by Lily Zante
“Leave who alone?” Alyssa asks.
“A friend,” I say.
She looks in the same direction. “Ugh, Wesley.” Her voice is full of disapproval. “He’s cheating on his wife.”
“The guy’s an idiot.” I knew Wesley from way back when. We both started out around the same time, but he went down the hedonistic lifestyle, drugs and drinking, and wild parties. I didn’t. My parents grounded me, and losing Ben made me realize early on how fragile life is. I didn’t want to fritter mine away.
“His wife doesn’t know, and now he’s found someone else to target,” Alyssa says.
No way. “Excuse me.” I march up to Nina and Wesley. Jealousy spikes and I put my arm around Nina’s waist, not caring who sees. “There you are,” I say to her, as if we are lovers.
Wesley looks at me, startled. “Is she with you?” He shakes my hand more firmly than I would like.
“She’s a friend of a friend,” I say quickly taking my arm off her waist, remembering that I’m supposed to be with Alyssa. “I’m keeping an eye on her.”
“Alyssa will be looking for you.” He winks at me. “I’ve got this one. She’s in good hands with me.”
No fucking way. “From what I hear, you’ve got your hands full,” I toss back. He slips me a sly grin. “News spreads fast.”
I glance at Nina. There’s a grateful expression in her eyes, as if she’s secretly happy that I came to her rescue.
“Nina was telling me she’s a waitress,” Wesley says.
“I am.” Nina speaks up. I can tell by the tone of her voice that she doesn’t like Wesley much, and that makes me happy.
Wesley laughs. “Everyone in this town is a waiter or waitress.” He sizes her up, his gaze trailing all over her body. He’s sizing her up, just like I’ve seen him do with most other pretty women. My fingers itch to hug her closer to me, but I can’t.
“You’re friends?” Wesley asks, cocking an eyebrow. “Aren’t you and Alyssa meant to be ‘ friends’?” He airquotes the last words.
I toss his words back at him. “News spreads fast.” I hold steady, refusing to give Nina up.
“Good luck with the new film,” he says, obviously getting the hint. He winks at Nina, “if you get bored of hanging around with this guy, come and find me.” I swear I feel her quiver.
“How did you end up talking to him?” I want to know, as Wesley snakes away.
“He came over, said he didn’t recognize me, and wanted to know who I was. Why?”
“Why?” I lower my head and drop my voice to a whisper. “That guy is a player. He’s the last person you should be hanging around with.”
“Cal,” Alyssa turns up with Dottie by her side. She looks from me to Nina, and then back at me again. “Hi, who is this?”
“Nina, meet Alyssa.” They exchange careful looks, and forced smiles.
“And you are?” Alyssa is nice. She’s been a good co-star, but the way she’s checking Nina out makes me think she doesn’t like the way I’m standing with her. This surprises me because she’s obviously aware that our pretend romance is a farce. The studio can try to manipulate me, and make it seem that things are what they’re not, but there’s no way that Hollywood gets to tell me who I can and can’t be with in my own private time. Or, in this case, who I can and can’t be friends with.
“She’s Elias Cardoza’s sister,” I say, snapping to my senses. I still have to be careful. News gets out. People talk, and I don’t want to be hit with a lawsuit for breach of contract. I also don’t want Nina to become the subject of a tabloid scandal.
“You are?” Alyssa shrieks. Excitement oozes from her eyes. I know it’s not due to her appreciation for the sport of boxing.
Nina nods. “I am.”
“You never told me!” Alyssa pokes me. “Have you met him?” she asks me, the tone of her voice indicating that she’d like to sink her claws into him at the first opportunity. I’m sure Harper would have something to say about that.
“I have. The guy’s cool. Nice guy.”
“Arrange a date,” Alyssa orders me.
A what? I’m sure she told me she had a boyfriend.
Nina pipes up. “Elias is already spoken for.”
Alyssa’s enthusiasm deflates like a punctured balloon.
“He’s so into Harper,” Nina adds. “You should see them. They’re cute together.” I do a double take, because it’s not like Nina to talk that much, especially to people she barely knows, and about Elias of all people.
“Just a meeting?” Alyssa suggests. “I saw the fight.” She holds her hand to her chest, and for a moment I think she’s going to fan herself. “He’s … he’s …”
“A great boxer. I know.” Nina smiles again. This is definitely another side to her that I’m witnessing tonight.
“Shall we go mingle?” I suggest, seeing that Dottie has disappeared, and Alyssa won’t stop going on about Elias. Wesley is still lurking around nearby, and I don’t want him anywhere near Nina. Luckily, a guy I recognize, another famous actor, taps Alyssa on the shoulder, and they get talking, so it’s easy for me and Nina to slip away.
I let go of my arm around her waist, as we step outside in the grounds of the mansion. An infinity pool glitters under the lights, and some partygoers are already in it. Others lounge around with drinks in their hands.
“I haven’t seen you all day,” I say, as soon as we’re away from people. I haven’t asked her if she wants to come out here, or if she wants to come out here with me, I assume she does. In any case, I’m more in need of her company. Nina will let me know pretty quickly what she does and doesn’t want to do. But she says nothing. She’s quiet. I continue walking, past people, and into the vast grounds. Alyssa said the film director had a Japanese garden, and I can hear water gurgling further down.
“You and your co-star,” Nina comments, “You make a nice couple. You look good together, good and glamorous.”
This pisses me off. Why can’t she come out and say exactly what she’s feeling? “Is that what you really think?”
“Yes.”
“Sometimes, I wish you would be real with me, Nina.”
“Be real?” she asks, astonished. “I am being real.”
I got a vibe off her at the hotel, before I left. I tried to hold back, tried not to get caught up in her spell. Tried to resist, but I’m certain she felt it too. Now she’s telling me this bullshit. Either she’s as good an actress as me, or I’ve really messed up and got all her signals wrong.
There is more to her than meets the eye. Secrets. Things she wants to keep hidden. She puts up a façade, but the problem with that is, the cracks begin to show over time. It’s not something you can keep up forever.
I contemplate my next move. We’re away from everyone, out here on a beautiful night. Just me and her. No interruptions. No Joni, or Frankie. No Dottie or Rudy. Or Elias or Harper. I could lay out the whole line to her here.
Tell her how I feel.
Tell her that I like her.
Tell her the truth.
And then what?
With her I feel as if I’m on an eternal goose chase and it’s a waste of my time because she is that elusive, rare thing; a beautiful woman who not only doesn’t see herself as that, but who doesn’t have any feelings for me. And that’s a real kick in the balls for someone like me.
Maybe I’m wasting my time going after her. Doesn’t matter, my time in Chicago will end soon and I can put this episode down to being nothing but a little experiment. It’s taught me something. Made me realize that I am not God’s gift to women. After years of being surrounded by women who would drop their panties at the slightest interest from me, it’s been eye-opening for me to meet someone who is nothing like that.
“Hey!”
I turn around.
It’s fucking Wesley again.
Under the light of the lamp it’s plain to see that he’s high on something. His eyes are red and there’s a tell tale dusting of white powder under his nose
.
“You never told me you were Elias Cardoza’s sister.” He ignores me completely and walks up close to Nina, completely encroaching on her personal space. She takes a step back.
“I didn’t think anyone needed to know.” Nina’s voice sounds shaky.
“Back off, dude.” He can be wild and unpredictable when he’s high. I try to say it lightly, but I’m feeling pissed at Wesley’s sudden interest in Nina, and it shows in my voice.
“Back off?” he echoes, clearly annoyed. “Are you together?” He points at both of us in turn. Neither I nor Nina respond. “Jesus. You sly dog, Sandersby. I thought you and Alyssa were a thing.”
I grind down on my teeth. “We’re friends, me and Nina.”
Wesley’s brow creases. “Then why are you trying to sneak her away from everyone? Here, alone, in the dark?”
My anger rises, not so much because Wesley’s behaving like a douchebag, but because he’s exposed a layer of wishful thinking, of stuff I’ve been mulling over in my head. And he’s made it sound as if I was making a cheap move, when the truth couldn’t be more different. I wanted to get her away from the likes of Wesley so that we could talk, not to shove my tongue down her mouth. Most of the people here are phony and I was scared that she might leave early.
His accusation puts me on guard. “Don’t make assumptions, dude. Cardoza’s helped me out, and I was helping his sister out.”
Wesley laughs. “I’m sure you were.” He makes a lewd gesture with his hips, as if he’s dry humping an invisible person.
“Fuck off,” I tell him. He’s being vulgar, and I know Nina hates talk like this. “Let’s go,” I say to Nina.
This is the last place either of us needs to be.
Chapter Forty-Two
NINA
* * *
The film premier was okay but I’m not sure about the after party. These people, they’re from a whole new world. A place I don’t want to ever be a part of.
Callum’s holding my hand, and he pulls me away from his friend. Some drugged up actor who looks familiar. I follow him out, and see that he’s making a call. Soon enough a stretch limo pulls up and we climb in.
“Sorry about that,” he says. “That guy can be a jerk.”
“I’m glad we left.”
“I didn’t mean to tell Alyssa that you were Elias’s sister, but it kind of came out.”
I wonder why he said that, but I let it go. I don’t mind. I figure that he was only trying to save face in front of Dottie and his co-star. To them it must be strange that he invited me along at all. Explaining who I was, and my connection to Elias probably helped him.
This evening has been a welcome break from my normal routine. It’s been unlike anything I’ve ever encountered in my life and I’m not sure I want it to end. Watching Elias fight at Madison Square Garden, and then watching the press swarm all over him after the fight, is a little what this evening has been like, only being with Callum I feel as if I’m in the eye of the storm.
The limo pulls up outside the hotel, we get into the elevator. Callum presses the button to my floor, and then his, but when the elevator stops at my floor, I don’t get out.
It seems relatively peaceful now, with just the two of us, but he’s been relatively quiet, and I’m feeling a little daring. “Do you have a balcony?” I’m curious to know. I also don’t feel like going back to my room right now and watching TV. It’s late, and it’s been a long day but I’m still buzzing from the events of the day.
Maybe I want to live a little, as Frankie would say.
“Yes, why?”
“I’m not ready to go to sleep. Can we sit outside and admire the view?”
The way his face lights up tell me he’s pleased to hear this.
I walk in and see that he doesn’t have a room. What he has is more like an apartment. It’s similar to his suite back in Chicago, maybe a teensy bit smaller.
As soon as I see the doors to the balcony, I head straight for it.
He walks over and throws the doors wide open. “Here you go. Admire this all you want.”
“Do you always have to have a balcony?” I walk over the railings and place my hands on it.
“I don’t demand it, if that’s what you mean. It just happens to come with some of the more expensive rooms.”
“And those are the only kinds of rooms someone like you gets. You probably get everything you want.”
He looks at me. “Almost anything.”
An undercurrent of something hot and tingly zaps through the air. It’s like an electric charge buzzing all around us. I force myself to stare out at the landscape before me, just so that I can pull myself out of this force field. My heart is beating so fast and my legs are suddenly unsteady. I’ve never suffered from vertigo, so it can’t be that.
“This is pretty.” Callum runs his finger lightly over my chunky bracelet. The four inch tall bracelet is the perfect thing to hide my scars. His fingers still on the cuff, and I wait for him to ask me if I’m okay, because he’s not going to come out and ask me if I’ve cut myself recently. Yet he doesn’t say a word.
“I’m glad I came here,” I tell him.
He looks at me in silence.
“I didn’t like it at the party, so much.” I try to gauge his mood. He’s been slightly off this evening, completely different to how he was when he knocked on my hotel room, when he saw me in my dress.
“Me neither. The whole thing was one big farce.” He sounds annoyed.
“Did I get you in trouble?” I hazard a guess. He’s mentioned about having an image, a façade to keep up. I know all about that.
“In trouble? With who?”
“With Dottie, and your friend Wesley, and Alyssa. About me being here.”
“No.”
It’s seductive, being out here so high above the ground, closer to the night sky and its secrets. I feel as if I’m in a bubble. I’m with Callum Sandersby, in his hotel suite, on a beautiful night like this. This is a bizarre moment in my life and I am compelled to throw caution to the wind, to let down my guard, and to experience it fully. Leaving Chicago, and the diner and my dingy little apartment behind has made it easier for me to pretend to be a new me.
I understand now why people go off around the world in a bid to find themselves. I never understood that before, but I do now.
“Why am I here, Callum?”
“Because you wanted to be here.”
“You asked me,” I reply, biting the inside of my cheek, mulling things over. We’ve been friends for a while, and he’s never tried anything, or come on strong. Maybe at the beginning he did, but I’m convinced now that it was part of who he is, and his bravado around women.
Along the way something changed.
He changed.
He changed enough for me to let him in.
“Because you asked if I wanted to go to the mountains with you.”
“That was Harper asking.”
“And you didn’t want me to come?” he asks, softly.
“You came back with me,” I state. “What happened to Alyssa?” My heart stops. I swear it stops beating because the look he gives me is so intense I feel as if my legs are going to buckle.
“Alyssa?” he asks, his voice throaty and hoarse. “Alyssa got busy, and why do you care.”
“Shouldn’t you be with her instead of me?”
* * *
CALLUM
* * *
“Shouldn’t you be with her?” she asks, her doe-like brown eyes holding me captive. “Why is someone like you here with someone like me?”
“You really want to know?” I’m scared that telling the truth will push her away again. I feel as if we’re finally being truthful with one another, stripped back from our facades, raw and vulnerable. But she seems willing to listen. Do I take a chance?
“I really want to know,” she whispers.
I figure that there’s a reason she wanted to come here instead of going back into her room. I can’t gauge he
r mood, or what she’s thinking but I have her to myself for now, and that’s the best outcome I could have hoped for. “I like you, Nina, and I can’t stop thinking about you.” She blinks, her long eye lashes flutter. I’m fearful that this is too much.
“But you don’t know anything about me at all,” she says, softly, and even in that softness I hear an objection.
“Don’t I?” I know more about her than she thinks. Fragments of stuff I’ve pieced together from those conversations with her brother and Harper. I’ve seen the cuts on her arm. I’ve read that there are many reasons why people cut. It’s not so much a cry for help as it is a way of dealing with past trauma. “My problem is that unlike most women I meet, Nina, you have absolutely no interest in me.”
She presses her lips together.
I continue. “I know that you’re fragile, and brave, and kind.” My voice drops as she turns to face me. “And you haven’t yet told me to get lost.”
She laughs. “I have, you just haven’t heard me.”
“If you had meant it, I would have.”
She cocks her head as if she’s thinking about my words.
“You were trying to figure me out, maybe, but you pushed me away for the longest time, because that’s what you do, Nina.”
Her lips part, almost as if she’s surprised. “I find this hard; getting to know someone, and someone like you, so world famous, I wasn’t sure. You’ve been patient with me, but … “
There it is again. She stops just as she’s starting to open up. “But?”
“Aren’t you with Alyssa?” she asks.
“Do you really think I’m with her?”
She chews her lip.
“We are Tinsel Town’s latest convenient romance story. She’s with her boyfriend. They won’t walk around so brazenly tonight, but she’s going to spend the night with him. There’s nothing real between us.”
She blinks as if trying to make sense of my words. “I wasn’t sure. I read what the papers said about you both, and I wasn’t sure. I never believe what I read but seeing you both together this evening … “