Nate
Sheila wasn't happy. Wanda, the cute, overly peppy Asian chick who had been interviewing me wasn't happy. I'd seen it before. People would be a massive fan of me until they met me. Then I'd be a dick and they would hate me. Or I would sleep with them, then be a dick. The result was the same either way. If I was a restaurant I would have the most terrible reviews ever. Sheila had even pulled up some youtube videos of fans who had supposedly met me talking about what a dickhead I was to them. Oh well. That was nothing to do with me. If they had a problem then who was I to care?
Sheila cared. She cared a lot. Too much, really. It was one of the reasons we had stopped screwing around. She got way too worked up about pointless shit. Not everything has to mean something, ya know?
"What were you thinking?" Sheila demanded in the limo back to my place. She was rubbing tiger balm into her temples. She had always insisted that he chronic migraines had begun just as she had taken me on as a client. It was a dumb joke, "Swearing on air? Jesus Christ, we'll be lucky if the radio station doesn't fine us for that one. Let me tell you mister, if they do it's not coming out of my paycheck!"
"It slipped out, I can't help it. That's just how I talk." I said. It was true. My first world was probably fuck or shit, come to think of it. Based on how the vocabulary I heard on a daily bases sounded, I didn't have many other options.
Based on my behavior, Sheila had decided to cancel the rest of my commitments for the day. They always say you shouldn’t reward kids or dogs for bad behavior,but this felt like a reward to me. Getting home to Darcy had been on my mind all day.
"Yeah, I know it's how you talk. I know how you talk and how you think and how you act. And if you don't mind, it's my job to reign all of that in and make you seem like a decent fucking human being. Remember Nate? Because we have a movie coming out in a few weeks that we want to do well?" she hissed. This was normally the time where I would reach for a cigarette but I had even been banned from those, for Christ sakes. Even my sodas had to be diet. I couldn't have any fun anymore.
"It's gonna do well. I'm in it, isn't that enough. I have four shirtless scene, you get a glimpse of my butt and my character talks about his feelings. This shit is like hardcore porn to soccer moms and college girls!" I said. Sheila tutted and opened the limo mini fridge. She threw me a can of diet cola and cracked open a can of beer for herself.
"I wish I had your arrogance Nate, I really do. Romantic dramas are different. You aren't selling to frat boys and twelve year old kids who just wanna see shooting and fighting. The fact that you appealed to the bored girlfriends who were dragged along to the movies was a bonus back when you were doing action movies. We need butts in those movie seats. We need to show the studio that they can sell you in more ways than one," she said, "And by the way, I didn't appreciate that shit about me writing that line."
"But you did. I have it here," I said, pulling it out of my pocket, "Yup, says right here. 'I think every girl is beautiful'."
"Oh god," she groaned, kicking off her sling-back heels and chugging down her beer, "I should never have dropped out of law school. My parents were right, it was a mistake."
"That we can agree on," I said. It took one sip of my pathetic diet cola. "This tastes like ass. Can I get something a little harder?"
I was just teasing again but Sheila scowled.
"No one wants a drunk as the star. No one wants a fat drunk as the star of their movie."
I thought she was going to shut up when she whipped out her phone and began texting rapidly. Usually, when those sharply manicured nails began to move like that it meant that she was done talking to me. It happened more frequently than you would expect, not that I could blame her.
"Where's the girl anyway, Nate? Did you fuck her yet?" she said, without looking up. Don't get me wrong, I clearly wasn't one for old fashioned manners. If I ever had a swear jar it would be filled to the brim within an hour. Even so, it felt wrong hearing those words used about Darcy.
"What makes you think I would do that?" I said. Sheila smirked.
"It's what you did with me. And almost every female you've ever come into contact with, if I remember correctly. She's not hear today either. I assume you slept with her and then said something cruel and thoughtless and she ran back to Alabama in tears?" she suggested. Jesus, I wasn't that bad, was I? Well, all right I had made a few girls cry in my time, but it was never my intention. It was only the ones who got too invested and expected too much from me who got hurt. I never made promises I couldn't keep. So I never made promises, period.
"I haven't slept with Darcy," I said. Sheila looked up from her phone, still smirking.
"You haven't?"
"Nope."
"That's not like you. She's not Marilyn Monroe, I grant you but she's a pretty little thing. I thought you might be into the accent. Was I wrong?" she said. I shrugged my shoulders.
"No. She's plenty hot. I just didn't sleep with her. She's not from Alabama, by the way. She's from Tennessee." I said. Sheila furrowed her brow.
"Okay. That's weird, but I'm glad to hear it. At least one thing that you didn't mess up in the interview was talking about having a special lady. They are going to eat that shit up. We want you to still be obtainable, of course but knowing you have a romantic side is going to impress the ladies. They'll buy more movie tickets," she said. She saw the bored look on my face and added, "They'll drop their panties even quicker for you."
"Yeah, maybe. I don't know why I said it. I wanted to catch people off guard, I guess." I said. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I wasn't so sure. Was I going to be grilled about my non existent girlfriend until the buzz died around the movie? That would be painful. I wasn't sure if I could keep up that kind of facade for long.
"I don't care why you said it. It was the only good thing you said in that interview." said Sheila. She took another swig of beer just as we were pulling up to my house. I didn’t blame her.
Darcy
Going back to work after everything I'd been through felt unreal. It was like at the end of the Wizard of Oz when the bright colors fade and Dorothy is transported back to boring old Kansas. My memories of the office building were sepia toned and I longed to go back to glorious Technicolor.
Here was the thing though. Things were different now. Very different.
They were different from the very moment I stepped through the swiveling doors at the entrance to the building. People were looking at me. That had never happened before, unless there was toilet paper on my shoe. I glanced down. I was in the clear.
It wasn't like I was looking all that good either. My hair was thrown into messy pigtails and I had squeezed into a pair of skinnies. The only nice item I wore was a hoody that belonged to Nate. When I say belonged I mean it was designer and he had obviously never bothered to wear it. He’d insisted I keep it when he saw me admiring it hanging up in the coat closet. It hung in a comfortingly loose fashion over my body. If only his arms really were around me, holding me close, whispering sweet nothings into my ear...fuck, this needed to stop.
I sipped some of my black coffee from my takeaway cup. It didn't have the comfort of the sweet hot chocolate from my homemade stash but gosh, I felt grown up.
Two models who had just opened shows at fashion week walked passed me with grins on their faces.
"Hey Darcy!" said Tatiana, the taller and more statuesque of the two. I looked around me as if another Darcy would be standing there. Nope. Just me.
"Hi!"I said. It came out like a squeak.
"You're looking great. We should go out for drinks soon!" she sang, before skipping away with her voluptuous co worker. Wow. If any of the girls back home knew that Tatiana Presley knew my name they would be steaming with envy. But how?
I approached the elevator and the staring didn't stop. Tim, my cross fit loving co worker who could never remember my name actually held the door for me.
"Thanks," I said nonchalantly, though I'd never known him to be so polite.
Especially not to a small fry like me. Why would he be nice to me when instead he could spend his energy on girls like Tatiana Presley? Tall, rich, beautiful and effortlessly flawless. Not a girl like me whose butt was a little too big and who got pimples every month before her period. That wasn't glamorous.
"Hey, no worries!" said Tim, "How are you doing, Darcy? We've missed you around the office."
"I didn't think you'd notice I was gone." I said. I looked into the mirror at the back of the elevator and smeared on a little bit of tinted lip balm on. Fresh faced would have to do today. I'd left my makeup bag on the bus and couldn't afford to replace many things just yet. Tim looked on at me.
"Of course we did. Well, I did anyway. No one makes coffee like you do, Darcy!" he said. I rolled my eyes. Dealing with Nate had given me a lower tolerance for bullshit.
"You always complain about my coffee!" I said. Tim laughed as if I was joking. I gave a little snicker, just to be polite.
"Oh come on, no need to play so hard to get with me," he said. He stepped closer to me so that we were practically inches apart. I couldn't help but step back as the elevator opened. Tim closed the door again, right before I could wriggle out, "So what, am I gonna have to pester you all day before you agree to have dinner with me?"
"Dinner?" I yelped. A month ago I would have been over the moon to be asked out by a guy like Tim. Sure, he was a little older but he was fit, intelligent, kind of handsome if you squinted even. He was successful. Best of all? He wasn't Nate McCoy.
Even so, my firs instinct was to shut him down. I wasn't the kind of girl who men like Tim wanted to wine and dine. No, I was the girl that guys like Nate wanted to bone and then run from. He had made that quite clear.
I didn't have to stick to that narrative. I hadn't slept with him. I wouldn't sleep with him. I would have dinner with Tim.
"I'm sure that would be lovely."
I hoped I was right.
Nate
"A date?" I exclaimed. When Darcy had stepped out of the guest room in a clingy black dress that stuck to the contours of her body like ink to paper, my first instinct was to throw her down and have my way with her right there and then. Unfortunately even I knew that she wouldn't take kindly to that. Even so, I had assumed she was trying to seduce me. Especially since the dress was unzipped, displaying a lot of the soft white skin of her back and the fact that she wasn't wearing a bra. But no. She wanted me to zip her up.
"Yeah, a date. So what? Sometimes civilized people like to get to know each other before they have crazy jungle sex, or whatever it is that you do." she huffed. My blood began to boil, but I knew showing it would only make her rub it in more. I couldn't have that now, could I?
"You're going to have crazy jungle sex with some guy just cos he's buying you taco bell?" I snapped. Darcy rolled her eyes.
"He's taking me to a really nice Italian place. La Bella Roma, it's in the city center," she said. I hated how moony her eyes went when she said the name of the restaurant. As if it were really impressive or something.
"Oh man, I've been there. I fucked one of the waitresses in the broom closet and got into a fist fight with the maitre-d," I said. Darcy's expression didn't change. She turned around and pulled her hair out of the way of her zipper.
"Come on Nate. Stop being a dick and zip me up. I can't reach back there," she said. Her voice was soft. Frustrated but pleading. I hated it, but I couldn't say no to the girl.
"I don't ever remember helping a girl to put on her clothes before. I'm not sure I like it." I said. I took the zipper between my thumb and my forefinger and pulled it up slowly. Her skin looked so beautiful. She was like a mermaid from an old painting I wasn't sure was real or not. Either way, she was drawing me in and I couldn't pull away. I couldn't stop myself from leaving a kiss at the base of her neck. She shivered against it.
"Nate," she breathed, "Nate."
I slinked my arm around her waist and pulled her close to me. The soft feel of her ass pressed against me made me crazy. It wasn't just me. I kissed her again and could feel her melt against me.
"If you want me to stop just say so and I will." I whispered as my hand cupped her breast. She gasped and looked back at me. For one tiny, fleeting moment she was in my control. She was either going to kiss me or kill me.
She pursed her lips and stiffened.
"I've got a date." she said.
The door slammed on the way out. I couldn't stop her. Or could I?
Darcy
Tim hardly glanced at me. He'd obviously come straight from work, dressed in his typical jeans and sweater combo. I felt silly for making such an effort. After all, it was my first date. People on TV always dressed fancy for dates. I even had a picture on my bedroom wall of Mama and Daddy on their first date, all those years ago. They were dressed to the nines for a college ball. Maybe I'd set the bar to high.
"Hey." said Tim.
"Hi, you look great," I said half heartedly. He didn't bother to reciprocate. Instead he grunted and gave me a nod. La Bella Roma had been a lie of course, something I’d come up with just to impress Nate. He would obviously be used to eating at the best restaurants. It was no big deal to him but it was huge to me. A crappy internship hadn’t given me the opportunity to try much haute cuisine just yet. I’d passed La Bella Roma a few times on my way home from work and it always looked so beautiful, so romantic. Like a fantasy.
He peered past me and into the hallway.
“You ok?” I said. He was behaving so strangely. Like he was looking for something. Something that I didn’t have.
“Yeah, yeah sure I’m ok. Hey, I’m really thirsty do you mind if I stop in for a glass of water or a soda before we head off? My throat is so dry.” he said. I glanced back at the kitchen and bit my lip. Nate would not be happy, but there was nothing that could be done about that. As long as I was working for him then this was my place too. Both Sheila and Nate himself had made that quite clear to me. So what was wrong with offering my date a drink?
“Sure,” I said reluctantly and beckoned Tim inside. He didn’t need to be told twice. He pushed his way inside and gazed around the room like he was in the world’s most interesting museum. Had I been as weird as he was being the first time I had stepped into Nate’s luxurious dwelling? I guessed that I probably had. That felt like a world away now. I’d changed as a person.
“So, we have Pepsi or mineral water. What are you in the mood for?” I said. Tim didn’t respond. He was too busy examining Nate’s marbled countertop. I watched him run a finger along it as if he was checking for dust. Then he picked up one of the books that I’d left messily splayed out. I had to repeat myself. “Tim. Pepsi or water?”
“Water, please,” he picked up a battered old copy of The Crucible, “Oh god, don’t tell me Nate is going the theater route now? Is this for a new project? I guess he thinks he’s Laurence Oliver now, huh?”
I grabbed glass bottle of water and unscrewed the lid.
“No. I was reading that because I watched the movie the other day. It’s interesting. Do you like Artur Miller?” I said. I would have been happy to talk about anything. Politics, religion, you name it. Just so long as we could get off of the subject of Nate McCoy.
Tim didn’t bite.
“No. So, Nate just lets you leave your stuff laying around like that? Doesn’t he get annoyed? It’s not very professional,” he said.
“Professional?” I repeated.
“You’re working for him, right? I wouldn’t let my housekeeper just leave her shit wherever she wants to! He must be pretty laid back to let you get away with that.”
I opened my mouth to argue, to assure him that I was not a housekeeper. We didn’t have a housekeeper employer kind of relationship. Then what kind of relationship did we have? That was the next obvious question. I closed my mouth again, but that worked out fine. It turned out that I didn’t even have to argue for myself.
“She’s not my housekeeper.”
Nate’s voice was a cold growl. He sto
od at the door, arms folded and jaw pulsing. He looked at Tim like he might kill him. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure that if I left them alone together he wouldn’t.
Tim gasped at the sight of him. A huge smile appeared on his features.
“Nate! Oh boy, Darcy was just giving me a little house tour and I just want to say that the place is amazing! I’m really impressed with how you decorated it. Big fan, by the way. Love the old stuff but the way you’re trying to diversify is admirable man, I’m sure your new movie will be a massive hit,” he stepped forward and extended his hand for Nate to shake, “I’m Tim, by the way. I write for Buzz magazine. Maybe you’ve heard of me?”
Nate gave Tim’s outstretched hand a withering glance until it retreated back to his side where it belonged.
“House tour?” he looked at me questioningly and my skin went a startling shade of lobster pink.
“No! No, no, no! Tim was just thirsty so I offered him a drink!” I said, almost pleadingly. This was so humiliating. Why had Tim lied like that?
“Okay. So give him the drink and go.” said Nate. He turned on his heel and slammed the door before Tim could get the word ‘goodbye’ out of his mouth.
“Is he always like that?” asked Tim. I shook my head. I wasn’t going to talk about him or think about him. This was my night off and I was going to enjoy myself. Whether Nate wanted me to or not, I was going to have fun.
Tim's car was parked out front.
"Where are we going?" I asked as I tottered slightly behind him in my high heels.
“I thought we would just see how we feel.” he said. He clicked the button on his car keys and the lights illuminated. It was a pretty fancy make, some kind of classic jaguar. I didn’t know much about cars but this one was nice. Not as nice as the four luxury cars and two motorcycles that Nate had in his driveway, but nothing was.
“Your car is really nice,” I said. Tim shrugged and got into the front seat. I followed suite and got into the passenger seat. As he started the engine I glanced back at Nate’s house. Nate was standing at the front window, his arms folded. Staring right at the two of us. I felt frozen to the spot. Tim leaned over me and waved manically, but Nate just walked away. He wasn’t pleased.
Starring Me and You Page 6