Strange Addiction

by Alexis Nicole

  “And what about you? How does it feel to be a big Hollywood journalist?”

  That statement was like a knife in my side.

  “Yeah,” he continued, “I heard that you were out here writing stories about the stars.”

  My explanation was stuck in my throat. How was I supposed to say that I hadn’t written anything in months, and for no good reason? I didn’t even realize how much I had missed being a journalist until this moment.

  Finally, I found the words to tell the truth. “I’m actually not doing journalism anymore.”

  “You’re kidding. As good a writer as you were?”

  I shrugged. There was nothing to say.

  Donovan rescued me. “That’s too bad,” he said. “I know that was always your dream.”

  “Yeah, well, sometimes dreams get deferred.”

  We stood in silence for what seemed like an eternity.

  Donovan broke the awkwardness. “Listen, I would love to catch up. I was just headed out to lunch when I saw you come in. Can you join me?”

  At first, I was going to politely decline and tell him I wasn’t hungry, but then my stomach spoke up before my mouth could.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” Donovan chuckled.

  He put his hand gently on the small of my back and led me out the door. The French bistro was only two blocks away, and not even ten minutes passed before I was sitting across from him.

  I couldn’t believe this was the short, shy guy that spoke only when someone spoke to him. Now he sat there confidently, giving me suggestions on what to order.

  “Of course, the French onion soup is the best,” he said.

  “Then I’ll have that and a side salad.”

  Once we’d given our orders to the waitress, we sat back and caught up. As Donovan spoke, I tried hard not to stare. But his smooth Hershey’s-colored skin and bright brown eyes made it almost impossible. It was easy to see that he’d been working out, and he’d even lost that little Midwestern twang, which so many people said I still had.

  “You look amazing, by the way,” he said all of a sudden.

  “What?” I thought I’d been the only one staring, but I guess he’d been checking me out too.

  He said, “I guess dating a superstar has its perks, huh?”

  His statement caught me off guard, and I dropped the piece of French bread I held in my hand. I took a sip of water to try to mask my discomfort and give myself time to compose myself.

  “You okay?”

  I nodded. “Fine. Just a little surprised that you heard about that.”

  “Well, news does get around.”

  “I guess.”

  “Especially when you’re in magazines all the time.”

  Well, that was a good point. It was hard to stay out of the public eye when your man was the star of the stars in Hollywood.

  “The first time I saw you in one of those tabloids, I tore out the picture, because I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to hang it in my store and tell everyone, ‘I know her.’” He laughed.

  I just smiled and nodded. It wasn’t that I was ashamed of my relationship. I simply wasn’t up to talking about it in depth, especially to Donovan.

  I guess it was my silence that made him ask, “Are you happy?” His voice was so soft, I barely heard him.

  I nodded. “It’s been interesting adjusting to the lifestyle, but we’re happy.” I didn’t know if it was what I said or how I said it, but Donovan looked at me with uncertainty in his eyes.

  I’d known Donovan just about my whole life. But even though we went that far back, I didn’t want to get into my relationship with him. Not only because I hadn’t seen him in a while and it just didn’t seem right, but also because I wasn’t sure what my relationship was with King. I mean, of course, I knew we were in love, but there were so many things that bothered me. There were so many things that we had to work out.

  “So how’re you liking California so far?” That was my best attempt to change the subject.

  “It’s expensive and fast and a little superficial. Really different from home, right?”

  I nodded.

  “But,” he continued, “I’m enjoying myself. I can see why you never came back home after you graduated.”

  From there, we never went back to talk about me and King. We just chatted about the good old days and about how different California was from Ohio.

  Having lunch with Donovan was like breathing fresh air. It was so easy. It was good to spend time with someone who knew me before, who wasn’t part of my life with King.

  “I would really like to do this again,” he whispered in my ear as he hugged me good-bye as we stood in front of the restaurant.

  I didn’t know why, but I hesitated answering. Maybe, it was because ever since the moment that King and I became a couple, I hadn’t had many male friends. When I stepped back and looked into Donovan’s eyes, there was a sincerity there that I hadn’t seen in a long time.

  “Sure,” I said. “Let’s make that happen. Give me your number.”

  His smile let me know that I’d made the right decision.

  “I promise I’ll call you soon.”

  Before I stepped away, he took my hand and kissed it softly.

  I headed off, going in the opposite direction of Donovan’s shop. Now I strolled down the street with memories on my mind and a smile on my face. Seeing him and reminiscing had done a lot for me. I didn’t need to shop as much as I thought, but I did want to get down to Chanel before the store closed.

  I was just about to step into Chanel when my cell rang.

  “Hey, baby,” I answered with delight when I saw King’s name pop up on the phone’s screen.

  “Where the hell are you?”

  The sad thing about King’s outburst was that it didn’t shock me. Now I just rolled my eyes and wondered why he wasn’t as delighted as I was.

  “I came to Rodeo to do some shopping. Are you okay?”

  “Naw, I’m not okay. What are you doing over there?”

  “I came to do some shopping,” I repeated.

  “You need to quit spending my money and bring your ass home now,” he yelled before he hung up.

  “Oh my God,” I whispered.

  As fast as I could, I headed back to the car. My hands were shaking as I put the key into the ignition and then sped out of the parking lot.

  I wanted to break all speed limits, but the last thing I needed was to bring home a ticket. King would have a fit, and it seemed like he was already upset.

  About what? I had no idea. I had no clue what had happened today, but King was not happy and I needed to do whatever was necessary to diffuse the situation.

  Chapter 12

  I twisted the car into our driveway, turned off the ignition, then sat there for a moment. I hadn’t spent a lot of time praying over the past few years, since I’d been out on my own. But I felt like a prayer could be a good thing right about now.

  I slipped out of the car, then eased into the house as quietly as I could. King was obviously already upset, and I didn’t need to do a single thing to add fuel to that fire. Dropping my bag by the front door, I listened for a moment, trying to hear a sound and get a clue about where King might be. But when I heard nothing, I began to make my way through the house to find him.

  As I’d driven home, I tried to imagine all the reasons why King would be upset . . . again. It had to be the new movie—he was always stressed out about new projects. At least, that was what I’d told myself. The first time King had ever gone off on me was on that movie set in Connecticut, and he was just as high-strung now.

  This movie was even tougher. King was playing the part of a patient in a mental institution, and he had to go into some really dark places for this role. The critics, who had gotten wind of the film, had said this might be King’s Academy Award–winning role, and that alone had added a lot of pressure. At the age of twenty-seven his father had already had two Academy Award nominations, and people were asking if King
Stevens would ever be as good as his father.

  I had searched most of the first floor of the house when I heard the music. It was soft, but I knew that King was in the den. The music got louder as I stepped down the stairs, and the voice became clearer. King was playing one of his mother’s CDs, and at the bottom of the steps, I saw him, slumped on the couch and wrapped in his bathrobe. His head was down, and he held a bottle in his hand. I wasn’t sure what it was. A bottle of scotch, maybe.

  It was hard for me to move. I was shocked; I’d never seen King like this before.

  “Baby,” I began softly, “is everything okay?”

  I had both concern and caution in my tone, not wanting to do anything that would startle him or upset him further in any way.

  He stayed the way he was, not moving, as if he hadn’t heard me.

  “King?” I kept my voice low as I slowly walked to the couch, then lowered myself to sit right next to him.

  Minutes went by, and a new song came on. Now King lifted his head and began singing with his mother. This song, I recognized. It was called “Baby, Good Night,” and it was a song about him that his mother had written and recorded before he was born. He told me that his mother would hold her belly and sing to him every night, before she went to bed.

  I sat and listened as King sang along, not wanting to interrupt, but also not wanting to set him off. Obviously, something was wrong.

  At the end of the song, the CD stopped playing and we sat in silence for a moment. Just as I was getting ready to ask King again what was wrong, he spoke to me for the first time.

  “What’s the one thing I ask of you when I get home?” He didn’t bother to look at me.

  I wanted to tell him that I was a grown woman. I wanted to tell him that since he didn’t want me to work, I was bored and had to do something. I wanted to tell him that he didn’t own me, that he didn’t own my life. Instead, I didn’t say any of that. I lowered my head and said, “To be here,” knowing that was the answer he expected.

  Really, I should have known that King wouldn’t be happy to come home to an empty house. But how was I supposed to know what time he was getting off the set? Was I just supposed to sit here all day and all night and wait for him?

  “To be here,” King said. “And why is that so difficult for you to understand?”

  With those words he looked up at me. He glared at me, and I became uncomfortable, unsettled.

  “Baby, I’m sorry, but I needed to get out. I thought I would be back before you got home, but I ran into an old friend.”

  His expression seemed to darken with my explanation.

  “Old friend, huh?” Suddenly he jumped up and grabbed my arm at the same time, pulling me up with him. His grip was strong and tight, and already I could feel my muscles pulsating beneath his grasp. I knew I’d have another bruise when he finally let me go.

  “Are you cheating on me?” he yelled as he let go of my arm and grasped my shoulders. He shook me as if I were a child.

  “What? No!” I said, as if his words were ridiculous. Once again, tears rolled from my eyes. “I’m not cheating on you. I wouldn’t do that.”

  “You out gallivanting with some other dude?”

  “No!”

  “You forgot you got a man at home?” he screamed.

  “No!”

  He continued to shake me with each word he spoke, and my head started to hurt.

  “You wanna leave me?” He tossed me back onto the couch, and my side hit the bottle of scotch, which he’d left lying there.

  I winced in pain, grabbed my side, and now I sobbed even harder. My eyes were closed, but I could hear his breathing over me.

  “You will never leave me,” he growled. “I have given you everything.”

  Take it back! Take everything back! Those were the words I screamed in my head, but of course, I didn’t dare say them aloud. The room was silent except for my sobs and his breathing, and after a few minutes I heard King stomp away.

  I didn’t move. I stayed there, still crying and wondering what had just happened. King and I had been together for just about a year, and I had never given him any reason not to trust me. I loved that man. I told him that, and I showed him that. But this—his temper, his grabbing me, these ridiculous accusations—it was all becoming too much.

  Still, I couldn’t imagine leaving him. Most of the time King was so sweet, so kind, so loving. He had shown me the finer things in life, and like he said, he’d given me so much. It was just at these moments when he made me question it all. It was at these moments that I felt sick . . . well, sick to my stomach.

  Just as I had that thought, I jumped up and dashed to the bathroom, just in time to kneel before the toilet and throw up. I released my lunch into the porcelain bowl and gagged until my stomach was empty. I stayed kneeling there for a while because my stomach was still twisting, but there was nothing left. I meant that. There was nothing left inside of me. Nothing emotionally, nothing spiritually. I was in pain.

  Eventually I tried to stand, but it felt as if the room was spinning. I flipped down the toilet cover, then sat, taking deep breaths at the same time. I had to find a way to compose myself, to stop my head from hurting, to stop my heart from aching. It took a long time, at least a half an hour, before I was able to push myself off the toilet and make my way upstairs to our bedroom. I didn’t have any idea if King was at home or if he’d left, but by the time I got to our room, I figured that he had stomped away again.

  I had no energy to do anything but lie in my bed and sleep today’s catastrophe away. I slipped under the covers and cried until I felt all pain ease from my body and my mind.

  “Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife? To have and to hold till death do you part?”

  King turned to look at me, and the sweetest expression, filled with nothing but love, came across his face. He looked deep into my eyes and kissed the back of my hand softly before responding, “I do.”

  My smile was wide. I adored this man. He was everything I could ask for and more. And finally, here we were, committing to each other. We were going to be husband and wife.

  The pastor turned to me. “Heiress, do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband? To have and to hold till death do you part?”

  For a moment, I tore my eyes away from King and scanned the sanctuary. Three hundred of our friends and family were on the edge of their seats, grinning and waiting for me to say, “I do.”

  Turning back to King, I thought about how lucky I was. This man was wonderful, so handsome in his custom tuxedo.

  And then . . . screams and gunshots!

  I shot up straight in the bed, drenched in sweat but shivering. The room was dark; there wasn’t even any light coming in from the window. I had slept into the night. Then my stomach rumbled. I tried to roll out of bed, but at first I couldn’t move. It took me a moment to realize that King had slid into the bed, and now his arm was wrapped tightly around me. With the rumbling rising inside of me, I squirmed, trying to get away.

  “Where are you going?” King whispered in a half-asleep voice.

  “I have to use the bathroom,” I squeaked.

  He loosened his grip and rolled over, probably asleep before I even jumped from the bed. I ran to the bathroom and leaned over the toilet just in time. I couldn’t believe there was anything else inside of me. I hadn’t eaten since lunch. But still, I was gagging on whatever was still left in my stomach. Finally, I leaned my back against the bathroom wall. I was totally spent, feeling like I had just run a marathon or had been in a boxing match.

  What was wrong with me? Was King stressing me out so much that now I was physically sick? That had to be it, and that meant that things had to change. We had to find a way to get back to the complete bliss that I’d known before we left for Connecticut, or else I didn’t know what I was going to do.

  Chapter 13

  After being in the bathroom for about an hour, I finally crawled back into bed. Totally exhausted, I fe
ll asleep right away, but when I woke up the next morning, I was alone in the bed. I sat up slowly, not wanting to disturb my stomach again, and once I was sure that I was fine, I slipped out of the bed, grabbed my bathrobe, and then went in search of King. I looked in every room of the house, but he was nowhere to be found. He must’ve had an early call on the set.

  Making my way back to the bathroom, I gasped when I turned on the light. I had halfway scared myself when I looked in the mirror. My hair was all over my head, going in every direction, my eyes were puffy and swollen, and there was white stuff all around my mouth. I looked like something out of a horror movie. I tried to stretch my tired arms over my head, but my arms felt too heavy. I shrugged off my bathrobe, then the T-shirt that I wore, and the first thing I noticed were the bruises on my arms.

  I shook my head, not at all surprised that they were there. Running my fingers over my left arm first and then my right arm, I wondered how long I was going to put up with this. This wasn’t the first time I had a bruise from King, but this was the first time that I had two at once. Meaning things were getting worse. And I didn’t even know what had really set him off yesterday. There had been plenty of other times when I wasn’t here when he came home, and he’d never gone off about my absence before. Something had gotten to him. Clearly, he wasn’t himself, and I desperately wanted to help him get back to the place where he was when I met him. The place where we were so happy together.

  I didn’t know exactly what I could do to keep him happy all the time, but I was going to work on it. I didn’t want to be part of his problem; I wanted to be his solution. I didn’t want to be the one to put stress on him.

  Hopping into the shower, I let the warm water wash over me, soothe me. I took a deep breath and tried to relax, to ease my mind and my body, but my mind and my thoughts were on King. It was surprising to me that he was having this kind of stressful reaction to fame. I would’ve thought that it would’ve been easier for him since he’d grown up in this life. Maybe that was part of his pressure—trying to live up to what everyone else felt that he should be. Maybe having famous parents wasn’t as easy as I thought.