by Lark O'Neal
With the snow falling so heavily, the day is beautiful and quiet. Most of the other actors have been sent home for the day, so I read the book of essays Tyler gave me. A couple are a little too long to read in pieces, but I like her writing style, with its crisp observations and the capture of excellent details. One essay at the end is called Goodbye To All That, about her decision to leave New York City after spending her twenties there. It has the same sense of poignancy as A Moveable Feast, a sense of time moving too fast for us.
I look out toward the snow falling and let the essay simmer in the back of my mind. Tyler doesn’t choose things for no reason, and I am pretty sure this essay was the one he wanted me to read in this collection. Youth and dreams are the common themes in both pieces, but youth written about later. I wonder what I will write about later, if I ever would.
Maybe I should start keeping a notebook, like Didion writes about. Keep a record of things I notice, so that I can jolt my memory later.
The melancholy is still with me when Kaleb is finally done. The sun has set by then, and we’re starving, but the last thing I want to do is head into the company dining room.
“Let’s order in,” Kaleb says, weaving his big hand through mine. “Your place or mine?”
“I have more supplies, I’m sure.”
“Okay. I’ll grab some of the wine and order some Chinese and meet you there in an hour.”
I summon a smile.
“Is everything okay, Jess?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been feeling this weird sense of worry all day.”
“Why don’t you call home and make sure everybody is okay? Call Electra and Henry. It will make you feel better.”
When I get back to the apartment, the first thing I have to decide is what to wear. I have a soft turquoise t-shirt and some patterned pajama bottoms that will be comfy, but they also look really cute. I take a quick shower and fire up the iPad. My dad answers almost immediately on Skype. The day is bright and hot behind him and he beams. “Jess! It’s so good to see you, lamb!” Then he gets a good look at me and his mouth turns into a big round O. “Your hair!”
One thing that’s amazing is that it can start to dry in about five minutes now. I flip the ends and swing my head. “What do you think?”
“It’s gorge!” Over his shoulder, he calls, “Katie, come see Jess’s hair.”
She exclaims over it, too, and all the tenseness in my chest starts to dissipate. We chat about the filming and the weather and the upcoming harvest. Darcy is planning to come visit the US next month, which will be a blast.
When I hang up, I’m better, but I send a text to Mercedes, too, just in case. Good day?
The best. Check Instagram! There’s a whole row of emojis after the exclamation mark and I laugh. Nothing wrong there. I check her Instagram feed and there she is between two businessmen types, holding a contract. MOVIE is all that can be read. Her comment is only: #2!
I send her back a row of emojis—dancing girls, claps, crowns, smiles, hearts.
I look at my feed, and there’s the picture Kaleb took earlier today, of the two of us on the balcony, and, honestly, it’s the best picture ever of us. I love it so much I copy it and put it on my phone home screen. It has more than 18K likes on his page, and just over 2.5K on mine. The comments on mine are telling. “You kiss that mouth!” “Swoon!” Emojis everywhere.
Because I’m just waiting, I look at Tyler’s feed, too, and the last shot is one of the mountains in Breckeridge, snow falling. I wonder if fresh snow is good or bad for his purposes.
Kaleb knocks and I let him in, and he pauses inside the door, a bottle of wine in his hand. He looks at my outfit, and a smile spreads over his face. “For me?”
I hold out my arms. “All for you.”
“I haven’t ordered the Chinese yet.” He moves closer. “Want to wait for a little while, maybe?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “What do you have for me?”
He pulls off his shirt in one smooth move. “A tattoo you like.”
I shake my head. “Other one.”
His eyes go molten gold. “Your shirt off first.”
I reach down and pull it off, leaving me bare-breasted, the pajama bottoms riding low on my hips. Without the drape of hair, it’s surprising how cool the air is on my body, and my nipples leap to attention. Kaleb reaches out with one finger, lightly touches one.
I swerve away. “Tattoo.”
He kicks off his shoes and socks, unfastens his pants and pushes them down, leaving his boxer shorts. My body flushes, warms, drips as I let my eyes move over his beautiful flesh—his smooth brown skin, the flat belly with its erotic arrow of hair pointing to the hearty erection making a tent of the patterned fabric of the underwear. My breath comes a little faster, making my chest rise and fall, but I’m in no rush. Not this time. Not after so long.
I look from the top of his tousled ebony curls to his glittering eyes and flared nostrils, over the round of his shoulders and the dip of his waist and his powerful thighs. “I still can’t see the tattoo.”
He kicks the jeans and shirt aside, and slips his hands just under the waist band of his shorts, then pushes the cotton down. His cock springs free, bobbing from its nest of black hair. He pushes the shorts off and kicks them aside, and stands there, naked and perfect. I move closer, touching his chest, his belly, and moving to the side, letting my hand run down his waist, over his hip, and the tattoo, that stylized Maori style tattoo covering most of his hip and thigh. I catch my breath, shivering as I trail my hand over it, tracing the edges.
“Jess,” he says, roughly.
I look up at him, letting my hand stray sideways, brush over his cock and the tender, sturdy weight of balls beneath, and he makes a soft noise. “Careful there,” he growls.
“What might happen?” I ask, taking it in my hand and giving it a squeeze.
With a fierce, swift move, his big hands slide around my waist and he pulls me close, chest to chest, and our skin is so charged that I’m almost shaking by the time his mouth claims mine. He picks me up and I fling my arms around his neck, my legs around his waist. He walks us across the room, drops me on the couch, and tugs my pants off, pushes my legs apart and just looks. Looks. Touches, sliding a finger from the center upward, dragging my juices in long, soaking swirls, around my clitoris and down, a little inside, and again, over and over, until I’m quivering, shivering, my cheeks hot, my hands digging into the couch fabric. “Kaleb,” I whisper, “please—”
He halts his movements. “Please?” he says, leaning into me, kissing my mouth, sucking my lower lip into his mouth. “What can I do for you, Jess?” He bends and licks my breasts, lingers over the tips, rises to kiss me again. “Kiss you?” his fingers slide into me, one, then two, and I cry out, shivering so much I’m not sure I can wait much longer, my brain gone.
“Or maybe,” he growls, “this is what you want? My dick.” He holds it at the dripping, hot center of me and I feel the thick, smooth probe of it, edging into me, a little a time, a little more, a little more. The anticipation makes my head fall backward, and I’m grasping his shoulders. “This is what I want. You, around me, so hot and pulsing, so—”
I grab his ass in both hands and haul him into me, pulling him deep. “This,” I say, gathering him close, and he plunges, we plunge together, falling over the edge into wild animal movements, our mouths finding the other’s, his cock filling me and withdrawing, over and over until both of us are crying out, slamming into each other, coming apart, me, then him, grasping each other so close we are one creature. I open my eyes and look at him, at his long eyelashes and proud nose, the divided eyebrow. As if he feels my gaze, he opens his eyes, and I’m peering into the golden heart of a tiger, a fierce dragon, my Kaleb.
Only Kaleb. “This,” I whisper, still moving with him.
“This,” he says, and kisses me, our eyes locked.
* * *
It’s too cold in the living room with snow falling outside to lie
there, so we grab the wine and two water glasses, some cheese and crackers and apples, and carry it all into the bedroom. It’s wonderful to be naked with him, to be laughing and let our guard down. I plug my phone into the little speakers and play Pandora, a station I’ve been building for awhile, kind of soft rock and folk mixed with some reggae-sounding New Zealanders. I play it quietly, and we pour wine, and break off hunks of cheese. “Are you sure this is enough for you?” I ask. “We can call for Chinese, too.”
“I don’t want anyone interrupting us,” he says, and hands me a glass of wine. “I’ll live on love.” His eyes crinkle with his grin.
I laugh. “Which wine is this?”
He brings the bottle over. “A 2011 Malbec.”
“Malbecs are Argentina, right?”
Bringing the glass under his nose, he nods. “The best ones.”
“And Chile is Carmenere?”
“Good.” He sips the wine, and I follow suit, looking into the deep ruby color of it. I taste plum and berry and pepper and vanilla, with long, soft lushness over my tongue.
“That is so good,” I sigh. “Why don’t we grow Malbec grapes?”
“Every grape has a particular climate that works perfectly. Malbecs like high altitudes, which is why Argentina.”
“What makes the differences in all of these things?”
“That is what I’d like to study. Earth, air, temperature, altitude. Everything.” He leans back against the pillows, half propped by piles of snowy white linens. So many pillows! It delights me, and I especially love the way he looks against them, relaxed and approachable, his beautiful chest bare, his eyes pools of amber light, his mouth soft and easy. “Maybe we could try a small plot of them somewhere, see what happens. I think someone planted some a while back.”
I dip my nose back into the glass, closing my eyes. It’s hard to get the right angle with a water glass, but I can make out some notes, up front and at the back of my throat. It’s not quite sour, with a berry waft, but when I taste it again, the thing I like is the velvety feel of it, flowing over my tongue, down my throat. “I love it.”
“Me, too.” He lies there quietly, stroking my knee. “God, I’ve been so tired. We’ve been working so hard.”
“Yeah, and more to come. It feels good, though, like it’s going to be a good movie.”
His mouth lifts on one side. “We have good screen chemistry.”
“Because it’s real chemistry.”
“We have life chemistry, too, but the thing about the camera is that it just loves what it loves. I worked my ass off to make that happen with Ellen, the girl from the television family, but it was just…never quite there the same way it is for us.”
“When will all that start to air?”
“A couple of months yet.” His brows draw down. “Gives me a chance to figure all this shit out.”
“The fame angle, you mean?”
“The privacy issue.” He meets my eyes. “I hate them in our business, in my business, all the time.”
“I guess I didn’t expect this part of it, either, not really.” The lump of worry comes back, roiling around in my belly like a big fat snake. I take a sip of wine and pick up a cracker.
“Your turn,” he says. “What are you thinking about all of it?”
“I’m not as bothered by the privacy angle, at least not right now. I mean, we’re all living online anyway.” I purse my lips, bite the lower and let it go, mulling over the best way to say what I am really thinking. How gorgeous he is, half sprawled in my bed, so unbelievably gorgeous. “You know that for the foreseeable future, you can get laid a hundred times a day if you want, by a hundred women?”
“A bit of an exaggeration.”
“Maybe. How many Instagram followers do you have?”
He looks down, that sweep of lashes so dramatic. “A lot.”
“I guess I think—how can any guy stand up to that temptation forever, you know?”
His chin lifts. “Is that what you’re thinking about?”
“Kind of. It’s already starting.”
“Online? Those are really young girls, most of them. Guessing.”
“No, in real life. Mercedes.”
“She’s your friend.”
“Maybe.” I meet his eyes, wondering if I should leave it alone. “She does think you’re hot.”
He takes a breath and looks at me for a long time. “She’s the kind of woman I used to hook up with all the time. Tall, curvy, broken.” He slides his hand around my leg and gives me a smile. “I’m absolutely sure she’s got great tits.”
I look down at my own chest. “Thanks.”
He sets the wine aside, takes mine from me, tumbles me backward. “But I want only you, Jess Donovan. Only you.” He kisses my face, my chin, my neck. “I love you. Everything about you.” He kisses my breasts, cups them in his big brown hands, admiring. “I don’t want her. I only want you.”
I sit up, pushing him back so I can straddle him. “That is not the point.”
“No?”
“The point is that there are going to be women who will do almost anything to get in your pants from now on, and that makes me feel insecure and scared and pretty sure my heart will get smashed.”
“Now we’re getting to the truth.” He smoothes hair away from my jaw and tucks it behind my ear. “You don’t think I can love you enough, really. That I’ll leave you like everybody else.”
Tears spring to my eyes. “Maybe.”
He trails his fingers over my ear, across to my jaw. His thumb lands on my lower lip. “I can’t predict the future, Jess, but we are not the kind of people who are going to be suddenly different because of a lot of attention.”
“Don’t you think everybody feels that way? That they’re just going to be the same self they always were?” I finger-comb his curls away from his face, trace the slight shadows below his eyes. “But how can it not change us, Kaleb? Really.”
His expression is serious, intent. “What we can do is not take it too seriously. Any of it.”
A puff of relief spreads through my tense throat. “Ah, that’s good.” I smile at him. “You’re always the steady one, aren’t you?”
“Let’s just let all the drama go, Jess. Let’s make this little world for ourselves and let everything crazy happen outside of it.”
“Jess and Kaleb world.”
“Yeah.” He searches my face. “Are you really over Tyler? Completely?”
I swallow, thinking of the book he gave me, and the sorrow in his eyes yesterday. “I chose you, Kaleb.”
“That’s not a direct answer.”
“I broke his heart and I feel bad about it.” Taking his powerfully made face into my hands, I kiss his mouth. “But you are my love, Kaleb. My heart.” I raise my head to look into his eyes deeply. “My soul. I love you.”
He kisses me fiercely, tumbling me backward, bracing himself on one elbow to look at me. “I love you, Jess, so much.” He kisses me, again and then again. “So much.”
Then we are making love again, slowly, gently, with great feeling, as if it is a sacred, bonding thing. And maybe it is. When he pulls me into his body and we begin to fall into sleep, I am at peace, in love. “This,” I say. “Always.”
“Always.”
* * *
In the middle of the night, the nightmare strangles me, and I’m thrashing, screaming, covered with blood, and wake up to find Kaleb gripping me tightly. “Jess, I’ve got you.”
I’m covered in sweat and my breath is a ragged pant. “There was blood this time.”
He rocks me gently.
“What happened to me, Kaleb? What is it that I’m trying to remember?”
“Or not remember.”
“I think that maybe I was molested or somebody tried to molest me.”
“Yeah.”
We are silent. Cradled as I am in his solid embrace, I start to calm down. He tips us sideways, tugs the covers over us. “I’ve got you, Jess. You’re safe now.”
> Somehow, I have to solve this mystery. Maybe there will be clues in the box I asked Henry to send me. “I wish my mom had just written me a letter or something. That she could show up as a ghost, just for a day, and tell me everything.”
He gives a soft laugh, rubs my back. His cheek is against my hair. “That would be nice.”
Sleepiness steals over us again, and I am safe and loved in this world Kaleb has created for me, next to his heart. Love as huge as the world, as the universe, floods me, my lungs and chest and limbs and head, and I suddenly grip him close. “I want to invent a word for this feeling,” I whisper, “because no word I know comes anywhere close to saying what I feel for you right now.”
“I know,” he says. “Me, too.”
“It should have light in it,” I say quietly. “And stars.”
“And comets and the ocean.”
“And dolphins.”
“Definitely dolphins.” His voice is drifting away. “And everything.”
“Yes,” I whisper.
Chapter TWENTY-THREE
It’s still snowing and cold when we get to the set the next morning. I’m starving, and both Kaleb and I feast on the cinnamon rolls they bring to the cast room, giddy with each other and the sugar and a lot of sex and not very much food.
We meet again on the balcony, and the takes are infused with the gilded way we’re both feeling, except that we both keep laughing. Peter finally says, “Okay, you love birds, let’s leave this for a couple of days. Let’s break for lunch and do some more of the internal shots next door this afternoon. Jess, if you’re not in any of them, you can go.”
I laugh. “Is that a hint?”
He scowls mockingly. “Go somewhere. Leave my star alone.”
“Is there a swimming pool around here anywhere?”
“Probably. Ask Bob to find out for you.”
We’re walking down the hallway toward the common room when my phone gives a quick buzz. Mercedes texts: Where ARE u?
Then she’s standing at the end of the hallway with a weird expression on her face. “Jess, you need to see this.”