Resist

by Blanche Hardin

  Who are you? Who are you really?

  Neither one of could quite answer the question though we knew we were close to an impasse—perhaps it was on the tips of our tongues and eventually we would figure it out via osmosis. A petty fantasy and good on paper but in reality, relationships didn’t work that way.

  Two people could talk their whole way through a relationship, engagement and marriage and still not be any closer to figuring out whom they married. Our problem wasn’t communication; merely we were doing the wrong kind and not asking the important questions that mattered.

  We avoided the subjects that made us feel queasy and uncomfortable.

  Neither one of us wanted to discuss the possibility of love because once we admitted it existed, we might have to wonder whether we were as susceptible to its charms as most people.

  Not that we didn’t love people. We just couldn’t quite get the hang out of truly loving ourselves and in that truth came the purest love of all: the ability to love another not related by blood or relation. If we could just find out what part of us was missing, maybe we could start to fulfill one another as much outside of the bedroom as we did during sex.

  Although my existentialist thinking should have prevented me from having as orgasm, I succumbed beneath him only moments before he came inside of me. Still and completely silent above me, he said nothing as he withdrew and situated himself in a way that the majority of his body weight was not distributed on top of me. His head lay against my breasts and I stroked his hair reassuringly.

  The bruising of his handprints around my wrists began to form on my pale olive skin and should have bothered me but I thought nothing of them at the time. I didn’t feel the pain and it never felt like he gripped me that hard. I merely wrapped my arms around his neck as he cuddled me closer, his semen leaking out of me to form a wet spot on the silk comforter beneath us.

  We both knew we should have taken showers but it was the farthest thing from my mind and there was something comforting in his fluids draining from my body. Although the actual concept we were so calm about should have repulsed us, we were too deeply involved in the aftermath of our lovemaking to care.

  “Why so quiet?” I finally broke the silence as I kissed his forehead.

  “I think I am falling . . . and I don’t know how I feel about that. I have never been in love before with any woman. Well, maybe I was a little bit in love with Jocelyn but was it the idea of Jocelyn I was in love with or the woman? Sometimes, for men, we can never tell.”

  “It’s the same for women too. It isn’t a male thing, sweetie, it’s human nature. Sometimes people look better on paper than in real life and love can be the same way. We are told that it is dewy ball of lovely emotions—reds, whites and pinks. Valentine’s Day is the National Anthem of lovers everywhere. But what that cheesy pseudo holiday shields is the ugly side of love, the part no one wants talks about.”

  He looked into my eyes longingly as if he knew I held the answer. “And that is?”

  “Jealousy, possessiveness, obsession, power struggles—they’re a necessary evil. The day you stop caring and realize you don’t want to fight for your relationship is the day the love dies, plain and simple. The problem is . . . most of the time, the murderer of love isn’t any of the emotions I just named. No, the biggest culprits are apathy, content, and the slow festering sense of comfortable numbness you get as you settle into a situation so deeply jaded you forget to care.

  “All of us are walking wounded but some of us revel in our in pain and realize it’s the brain struggling to tell the body, ‘You’re alive, goddamn it, and celebrate it for however long it lasts.’ Others try to bury that pain because they prefer not to feel at all. They suppress it with drugs, booze, sex, food—anything to not remind themselves of the fact we are living, breathing human beings marching towards the day of our death from the moment we were born. It’s not maudlin thinking but common sense. We were born . . . to die.”

  Blaine’s crystal blue eyes searched mine before he rose up and kissed me, his mouth claiming my own. Our tongues danced and pranced around one another in a duet of life, death, and the struggle to maintain what we knew innately.

  If love was a battlefield, we’d just been called in for duty and our time on the sidelines as mere observers had passed us by. We would have to fight for what we wanted.

  He desired me, needed me, and wanted me but now he’d finally come to the conclusion perhaps that it would be impossible for him to live without me.

  He battled two sides of himself. One was dark but the other half was darker, more sinister and just plain sadistic. I knew it wasn’t in Blaine to be a sadist. All were taught to be the monsters they became but I had to remember what Nietzsche, that mad man in love with his sister, had once proclaimed.

  Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

  If I truly believed Blain was capable of loving me, I would have to fight the monster inside of him. Not that he would ever be free of that dark twisted side but it would have to be controlled lest it swallow all of him and there would be no part of him to truly love.

  I also realized with stunning clarity I hadn’t conquered genophobia.

  Blaine had found a way to infuse his own feelings inside of my body and thus, I’d adopted them as my own. But underneath it all, that suppressed, frightened woman remained, comatose and mute at the moment but still there—hidden inside me—just waiting for her time until she could finally be released.

  Every time we fucked, we exchanged DNA, and I was becoming more and more like him, whether I wanted to be or not.

  Women like me—no matter how pretty, plain or downright ugly we are—don’t just survive. We were never meant to.

  In the end, we persevere, not because we have to but because it’s what we’re meant to do.

  And we always get what we want.

  I wanted Blaine and I was determined to have him, even if I would have openly embrace that darkest part of him and promise myself with strict discipline never to let him see the monster he’d begun to cultivate inside of me.

  Chapter 13

  Blaine

  If Blaine despised anything, it was weakness and his was just beginning to show. The cracks were there below the surface and he despised how needy he’d become. Not just for Vie but for her body, her soul, and her affection.

  He’d never remembered acting this way with Jocelyn but maybe it was because deep down, she didn’t truly want to understand him. She didn’t side-step his manic depression—she merely acted like it hadn’t existed at all.

  Vie wasn’t like that, and for that, he was eternally grateful. Because of her advanced degree, she knew more about the mind and the psyché than he did and he loved her for it. She didn’t avoid his issues anymore than she walked on eggshells; instead she assessed his state of mind and molded herself to fit him. To be the person he needed in the moments they spent together.

  So yes, for the first time in his miserable fucking life, he found himself falling in love because she fucking got him and understood him and there was absolutely no judgment there. Nor did she treat him like a mental health patient and handle him with kid gloves the way his parents did.

  She had a list; he’d hacked into her computer and knew she kept a Word doc file she called “Lessons.” She had written down four so far but she wasn’t very good at following them because every single one she’d broken the night before.

  He contemplated this as he showered and thought about the day.

  Labor Day.

  The following morning, they would rise early and catch their flight back to LAX, pick up his BMW stored at the airport and drive back to their cozy love nest in Pacific Palisades.

  Filming for WAGs would start the following week with the first episodes showing the week of Thanksgiving. The network—Celebrity Today—had been hyping the show for months, giving small teasers of the wives th
ey’d pre-taped. The show was listed as one the top ten Fall shows in Entertainment Now. It would be a hit for the network and the studio. His controversial film, Dances With Devils, was being compared to Eyes Wide Shut meets Match Point combined with Vanilla Sky though “even more brilliant in its portrayal of love, lust and deception played out between two actors who are so incredibly natural and talented, you would think it was a genuine reality show as opposed to a movie.”

  Blaine had begged David and Jamie not to show the rough cut of the film to anyone but they’d gone against the grain and released it overseas so that, technically, it still could qualify for the Award season of 2015. He wasn’t exactly thrilled but after they’d sent him an advanced copy of Variety and the glowing comments from one of their top movie reviewers, he had to admit the accolades filled his heart with an overwhelming sense of pride.

  He realized his days as an underground and celebrated director of snuff and pseudo snuff was over. He couldn’t go back and he would have to sever all contacts with those people and that world. If he didn’t have enough on many of the twisted studio execs than he would be a goner for sure. They had just as much on the line as he did. Therefore when he checked is iPhone 6 and found a cryptic text message, he wasn’t all that surprised:

  Unidentified Caller: If there are any loose ends we should know about, please contact me.

  Blaine felt insulted to be honest. The iPhone was his professional number though he had another personal phone as well, which happened to be a Samsung Note 4, the latest one they’d yet to release. Of course, with money and connections came fancy little gadgets that one could get before they were made available to the public.

  He smirked and threw the phone on the bed and strode naked to his walk-in closet to get dressed. Vie waited for him downstairs. It was barely six in the morning but she wanted to take an invigorating walk on the beach.

  It wasn’t a euphemism for “talking about their relationship” like a lot of other passive aggressive women might have done. Vie meant exactly what she said. She wanted them to walk on the beach, hand in hand. It was only a quarter mile away and easily accessible.

  At this time of the day, it would be virtually empty and lovely for the two of them to spend some quality time together.

  He pulled on pair of casual pants and white t-shirt. After running his fingers through his damp hair, he grabbed his phone and studied it before he texted back.

  Blaine: Only one loose end. Jeremy Bergen. He inherited some heirlooms and very valuable possessions belonging to his father. Three, commissioned Blu-Ray discs are in his possession.

  Unidentified Caller: Okay. Your phone is not secure and your records can be traced. Any way for you to deal with this?

  Blaine: Don’t worry about that. My brother can hack into V’s network and this conversation between you and I will be wiped. There will be no digital trace.

  Unidentified Caller: The problem with this new world order we live in. Nothing disappears in cyberworld. You ever heard of screenshots?

  Blaine: Haha. Believe me, Z will screenshot this conversation before it disappears. To cover my ass against you and vice versa. Don’t contact me again until I return to the City of Angels.

  Unidentified Caller: Aye-aye, captain! LMAO

  Blaine rolled his eyes and stuffed the phone in his side pocket. He hated this abbreviated, hash-tag society they lived in and ached for real conversations without the bullshit. People didn’t talk anymore. Everything was so fucking impersonal, even sexual relationships. Nothing was sacred to anyone anymore.

  Vie waited for him at the bottom of the staircase. She wore Juicy Couture black yoga pants with slim pockets and a white t-shirt too with Juicy Couture displayed across the bust in fancy lettering. Her hair was up in a ponytail and she smiled at him as he walked down the stairs.

  “Everything all right?”

  He nodded. “Yes, everything is fine.”

  They walked down the hallway and almost ran right into Zed.

  He wore another one of his concert t-shirts—Five Finger Death Punch—and a pair of slightly baggy black jeans. “Hey, where are you two off to?”

  “The beach. Just an early morning walk.” Vie stared at him strangely while Blaine glanced at her.

  “Oh, enjoy yourselves.” Zed tried to bypass them before Blaine let go of Vie’s hand and stepped right into the pathway of his brother.

  “Did you sleep last night?” he questioned in a low voice.

  Zed’s violet-blue eyes looked everywhere but his face. “I got a few hours but that’s it. You have no idea how hard it was getting rid of Brigitte. While you two skittered past the sitting room last night to go upstairs and fuck your brains out, I had to deal with her hysterics about leaving.”

  “Well, do you have any idea where she went?”

  “She said she was going back to L.A., Blaine. Something about moving out and finding a place of her own.”

  “All right.” He stepped out of his brother’s way and Zed brushed past him in a hurry.

  “Is it just me or is he acting strange?” Blaine turned back to Vie as he strolled over and grabbed her hand again.

  “Define strange. Exactly what the hell is normal for Zed?” Vie questioned in a facetious tone. “I think he’s pissed off we’re sleeping together and you left him with the job of getting rid of your brother’s mistress.”

  “Mistress? Funny you should put it that way.”

  They walked all the way from the estate to the beach and continued their casual stroll in the sand but not near enough to where the tides came in with steady regularity. Neither of them spoke for a long time until Vie broke the silence.

  “Listen, maybe I’m out of line for saying this but I think Xavier is a coward. He should have handled Brigitte. She really wasn’t Zed’s problem to deal with. She probably needed to be talked down and I wouldn’t have wanted to do that.”

  Blaine snaked an arm around her waist and pulled her close. “All the Pascal-Baasch men are cowards. Do you think I haven’t done the same thing to Xavier or Zed hasn’t made us do something similar for him? He needs to play the martyr sometimes just for the sake of attention if nothing else.”

  “Mmm,” she responded, “he’s his normal surly self so I think this whole obsessive behavior you were worried about can be relaxed a bit. At least crisis was averted. I don’t like thinking about him in a place like The Ranch and as you can see, he’s adjusted to you and me.”

  “You think?” He turned toward her and watched her profile. “Don’t you agree he’s a little old for that whole . . . scene in the house? Talking about us fucking our brains out and what not when our suites aren’t even close to one another?”

  “I said he’s adjusting—meaning he’s tolerating us being together. That’s completely different from accepting a situation. He’s got some time before he might feel that way, if it ever happens at all. I never implied everything was honky dory but I don’t think he’s a danger to me or anyone else either.”

  “If you say so, Vie.” He leaned over and kissed the side of her forehead before they continued their stroll in the sand.

  “What is that?” she asked out loud while pointing in the direction near a far distant tide. It looked like a dead animal but as she broke into sprint and he joined her, he realized it was a human body.

  The closer they got to the body, he realized it was a female, probably white from her pale skin and blonde hair darkened by being soaked in the water. Her skin was covered in grit and sand.

  His heart thundered in his chest.

  Please don’t let that be Brigitte.

  “Do you think it’s . . . Brigitte?” Vie wondered out loud as they stopped just ten feet away.

  “Hard to tell from here since her hair is obscuring her face.”

  “Does she have any tattoos or birthmarks?”

  “Well, she has a dolphin tattoo but it’s on her hip bone and that chick is face down.” Blaine pulled out his cell phone and voice-dialed emergency services
.

  Vie was noticeably quiet as she lightly bit her bottom lip. “How do you know she has a dolphin tattoo on her hip bone?”

  He ended the call with the emergency services representative after she told him she was sending police and the ambulance out to the scene and for them to stay at the possible crime scene. He turned toward his lover and glared at her with icy crystal blue eyes.

  “Vie, I know we have a lot of sex but surely I haven’t fucked the brains right out of your head.”

  Someone nearby snickered and they both turned to see several other people had gathered at the scene where some poor bitch had been dumped or murdered or perhaps both. It didn’t look like the original scene of the crime but then again, he wasn’t an expert, just a former snuff director and that wasn’t the same thing as being a Crime Scene Investigator.

  Could it be the tie up of loose ends if it was Brigitte?

  No. He couldn’t think like that. He doubted David and Jamie would want to be associated with this situation he’d dubbed “Six degrees of fucked up.”

  Vie clung to his bicep with one of her hands. “You’re not telling me you fucked her?” she said in a low voice.

  Blaine didn’t roll his eyes but the smirk on his face was the masculine version of the overused feminine equation. “Well, if you must know, we all fucked Brigitte. It’s no secret. Hell, Zed and I had her one time together. This was shortly before I flew to the Bay Area to fetch you.”

  She wrinkled her pretty nose in disgust. “I think I could have lived my whole life and if you’d never told me that, I’d still be okay. To be honest, I don’t want to know about every woman you fuck, Blaine. I might be forced to rethink our no-condom policy.”