“Touch of the flu,” he said. They accepted that, because something was definitely not right with Steve that day, and then Sue-Lyn wrapped an arm around his waist and gave him a squeeze. His girlfriend was working that day, as she most always did on Sundays, but they trusted each other and, heck, what was a little affection between friends? But the thought of overstepped boundaries between friends wasn’t lost on Stephen, and so he pushed Sue-Lyn’s arm away, feigning an upset stomach. As the others laughed and carried on, swapping stories from the last week on set and wondering where Josh was that day, he looked away.
Ten miles away, Josh and Jessie lay together on the overstuffed leather couch in his media room and, as a film ran its course on the television, they stared into each other’s eyes. They stayed that way for most of the day, exploring the newness of each other with that great gift that is touch, and they made love in the blue glow of the semi-darkness. Soon, though, it was time to leave. Jessie had to go home at some point and prepare for the next day. Four a.m. came early for those who worked on a busy film set. Her call was for five thirty, but she had to get up and drive out to Langley. Josh wished he could pick her up, but it likely wasn’t a good idea until they at least figured out where they stood. His call was for seven, as he wasn’t in the first scene, and there was no doubt that folks would notice if they arrived together.
He had to drive Jessie home, but promised to drop her off just beyond the entrance to her parking lot so as to avoid the few paparazzi camped out at both the front doors and near the garage to the underground parking. She called Matt, her head of security, and scheduled a pick-up – he, or one of his team, were paid well to always be on call and, she hoped, to not ask any questions. He or his man would see her safely inside the underground parking and up the elevator to her condo.
Josh piloted his truck to a partially hidden driveway across the road from where Matt or his man would soon arrive. Lit by the dim blue-ish glow of the dashboard, Jessie felt the most bizarre sensation come over her. How strange it was to feel so inflated, elated, and blessed at the same time one was overcome with fear and the sense of impending loss. She gazed at Josh and they sat for a few minutes, their heads against the backs of their seats, their knees pointed towards each other. She leaned forward and he pulled her close, her head on his chest. He stroked Jessie’s hair with his good left hand while she placed a hand over his bulky cast, feeling the still bruised fingers. After a few moments, she sat up and aired their dilemma head-on, with just one word – his name.
“Josh,” she said in anguish, and to him it sounded like a rainbow breaking over the clouds, because he knew from the way the word was spoken that it held all the things she needed to say to him, and that she wasn’t sorry. That was a large burden for such a simple word, for a name as unassuming as his.
He put a finger to her lips. “I meant what I said earlier. We’ll figure it out.”
And Jessie hoped they would, but she also knew tonight she had to walk inside her penthouse and wait for Charlie to call, because after his last fiasco he was doing better staying in touch with her these days. And she didn’t want Charlie to call; she didn’t want the sun to go down that day without Josh beside her, his hand on her hip as they drifted off to sleep. More so, she did not want to be on set once again tomorrow, and the next day and the next, without the truth made apparent for all to see - that somehow she had fallen in love with this man, and he with her, and that not another thing on this planet mattered at this time except that fact.
But time held them captive once again and, in the false white street-lit darkness beyond, she saw Matt’s black Audi sedan pull into the arranged meeting spot across the street, and she had to go. When she let go of Josh’s hand, Jessie felt her heart literally ache, yet somehow she managed to pull open the door and walk on shaky legs across the street. Matt got out and opened the passenger door for her, and when he stepped back inside, he dared a peek across the road from where she had appeared, but all he saw was a dark shape hiding there in the blackness of the night. He told himself it wasn’t his business anyway, but when you were responsible for another’s security, it was your job to make all mysterious shapes in the darkness your business.
Matt pulled away from the small parking lot and into the larger one by Jessie’s building. In his rearview mirror, headlights swiftly appeared, beacons in the black night, then they turned away and the mystery disappeared into the night.
***
Chapter Ten
The next three weeks were an extraordinary, concentrated, mind-blowing, passionate time for Jessie and Josh. There were so many things they had come to respect and admire in each other, that neither could even fully grasp what their relationship meant. So they tried to push away the layers that required thought and concern for others, and instead chose to focus on the obvious, on what they knew to be true, and that was that they reveled in each other’s company and, gloriously, in each other’s bodies as well. Work was challenging, and for the most part they continued to avoid each other as they had before. Meeting each other’s eyes was simply too painful, because neither had the power within them to hide how they felt about the other. But, luckily, they were very good actors, so they were able to focus on Billy and Kate and the world of nineteenth century “Gassy-town”, and push Jessie and Josh aside until wrap.
Only one thing changed – at lunch that first day, when Jessie was under her wintry cottonwood tree on a blanket she’d wrapped around her legs, guitar in hand, and light winter jacket over her shoulders, Josh joined her. He continued to do so each day, script in hand, so others who took notice would think they were just going over some lines. Although, had they looked closely, they would see only Jessie playing guitar and singing softly, and Josh dozing quietly on the edges of her blanket, listening to her enchanting voice as it filled the caverns of his soul. When he felt terribly brave, or when he felt he’d had enough and told himself he didn’t care what anyone else thought, Josh reached out a hand to gently caress Jessie’s thigh with his fingertips, or with the back of his left hand, and those seconds, minutes - bar none - were the most exquisite of his day until after wrap, when they met twenty miles southeast at a vacant, isolated ice cream place called Benny’s.
There they sat in the back of the small parking lot, either in the cab of his truck if it was freezing, or in the bed of it, on a blanket they commissioned for just that purpose.
Benny’s was more parking lot than building. Beside the small derelict one story structure, its peeling, faded sign remained to stand guard over the lovers. A soulless six-foot Benny wearing washed-out rainbow pinks and yellows, and a ridiculous grin too large for his fictional unseeing face, stared at them incessantly - like a God, daring them. Faded Benny held high a peeling ice cream cone, like the Olympic torch, or perhaps a warning, Jessie thought.
No one ever came by, for it was a lonely location devoid of life other than their own two beating hearts and, in summer, a family or two of blissful, unaware field mice. So they made it their own special place, and it was there under faded Benny’s watchful eyes where they grew to love and respect each other even more.
Josh and Jessie were always careful not to give too much of their pasts away, but they shared enough to rationalize why they were so drawn to each other in the first place. The main common denominator was lonesomeness born of absent parents – in Jessie’s case, the dad she remembered, who played Frisbee in the backyard with her, and who taught her to sing with confidence and passion. She missed her mom, too, but in a different way, for her mom had not rescued her when she was so desperately scared, alone, and hurting, physically and emotionally – in the worst way, as only a molested twelve year old can. On the good days, she felt she could forgive her mother for her crime of neglect; on the bad days, she couldn’t bring herself to even ponder her mother’s broken spirit or whether the woman still existed on this troubled earthly plane.
Jessie did not tell Josh anything in detail, with the exception of the good times with he
r dad, his death – as she had shared with Stephen – and then her mother remarrying and Jessie’s decision to leave home at age fourteen. She did not speak of the step monster of a substitute parent, crawling into her bed at night and calling softly, “Jessie…” to make sure she was awake to feel his touch. She did not share the horror of it all, that at the time she was an innocent who did not even know the realities of sex between men and women. She did not tell the most appalling part - that even though she hated it, and him, and she knew it was terribly wrong, somewhere in her innermost soul she derived some pleasure from his brutal touch. That was a fact she rarely admitted, even to herself. That was a horror she’d never been able to reconcile within herself.
Charleston…well, how could Jessie tell Josh about Charleston? Again, the pain was buried, done and gone, as far as she was concerned. Or so she thought. She told Josh about Sandy, that he was her first love, that they met on the beach and shared a few years together while finishing high school. She talked about Rachel, but didn’t say much except that her friend had fallen into the trap of drugs and alcohol, and that was maybe why she wanted to help Josh as well as the girls in the shelter and, especially, the scrawny introvert Terri. She explained that Rachel had gotten in over her head and one day overdosed and died. She did not talk about Deuce McCall or his restaurant and lounge in Charleston. With the exception of busking in the early days, Jessie didn’t mention work much, although Josh knew a bar there was now well known for giving her a start in the entertainment business. She did not say why or how her relationship with Sandy ended. She could barely allow herself to think of it, of him, and of those days, and so Jessie’s explanation of her years in that great city, voted one of the top three in the world to visit for its exquisite beauty and celebrated history, was brief.
Josh didn’t push her. On some hopeful level he thought they would have a lot of time to talk about her past. He felt she, like him, would share those types of thoughts when she was ready, as their trust built, as time ticked on. He didn’t acknowledge to himself just how cruel time could be, how brusquely and dispassionately it could rip lovers apart.
For his part, he told her about losing his mother to cancer when he was twenty - about how beautiful and gentle she had been, how much he adored, as a boy, being buried in red velvet seats in symphony halls listening to her play cello. He supposed that was why he felt Jessie’s music so deeply – sure, it wasn’t Beethoven or Vivaldi, but the depth of feeling in her music came from the same place as the masters. It was just as real. One day, when they were talking about his mother and the fading memories he had as a boy watching her perform, he thought about Jessie on stage, and the riveting madness of watching her perform, often for thousands. Now that he had gotten to know her, he knew without doubt that she was shy, sad. How did she find the confidence to perform on stage for so many?
“I go someplace else,” was her simple answer as she sat looking up at him, knees drawn up under her chin, enfolded by her arms, a little smile at play on the lips he loved to kiss.
“Where?” he asked. “Where do you go?”
She took his hand and squeezed it. “You know where I go.”
He lifted her fingers to his and nuzzled them, his gaze never leaving hers.
“Yeah,” he said. And that was the basis of their love – a mutual knowing.
Josh told her a little about his dad, but he didn’t want to get into it during those surreal weeks, either. What they were experiencing now, the initial growth of a long and enduring love and trust, must not be sullied by the rotten smell of distasteful memories. Instead, he spoke of his family, of Kayla’s love and commitment for dance, of Zach and Hilary and their adorable, frisky children in Seattle.
They would sit there together, under the stars, sometimes shivering from the cold and often trembling in awe of their feelings for each other, until they knew they must part and go to their separate homes and get at least a few winks before Call in the morning.
On the first weekend, they left town in Josh’s truck and went hiking in the hills and winter camping, being careful to choose a barren, desolate area where they hoped they would not run into others. It was heavenly, being together and trying not to think about real life and its pressures, and Jessie’s impending nuptials, which were drawing closer whether she wanted them to or not.
On the second weekend, Josh drove Jessie down to Seattle ‘as his co-star and friend’ to visit his brother’s family. Hilary wasn’t fooled – women are sensitive to such things as love, and her Spidey senses were tingling the moment they arrived. But she told Zach of her suspicions and left it up to him to speak to Josh to discern the truth of their relationship, and Zach was so overwhelmed with parenthood and his businesses he never found the time. Instead, he chose to revel in Josh’s presence with this girl, whom he quickly respected and adored. Because most times when he saw Josh, his younger brother was unhappy and afraid. So this time Zach just sat back for once and watched him radiate light.
On the third weekend, unexpectedly, Charlie arrived home from Europe.
***
Stephen hadn’t had much to say to either Josh or Jessie over the last few weeks, and the others noticed. Nobody seemed to want to talk about what happened, so Jonathon and his cast just bided their time and observed the interactions between the three. As perceptive as they were, no one could put a finger on what had come between them, but Sue-Lyn noted Josh seemed to be joining Jessie under the cottonwood tree an awful lot these days.
On the Friday night of the third weekend, the entire cast and crew were simply wiped out, exhausted. It had been a very physical shoot that day, with a staged gunfight, a lot of extras, and a half dozen guest cast, some of whom were ornery and difficult and on an artificial high working with Oscar winner Jessie Wheeler, about whom they could boast in the days, weeks, years to come. By nightfall, around seven o’clock, the hard working cast and crew of Drifters were finally calling it a day.
Josh and Jessie, although beat as well, were excited about sneaking away to Benny’s quiet parking lot to ruminate about the day and to hold hands under the stars. They made their way up to base camp, leading their horses, talking quietly. They had become a little cocky in this third week, a little too accustomed to being together as lovers in love, and people were starting to notice. Still – they left set together and, in the quiet darkness of their walk let their fingers touch, Josh’s left and Jessie’s right. Jessie was chatting animatedly about the gunfight and Josh was, as usual, listening in that serious way of his, head cocked towards her and chestnut hair falling over his cheek in front of his ear. Jessie couldn’t help herself. She reached up and, with the forefinger of her left hand, tucked it behind his ear underneath the black nineteenth century hat, and smiled up at him in grateful anticipation that they could shower and leave and be alone together for the weekend, at least most of it. Jessie had an engagement the next night, singing at yet another of Dee’s fundraisers in an upscale restaurant, but much of the cast and crew of Drifters would be there, Josh included.
After she fixed his hair, Josh smiled down at this girl who had become such an important part of his life - the life whose promises and truths he’d once set hastily aside in the bin of lost socks and forgotten childhood wonders. But then – he noticed a movement in the corner of his eye, and he looked up. They had reached the top of the little hill, and were making their way into the area of base camp near the parking lot. On the left was the split rail fence with its passageway to a weekend’s freedom; straight ahead was the barn, beckoning them with the soft yellow glow of insincere, artificial evening light, towards which the tired and hungry horses could sense they were headed. But something was amiss – Josh had the sense they were being watched, and he quickly realized in the dim, cloudy moonlight that the movement he spotted was that of a man leaning against the fence on the parking lot side, facing them, staring them down as relentlessly as Benny’s dead eyes.
Shocked, surprised, and suddenly desperately lonely, Jos
h’s eyes flitted back to Jessie in bewilderment. His expression softened as she looked at him quizzically and, as reality hit him right between his own dying eyes he realized that in a moment or two her world would come crashing down on her as well. Holding her gaze, he reached down and touched her fingers as he took the reins of Jessie’s doe-eyed black and white paint, and then he looked over her shoulder at the fence beyond.
Jessie knew without turning that Charlie was there. She felt Josh’s touch slip from her fingers as he took the reins and led their horses towards the barn, and for one simple last moment she watched his posture change and his shoulders slump as, head down, he trudged ahead, bathed in that eerie transition between blue moon and golden light, between what is dreamlike and mystical, and what is abrupt and real.
She turned slowly, afraid to let him out of her vision for fear he would disappear forever, like Sandy suddenly had, and her father before him.
But then he was gone and there was Charlie, behind the fence, the barrier, as if he was a free man and she was inside, behind its bars, locked away in some interminable prison.
Jessie steeled her nerves and buried her heart as she had often been wont to do in her relatively short life of twenty seven years, and made her way, one long step at a time, over to the shadow and its corresponding stiff, unreadable, impenetrable mask.
***
Charlie took Jessie to his penthouse in Burnaby that night with take-out from the Noodle Box in hand. Not much was said – Charlie had no idea how to start the conversation, and Jessie was terrified to begin for fear of where it might end up. She wasn’t ready to face ending the relationship with Charlie – she was so wrought up in emotional angst these days she felt she couldn’t think straight. Part of her missed the days when she felt numb, and the other part of her was frightened she was heading back there. It was too much, the headiness of discovering Josh and his kindness and his secrets, while being engaged to a man whom she loved on some level – but not nearly in the same way. There was a comfort in being with Charlie that was undeniable. They’d fallen into certain patterns and Jessie’s emotions felt smooth, for the most part - bearable. Josh was fraught with danger – he had quickly become someone who meant far too much to her.
A Song For Josh, Drifters Book One Page 18