I've Seen You Naked and Didn't Laugh: A Geeky Love Story

by Eden Butler

  He was everywhere—in this house, in my career, in my damn head.

  I patted Ripper on the head as I wiggled away from his heavy body and stood in front of those bookshelves contemplating why I hadn’t seen fit to rid myself of Will’s influence, at least inside the walls of my home. Why did I insist on keeping him so front and center, knowing that in doing so I must resign myself to being the safe, familial friend?

  There was a large photo of the two of us from six years before. It was the night I'd wrapped my first day of filming on Clockwork Castle and Will had come to the set to take me and our shared friend and mentor, Cooper Vilmont, out to dinner to celebrate. It had been Coop’s dream to write and direct a steampunk crime fighting historical series and he’d tapped me to star in the thing. It had been the happiest I’d ever been creatively. In the photo I still wore the brown leather corset over a white frilly shirt, topped off by a weathered aviator jacket with tails and brown britches. Will’s arm was draped over my shoulder and his smile was genuine and dazzling. Like most things we did together—professional and otherwise—it had been a fun night. It was just another happy memory I’d shared with Will and staring at the humor lighting up his face only made me resentful and embarrassed.

  “I’m going to take you. I’m going to take you again and again.”

  I shuddered, trying to dismiss the memory of the drunken slur in Will’s voice from that night three months ago. That wonderful, horrible night, that happened right here in this room, that night when everything changed between us. It was the night I lost my best friend forever and it was my own damn fault.

  The next morning, I was still drowning in bliss, having finally been able to show this man who I had loved in secrecy for so long just how I truly felt about him. He, however, hadn’t remembered a thing. He had, in fact, been utterly horrified to wake up naked next to me.

  “Oh God, Rainey. What did we do?”

  There’d been so much fear in his eyes at that moment. So much frantic worry. Of course there would be. Will had always been almost cavalier about sex. The women he slept with were happy to be in his company, sure, but there was rarely a repeat performance. Why did I think it would be any different with me?

  “Sex, my friend, is just a bodily reaction. I’ll never understand why people lay so much meaning on it.”

  In that moment, wearing a baggy “Han Shot First” shirt, watching my best friend’s disturbed reaction at being naked with me was a flint that caught this entire lie on fire. He’d looked so scared, so worried that we’d stepped over a line he’d never wanted to cross. I couldn’t tell him the truth, I just couldn’t. So I did what I’d done for the past decade when it came to Will: buried my feelings deep down in the pit of my never-empty belly, and pretended it didn’t matter.

  “Relax, Captain Hot Pants, you just got drunk and hot and stripped down.” He kept on staring, eyes round and worried so I kicked him, laughing at his expression. “Please, like I’d let you even get a whiff.”

  But he’d gotten more than a whiff, so much more, freely, gratefully, glorious given. He might not know, but I did, and despite my best efforts, when Will relaxed, laughing at the ridiculous idea of us being together, laughing at even the possibility of us and sex at all, something broke loose inside my head.

  It had yet to snap back together.

  Blinking to shake off my morbid reverie, I went on small rampage. Ripper yelped twice as I hurried to the hall closet, unfolding two flattened cardboard boxes and shoving all those damn pictures inside, every last one of them.

  “Watch it, buddy.” I spoke sweetly, but my tone was clipped and Ripper, I guess, took that attitude for what it was, disappearing behind a low whine when I went on with pulling frames from the shelves and chunking them into boxes.

  No, I didn’t want to keep looking at the picture from last year’s Emmy party when I’d actually won for Best Actress in a Drama Series. The wooden frame clattered against cardboard and I rolled my eyes at the image of Will cupping my face just before he gave me a congratulatory kiss. Friendly, of course, nothing romantic about it. At least, that’s what he told anyone who happened to comment on the picture.

  “She’s like a kid sister.” That had been his constant refrain for a decade anytime a fan, friend or photographer asked what the deal was with us. I’d always shrugged off the question myself because we had been friends. The very best of friends. Until that uninhibited night, there had only been small moments that didn’t add up to much. Not to him, anyway.

  Another memory intruded, this one from when I had caught him on a talk show a few months ago. “Oh thank God, Jimmy! A question I have never heard before,” he’d teased host Jimmy Fallon, with a charming sarcasm that kept it from seeming as if he might be even remotely annoyed when the topic of “us” being together at yet another Comic-Con came up. “We like to figure out what costumes to wear so we can geek out without anyone discovering who we are. We both are such huge nerds, it’s crazy, we love going to these conventions, but it's no fun if anyone knows who we are—I mean, it’s not about us, you know? So we do this whole Bond, stealth thing; Raine and I have perfected it over the years. She’s amazing. We do our little cosplay and run around like everyone else, having fun and geeking out and hitting the floor to buy shit—oops! My bad—stuff we don’t need.”

  “So that’s all it is?” the talk show host had asked, looking dubious. “Really? Nothing else going on between you two. Come on, Will…”

  It was the same. Always the same: Plausible deniability. Of course, there had never been anything to deny until…

  One of the pictures slipped from my hand, clattering to the floor. I stepped back and only just missed being hit by the glass as it broke and scattered near my ankle.

  “Shit…” That shattered frame held a photo of my friends J.J. and Erik, and me and Will just last summer when we had all taken some time off to vacation in Hawaii. Everyone but J.J. was pink around the face, but then he’d likely never burned a day in his life with all that gorgeous olive skin of his. Despite my foul mood, I couldn't help but smile at the stupid expression on J.J.’s goofy face. Will had named him “The Elastic Man” during their first season of AURA when Will played Captain Dash Thorn and J.J. was his alien second in command, Gwof Duggan.

  “Honey, I am not remotely elastic,” J.J. had quipped that day, and then Erik, his partner of nearly nine years, had snorted as if to say, “Oh really?” J.J. leaned over to mutter something low and secret to his lover, and then they wandered off with playful smiles; we didn’t see them for hours.

  I’d almost decided to keep that picture out simply because J.J. and Erik looked so great in it, but the frame was badly busted and would have to be replaced. I reached down and gingerly picked it up, not wanting the stray shards of glass to draw blood, but even my careful touch caused the lower wooden slat to fall off. It was then I saw the corner of another photo sticking out from behind the vacation picture; for the life of me, I couldn’t think of what it could be.

  When I pulled the hidden photo free, I gasped and I swear my heart skipped a beat. Or even two. The damaged frame fell forgotten from my fingers.

  It was a photo from high school. Ellie and I smiled at the camera, hair done to the nines, make up as flawless as two eighteen-year-old former pageant contestants could manage it, Ellie’s arm around my bare shoulder, her chest pushed forward beneath the glittering gown she wore as we stood in front of the small wooden bridge that spanned the manmade rock waterfall at the Hilton Waco. We were there for our senior prom, though we’d ignored our dates most of the night. It was the last time we’d be around any of our high school friends for years. Just a month later we’d be walking off the football field, diplomas in hand and heading straight for Ellie’s ten-year-old Honda Civic, on our way to Hollyweird.

  The picture crumbled under my fist as I balled it up and flung it into the unlit fire. First Will and now this. I didn’t know if my heart could take it.

  Ellie Garcia had been my bes
t friend for years. We’d bonded when she met me on the pageant circuit and I was still overwhelmed by it all despite Taunte Clarice’s coaching. Seeing in me no threat to her own dazzling beauty, Ellie took me under her polished wing, and I repaid her in kind by always having her back, helping to insulate her from some of the worst of the gossip and back biting that comes with the territory.

  When we found ourselves assigned to the same high school, our friendship became even closer. She’d been the popular, smart captain of the cheerleading squad. I’d been a theater geek. She still took me under her wing, and I still had her back. Freshman year, during Speech 101, we’d discovered a mutual love of Jane Austen’s Persuasion and a fierce desire to get the hell out of Waco.

  But that was the past, the distant past. It didn’t take too long to discover that the fierce desire Ellie had to reinvent herself was bigger than her need for any of her former relationships. Even though we still roomed together in the tiniest loft apartment L.A. had, and even though she had gotten a job as the executive assistant to a casting agent, she wanted more and she wanted it now. She wanted to keep being the girl in the spotlight. Even though I wasn’t getting constant work, I was getting auditions and occasionally some gigs. Suddenly, I was the one who was starting to shine, and Ellie was the one in my shadow. That, apparently, was more than she could handle, and her true nature came out, one full of scheming and lying and betrayal, despite everything we had been to each other. And now, if TMZ was to be believed, all these years later Ellie was also determined to add my best damn friend to her trophy case.

  “Asshole.” The picture didn’t change anything. Ellie’s dazzling smile kept mocking me right until the point that I grabbed my lighter and set the crumbled photo ablaze, watching it blaze up before throwing back into the fireplace. I opened the window as the filmy paper burned, not wanting to set off the smoke detector. It didn’t matter that it was only sixty-five degrees outside. That stupid smile needed to go and, it went up quick. Thankfully. The faintest hint of smoke lingered throughout my modest home as I continued to work through the dozens of pictures on display before I’d finally managed to hone them down to a few pictures of me and my family, sequestering the rest in those cardboard boxes.

  An hour and two glasses of Moscato later, my bookshelves were cleaner, with only J.J., Erik, Coop, his family and mine all staring down at me. But the tightness in my chest did not loosen, not even as I worked on a third glass of wine, and as I flipped on the television only to see yet another news broadcast covering the heart foundation gala, I thought maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t hurt to call Will. Just once. Just to see how he was doing. Just to ask him how he liked working with Ellie the BFW who’d ruined my chances at a juicy role a hundred years ago.

  Damn. I just couldn’t let the hurt go. It was petty, I knew, to hold a grudge this long, but that high fantasy fey film had been mine. I knew it. My former agent had known it. Everyone knew it. Even Ellie had known it, but like most things she wanted, the BFW didn’t care if something was hers or not. She schemed, she lied, and she took that plum role away from me. It had made her a star.

  Taking a deep breath, I took a step back. Ellie was one thing, but this was about Will. My Will. Calling Will was likely the mature thing to do. I did miss him something fierce and I was worried if he was looking after himself as he worked. One call wouldn’t hurt, right?

  Ellie’s stupid smile flashed across the screen and I clicked off the set, tossing the remote behind me as I opened up the French doors to let Ripper have some yard time while I was on the phone, but the stupid mutt trod on the remote in his haste to get outdoors, and the small plasma TV in the living room flared to life. And for some perverse reason, the fates, the universe, whoever it was that seemed content ruining my life, chose that exact moment to remind me why Will had pissed me off in the first place. Entertainment Tonight’s lead-in music started up and I couldn’t help but hear Nancy O'Dell lead in the broadcast with Will and Ellie and their “They Might Be” budding romance. Talk of the town, indeed.

  Double pffttt.

  “It’s like I’m cursed,” I told Ripper who was studiously more interested in a butterfly hovering too close to the potted hydrangea blooms my mom had sent me for my birthday a few months back.

  I couldn’t keep my eyes from straying to the TV screen. Will kept running his fingers through his hair. It was a nervous habit he had, one that dozens of PR people and studio managers hadn’t been able to cure him of; with that pretty blonde reporter sticking a mic in his face, drilling him with question after question about his relationship with Ellie, the nervous tick didn’t surprise me.

  “Will, do you want to give us any juicy details?” The reporter winked at Will, a gesture that broadened his smile.

  “Sure, Brooke, I can tell you that Alibi is going to be a thrilling show and I think everyone will enjoy it.”

  She moved her head, mocking a small frowning pout, and soldiered on, still not satisfied, it seemed, with his flippant answer. “What about you and Ellie?”

  This time Will abandoned his hair altogether, taking up the annoying, attentive stare that had always bugged me. It oozed sincerity that could make anyone believe he meant what he said. But I knew that when Will squinted his large brown eyes, pulled those mildly thick eyebrows together and focused directly on the features of your face, as he was doing to the reporter right now, that it was a practiced performance, an actor playing a part. It always worked with women, and with quite a few men. If the sudden, low blush on the pretty blonde’s face was any indication, it was working yet again.

  “Ellie and I are working great together.” For affect, he added a slight head bob, pulling up the right side of his mouth to give Brooke a charming, non-threatening smirk.

  “On or off camera?”

  “Man,” another flick of his fingers through his hair and then Will laughed lightly, something I knew all too well meant that he was getting annoyed. “You guys are so worried about who I’ve got in my sheets, aren’t you? Me and Ellie? You know a few weeks back everyone was asking about me and Raine Quinn.”

  Will was no rookie—that was one slick move, deflecting questions about him and Ellie and reminding the gossip mongers that they were working on the same old angle that they had before. The media had always clamored for what they believed were the juicy tidbits of our relationship. They made assumptions, believing, it seemed, that a man and a woman couldn’t possibly be close without there being something more to the relationship. It was that assumption that drove their curiosity. Will knew that, and he used it.

  “What about Raine, Will? She and Ellie don’t seem to get along very well, from the way they’ve spoken about each other in the past. Raine can’t be happy about you working with Ellie.”

  “Sure she is,” Will promised, this time without the laugh. He’d recovered quick, took up the earnest stare again, this time adding a brief nudge of his chin. “I’ve known Raine forever. She wants me to succeed and she wouldn’t let her personal feelings get in the way of that. What friend would?”

  I managed to keep from attacking the television, but just barely. I did, however, down the rest of the wine from my forgotten glass, and then and shut the set off, grateful for the first time that I’d hidden all the pictures.

  Personal feelings shouldn’t get in the way. I knew that. God, how often had Will told me that himself?

  “Business is business, Rainey. Don’t let feelings muddy that up.”

  That bit of advice had come before our mudding had happened. Before the…nakedness, and all the wonderful madness that had followed.

  “You feel like a dream, beautiful. A dream come true.”

  I had felt like I was dreaming. Will over me, on top of me, inside of me, both of us wanting, needing, giving and taking because, yes, we were drunk. We had started drinking because we had suffered a loss, sudden and distant, one that had shocked us, had cut us to the core. We had kept drinking in sorrow and in celebration, and in a desperate need to forg
et. We drank so as to dull all feeling and to enhance it. Because we’d suffered a great, great loss, and needed to remind ourselves that we were still alive.

  But I had wanted it, had been wanting it for so long. Him. Us. I couldn’t help myself. He was my best friend and I loved him completely. When it started, when he first reached for me, with our first fumbling touches, I could have stopped it, could have kept it from happening. But I didn’t want to, oh god, I didn’t want to. And the alcohol allowed me to believe he didn’t want to, either.

  But Will’s reaction the next morning—his shock, his fear, and then how relieved he was when I lied and said nothing had happened between us—that was the final straw. I’d gone on for ten years watching him sleep his way through women, always priding himself on never falling for a single one. I had been a fool to think it would have been different with me.

  Thank God I have you, Pinkie. Thank God we’re solid.

  That morning, the morning after, he’d kissed my forehead and ran out of my house, a little hung over, likely oblivious to the idea that he smelled faintly of my perfume. He left me alone with my grief from the night before and the added sorrow from that morning, and a heaping helping of shame in thinking that I had touched my dream when all I had was an emptiness that yawned even deeper now that I knew nothing would ever breech it.

  Ripper came inside and for some reason that I knew had nothing to do with the small breeze that disturbed the fallen hydrangea blooms, a chill moved over my body. It had been three months since that night. Three months since I started to divest myself of the force that used to be my best friend. My reaction had been abrupt, juvenile but, eventually, my ignoring him had the desired effect. Or, at least the effect I was steeled to bring about.