by J. P. Oliver
Hassan stuck a stubborn hand out, trying his best to be annoyed with me. “You’re not driving.”
“I own this car.”
“Get in the passenger seat, Fred.”
It wasn’t a real fight, and we were losing daylight. Sharing a wry look, we climbed into the car, leaving Jackson, Doc, and my home behind.
I didn’t know what was wrong with me.
Lately it had been like this more and more; the ability to speak easily with Hassan was only getting more and more comfortable. He was surprisingly easy to talk to, I thought, for someone who was supposed to be gruff and intimidating and like a beefy shadow on the wall—though, in all honesty, he was all those things, too.
And, lately, it was getting harder to fight the warmth that crept through me when he looked at me too long. Nights like the one after the accident on-set had become more frequent. After a sweep of the building, we would sit a moment and talk. During moments like that, it was easy to forget that nothing about our current situation was normal.
Really. I didn’t know what was wrong with me.
Sure, he was attractive. Anybody could see that much. But, he was different from any of the people I’d found myself interested in before. My prior flings and occasional boyfriends were warm and had a clean history. There was light. No past cloaked in darkness and bloodshed and violence and suspicion. That wasn’t how I ever thought of myself, or how I had ever tried to live. I had enough things from the past that I had overcome; I didn’t need to delve into the darkness of someone else’s past.
But, that didn’t mean the spark wasn’t still there.
“Fred.”
I turned from the window, feeling a little sleepy. It must have shown on my face, because when Hassan glanced over at me, he looked like he was pressing down on some small smile. “Sorry. I didn’t know you were asleep.”
“I wasn’t.” And then a yawn betrayed me.
“Okay. Not sleeping.” Hassan said it in a way that clearly indicated he didn’t believe me one bit. “Can you just check the map. The turn should be coming up soon and I want to make sure—”
“Got it.” I scrolled through my phone rapidly, nodding as I reaffirmed what he was thinking. “Yeah, it’s going to be the next one. On your right.”
Flipping his blinker on, he hummed. “Thought so.”
The cabin was a few hours from Los Angeles, stuck somewhere in the beauty of the Sequoia National Forest. It was a last minute rental, and I’d made the decision to come here under the pretense of scouting a new location. The outdoor set we had thought of building wasn’t going to feel natural enough, I had told Hank at a production meeting.
He’d seemed stressed about the idea of traveling off-set to film, but I had assured him I knew a good place for it, and would be more than happy to scout on my own time. With his blessing and two days away from the set, I had dragged Hassan with me into the wild for some much needed peace and quiet.
“What do you think?” I asked as we entered the cabin. It was a small space, though I had been sure to book a place with two bedrooms (I would be lying if I said I didn’t hover my mouse over the ‘one bedroom’ option for a second before hurriedly moving on). “Not too shabby, right?”
Hassan whistled as he entered the cabin, taking in the dark wood walls, the fireplace, the cozy atmosphere. “I’ve seen shabbier.”
Dropping my bag on the floor, I moved to the kitchen, already set on making a pot of coffee. We’d just driven quite a while, but the day still wasn’t over. “You used to be into stuff like this, right? Camping, the outdoors….”
I looked over my shoulder. Hassan was watching me stretch for the highest shelf, and I felt a warmth in my stomach. He cleared his throat. “Who told you that?”
“Jackson.”
He sighed. “Jackson gossips.”
“Is it true, though?” I came down with two mugs and a bag of pre-ground beans.
“Yeah, but….” He gestured to the cabin and all of its quaintness as he leaned against the kitchen counter. “Not like this. This is, uh… what do they call it? That fancy kind of camping.”
I considered it a moment as I prepped the coffee. With a grin, I guessed, “Glamping?”
“Yeah, glamping,” and he said it with such distaste that I had to laugh.
“It’s kind of a lot,” I agreed. Not that I was complaining. The place was relaxing.
“I’m more used to tents. Sleeping bags in the dirt or sand. Y’know. Real camping.”
“Did you camp a lot?”
He made a far-off sound, like he was remembering something. “Yeah.”
“By yourself?”
“Sometimes.”
Eyeing him, I started the coffee pot. It gurgled to life. “That sounds lonely.”
“It was nice,” he defended, though he didn’t sound angry. He said it like it was just a fact. “Quiet. I could get a lot of thinking done.”
“What about the times you weren’t alone?”
We stood across the small kitchen from each other, leaning on counters. He looked like he was remembering something less pleasant this time. “Sometimes it was with my unit from the military. We all spent enough time camping together that it was second nature. They were a good crew. Like brothers.” He even grinned a little. “Mikhail was part of it for one tour.”
I mirrored the look on his face, helpless to stop it. “I can’t imagine you two camping together.”
“He was just as strange then as he is now. But trustworthy.” It was rare for Hassan to give a compliment; when he said them, he really meant them.
“Who else would you camp with?”
He paused. “A friend. Another military buddy, but… we were never in the same company.”
I swallowed the feeling that there was more to the story—that there was more that Hassan was deciding not to tell me—and smiled. My acting chops paid off, it seemed, a comfortable silence overcame the kitchen, nothing but the sound of the coffee dripping into the pot to fill the space between us.
“Well,” I sighed, turning back to the mugs, “this isn’t going to be like one of your tours overseas. A little glamping isn’t going to kill you.”
He brushed past me and, out of the corner of my eye, I could have sworn I saw him smile. “We’ll see about that.”
After unpacking, we went on a short hike. I knew the area well enough, and made sure to take some photos for Hank. If we did end up using this location for the film, well, I wouldn’t be complaining. It was gorgeous; the trees dwarfed the both of us, the reds and oranges of the trunks melting into the green of the rest of the forest. I even snapped a photo of Hassan while he was squinting past the sun to see the top of a tree, which I kept to myself.
We headed back when the sun showed signs of setting, golden light filtering in through the branches as we hiked back. There was no urgency to how we moved, keeping a slow and steady pace back to the cabin, chatting about nothing in particular.
Out here, there were no assistants and interns and actors, no stalker, no stress. Just me, the smell of fresh leaves, and Hassan.
I proposed a cookout, which Hassan easily agreed to. I poured bags of ice into the cooler and loaded it with beers as Hassan started a small fire and began to cook hotdogs. The quiet was nice, and I took the liberty of watching Hassan work when he wasn’t looking, both glad and annoyed with myself for being drawn into looking at him.
We ate our luxurious dinner of hotdogs and cheap beer sitting close to one another, backs pressed against a gnarled log, in silence, until Hassan finally spoke.
“I used to camp with my grandpa and dad.”
He said it quieter, and with the same sort of fondness he’d had when talking about his military company, so I knew it meant something important. I didn’t say anything. He took it as a sign to keep speaking.
“They were in the military, too. Used to tell me about all the things they saw. The places they went and the people they met.”
I touched the condensation on
my beer can, and when I looked at him he was watching the sky through the trees. “Is that why you joined?”
“I think so.” He shook his head, turning back to Earth—to me. “Sorry. I don’t know why I—”
“It’s fine. I, um….” I grinned, offering a shrug as I watched the fire. “I didn’t go camping much. Ever, really. I was stuck at home a lot. Y’know. My mom worked a lot since it was just her, and I was always trying to look out for me and my sister. We didn’t have a lot of money, so….” I chuckled at a sudden memory. “The first time I ever went was after I got my first job in Hollywood. They sent us out to the woods for a camping arc and that was the first time I ever got to do any of this.”
Hassan’s mouth twitched into a half-smile. “Glamping.”
“Glamping.”
“The country’s better than the city,” he said, and he sounded happy for once. I couldn’t recall ever seeing him that relaxed. I felt a wall between us slowly crumbling, every word like the blow of a sledgehammer. “I’d spend all my time out here if I could.”
I nodded slowly. “Some of my best experiences have been out here.”
“Like what?”
Another laugh fell out of me. “Well, there was a retreat for one soap I was doing—”
“Wow. I almost forgot you were a soap opera star.”
I swatted his shoulder lightly, earning a chuckle. The contact, however brief, made my chest tighter. “Shut up. I’m telling a story.” After he offered an insincere apology, I added, “We went on this retreat, right? Me and… well a bunch of people I got along with but didn’t really like. Didn’t want to spend a whole week in one house doing studio-sanctioned bonding exercises.
“By the second day, I was ready to go home, but couldn’t obviously. So, I took my producer’s truck after she’d fallen asleep, drove a couple miles down the road to the nearest dive bar….” I took a long sip of my beer. It was my fourth and I was starting to feel that familiar pleasant buzz. Hassan was on his third, and it occurred to me that maybe the ‘no drinking on the job’ rule didn’t extend this far into the middle of nowhere.
“I love a good dive bar,” he sighed.
“That,” I told him, “was the first time I ever got a blowjob in a bathroom.”
I don’t know why I told him that. I could feel the back of my neck heating up in the silence that followed, until he finally said, “I got my first in high school.”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s not a contest.”
“Sure,” he hummed, voice dripping in sarcasm.
By some magnetic force, Hassan and I happened to glance at one another at the same time, and the look on his face had me shivering despite the fire bleeding warmth in front of us. There was a certain hunger in his eyes—it was a look I’d never seen him wear before—and I could clearly see the wheels in his mind turning. I wondered what he was thinking about. I wondered if it was the same thing I was thinking about….
Slowly, the corner of his mouth pulled up, just a fraction but it was enough for me to notice. I caught his lips and stared at them a moment too long, the obviousness of what I was suddenly wanting apparent to the both of us.
I realized how close we were, and how much I wanted us to be closer. Even over the acrid smoke of the campfire, I could still smell whatever it was—something like cinnamon, but not quite as sweet—that I had come to associate with Hassan. Deep in my abdomen, I could feel a hot warmth stirring at the tension.
But, then it was over. The realization of who we were to each other flickered across Hassan’s face, and I too remembered that he was my security guard and I was his employer. I looked away into the fire and took another sip of my beer, ignoring the slight throb of protest in my groin.
Had I really wanted to kiss him? The realization that I would have done it was a shocking one. Did I have feelings for him? Real feelings? Or was I just drunk off the time I’d been spending around a hot and capable man? He wasn’t my type, I reminded myself, though it was getting harder and harder to listen to that part of me.
“This was good,” I heard myself say, a sudden need to fill the silence. “The hot dogs. The beer.” I took a breath I didn’t know I needed, casting him a small smile. “Thank you for coming out here with me, Hassan.”
His cold eyes met mine, but there wasn’t that same iciness to them. He didn’t smile, but I didn’t need him to. “Anytime, Fred.”
We sat around the fire not much longer before pouring sand over it and heading back to the cabin. The quiet was weighted this time, when we would stop talking; we both clearly suddenly had something on our minds. Again, I was left wondering if we were sharing the same thoughts. We had almost kissed…. Right? Had I been imagining it? Or had he really felt it in the moment like I had, the subtle pull that would have been so easy to give into….
I followed him inside, flipping on the lights and silently scolding myself to calm down. I wasn’t some horny teenager! Tugging off my jacket, I tried not to think of what had just transpired, but it kept playing over and over in my head. Halfway into thinking I might need to take a cold shower to calm myself down (it had been a while), Hassan’s voice cut through the cricket’s chirping harshly.
“Stop.”
I did as he said as he extended his arm, the two of us stopping dead in the living room. For a moment, my heart jolted in some kind of strange hope that something would happen, but then I saw the tension in his back. He was on high alert, all the relaxation that I’d seen in him throughout the day gone. I stepped slowly behind him, placing a light hand on his shoulder.
He was scanning the room.
“What is it?” I asked, my voice hushed. I didn’t want to interrupt whatever he was thinking, but at the same time, I needed to know. Cordelia always said I was nosy.
“Something’s not right.” He pointed to the kitchen, and I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, until he told me what to look for. “The coffee maker is gone.”
My heart froze in my chest. I glanced all around, eventually stepping around Hassan, despite his protests. The coffeemaker wasn’t where I had left it, situated next to the sink. In fact, it wasn’t on the counter at all. I frowned as Hassan. “You didn’t put it in any of the cabinets did you?”
“I didn’t touch it.”
I believed him, but still turned to look through every cabinet. I heard Hassan sigh behind me, his footsteps crossing over the creaky wooden floors. “I’m going to do a sweep of the house.” He was back to grunting, and the part of me that wasn’t panicking over the coffeemaker was disappointed; Hassan seemed different out here. He was letting his guard down, but with the disappearance of some kitchen appliance, all those walls came shooting up again.
It took an hour for Hassan to clear the small cabin. He wanted to check every nook, every space under a bed, every closet for any sign of entry. He couldn’t find any, which I assured him wasn’t a big deal; we’d been dumb enough to let the door open.
He took it out on himself, I could tell, for letting his guard down. He didn’t say much, but it was easy to tell; he was a man who was hard to read, but I was slowly beginning to piece him together. His shoulders would draw up tighter when he was faced with a new problem, like his body and mind were fighting it without realizing. Unsure of what to say to ease that tension, I grimaced; a nice evening ruined. The coffeemaker wasn’t the only thing to be taken. We discovered my cologne was taken as well, and there were small things—the coffee mugs we’d left in the sink, a couple of magazines on the coffee table—that had been moved. Neither of us had done it.
“It’s him,” I murmured, feeling more watched than I had even after Hassan had wired a dozen cameras in my home. “Isn’t it?”
Hassan nodded solemnly.
I wanted to reach out and touch them, assure him it wasn’t his fault. The whole point of this trip, I wanted to say, was to get away from everything for just a minute. I didn’t say it. Instead, I sat next to him on the sofa and offered him a beer.
He took it, but
didn’t drink. No drinking on duty.
“I feel like I’m in the panopticon,” I joked, though it wasn’t really a joke. I could feel the eyes of some unseeable force on my back, and all I could do was hope it was my imagination.
He nearly laughed. “What the hell is that?”
“The panopticon?”
Hassan nodded.
“It was a prison. Well, first a social theory. Then a prison. It’s this place with a watchtower in the middle, and the guards in the tower could see into every cell that surrounded it in this… big circle.” I gestured with my hands, and his eyes followed. “But the cells had one-way windows. The guards could see in, but the prisoners couldn’t see out. So they never knew when they were being watched.”
“That’s kind of fucked up.”
I grinned, leaning back into the sofa. “Yeah. It is.”
I didn’t sleep soundly. My mind was occupied with thoughts of someone lurking just outside my window—which Hassan had insisted on checking to see if it was locked three times. The last time, he had lingered in my bedroom door, dressed loosely in sweatpants and a shirt. It was the most out of uniform I had seen him, and, with a guilty conscience, I wanted to see him out of it just a little bit more.
“You’re okay?” he asked, unusually accommodating.
I wanted to tell him ‘no.’ I wanted to tell him ‘stay.’
I offered a small, reassuring smile. “I’m alright.”
It had been a lie. I was unharmed, sure, but paranoid. A million thoughts swirled in my head, keeping me up through most of the night. The only reprieve was a short dream in which a certain nameless bodyguard removed my clothing slowly, but it ended as quickly as it had started once my pants had been stripped away.
This turmoil followed me out into the kitchen, where I tried to make coffee—only to remember we no longer had a coffee pot. With a sigh, I tried not to throw my mug back into the sink.
“Hey.”
Hassan’s voice startled me. I hadn’t noticed him sitting on the couch in silence.
I ran a hand through my bedhead. “Morning. I noticed his clothing was fresh and he looked like he had showered. “You’re up early.”