by Mimi Strong
I bent over and blasted the grass with bile, champagne, and what tasted not unlike pool water. Wait. It was pool water. “Gotta hydrate yourself,” was one of the things I’d said the night before as I stuck my face in the pool water and took a good drink.
Okay, that was gross, but why hadn’t I gone into the pool and washed my sticky body off? I love being in the water.
And why did I have something crinkly inside the waistband of my panties, just above where my pubic hair started?
I pulled up the hem of my dress at the front.
“Whoa, not here!” Dalton said. He’d gotten out of the car to either help or laugh, and he hadn’t held my hair back when I chucked, so clearly he was there to laugh at me.
Ignoring him, I pulled out the waistband of my underwear. I had what looked like a paper towel, folded in a square, taped to me.
Right. The vending machines were right outside a tattooist’s shop. And the boys had gotten temporary tattoos in their prize packs, but my plastic bubble had a bracelet that broke when I tried to put it on. Then I’d started crying about having big wrists. (Shit, man. Why couldn’t I have forgotten that embarrassing detail?) Daniel cheered me up by offering to buy me a tattoo.
I dropped my green sundress back down. The sun was high overhead, and the smell of someone’s stomach contents was getting to me. The square of paper taped to me was only two inches wide, so how bad could it be? Knowing me, the tattoo was probably a cartoon peach. I could work with that.
Dalton was hovering and had already come to the same conclusion as I had. “You got a tattoo?” he asked.
“Yup. Team Connor. I’m switching sides now for when One Vamp to Love comes back in the fall.”
“No, you didn’t.” He looked amused.
“It’s totally Team Connor, dummy.”
He frowned. “Dummy? That’s not nice. I picked you two up, and I could have kept driving.”
I remembered his sensitivity about being called a meat puppet, and the reputation of good-looking actors being dumb.
Mitchell asked Dalton, “How did you happen to be exactly where you were? Peaches told us last night you don’t live in Malibu.” He was still hunched over, but appeared to be finished being sick, by the way the pink had returned to his cheeks.
Dalton gave me a devious smile, his green eyes as mischievous as ever, and that million-dollar dimple in his chin mocking me. “My little secret.”
I tossed my purse down on the ground. “You had a tracking device implanted in my bag! You weird-ass rich fucker!”
He started laughing, then doubled over, and finally fell back on the grass, rolling with laughter.
Mitchell looked over at me. “That’s a little paranoid.”
Dalton sat up, still grinning. “Show me your tattoo, and I’ll tell you how I knew you were in trouble.”
“No fucking way.”
Mitchell got my attention and pointed to the nearby water fountain. We both dragged our bodies to the water like zombies, and drank deeply.
Normally, public fountains gross me out, but I would have wrapped my lips around this one happily. Sweet, sweet water.
I was still enjoying the water when Dalton grabbed my arm. “Come on, we gotta go.”
Pulling my arm away, I snarled, “Don’t touch me.”
He held up his hands. “I’m done.” He backed away slowly, hands still up. “You’ll look awesome in the paparazzi photos. Really. Good luck with that, and have a nice life.”
Photos? I spotted a car rolling into the near-deserted park, a long camera lens visible behind the front windshield. Paparazzi.
Mitchell and I ran toward the car, Mitchell muttering about Team Drake all the way, and me apologizing in between curse words.
Dalton let us into the vehicle, and we took off, kicking up gravel with the tires. Mitchell clapped his hands. The windows were tinted, and nobody could see in, but I still slouched down low in the front seat, covering my face with my hand.
“Let’s get brunch,” Dalton said.
Mitchell squealed and started back into fanboy mode again.
When Mitchell finally stopped to breathe for a minute, I said to Dalton, “Are you seriously inviting us for brunch?”
“I have the time off. You and I were supposed to be spending this whole week together.”
“Right.” I felt about three inches tall. Meekly, I said, “Sorry I snapped at you. I’m a little hung over.”
“No shit!”
“Can you lower the volume of your sarcasm before you make my ears bleed?”
“Someone had a fun night.”
“And can we pull over at a gas station so I can take a whore’s bath at the very least?”
He turned to me, one dark eyebrow raised magnificently.
I explained, “That’s where you get a wet paper towel and just… do your armpits… and… oh, never mind.” I covered my face again. “Stop looking at me. I can feel your eyes groping me, Dalton Deangelo.”
Mitchell piped up from the back set. “We could swing by my apartment and freshen up. My roommate has some dresses that would look great on Peaches.”
I turned back to face Mitchell, who was looking peppier by the minute. “I thought your roommate’s name was Steve?”
“His drag name is Luscious Hilda Mae Sparkles. She’s inspired by this plus-size vintage pin-up girl from the fifties, plus Mariah Carey. Of course.”
“Of course,” I said, trying to wrap my dehydrated brain around the concept.
Mitchell gave Dalton his address, and we were at the door in twenty-five minutes.
I took the first shower, while Mitchell very awkwardly entertained Dalton by showing him his collection of vintage LA postcards from the sixties.
Alone in the bathroom, I pulled off my sticky, sweaty dress, and stared at myself in the mirror. I still had a square patch of paper towel stuck to myself, a few inches inside my front hip bone, and I didn’t have the nerve to see what lay beneath the bandage. The skin stung, like a scrape or a burn.
There was cellophane over the paper, so I made sure the tape was water resistant and got into the shower. The bathroom was really old, everything pink and blue from the fifties, but it was clean and welcoming, and I was grateful. The shower head was better than average for an old apartment.
Steve/Luscious Hilda Mae Sparkles was at her day job at the coffee shop he/she managed, but had given approval by text message for me to wear anything from the costume closet. After my shower, I zipped into a retro floral dress with a pink sash for a belt. I’d hand-washed my champagne-sticky underwear in the shower and dried them somewhat with the hair dryer before putting them back on.
I let Mitchell take over the bathroom, and I came out to find Dalton sitting at an easel with a paintbrush in his hand.
“That’s random,” I said.
“I like to paint.”
CHAPTER 18
I took a seat on the orange-vinyl vintage sofa across from him. “You like to paint? Yup, that explains everything.” The sofa cushion compressed slowly under me, letting out an embarrassingly audible wheezing of air.
Dalton continued to dab at a canvas with his paintbrush, loaded up with tangerine-orange paint.
He said, “Mitchell likes for guests to contribute to the decoration of the apartment, by putting a cheerful saying on a canvas.”
I looked around the room, noticing that some of the paintings I thought were abstract color washes actually had words on them.
The biggest painting, on the long wall, read: After a storm comes a calm, Matthew Henry.
I said, “Holy sheep tits, we’re sitting inside a Pinterest board.”
Dalton laughed. “Is that an internet thing? I don’t go online. Too toxic.”
“It’s a page where you share over-engineered craft projects you’ll never actually do. But look at my man, Mitchell. He’s really doing the whole make-your-own-art thing.” I crossed my legs, feeling it was the only appropriate pose for such a low-rider sofa. People must have
been way shorter a couple generations back, because the furniture legs are tiny.
Dalton got up and fetched us both bottles of water from the kitchen.
This is weird, I thought, and then I couldn’t un-think it. Here I was, hanging out with Dalton Deangelo, in LA, only we weren’t dating. I wouldn’t be licking the side of his gorgeous neck or riding him like a pony back in his palatial master bedroom. We were going to have brunch. With our chaperone/fanboy.
And then, after a few minutes, it didn’t feel so weird anymore. We could just be in a room, and not put each other’s body parts in our mouths. That’s how friends are.
I raised my water bottle. “To future old friends, which is what we are.”
He cracked the lid off his bottle, but didn’t move in for the toast. “Are we friends now? Have you forgiven me for words written on a piece of paper by someone who isn’t me?”
“I wasn’t mad about the words on the paper. It was you saying them.”
“I thought you were mostly irate about the tasteless threesome joke in the manuscript. By the way, we cut that out in the final draft. I thought the joke made my character unlikeable.”
“Fuck your character. He sucks.”
Dalton stared steadily at me, his green eyes giving away nothing but inner stillness and control. “Why were you out partying last night with your new buddy? What happened to underpants boy? Michael Crow or whatever?”
“Keith Raven. Don’t act like you can’t remember his name.”
Dalton’s sultry lips quirked up in a smirk. “You didn’t answer my question. Why didn’t you spend the night in your new man’s arms?”
I looked down at the piping on the orange vinyl sofa and flicked at the worn-thin spots with my fingernail. Fine filaments like fur were sticking out along the cracks.
After a moment, I said, “I think he spent the night in the bony arms of his model skank ex-girlfriend. I’m not sure. I kinda just left and haven’t checked in yet.”
“So you ran out on him, lathered up in an emotional tizzy, yet he’s the one in the doghouse?”
“Maybe.” I chugged my water, still avoiding eye contact.
“I’m starting to see a pattern,” he said.
The tissh-tissh sound of the paintbrush on the canvas started again, so it was safe for me to look up.
“What are you painting? Turn it and show me. My bare legs are stuck to this ridiculous couch and I can’t get up.”
“Peaches Monroe, guys always let you down, don’t they?”
“No comment.”
“They say every story has a happy ending, if you stop in the right place. I’d say you make sure your relationships have a bad ending, because you run out before a minor misunderstanding can run its course.”
I swallowed hard. “If you’re trying to make me feel like shit on toast, it’s working. I’m dressed in a drag queen’s clothes, I got a tattoo I’m too scared to look at, I narrowly escaped getting arrested, and now the world’s most beloved TV vampire is telling me I suck at life.”
Dalton slowly turned the wood-framed easel to face my way. The image was mostly blue, like sky above ocean, with an orange circle like the sun, and in white letters: Trust the process.
“I don’t get it.”
Dalton stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Trust the process is one of the things my best acting teacher used to say. Basically, it means… well, it means whatever you want it to mean. My process is not your process.”
“Maybe you should be dating Keith. He’s into all sorts of spiritual stuff. Do you like parsley shakes?”
“You don’t suck at life. And Keith seems like a good guy. I feel protective of you. I’m your friend, remember? I knew it from the day we met.” His expression got serious. “I feel rotten about the NDA I had you sign. I’ve never told anyone about my past before, and I was caught off guard by how exposed I felt. I’m sorry I put you in that position.”
“I’m sorry… I’m sorry I freaked out and ran off all those times. Especially the last time.” I drank the last bit of water from the bottle. “But here we are. No hard feelings. I’m ready to be your friend.”
Mitchell came out of the bathroom in a cloud of steam just as I was finishing. “And I’m ready for bru-uuuu-uuunch!” he sang.
My stomach growled, because apparently my stomach recognizes the word brunch, even when flamboyantly sung.
We were going to try the Hollywood hot spot, Mr. Chow, but the swarm of photographers made Dalton keep driving. Instead, the three of us went to brunch at a bistro with white tablecloths and paintings of fruit on the walls—real paintings, not those cheap mass market prints you get at chain stores.
My breakfast was a spinach and olive omelet, and it came with gorgeous fresh fruit, including ripe pineapple and papaya. Oh, plus there were tiny slivers of various cheeses. So good. Myam myam, as they say in some circles.
Mitchell had finally toned down his fanboy-ness and was asking Dalton questions about the show—questions Dalton seemed quite pleased to answer, such as what did the fake blood taste like? (Corn syrup.) Was the director a nightmare to work with? (No, but the director’s assistant was a control freak.)
They talked about photography, and then got onto Quentin Tarantino films, both of them becoming gushing fanboys about how much they’d love to work with him, or with Nicolas Refn, whose film violence was “stylish, but more chilling than Tarantino’s.”
The waitress was attentive, never letting my ice water get more than one third empty.
The conversation veered into the territory of some of my favorite movies, and it turned out Mitchell was a great conversational link, because he liked dude movies and chick movies. The three of us had a great talk, and two hours passed easily.
I’d had a number of mochas, and excused myself to the washroom, which had really great lighting and fresh flowers.
In there, I pulled out my cell phone and checked for messages from Keith. He’d only sent one, and it wasn’t what I expected.
Keith: Sounds like you’re having fun! Thanks for checking in!
I shook my fist at Last Night Peaches, who had apparently sent him a dozen messages babbling about hanging out with Mitchell (whom Keith had met at the photo shoot), talking about the club we were at, and even saying I was dancing with all the LA Lakers guys.*
*That was actually a teensy lie, because I remembered most of being at the club. I actually danced with a couple tall guys who were LA Lakers fans, but when you’re drunk and name-dropping by text, you get a little fast and loose with the facts.
There was no panic in Keith’s single reply, because I’d apparently assured him I’d be crashing at Mitchell’s place. Neither was there any explanation from him about what the fuck he was doing for three hours with his drunk and vulnerable ex-girlfriend, with her tears and her ratty fake hair and her quivering lower lip.
Just thinking about her nearly made me rage-flush my phone. I sent him back a message designed to get him squirming.
Me: So, should I come back there to get my stuff, or what do you want?
Perfect. Just vague enough I could play it either way depending on how he responded. If he was guilty, he’d assume I knew everything, and 'fess up. If he hadn’t played Enjoy My Tasty Burrito with his ex, he’d tell me to get back over there and play a round with him.
I tucked my phone away and fixed my makeup. I’d spotted a couple photographers outside the restaurant, so I figured it best to be prepared.
When I came back to the table, the two guys were strangely quiet and grinning.
“What’s going on?”
“We were just discussing your commercial shoot on Monday,” Mitchell said.
I took my seat, careful to smooth out the floral skirt of the drag queen’s dress.
“I wish I was done with all my obligations,” I said.
“You miss your little town?” Dalton asked.
“No.” Yes, I did, but I didn’t want him to know, to think I was too weak to spend a week away fr
om home—to think I was like those wimpy kids at summer camp who sob inconsolably on the first night.
“She’s adapting just fine to LA,” Mitchell said.
“Thank you.” I gave him my sweetest smile.
Dalton put his elbow on the table, rested his chin on his hand, and stared at me as if Mitchell wasn’t even there. “What are your plans for the rest of the day?”
I squirmed in my chair. “Keith is busy with other stuff, so I’m just going to hang out.”
“Wanna come hang out at my house?” The light in the restaurant practically danced in his sexy green eyes.
“Stop looking at me like you’re the fox and you just got the keys to my hen house.”
“I’m not. You’re projecting your ravenous sexual desires onto me.”
“Oh my,” I coughed, pretty sure the tables around us quieted down to listen.
“This is the downside to being a sex symbol,” Dalton said to Mitchell, all the while keeping his gaze on me. “These women, and their craven fantasies. They have all these wicked ideas about what they want to do to you, but they’re like domesticated cats who finally catch a rabbit. Once they have you, they get all kittenish and embarrassed. The truth is, despite all their one-sided fantasies, once they have you, they don’t know what to do with you.”
“Hah!”
He continued, “The thing about a fantasy is you can have magical spells and goblins in a fantasy. Or relationships with no rocky patches, ever. In real life? Not so much.”
I put my chin on my hand, mirroring Dalton’s pose. “In my fantasies, the guy doesn’t lie to get into the girl’s pants, passing off movie lines as his own feelings.”
“But the guy touches the girl just right, doesn’t he? And he keeps things interesting on their dates, takes her places she’s never been. He lavishes the girl with affection, and he’s true to her.”
