by Sara Celi
When we were both naked and I was pleased with my work, I raised up from the edge of the bed and took a condom from my stash in the top drawer of the nightstand. I ripped it open with my teeth and shoved it onto my dick.
“I’ve wanted this for a long time,” I said. “Maybe since the moment I saw you.”
“Really?”
“I knew you were different, and different is exactly what I need.”
We shared another kiss, and I entered her at last. I took one long, deep breath. Then, my body and my mind disappeared as I moved inside of her. Slowly, I pushed in and out, still hoping to lengthen the moment from a few minutes into an hour or more, but it was too much to take. She begged me to go faster and harder, and I did.
We moved together as the moment built. I kissed her again and our tongues twisted together; she spread her legs so I could go deeper. Our bodies had been made for each other, and I had never had it this good.
When the moment came, she orgasmed first, shuddering and crying out as she finished. The sound of her voice pushed me over a cliff and I came, too, losing myself inside of her as everything inside of me released.
It was beautiful. It was scary. I wanted more of it. Immediately.
“That was amazing,” I said.
Too soon, our breathing slowed, and the moment faded. I rolled off her body, took off the used condom, and threw it into the trash. When I turned back to her, we moved under the covers of the bed.
“I didn’t expect this,” she said.
“I did.” I played with her hair, admiring the dark curls. I’d seen plenty of sexy bed head in my day, and this woman would have it for sure the next morning.
“Is that what was going on earlier? You wanted to fuck me?”
I kissed her nose. “That wasn’t fucking.”
“Good, because if you’d said it was, I wouldn’t have believed you.” She pressed her forehead against mine, then after a beat, she kissed me, a small peck across my lips. “But I’m curious. What was it?”
I wrapped my arms around her in the bed. “That was more like… making love.” I paused after the word rolled off my tongue. I couldn’t remember a time when I’d used the phrase before, but nothing else would have described that night. “Fucking is random. That wasn’t random.”
“But we broke the contract, you know.” She grinned. “It said no sex.”
“Hasn’t anyone ever told you? Rules were made to be broken.” I kissed her, longer this time, savoring every millisecond of our connection. “We can break them again if you want.”
A laugh. “I’m sure you’d like that.”
“Anything you want, honey. You’re the boss.”
She settled into me and soon fell asleep. I listened to her contented breathing, and thought about her for a long time. I liked Brynn a lot. Somewhere, in the mess I had made of my life, I’d gotten lucky. I’d found her.
And I was going to show her how much she meant to me.
I woke up in Tanner’s bed around five thirty the next morning. He’d wrapped his legs and arms around me during the night. I felt his mouth next to my ear, and I heard his breathing. I watched him for a few minutes, and then made a few small and calculated movements to get out of bed without waking him.
Then my gaze fell on the nightstand by Tanner’s bed. A few weeks before, a photo of Lana had adorned it. That morning, though, it was gone.
Things had changed. A lot.
I threw on the extra bathrobe I found in his bathroom and stumbled, bleary-eyed, down the hallway. I picked up pieces of my clothing as I went, and the trail took me back to my purse. Everything went back to the pool house except my cell phone. I took a seat in one of the lounge chairs around the pool and opened the contact list.
Dad picked up in two rings. I knew he’d be awake; he never slept in, even on his off days. His flat Midwestern twang soothed me. “Hello, honey. Been thinkin’ bout you.”
Dad sounded happy to hear from me. This made me feel guiltier for not keeping in touch with him.
“Hey, Dad. I’m sorry I haven’t called.”
We made the usual round of small talk. He planned to go into the auto repair shop around eleven because the owner had offered him an extra shift. He’d started going to AA meetings again and next month would be two months sober. The family across the street had put their house up for sale, making them the latest neighbors to move away from Griffin since the economic downturn. They planned to try their luck in Oklahoma, where the man said he had a job in the oil fields that paid $75,000 a year. Dad would do it, too, if he didn’t have a bad back and deep ties to Griffin, including the fact someone in our family had lived there since 1875. He’d always been so sentimental about that town.
The entire time we talked, I thought about how to break the news to him. Finally, I decided to rip the Band-Aid off as fast as I could.
“I’ve some news of my own, “I said. “I’m dating someone. Someone famous.”
“I know you are, sweetie.” A pause. “You’re Tanner Vance’s latest girlfriend. All anyone around here can talk about.”
Griffin, Ohio, had always seemed like a world away from Los Angeles. Growing up, no one there seemed to care about much of anything beyond the banality of their lives: dead-end jobs, taxes, gossip about people who’d become addicted to heroin, and talk of who played well in the football game Friday night.
“One of the guys at the shop showed me a couple of pics from that website—what’s it— the one that has a TV show, too—LA 365?” Dad said. “Anyway, they ran a whole big thing on the two of you walking out from some kind of fancy exercise class. You had on a pair of workout pants with a logo on the side.”
“SoulCycle.”
The store had offered us both a selection of complementary outfits once Tanner and I started attending classes there. We both walked out with almost $500 in merchandise.
“Guess that’s the one,” Dad said. Another pause. “Tanner Vance is pretty rich, isn’t he? Didn’t he star in The Flash Returns? Probably got paid a lot.”
“It flopped at the box office. Made back less than half its production budget.”
“Hmm.” Dad cleared his throat. “He dated some woman, didn’t he? The one with the thick eyebrows?”
“Lana,” I said. “They broke up a while ago.”
I leaned back in the pool chair and listened to my dad talk. He’d seen a few of Tanner’s movies, of course, and he thought he’d seen some negative stuff about Lana and Tanner in the press, but Tanner still had the distinction of being one of Hollywood’s most famous celebrities. People loved him. And now, if I was his girlfriend…
“Things seem like they’re turning out for you,” my dad said, not bothering to hide the pride in his voice.
“I guess they are.”
“I’ll admit, I never doubted you, honey. I knew Hollywood would see how great you were someday.”
As the sun rose over the city landscape and my dad talked about various tidbits of Tanner’s life he’d read in the tabloids, my thoughts drifted to previous night. This was supposed to be a secret business arrangement, but it sure didn’t feel like business anymore. We’d gone somewhere different, and truth be told, I liked it. Waking up to Tanner had been nice. Comforting. Easy. Natural.
I wanted more, but I couldn’t be sure. Was this still business, or not?
“Listen, Dad,” I said, trying to get a grip on myself and on him. “This thing with Tanner might not last long. You know how Hollywood can be. Well, maybe you don’t, but… it’s weird. In a relationship out here, one month is like six in the regular world. And people break up for strange reasons.”
He laughed. “I’m sure he wouldn’t break up with you, honey. Not someone as wonderful as you.”
“I don’t want you to get your hopes up. This probably isn’t a permanent thing.”
“If it isn’t, know you can always come back here,” Dad said. “Especially if you need to clear your head.”
The sliding door to the main hou
se opened and Tanner stepped outside. He looked as if he came straight out of a casting for a Calvin Klein commercial, wearing a loose bathrobe and black boxer shorts.
“I’ve got to go, Dad,” I said. “I’ll talk to you later. Stay sober. I’m proud of you.”
“About last night,” Tanner said when he took a seat in the lounge chair next to me.
“Last night was—” Amazing. I wanted to say that word, but I couldn’t be sure where we stood. Instead, I broke off. The city lay beneath us, and if I focused on the skyline, it might help soften whatever Tanner had to say next.
“I want more of what we had last night,” he said. “I want more of you.”
His words took me back a little bit. Part of me thought I had been one big conquest, a woman so close to him that he simply couldn’t resist. It would have made sense; entering into an “agreement” like ours had made sex tempting. If it had been a one-night thing, I wouldn’t have been shocked. A little hurt, but not shocked.
I gulped. The game hadn’t turned for my career; it had turned between Tanner and me.
“What about the agreement?” I choked out the words. “And the contract?”
“Fuck that stuff.”
I blanched, and he laughed.
“Well, fuck the agreement and the contract if you want. It’s what I want. I don’t care about doing this for show anymore. I care about doing this for real.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
“I’ll still pay you, if you want,” he said, rushing forward. “I’ll take care of everything. You won’t have to worry about anything, and that part will stay the same. And when people ask you about us, I want you to say you’re my girlfriend.” He paused for a beat. “But I want you to mean it. I want to be true. Real.”
“Are you serious?”
Tanner took my hand in his. “Listen, Brynn, I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. What I had with Lana wasn’t love. It was lust in the beginning, and then it was convenience. Something everyone else convinced me made sense, but it never really did. We were wrapped up in something that wasn’t real.” Tanner squeezed my hand. “But when I look at you, I know what we have can be real if you give me a chance. This could be it. Everything I never knew I was missing in life. Everything.”
“You think? How do you know?”
“Because I do.” He cupped my chin with the fingers of his free hand. “And I want you to let me show you.”
We kissed, and it was strong and familiar. Tanner pulled me tight against his chest and we fell into each other. As our kisses extended, he stood up and lifted me into his arms, then carried me inside the house once more.
Once we made it to the kitchen, he placed me on my feet again, and our bodies twisted together as the kisses intensified.
“This is everything, Brynn,” he murmured against my mouth. “And that’s the way I want it. I don’t need anyone but you.”
I took a step backward. “I trust you. And I feel exactly the same way.”
“I’m not going to let you down.” He tilted his chin a little. “And I was thinking. Maybe you could move your things into my bedroom?”
“Into your bedroom? You don’t want me to stay in the pool house anymore?”
“No. I want to wake up next to you every morning,” he said. “Being with you feels like home.”
His lips crashed against mine again, and soon we were on the floor, a disheveled pile of bathrobes and limbs. It was ecstasy. It was fulfillment. It was everything. It was a moment I never wanted to end.
Funny how things worked. We’d been good together as business partners, as employer/employee, but we got better as true boyfriend and girlfriend. For the next few weeks, we floated around Hollywood as one of the hottest and most sought-after couples in Los Angeles. Photographers clamored for our photo. Interview requests flooded into Kenneth’s office, and he passed many of them along to my agent, Andrea. Madame magazine wanted to schedule a spread about my style tips. Good Morning with Molly and Chris wanted to fly us to New York for a joint appearance as soon as possible.
Tanner booked the lead role in two films set to start shooting the following year. Rockchick Mag set up an interview and photo shoot with me, and Kenneth promised over the phone he’d guide me through it. I booked a twenty-five-show story arc on Hawthorne’s Landing, which made me laugh because it made Samantha’s guest role seem like a blip. We both agreed to be interviewed for a nostalgia documentary about movies and TV show in the 1990s, and an MTV rep talked to Tanner about presenting at one of their awards shows, then leaked it to the media.
Before long, headlines about Lana began to fade from the covers of the supermarket tabloids. A bisexual reality TV star caught in a love triangle with a model and one of Hollywood’s hottest hunks didn’t move magazines any more.
“May I help you find anything?”
I glanced up from a stack of graphic T-shirts to find a dark-haired salesgirl smiling at me. “Oh, I’m just looking.”
“We’re having a sale on pants right now,” she said, eager to give me the required sale pitch. “Every pair is forty percent off. Perhaps I can help you find some new skinny jeans? Or some leggings?”
“I’m fine, thank you,” I said, careful to be kind and smile at her. The last month or so had taught me many things, including that anyone who recognized me could talk to the media at any moment. Tanner and I had a good thing going, and I didn’t want to screw it up. “I’ll let you know if I need anything.”
I turned away from her and wandered some more around Margaret’s, a boutique on Robertson where the T-shirts began at fifty dollars and tabloid photographers lurked across the street. I fingered a few of them and picked up one I liked, and then grabbed a few dresses and some jackets.
Halfway into trying on those items in the dressing room, I heard the voices. Two women. One shrill, defined and nasal, the other throaty and slow. Both had a typical Southern California clip. What I heard them say made me stop short, one arm in the sleeve of a leather jacket covered in silver studs and roped fringe embellishments. Something about their voices made me think I had encountered these women before, and I probably had. Los Angeles might be huge, but Hollywood could be so damn small.
“It’s terrible,” said the shrill one. “I mean, I like, totally feel so bad for her.”
“Totally,” came the throaty voice. “No wonder she was acting so weird at One Eve the other night. We had bottle service, but she didn’t drink a drop. And she loves vodka.”
“Hmmm…”
The two women sounded like they had taken the two dressing rooms closest to me.
“What do you think she’s going to do about it?” The shrill one zipped up something, probably a dress. “She can’t—you don’t think she’ll—she won’t. Not even she’d do something drastic like, well, you know. Something terrible.”
I struggled to place the voices. Where had I heard these two before? Where had I met them? A premiere? One of the acting classes? Some stupid party? Curious, I found a small break in the fabric of my dressing room and I peeked out of it, hoping to catch a glimpse of at least one of the two women. No luck whatsoever.
“I hope she’s okay. Seriously,” the shrill one continued. “She’s fragile these days.”
Throaty voice clicked her teeth. “Oh, I know, and this is going to kill her career.”
Shrill voice chuckled. “Whatever’s left of it? What she’s doing now isn’t exactly Oscar-worthy.”
“So true. Did you see last week’s episode?”
Both ladies laughed openly, gleefully, and that was when I knew where I’d heard their voices in the past. They had recurring roles on Lana’s reality show. In fact, Hillary, the throaty one, had a pretty big role on the show; she’d dated one of Tanner’s costars and called herself a fashion designer because Neiman Marcus carried some hats she created for a capsule collection. Blood drained away from my face as I realized whom they had been talking about.
Lana. Of course.
Throaty and Shrill devolved into some other train of conversation, and shuffled around in the dressing rooms, groaning about sizes and zippers. I knew opportunity when it arrived, so I shoved the leather jacket back on the hanger, gathered my things, and walked out of the dressing room.
“Did you find everything okay?” asked the black-haired salesgirl when I breezed past her.
“All perfect,” I called over my shoulder. “But I realized I’m late for an appointment.”
I didn’t breathe easy again until I pulled Tanner’s Acura out of the parking spot in the garage and started to drive home.
When I got back to Mulholland Drive a short time later, Tanner sat at the outdoor table, reading a script. As soon as I walked through the sliding door, he stood up and met me halfway across the patio.
“How are you, honey?” He kissed me once, but frowned when he saw the expression on my face. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s nothing.” I shook my head, trying to clear it, but that didn’t work. I sat down in one of the chairs across from his. “Just—”
“What?” Tanner resumed his place at the large table.
“It’s—” I broke off again. “It’s something.”
“Tell me.”
“I ran into a couple of people while I was out shopping.” I sighed. “Well, not exactly ran into them. They were in the same store as me.”
Tanner sipped his Diet Coke and waited for me to gather my thoughts. Running into Hillary and her minion hadn’t been the problem. What they had said to each other had been the issue.
“Is something going on with Lana?” I finally said. “Something big?”
“Not that I know of.” He shrugged. “But you don’t know Lana well. There’s always something going on with her. And anyway, why do you ask?”
“I saw Hillary and one of her friends from the show at the store.”
I watched Tanner as I said this, expecting a change in his expression, or a reaction of some kind, but he didn’t have any. He tapped his fingers on the side of the table.
“They were talking about someone, and I think it was her. She was—they kept saying she’s in trouble, and she’s going through this horrible time.” I leaned across the table. “Tanner, I can’t help but think—”