Hotel Hollywood: A Lesbian Romance

by Nicolette Dane

  “Not right now,” I said, worried about the potential disarray within the walls. “Let’s just go around back and head out on the trail.”

  “Yes dear,” said Kelsie, letting her shoulders go slack and pretending like we were an old married couple.

  “I just don’t want you to see the squalor I live in,” I said, lifting up an eyebrow and giving Kelsie a look.

  “I grew up in a commune,” said Kelsie evenly. “We had this greenhouse room with a dirt floor built into the main house. You probably don’t have an entire room of dirt.” She grinned at me.

  “Whatever,” I said. “Just follow me.” I grabbed at her hand finally, giving her a swift pull, but then released her fingers once a dash of anxiety overcame me.

  As we wandered toward the back of the house, I saw that my father was sitting there in a lawn chair on the deck, accompanied by two of his friends. All I could think was, ‘I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be here,’ over and over, repeated in my brain like some sort of meditation mantra. I couldn’t live like this anymore. I didn’t want to be here. My father noticed me and stood up from his chair, holding a beer can in one hand and taking a drag from his cigarette in the other.

  “Audra!” he called up, giving us a wave.

  “Hey Dad,” I replied, returning his wave.

  “Let’s go say hi,” Kelsie whispered to me.

  “I don’t really want to,” I murmured back.

  “C’mon,” she said, putting her hand at the small of my back and redirecting our stride toward the deck.

  “Who’s your friend?” asked my father, looking toward Kelsie with a half smile, ashing his cigarette onto the wood below his feet.

  “This is Kelsie,” I said.

  “Hey Kelsie,” said my father.

  “I’m Don,” said one of my father’s friends, offering a wave.

  “Salutations Don,” said Kelsie with a wild grin on her face.

  “It’s not often that Audra brings friends around here,” said my father.

  “We just met,” said Kelsie matter-of-factly. “She’s showing me around town.”

  “Are you here with the movie?” asked Don from his seat.

  “I am,” said Kelsie.

  “An actor?” said Don.

  “I’m a make-up artist,” said Kelsie. I could see the fire dancing in her eyes. “You’d be surprised at how ugly some of these famous actors are. I’ve got my job cut out for me.”

  “You sure you’re not one of the actors?” continued Don. “You look awfully familiar to me.”

  “I’m sure, Don,” said Kelsie authoritatively. “Just a make-up lady, that’s all.”

  “We’re gonna head out for a walk on the property,” I said, eager to get away from my father and his friends. I knew that goofing with them was fun for Kelsie, but I had spent too much time around them to enjoy it any longer. Yeah, they were mostly harmless, just a gaggle of men who didn’t have much else going for them other than drinking their afternoon away, but it represented something much different to me. It was complacency, it was strandedness.

  “All right,” said my father, shuffling his feet a bit and looking down. “We’re gonna order pizza in a little bit if you girls want to join us.”

  “I like pizza,” said Kelsie.

  “Maybe,” I said, but I didn’t really intend to eat with them. “We’ll catch you later. C’mon Kelsie,” I said.

  “Nice meeting you gentlemen,” said Kelsie with an affable wave.

  All three of them waved back at her, my father, Don, and the other guy, Leonard, who rarely said much. I nudged Kelsie eagerly and the two of us picked up our feet, continuing our walk out into the back property.

  Beyond the immediate yard surrounding the house, the field was overgrown with tall grass, though there was a path that had been cleared by my father and his friends with a truck. The path of the tires was apparent in the ground. Kelsie and I walked this path, each of us in our own tire tread, meandering slowly out away from the house. Kelsie looked off into the distance expectantly, head turning to either side, taking in the landscape while I mostly walked with my head down, occasionally looking up to make sure I was still walking straight.

  “I’m sorry about that,” I said once we were out of earshot from the guys.

  “Sorry about what?” she replied.

  “Those guys,” I said.

  “What?” Kelsie said incredulously. “That was a perfectly fine interaction.”

  “Yeah,” I mused.

  “C’mon,” she said. “They were friendly. Nothing was weird.”

  “I guess it’s just different for me,” I admitted.

  “I guess,” said Kelsie.

  We continued walking for a few moments together in silence. Then Kelsie spoke up again.

  “Are you all right?” she asked with concern in her tone. She looked over to me empathetically.

  “Yeah,” I said vaguely. “I’m okay.”

  “Then why did you leave so quick yesterday morning?” she said. “I mean, you woke up and then basically bolted out of the room.”

  “I just felt like I was gonna be late.”

  “It was different than that,” said Kelsie. “No, it definitely felt different.”

  With that, Kelsie tenderly reached over and took my hand, offering me a sympathetic squeeze. Our eyes met and then I quickly looked away.

  “I’m just worried,” I said. “I’m worried that…” I felt like I couldn’t say it, that I couldn’t let the words out of my mouth without feeling foolish.

  “Worried that…?” prompted Kelsie. She was trying to make me feel comfortable, I knew that much, I felt that much. But it was still tough.

  “Ugh,” I groaned. “I feel stupid saying it.”

  “Say it,” she said evenly. “Just say it.”

  “I’m worried that, you know, this is just a casual or meaningless thing for you,” I admitted, feeling a bit of weight release from me. “You know, you fly into town, you mess around with someone, you leave and do it all over again somewhere else.”

  “Oh boy,” said Kelsie. I felt her fingers rub gently into my palm. “You think that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, still plodding along in the worn grass. We were coming upon a tree line, closing in on a small forested bit of the property and easing toward the pond. “I guess I’m already thinking about you leaving.”

  “I do like you, Audra,” said Kelsie. “But you’re right, I will have to leave in just a couple of weeks.”

  “Our night together,” I said. “It made me feel really close to you. It’s just really scary for me.”

  “Why?” she asked tenderly. With that, Kelsie pulled me closer toward her and she slung her arm around my back, her hand resting at my hip.

  “It’s just… I feel totally stuck in this town,” I said. “And here you come, like a total whirlwind of light and love, and we have a lot of fun together and I feel close to you. And I know, deep down, that this is only going to last for a short while.”

  “You’re so not stuck, Audra,” said Kelsie. “Dude, you could just pack up your Jeep today and drive off into the sunset. You’re an adult woman. You’re free.”

  “I just don’t want to feel abandoned again,” I said. Without thinking about it, my hand instinctively rose to my face to wipe a tear from my eye.

  “I know it seems like I’m some Hollywood… I don’t know, what’s the word?” she said. “Floozy?” She laughed at herself and I couldn’t help but laugh along with her. “But I’m just a person, looking for love just like you. People might see me up on screen and think I’m untouchable or I’m special or I’m beyond the feelings of regular people. But I’m really not.”

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Yeah!” she said with a wary laugh. “Audra!” said Kelsie, stopping and taking hold of me. She gave me a light shake like she was trying to wake me up. “Come back. Stop dwelling so hard on the past or the future or whatever it is you’re thinking about.”


  “I don’t want to stay here,” I reiterated softly.

  “Okay,” said Kelsie. I felt like I was annoying her. I didn’t want to annoy her. “So why don’t you come with me back to LA when we wrap up here?”

  “What?” I cooed. “LA?”

  “I’m telling you, Audra,” she went on. “I’m not the Hollywood trollop or whatever you’ve convinced yourself I am up here.” As she said this she tapped at the side of my head. “I really do like you. I’m having fun with you.”

  “You didn’t just get me stoned so you could take advantage of me?” I said timidly.

  “Dude!” she said, looking at me with intense skepticism on her face. “I like to think of myself as pretty difficult to offend but you’re definitely trying my patience here.”

  “I’m sorry,” I cheeped.

  “I got you stoned because it’s fun,” she said. “And yeah, it lead to something more physical between us. But didn’t you want that too?”

  “Yes,” I admitted, nodding slowly.

  “Then what’s the problem?” said Kelsie adoringly. She raised her hand to the side of my head and gently caressed my hair.

  “Here’s the pond,” I said, changing the subject and pointing toward the water.

  “There it is,” she said, laughing to herself and shaking her head. “Let’s sit on that log.”

  We strolled up together to the log near the pond and sat. I slipped a little bit on the damp ground in front of the log, catching myself, and giving us both a laugh. I felt embarrassed but Kelsie had no judgment in her. She just smiled at me, helped me sit upright, and gave the small of my back a rub.

  It was a beautiful summer afternoon, slightly humid but nice, the high sun was blocked for us by a small stand of trees near the pond. There was a slight buzz of insect life sounding off around us and beyond this musical accompaniment, we were alone out here on my family property.

  “You know,” I began. “You haven’t told me much about the movie.”

  “You haven’t asked,” laughed Kelsie. She dropped her hand to my bare thigh and let it hang there sweetly. “I mean, it’s just a sweet romance. You came to that filming day,” she said. “It’s just nostalgic and tender.”

  “Do you enjoy it?” I asked. “Is it fun?”

  “Well, sure,” said Kelsie, looking off as she considered my question. “I’m doing what I love. I work with amazing people. It’s a ton of fun. But I really love the breaks between movies,” she said. “The fast-paced life in Hollywood isn’t totally my thing.”

  “Do you feel like you don’t fit in?”

  “Sometimes,” she said evenly. “Sometimes I do. But I’m not as obsessed with image as some of the others in the business, so that kind of alienates me.”

  “I definitely feel alienated here,” I said.

  “I’m getting that,” said Kelsie. She gave me a jokingly skeptical look and gauged my reaction. Seeing that I was being serious, Kelsie leaned in and kissed me on the cheek.

  “Can we just hold hands for a little while?” I asked sheepishly.

  “Of course,” Kelsie said with compassion. She took my hand, our fingers weaving together, and I leaned my head against Kelsie longingly, meditating on what could possibly be next for me, for us, my this life path I was walking along. In that moment, though, I knew that I was happy. I was happy to be with Kelsie, comforted by her acceptance, relaxed with the calmness of the scene around us.

  It was becoming apparent to me that my strife wasn’t really with anything external. I mean, I had it pretty good. And Kelsie was right. I wasn’t bound to anything. I wasn’t bound to Champlain. I could leave at any time. I just had to make a choice. I just had to be decisive. What had held me back for so long was that I refused to make any decision, instead just letting inertia carry me along. But if you’re unhappy, yet you keep doing the same thing, the answer is pretty obvious. You’ve got to do something different.

  “Do you think if I came out to LA,” I began. “That I could crash on your couch while I figured out how to live on my own?”

  This gave Kelsie a fit of giggles, like it was at the same time both a silly and an exciting question. She pumped my hand firmly.

  “Totally,” she said. “It’s a comfortable couch.”

  “Okay,” I said longingly, dissolving into her, happily letting the entertaining thoughts of leaving Champlain dance in my head.

  Kelsie had dinner plans that night with the director Reggie and her costar Josh, so that they could go over some of the finer points of the script as their shooting in Champlain starting to wrap up. I took her to the hotel and then decided to drive around a bit and give myself some time to think about what we had talked about that afternoon. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss Kelsie, being away from her that evening. I wanted to spend my every moment with her. I want to learn from her, to love her, to feel her love. We had planned to meet up later that night at the hotel and even though going in to work on my off-hours wasn’t my idea of fun, the fact that I’d get to see Kelsie erased any trepidation about stepping into the hotel when I wasn’t on the clock.

  Never before had I felt as accepted as I felt with Kelsie. It was like she truly got me. I had never felt like I had a friend in life who understood me fully, let alone a lover, but Kelsie was just cut from a different cloth. She had a special spark. She made me feel comfortable like I wasn’t used to feeling. And whether I was at work or at home, both places that never seemed to give me true comfort, the thought of seeing Kelsie eased the ennui, it made me feel like the dissatisfaction was only temporary.

  She was like some enchanted key that could unlock this door that had been in front of me for longer than I could remember. And I was eager to learn to wield that key.

  As I drove down some of the long, curvy, deserted roads that drew a haphazard oval around Champlain, sometimes tree-lined, sometimes open fields or farmland, I tried to imagine what life might be like outside of my town. I tried to imagine what Los Angeles was like. I had a weird sense of it, a vague notion that assumed it was built up, glitzy, rich-looking, whatever I had surmised from the little bit of TV I’d seen it depicted in. But I knew that, being one of the country’s largest cities, it had its impoverished areas. I mean, it had to, right? It couldn’t just be rich and famous people. Whatever it was, I was sure it was a far cry from Champlain. It was probably loud, frenetic, intense. Champlain was none of those things.

  I wondered what Kelsie’s life was like out there. Was it intensely busy, racing around the city to fulfill all her social obligations? Or was it quiet and serene, like life was generally like by me? Maybe she often stayed at home, lounging around in comfortable clothing, studying the script for her next role. That could be nice. But maybe the social butterfly thing could be nice too. I mean, that wasn’t my thing but maybe it wasn’t my thing because I’d never really given it a fair shot.

  The night was getting darker on my drive, a darkness interrupted occasionally by the headlights of another car. But that was very infrequent. I was on my own out here.

  As I focused more and more on Kelsie and my growing desire for her, my mind wandered back to our evening together after the beach. It was a bit hazy to me because of the weed and I found myself regretting smoking. I wished I had experienced it sober. I could sort of piece together what she looked like naked, I could sort of remember what it was like to be intimate with her, but it was a little fuzzy. I wanted another try. I wanted to live unclouded in that moment, to feel her lips, to touch her tenderly. And I felt like I would get that opportunity later on tonight.

  My heart sped just a little faster as I thought about getting intimate with Kelsie. It brought a wry smile to my face. I even squirmed into the bucket seat of my Jeep, feeling my panties ride up somewhat as I got a sudden tingling sensation. Reaching between my legs, I picked out my wedgie and continued driving nowhere in particular.

  I really could leave this all behind. I wasn’t tied to anything here. I would feel a bit sad for Jake. I was his
most stable employee at the hotel. But he couldn’t honestly expect me to stick around forever. And I imagine Meredith, the woman Jake had brought in temporarily to help, would be thrilled to get the job full-time. I felt like I would probably be missed for about a week in Champlain, after which I’d pretty much be forgotten about.

  And yes, I can admit, it might be tough to leave my father. But I couldn’t think about him. I couldn’t save him. I needed to save myself. I’d spent too much of my life sacrificing myself for some misplaced duty to others. Kelsie was helping me now realize that it’s okay to do things for yourself sometimes too. She was a shining example of self-sufficiency and passion for life. I felt far less anxious when I was around her.

  My face ached a little bit from smiling. It was a feeling I wasn’t used to but it was really nice. I looked forward to a time in which it wasn’t so out of the ordinary to have a smile on my face and a buzz in my heart. That time was coming, I was certain of it. I had waited all of 27 years to begin finding myself and I finally felt myself standing on that wonderful precipice, looking over the edge, and exploring the vast possibility that laid there before me.

  Opening the front door to the Hotel Champlain, I quietly slipped inside allowing my flip-flops to drag against the carpet. I was hoping that I might catch the front desk empty so that I could stealthily enter without any questions. But once I entered that dark lobby, I saw Meredith sitting there with her eyes trained on the computer screen as though she were looking right through it. She appeared somewhat confused. My bare legs felt a light chill from the cool air in the climate controlled lobby.

  I walked gingerly up to the desk and approached Meredith, who didn’t really notice me coming. After a moment, I knocked my knuckles on the desk and put on a happy face. Meredith shivered in surprise and then looked over to me. She was a middle-aged woman, a bit hefty, with dark hair and glasses. Once she recognized me she smiled.

  “Are there any rooms available, ma’am?” I said teasingly.

  “Good evening, Audra!” she beamed. “Can’t keep away from the Hotel Champlain, can you?”