Lose Me: (New Adult Billionaire Romance) (Broken Idols)

by M. C. Frank

Then he cursed.

  We ate in the hospital’s restaurant—that is he ate and I pushed the food around on my plate, but for once he didn’t force me to eat. He smiled and made jokes and it was a bit forced, still we both made a good effort at pretending to enjoy ourselves.

  It was raining again in the afternoon, so we stayed in my room playing cards.

  “Listen, you. . . you know you don’t have to stay here, right?” I said and he laughed. “I mean,” I added quickly, in case he thought I didn’t want him there, “I’ve known you for what, like ten minutes? We hardly know each other. I hardly know you. And now you suddenly have to sit in my hospital room—”

  “What do you want to know?” he interrupted me.

  “Huh?”

  “I get it. I need to be here right now, for you, but I do realize that you hardly know me,” he said. “So get to know me. What do you want to know?”

  “Oh.” His blue eyes were fixed on mine intently. I turned aside, trying to hide my red cheeks. “What do you like? What do you hate? What do you dream of?”

  “All right, slow down, Sherlock. Why don’t we play twenty questions?”

  “Sarcasm,” I answered. “Nice.”

  He laughed, leaning back on the pillows, and then turned around to rearrange them, throwing one that was bothering him to me.

  “Hey!” I shouted. “Sarcasm I appreciate, violence not so much.”

  We were both in sweats and he was lying on my bed, me on the little bedside armchair, the food tray between us as a card table.

  “You call that violence,” he laughed, “you should have been on the set of my first movie.”

  “Why?” I asked, intrigued. “What was it about?”

  “Ninjas,” he answered. “The ‘Boy Hero’ anime that was made into a kid’s flick? Ever heard of it? I was the voice of Mex. . . and then I was Mex.”

  I’m ashamed to say I immediately sat up and looked at him with new-found respect. But not really ashamed, because that’s my brother we’re talking about here. Internally I was like YAS.

  “You were. . . You—?” I started, but he lifted an eyebrow and I stopped quickly. “Sorry, it’s just I used to watch this all the time. My friend Katia and I, we used to shut ourselves in my room all Sunday morning, pausing every sequence and trying to replicate it. Well, actually I tried the stunts and she calculated the integer spin and the momentum of the orbital something, I can’t even remember the words, trying to prove whether your moves were possible or not, from a scientific standpoint.”

  “She sounds like a delightful person.”

  “Oh, she is. Wait till you meet her, she’s a physicist,” I said and he pretended to shiver with horror at the word ‘physicist’. “You’ll love her. You have to, because I love her.”

  “I’m scared now.”

  “I’m telling you she’s the best, okay? You’ll see.”

  “Can’t wait. Okay, care to make this interesting?” he asked, kicking off his shoes and crossing his striped-socks-clad feet at the ankles.

  “Always.”

  “I’ll answer one question for every bite you take,” he deadpanned, lifting a plate with a PB&J sandwich, which he had been trying to make me swallow since lunch.

  “You play dirty.”

  “All right, I’ll sweeten the deal,” he said. “For every five questions you ask, and for every five bites you take, you can do as many crunches as you can, up to fifty.”

  I froze. I hadn’t exercised since the operation. Can I still do crunches? My stupid brain thought. I told it to shut up.

  Ollie was still smiling up at me, but suddenly he looked uncertain.

  “Can I do pushups too?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

  “Anything you want, except maybe for somersaults. We’ll have to wait until it stops raining for that.”

  “Cool,” I said. “Okay let me think. . . Oh, I know. Favorite song.”

  “That’s your first question?” he asked, pushing the plate towards me and picking up the cards in his long fingers, straightening them perfectly before he put them back in the box. His face looks completely focused.

  “It’s the most important one,” I replied, watching him. “After your favorite car, but I’m scared to ask that one. A little OCD, are we?”

  “Okay,” he said. “There is no little OCD, either you have it or you don’t. And it’s way more complicated than just fixing a pack of ca—” He stops himself. “One question at a time, okay? One question and one bite, before I answer.”

  “All right, dad.” I bit into the fluffy bread. It tasted like mud, but I managed to swallow the entire bite.

  “Guns ‘n’ Roses, November Rain. And Alfa Romeo Spider, although you cheated.”

  “Oooh,” I said, trying not to show how hard it was to swallow down the mouthful of PB&dust, “that might be a problem.”

  “Song or vehicle?”

  “Both.”

  “Ah, don’t you know? There’s no getting rid of me, I’m family,” he replied easily. “I mean, I’ve got a sister who cheats at twenty questions, but I’m not complaining. At least not out loud.” He winked at me. “Next question.”

  I felt a slight shiver as the word ‘family’ came out of his mouth. “I wasn’t trying to cheat, it’s just the questions keep popping in my head. . . Oh, I’ve got another one. What age did you get your first role?”

  “Eight.”

  “Name of your dad.”

  “You didn’t take a bite.”

  “Fine. I’ll take the freaking bite. What’s his name?”

  “John Kovack.”

  “What?! James Bond?”

  “Is that your next question?”

  “I didn’t know your dad was freaking James Bond. . . I didn’t know the most eligible bachelor of Hollywood had ever been married.”

  “Yes, he was married briefly to Christina, and by briefly I mean for about two months. I see him every second Christmas at Vegas. Okay, two more questions and then you can do your crunches.”

  “Every second—? That’s. . . that’s cool.”

  “Well, cooler than most dads in the business,” he shrugged. “Still it sucks as far normal families go. . . But who am I to talk about normal families? I’ve no idea what the words even mean.” He laughed and got up gingerly, stretching. “I’ll be back in a sec.”

  And he simply walked into the little bathroom closet right inside the hospital room. I stifled a giggle. I think that’s when I realized he was feeling so at ease with me, truly at home. Because we are each other’s home.

  And then it happened.

  His phone beeped.

  I know I shouldn’t have looked, but it was sitting right there on the nightstand. At spitting distance. I just glanced over, and for a second the text message blinked on the screen.

  The name on top.

  Aaargh.

  It was Wes, of course.

  The text read:

  Hey, ‘Babe’. Ha. So, how is she today?

  Then the screen faded to black. My heart started beating like crazy and I took a deep breath.

  Okay, first of all Babe? WTH? And the ‘she’ could be anyone right? Right. Anyone, could be anyone. I tried to breathe calmly, looked out the window. Then the phone blinked again. Some demon made me look—yeah, like I could resist.

  She feeling any better?

  The screen went dark in a second.

  Inside the bathroom the faucet ran. Come on, Ollie. Hurry back, it’s gonna blink again. And then it did.

  Give me something, I’m dying here, Ols. Come on.

  Right then the door opened. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, just sat there not moving a muscle.

  “Next question, girlfriends,” I asked, hardly knowing what I said. Ollie looked at me strangely, because my voice sounded a bit too loud, but he plopped himself on my bed with a thud and sighed dramatically.

  “Oh, you don’t want to go there, that’s just not something a dude talks about with his little sister.”

  H
e picked up his phone. “Did this thing beep, like, ten times while I was in there? Sheesh. . . ” He flicked through the three texts, then flung his phone away carelessly, murmuring, “idiot!”

  “Do you know,” he turned to me, “what it means when a guy you’ve known since you were six suddenly starts to call you ‘Babe’?”

  “Babe?” I repeated in a choked voice.

  I could almost hear Wes’ voice in my head, retorting some really lame response to Ollie. I missed him so much it hurt to breathe.

  “Yep. Babe,” Ollie said. “There was some comic actor in the nineteen thirties, you know, vintage black and white flicks, not much sound apart from a piano played in a frenzy, and a few white-letter frames thrown about to give you a sense of the plot. . . It doesn’t get any more vintage than that, right? And this dude is fat. Not obese, but chubby in a cute, funny way, doing stand up comedy, getting into scrapes with his friend who was thin as a rail. It was a big deal back then for someone to be chubby, I suppose—people didn’t have much to eat usually. Anyway, they’re called ‘Laurel and Hardy’.”

  “Oh I know them, we have them in Greece, too,” I said, my thoughts momentarily distracted. “There’s a poster of them in Chandler and Joey’s room, in Friends.”

  Ollie laughed. “Yep, them.”

  “Oh. Oh! The L&H,” I realized. “That’s where that comes from?”

  “Exactly!” Ollie said, snapping his fingers. “Wes loves these two dudes. So, he got it into his huge head that I’m the fat guy, cause his name was Oliver Hardy—or Ollie. Turns out people started to call him ‘Babe’, cause with his chubby face, always laughing like that, he looked like a baby. So he’s calling me that now. As in ‘Babe’.”

  “Sounds normal to me,” I murmured, hardly knowing what to say.

  “He started it after our latest round of ‘truth or dare’. He lost, of course. It’s such a stupid thing, but we’ve been doing it since we were kids, daring each other to do lame stuff in front of the cameras to pass the time. How should I know that this one would turn into the weirdest . . . ”

  Suddenly he frowned, realizing he’d been talking about him all this time. He winced.

  “Ah, sorry,” he said and I shrugged, trying not to let him see how much it hurt. “I. . . Crap, maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it. Wes said you guys haven’t talked—”

  I held my breath. This was it. Wes had totally told him we hadn’t spoken since before the operation, and who knows what else? How Ollie hadn’t asked me about it until now, I don’t know.

  “I. . . um,” I said intelligently.

  “You know what?” he interrupted me. “None of my business.” He lifted his hands in the air. “I’m here for you right now. What was your question again?”

  He grabbed a handful of chips from my plate and shoved them into his mouth. And that was that. Subject dropped.

  I stared at him as he was sprawled there on my bed, chewing noisily, in that way people do and piss you off, but when they’re your brother or your dad you’re used to it, and you don’t even hear it anymore. That’s when I realized it: I loved him.

  I love him. That’s it. That’s how it happened. (I’m glad I’ve written this down for future reference, by the way. That was the exact moment. The moment I knew. Because he understood. That’s all it took.)

  “So. Girlfriends. Spill,” I told him as casually as I could. “I didn’t swallow that nasty bite for nothing. And without anybody having to yell at me to do it.”

  “I never yell. All right, have it your way. Girlfriends. . . let me see. None. Girls. . . about a million.”

  “Oh, so you’re that guy.”

  “One more question, smartass.”

  “I think we are nearing dangerous waters of TMI, as in too much information, so let’s talk about something else. Hm. . . .Oh, yep. I’ve got it. Happiness.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Happiness. What does happiness mean for you?”

  Ollie was silent for a moment, thinking. “I don’t suppose you’re expecting a real answer right now, are you?” He fake yawned.

  “Do you expect me to keep all of these bites down?”

  “Crap,” he said. “Okay. Happiness. I’ll need a sec here.”

  It took him almost five minutes to answer. Then,

  “Cruising on the L&H with just Wes, no girls, only the sea and us. Skyping with my dad when he’s on his plane, on his way to or from a set. Oreos. Lying on my bed, headphones in, eyes closed, listening to really tacky nineties music. Grand Theft Auto V. Surfing in a beach in Sydney where the curls get as tall as twenty feet, maybe higher. Watching your dad and you playing charades. The day I called you sis for the first time.”

  “Oreos?” I said.

  “Drop me five,” he replied.

  I did twenty-five push ups. But then he had to literally pick me off the floor and call a nurse because I couldn’t catch my breath. Thankfully Jamie was off duty—that’s something, at least.

  And then, like the grandma that I’ve become, I slept for nine hours straight. Woke up in the freaking middle of the night, and couldn’t sleep anymore.

  Now it’s six thirty in the morning and I’ve been writing for an hour. My wrist hurts, but I’m wide awake. I’ll try to get some more sleep anyway. If Jamie comes in here in three hours and finds me still up, there will be hell to pay.

  Update

  Apparently I did fall asleep. Something woke me at about eight seven; a cool hand on my forehead.

  “Dad?” I squinted up at him.

  “Go back to sleep,” he said. “Just wanted you to know I’m back. Your brother fell asleep on the couch outside your room, I’m taking him back to the hotel. You ok?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Wait, can I talk to him for a sec before you go?”

  There was something I wanted to ask him before I’d fallen asleep like a freaking baby.

  “What?” Ollie asked as he came in, frowning, his eyes all blurry with sleep.

  “You never got to tell me what’s wrong with you.” I said. “I did, but not you.”

  “Ari. . . ” he sighed, rubbing his eyes. “I’m still asleep here.”

  “I won’t go back to sleep unless you tell me. Or I’ll have terrible nightmares, I always do when there’s something unresolved in my mind.”

  He looked at me sheepishly for a second, and then I groaned, because I finally got it. His eyes were telling me that my nightmares would be even worse if he told me. Which could only mean one thing. Wes.

  “Tell me,” I said, sitting up.

  “You already know.” His voice was resigned.

  “Is he. . . is he struggling with—is he drinking again?” I whispered.

  “Bingo,” he said and yawned. “Do me a favor,” he went on, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Please get it through your thick head that it isn’t your fault and go back to sleep, ok? I know what you’re thinking, and I want to tell you, what you’re thinking? Don’t think it.”

  “Ok,” I said in a small voice.

  “Ari?” he stopped at the door.

  “What?”

  “I’m—I’m glad you’re okay. Really glad.” He smiled. “For a few days it looked like. . .I’d found you too late. I’m incredibly happy it wasn’t true.”

  I just stared at him, dumb. “When will I start feeling happy about it?” I said finally in a voice I hardly recognized as my own.

  He was next to me in two long strides, hugging me so fiercely my breath caught.

  “Soon enough, I hope,” he said against my bald head. “You have your whole life ahead of you. This will just fade to a bad memory, nothing more, you’ll see.”

  Then he said goodnight and left.

  And I picked this thing up to write until I felt sleepy. Which I don’t, not in the least. I feel tired, but not sleepy.

  I feel guilty.

  I feel scared.

  He said it’s not my fault but. . . Oh, it is. It is. Wes, I’m so sorry. So so so so sorry.

&
nbsp; That’s it. I’m calling him tomorrow.

  Day Six

  I’m going to write this down right now, just after I woke up, in case I forget it. I mean, I’m pretty sure it’s branded in my memory forever—not to be too dramatic or anything—but it’s the details that count, right?

  So the memory came so vivid it was almost real, right at that point where sleep meets wakefulness, and I don’t think that kind of lucidity comes too often. It’s eleven to nine now so, considering Ollie and dad went to bed about three hours ago, I have hours until they show up.

  All right, let’s do this. (Jamie, I hate you.)

  This memory is from the day I was sick and Wes came to my house and stayed with me practically all day. The day that he said ‘he wouldn’t change anything, except for the pain.’

  I was lying on my side, on top of the bedspread, between bouts of pain and nausea. Wes was on the bed beside me, his body parallel to mine. He had his head propped up on his hand, his elbow next to my nose.

  “How come you don’t have a boyfriend?” he asked me out of the blue.

  The tone of his voice was conversational, as though he just wanted to make small talk. Or maybe to distract me from feeling lousy. It worked, anyway.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “All my friends are in Athens or Europe, in college or university, studying. I kinda. . . skipped that step.”

  “Well, in the industry,” he said, “kids don’t study. They don’t have to. They don’t even read actually, no one does except for me, but. . . that’s another story. Anyway, I plan on attending a college interview in a few weeks. If they even consider my application. I mean, it’s one of the most prestigious schools for dramatic and visual arts in the world.”

  I almost scoffed at the thought of any school not accepting him.

  “Sounds cool,” I said. “Good for you. There’s no doubt you’ll get in, though, right? If you don’t get into the best school there is, then who will?”

  “You really think I can do it?” he asked me, his face lightening up, and I said of course he could. “You’ve been lucky with your choices in life,” he said quietly and I shuddered.