Protecting Emma

by ML Michaels

  Standing to her feet with a morose frown, Claire stepped on to the stage and scooped up her grinning, oblivious daughter into her arms, clinging to the one thing that seemed true and certain in life as she said, “Sometimes things aren’t as simple as they seem, Charlotte. And as far as this situation goes, well I guess we’ll just have to see.”

  ***

  Home.

  Shawn Sullivan felt just a bit out of place steering his sleek apple red Corvette down the short narrow streets that lined his hometown of Genoa. He found himself staring at the collection of traditional, ranch-style suburban homes and modest mom and pop businesses that defined and distinguished this Florida town.

  “Wow, they still have a video store here. Does anyone in this town still own an actual VHS machine? Maybe they keep it stashed in the back of the house, alongside the Victrola record player and the transistor radio,” he chuckled, before adding with a shrug, “I also see, though, that Jeb and Nancy’s Video Palace has now been rebranded as Jeb and Nancy’s Video and Frozen Yogurt Palace. Probably a smart marketing move on Jeb and Nancy’s part.”

  He did smile, however, as he saw that the video store (and frozen yogurt emporium) now featured a poster that bore his own likeness, one that came accompanied by a sign that read, “Welcome home, to our Movie Star!”

  “Aw, shucks,” he preened with a grin, returning his gaze to the road before him as he spotted yet another familiar sight, a tall, majestic oak tree that marked the turn off onto (ironically enough) Maple Avenue, the street where he grew up under the care of his devoted parents, Cliff and Gina Sullivan.

  It was easy enough to spot his family home, which stood out boldly from the standard block of single-story, ranch-style homes that defined the old neighborhood.

  “Home sweet home,” he said aloud, turning into the long, winding cobblestone driveway that fronted a classically designed, nouveau Victorian home. It was a lavish three-story, pearl-pink structure that represented a lush concoction of domed and sloped rooves, entwining balconies and front porches, and stained glass windows, all kissed with a sweet ivory trim that likened the residence to the gingerbread house he had made in his sixth grade home economics class.

  “Although I hope that this structure won’t be decimated post haste like its predecessor in the interest of making s’mores,” he quipped, bringing his car to a dead stop before the brass handled double doors that fronted his parents’ Victorian dream home—one he had purchased for them the moment that he ‘made it big.’

  “After seeing me through the sum total of my adolescence, I figured that these two set upon and admirable people deserved a custom made residential paradise,” he figured, “At least.”

  His thoughts scattered as he stepped onto the sharp-tiled entryway of the spectacular home and found himself in the midst of a group of people that converged suddenly upon him—unifying as they did in a near deafening cry of “Surprise!”

  In moments, he found himself suffocated by and entrapped in the midst of the most menacing group hug in the history of the world.

  Shawn nearly yelped out loud as he found himself encircled by a group of people whose faces he immediately recognized. His beloved parents, Cliff and Gina. Charlotte, his beautiful kid sis. Mrs. Morgan, his high school drama teacher and—by all rights—the individual to whom he figured he owed about half of the earned royalties he had earned since the inception of his acting career.

  “From what I’ve heard, the other half can be attributed to the supposedly superior state of my pecs and abs,” he mused with a sheepish smile. “And that’s all me, baby.”

  He saw Dr. Mankowitz, the physician who had brought him into the world, and, of course, Jeb and Nancy—owners of the afore mentioned outdated but always homey video palace.

  He did not see her.

  As he searched the faces of those who filled the walls of his parents’ sitting room—a space distinguished by walls of silver brocade, vaulted ceilings that sported the presence of candle-lined brass chandeliers and velvet-lined cherry wood furniture that sat atop a plush surface of ivory-hued carpeting—he felt a growing sense of disappointment as he came slowly but surely to a sad realization.

  Of all the people who had rushed to attend this surprise coming home party, some of whom he barely recognized, one very important individual had failed to make a showing.

  “Claire,” her name rang low and hollow through the confines of his mind. “Where is she?”

  This was a question he asked aloud moments later as he and his sister Charlotte feasted on cake and punch in a far corner of the room.

  “Didn’t you invite Madame Director to join us for this little soiree?” he asked her, attempting a casual shrug as he sipped contentedly at his mother’s prized strawberry lemonade.

  Attempting her own casual shrug in return, Charlotte met his question with a faint forced smile as she told him, “Sure I mentioned it to her, but you know how things go in the drama world. It’s the day before opening night and she has a bazillion things to do. I mean, I’m sure that she would have loved to make it, but….”

  She fell silent as her brother met her words with a brisk, silencing wave and rolled his eyes heavenward as he considered their meaning.

  “Now Sis, I’ve seen you in school plays—and here at home, when you and your friends acted out the entire text of ‘Little Women’ and forced my buddies and me to watch the whole blasted thing,” he cringed at the memory, adding more seriously, “I know that you can act a lot better than this.”

  Charlotte sighed.

  “Don’t stick me in the middle of this, OK?” she insisted, adding with a broad gesture in her brother’s direction, “You’ll just have to go and talk to Claire yourself.”

  Shawn thought a moment, then nodded.

  “Oh believe me,” he intoned then, more to himself than to Charlotte, “I will.”

  ***

  For just a moment, the spirit of sweet Juliet permeated her soul.

  After scrambling about for more than an hour on the central stage of Genoa Playhouse, shuffling, rearranging and organizing to her heart’s content, Claire succumbed to an impulse that seized her soul.

  Jumping the border of the makeshift set piece that had been painted to resemble a stone cast balcony, she shut her eyes tightly and morphed in her mind into the figure of a young and timeless beauty, the classic heroine known as Juliet.

  “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” she breathed, journeying in her mind to the time of princes and princesses, courtly gentlemen and ladies fair.

  “I’m right here, Toots. Just open your eyes and take a good look.”

  A stunned Claire gasped outright as her senses were stirred by the sound of a deep masculine voice that resounded loudly and clearly throughout the hallowed halls of the playhouse.

  Jumping in surprise in her place at the center of the balcony, she screamed outright as her short, curvy body went careening over the edge of the flexible set piece and braced herself for a hard fall as she careened freely and wildly in the direction of the stage beneath her.

  Her breath caught in her throat moments later, as her fall was broken by an encompassing pair of firm, strong arms that pulled her up tightly against the surface of a massive, hard-muscled chest.

  Just then she opened her eyes to behold the most beautiful man she ever had seen.

  Immediately she lost herself in a pair of wide, dark eyes that stared at her with unsettling intensity. The gaze was accompanied by the slow and sensual upturn of full, soft lips that she suddenly yearned to kiss.

  And lucky for her, the owner of these very same lips seemed to feel the same way.

  She gasped outright as an ardent Shawn Sullivan seized her lips in a passionate kiss, his full, moist mouth massaging hers in slow, intense strokes.

  Angling his head over hers to intensify their kiss, Shawn clutched her closer to him in a tight but nurturing embrace, and his hands ran like reams of warm water down the surface of her back.

 
; Leaning fully into his kiss, she wrapped her arms around his sculpted shoulders and devoured his lips with hers.

  For just a moment she went back in time, back to the night of the homecoming dance in college, when the two of them kissed deeply and passionately at the center of the dance floor—not caring who was watching as they dissolved together in what seemed a binding embrace.

  “Ah, but it wasn’t. And it’s been a long time since college.”

  The unwelcome thought sliced like a knife through the gauzy parameters of their ethereal fantasy world. It was enough, in fact, to drive Claire out of Shawn’s encompassing arms.

  Jumping to the ground before him in a single smooth flourish, Claire planted her hands firmly on her rounded hips as she demanded, “Hey Shawn, what the heck?”

  The man before her maligned her further by laughing loudly in the face of her ire.

  “Well judging by the way that you were kissing me back, my fair Juliet,” he told her, accenting his words with a mocking bow, “We both seemed to have the same idea.”

  Claire shook her head.

  “So what are you doing here, anyway?” she asked him, adding with a weak attempt at a bland, disinterested shrug, “Aren’t you supposed to be in attendance at some grand welcome home party or something?”

  Meeting her casual shrug with one of his own, Shawn folded his arms before him as he pinned her with a curious gaze.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact I am,” he replied finally, adding as he inclined his sculpted head sharply in her direction, “I couldn’t help but notice, though, that one guest was missing—the most important guest, as a matter of fact.” He paused here, adding with a shrug, “Why, Claire, would you skip out on my coming home party?”

  Claire pursed her lips.

  “Well you can’t exactly skip out on an event that you never agreed to attend,” she reasoned, adding as she raised her hands before her in what seemed a defensive stance, “Look, Shawn, I’m sorry if I’m coming off as harsh. Like everyone else in this town, I am so proud of your phenomenal success—I mean, who wouldn’t be? But my world can’t stop for you. As you well know, I have a play to plan, a show that opens tomorrow.”

  Shawn snorted.

  “A show that opens tomorrow, in a theater that is roughly the size and condition of a shoebox,” he sneered, adding as he made a broad gesture in the direction of his stone-faced former girlfriend, “Honestly, Claire, what happened to you? You have more natural acting talent in your tiny pink fingernail that I do in my entire body. But instead of making big bank in Hollywood, you’re stuck here in the town that dreads sundown teaching drama classes at community college and directing the umpteenth version of Romeo and Juliet—and in a community theater roughly the size of my apartment in LA.”

  Claire had heard enough.

  “Well at least I am teaching and directing the word of one of the world’s greatest playwrights,” she reminded him. “Although I am beyond certain that some of the lines that you utter on the silver screen—like, I don’t know—‘Surf’s up, Dude! The tide is INSANELY high!’—are quite comparable to ‘What light through yonder window breaks’.”

  “It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!" Shawn interrupted, his voice soft and smooth as he fell all too easily into the role of Romeo. “And you just proved to me, dear Claire, that you did indeed see “Heat Wave,” my last theatrical feature.” He paused here, adding in an amiable tone, “Look Claire, I frankly have no idea what went wrong between us. I have no idea why you ditched our dream to go to Hollywood, why you haven’t answered a single one of my letters or e-mails, and why you flat out refused to come to my party this evening. And frankly, at this point, I don’t care. I just want to erase all of the tension, all of the hurt, and take you out tonight. We can go anywhere and do anything you want, princess—you know we’ll have a blast, we always did.”

  Claire thought a moment, then shook her head.

  “I’m sorry Shawn, but did is the operative word here,” she told him, adding as she turned away, “Things have changed, and I’m sorry to say that we can’t change them back. Now if you’ll please excuse me, I have a job to do.”

  ***

  An hour later Claire left the Genoa Community Playhouse, taking her car keys firmly in hand as she pointed them before her in a decidedly defensive manner.

  Although she resided in a small town where neighbors knew and looked after one another, she still took a lesson from her college days and remained aware of her surroundings. She always looking from side to side, before and behind her as she walked and kept a sharp object, like her car keys, firmly in hand until she reached the safety of her car.

  One evening during her freshman year at Genoa Community College, she was walking home from a night class when her journey was disrupted by the presence of an unwanted companion, an obviously drunken frat boy who blocked her path as he demanded—and in a loud and markedly slurred tone—that she give him her phone number.

  After rejecting his request and making her own demand that he clear out of her way, and pronto, Claire sighed with relief when her tall, strong boyfriend swept onto the scene. Shawn had physically pushed the drunken cretin out of their path and demanded they leave him alone.

  Finally, she had sunk relaxed deep in Shawn’s embrace, allowing him to half carry her the rest of the way home.

  “He told me that night that I never had to be afraid,” she recalled with a sigh. “He’d always be there to protect me. He was so sweet back then, so down to earth. Why then, when we were talking tonight, did I feel as though I was talking to a stranger?”

  She froze then as a pair of golden orbs flashed brightly before her, prompting her to shoot a wide-eyed Bambi in headlights look to the driver of the car that now pulled up in front of the theater.

  The same eyes narrowed in a show of frustration as they regarded the offending auto, a sleek, shiny red Corvette that looked quite unlike most of the vehicles found in the boundaries of her modest hometown.

  “Show off,” she muttered beneath her breath, approaching the vehicle’s passenger side as its door popped open before her.

  “Let’s go for a ride, Claire,” Shawn invited, pinning her with a wolfish white toothed grin as he crooked a sexy finger in her direction. “You know you want to do it.”

  Soon a disbelieving Claire found herself ensconced in the whisper soft passenger seat of a lightning fast roadster, holding on to the arm rest as the car flew down the streets of their quiet, normally sedate hometown.

  Pitching their heads back and laughing outright, she and Shawn shared a mischievous grin as his cat of a car roared and purred beneath them, catching them up in a maelstrom of raw energy. Quite on impulse, they clutched hands between them.

  “Feel the speed, Claire!” Shawn cried loudly above the rev of the engines. “Enjoy the feeling!”

  After sailing down the near deserted thoroughfare titled cleverly as Main Street, Shawn’s car came to a screeching halt several blocks down, landing finally in the barren parking lot of Jeb and Nancy’s Video and Frozen Yogurt Palace.

  The couple burst into a fit of exalted laughter as Shawn switched off the engine and raised her hand to his full moist lips for a warm, gentlemanly kiss.

  “Did you have fun, babe?” he asked her, keeping a gentle clasp on her hand as he pinned her with an inquiring stance. “We used to have this sort of fun every Friday and Saturday night, remember?”

  Claire nodded, fighting to catch her breath as she assented, “We had a blast, that’s for sure—every single night we went out.”

  She took in her breath as her companion surged across the seat, searing her parted lips with a quick, hot kiss.

  “And when we stayed in, things got better still,” he reminded her on a whisper, adding as he raised his hand to stroke and caress her fair skinned cheek. “Could you please just tell me, Claire? Why did the fun have to stop? Why did we have to stop?”

  Claire sighed.

  “Well there’s no single or easy answer
to that question,” she revealed, adding as she gestured to the now darkened front window of Jeb and Nancy’s Video and Frozen Yogurt Palace. “For one thing, just take a gander at that glossy poster hanging in the window at Jeb and Nancy’s. Those two used to bust our chops on a regular basis for being what they called Movie Nerds—kids who spent the bulk of their free time in their dorm rooms, watching every new release they had available.” She paused here, adding with a sheepish grin, “They still make the same charge against me, mind you—even going so far as to relabel their new release wall as Claire’s Corner. You, on the other hand, now rank as one of the movie stars that they promote in the shop—plastering your posters and glossies all over their walls and heralding you as their local hero.”

  With these words her grin dissolved, and she took her hand from his.

  “Imagine what it would have been like, Shawn, if you and I had gone to Hollywood together,” she told him, adding as she made a broad gesture between them, “You’d be the big time movie star, bringing home the unreasonably generous paychecks and getting the red carpet treatment wherever we go. I’d be the supporting player, just as I was in our production of Romeo and Juliet. People would constantly question why you were with me, and you can bet those glamorous wanna be starlets out there would be constantly trying to lure you away from me.”

  Shawn shrugged.

  “Or to test an alternate theory, you could have gone on to become a famous director,” he offered, “One who directs and writes high quality films that your man can star in so he won’t have to act in celluloid drek like Heat Wave.”

  Claire sighed.

  “Heat Wave is far from drek, Shawn, and we both know as much. It’s a big budget Hollywood film and very well-produced,” she insisted, adding with a broad gesture between them, “It’s just that, well, I know that a man of your talent and experience can do so much better.”

  She took in her breath as the man before her clutched her hand in his and stared deeply and almost imploring into her eyes as he whispered, “Then help me do better, Claire. Come to Hollywood with me and write a real script for a real movie—something that we can both take pride in that will really make our careers.”