I watched them go, disturbed once more by the way Chase moved in that thing. It was almost impossible to imagine that underneath that gross, smelly ape suit was Chase, with his smooth skin and green eyes and perfect ass.
“So are we going to talk about this at any time soon?” said Mom, closing the back door.
“Talk about this. You. Him. Are you two dating?”
“Kind of,” I said, although we hadn’t really dated as such. We’d just had mutual nervous breakdowns, escaped from LA and somehow wound up having an awful lot of really amazing sex. “Is there something wrong with that?”
She shook her head and took another couple of beers from the fridge. My last one, if I wanted to get back to the cabin tonight. “He’s very famous,” she said.
“I know.”
“And probably very screwed up. Famous people generally are.”
“You hate him,” I said.
“No. Not at all. I genuinely like him. And it’s obvious you’re nuts about him.”
I took a swallow from the bottle, having long since given up trying to figure out exactly how my mother’s mind worked. “So why aren’t you holding a parade already? You’ve been freaking out about me being single for so long.”
“Yes, because you were working too hard,” she said. “You weren’t having any fun.”
“Well, I’m having fun now. So what’s the problem?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. That’s the problem. The whole thing makes me uneasy and I don’t know why. I mean, a movie star. That’s a lot of baggage.”
“I know.”
“Is it serious?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It feels that way, yeah. And it’s a lot, all at once, although I’ve known him for like, eight months. It’s just now I feel like I’m really getting to know him, and the real him is so, so much better than anything you’ll see on a movie screen. He’s funny and smart and goofy and odd and I’m…” Oh God, I was fucked. “It’s like I’m falling too fast. I know I am, but I can’t…I can’t seem to stop.”
There was a short silence while we both digested what had been said. Yep. I was in way over my head, but the words kept right on falling out of my mouth.
“And I think I screwed up already,” I said.
“Why? What did you do?”
“I called his agent. We had this…rule. We said we were going to get away from it all, not read any gossip sites, not get tangled up in Hollywood bullshit. Of course, this is before I found out he was blowing off ComicCon to come away with me, but never mind.” I sighed. “And I was stupid enough to check TMZ and it’s…well, it’s not great. Turns out that people were worried about him missing the convention and now it’s kind of a five alarm fire surrounding his disappearance.”
She stared at me.
“Yeah,” I said. “He doesn’t know anything about it. And I haven’t got the guts to tell him.”
She was still staring at me, which did nothing to ease my conscience or assure me that the situation wasn’t that bad after all. Then she shook her head and tried to do what all Moms do: make it better.
“Five alarm fire,” she said. “I’m sure you’re just being dramatic.”
“I’m not. It’s bad.”
“How bad?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“I can’t do it,” I said, handing her my phone. “I can’t bring myself to look at the gossip sites. Every time I even think about it I feel like I’m going to throw up.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“I’m not being a drama queen,” I said. “I can’t. Can you look up TMZ for me? I seriously don’t think my nerves can take it. Just…look. And then tell me on a scale of one to ten how messy it is. Like, if they’re still talking about him vanishing or whatever…”
Mom sighed, but she did as she was told. “Fine,” she said, tapping the screen. “But I still think…” She trailed off, her eyes on the screen. My stomach did a slow roll. “Oh.”
“Well?”
She winced. “Uh…about an eight?”
“Oh God.”
“Point five.”
“Oh Jesus Christ.” On one hand I wanted to know, on the other I wanted to take that trip we talked about. The one to Tierra del Fuego. “And?”
“‘Agent cites mental health reasons.’ Well, that’s not good.” She scanned the screen. “There’s been a lot of speculation about whether he’s…you know.” She drew her finger across her throat.
“Oh shit.”
“Yeah. Actually it’s more of a nine.”
“Don’t you dare add a point five to that.”
Mom put the phone down. “Honey, it’s okay. It’s all right.”
“Don’t say that. It’s not. It’s a mess. What if I’ve ruined his career?”
“Look,” she said, putting a hand on my arm. “Chase is an adult. He agreed to come on this trip with you. And he knew he was blowing off an important engagement. That’s on him. You can’t blame yourself for that.”
“No, but I shouldn’t have kept this from him. I tried to run some damage limitation but clearly that hasn’t worked. I should have told him, right?”
There was an awful pause. “Yeah.”
“Oh my God. What am I going to do?”
Once again, she was not giving me any breaks. “Well, it sounds like you’re going to have to tell him.”
“How do I even do that?”
Mom shrugged. “Try using words?” she said. “Unless you plan to employ the medium of interpretive dance?” She saw the look on my face and swiftly apologized. “Sorry. I’m not helping, am I?”
“No. How do I explain a thing like this? ‘Hey, remember how I kept you away from all the stuff that was making you insane? Well, guess what – it’s escalated in your absence and I know about it, but I haven’t told you shit about it because on some stupid, avoidant level I hoped we could hang out in the mountains cooking salmon and happily banging one another for the rest of our lives. Oh, and your career? That’s probably in the toilet. So, you know. Oops.’”
She narrowed her eyes. “Yeah,” she said slowly. “Have you completely ruled out interpretive dance?”
“Mo-ther!”
“I’m sorry,” she said, again. “I don’t know what to say. You’re right. This looks like a huge mess. And it will probably get even worse once Patty starts getting chatty.”
I’d briefly forgotten about her, but Mom wasn’t wrong. Patty would add just another layer of chaos to the whole situation, a situation that currently involved a missing Hollywood star hanging out in Northern California literally pretending to be a sasquatch. And that part had been my idea. It was safe to say I wasn’t helping.
“Do you think she’s tweeted yet?” I said.
“I’ve no idea.”
“Check.”
Mom sighed and retrieved her phone from the top of the microwave. “You know,” she said. “This is part of the reason you’re in this mess. All this social media and constant back and forth. It’s not healthy. Nobody is supposed to be socially ‘on’ the entire time.”
“Yeah, thanks for the insight.” Just what I needed right now. A Gen X parable about how they used to have to walk uphill both ways to play PacMan on a computer with about 64k of total memory. “Has she tweeted?”
“I don’t know. I’m just looking.”
Mom scrolled down. “Nope…nope…oh, yes. Behold.” She selected the relevant tweet and held out the phone. “She hath twat.”
OMG!!! Think I just saw bigfoot!!!
This was followed by a number of shocked faces and a foot emoji.
“This feels bad,” I said, still stuck on my birthday party.
“Meh,” said Mom, and snagged another tweet from earlier in Patty’s timeline.
I’ve seen @therealchasemorrow!!! And he’s got a SECRET!!!
Another storm of emojis, including shushy faces this time.
“Goddamn,” I said. “She really is the worst
.”
“I know. Who does she think she is with those emojis? Cher?”
“She wouldn’t really out him, would she?”
“Nope,” said Mom, but she was still looking at the screen. I heard the sounds of loud, heavy breathing coming from the phone. “Think she might be preoccupied by the Bigfoot thing for a while.”
I glanced at the phone. It figured that a feverish tweeter like Patty would never be more than five inches away from an electronic device at all times, and she hadn’t disappointed in this case. In fact her response to spotting Bigfoot had been the obvious one; she’d whipped out her phone and started filming.
Patty’s ragged, Blair Witch breathing filled the room as I watched. I recognized the alleyway between houses where Patty kept her trashcans, and then I saw the shadow on the wall, big enough to appear nine feet tall. Chase shambled slowly into view, peered furtively around and then, after sniffing around the edges, opened up the garbage can.
“He really commits to the part, doesn’t he?” said Mom. “This is great.”
“Are you kidding? I wanted her to look like a crazy nobody tweeting about celebrities and Bigfoot. She wasn’t supposed to…” I groaned, appalled at how fucking good Chase was at this. “She wasn’t supposed to Patterson-Gimlin my boyfriend. Oh my God.”
I glanced at the retweets. It refreshed before my eyes. Four figures. And getting bigger. Oh shit.
*
I didn’t tell him.
Not about the shitstorm, or about how successful his little dumpster diving routine had been, but all the same, my sasquatch was very subdued on the way back to our cabin.
“You’re quiet,” I said.
“Mmm.” Chase stifled a yawn. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m kind of…processing.”
“Processing what?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t have a great deal of time to get into that sasquatch headspace, but I kind of wish I’d had more. It feels like a very quiet sort of place.”
“An ‘I don’t exist’ kind of place?”
He caught my eye and sighed. “Seriously? We’re having this debate again?”
I had a terrible feeling that a lot of people were having this debate. The last time I’d sneaked a look at Twitter Patty had had sixteen thousand retweets. What the hell had we done?
“I had fun tonight,” said Chase.
“Me, too.”
“It was nice. Like a real date.”
“You usually dress up as Bigfoot on dates?”
He fluttered his eyelashes. “Well, I usually save that kind of thing for third dates,” he said, with mock primness. “But yeah. Sure.”
“What about that drinks party at the lodge?” I said. “Wasn’t that a date?”
“Kinda. Although we didn’t really know we were into each other at the time.”
“Yeah, but a lot of people go out on dates without knowing they’re into each other yet. That’s sort of the reason why they go on dates.”
Chase thought about it. “I guess. Although they don’t pretend to be married and looking for sasquatch.”
“No. Or dress up as Bigfoot and go through the neighbor’s garbage.”
He laughed. “We really do have some kind of sasquatch thing going on, don’t we?”
“Well, you do have enormous feet.”
“You know what they say. Big feet, big…” He trailed off deliberately.
“Big what?”
“Socks.”
He looked so pleased with his bad joke. I’d always liked that shy, goofy smile of his, but now I could see the person he used to be. The bookworm who played the tuba. The kid who was kind of a freak at school. A freak like me.
“I should tell you something,” I said, my heart already starting to hurt.
Chase’s smile softened a little, settling in the corners of his mouth. “I know,” he said.
I slowed the car. “You do?” He knew all about this? It figured. He had that spare phone all along. He wasn’t going to disconnect from all of his Hollywood life support systems all at once, right?
“Yep,” he said. “And I should tell you, too.”
No. Wait. What? “Tell me what?” I said, confused.
“You know what,” said Chase, reaching over and touching my hand. “That you’re…a big deal.”
Oh shit. “Yeah.” Oh my God, how did this keep getting messier? “You, too.”
9
I slept on it.
Well, he did. Chase slept like a baby. I lay awake feverishly refreshing Twitter and reminding myself why you should never perpetrate Bigfoot hoaxes on a first date.
It was everywhere. HuffPo, Vice, even the goddamn Guardian. In these strange days it was only a matter of time before the president rolled out of bed, saw the sasquatch tape on Fox & Friends and started tweeting about it. Patty must have been having the time of her life.
Meanwhile Bigfoot himself lay next to me, face down and snoring softly, the smooth line of his back and upturned ass so inviting to the touch that the sight made my palms itch. We hadn’t had sex last night, on the grounds that he still felt ‘kinda sasquatchy’, and I was almost relieved. I didn’t trust myself not to let my heart spill out of my mouth while we were fucking.
I felt his hand on my thigh and stiffened. He stretched out his fingers, reaching for my cock, but I moved my leg, obstructing him. Chase made a soft, sleepy sound and rolled over, his dick already saluting the sun. The tip was the same rosy pink as his nipples, his fair skin lightly sunburned, a sexy reminder of the time I’d walked out onto the deck to find him spread out on a blanket wearing nothing but a thin layer of sunscreen. How like him to guess that outdoor sex had always done it for me.
He arched his back like a cat wanting to be petted, but for once I kept my hands to myself. I felt lousy enough as it was.
“Touch me,” he said, in a cracked, half-asleep voice.
I shook my head and took his hand, directing it down between his thighs. He gave me a slutty, heavy-lidded look and offered his dry lips to be kissed, making it impossible to refuse. I swallowed his sighs as we licked the taste of sleep from one another’s mouths, aching for him but not allowing myself anything more than this.
“Chase,” I said, trying to call a halt to it, but his lips were inches from mine, his hand already at work as he slid deeper into the touch of his own body, all those rhythms and speeds you learn so young, as soon as you have the nerves to feel pleasure. I couldn’t help it. I kissed the slight frown between his eyebrows, coaxed his bottom lip from between his teeth with my tongue. He opened his mouth with a soft gasp and I could have cried in that moment, with how much I loved him and how hard I’d failed to keep him from harm.
“You are so beautiful,” I told him. “You have no idea…”
“Finn, please. I want you.”
“No, honey,” I kissed his shoulder and watched his hand at work. “Can’t I just watch for once in a while?”
He made a faint noise of protest, but he was too far gone to stop. His breathing was quick and ragged and his hips were already starting to buck into his touch. I ran my fingertips over his skin, tracing patterns over his torso until I came to a nipple and pinched gently. He cried out, his open lips so pink and tempting that I had to kiss them. Chase moaned into my mouth, his body rising from the bed as he dug his heels in. I wanted him so much that it was like pain, but I didn’t deserve him right now.
I slid my hand down to cover his, my fingers on top of his, feeling his grip, his stroke. I could have learned from this, if I’d thought to do it sooner.
He broke off the kiss to gasp. “I’m coming,” he whispered. “Oh God, Finn. I’m gonna…I’m gonna…”
Chase came with a long, deep shudder. I kissed him greedily, fastening on his mouth like some kind of vampire, trying to suck down every last sigh and shiver. I was so hard it was starting to ache, but I lay still, as though I’d come right along with him, breathing at the same pace as his parted, panting lips. The sweat from his forehead cooled on mine. His brea
thing slowed.
“Chase…” I said.
“Mm?”
“Before anything else happens,” I said. “Whatever happens…I need you to know.” Here goes. “I really do love you.”
He didn’t answer.
“Chase?”
Fuck. That ‘mm’ had just been the answering service. He’d gone right back to sleep.
I looked down at my erection and sighed. Sex, romance, I’d fucked up both and it wasn’t even ten in the morning yet. I thought about masturbating but I didn’t even feel like I deserved that. I should have told him last night. And I definitely shouldn’t have done what we’d just done, even if I didn’t even do that much.
Instead I settled for some boner-killing thoughts about what Trump allegedly got up to with those two Russian hookers and went downstairs to make some coffee, knowing the smell would probably lure Chase out of bed.
Did I want to lure him out of bed? The sooner we were out of bed the sooner I was going to have to tell him.
I took my coffee out onto the deck, figuring that if there was one thing I could enjoy untainted by guilt, it was the view. It was one of those sunny days you seldom get in LA, the sky cool and watery blue, instead of that pitiless SoCal cornflower. Little white and gray clouds scudded busily across the sky above the tips of the redwoods. A nice enough day to fuck one’s life up beyond repair.
“Hey.” Chase wandered outside, wearing nothing but a smile and that bad tattoo at the top of his spine.
“Oh my God, put some clothes on.”
He wrapped himself around me. “Why? There’s nobody here but us chickens. Gimme your coffee.”
“Oh, really. That’s nice. You’re all lovey when you want something.”
“Duh.”
“Come inside. I’ll get you some.”
“I want some of yours.”
“You’re being a pest. Why are you being a pest?”
“Because I’m happy,” he said, arms around my neck. “Because you love me.”
Click.
Someone else might have missed that noise, but not him. He knew it all too well. He’d heard it a thousand times before, in the epileptic glare of the flashbulbs. Click click click. Chase, Chase, over here, Chase.
Going Sasquatch Page 13
