Lovestruck in Los Angeles

by Schurig, Rachel

He didn’t respond, just stared straight ahead. I was about to demand he tell me what he was thinking when the valet pulled up with the car. Thomas moved to open the door for me, but I hopped down from the step and grabbed the handle myself, not in the mood for his chivalry. He sighed behind me before walking around to his side. I waited in the car while he tipped the valet, my arms crossed.

  He got in and pulled down the driveway without a word. “Please buckle your seat belt,” I said, my voice as tight as his had been. He stopped at the gate, buckling his belt while he waited for it to swing open, but still didn’t say a word.

  Fine. If that was how he wanted to be, that was just fine. There was no way I was going to make the first move here. I had done nothing wrong.

  Thomas groaned suddenly, pulling the wheel sharply so that we were on the side of the winding, mountain road. He turned to me. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for, Lizzie. You don’t deserve suspicion.”

  “Thank you for saying that.” I studied his face in the darkness. He still looked mad, or frustrated. Or maybe just tired. “We were just talking, Thomas.”

  “I was watching you.” He turned his head slightly to stare out the front window. “He touched your hair.”

  “I didn’t ask him to. And I didn’t reciprocate or give him any reason to think he should continue along that line.”

  Thomas nodded, once. “I didn’t like it.”

  “I didn’t like it much either. But it was nice having someone to talk to. It wasn’t much fun for me when you left me by myself.”

  “I’m sorry, Lizzie. I really couldn’t get away—”

  I put my hand on his shoulder. “I’m not saying you should have. I’m a big girl, and I understand that you were working. But it’s not fair of you to get mad at me for finding a way to pass the time.”

  He turned back to me, his face softer now, and placed his hands on my cheeks. “You’re completely right. I’m sorry.”

  He leaned in to kiss me softly, and I responded, slightly mollified.

  “I promise I won’t act like a jealous ass again,” he said against my lips.

  “I’ll hold you to it.”

  He smiled and released me. “I’m exhausted. Let’s go home.”

  We drove in silence, but it was much less tense than before. Thomas seemed to be in a better frame of mind, though I could tell he was still stressed. And clearly tired. I remembered that he’d been tired and somewhat drawn before we’d even gotten to the party. Was the Jackson thing only the tip of the iceberg? What else was bothering him?

  My conversation with Jackson swirled in my head. How surprised he was that Thomas hadn’t been more affected by the success. How different he said we were from the rest of the couples in the room. And, more than anything, how sad and lonely he sounded when he told me about not ever finding something real.

  My stomach hurt by the time we pulled into the garage. I was realizing some things about this business, about this life, that I had been willfully blind to. I had a feeling it was a lot harder, a lot more complicated, than I had ever realized before. It was clearly affecting Thomas right now, the pressures of the industry. And it clearly affected Jackson as well, though he’d been dealing with it for much longer.

  As we walked into our beautiful, storybook home in Malibu, I felt a low thrum of fear that I couldn’t seem to shake. What if Jackson was wrong? What if Thomas and I weren’t different from the other couples at that party? What if we weren’t immune to the sadness and loneliness I had seen in the eyes of one of the most famous men in the world?

  What if we weren’t strong enough to get through this?

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Saturday after Jenner’s party, I woke up feeling sick to my stomach.

  “Lizzie?” Thomas asked sleepily from beside me as I sat up, rubbing my belly. “You okay, babe?”

  I turned my head to tell him I was okay, and the small movement sent a rush of nausea through me. “I’m going to be sick,” I whispered, bolting from the bed. I ran to the bathroom, just barely making it to the toilet before I threw up.

  Thomas was right behind me, rubbing my back and smoothing my hair away from my face. I groaned. “Go. You don’t need to see me all gross.”

  “Yeah, right,” he said, dropping to his knees so he could better rub my back. I bent over the toilet and retched again and again. Finally, when there couldn’t possibly be anything left in my stomach, I sank back onto my heels and flushed the toilet.

  “Here.” Thomas handed me a tissue, and I wiped my mouth.

  I moaned. “I feel like I just got hit by a truck.”

  “You’re all clammy.” He sounded worried. “But you don’t feel hot.”

  “I think I just need to lie down.”

  Thomas insisted on carrying me back to the bed then laid me gently on my side of the bed. “I’ll go get you something to drink. Apple juice? Tea?”

  “Apple juice would be good.”

  I had to make another run for bathroom before he even made it back. How could I possibly need to throw up again? I was hobbling back toward the bed when he returned.

  “Damn it, Lizzie, you should have waited for me.” He put the juice on the table beside the bed and ran to me, swooping me up again.

  “I can walk, Thomas. I’m sick, not an invalid.”

  “I’ll carry you if I feel like it,” he said, helping me back into bed. He handed me the glass. “Drink slowly.” I took a sip, the taste and wetness feeling like heaven on my fuzzy, swollen tongue. “Better?”

  I nodded, and he set the cup on the table again. “When did you start to feel bad?”

  “Not until I woke up.”

  “You were fine yesterday?”

  I nodded. Thomas had spent most of the evening at the studio, not coming home until long after I’d fallen asleep on the couch with a book.

  “Did you eat anything strange?” he asked.

  “No, I ate here at the house yesterday. I had a sandwich for lunch and that leftover soup for dinner.”

  He scowled briefly. “That’s hardly enough food for a whole day.”

  “Well I’m pretty glad I underdid it right about now. Anything else I would have eaten would have just come back up anyhow.”

  I didn’t get sick again for the rest of the morning, though I did continue to feel terrible, nauseated and weak. Thomas stayed in bed with me for hours, watching television and rubbing my back and arms. When he brought me some eggs and toast for lunch, I took two bites before promptly running back to the bathroom to throw it up.

  “We’re going to the doctor,” he said once I was back in bed. He paced the room in an agitated manner I associated with him waiting for a review to come out. He was nervous.

  “I’m not going to the doctor. It’s only a stomach bug.”

  “You can’t hold anything down!” he cried, throwing his arms up.

  “I’ll hardly starve, Thomas.” I held up my second glass of apple juice. “And I’m keeping hydrated, which is the only thing a doctor would be worried about.”

  He sat down at the edge of the mattress. “I don’t like it, Lizzie.”

  “I don’t like it either, but there’s not a lot I can do about it aside from rest, right?”

  He sighed. “I guess you’re right. I’m going to go call Heidi.”

  “Why? Does she need to know I’m puking my guts out?”

  “I’m canceling my meeting.”

  I shook my head vehemently, wincing when the nausea rose. I closed my eyes, willing it to subside. When it did, I looked at him. “No. You’re not canceling that meeting. Heidi’s been trying to set it up for weeks.”

  Thomas was supposed to be having dinner with Heidi and some hot shot director who wanted to work with him next year. From the way Heidi had been going on about it, the dinner meeting was a coup.

  “We can reschedule.”

  “No.” I crossed my arms. “You’re not letting Heidi down just because I don’t feel well. She’ll be pissed at me, and I have to work
with her.”

  His eyes narrowed. “I’d like to see her try to be pissed at you.”

  I reached for his hand. “Come on. I’m fine. I’m just going to lie here in bed watching this Project Runway marathon. Go to dinner. You’ll be back in a few hours.”

  “But then I won’t find out if Seth Aaron won or not,” he said with his most convincing smile, gesturing at the TV.

  I laughed. “I promise to tell you which designer won, okay? But you’re not missing the dinner for me.”

  “Then let me call Imogen to come sit with you.”

  “Do you think I want to feel gross and sweaty with Imogen, the perfect ballerina, watching me? Come on. I’m a big girl. I’ve been sick before.”

  In the end he agreed to leave me alone, but I could tell he wasn’t happy about it. He promised to cut the dinner as short as possible. To be honest, I was almost happy to see him go. Thomas clearly didn’t like me being sick—and his hovering and obvious agitation was starting to make me feel anxious.

  After spending most of the day in bed, I decided to go sit on the deck for a while, thinking the sea air might help calm my still roiling stomach. I turned on all the exterior lights and brought a book and a can of Sprite with me, wishing for a moment that I was back in Michigan. Every Detroit girl knows the best cure for any ailment is Vernors ginger ale. My mom used to warm it up for me anytime I was sick.

  Felling nostalgic, I called Sofie, figuring she could distract me for a while.

  “What’s up, cuz?” she asked.

  “Sof, I’ve been puking all day, and I feel like shit.”

  “Which reminded you to call me? I feel so loved.”

  I laughed, though it hurt my stomach. “Shut up. I just thought you could distract me for a while.”

  “Okay, girl, what do you want to hear? Family gossip or church gossip?”

  “Family.”

  She went into a long explanation of the giant fight Laura and Maria had gotten into. Apparently Maria was now taking it as gospel that Laura was pregnant and thought it was still too early to tell anyone. When Laura had poured a glass of wine at lunch the other day, Maria got on her case. Laura, in turn, freaked out on her older sister.

  “It was a pretty classic Medina cat fight,” Sofie said with relish. “I was surprised they didn’t start pulling hair.”

  “And what was the conclusion? Is Laura pregnant?”

  “No one knows. She says she’s tired of the family being more interested in her uterus than her feelings, and she wouldn’t tell us if she was pregnant.”

  “Good for her.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s still driving everyone crazy. Your mom especially. She actually started interrogating Frank about whether Laura’d had any food aversions lately. When she heard that she was feeling nauseated during the car ride to his parents on New Year’s, she went nuts. Because she couldn’t possibly have just been car sick, of course. If she’s showing the slightest sign of any kind of sickness, she must be knocked up.”

  Suddenly, there was a roaring in my ears that wasn’t coming from the ocean. I tried to count back in my head. I definitely had my period before Christmas. But did I have one in January? Dates and numbers were swimming around in front of my eyes and I couldn’t remember and suddenly I felt like I might pass out.

  “Lizzie?” Sofie called through the phone. “Where’d you go, chica? Lizzie?”

  “Sorry,” I muttered. “Sorry, Sof. I’m not feeling well again. I’ll call you later, okay?”

  “Okay, babe. Try to take it—”

  But I hung up before she could finish. I had to figure this out. I had to know for sure if this was a possibility before I called Thomas.

  Oh, my God, Thomas. What was he going to say?

  Stop, I ordered myself. You have to stop. You have no idea if that’s what this is.

  I put my head back against the lounge cushion and took deep, calming breaths through my nose. When I finally felt like I had a handle on things, I stood gingerly and made my way into the house, and up to our bathroom. I fumbled under the sink until I found my box of tampons. Half full. Had I bought it two months ago, or last month? Everything in my mind felt jumbled. I opened the calendar on my phone, but it provided no clues. Why didn’t I track this kind of thing? I knew for sure I’d had my period in December. It was right in the middle of the month. But January…January was a big blank.

  January, when I was feeling so distracted. So tired and out of sorts all the time. When I couldn’t concentrate on anything.

  Had I taken my pill every day? Things had been kind of crazy, with the travel to the UK and the holidays. I was always forgetting to put those little day of the week stickers on the package, to remind me where I was supposed to be in the pack. What if I’d missed one and hadn’t noticed?

  “Oh, God.”

  With shaking fingers I typed out a text to Thomas. Call me when you leave the restaurant. I want you to pick something up for me.

  There was nothing to do then but wait. I knew I should try to eat again, but I couldn’t bear to try it. Was it normal for morning sickness to last all day?

  You don’t have morning sickness. You can’t.

  The ringing phone in my hand made me jump. Thomas.

  “Hey, love,” he said. “How do you feel?”

  “I’m…uh, not great.”

  He swore. “I knew I shouldn’t have left. I was just leaving when I got your text. I was going to call you anyhow to see if you wanted me to stop for anything.”

  “Thomas—”

  “Have you eaten? Want to try some soup? Maybe rice would be good, something real bland, you know?”

  “Thomas,” I said again, louder this time. “I don’t want food.”

  “Oh. What do you need then? Medicine? Do you guys have Tamiflu in the States?”

  “I need you to get me a pregnancy test.”

  He was quiet for so long I almost started to wonder if he had heard me. I was about to repeat myself when he finally spoke. “I’ll be right there.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “How are you feeling?” Thomas asked, for about the tenth time since I’d left the bathroom and joined him on the edge of the bed to wait for the pregnancy test results to develop.

  “I’m okay,” I told him, for the tenth time, even though I felt completely numb. How could I have been this stupid? It’s not like I was a kid anymore—I was twenty-four years old, for God’s sake. I should have been beyond accidental pregnancy scares.

  Thomas reached for my hand. “It’s going to be okay, Lizzie.” His voice was soft and steady. How could he be so calm? He had to be freaking out inside. There was no way in the world we were ready for something like this. He was gone half the time, so busy and stressed about the movie. How on earth could the two of us expect to have a baby right now?

  Oh, God. A baby. What would my parents say?

  At the thought of telling them I suddenly become nauseated all over again. My father already wasn’t talking to me. He would kill me when I told him about this. Maria would go nuts. I pictured her smug face, the “I-told-you-so” clear in her eyes. And my mom…

  If possible, I felt even worse, thinking about her. She’d been so supportive of my new life, even though she didn’t like the idea of me moving to a different country. She stood up to the family for me, something no one ever did. And this was how I repaid her. Getting pregnant without being married.

  I knew that in this day and age it wasn’t a huge deal. People got pregnant without being married all the time. But my family didn’t exactly follow the norms of society. To them, this would be an offense over which to disown me.

  “Breathe, Lizzie,” Thomas said. “You look like you’re about to faint.”

  “I’m okay,” I whispered, knowing it was futile. I couldn’t be any farther from okay, and Thomas could tell. Luckily the timer on his phone beeped, making us both jump.

  “I guess it’s time,” he said, his voice sounding nervous for the first time.


  I gripped his hand, sure that I wouldn’t be able to stand on my own.

  “Want me to look?”

  I knew it made me a wimp, but I didn’t care. I nodded, not meeting his eyes. Thomas gave my hand a last squeeze before he stood and crossed the room, reaching the bathroom in three short strides. He was gone for only a moment, just long enough for me to imagine the worst about a dozen times. Then he was standing in front of me again. My stomach sank —he looked sad.

  “False alarm,” he said.

  It took a minute for his words to sink in. From the look on his face, I had been sure he was about to deliver bad news. “Wait, what?”

  “False alarm,” he said again. “Not pregnant.”

  The air left my lungs in a whoosh. I closed my eyes. “Oh, thank God.” I felt almost dizzy with the relief.

  Thomas sat next to me again, but this time he didn’t take my hand. I finally opened my eyes. He was staring at the ground, an inscrutable expression on his face.

  “Hey,” I said, placing a hand on his arm. “It’s okay, babe. False alarm, right?”

  He looked up at me, and I realized that I wasn’t imagining it before—he was sad. “Thomas?”

  “I know, it probably wasn’t the best timing,” he said, shaking his head. “But I have to admit I got excited there for a minute.”

  “You got…excited? Why?”

  He looked at me like I was crazy. “Why? Because I love you.”

  “Thomas, we could not have a baby right now,” I said, bewildered. “This is a good thing.”

  “Why not? Why couldn’t we have a baby?”

  Was he losing his mind? “Um, for like a million reasons. We’re way too young, for one. You’re way too busy. Your career is in a really important phase right now. And we’re not married.”

  “So what if we’re not married right now?” His face had tightened slightly. “We love each other, don’t we? Just because we’re not married doesn’t mean we aren’t committed to each other. Or were you planning on going somewhere?”

  “Don’t even say something like that.” I looked into his eyes, wanting him to understand. “But I would definitely want to be married before we had kids.”