by Anna Bloom
Anyone can guard her from the threat of an unhinged nut job.
Can I be the one to save her from herself?
More importantly, can I guard her from the way I feel, even after all these years?
One thing I know for sure is that the two things don’t fit well together.
"I don’t know." I don’t mean for it to come out so weak and pathetic, but it does. I scrub a hand through my hair, pulling at the tangled waves I didn’t get a chance to cut before flying in. She stares at me long and hard and I stare back, two people trapped in a moment together in a fast food joint. She opens her mouth to speak and I shift forward when some tosspot, judging by the tone of voice old enough to know better, shouts her name at full volume.
That’s it. The intimate McDonalds moment playing out between us evaporates and I snap back into bodyguard mode. The other version of me, the one who wants to sit and talk, the one who wants to reacquaint himself with every single piece of her, slips back into hiding as my protector mantle settles on my shoulder. How long I can keep him there, safely locked out of sight, and maintain the status quo, I don’t know.
"Shit, come on." I grab for her fingers with one hand and the tray with the other, dumping our rubbish into the bin as we speed through the exit. We run for the car, a few people following though nothing uncontrollable. I’m starting the engine checking the mirrors when a strange whimpering fills the air. My blood runs cold. Is she crying?
“What’s the matter, Soph?” Using the tips of my fingers I tilt her chin upwards, lifting her head toward mine only to find her laughing, her cheeks flushed and her eyes shining with mirth.
The dark confines of the car lift with magical rays of sunshine—or some poetic shit like that.
"Is my running that funny?" I ask. My own lips quirk in response to her laugher, a stupid grin smearing itself all over my face and my body pitches forward a little. She peels another round of giggles and I roll my eyes. Drumming my fingers on the steering wheel and adopting an air of feigned patience I say, "In your own time."
Fanning herself down—it’s totally a girl thing—she pulls the serious face I remember her practising from drama coaching where they used to play sad face, happy face. Shit I know too much about this girl. "It’s," she starts to shake with laughter again. I’ll take it though, it’s better than watching her shake with fear or nerves. It’s just you made that look so much sexier than that last guard I had, he was such an old fart."
"Is that why you fired him after two weeks? He couldn’t run sexily enough for you?" I’m biting down on my lips to stop from joining in with her laughter. Nothing undermines the role of a serious bodyguard like a laughing fit.
She shouts with laughter again, clutching her ribcage. "Ah, Blake, I haven’t laughed in ages." She wipes at the droplets of laughing teardrops lining her eyelashes.
"Always a pleasure to please. Buckle up." I turn for the window so she can’t see the pleased smile I’ve got plastered all over my face—I’m such a fucking idiot.
She catches the latch of her safety belt without so much as a grumble. "Are we going home now? This is my last day of freedom."
My eyes flicker over to her space and I find the laughter dying on her face, replaced with a frown line between her fair, arched eyebrows. What the hell has gone on in the last five years? I’m desperate to find out, but I know I won’t ask. The lines are blurry enough as it is.
"Here. Take that gunk off." I throw her the pack of face wipes I’d stuffed in the door pocket before the morning run to the GMA studios.
"Do you not like makeup these days, Blake?"
"No, it’s just you are a little made up for where we are going next."
Her face fills with horror. "Next? Can’t we just go home? What else have they got planned?"
The affliction in her words is loud and clear and that tightening she can’t control stiffens her body as her fingers drum against her thighs. I would give anything to take away that panicky need. She’s yearning for oblivion, for a hit, a fix. I’ve seen it too many times before, back in a life before Hollywood. "It’s just me. You’ve done your bit for the day. You know, Soph," I turn for her, and wait for her to meet my gaze. "You can make your own choices. You can tell other people what you want to do. You aren’t a child anymore."
Silently, she reads into my words, her pale blue eyes searching mine. Her gaze is like a tractor beam from an alien spaceship seeking me out on my planet of desperation. With a snap, I turn and punch the car into drive. Her words are low when she says them and I strain to hear. "It’s not like that in my life, Blake. It never has been."
She lets out a deep sigh and opens the packet of face wipes, scrubbing at her skin until it’s just freckles and ivory silk remaining. "There, all scrubbed clean." She throws the wipes into the front compartment and folds her arms across her chest, her hands jammed into her armpits.
I flash her a smile. "How are the cravings?"
Surprise flits across her features and she crimps her lips together in silent response. Jesus. Am I the first person to ask her this since leaving rehab? What about Erica; what about her friends? An empty hollow radiates around my chest down to the pit of my stomach. "Come on, let's go chill," I say when it’s clear she’s not going to answer.
She snickers. "I’ve never seen you chill."
"Maybe I’ve been working hard on it while I’ve been away." To be fair, I did spend a large amount of time skulking about drinking beer and licking my wounds of regret.
Her eyes flicker but she doesn’t add anything else and I work the car down the traffic wondering why this thing between us is so damn easy when it would be much better if it was impossibly hard.
Chapter Eight
Sophia
What does a washed-up star do after they’ve been mauled over a breakfast interview and stuffed their face with fries? They go to yoga. Well, at least they do if they have a crazed, bodyguard come sober companion in charge of the destination of the car.
Every time I think about being on set the following day, nervous palpitations rocket through my chest like I’m high on Speed. As Blake drives the car through the traffic, I keep running the GMA interview repeatedly in my mind. How do I switch it back on? I don’t know how to be her, Sophia Jennings anymore. I’d felt like an imposter in that interview seat because I no longer knew what Sophia should say.
On set it will be worse. I don’t even know the goddamn script, and I can’t even remember looking at it sober.
I should just tell someone I can’t do it. That I’m not ready.
My eyes keep drifting to Blake. He’s magnetic. In many ways, he’s changed: his hair’s longer, maybe he’s a little wider than he was five years before, but he’s still beautiful to look at; his skin a deep olive, dusted with a faint stubble, contrasting with the brilliant blue of his eyes.
There is something so grounded about him. Like he’s real, made out of the earth, made from tangible objects that tether him down like an anchor. When I stare at him, which I’m doing more than I should and hoping he doesn’t notice, it pushes down the rising panic lifting inside of me every time I think about what tomorrow will hold.
I should stop looking but I can’t. My eyes keep flicking back in his direction, absorbing all the beautiful angles and curves that create him.
When the car stops moving, I drag my eyes from his face. I’m not quick enough and he catches me staring. I flush a furious pink but his expression remains blank, his eyes calm. Turning, I glare out of the window taking in our surroundings. Where the hell are we? It’s not the condo that’s for sure.
"Yoga?" I stare at the downtown studio across the pavement from where we’ve parked. It’s dilapidated, paint peeling from the minute front porch and a sign hanging from one rusted hook at a wonky angle. "Yoga, here? Are you sure? It looks like a crack den."
He laughs and the sound transports me back five years. Just like that.
"I don’t remember the old you being so judgemental on appearances?" h
e chuckles, but his words sting.
I fire my response almost without thinking. "That girl’s not here anymore, Blake." He needs to know the girl who used to love life is no longer around. The girl that used to enjoy the game of teasing him, knowing she was making him uncomfortable just so she could get her hands on him—is long gone. She’s tired, broken and has given up.
His azure blues hold mine and I want to pitch off a cliff and drown in them. "I know that," he says, and even though I know he’s only agreeing with me, it still hurts. Why can’t he still see the old me? Maybe if he could, I would stand a chance of finding her again. "Can she still touch her toes though?" A flicker of a smile lifts his dark expression. "That’s the question of the day."
It’s a bloody good question. When did I last touch my toes? When did I last do any exercise at all?
My silence gives him his answer and he mutters under his breath as he stretches out of the car, his muscles rippling under the starched white of his shirt. He must be hot and sweaty, but it never shows. He’s as cool as a metaphorical cucumber. I’m hot. I even checked the air con in the jeep. Apparently sitting next to Blake has the same effect on my skin as sitting next to an open furnace.
"I don’t have my stuff," I call after him, but he ignores me and pops the trunk grabbing a bag and two yoga mats.
"Sure you do. Come on, Soph, this will do you some good."
I stumble out of the car. Why do my co-ords just evaporate when he’s about? There’s no chance of managing any balancing poses if I wobble every time he looks at me. Maybe he will stay outside the room? But then the thought of him not being there…
He steadies me, catching my arm but then drops it as if it stings to touch me. I peek at the rundown building. "Really?" I ask. "Well, I don’t know about this. I can’t see this being a good lesson." I’m now a yoga snob, but it doesn't strike me as a place of calming zen.
Chuckling, he leaves me stood on the pavement on my own as he pushes his way through the door, paint cracking and snapping with his touch.
I follow him. There isn’t any choice apart from stand out in the street in the dodgy end of town, or sit in the car until he’s finished whatever it is that goes on inside the building.
Blake seems to know where he’s heading and pushes confidently through a beaded curtain. "Ugh, incense?" I reel from the cloying smell as it wafts over us the further into the building we get. "Are you sure this isn’t a crack den?" I whisper. "Because if it is, I don’t think it’s a good place for me right now."
He’d asked about the cravings and I hadn’t answered. I couldn’t answer because I didn’t have words for the burn inside of me. I’d told Sarah just the other day I didn’t think I was a real addict, but—the thirst, the need—it’s whispering in my ear constantly. Maybe I’d been wrong.
Maybe I am an addict. Maybe it wasn’t an accident. Maybe it wasn’t an experiment in escape that went wrong.
He chuckles, oblivious to my inner monologue, and it takes me a moment to remember what question he’s answering. "No." Phew, it’s not a crack den.
Down a dim passageway he pushes through another door and we walk into a room filled with such startling sunlight I blink like a mole facing the midday sun. The ceiling is made of glass, tilted windows are open to the sound of bird song and buzzing winged insects. In the distance traffic purrs, but not close enough to detract from the tranquillity of the room.
"How on earth do you know this place?" I turn slowly on the spot. It’s how I’d imagine a tropical jungle. Tall long-stemmed shrubs and trees fill giant ceramic tubs, creating a luscious green canopy. "This is insane," I state. It is. A tropical haven in the heart of downtown LA. Whoever heard of such a thing?
"I told you before, you don’t know what I get up to in my spare time." His eyes hold mine and a conversation unravels without us speaking a word. My mouth dries the longer I watch him and my pulse kicks up a notch.
Motioning for a bamboo screen he says, "You can get changed behind there."
Before, I would have teased. Probably just dropped my clothes in front of him, for the fun of it, just because it was funny to watch him try not to look at my body. That girl is gone, just like I told him, and I scurry behind the screen and root through the bag he’s packed with yoga pants and training tops. Clearly Blake in bodyguard mode had no issues rifling through my belongings and taking clothes out of my drawers in my bedroom. When had he even done that? When I was asleep? At four this morning? When I was in the shower? Skimming out of the smart linen top and jeans I wore to the interview, I pull a pair of loose sweats over my hips. They’re even baggier now, but I tighten the cord on the waistband and drag a sports bra and baggy vest over my head. My hair falls about as I rummage through the bag, sure Mr. Organise would have forgotten a hair band, but no, there in the bottom left corner of the bag are clips and a band. I grab them and twist my hair into a bird's nest on the top of my head.
Changed, I poke my head around the screen and am greeted by Blake wearing just loose yoga trousers and a vest.
Once I saw him in jeans. Just once.
My mouth flaps open. Holy crap.
Yoga pants and a vest top? Bloody hell. Muscles bulge everywhere, all sleek and smooth curved ripples. My hands itch. My palm could just smooth over the curves, feeling the warmth of his skin beneath my touch. I clear my throat. "Where’s the teacher?" My words are a strained cough, my skin heating when he turns his eyes on me. He must read my thoughts all over my face. Craning my neck, I search out anyone else in the foliage filled building and then turn back to him in confusion when I see it’s just us.
When my gaze settles back on him with a questioning shrug, he waves a hand at himself, a smug flicker curving his lips. "Here already."
Giggling to mask my confusion, I step out from behind the screen, self-conscious of the baggy pants and stretched neckline of the vest exposing my black bra. I fidget with the neckline trying to cover more skin. "Are you for real?" I search for any sign of humour. This must be a joke.
His eyes hold mine. "Very."
"But?" I can feel alarm rising, burning and mixing with the desperate thirst residing within my body every waking moment. "What if I fall over?" If I make a tit of myself in front of him, I’ll just die. I haven’t done yoga in years.
He rolls his mat out amongst the rugs and bean bags—some throwback tribute to an Indian yogi’s temple—before turning his bright blue gaze onto me. "Stop asking questions and relax. Just believe me this will help."
I try to take a deep breath, but fail as I watch him settle cross-legged on his mat, closing his eyes as he centres himself. "How do you know?" I whisper towards his restful face. I attempt another breath but it hitches in my windpipe—how can I do yoga when I can’t even breathe normally? Surely, I’ll pass out.
He pops one eye open, finding me still standing frozen to the spot. "Because I just do."
Flinging my own mat opposite his, I fold myself into a cross-legged position—not a lotus, which Blake is demonstrating with surprising dexterity—bloody show off. Even my basic sitting position is stiff and my hips creak in their sockets. It’s not a great start. Closing my eyes, I try to focus, but it’s hard. So hard. The moment I begin to empty my mind of all the hundreds of things I should worry about: filming, the set, Johnny, chips and milkshake, Erica, wanting to kiss Blake, all I can think of is a buzz working its way along my veins. How it could help… The sting of the high just as it gets me, draws me in and teases until I can taste the metallic blast on my tongue… I block it and try to not let it take hold but my mouth dries with anticipation. Determined to blank wall my craving, I focus on something else, something that can help me forget the crave burning in my veins. I focus instead on Blake’s chest against mine at the GMA studio. It fills my vision until my arms ache and my legs feel heavy—a craving of a different kind. Blake’s actions at the studio should have felt wrong, but they hadn’t. I wanted to hate him for leaving me all those years ago, I wanted to be repulsed by him. But the
press of his body had done the opposite. It had set me on fire.
It burned with as much intensity as any high I could seek out. That alone was dangerous. I want him. The young girl with teenage fantasies is warring with the older me who’s nursed a lonely broken heart and I don’t know who will win.
"Soph." His voice is startlingly close to my ear and I jump an inch off the floor. His hands slide onto my shoulders applying gentle pressure, pushing my spine into the ground, and centring my coccyx, until I’m sat bolt upright as if I’m being pulled by a string through my head. "Focus." My stomach churns at the deep rumble of his voice and the fantasy ridden teenager within shakes her pompoms in a hormone driven display of excitement.
Ignoring the cheerleader in my heart, I shake my head. Him being this close isn’t helping, not this time, he’s muddling my thoughts. "I can’t." Tears burn my eyes as all the many cravings I contain evolve into a devilish furnace of want and need. I’m drowning and I want it, to be pulled under. I want it all, drugs, alcohol, him.
"You can." He settles behind me, oblivious to the burning desire flooding my veins. His legs slide alongside my thighs, and his breath flutters against my skin. His hands remain firm on my shoulders as he waits for my mind to calm. He’s touching me, hands heavy and smooth. He’s touching me. The cheerleader backflips and somersaults and my body tightens. He’s touching me, and it feels good: clean, decent, and pure, none of the things I’m used to. "Breathe, Sophia." Slowly, because every so often another stream of thought, mainly about his hands on my skin, pulls me away, I manage to free my mind. How long he’s sat with his hands on my shoulders, waiting for me I don’t know.
"You’re ready."
He removes his hands and I struggle to hold stability with the absence of his touch. I wait for all the screaming thoughts to come crashing back into my mind, but they don’t. A calm serenity as smooth as a still lake keeps me centred in the moment and I breathe freely in and out.