by Craft, Lana
Once satisfied, she welcomed his embrace, grazing a soft kiss over his lips as he pulled her against his damp chest.
The rest of the evening passed in a slow blur, but it was one neither one of them would ever forget. What it represented for both of them was the end of one chapter and the beginning of a next.
Two weeks later, Blair would board a bus to Los Angeles without ever looking back. She would never tell Trent that she had fallen in love with him, and she’d never give him the chance to tell her.
Nine months later, when she'd bring a healthy baby girl into the world with his eyes and her dimples, she wouldn't tell him that either.
Some things, Blair figured, were better left unsaid.
Chapter three
Present day
“It’s not really an addiction,” she said, pursuing her heart-shaped lips in a familiar sarcastic grin. Her words were simple enough but they carried a familiar bite. “It’s more of a...light dependency.”
To say that wit was Eden’s strong point would have been putting it lightly, but when you’ve starred in over fifty films before the age of twenty, you get pretty used to playing a character.
This one? Well...it was one her therapist, the acclaimed Dr. Julianne Sterling, had come to know pretty well. Jaded child star with a superiority complex and a drug addiction. As far as Dr. Sterling was concerned Eden inhibited all the classic symptoms—lack of a childhood, daddy issues, a deep seeded need to be better than the next girl—it was all there.
As hard of a pill as it might have been for her to swallow, Eden wasn’t anywhere near as one-of-a-kind as she wanted to believe.
Dr. Sterling watched the young woman rummage through the high-priced purse in her lap before furnishing a pack of cigarettes and shaking one free. “You can't smoke in here,” she reminded her for what felt the hundredth time, pointing a nail at the ‘no smoking’ sign on the wall behind her.
They were on the fourth floor of the St. Vincent Medical Center, smack dab in the middle of the mental health ward. Eden’s bright pink lipstick, blood shot eyes, and running mascara was off putting against the all white scenery. She was better than this and she knew it, but addiction had a way of cementing you in your delusions.
“Whatever,” Eden bit back, her breath coming out jagged as she exhaled a wave of smoke from between her lips. The end of the cancer stick found its way to her mouth as she stared Dr. Sterling down for a fight. When she didn’t get one, she laughed and rolled her eyes. “Right...that’s what I thought.”
Dr. Sterling sighed into her palm. Eden with her big doe eyes and baby face was a sharp contrast to her own weathered appearance. Fine lines covered her forehead, tiny graphs that led down to the crows feet she sported in the corner of each eye. It was obvious that she had been a natural beauty once, but those days had long since passed.
Eden couldn’t help but scoff at her. It was true what everyone said about Hollywood. It could age you if you let it.
Dr. Sterling picked up the small trashcan beside her desk without a word, snatching the half-lit cigarette from between Eden's fingers and tossing it inside.
Eden shot her an incisive glare and raised her eyebrows in surprise. It was seldom that anyone ever challenged her, but Dr. Sterling remained unshaken. She wasn’t about to let a spoiled has-been shake her resolves, not even one as intimidating as Eden could be on a good day.
Within the confines of the hospital, she wasn’t any different from her peers. It didn't matter how she looked.
Dr. Sterling sighed as she took in her appearance. Eden’s flesh was more exposed than not. From beneath the rise of her crop top a belly ring dangled from her abdomen, shimmering in the light that poured through the large bay windows behind them.
It was the kind of attire most women would wear to club hop during a Vegas bachelorette party. Not to meet with their therapists on a Tuesday afternoon.
Another smart remark left Eden’s mouth and Dr. Sterling shrugged, tapping her ballpoint pen against the evaluation sheet in front of her. Eden’s name was written on top in delicate cursive, and Dr. Sterling immediately recognized the handwriting as her boss's.
"We’re overcrowded enough here as it is,” Erica had warned her just a few days prior, when Eden was admitted on a 5150 hold for driving the wrong way down the interstate.
“Come on, Jules. You know as well as I do that there are plenty of people who need to be here more than she does.”
Dr. Sterling disagreed. If there was anyone in this city in dire need of psychiatric care, it was Eden, but her boss was insistent and she wasn’t in any position to object. In three shorts weeks the Southern California Medical Counsel would evaluate her for a prestigious job opportunity in a private facility, and if she landed it, her rate of pay would triple.
Objecting to signing a famous girl's discharge papers would only make her seem difficult, and so she did, but only under the condition that Eden would attend weekly outpatient therapy sessions twice a week.
She also wrote her a prescription for a mood stabilizer and gave her a firm order to obey all traffic laws from there on out. She wouldn’t listen, they never did, but that didn’t stop Dr. Sterling from insisting.
Eden crossed her arms over her chest and anxiously eyed the clock in the corner of the room. It was obvious by the look on her face that she was well aware of the fact that her session was coming to an end, and that in a few short minutes she’d be free to leave.
Dr. Sterling sighed. She figured there was really no use in prolonging the inevitable. “You can go,” she said, capping her pen and clipping it to the pocket of her jacket. “Although, I’m sure you're already aware of that.”
Eden snickered and strolled towards the door. It was evident in the way she moved, with her head held high and her shoulders pushed back, that she thought the sessions were beneath her. It was the walk of a model minus the runway but it was all just a cleverly crafted façade. The only thing Eden really cared about was the bag of coke tucked in her medicine cabinet, hidden amongst pill bottles and high priced cosmetics.
Eden looked back at the homely woman still seated behind her desk. She was preoccupied with some paperwork and didn’t register her gaze. For a brief moment, Eden tossed around the idea of apologizing to her for being so rude, but it quickly passed.
If anyone deserved an apology it was her, she thought as she pictured her mother in all her glory, perched in her usual lawn chair with tanning oil casting a glow on her scantily dressed flesh. She lived a life of luxury but everything she had, she owed to Eden. Of course, that wasn’t to say she ever got a thank you. Eden’s mother seemed to be under the belief that hitching onto her daughters money train was her god given right as a parent.
It was total bullshit and though Eden couldn’t stand it, she didn’t have the energy to keep pushing her off.
“I expect to see you back here on Thursday,” Dr. Sterling called out, but Eden rolled her eyes and continued down the hall.
It went without saying that she had intention on ever seeing her again.
Chapter four
There’s a saying.
If you want to find drugs in Los Angeles, simply open your front door. Nine times out of ten they’ll come to you. It was a reality Eden knew all too well and one that rang even more true for celebrities. In her sixteen years in the industry, Eden had never attended a get-together that didn’t provide its guests, the most elite of the elite, with at least one drug of choice as a party favor.
Eden was just shy of twelve when she tried cocaine for the first time. She was at the wrap party for a family sitcom she had landed a lead role in, and the supply was endless. “Just stick your finger in and sniff," one of Eden’s older costars, a charming boy who would go on to steal the hearts of teenage girls all across America, instructed.
Eden nodded and did as she was told, always following the instructions of those with more experience than her.
The chalk like substance brought the idealistic young girl to life
in more ways than one. It made her feel good and alive and attentive, emotions she had seldom experienced in her upbringing. Not only that, but it got her through twelve-hour days on sets she didn’t want to be on in the first place, working hours no seventh grader should have been working.
Unfortunately for Eden, this was long before the days of strict child labor laws. In Hollywood anything went, and it wouldn’t be long before that would be exactly how she approached drugs. Cocaine may have been her first love, but crystal was the high school crush she stared at longingly from her locker and could never quite get over.
There was something so forbidden about it. It was so off limits that Eden couldn’t resist the magnetism she felt towards it every time it was present in a room she happened to be in.
The first time she ever tried it, she felt as though she was living in a dream. It made her forget about the monotonous cycle that was her life, something coke could only ever gloss over. It was dangerous but that was exactly what attracted her to it. It offered a certain euphoria no other drug did. An instant buzz that other substances just couldn’t quite mimic.
By the age of fourteen, Eden was a full-blown addict, and it wasn’t long before it started to leak into her work. Tabloids that once went gaga for the young beauty now painted her as a child star gone bad—the baby faced “bad girl” of Hollywood.
That was only the beginning though. Things really didn’t start to go south for Eden until the concerned parents of America took notice of her behavior. No longer did they want their “innocent”, unsuspecting children watching TV shows or movies that she starred in. Just like that, she was brandished as a bad influence. Someone to be avoided at all costs.
Not that their fears weren’t entirely noble ones. They simply didn’t want their precious offspring ending up like Eden, a drug addicted teen whose star status had long since disintegrated beneath a pile of drugs and men. With the blink of an eye, her name lost all its sparkle and fifteen-minute guest spots on D-list soaps quickly replaced what were once starring roles.
Refusing to give up without a fight, Eden’s mother did everything in her power to get her daughter back on the straight and narrow, but as usual, her motivations were entirely selfish. “What is it that you’re trying to do here?” she would ask Eden as she watched her wither and sweat beneath expensive hotel sheets, standing guard in the doorway until her detox finally passed. “Do you want to become a wash-up? Do you want us to lose everything we’ve worked so hard for?”
They were her go to choice of words, and the end goal was always the same. For her to get better so "they" could start making money again.”
The reality of the situation couldn’t have been any clearer. Eden’s mother looked at her daughter as a commodity—a good to be bought and traded. She never once empathized with her in the way most mothers would have, and as far as Eden was concerned, the reason was simple.
She didn’t care.
Eden was just shy of seven when her mother first began carting her to auditions. She knew enough about the industry to know there was a spot in it for her daughter, a natural beauty with a cuteness factor akin to Shirley Temple’s, and she wasted no time in trying to exploit it.
"You’re going to be a star,” she’d tell Eden as she’d fix her hair, tying big bows into it to secure the look. For all her inadequacies as a parent, she was anything if not business minded. She knew what she had to do to sell the image of her daughter and she did it well.
And so it went.
Eden starred in her first commercial just a few weeks before her eighth birthday and landed her first leading role by age nine. No one ever told her she was moving too fast, or to enjoy her childhood while it lasted. As far as Eden was concerned, she was a full-blown adult by the time she hit puberty. She didn’t even go to school anymore. At least not in the way other kids did.
Eden’s education had been muddled down to a tutor who came to visit her three times a week on whatever set she happened to be on. They would go over things like grammar, multiplication, and history...all in its most watered down form.
Not that it mattered though. Eden was told from an early age that she didn’t need book-smarts in order to succeed in her career of choice. Of course, the glaringly obvious problem with that was that it had never been her choice.
In her glory days, Eden’s mother had tried and failed to become an actress. Unlike her daughter, it was her passion. The irony was that unlike Eden, she didn’t have the natural talent it took to succeed in such a cutthroat industry.
As if that wasn’t enough of a punch in the gut, she also seemed to lack the sparkle that would go on to launch her daughter’s career.
“Work on your smile,” one agent told her. "Maybe consider a different hair color?” was the advice another had to give. But most just flat out said no. They offered her no pointers on how she could improve her craft, and as tough of a pill as it was for her to swallow, she gave up, deciding to focus on her daughter’s career instead.
Of course, that wasn’t to say she didn’t feel bitter every time she saw some woman with less talent but bigger breasts skyrocket to the top. But when that would happen, she’d simply drown her sorrows in expensive bottles of wine on Eden’s dime.
It seemed to work for her well enough.
As Eden pulled into the driveway of the large home she shared with her mother, her eyes lingered for just a second too long on the Hollywood sign. It was as constant a reminder as any of everything she had lost. Even the shiny SUV she was behind the wheel of wasn’t her own.
The production manager of one of her most recent adult films had loaned it to her. The movie, if it could even really be called that, would come out in a few weeks and would serve as her introduction into the world of porn.
Eden sighed and turned off the ignition, stepping out of the vehicle and making her way up the front steps. She punched a four-digit code into the home security system panel and made her way inside. Her mother’s dog, a tiny dachshund terrier named Felix, greeted her as soon as she entered. She reached down to pet him and called out for her mother to make sure she wasn’t home, but she was confronted with nothing but silence.
A heavy wave of relief washed over Eden as she began to gather up her things. She spotted her cellphone and tossed it inside her purse, making her way into the bathroom and holding the designer leather open over the sink.
Inside the medicine cabinet were dozens of bright orange prescription bottles. Eden stuffed them inside her purse one by one, making extra sure to grab up the one with the tiny white bag hidden inside of it.
When Felix barked at her from the kitchen, Eden shut the medicine cabinet and went to pick him up, allowing the small dog to lick her face. “Sorry boy,” she said, setting him back down on the tile. “She's not here.”
The last time Eden saw her mother was shortly before she had been admitted into the hospital. They had been having a run of the mill conversation on their back patio, but it quickly took a turn for the worse when Eden’s mother suggested that she wasn’t making a wise decision by accepting her million dollar porn deal. Of course, her problem with it wasn’t that she didn’t want her daughter working in such an industry. As usual, her reasons were purely selfish in nature.
“You’re a major actress,” she said, waving her hands in the air to further emphasize her point. “Okay. Were. It doesn’t matter. You’re still selling yourself short. A million? Seriously Eden? That’s an insult.”
The comment didn’t sit well with Eden. Her mother’s comments rarely ever did, but after dealing with her snide remarks on this particular subject for weeks, she wasn’t in the mood to keep kicking a dead horse. Before another word could escape her mouth, Eden entered their garage and grabbed a canister of gasoline off a shelf in the corner, proceeding to pour it around the circumference of her mother’s car.
"I’m sick of hearing what you think!” she yelled, turning towards her mother, whose expression was tinged with horror.
Eden reached do
wn and rubbed her hands over the raw spots on her knees, flinching at the sensation. If one of their gardener's hadn’t tackled her to the ground when he did, she had no idea what kind of damage she would have done.
“All right, Felix,” Eden said, taking a final look around the house for anything she might have missed. “See you later.”
Eden shut the door behind her, punching back in the security code and leaving the large mansion as though she had never even been there at all.
Chapter five
Eden was never afraid of dying.
She had many fears but death was never one of them. Not as a little girl, when she fell off the edge of a swimming pool on the set of a movie and nearly drowned. Not a few years after that, when she was in a car accident on her way home from a wrap party. And not now, as dozens of paramedics paced above her, fluorescent lights washing out their anxious faces.
“What’s going on?” Eden heard herself ask, but her words were lost somewhere amongst a sea of panicked voices and sirens.