At that moment, I didn’t know what to think. The anxiety came back. I got a bad case of the ‘what ifs.’ Someone who could treat you like this, make you feel so loved, someone who had fast-tracked themselves into your heart, they also had the ability to hurt you as well. They had the ability to leave and simply crush you. And I knew that Kelsie wasn’t long for Champlain, her train was heading out shortly. Then back out west. Just like my mother.
“Don’t go,” I meekly cooed, my fingers tenderly wrapping around her wrist. I pulled the pillow off my face and my eyes met with Kelsie.
“Hey,” she said tenderly, looking deeply into my eyes. “I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Okay,” I said gently, feeling mildly relieved. “Okay.”
But I wasn’t okay. Something about feeling so immediately close to Kelsie also made me feel fragile. I had been hurt before and I guess I just didn’t realize what it might feel like to be accepted or wanted. I wanted to believe Kelsie, I wanted to think that she truly wanted me and not just a quick fling while she was in town. But everything I had been lead to believe about Hollywood stars, or maybe everything I had been lead to believe about people in general, was that they just weren’t always that reliable when it came to love. You let someone in close to you and they can hurt you. I didn’t want to be hurt.
Not wanting to be hurt, though, is what was constantly holding me back. I could see that. But look, just because you can realize some foible about your life, that doesn’t always make it easy to do something about it. For example, and this one is silly so I hope you don’t judge me, but I’ve always been self-conscious about my legs. They’re like twigs. I feel like I’ve got no muscles at all in them. And then I see these athletic girls who have beautiful calf muscles, amazingly sculpted thighs, and I’m just like, “I want that!” I know that I could just start running and get those muscles that I like. But do I run? Nope. I think it’s because that takes a ton of work. It could take me years to get the kind of leg muscles I dream about, maybe even longer, maybe not at all. And something deep inside of me tells me that if you don’t try, you can’t fail. That keeps me stagnant.
Maybe it’s just confusion as to what I actually want. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know what I want, I don’t know where I’m going, all I know is that I’m tired of feeling hurt, I’m tired of feeling held back, I’m tired of feeling alone. But it’s like there’s something within me that won’t let me just be happy and go for it.
And then, when I analyze all these feelings, I feel like I’m just a whiner. I drop it. I push it down. I move on.
Kelsie really did make me feel good. Every time I was with her, it felt magical. It felt right. I felt like Kelsie could understand me on some level, understand feeling a bit like an outcast, a bit like a foreigner in your own life. I knew deep down that I didn’t belong in Champlain. I was young, smart, driven toward… I don’t know, something else… and Champlain was just more of the same old stuff, a stagnant life going nowhere. Kelsie showed me that there was more out there. But could I handle it? Could I handle the risk? Could I handle the possibility that maybe Kelsie wasn’t being completely true with me?
I laid there in Kelsie’s hotel room bed in the morning, alone and naked. She had already left earlier for filming, the days the film crew was in town dwindling, and I didn’t have much more time before I was scheduled to be downstairs at the desk. Another day sitting alone at that desk, broken up occasionally by a conversation or two with Jake, then back home to my sad house, then I’d do it all over again the next day.
You ever have that experience? Your days just become so predictable, so boring, so regular, that it just seems like you’re not living at all… only existing? I knew so much more was out there, I knew I was just holding myself back for some godforsaken reason, something I couldn’t really put into words… I mean, was it fear? Was it anxiety? Was it that I was just scared of being hurt, dumped, left alone? It all just felt like some stupid unresolved storm within me. Does that make sense? Maybe like there was always this impending storm hanging over me, always threatening to rain, and because of it I always had an itchy trigger finger on the button of my umbrella.
Reaching over to the bedside table, I took hold of my phone and looked down into the screen. I would have to pull myself up soon, slip into my work clothes, settled down at the desk. It was just after 7AM and I had to be down there at 8AM. That meant it was just after 5AM in Utah. I took a deep breath and wandered through the small contact list on my phone. I don’t know what made me do it, but I decided to call her.
The phone rang as I held it tightly against my ear, my heart racing. I didn’t think she would pick up. Maybe that’s why I was calling so early. It was an easy out. It was like some unconscious safeguard from having to actually address what I had on my mind. But she picked up. By God, she picked up.
“Hello?” I heard her groggy voice through the tinny speaker on my phone. “Audra? Is something wrong? Why are you calling so early?”
“Hi Mom,” I said, really not knowing where I was going with this whole thing. I mean, I didn’t know what had come over me. I didn’t know why I had called her or what I was going to say. It was sort of like I was just watching myself act out the whole scene, like it was already written and performed and filmed and I was just spectator.
“Are you all right?” she said, her voice tinged slightly with fear.
“Yes,” I said meekly. “Yes, I’m okay. There’s no emergency.”
“Okay,” said my mother, waking up, now probably feeling somewhat annoyed that I’d phoned her up so early. “So why are you calling at 5 in the morning?”
“I… I don’t know,” I said with confused tension. “I mean, no, I do know,” I corrected, letting the tape run, letting the script play itself out. “Why do I feel so abandoned? Why do I feel so alone?”
“Audra,” she said. “It’s 5AM.” It felt like she was blowing me off.
“Why did you leave?”
I heard my mother sigh through the phone. Then there was silence. Why I had chosen that moment to really confront her about this, I didn’t know. It just felt like I was supposed to. Like I really needed it at that moment.
“Look,” she said. “It’s not you, Audra, it’s me. I just…” she paused and I could feel the wheels turning in her head. “I had you too young and I never wanted to be a mother,” she said. The words hurt but I knew that I needed to hear them. “That’s not to say I don’t love you, Audra, of course I love you. But the postpartum depression, living with your father through the mess that he became, I just felt like I wasn’t living authentically for myself.”
“Isn’t that a little bit selfish?” I peeped.
“Sure it is,” she said. “I can’t defend that. But what use am I to you or your father, or anyone really, if I’m miserable?”
“Are you happy now?” I said. “Are you happy where you are?”
“Yes,” she said. “I feel more alive. I feel more like myself, like what I wanted out of life. I’m sorry, Audra. I’m sorry I’ve been a bad mother, I’m sorry I left you, but I’m not perfect. I’m selfish and I want to be happy on my own terms.”
“Okay,” I said. “I understand.”
“I hope you do,” she said. “And I hope you can find happiness, too. I really do love you, you know, in my own way. I’d love to see you if you want to come out west.”
“But you’re always traveling,” I said. “Always driving around.”
“We’re not living in the days of pony express mail,” she said sarcastically. “You can call me and ask me where I am.”
“Okay.”
“You can,” she reiterated. “You can come out and visit whenever you like.”
“All right,” I said. “Maybe I will.”
“I’m going to get back to sleep,” said my mother. “I’m sorry that I’ve been such a bad mother, I’m sorry that I left, but I think it would have been even worse had I stayed.”
“Thank you
for talking to me, Mom,” I said.
“We’ll talk soon, Audra,” she said. “I hope you have a great day.”
“You too,” I said.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too,” I softly replied, trying not to let on that I was crying.
I hung up my phone and dropped it down onto the bed. Looking up at the ceiling, I released a long sigh and wiped at my eyes. I wished that Kelsie was still next to me in bed, holding me and snuggling against me like she did the night before. I hated feeling so alone. I knew she was probably off at that farm, feeling great about living out this passionate life of hers, smiling in between takes as she fooled around with the cast and crew. Her fulfilling life. Somehow she had figured out what she loved doing, even if it wasn’t all bliss all the time. I knew she loved the acting part of her job. I could see it in her face when I watched her at the shoot, when I watched her talk about her life. Sure, she didn’t always feel like she fit in, but who does? Maybe we all just feel like phonies, maybe we all feel like we’re alone in this world on some level. Do you feel like that? Maybe you’ve got a pretty good life by most measures, but do you still feel like you’re alone in your journey?
I hope you do. Selfishly, I hope you do. Because that makes me feel not so alone. But the good in me, the positive Audra that exists somewhere down in there, she hopes you’ve figured out how to love and be loved. Because that means it’s possible for me too. That’s also a selfish way of looking at it. Either way, whether it’s a misery loves company type of thing or it’s more of a ‘if you can do it, so can I’ feeling, I’m just looking for that magical connection with other people. I’m looking for proof. I’m looking for a guide. Maybe you can be my guide. Or maybe I just need to figure out how to be my own guide.
Crawling out of bed, I gingerly slipped into my clothes which had been strewn around the bed from the previous night’s festivities. I still felt tender and fulfilled down below, a physical remembrance of my corporeal love with Kelsie. It was nice. A nice, subtle ache. I wanted that all the time. I wanted to feel fulfilled, I wanted to feel wanted. Needed. And maybe Kelsie was just the girl to make that happen.
As I stood in the doorway, door half opened, looking back at the hotel room, I thought about how many times I had looked in that particular room. Hundreds, probably. But there was something far different about it now. There was something life-altering between those four walls.
Sitting behind the desk, I methodically tapped the eraser of my pencil against my cheek as I watched the front door of the hotel. It was quiet in the lobby, a sound I was quite familiar with, but I knew that it would soon grow noisy as the film crew returned from a long day of shooting. I had told Meredith to come in a little later, as I had some things I had to take care of which would cause me to work a little longer than a normal day, but it was really just a ploy to be present for Kelsie’s return to the hotel for the night.
I was nervous. Nervous that everything would come collapsing down on me just as I’d made a decision. Nervous now that I was going to explain my feelings to Kelsie, that she would back down and end it all. Nervous that it was just my fate to live out my days in Champlain, behind this desk, working in this hotel until it either went under or I couldn’t work it anymore.
Everything seems so heavy when you’ve experienced so little. Right? The smallest thing can seem like the end of the world when your worldview is so narrow. The future can feel so nebulous and uncertain when you’re unsure what to expect. Or maybe I’m just an inherently anxious person and this weird concoction of feelings I feel aren’t normal. I don’t know. But it was a nervous excitement, I can say that much. There was a hint of positivity to it all.
The door to the hotel flung open and in traipsed the crew. A cacophony of sound emanated throughout the lobby as they entered, people continuing conversations with other another, laughing, an air of joviality, of warmth, entered the Hotel Champlain with them. My eyes scanned each body that walked through that door, eager to find Kelsie’s wonderfully bright face, framed by her red locks, green eyes, pale visage. She had become like an apparition to me, almost like a hallucination of what could be.
I was ready to commit. I was ready to go. I wanted the words to come out of my mouth so desperately. There was a soft smile across my lips as I watched and waited. My toes pumped my legs up and down with that nervous excitement. I could barely keep it all in.
Then she entered, that altruistic smile on her face. She came through the door with Josh Timony, the two of them laughing together like they had just shared an inside joke. For a moment I felt intensely jealous, like it should have been me sharing that joke with Kelsie, but I quickly calmed myself and told myself I had nothing to fear. All my insecurities were just phantoms, just little made up things that I carried through life and did nothing for me. I could drop them any time I wanted. Anything hurtful that had happened to me in the past was already gone. The future was mine for writing.
Kelsie caught my eyes and flashed me a toothy grin. She then grabbed on to Josh’s arm and said something to him. He smiled and nodded and looked toward me. Josh gave me a small wave and then he and Kelsie parted, he walking toward the elevators and Kelsie heading toward me. It all happened so fast, like it was some sort of movie montage with jangly music dubbed over it.
Sauntering up to the desk with a bounce in her step, Kelsie placed her hands atop the desk and smiled across it at me with wide and excited eyes. I could tell she was bursting, like she had something to say, because I probably looked the very same way. But before I could get any words out, Kelsie broke the silence first.
“We wrapped today!” she said enthusiastically. “A few days ahead of schedule!”
“What?” I said. “You’re done?”
“Well, not totally,” she said, her head leaning off to one side as she thought about it. “We have to go back to LA and we’ve got another few weeks at a soundstage, but we got everything we needed to get here in Champlain!”
“Why did I think you had another week here?” I said with confusion. I looked down to my computer screen. I felt like, even if I had admitted to Kelsie that I wanted to come with her, I’d at least have another week, maybe even longer, to figure out the logistics. But her enthusiasm made it really seem like this thing was done, over, and that they were flying back off to Hollywood as soon as they could.
“Well, we’re booked out here for longer,” Kelsie said. “But since we finished ahead of schedule, we’ve got to head home to keep working.” I could tell she was happy and then her expression changed suddenly. “Oh! Don’t worry. I mean, the hotel will be paid for the full booking, I’m sure.”
I felt like I had been smacked in the face, like I was seeing stars. It was just too sudden for me. For once I had felt a modicum of control and now that was taken away from me. I wanted to tell her, I wanted to say what I had to say, but I found it difficult to get the words out.
“That’s… great!” I said, putting a smile on. But I knew there was sadness in my eyes.
“We’re doing a little thing tonight in the hall over there,” said Kelsie, motioning toward the hotel banquet room. “You should come and hang out with me.” She leaned forward and tenderly grabbed my wrist, joyfully smiling, hopeful that I would acquiesce.
“I’ve been working for like 10 hours,” I said, feeling defeated now. “But I want to talk to you. I want to talk about last night and about… just… everything.”
“Last night was awesome,” said Kelsie in an enthusiastic murmur, moving in closer to me and offering a grin. “I think I still have your taste in my mouth.” Her whispering secret sent a shiver coursing through me. It made me intensely happy.
“Okay,” I said brightly with a smile. “I’m tired but I’m coming to this party.”
“Excellent,” said Kelsie, scrunching up her nose. She smacked her palm on the desk. “I’m going to go shower and get ready. I’ll catch you in a bit, babe.”
Turning from the desk, Kelsie strutted off
, her tight rear bouncing back and forth under her jeans as she moved. My heart felt like it was beating out of my chest. I was totally lovestruck by this girl, so bewildered that I didn’t even speak my peace with her when I knew I could have, when I knew I should have. Kelsie would accept me, I was sure of it. But the prospect of having just one, maybe two more days with her, just that same amount of time to actually decide and wrap things up here in Champlain, that felt intimidating.
But the smile that was engraved on my face said it all. Kelsie had stolen my heart.
Three
In anticipation of something like this, some sort of sudden afterparty for the film crew, I had been keeping a nice strapless black dress in my locker at work and I was thankful that I had. There would have been nothing more embarrassing than walking into that joyful revelry in my polo and khakis. I put my hair up and slapped on a bit of makeup, something I rarely did, and wandered into the party in the banquet room with a hint of trepidation and nervousness. Kelsie was off to one side, chatting happily with one of the producers, so I sheepishly made my way over to the drinks table and took a bottle of water.
Before I knew it Jake found me, he himself still wearing his work uniform, and he frantically raced toward me.
“Audra,” he said. “I’m glad you’re still here. I wasn’t quite ready for this party they’re throwing and I think we’re going to run out of champagne. Do you think you could run out to Meijers and pick up a case if I gave you some cash?”
“Look at me,” I said, motioning to my dress. “Jake, I’m here to celebrate with them. And besides, I worked like 10 hours today.”
“Please Audra?” he asked again. “I’ve got about a hundred more things to do and could really use your help.”
There was a time when I would have given in to Jake’s request. And that time wasn’t too long ago. The old Audra was a people pleaser, but I was really starting to have true feelings of my own and I was coming to terms with the fact that that kind of stuff, sacrificing your own desires to do unimportant things for other people was just something that put you on a road to self-loathing. I didn’t want to be that girl any longer. Being that girl had taken me as far as it could, which admittedly wasn’t very far at all. I was off work, I was tired, I was dressed up, I was there for Kelsie. I didn’t want to go run an errand. It wasn’t my problem any longer.
Hotel Hollywood: A Lesbian Romance Page 10
