energy and love and expectation.”
“Well, you are all those things.”
“Yeah, but what I mean is that I grew up jaded, and even before I had sex for the first time, I knew what it would be like. I knew what Hollywood makes it seem like. I had my first kiss on camera.”
“I know. I was there.” He’s reliving that moment between us, captured on film forever.
“But it wasn’t a first kiss. It was a pretend thing, and I guess I kind of feel like even after the cameras stopped rolling everything until now was just a pretend thing too.”
“Like your whole life was nothing more than one big movie where you played a role the whole time?”
I press my lips together and nod. “But that,” I say as I point down to the bike and then over to the steps, “felt real. Like we’re just two real people experiencing something . . .”
“Real?”
I intend to elaborate, but he kisses me quickly. Peter unstraps another helmet from the tail bar of his motorcycle and hands it to me. “Come on, let’s go. I’ve got a lot of other real things to show you.”
On the back of his bike, with my arms around his chest and my legs hugging his, I feel free. I know the helicopter photographer will have transmitted pictures of this moment to the world by now, and I know other shutterbugs will follow us around. It doesn’t matter. As we cruise around Mulholland, I lift my arms up into the air and smile beneath the helmet.
I am so thankful for my life in a way I’ve never been before.
Chapter 65
Been talking to my therapist about mental health. I was never quite sure if my brain was messed up before the drugs. Anxiety is a given. No need to discuss it. Well, we do discuss it, but it’s not like she has to assess me for it or anything. We’ve been discussing depression, and how I probably had acute depression at the time I started using, but from the sounds of it, I had dysthymia, which is like, long-term depression.