by Lisa Marie
“Let’s go, I see some behind your ear.” She laughs as she pulls me to standing.
We emerge from the steamy bathroom, wearing plush terry cloth robes, and we walk into the living area. Farrow sits on the sofa, and I collect both boxes hers and mine. I return to the living area and put the table back in front of the sofa. Sitting beside her, I begin by opening the smaller of the two boxes. I remove the waxy zed folded paper and place it on the table top. I then pick up the larger box and offer it to her. Removing the lid she gives me a curious look as she removes the red paper orb.
“The Chinese believe that China Red color is fresh and pure.” I remove the orb from her hand and start feeding the descending narrow wire through the four holes in the zed shaped paper. “Red is the color of the auspicious. It signifies reunion, health, happiness, harmony, peace and prosperity.” I connect the wire to the orb and look into her eyes. “This, my dear, is a flying lantern. They are released for many occasions. Birth, death, religious festivals…marriage.” I look up at her through my eyelashes and smile. “Many people believe they offer protection from evil spirits and bring good luck to those who release them into the sky. They are designed to make every moment special and memorable.” I fidget with the folded zed. “The part I gave you is the wick. It’s what makes the lantern work. You are my wick, Farrow. I need you to soar.”
* * *
Farrow
I don’t know what to say. I’m speechless. This beautiful man in front of me floors me almost every chance he gets. Little did I know when I dream casted him as Tate that he was this amazing. I am never walking away from him again.
“Can we light it?” I request, reaching for his hand.
“I’ll inflate it, and we’ll go on the balcony.” He squeezes my hand and stands.
Walking toward the balcony, emotion overcomes me. Tears begin to spill down my cheeks. I hug myself, and I hear the blow dryer in the bathroom. Hugging myself, I let my tears flow. As I look over the skyline, I hear the ruckus of tourists below, see the lights and sirens of emergency vehicles, and hear the odd scream when a celebrity is noticed. I see why he doesn’t want this life. I don’t want this life. Why did I think it was the right decision besides to prove to myself that I could do it. That I could be something.
The blow dryer shuts off, and I wipe away my tears while looking over the balcony rail. I hear him step onto the balcony and feel him as he stands beside me with a lighter in his hand. He flicks the lighter and holds it to the wick. I place my hands with his and together we release the lantern. Slowly it rises. Higher and higher, dancing in the sky just for us. As I watch, more tears come. Kasen brushes them away with his thumb and wraps his arms around me. We don’t need words as we tilt our heads and watch our lantern get further and further away, taking the evil spirits with it as we celebrate and honor our love.
We stand there in an embrace for a long time before we begin to sway to our own music. Our arms locked around each other as we tune out the entire world and focus on us. When the internal song ends, we walk back into the room and climb into bed. Cuddling in the crook of his arm, I wrap myself around him and we drift off to sleep.
I come out of my slumber before I open my eyes, reveling in the comfort of these high quality sheets. I feel the bed shift and I smell coffee. Opening one eye, I look through my hair in the general direction of the shifting. My arms remain tucked under my pillow and quite honestly, I’m not prepared to move them yet. I feel his finger gently trace my exposed side to the pillow, where he sweeps the hair from my face. Expecting to see his bare chest, he disappoints me with a blue baseball t-shirt and faded jeans. Pouting, I push my bottom lip out and look up at him with puppy dog eyes. He smiles and proudly presents me with a takeaway cup from Coffeebean and Tealeaf.
Sitting up, I wrap the duvet around myself and greedily take the cup from his hand. As I am bringing it to my lips, Kasen tries to pull the duvet away. Innocently he lays on his side, playfully biting his lip while tugging on the covers trying to sneak a peek. With a mouthful of coffee, I point my finger in his face and grunt at him. He rolls onto his stomach with his tattooed arm bent in front of his face, so only his eyes are showing. His other hand resumes the sneaky duvet tugging. Narrowing my eyes, I look at him and all I can see are his green eyes playfully dancing above his arm.
“Clearly, I am at a disadvantage, Mr. Wells.” I pull the duvet closer to my body, lean down and give him a quick kiss on the top of his head, and climb off the bed letting the blanket fall.
His eyes grow wide. “Where do you think you are going?” He asks devilishly.
“Oh, I have to get ready. It’s 6:45 and I have an interview in Santa Monica at eight.” I walk to the bathroom and feel his eyes on me the entire time.
Closing the door, I place my coffee on the counter and turn to run the water. Stepping under the spray, the door opens. I see him on the other side of the shower glass. Watching me watch him. He reaches out, pulls the door open and presses me up against the tile. Lifting my leg slightly, the water is just starting to penetrate his clothing.
“You’d better hurry then.” Kasen smiles against my lips. “I hear the actor you are meeting is very…demanding.”
“A real smug bastard,” I reply.
He steps away and backs out of the shower. “We’ll grab breakfast on the way.”
“Kasen?” I call out
“Yep?”
“I love you.”
“Love you too, babe. Now hurry up!”
He leaves me alone in the shower with my thoughts. I can’t wait to see the look on his face when I pull out from my purse the kite we didn’t open.
Chapter 26
We pull up to the parking lot by the museum. Walking to the pier, we watch a group do their morning yoga. At eight in the morning and hearing the ocean lapping at the beach below, it’s so peaceful on the pier hearing the ocean lapping at the beach below.
“Should we get started?” I ask in my most professional voice possible. I am here to interview and interview I will.
“That would be great. I have a pretty hot redhead I want to get back to.” He waggles his eyebrows at me. Smiling, I shake my head and start the voice recorder on my phone while removing my questions from my purse. All the while, Kasen is playing aloof and looking everywhere but at me. This is going to be ridiculous.
“Thank you for meeting with me to discuss DIRTY, Kasen.”
“You’re welcome.” He nods
“The last time we saw each other you filmed the closing scene. The moment appeared bittersweet to the whole cast. What was it like for you? Was it bittersweet?”
“Bittersweet is a good word, I suppose. I mean, I was Tate for a while. It was a kinky fun role that taught me a lot about…kink,” he growls the word kink with a cocky grin, and my nipples harden instantly. It’s a good thing they don’t make a sound when they do that, my phone would have picked that up for sure.
“But,” he continues as he looks into the distance. “As happy as I was to have completed the job I was hired to do, it was a day I lost something very special to me, and it sucked.” He swallows hard and looks at me. “So bittersweet it was.”
I take a deep, ragged breath and continue, “It’s no secret you and I spent a lot of time together during the filming. Hell, we had twitter conversations from the SAME VEHICLE almost every morning.” He releases a loud laugh.
“So my question for you is this… What was it like, for you, to have a blogger on set? What were your initial thoughts when you learned about the contest from EI?”
“Twitter…those were some funny conversations.” He smiles at the memory and scrubs his hand over his morning stubble. “When I learned that they were bringing a blogger onto the set, I thought it was an awesome idea. I mean someone who isn’t in the celebrity lifestyle? Someone somewhat normal…”
“I heard that, Wells.” I warn.
“It was great hanging out with you, Farrow. However, I’m stil
l waiting for the whipped cream dancing you promised.” He protectively leans back and guards his face with his forearms.
I turn off the recorder and reach into my purse to pull out kite number three. Kasen is nodding in greeting at the women leaving the dock with their yoga mats. Only a few of them are whispering and squealing. I made sure to wear my button up shirt and lay out the voice recorder, just so we wouldn’t be interrupted too many times by fans. When he turns back to me, he sees the kite.
“You have it?” He seems really nervous. His eyes are wide.
“I haven’t opened it. I was always hoping I would open it with you.” I admit. “Kasen, that night was the worst night of my life. You have to understand, the situation reminded me of him. I thought you were staking your claim.”
He looks down at the boardwalk, and I put my hand on his. “I don’t blame you. Not for one moment. I blame myself. I blame myself for believing my father when he said I could never do it on my own without a man to do things for me. I proved to myself I could do it. I had a crappy job as a waitress in a restaurant in Tucson that I never told you about. It was horrible. Oh, and I also worked in a daycare with screaming children all day. I lived in a one bedroom apartment and seldom went anywhere.”
“So, you never opened this kite?” He asks in astonishment, and I shake my head in response. He removes the kite from my hands. Folding it in half, he tucks it into his back pocket. “We’ll save it then.” Kasen assures me and stands. “Let’s go for a walk.” He suggests, holding his hand out to me. Taking his hand, I place my notes and phone back in my bag. Leading me to the beach, we remove our shoes and walk along the water’s edge. It’s still early, and the waves are cold.
“Farrow, do you know why I never asked what you did before I met you?”
“No, and I was always scared you would. Ladyporn blogger is my shield.” I laugh
“It doesn’t matter how you get to where you are as long as you keep moving forward.” Kasen stops walking and turns toward the ocean. “Those are the words Mama told me when I told her about you.”
“When did you first tell Mama about me?”
He smiles a nervous smile and licks his lips.
“When I landed in Redmond, I stood in arrivals waiting for my bags. My agent sent me the link to a little blog, so I could be prepared for the things she might say. When I was reading, this little kid fell to the ground and started WAILING!”
“I remember that. Where were his parents?”
“I have no clue, but he stopped crying the minute he got that toy car from me.”
“Why DID you have the toy car? I’ve always wondered.”
“To get the kids away from me, so their mothers don’t freak out! Seriously, works every time.” We both chuckle. “When I turned around, I saw you. Just standing there. I didn’t feel the need to hide who I was. I wanted to take you to dinner, find out your name. And then you realized who I was. I could see it all over your face.”
My face heats and I look away from him.
“I had to put on MY shield. My sunglasses. I asked you not to scream and walked away after handing you your bag. The whole way to my car, I kept kicking myself. I should’ve talked to the redhead. She seemed nice.” His pinky finger twists with mine. “Even when I saw you on the curb, I asked the driver to pull over until I saw you climb into a waiting car. It wasn’t meant to be.”
Sitting on the sand, he pulls me to sit in front of him. Our bare toes dig in, and his arms come around my shoulders.
“I got to the loft and decided to go talk to Sergey for a while. I needed normalcy before the crazy. Opening my door, I saw the back of your head as you entered your suite across the hall from me. I nearly had a heart attack, but instead I went to my sofa and called Mama. What were the odds?” He kissed the top of my head.
“You do realize our meeting this morning was for me to confess to you. To give you my heart, my promise. You kind of just stole my thunder.” I admit leaning into his chest and kissing his hand.
“Babe, without lightning, thunder is meaningless.” I angle my chin to meet his lips with mine.
* * *
Kasen
Farrow stands and dusts the sand from her pants. Pulling me to my feet we begin to walk back to my bike, hand in hand. This is the most public we have been.
“Babe, this is going to sound wrong, but please don’t take it that way. There’s lots of people on the pier, and in the parking lot at the museum. Are you ready for this?” I motion to our joined hands. “I personally don’t care what they say, but I don’t want you to get hurt. It’s your decision, babe.”
Stopping briefly, she looks down at our joined hands and back up to the growing crowds on the boardwalk. “I’m not afraid, Kasen. Let’s do this!” She states while squaring her shoulders.
“Jeez, you’d think you were about to take on that bikini chick in a mud wrestling match, babe. Wait… are you going to mud wrestle? Because that would be awesome!” I feign excitement as she smacks my arm.
As we reach my bike, I look around and see people starting to recognize me. My heart sinks. I know how vicious the fans can be. I try to release her grip, but she won’t let me.
“Excuse me,” I hear a small voice behind me, taking a deep breath I turn around with a bright smile. “Are you Kasen Wells?” She whispers, as to not bring attention to him.
“Yes, I am,” I reply, trying not to bring attention to my nervousness.
“I have a package for you.” She hands me a flat white box, tied shut with silk twine.
I turn back to Farrow, who is now tearing up.
“Open it,” she whispers.
I untie the twine and tuck it in my pocket. Lifting the lid and the tissue, I find a picture frame with a ripped piece of paper in it. Confused, I look at Farrow, whose biting her thumbnail.
“Remember yesterday I said I renegotiated?”
“Yes?” I question while looking closer at the paper. It’s not just any ripped paper. It’s her contract with EI. She ripped up her contract with EI! “What did you do, babe?”
“Well… After you gave me the napkin the other day, I contacted Susan, the head of Human Resources at EI. She was so helpful. Turns out, a five year contract was a ridiculous offer to someone off the street…or someone like me, a waitress.” She shrugs. “SO, they had to renegotiate based on my PROFESSIONAL experience. I’m free from EI in my current position in a month and will be free of them completely in five. Because of the whole kerfuffle, yes, I said kerfuffle, they will continue to pay my rent and a portion of my salary until six weeks following the theatrical release of DIRTY in October. They want me available to cover all the – ahem – DIRTY talk.”
I see the odd cell phone come out and take pictures. All around me, women are realizing who I am. My heart starts hammering in my chest. “Why did you frame it?” The need to know the answer outweighs the small amount of people gawking.
“I framed the exact moment in time. When I gave up on myself and started believing in us.”
I no longer care who has their camera out. I wrap my arms around her waist and lift her high. Her hands cup my face. “Home,” she smiles.
“Home,” I reply and kiss her fiercely. Knowing that we don’t need to go anywhere because when we are together we will always be home.
Chapter 27
Farrow
He’s been gone for three days. He is constantly texting me, and of course I am texting him. Stopping at Coffeebean this morning, people are saying hi to me. The barista gave me my coffee for free! So strange. I thought I saw someone on the train taking my picture. This is Hollywood, nothing makes sense here.
Walking into the office, it’s a buzz as usual. Typing and chatter. When I arrive at my desk, there is a bunch of wildflowers tied up with a kite balloon. I know who this is from and I don’t even have to open the card. I sit down and inhale the beautiful aroma before I compose my text.
ME: Thank you, baby.
ME: HA HA
KASEN: Did you see it yet?
ME: The kite balloon? Adorable!
KASEN: Uh… guess not.
ME: See what, Kasen?
KASEN: You will know when you see it. Call me when you do.
ME: Um O.K. Gonna work now, weirdo.
KASEN: I’ll be talking to you real soon. Love you.
ME: Love you.
Suddenly, it seems the whole office has stopped working, and they are all staring at me. What a weird day. I turn on my monitor and click on my RSS feeds when my mouth drops. It’s a succession of pictures from yesterday on the pier, and on the beach. I pick up my cell phone and press speed dial two.
“That didn’t take long. You okay?” Kasen asks
“Um…” I don’t even know what to say. He laughs into the phone.
“Warned you.”
“What if I say I will mud wrestle instead?” I swallow the lump in my throat. “At least now I know why someone took my picture on the Walk of Fame today.” I laugh nervously into the mouthpiece. “Heh heh… joke’s on me.”
“I’ll call Christine and set up security for you. Stay at work until you hear from me.”
“Okay,” I reply. “I have to work now.” People are staring at me. I wish they would stop.
“Love you, Farrow. Take a deep breath and it will be okay.”
I don’t even return the sentiment. I just hang up the phone and look around the room at all the people who are pretending not to stare. You know the look. Eyes look everywhere but at you. Darting nervously about like flittering butterflies, pretending to be busy but they really aren’t.
“A word, Ms. Connoley.” I hear Thomas behind me. Suddenly all of my co-workers are busy and quickly leave the area.
“Certainly,” I reply and stand to follow him to his office.