Forever With Him

by Stacy Travis

  But the kissing… I didn’t want that to end too soon, either. So we stood on the sand for so long that I lost track of time. I needed to have his face that close to mine. I needed to feel his lips and the heat from his hands on my skin. We only came up for air because of the incessant buzzing of his phone. He extracted it from his pocket without his lips leaving mine, but he had to back away and check the caller ID. Satisfied that it wasn’t important enough to answer, he clicked it off and returned it to his pocket, but the spell was broken.

  Instead of kissing some more, we walked to the water. Chris draped his arm around my shoulders.

  “I can’t believe you’re here,” I said.

  We stood in the shallow surf, letting the waves lap at our feet. The big ball of sun shone directly in front of us. Chris ran a hand over his chin, which had the beginnings of stubble after just one day. His hair was a little rumpled, probably from running his fingers through it on the plane while he memorized lines, but his dark eyes were just as mesmerizing as I’d remembered. “I can’t really, either. I feel like a wind-up doll. I go wherever they point me and work my ass off. But this direction was true north. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

  The weekend beach crowds had thinned by late afternoon that Sunday, but the air was warm enough that a few dedicated sunbathers were still lazing on beach towels, catching the last few rays of the day.

  Breathing in the salt air and feeling the squish of wet sand between my toes, I could almost convince myself we were back on a French beach. Maybe that was why he’d wanted to come to the water, to try to recapture some of what we’d had on those endless sunny days when nobody controlled our schedules.

  A few sandpipers pecked at the soggy sand, their long beaks tapping, searching for tiny crabs. When the water approached, they ran up to drier sand, their skinny legs racing up the beach. “I wonder how much energy it takes to fly,” Chris said, watching them.

  “You thinking about taking flight?”

  “No. I mean them. Why are they running?”

  “Why do they run when they have wings?”

  “Yeah. They’re birds. It seems like they’d just fly when the waves come. So it must be more efficient to run instead.”

  I hadn’t thought of it like that. But once I did, I was pretty certain he was incorrect. “Could it be… maybe it’s just a game to them? Maybe they run on the sand because having the ocean chase them is fun.”

  He looked at me like I was something new to him. “I really missed you. The way you think, talking to you…” His lips twisted into a smile, and I realized how much I’d missed him too. “There’s no one on the set like you.”

  “I missed you too.”

  I looked at Chris’s profile, reminding myself what he looked like in person. I’d stolen a few looks at Internet fan sites with pictures of Chris plastered all over them. I’d marveled at his dedicated fan base and the effort they put into keeping up with all his latest news and sharing their enthusiasm with each other. It seemed crazy that I didn’t recognize him when we first met, but then, I wasn’t a superhero fangirl and probably never would be.

  Chris turned to me and smiled. In some ways, it felt like no time had gone by since I’d seen him. But in other ways, something was different, and I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  I knew from experience that sometimes it took some time to fall back into a rhythm after not seeing a person for a while. Annie was a case in point. I loved her like a sister, but anytime she visited, we bumped into awkward bouts of conversation and annoyed each other for a couple hours until we found our rhythm again.

  I was desperate to spend some time just talking, since our brief phone calls over the past three weeks had mostly consisted of apologies—his—and attempts at figuring out logistics—mine. There had been no wild phone sex or even sexting, and we’d barely had a chance to exchange pleasantries before Chris inevitably had to deal with a last-minute request to run lines or a conference with the director or a wardrobe emergency.

  I’d never been on a film set, but the way he talked about it made it sound like he had to be involved in every decision. I knew why. He’d told me in France that he was an executive producer on all his films, but we hadn’t talked in detail about what that meant.

  So I asked.

  “It means I get a say, and I share in profits,” he said, taking my hand as we walked barefoot along the shore. We were each carrying our shoes in the other hand. Chris hadn’t mentioned that before.

  “So what does that mean? A say in what?” I didn’t care if everyone he knew understood the jargon of movie making. I still needed basic training in what it all meant, and he never made me feel silly for asking.

  “Pretty much anything creatively, but I know my place. I know better than to start tearing apart a script just to exert some power. But since it’s my face on the billboard, I reserve the right to speak if I have something to say.”

  “Which means that even if you don’t say anything, you’re aware of everything. You care.”

  “Yes. I care a lot.”

  “That’s all I needed to know. So you’re super stressed about everything that goes into making the filming a success, on top of learning your lines and acting.”

  “Pretty much.”

  I looked at the creases around his eyes, which normally highlighted a glint when he smiled. Instead, they looked like evidence that he was worn out. I wondered if flying all that way instead of catching up on sleep had been such a good idea.

  We stretched out our walk on the beach until the sun had lowered enough to cast orange light on the eastern clouds and the last straggling beachgoers had left the sand. Then we walked up the beach, the area finally empty enough that Chris Conley wasn’t immediately recognizable to passersby at every turn. We took the stairway two steps at a time to the bluff overlooking the Pacific Coast Highway and the ocean. The sun was dropping fast, nearing the horizon line. We’d timed it perfectly, and minutes later, we watched the final moments of the sun’s performance before it slipped away.

  Watching the sunset usually calmed me, but this time I just felt sad. We had only one night together, and the setting sun signaled the beginning of its end. I didn’t like the new association with sunsets.

  We stood at the railing on the bluff, gazing out at the ocean. Then we called for the town car and picked up Italian takeout on the way back to my condo.

  We split a calzone, linguini with pesto, and a green salad. And we talked. He told me more about the movie and some of the frustrations, and I filled him in on work and showed him a few canvases I’d painted over the past couple weeks. He shook his head like he had the first time he saw my artwork. “You’re an artist. You’re not a hobbyist. You could do this professionally.”

  “Thank you,” I said. We’d had this same conversation three weeks earlier. I wondered if he remembered.

  After a couple of hours, Chris was fighting to keep his heavy eyelids open, so I backed against the side arm of my couch and pulled him in between my legs with his back leaning on me. He tipped his head back against my shoulder, and I wrapped my arms around him. “This might not be a good idea,” he said. “I might fall asleep.”

  “It’s okay.” I wanted to be there for him. I wanted him to know that it didn’t always have to be day sailing on fabulous boats or views of the Mediterranean Sea for me to want to be with him. Though it did require a little adjusting of expectations on my part. I’d been fantasizing about our night together from the moment his assistant gave him the go-ahead to make the trip. I’d even bought a lacy bra that matched the thong that was uncomfortably lodged where it shouldn’t have been. I’d been anticipating Chris tearing off my clothes, discovering my lingerie treat, then tearing it off too. He ran his fingers up and down the length of my leg, but when he abruptly stopped, I knew it was because he’d drifted to sleep.

  I wasn’t angry. I didn’t wonder why he hadn’t gotten his sleeping out of the way on the six-hour flight. I knew it was the middle of
his workday. I knew he worked on flights. I knew.

  “I’m sorry, love. I’m wiped out,” he said. And right there, with that tiny term of endearment, my heart was whole again.

  “You need to sleep.” I leaned forward and wrapped my arms more tightly around him.

  He hefted himself up from the couch and turned to tug me up by the hand. He pulled me in close, folding me into a warm embrace. With one hand, he smoothed the hair off my forehead and traced the outline of my lips. “I’m not a very good date tonight.”

  I met his eyes and tried to convey my empathy for his state of exhaustion. “You’re always a good date. I’m happy to have you here.”

  “I’ll be a whole new person if I get a few z’s.”

  “I know. C’mon, let’s sleep.”

  He smiled, his eyes half-hooded. Even fatigue did nothing to detract from his gorgeous face and his dimpled smile. As he led me into the bedroom, I felt a strange sensation that I hadn’t experienced with him before. There had been no seduction, no emotional words. It was just two people walking toward a bed under a mutually agreed assumption that we would brush our teeth, maybe make out under the covers, and go to bed because it was semi-late and he was exhausted.

  It felt ordinary. And in so many ways, the comfort of knowing that every moment between us didn’t need to be noteworthy made me feel happy, like we were leaving the fling stage behind and settling into something more real. I wanted to have a normal relationship with Chris—the regular guy, not Chris the movie star—so even though a tiny part of me wanted him to swoop in like a superhero and carry me off to his sex den, this was better.

  After three weeks of waiting to see him, I wanted to connect. It struck me as strange but comforting that curling up in bed with the idea of going to sleep gave me the connection I’d been craving.

  I needed that relationship proof of concept.

  It was the only way I could make it through another three weeks—or three months—and believe we were heading toward something. Because despite the proof lying beside me, I was still struggling with believing.

  Chapter Eight

  Nikki

  I barely slept all night.

  There was a family of birds in the tree outside my window that seemed to have some confusion between day and night and stayed up singing throughout the night. Usually, their sounds faded into a pleasant background soundtrack, the live version of something from a calming meditation app. But instead of lulling me to sleep, their chirping felt like a call to action for my overactive brain.

  Chris had fallen asleep almost instantly, his body curled around mine and his hand flat on my stomach, grasping me to him like a teddy bear. I was hyperaware of his hand there, and after a few minutes, I was also hyperaware of my breathing, moving his hand in and out. I was so busy trying not to disturb him by taking in too much air that I found myself in danger of expiring from lack of oxygen.

  Lest I hyperventilate, I shifted so I could take in a little more air and still feel the security of his palm against me.

  Sleep was something I rarely struggled with, but we’d gone to bed on the early side, so I wasn’t that tired. I’d also worked myself into a keyed-up and breathless state over the course of the day, awaiting his arrival. I was having trouble bringing myself down to the sleep zone.

  Beyond all that, I knew we only had mere hours together, and I didn’t want to squander them asleep. So I lay there, my eyes open, allowing myself to revel in the feeling of Chris holding me against his hard body and breathing lightly on my shoulder.

  I wanted this all the time. My heart swelled with love for him, and I wanted to tell him. Immediately, though, the beautiful ache in my heart turned to panic. I wasn’t sure it was good for me to have expanding feelings when he wasn’t making good on his proposition that he’d move to LA so we could be together. What if this—this occasional day here or there—was the extent of what we could have, a cross-continental booty call with some nice words thrown in to keep it going? I had to rein in my emotions.

  Love isn’t predictable. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

  I decided those platitudes were stupid. What did they know about my particular set of circumstances with Chris?

  Then I had a series of even worse thoughts: Maybe I am the common denominator in all my failed relationships—or maybe I’m the catalyst.

  The effect of having deep, happiness-disrupting thoughts in the middle of the night was to amplify their gravity.

  During that sleepless night, I noticed new things about my condo that had never been visible to me during other sleepless nights.

  I noticed that the single streetlamp that shone through a crack in my slatted blinds cast a shadow on the ceiling that looked like an oblong pumpkin with a terrifying face that was likely mocking me. My bedside table stood at a height that allowed for pulverizing my funny bone on the corner when I lay on my back and put my hands under my head. It was the worst, most significant sleepless night of all time.

  Also, my room didn’t have sufficient oxygen for me to survive. I felt certain that would be my undoing. Or maybe it was just that I’d unconsciously held my breath for about six minutes because Chris had shifted and somehow grabbed for my hand. He’d interlaced our fingers and wordlessly kissed the back of my hand before settling into a new position and continuing the quiet breathing of sleep. Suddenly, once I resumed breathing and despite my concerns over lack of air, I felt myself relaxing. The connection, even though it was small, even though it was an unconscious movement by a sleeping Chris, was enough to calm me down. Everything was okay, and I needed to turn off my infernal, overactive brain so I could rest.

  I fell asleep briefly and dreamed that Chris was telling me it had been a mistake for us to try to date in the nonvacation world. I woke up in a sweat, saw him sleeping peacefully beside me, and tried to coax myself back into a REM state.

  I tossed and turned and eventually ended up flat on my back on one side of the bed, staring at the part of the ceiling that didn’t have the creepy pumpkin shadow and playing a game with myself. Don’t sleep, I told myself. Stay up the rest of the night. I dare you. I was betting that some easily influenced part of me would buy into my reverse psychology, and in trying to stay awake, I would drift off. It had worked once when I’d babysat my boss’s kid, who refused to accept that he was tired.

  I, however, did not buy it. Fine, I’ll stay up, my brain seemed to say.

  Stupid, stubborn brain.

  Maybe because it was bordering on morning in New York, Chris began to stir. I felt him reach out for me, and without saying a word, he pulled me in toward him, wrapping his muscular arms around me and spooning me with his comforting, hard body.

  He kissed my bare shoulder and my neck. Then he settled there, his breath growing deeper and slower, his hands warm and reassuring against my skin.

  And finally, I slept.

  By seven in the morning, I’d rested a bit and reacquainted myself with the blissful feeling of having Chris’s body intertwined with mine. For a few moments, I slowly shook off the residual fog of sleep and reveled in all the ways our tangled limbs were seamlessly connected. It felt purposeful, impossible to achieve without being connected in other ways.

  My old Krups coffee maker began the daily wheeze and sputter that indicated the pre-programmed brew cycle was finishing. Like a siren song, it pulled me from beneath the covers. I took two mugs out of the cupboard and went to my fridge for some oat milk, which I’d started drinking after Annie raved about how much better it tasted than soy. She’d already given me a scolding for drinking almond milk, claiming I was contributing to planetary demise because almonds were thirsty, resource-greedy seeds, and I shouldn’t support the military-industrial complex by consuming them. Or something to that effect.

  The oat milk was a little watery but overall not terrible, and I felt better about myself and the planet immediately after the first sip of hot coffee.

  “Hi, gorgeous,” Chris said, sneaking up behind me and nuzzl
ing the nape of my neck. He put his arms around me and turned me to face him, dropping his lips onto mine in a kiss that was instantly more heated and seductive than anything that had happened between us the night before. It was a kill-me-and-leave-no-witnesses kind of kiss. It was a kiss that held me in the present. I needed that, so I could stop analyzing and let go of all my fears about us. My hands wrapped around his neck, and I kissed him until my heart was satisfied.

  “How’d you sleep?” I asked.

  “I don’t remember a bit, if that tells you something.”

  “It tells me you were tired. I don’t think you moved all night, except when you cuddled me like a blankie. Now I’m officially ruined for all the nights when you’re not here.”

  He exhaled his frustration. “I know. Being here with you like this is exactly what I wanted when I said I’d move. And then I messed it all up.” He grabbed a coffee mug and refilled mine before pouring his own.

  “You didn’t mess it up. You have a job. I have a job. We live in different places. All that messed it up.”

  “So we need to maximize our waking hours when we’re together,” Chris said, coming back and bending to kiss my neck. “What time do you get off work?”

  Work. No wonder my coffee maker had flipped on at seven. It was Monday, and despite the rippled abs that I was casually running my fingers over, I needed to be at my desk in a couple hours. Unless…

  “You know what? I’ve never taken a personal day. You’re only here until tonight. I’m not going to work.”

  His smile brightened, but he looked tentative. “Is that okay? Will you miss important stuff if you’re not there today?”

  I shook my head and wrapped my arms around his waist. His skin was hot and smooth, and I couldn’t think of a single reason to step away and go to work. “Nothing I can’t deal with tomorrow. I’ll have my cell if anyone needs me urgently. It’s all good. It’s decided.”

  “Well, great. We can pack in a lot of quality today before my flight leaves tonight.”