by Lark O'Neal
I would tell you how much I love Dad, and ask why you stole me away from him. I keep trying to figure out what you were doing. You must have had a reason, but I don’t get it and Dad doesn’t know, and even the stupid nightmare I keep having doesn’t know. What happened, Mom?
I would tell you about the film and how great I feel about what I’m doing, how it clicks in for me when the acting is right, when I get inside that character, that person, and I can feel in my gut that it’s right. I was worried that it was only some crazy chemistry thing between me and Kaleb—that somehow he was making me better than I actually am, but on set now without him, I can feel it again. I can feel my energy interacting with others, and I can somehow sense what do to, how to tap into it. It’s exciting and it’s fun and I have no idea where it comes from, but I hope I get to do more of it.
I would tell you about Kaleb, too. How frustrated and hungry and mad and soft and tired and energized and right it feels with him. He’s mad at me and I don’t know if he’s going to get over it, and I earned his anger, for sure, but at the same time, I had things to work out. I want to make this right, or figure out how to get back to Jess and Kaleb world, but I guess he has to want it, too. And I’m not sure he does.
Which totally breaks my heart. Maybe sometimes you figure things out too late.
Is that what happened with you and my dad? Did you figure out too late that it was not the right place for you? Did you figure out that—
Suddenly, I realize that I have a tool at my disposal that I never had before. What if my mother went back home to her family before she came to Colorado and met Henry? What if I can find her family and they have information about her that makes some kind of sense out of the jumble of my memories?
Electrified, I open a window and Google Cassie Donovan, Montana. It’s not a very unusual name, so I’m expecting many results. Instead, there are a few, but nothing that actually matches her name and the actual state of Montana. Hmm.
She never had a Facebook account her anything like that, so that won’t be any help. I know her date of birth, May 20, 1969, and I think about running a search for babies born that day in Montana, but it suddenly seems overwhelming. Sad.
Maybe I’ll just ask Henry to send the box of stuff he saved for me. It’s a place to start. Opening a fresh email, I type in: Henry, I need that box of my mom’s things. Will you send them to me here as soon as you can? I type the address, in case he’s misplaced it.
When I send it, I’m closing the computer and getting ready to go to bed when there’s a knock at the door. In my current mood, I’m not sure I want to see anybody, but if it’s Kaleb, I’m not going to give him any more reasons to think bad thoughts about me. Peeking through the peephole, I see Mercedes instead. She’s staring right at the hole, and I open the door with a scowl. “What do you want?”
She’s carrying a bottle of Stoli and two crystal highball glasses and pushes by me even though I’m very sure my body language is stay out. “We have to talk.”
“I’m too tired, Mercedes. We were on set for ten hours today, and I had to deal with two ex-lovers in the same room and I’m not sure where your head is, and I don’t want to drink.”
She settles the bottle and glasses on the counter. “You don’t have to talk. I want you to listen.” As if this is her apartment, she opens the freezer and collects a handful of ice she drops in one of the glasses. Unscrewing the cap on the bottle, she says, “I keep telling myself that just because you look like Sierra that doesn’t mean you’re her, but it kind of doesn’t seem to matter. I automatically trust you because you look like the only friend I’ve ever had, and I loved her and I lost her.”
She’s a storyteller, and a damaged human being, and I should keep my defenses up, but they slip fast under the ferocity of her bloodshot, Bratz-tilted blue eyes. I say, “She died and you wrote Torches about her, for her.”
“Yeah.” She stands under the harsh fluorescent light and takes a big sip of her vodka. “But that’s not why I’m here. I’ll tell you that story another time if you want it. It’s…sad and just—whatever.
“The thing is, we are all a lot alike in some ways, you know? Me and you and Sierra. Lost girls, right? Had to fight for every little thing.”
I lift a shoulder, nod. Settle on one of the stools to listen.
“So I keep forgetting that you don’t know all the stuff about me. The stuff that will help you stop feeling so jealous over Kaleb and me. He’s hot, okay? He really is. That thing, that dance they did, when they stick out their tongues—”
“Haka.”
“Holy shit.”
I nod.
She sips again. “But here’s the thing, Jess. I got two pieces of luck—the first one is that I am very, very smart and no one ever thinks I am.”
“Agreed.”
“Number two, I grew into this body that makes men kind of crazy—and it won’t last that long. So I have ten years, maybe fifteen if I’m lucky, to get what I want, and I’m never going to get it chasing sex because I want to have sex.”
“You have sex all the time.”
“Yeah, with people I don’t care about, with people who want me and can give me something.”
“That’s pretty cold.”
“The world is a pretty cold place. If you’re soft, it will squash you like a marshmallow right under its heel.”
I scowl. “So, let me get this right. You would fuck Kaleb because he’s hot, but don’t want to because you have this weird vow, even though you told me that you’d do it for my sake.”
Her lips turn downward. “When you say it like that, I guess it sounds suspicious.” She slams the glass down on the counter suddenly, her eyes widening. “And what’s your friend Tyler’s problem?”
A headache is blooming over my right temple. Rubbing it, I say, “I don’t know and I don’t care. He was a jerk, that’s for sure.”
“He hated me on sight. I mean instantly.”
“Could you go back to how I don’t know everything I need to know to avoid being jealous of how hot you think Kaleb is?”
“It’s kind of hard to get it all into words.” She falls on her elbows, the glass between her palms as if there is an answer written inside it. “I’m very fucked up on this level, seriously. Relationships, sex, all of it. My social worker says I have attachment disorder, which, I dunno—isn’t all that shocking when you’ve had nineteen homes in your life.” She raises her hand and doesn’t look at me. “Please don’t say how sorry you are. I hate it.”
I nod.
“I have loved people. Not that many, but I do love them. Sierra was one of them, and I don’t know why, but I think you are, too, Jess. I just saw you and loved you, right then.”
“Mercedes—”
“Yeah, I know.” She straightens, waves a hand. “I’m being a weirdo, but there’s just something I know and trust about you. Maybe we were sisters in some other life or something, you know? And then I made you up in a book, and there you are standing right in front of me.”
I think about Kaleb saying how damaged she is. She’s also a genius and I want to see her work out all of her demons. In that second, as she’s standing under that harsh ugly light, I get a roaring sense of her long, long loneliness, the torture she endured, and I want it to be true, that we were sisters in another life.
Coming around the counter, I take the glass out of her hand, set it aside and pull her thin, long hand between my two palms, trying to warm it. “I could use a friend. Even a sister. But I think what you need more than anything is some sleep. Why don’t you come lie down?”
“I’m not going to betray you, Jess. I swear.”
“Okay.” I tug her into the bedroom and pull back the covers. “Go to sleep.”
“I need to text Alejandro.”
“Do that.” I head for the bathroom, weary in every muscle, and change into my pajamas. When I come back, Mercedes is out cold, her jeans on the floor.
“Sweet dreams,” I say quietly.
/> At least I had my mother. Maybe I should let sleeping dogs lie.
Chapter TWENTY-TWO
When I get up, Mercedes is already gone, and the bottle is gone off the counter, too. No note. But that wouldn’t really be her style.
Today we’re filming the balcony scene, and I sit down to go through it a couple of times. We rehearsed it a little, but I’m nervous. Maybe more anticipatory. Maybe we’ll have camp sex tonight. Maybe we could have camp sex all night and disconnect from the crazy rest of the world. That sounds so good right now I can’t even stand it.
Drinking tea made from American tea bags, I sit down to make my rounds on my iPad, checking first on email. There’s a note from Tyler who writes:
Jess,
Thanks for getting Kaitlin and Mercedes together. She talked about it for an hour, about why she loved the book and what was so cool about meeting an author. It was nice of you to set it up.
Have a great day.
Tyler
Something about the formality of the note makes me feel kind of sad. It’s supposed to be like this, I know. I haven’t been replying to his emails so that we can establish boundaries, and now it’s working. It just kind of sits in my belly, heavy.
But any thoughts of that are chased out of my head when I get a text from Mercedes. Check KILR! Lots of play this am!
Crap. With a sigh, I open the site, and there’s the whole drama from last night, playing out in photos. TORCHES TRIANGLE TURNS QUADRANGLE? Me and Tyler, heads bent together as if in deep conversation, Kaleb over Tyler’s shoulder looking at us. Mercedes and I standing with Tyler. Kaleb and I talking, me looking up at him with a very sad expression that I don’t remember making. The last photo is of Kaleb and Mercedes in what looks like a heated argument, but I’m sure that’s just the slant of the photographer, just like I never looked at Kaleb with sad eyes.
There is also a link to the video Mercedes filmed of Dave and Kaleb doing the Haka. I admit I run through it about four times before a knock sounds on my door. I know it’s Kaleb and open it to him.
“I made tea,” I say, “and there’s no point getting all pissed off because there’s nothing we can do about photographers like that.”
“You didn’t have to invite him to Aspen.”
I turn. “I didn’t. He invited himself.”
“You agreed to meet with him.”
For a long minute, I stare at him, my arms crossed, just as they were last night. “Kaleb, what do you want?”
“Privacy.”
“No, I mean here, with us. From me.”
He looks at me in return, for a long time. Then he shakes his head. “I don’t know. I want him to never have existed. I want the photographers to stay out of my business.”
“You know what I want?” I step closer to him and reach out to press my palm against the middle of his chest. “You. That’s it. Just you. You and me, the way we were in Kaikoura that day, falling in love and finding each other.”
He lets out a gust of air, and bows his head, covering my hand with his. When he raises his head, his amber eyes are filled with regret. “I’m so sorry, Jess.” His hand curls around mine, tighter, pressing my palm against his heart. “I’ve never felt like this before, like my soul is sewn to somebody else.”
“I know.”
“It’s some pretty scary shit.” He sways forward to touch foreheads with me, touch noses. “That’s what I want, too. How do we get back there?”
He smells of promise and night and sex and my blood stirs. “You have to let go of Tyler. He was important to me, but he isn’t anymore. Stop making trouble where there isn’t any.”
“You did sleep with him, Jess.”
“I did,” I say unapologetically. “You told me to finish it and that was what needed to happen.”
His big hand comes up around my neck. “No details, for God’s sake. Never.”
“I slept with you when I wasn’t supposed to, remember.”
He grins down at me. “That’s because we are meant to be together.”
“Ah. That is true.”
“We’re filming the balcony scene today,” he says, his hand sliding up under my t-shirt. “Do you want to practice?”
His fingertips are blue fire, riding over my ribs, up my spine, around to my belly. I reach around and cup his high, firm butt, pulling him into me. “I want to wait until after the filming, and then have camp sex. Lots and lots of it.”
His grin moves across his face. “I can live with that.” Under my shirt, he cups my breast, rubs the pad of his thumb over my nipple, and bends to capture my mouth. “It was so good to kiss you yesterday,” he murmurs. “I could have kissed for a day.”
“Me, too.”
And then we’re lost in just that—kissing. He has to bend to reach me, and I’m on my tip-toes. His mouth is an ocean I want to swim through forever, and he explores my lips, my mouth, as thoroughly. Sliding lips, back and forth, tongue tips dancing, teasing, touching. Mostly, I love his lips, the pillowy powerful feeling of it. It’s like his mouth was invented for kissing.
“Car is going to be here in seven minutes,” he says, raising his head. “I’ve got to shave or your chin will be blistered by the end of twenty takes.”
“Oh, that’s right,” I say, laughing. “We’re going to kiss for our job today! Rotten, rotten job.”
He straightens and slaps my bottom, but as he turns away, I grab his hand. “Promise, Kaleb. Don’t let things come between us again. I love you.”
For one long second, I see the doubt in his eyes, then he solemnly lifts my hand to his lips. “This,” he says quietly.
“This,” I say, and press his hand to my heart.
* * *
The whole morning, as I’m dressed in a thin elegant robe and my face is made up to look as if I’ve washed all my makeup off, and my hair is pulled into a loose and messy style, I keep thinking there’s something I’ve forgotten. That something is wrong and I’m going to freak when I realize what it is.
It makes no sense. Benjamin, the guy who plays my bodyguard, notices it. “You all right, baby? Seem a little tense this morning.”
We’re waiting for the set to be properly lit. “I don’t know. Something feels off, but I’m probably just nervous.” I haven’t seen Mercedes. Could it have something to do with her? “Have you seen Mercedes this morning?”
“Yeah, she was having breakfast with Grant and Alejandro this morning. I heard someone has made a bid on her second book.”
“I didn’t even know she had another one.”
“It’s not out yet.” He chews his gum, a prop for the part, and he frowns a little. “That girl has some shit to work on if she’s gonna make it.”
“She’ll be okay,” I say with conviction. “She’s got stuff to work out, but she’s really smart.”
“Mmm-hmm. The difference between me and you, kid, is that I’ve got thirty years in the business. I’ve seen a million girls like her—broken in some way, burning with ambition, and they burn themselves right to bits.”
It has a sad ring of truth, but I don’t want that to happen to Mercedes. “What makes the difference between the ones who are okay and the ones who flame out?”
“I didn’t mean to imply that you’d be one of them.”
“No, I know. I just—Mercedes. I want her to be okay. She’s such a good writer.”
“She’ll have to save herself, baby. All of us do.”
I look up at him, the words resonating somewhere deep in my gut. “I never thought about that.”
But isn’t that what I’ve been doing since my mom died—trying to save myself, make my way? In a lot of ways, though, I’m a lot luckier than Mercedes. I’ve had lots of people in my life to look out for me, take care of me. Even when my mom died, I had Henry, whom my mother chose, I suddenly realize, in part because he’s such a great nurturer. When I couldn’t live with Henry anymore, I found Electra. And then I found my dad, who wasn’t just willing to establish a relationship, but welco
med it with great enthusiasm.
Finding my dad seemed to open some good luck portal in my life. Since then, things have been not just better, but pretty amazing.
Kaleb walks on set, dressed in the same costume he wore to the party. His hair is tousled, his eyes darkened a bit with some kind of make-up, and I shoot a photo for Instagram.
“Let’s do one together,” he says, and leans in to put his head on my shoulder, holding out his long arm to snap the shot. Typing with his thumbs, he says, “My hot co-star.”
“Okay, people, places!”
The entire scene is filmed on the balcony, but like the day on Milford Sound, it’s cold. Freezing cold, and all I’m wearing is a thin robe. We say our lines, leap back inside to warm up with hot tea and blankets thrown over our clothes, then we head back out to kiss some more in the freezing cold. Again, Mercedes’ words give homage to Shakespeare, but don’t try to replicate him. I find myself getting lost in them, in the piercing tale of a virginal girl being sold to the highest bidder in a modern world where such things are supposed to be prevented, and the youth who would do anything to escape the life of his crime boss father. Doomed, the two of them. Kaleb as Rome is more volatile, with bigger gestures and a way of grumbling his American accent that’s really sexy.
I find myself thinking of Rapunzel and her prince, and the curse of the witch who sends the prince wandering blind in the forest. When we cut, I grab Kaleb’s hand, suddenly feeling that sense of foreboding again.
“What is it?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
He touches my jaw, kisses me. “It’s just been a long few days. Let’s go inside.”
* * *
It grows more and more difficult to film thanks to a storm that’s gusting and throwing snow around. Peter calls a halt to the balcony scene and we do some interior shots, break for lunch, and return to the interior shots again. I only have about a minute of film time as Rome goes to see his uncle, who wants an end to the war with the Capulets, and seeks a way to bring them altogether, not understanding that Jules is not Montague’s daughter at all.