Star Struck

by Jane Lovering

  ‘No.’ I still stood. ‘He … kissed me.’

  ‘Did you want him to?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Did I? Had I? How was I supposed to feel?

  ‘Oh.’ The hand lowered. ‘And the …?’ Fingers made vague motions at the chest region of his shirt. ‘You might want to do up some buttons, by the way.’

  Without taking my eyes from him I fumbled my shirt closed. Shrugged once.

  ‘Skye.’

  ‘It’s all right, I don’t want to cause any trouble, we were having a drink that’s all, I think I got a bit carried away.’ I ran out of breath and stopped speaking on an inward sob of air.

  Jack moved closer until he could put a hand on my arm. Stroked my shoulder for a moment, then shook his head slowly, not dropping his hand. I could feel the weight of his fingers, but no warmth; and a slight tremor, as though he was fighting the urge to grab at me. ‘I should have asked the security guys to keep a closer eye. I know what he’s like, Skye, I should have …’

  ‘Like I said. I’m twenty-nine. I can look out for myself, Jack, don’t beat yourself up about it.’ My voice sounded surprisingly strong. ‘Nothing terrible happened, nothing was going to happen, Geth and I are capable of understanding the word “no”.’ Moonlight hit us both. Made Jack look haunted. As I already felt pale and stretched, it probably made me look like a movie version of some kind of ghoul.

  There was suddenly too much sky.

  ‘Come inside.’ It wasn’t the sharp order that Gethryn had got, it was a gentle suggestion, accompanied by half an arm across my shoulder. ‘Come on. I’ll take you back to your room.’ The calm words and his even tone stopped the panic before it could rise, and the pull of his arm tugged me against his body as he started to move. It was protection against the wideness of the world and I found that I could keep everything scary at bay as long as I concentrated on the simple business of walking and the slightly swaying body of the man walking next to me.

  We walked back to the main doors and immediately into Felix who was drinking Southern Comfort at the bar.

  ‘Well, look what the cat dragged in.’ Felix squinted at me. ‘You’re a bit pink. So, how’ve you been?’ He wagged eyebrows unsubtly. ‘Sorry I dipped out on you earlier but … well.’

  ‘Yes, I saw. I’ve been okay.’ My body shivered. ‘Well. Yes. Okay.’

  Jack had dropped his arm from my shoulders and shoved both hands in his pockets. ‘Have you eaten, Skye?’

  ‘Eaten?’ I stared at him.

  ‘Yes, eaten. Food in, mouth move, num num. Eaten.’

  I couldn’t see his eyes; he’d dropped his head so that his hair hung over his face, but his voice was tight. ‘No.’

  ‘Come on then.’ Jack put a hand on my forearm and closed his fingers around it. ‘I’ll get you some food.’

  ‘But I –’

  Felix gave me a stern look and then rolled his eyes. ‘Go on, lover. You’re too skinny already. You need to eat.’

  ‘There’s no such thing as too skinny.’ I tried an uppish defence, even though I knew he was right. For my shape, I was too thin. I looked like a skeleton someone had thrown clothes at. ‘Oh, all right.’

  ‘So gracious.’ Jack headed away, not, as I’d thought, towards the diner but towards the stairs.

  ‘Sorry.’ I followed him. ‘I’m feeling a bit … odd.’

  ‘Bit pissed you mean. What were you and Geth drinking out there?’ He’d stopped on a stair, back to me but rigid. Waiting.

  ‘Did I say we were drinking?’

  ‘You didn’t need to. But you didn’t admit to it – interesting. Did he tell you not to talk to me?’

  We walked along the corridor to his room and I stopped to think while he unlocked the door. ‘No.’

  Jack ushered me past him, but stopped me before I could get inside by putting both hands on my shoulders and pulling me around to face him. ‘Skye, look –’

  ‘Oh, don’t start again with all the “stay away from Gethryn” bullshit, please. I’m sorry if you two have problems and I’m sorry you’ve both got all this machismo shit going on, but I’m not your little sister, and I bloody well don’t have a virginity to lose, so just stop all these dire warnings and leave me alone. What happened out there tonight was – well, it was under control.’

  He held both hands up in the air. ‘Under control. Okay. You’re right, you’re a big girl, you can decide for yourself who you see.’

  ‘All right,’ I said, dubiously.

  ‘But whatever you think of me, I don’t make a practice of riding in every time I see a couple in a clinch, you know. I’m not some big killjoy who can’t bear anyone to be happy. I saw your face, Skye, and happy was not on the agenda there.’

  ‘So you were watching because it was me?’

  Jack shook his head and moved inside the room. ‘You … you’ve just hurled in from home and I guess the accent and all, it’s making me feel a bit homesick. A bit …’ He tailed off, his eyes lost focus and he stared out of the window, hands working their way deep into the pockets of his black jeans. ‘Yeah. So. Food. These places are always rubbish at producing anything that’s actually good for you, so I brought some things along.’

  ‘Okay.’ What was he playing at? He seemed nervous, he’d lost that whole lone-hunter edge he’d had when we’d come in from the desert. Maybe he just needed a smoke.

  ‘Fine.’ He turned to the tiny fridge in the corner under the laptop and pulled out some fruit and a bar of chocolate, then plopped a pile of apples and oranges on the bed beside me and suddenly his words were coming in a breathless rush. ‘The fancy dress ball, Sunday night. Would you come with me?’

  I let the apple I’d picked up drop back onto the duvet. ‘What, you mean like … a date?’

  ‘Well, I suppose … kind of.’

  ‘But you … this isn’t … that’s just weird.’

  Jack sat down and stared at me over an orange he was peeling with his teeth. ‘What’s weird? Asking you to the ball?’ He tipped his head on one side. ‘I like you. And I know that I’m a miserable old bastard who smokes under stress and has a variable sense of humour, and sometimes I don’t know when I’m talking to real people and when I’m talking to the people in my head, but I can be fun, too. I think we could have a good time together. Now tell me, in what way is that weird?’

  ‘Is this just to stop me from seeing Gethryn?’ I felt the strangest urge to giggle like a schoolgirl.

  ‘No.’ Jack cupped the orange in his hand, pulled a segment away and looked at it closely. ‘I’m crediting you with some good sense on that one.’ His expression was dark. ‘I’m just a writer, a nobody and he’s the star.’ Shadowed eyes met mine and he let the orange fall onto his lap. ‘Gethryn will go with Martha,’ he said, quietly. ‘They’re both part of the cast and we like them to appear at these things together. Come with me.’ Long fingers elegantly excised a pip from the flesh and flicked it accurately into an ashtray on the table.

  ‘Can you dance?’ Stupid question.

  ‘Only one way to find out.’

  ‘Can I think about it?’ I could see the individual lashes of his eyes, the unconscious twitch of his lips, and all of a sudden I knew if he kissed my mouth it would be gentle, and I found myself wondering how he would taste; what he looked like, naked.

  He stood up abruptly and went to the fridge. Took a can out, popped it open and drank. ‘I guess so. Although I’m already disappointed that you need to.’

  ‘You fancy yourself a bit, don’t you?’

  A quick smile and his saturnine looks lifted as his eyes gleamed. ‘I’ve already had offers. Ruth, girl who was sitting next you to at the quiz, she cornered me in the bar and asked me to go with her.’

  ‘The cow!’

  ‘She said she wanted to dance with me at the ball, and if I
played my cards right she’d show me a few tricks later on in her room.’ Jack went back to concentrating hard on segmenting the orange.

  ‘You’re making it up.’

  Another smile. ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’

  ‘You bastard.’

  ‘Now, eat something. There’s some bread. Or there’s some chocolate, if you’re going to come over all female on me.’

  Listlessly I picked up the apple I’d dropped. Jack licked his fingers clean of orange juice and wiped them down his jeans, then poked his laptop into life and tapped away at a few keys, sucking orange segments in a way that made the juice spurt into his hair and down over his chin in an unwarrantedly lascivious way; I suspected on purpose. I refused to comment, kept my eyes down and bit the apple down to the core. A sudden flashback to earlier that evening caught me in the throat, Gethryn, fingers eager. Would he have stopped if I’d asked?

  A loud bang at the door made me gasp in shock. An apple pip shot into my windpipe and I began to cough and choke. Jack opened the door and then came over and started slapping me between the shoulder blades. Lissa stomped into the room, took one look at me and rolled her eyes.

  ‘Is she doing it again?’

  ‘Choking.’ Jack banged me hard again on my spine, and with one loud cough the pip flew from my mouth and curled away across the room.

  ‘You really are quite accident-prone, aren’t you?’ Lissa sat beside me on the bed. ‘Perhaps you should stick to soft foods.’

  ‘Perhaps you should stop drink-driving.’ Jack stopped thumping me and looked at her.

  ‘Hey, cut me a little slack, Jackie-boy.’ Lissa glanced at my face and wrinkled her nose. ‘Sheesh. You Brits.’ Unexpectedly she reached into her bag and handed me a large tissue. ‘Here. Mop. And scrape, you might wanna scrape a little.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I mopped and, furtively, scraped.

  My streaming eyes showed me a misty image of Jack looking sideways at Lissa. ‘What is it you want, Liss?’

  She perched herself on the edge of the small table under the window, tiny buttocks barely causing it to tip forward. ‘Wanted to talk to you about this crazy idea you’ve got in your head about cutting out. Running for the border.’ She opened her bag and fussed with lipstick and a mirror. ‘You mentioned it, but are you serious about it? It’s not one of your, like, abstract concepts?’

  He slumped, leaning his whole body against the wall. ‘Sorry, yeah, you’re right. We should have talked it through, Liss. Will you get onto the network guys? They should be fine with Scotty taking over, let’s face it, he was doing all the practical stuff during the first series anyway, and you can tell them I’ll turn in the scripts I’m contracted for …’

  I could only stare.

  ‘Mmmmm.’ She carefully outlined her mouth in scarlet and began filling in her lips. ‘I’ll do it, but – why?’

  Jack shrugged and gave me a quick look that I didn’t think I was supposed to see. ‘I need a new life. This was fun when we started out; yeah, it all got a bit lairy when we thought we were being cancelled, but I liked all that, the uncertainty and everything, it kept me wired. The big bosses who hired me were loving the stories, the other writers were great and let me muck about with their scripts – it was all new, all exciting.’ He folded his arms and let his body slide a little lower down the wall. ‘Now it’s …’ He shrugged again. ‘It’s personalities. It’s the needs of the few outweighing the needs of the many; it’s people using their power and position and their name to get access to things they shouldn’t have. It’s all crapped up, basically, Liss, and I want out. I want home.’ His voice lowered, became so quiet I wasn’t sure either of us were supposed to hear. ‘I want peace.’

  She snapped shut the mirror and twisted the lipstick away. ‘Gethryn,’ was all she said.

  ‘Partly.’

  ‘Even though you’ve done what you could? Won’t be a problem next series.’

  ‘No, but he can still do damage.’ He gave me a tiny, sideways glance. ‘Look, I’ve got an editor in Britain hassling me to pick up the novels again. It’s a whole different ballgame, writing the books, doing the signings, and it’s something I love. I mean, that’s how I made my name, after all. Don’t get me wrong, I was flattered when the network guys hauled me over here. It was a chance to do something new, and it’s been brilliant, the whole thing. Fantastic. But it was only ever going to be temporary, which is why I didn’t sell Beck Farm when I came over; this was just another move in the Fame Game, getting my face, my name out there. When it comes down to it, I’m a novelist, Liss, and Yorkshire is my home.’

  Lissa turned abruptly to me. ‘What’s the story with Felix? He brings you over here but you’re not a couple. You share a room, a bed, but you’re not –’ she made little hooks in the air with her fingers – ‘sleeping together. He’s heading for destruction-city and you seem to want to drive him there in your own little suicide-wagon … what is it with you two?’

  I finished mopping my face. ‘He’s my best friend. That’s all.’

  ‘Uh huh.’ Lissa shot a quick glance at Jack. ‘Wow. Don’t envy you this one.’

  He and Lissa exchanged a look that went on rather longer than I was comfortable with.

  ‘I think I’ll go to bed,’ I said, not sure that they’d hear me. ‘What’s happening tomorrow?’

  Jack pushed away from the wall. ‘They’re … we are announcing the quiz results in the morning. Afternoon is all the practical stuff, setting up the prizes, then in the evening there’s another signing session – apparently I’m giving away signed copies of some scripts. And then everyone’s getting geared up for the fancy dress ball. Highlight of the event. People like to get together on the evening before it all to discuss costumes and stuff.’ He made a face. ‘Really it’s just an excuse for everyone to get lathered.’

  ‘Do you know who’s won the quiz?’ I asked quietly.

  ‘Nah. They get some kids trying to boost their college funds to the tune of a couple of dollars an hour to do the marking.’ He gave me a stern look. ‘And I wouldn’t tell you, even if I knew.’

  ‘No. Right.’

  Lissa cleared her throat. ‘Think we’ve got some paperwork to cover, Jackie-boy. If you’re heading back to good old Blighty, that’s the end of my representation, you know that? It’s over.’

  He nodded. ‘I know. And I’m sorry. I know we talked about it, but I never made it clear that I wasn’t just chucking ideas about, that it was something I really wanted to do. Should have told you earlier, but … I’ve really only just made up my mind definitely.’

  I headed out of the door while they stood looking at each other, but I didn’t immediately head for my own room, because just as I pulled the door closed behind me, I heard Lissa say quietly, ‘So, Iceman. You really gonna throw this all over, huh?’

  I instantly pretended an almost terminal case of untied shoelaces, ear pressed to the slim crack in the doorframe.

  ‘Come on, Liss, you know it’s for the best.’

  ‘Networks love you. Ratings love you. Hell, the fucking viewers all want to have your babies.’ There was a pause. ‘Sorry, Ice. That was cruel of me. Didn’t mean …’

  ‘I know you didn’t. It’s okay.’

  Heart pounding and holding my breath so that I could hear, I slid my body along the wall to the next doorway, flattened myself against it and tried the handle, to be pitched backwards into a cleaning cupboard just as the door to Jack’s room opened. I crouched in the bleach-scented darkness with my face against the door panel and wondered if I was falling into some kind of pattern of listening at half-open doors.

  ‘You really don’t have any emotion at all, do you, Jack? All this “Iceman” thing, you really got it down, man.’ There was a hint, just the merest whisper, of pain in her voice.

  I heard him sigh, and it was a sound that pulled at s
omething instinctive inside me. I wanted to touch him, to hold him, to reassure him that all the pain contained within that single outbreath could be forgotten. But I didn’t dare move.

  ‘Yeah.’ His voice faded. He’d probably gone back to stand by the window.

  ‘How long have I known you, Iceman, hey? And now – come on, this is me, I know you. You’ve never had any kinda feeling in all this time, even when … and now suddenly you’re overcome with wanting to go back the UK? Smells of fish, boy. How much of this is down to Geth? I could shoot myself over that one, I never thought …’

  A sigh. ‘It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t you, Liss, it was … I don’t know. Me. It’s all me. My head is … I promise I’ll tell you when I get it sorted.’

  ‘Yeah. So. You want me to fetch over the paperwork or not?

  ‘I guess.’ I heard him sigh deeply, then a scratchy sort of noise as though he was running his hands over his stubbled face. ‘I guess.’

  Abandoning the cleaning cupboard as soon as Jack’s door closed, I dashed back to my room to hug a pillow and wonder exactly what secrets were being kept by the reticent Mr Whitaker.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The crowd were waiting in the diner to hear the quiz results. The makeshift stage had been reassembled at one end, much to the chagrin of the waitresses, who were stomping about behind the counter with coffee pots, and there were so many people that the big glass doors had been opened to allow the overspill to sit outside on the steps. I could hear Spanish arguments and dog yapping coming from the kitchen, which was almost enough to distract me from the fact that they were announcing in reverse order, and had got to number five. Felix was holding my hand, bobbing like a tethered balloon.

  ‘You must have got something,’ he kept whispering. ‘I mean, you’re not that crap.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Ssssshhh.’ A small woman wearing jeans far too long for her and a Status Quo T-shirt hissed at us and I cringed, ducking down behind Fe’s shoulder.