Starlet's Web (The Starlet Series, #1)

by Carla Hanna

  “And you know that I love you and have since I can remember,” Manuel said as he slowly took my hand and gazed into my eyes.

  “And you know that I love you. You’re my best friend.”

  I pulled him towards me and pressed my lips to his. It was a slow movement at first, but then energy surged from him and he kissed me passionately, pressing his body against mine, which was pressed against the Porsche. Both of his strong arms were around me with his hands between the car and my lower back. It was nice. It was comfortable. I was happy and loved. I didn’t feel a desire to make love. But I could kiss him all night, and we would have a great prom.

  We slowly parted and started walking towards the Getty, still holding hands.

  Mom urged me to self-reflect and make sure I was ready—put my needs first. We role-played speaking up, saying no, telling Manuel my feelings. But making him happy was one of my needs. He was everything to me. I wanted to give him a great prom because he deserved to have a wonderful time. We both did.

  “Now let’s go to prom.” I smiled again and put my arm around his waist.

  We danced and kissed during the slow songs and kissed in the corners of the room. We drank punch and water and laughed with friends. I danced with some guys. Manuel was jealous and cut in on each one. However, I wouldn’t let him cut in when I danced with Mitch, careful not to offend Beth. Mitch knew Manuel was jealous and teased him. We had fun.

  Alan walked towards us. There was something off, something wrong. I suspected ecstacy, but I wasn’t certain which drug.

  “You’re bailing already?” Manuel asked.

  “Yeah. My date’s a bitch. You still coming to my pool party? I’m not taking the bitch with me. I’m leaving her here,” Alan growled with glazed eyes and slow speech. “I need a drink. Dad bought kegs and I have plenty of extra to play with. The limo is leaving in ten minutes. Come soon, would ya?”

  Alan lived north of Montana Avenue, too, about a block away from my house on the South side of San Vicente Boulevard. He lived on Georgina Avenue, a lovely street lined with palm trees. The view from his pool deck was pretty, too. He saw lots of sky and the tops of trees and houses as he faced north from his patio. It was peaceful. His dad, Ira, was a kind, generous man, but he had the strangest relationship with Alan’s mom, a sleazy, plastic, shallow snob. They didn’t divorce out of convenience but they didn’t like each other whatsoever. I loved Ira but despised Alan’s mother.

  Alan always had parties with lots of booze, drugs, and private rooms. He hired bouncers and treated his parties as if they were VIP events.

  The way Alan is at parties with drugs is like the way I was with alcohol. Nervous and awkward, I felt like I had to have a drink in my hand at each industry party when I was fifteen and sixteen, during my sophomore year. The drinks eased the tension. Many drinks eased a lot of tension. Unlike Alan, I didn’t sleep with anyone or do hard drugs, but I certainly kissed a lot of men and one woman when I was a drunk sixteen-year-old protected by the best lawyer in Hollywood.

  “Soon,” Manuel said. “We’re having fun. Have you ever seen Marie smile and laugh so much? It’s been a long time for me. Reminds me of when we played strip poker in eighth grade and she kicked all our butts. Remember how she gave us dish rags to cover ourselves and laughed hysterically at our embarrassment.”

  “Damn,” Alan laughed. “We finagle a strip poker game so we can see her tits and she doesn’t even lose her hat! At least I got to see Kate’s.”

  He knew he had stepped over a line and backed off. Alan glanced at me apologetically and then let his thought wander as he checked me out. Manuel stepped in front of me.

  “Dude!” Manuel objected.

  “Hey, sorry…” Alan mumbled and then brightened his tone. “It sure taught me to never gamble with an American Indian actress, even when she’s high on peyote. Remember to invite me to your 21st birthday in Vegas, Marie. I can’t wait to see you wipe out the poker tables. I want to be there too when you win Celebrity Poker and the World Series of Poker. Then you should donate your winnings to gambler’s anonymous. That’d be ironic.”

  “Alan, you’re absolutely offensive. My poker abilities have nothing to do with me being an American Indian.” I scolded and laughed, “Vegas here we come. Put it on your calendar for three years from next month.”

  I smiled. Manuel was right. I was having an amazing time but the expectation that we should be making love was on my mind.

  Maybe the desire I felt with Rex would never surface again in me because of how traumatic it was to feel it when I did. The situation was confusing. The feelings I had were repulsive. They didn’t make sense in context. It was a rape scene for heaven’s sake and my body responded with arousal as if it was an intimate first kiss.

  I kissed Manuel again. Nope. No flame, but it was nice.

  “What’s Alan on?” I asked Manuel.

  “He might be going back to pills because he’s mellow. I saw him and his slut go into a room at one of the parties he dragged me to. She offered me a choice of ecstacy, coke, or meth. He turned pretty manic that night.”

  “Have you done drugs besides pot?”

  “I’m not interested in doing any drugs. You were there when I tried coke at Alan’s sixteenth birthday party. You and Beth were the only ones who didn’t try it. I haven’t gotten high since our strip poker days. I don’t like the scene and work too hard to throw my money away on some short-term high. You?”

  “No. Booze, Vicoden, and pot were hard enough for me to quit. I’ve seen everything, though. It bothered me how everyone had a ritual about how they took their poison, especially when there were needles involved. Once, everyone but me and another actress did heroin at a dance club in London. That was a really bad night. She and I got out of there, took a cab back to my hotel, and then met up with Blake to hang out. He already had plans to visit some great party his friend had heard about. We got there and you just don’t want to know. It was some homosexual orgy. He was so embarrassed that he brought us there.” I pushed the thoughts out of my mind.

  He asked, “You saw that stuff?”

  “Yeah, haven’t you? Alan’s parties can become orgies, maybe not with everything so in-your-face as adult parties, but it’s there, too.”

  He agreed. “It took me a while to learn that in those back rooms it’s always the same set-up. There’s a nice, friendly guy on bed with his girl who always seems to have her shirt off. The guy encourages Alan to take a pill and touch his girl. I get the hell out of the room. If I stay at the party, I usually end up kissing some girl after having a few drinks, pushing her off me when she tries something, and then getting out of there, feeling stupid that I wasted another night.”

  He laughed. “I don’t like getting drunk, either. I was pretty traumatized seeing you get drunk all the time when you were sixteen.”

  Manuel went to a party with me for my sixteenth birthday and saw that I couldn’t stop drinking. That night I was high, too, and kissed Alan for a split second to see if Manuel had even an ounce of desire for me. He didn’t show that he cared whatsoever. He was concerned with my drinking, though, and called Dad, and told Mom and his parents. I wouldn’t speak to him for two months for ratting me out, especially since Dad made me go to rehab.

  I dropped the subject, big time. “So, my romantic mood for this dance is over. But I had a really great time.”

  I embraced Manuel and closed my eyes, feeling sleepy and relaxed. “Ready for Alan’s party?”

  “Ya know I don’t want to go to his stupid party.” He kissed my neck and whispered, “Let’s go back to your house and watch late night TV.” He continued to kiss me along my neck and back to my lips.

  I gasped but returned his kiss, stalling. I didn’t know why my body didn’t respond to him like it should. Perhaps that’s why I kissed Byron the night before. Perhaps my guilt would subside after I showed Manuel that I loved him. Perhaps Manuel needed to be my lover so that I could more easily resist men in the future.


  Manuel took my face in his hands and looked down at me tenderly, “Marie, relax. Trust me. I know you’re not ready.”

  He led me off the dance floor. “I left my backpack on your bed. I brought my shorts. You can change into your pajamas. I collected some shows we can watch that don’t criticize you or Evan. You’ll like seeing Evan on Sam’s mom’s talk show from my iPad. He was hilarious on SNL, too. I’ve got a clip of Renee going off, getting bleeped the whole time. Okay?”

  I laughed. “Yes. Sorry I got worried.”

  “Hey, will you meet some of my sports buddies before we leave? They might gush over you and probably have your poster in their bedrooms. You might have to sign their chests.”

  “Sure. How about one more slow dance, making out the whole time?”

  ~ OKAY ~

  I didn’t know what time it was, but it was still dark outside. I hadn’t found my travel alarm clock and iPhone dock from the things my set assistant packed for me and had been using my cell phone to know the time. My cell was in my bag with the unused swimsuit that was on the floor somewhere. I remembered that I needed to charge my phone. A rush of adrenalin pulsed through my body when I heard Manuel breathe. I slowly rolled from my back to my side to admire him. I held his hand, careful not to wake him, thrilled to feel his warmth.

  I relaxed—completely happy—comforted that Manuel slept next to me, breathing slowly and evenly. His strong chest was bare and only one leg was under the sheets. I saw the tattoo he recently updated on his shoulder, which didn’t quite hide Kate’s name. He only had the one tattoo and vowed that he would never get another, which surprised me because his parents and sister were inked.

  He looked beautiful. I felt secure. I trusted and loved my boyfriend.

  I quietly slipped out of bed. My head pounded, as always—a side-effect from my condition. I was nauseous, as always. I tried not to vomit, especially with Manuel there. I turned on the faucet, hoping he wouldn’t hear. He already thought I was bulimic. I thought so, too, because I had felt sick every morning since I had been fifteen.

  I took two pain killers and searched for the medication that my set assistant packed somewhere. I took two prescription drugs, one to boost my immunity and the other to prevent ovarian cysts from bursting. I already missed two days. I couldn’t find the bottles but made a mental note to find them later that day.

  I washed my face and brushed my teeth. Prom was wonderful and Manuel being in my bed filled me with joy. We took a walk after we made out on the couch. Manuel got out of bed twice, once to do push-ups. The other time I watched him from my bedroom window running in place on my outside terrace.

  I knew he wanted more. I didn’t want to lose him. I couldn’t lose him. I decided that I was going to make love. I turned off the light before I opened the bathroom door and quietly walked back to bed. It was brighter now, dawn.

  “Hey.” Manuel smiled. He examined my sleep shirt. I wore a souvenir long-sleeved cotton sleep shirt I got in Bigfork, Montana. It had a sketch of a moose’s head with a glittery purple crown on her head. Each antler covered one of my breasts. It was cute. I thought Manuel would get a laugh. “You have a really nice rack. Perfect actually,” he said as I crawled back in bed.

  He got up, stopped in the doorway to the bathroom, and asked, “Marie, I thought you got over your bulimia.”

  “It’s just my bad luck that you’ve seen me puke twice in the last month. I’ve worked with my therapist on it and am still nauseous every morning. Honestly it seems physical, not mental. It’s like the headaches, a side effect from my meds.”

  I thought my nausea was alcohol-induced until after rehab. Then I thought it was because I was worried about being called fat. Mom vomited just about every morning. I concluded that it was inherited.

  He grinned at me when he returned to bed. “Last night was nice. Thanks for a great prom, mi cariño.”

  I smiled at him and put my hand on his cheek. “But it wasn’t enough.”

  “No, it is. I can control myself.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “With you, I can’t be just your best friend and girlfriend anymore. I have to be your lover and then wife. I miss you desperately when I’m on location, when I can’t see you. I grab my phone anytime I hear a text come in. I check my email ten times a day hoping you had some time to reach out to me, to show me that you’re thinking of me, too. I know we’re young but I’m so sure that you’re the one for me. You’re my soul mate, my everything.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “I complained to the priest that drinking alcohol is okay but premarital sex with the girl I totally love isn’t. It makes no sense.” Manuel paused, looking intently into my eyes, “I’m completely in love with you. I know the industry has burned you. I know you’re afraid. I’m patient. I really can wait.”

  My eyes were wet with tears that were not falling. These were slow tears that gave my feelings away. I honestly answered him, “I can’t lose you. We can’t just kiss and hold hands.”

  The pain on his face was intense and his breathing quickened. “I love you so much,” he whispered as he kissed my neck. He slid his lips along my jaw bone until his lips found mine.

  I sighed, still not feeling much physical desire but definitely feeling an overwhelming love for him. I really liked how he kissed me. Manuel as my husband was a wonderful thought.

  I whispered, “Please tell me what to do. And I have protection in my stuff packed from the trailer.”

  “Nope.” He moved his lips across my cheek to my ear. “We’re not going to be doing it. I’m a non-conformist. It’s too expected to do it prom night. It’s a right-of-passage that I refuse to let influence me. You’re too special for that.”

  “What?” I laughed and it eased my anxiety.

  “Yeah,” he whispered. “We’ll wait.”

  ~ DIAMOND HEART ~

  Manuel asked, “Why exactly don’t you sleep around?” He turned off the TV and sat on the couch facing me. “I’ve always wondered.”

  I reacted, “I didn’t see that question coming!”

  “I want to know.” He questioned, “Is it religion or is it a reaction against everything you’ve seen?”

  I looked down, selecting the right words. “Sometimes I think my heart is ice.” I tried to explain, “No, you can break ice. More like a diamond. I know I love you. If anyone can break through the diamond, I know it will be you. I just don’t have the desire. I don’t know. Making me feel enough passion is gonna take a lot of work. I might just be one of those girls who’s never pleasured.”

  He seemed disappointed. “It’s not because of your morals?”

  “No. I think the rules are bull. It’s me.” I scrunched up my face into an embarrassed grin. “I don’t want some pressure to, I don’t know the word, perform, I guess.”

  “Like the summer before ninth grade at the park?” He laughed, remembering.

  Alan was completely obsessed with me in eighth and ninth grade. He dreamt up all kinds of ways to get me to kiss him or show him my body. We smoked pot and played strip poker and they all lost. We played truth or dare and I never took a dare. We played spin the bottle. Instead of having to kiss Alan, as he had intended, I had to kiss Manuel. I was going to just give Manuel a quick kiss and leaned forward nonchalantly to kiss his lips but our eyes met and I stopped. I couldn’t do it. I was turned on. My heart beat wildly and body tingled. I was completely embarrassed and my cheeks flushed. Manuel also blushed. Everyone saw. I fought the feelings, leaned in and kissed his lips quickly as if I just kissed a Hollywood hello. But even in that brief instant, a spark ignited my body from where our lips met. I was on fire with desire.

  “Ya know, that’s when I first knew I loved you, Marie. Before that I always thought of you as my sister. When we kind of kissed, I thought I was going to combust. Even though you kissed me hello, it really hurt. That summer was our last trip to Lake Powell together, ya know. I wanted you the whole time, especially when we slept outside together. I memorized your face.”

&
nbsp; “What? I memorized yours, too. Except that night, you were a complete prick the whole time. You wouldn’t do anything else with me. You were, like, on the opposite side of the boat, spoke Spanish and German so fast that I never knew what you were saying, and you wouldn’t even swim with me and Janet. I still don’t know what I did to piss you off so much.”

  “Well, I saw you naked our first night on the lake.” He laughed nervously. “You wore a red bikini that day that tore me up. I didn’t go on the evening swim because I was turned on. I watched you get out of your wetsuit. I pretended that I was sleeping when you came into our room because I didn’t want to deal with you. Then, I saw you get out of your bikini and put on your pajamas. You were—are—so pretty. I couldn’t handle it. I lay there in pain.

  “I talked to Dad about it that night after Janet went to bed. He gave me my first beer and welcomed me to the frustration of manhood. Dad told me I either had to pursue you or squelch it. Anything in between would be torture. He reminded me that we were fourteen years old, just kids. You had just finished filming those first two movies and he said that was just the beginning. You’d miss school and have to go to tons of events. He said that you’d get caught up in all that and would probably forget me. Dad explained that a friendship could endure but I’d get hurt if I tried for more. He threw that red bikini overboard that night.”

  “I remember. I thought you were asleep. You know, I couldn’t kiss you for real at the park because I realized I loved you, too. Looking in your eyes made my heart skip a beat and completely turned me on. I stopped because of the feelings, not because of performance anxiety. But by the time we went to Lake Powell, I didn’t feel that desire anymore. I figured that you felt the same way.”

  “Yeah, Marie, that was a tough summer. I’m just so grateful that I was patient or you wouldn’t be here with me now. I really, really love you.”

  “Why did you push me down when I kissed you in January?”