by Imani King
"I don't know what you're talking about, Blake. Everything is fine."
"That's just it, Vanessa. That emotional dishonesty. How am I supposed to be able to figure this out - to make things better - if you won't admit the obvious? It's not like it used to be and you know it."
She seemed on the verge of replying. She opened her mouth and then closed it again and got up to leave. I was torn between my old conception of Vanessa - a fragile, vulnerable girl who needed to be loved - and the new one - a spoiled starlet, more interested in her phone and her Google results than anything or anyone else. The words just came out automatically, I didn't think about what I said before I said it:
"If you're going to keep walking away, why don't you just actually walk away? You're clearly unhappy. Why are you here?"
I knew it would get a response and it did. She turned around slowly with an odd smile on her face that I'd never seen before.
"You don't want me to walk away, Blake. I promise you that."
"What?" I was genuinely baffled. Her meaning was unmistakable - she was threatening me.
"Are you - Vanessa, are you threatening me?" I sputtered, anger rising up thicker and hotter inside me.
I watched her. She stood there for a few seconds with that weird, unsettling smile on her face and I actually saw her demeanor change, I saw the moment she changed tactics. She walked back to me and crawled into my lap, her body soft and welcoming now where seconds earlier it had been stiff with resentment.
"Blaaake..." she whispered in my ear and flicked her tongue over my earlobe, causing an almost instant erection as she ground her crotch down against me.
"Vanessa, no. Answer the quest-"
"Why Blake? I want to fuck."
She was using her high-pitched little girl voice, the one she uses on valets and delivery boys when she wanted a favor and doesn't want to do it herself. Something about that tone killed any arousal I'd been feeling and I gently pushed her off my lap.
"Vanessa, no. This - I can't do this right now, you can't just use sex to shut me up all the time."
Her discomfort was obvious. I could feel how little she wanted to be there, with me. I kept it hidden, though.
Something dawned on me that evening - something I had as yet not allowed myself to consider. I watched my wife disappear up the stairs and it hit me fully for the first time that she might not have married me for the reasons I thought she had.
I'd watched so many of my friends and colleagues fall for shallow, pretty trophy wives, completely convinced these women were in love with them - and not with their money or their fame. Had I gone and made the same mistake I'd congratulated myself on avoiding for thirty-four years? I sat at the table until the sun went down and left me in almost total darkness, lost in my own grim thoughts.
Chapter 5: Natasha
It was a couple of days before I finally found the time to have the dinner - and the gossip session - with Rosa that I'd been putting off. I had to tell someone about everything that was going on and there was no better person than my best friend. Loyal to a fault, Rosa was also an expert at keeping secrets - I trusted her implicitly and, given the nondisclosure agreement, she was really the only option when it came to spilling my news.
We splurged on a bottle of grocery store wine and Thai take-out. We had the apartment to ourselves that night and I watched her pour wine into a couple of mugs - there were no wineglasses in the house - and sat on the sofa almost bouncing with eagerness to get my news off my chest.
Rosa, dressed in sweats and with her light brown hair piled up on top of her head in what we liked to call our 'not-leaving-the-house-'do' handed me my mug of wine and sat back, grinning.
"Well, are you going to tell me? I can see you're dying to."
Tentatively, I went over the details of the surrogacy.
"I'm being paid a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to carry their baby. They won't be using my eggs, obviously, but even if it doesn't work, I still get paid. I'm not allowed to drink or smoke if I get pregnant. I, uh..."
"Oh my God, Nat, I know all this already. Are you going to tell me who it is or what?"
Well," I started nervously, sipping my wine, "it's someone very famous."
"I knew it! I knew there was a reason you were keeping everything on lockdown."
"And Rosa, I signed a legal agreement not to talk about it so this can't go beyond this room. To anyone. Ever. OK?"
Rosa made a face. "Nat - girl, come on - you know I can keep a secret. Even a big one."
I took a deep breath and another gulp of wine. "It's Blake Charlton."
Rosa's first reaction was to throw her head back and cackle with laughter. When she looked to me to acknowledge the joke and tell her who it really was, and I only responded with a smile, she went quiet for a few seconds.
"Nat. Oh my - Nat, are you joking?!"
I shook my head no and watched her eyes get wide.
"Holy shit, Natasha. Holy shit. Blake Charlton? BLAKE CHARLTON!?"
I nodded, suddenly a little shy as Rosa let my news sink in. Then I told her everything, both of us leaning in over our cheap coffee table, completely engrossed. When I finished, she refilled our mugs and sank back into her chair, shaking her head with disbelief.
"I seriously can't believe this Nat. Blake Charlton. Damn, girl. Too bad you can't conceive it the old-fashioned way."
She peppered me with questions about Blake - I was not the only one with memories of his face adorning my walls and my high school locker, but eventually she seemed to accept the news and share my happiness at the fact that I would soon be out of debt. I didn't tell her at the time but I intended to give her some of the money, too - she was in exactly the same post-graduation-but-not-yet-employed poverty trap as I was.
"So..." Rosa started after we'd almost finished the wine, "this is a legal agreement? A business agreement?"
I nodded, conscious of a sudden skepticism in her tone. "Why?"
"I dunno, Nat. You've been mooning around here like you're in love. In fact I was pretty sure that was what you were going to tell me - that you had fallen in love with the mysterious man - or, something like that."
Heat rose up in my cheeks at Rosa's comments. She immediately read my expression, in spite of my efforts to keep it neutral.
"Oh my God, Nat. Nat, don't tell me you're in love with him. Are you having an affair with Blake Charlton?"
I tried to shut her down as quickly as possible: "No, no affair. Nothing like that. I mean, he's sexy as hell, and he seems so interesting and he's sweeter than I thought he would be and...I don't know, in some ways he seems sad but-"
"Oh my God! You ARE in love with him!"
So I decided to just be honest with my best friend and tell her the emotional truth behind the other truths I'd just revealed.
"No, Rosa. Please don't make fun of me. I'm not in love with him. I just - I don't know, I'm attracted to him and not just for the reasons you think."
"Oh?"
Rosa sounded understandably skeptical.
"He seems surprisingly human. It's hard for me to explain this, I've never known any famous people. Maybe I am just impressed because he's famous but it doesn't feel like that. He seems lonely in a way."
Rosa rolled her eyes.
"Nat, are you kidding? He seems lonely? Are you completely sure this has nothing to do with the fact that he's hot as hell?"
I stopped and thought about what she'd said. I couldn't deny the fact that Blake's hotness was definitely part of my reaction to him. But I've been around hot men before - although none as hot as Blake - and I've always gone for the ones I had a connection with. I can appreciate a good-looking jerk as much as the next woman but honestly, hotness alone has never been enough to truly inspire my interest.
"Rosa, can you just listen to what I'm saying? I know he's sexy. But I'm not lying and you've known me long enough to know it's not my thing to go for looks and nothing else."
She considered what I'd said.
"You're right, Nat. I just - I'm worried about you! This is a pretty unique situation and I don't want you to get in over your head - you don't really know this guy and you don't know anything about the world he lives in."
"Don't worry, I won't be stupid."
I could see her mind was going a mile a minute.
"Actually, Nat, for real - if this didn't involve so much money, I would be telling you to run in the other direction right now."
"Really?" I asked, not expecting her sudden seriousness. "Why?"
Lisa waved her hand in front of her face in a 'don't be ridiculous' gesture. "Natasha, do you have any idea how rich people are? Especially rich, famous people who can buy whatever they want? You would get absolutely destroyed."
"Destroyed by what?"
"By having an affair with a rich, married man who, no offense, can literally have anyone he wants. You are aware of Blake Charlton's history, aren't you? Be honest, is that the kind of person you think it's a good idea to fall in love with?"
I sat back, stung by my best friend's comments but grudgingly aware that she was right. What exactly had I been thinking? Days of denial - of telling myself it was nothing more than a dumb crush - sank down around me as I realized that I had, stupidly, been hoping for something more with Blake.
"I'm such an idiot," I said, looking at Lisa and shaking my head at myself.
"Nah, you're not an idiot. I would have done exactly the same thing - what woman wouldn't? But you have to be smart, Nat. Thinking he's hot is one thing. Actually hoping for something more than a legal agreement is quite another. You're still good, right now. Just fulfill your end of it and be done with him. You're lucky I could talk some damned sense into you before you did something really stupid."
Rosa was smiling but I knew her last sentence was only a half-joke.
We sat in our shabby living room and let everything sink in. Rosa was so right, what had I been thinking? Even if Blake Charlton was attracted to me, even if he did want to sleep with me - I was no longer a sixteen-year-old standing at a safe distance from the object of her affection. I tried casual sex once, with a hot football player during my sophomore year, full as I was with the bravado of youth. Sure enough that one night had been enough to have me checking my phone obsessively for the next couple of weeks until it finally dawned on me that it was just going to be the one time and that he really had only been interested in sex. It hurt - I remember being taken aback by how much it hurt and baffled by how all those other girls around me seemed to be able to maintain their sex lives with a degree of emotional remove that proved impossible for me.
"Fuck Blake Charlton," Rosa said, made bold by wine and sisterly affection, "and by that I mean - don't fuck Blake Charlton."
We both laughed but she could see I was having a bit of a personal crisis over just how close I'd come to doing something very, very silly.
"Nat - hey, listen, no harm done, right? No need to feel guilty or bad because nothing happened - everyone is emotional, we all get ahead of ourselves - the test is whether or not you can do what you know is right, and I know you can."
I patted the spot beside me on the sofa and she came over and sat down, putting an arm around me and leaning her head on my shoulder.
"You know I'm here for you, right? If this goes ahead and you get pregnant, I'm here. You have so many friends who love you. I'll hold your hair back when you puke, I'll get you Cheetos from the gas station at 4 a.m. - hell, I'll even try and get over my phobia of blood and mop your brow in the delivery room if you need me."
My eyes filled with grateful tears and I could barely get the words out as I looked up at Rosa and whispered, "Thank you" through my sniffling.
"It's not a thing, Nat. I know you would do exactly the same for me."
She was right about that, too - I would do the same for her.
We spent the rest of the night finishing off our take-out and talking - about Blake Charlton and our arrangement but about a lot of other things, too. By the time I went to bed I didn't feel that bad anymore. I might have acted or felt like a sixteen year old sometimes but I wasn't sixteen anymore. My priority was my career and my friendships, not men. Especially not world famous actors who, while sweet and seemingly kind and possessed of incredibly masculine forearms, didn't have my back like my friends did. I went to bed resolved to be cool with Blake the next time I spoke to him. No more sushi on the beach, no shared car rides, and no meaningful glances over personal conversations. It was business now. Business and nothing more.
I woke up the next morning to a grim-faced Rosa sitting on the side of my bed. As soon as I saw the look on her face I sat up straight, convinced something terrible had happened. It had, but not in a way I could have guessed, and not in a way I would realize the cost of until much later.
"Rosa? What's going on?"
"Come have some breakfast," she said, rubbing my shoulder, "There's something I think you should see."
So I got up, confused, and went to the kitchen where a hot mug of coffee was waiting for me. I sat down and Rosa pushed her laptop in my direction. I looked down at it and it was as if I could feel the blood draining from my extremities.
The photos were blurry but they were very obviously me. And Blake Charlton. On the beach in Malibu and looking a lot chummier than I would have guessed we did that day. I looked up at my best friend.
"Oh, shit."
Chapter 6: Blake
Vanessa was aware of the fact that she'd screwed up by threatening me during our argument. The next few days saw her on her best behavior - so good, in fact, that in spite of the image of her cruel, smiling face in my mind, I almost started to believe her. A little. Her recent lack of interest in our baby plans turned into gushing enthusiasm and she started the course of daily shots that would lead to the fertility center and, hopefully, the retrieval of a healthy bounty of eggs.
I still couldn't quite manage to get Natasha Ray off my mind, though - or the way she'd looked on the beach with her long, curly hair blowing around her face in the wind and the sunlight making her gorgeous, dark skin glow. The day after Vanessa had come storming downstairs with the tabloid photos I called our surrogate, lying easily to myself that it was about practical matters and nothing more.
When she picked up I could hear the coolness even in her first word: "Hello?" - and it gave me an odd sinking feeling.
"Natasha. How are you? I'm just calling about the - uh, the photos - have you seen them?"
She told me she had seen them. I wanted her to stop using that businesslike tone but there was no way to ask her without looking like a fool, so I didn't.
"Listen, Lisa - my publicist - has spent all morning on the phone with her contacts at the tabloids and the magazines. We're issuing a statement denying anything romantic. I know this is probably really weird for you but it'll be fine. If anyone tries to contact you I can give you Lisa's number to forward them to, if that's OK?"
"Sure, yes, that's fine."
She was being so short with me. Not rude, or angry, just...uninterested? I'm not used to women being uninterested in me and I didn't quite know how to handle it. I probably should have ended the call there but I pressed on, wanting to talk to her longer, to ask her about her day and her plans. In fact I was in the process of doing just that when she cut in to my blathering.
"Blake, I don't want to be rude, but I'm in the middle of something. You can text me when there's more information on dates and timing, is that OK?"
I was definitely getting the brush-off. Perhaps it shouldn't have surprised me. I think one of the main reasons I was so inexplicably taken with Natasha Ray was the vibe of goodness she gave off - of family and solidity and all of those American ideals we make so much of and so rarely live up to. She didn't seem like all those girls at the clubs and the bars and the exclusive ski resorts of Europe, desperate for a piece of any man with a fat bank account or some measure of fame - or, ideally, both. I told her it was fine, that I would text her when the time for the (hop
eful) embryo transfer approached and hung up without incident. Then I spent the rest of the day in a funk I couldn't shake and eventually ended up back at the Ivy with Lisa - not because there was important business to discuss, but because I was antsy and looking for a distraction.
Lisa was her usual direct self.
"Are you fucking this girl, Blake?"
I laughed and shook my head.
"No. Believe it or not, everything is totally platonic."
"But you want to fuck her?"
"Jesus, Lisa, are you my publicist or my psychiatrist? I'm not fucking her. There aren't going to be any tabloid confessions or compromising photos, so calm down for one second, please."
Lisa actually looked slightly shocked at the revelation that I wasn't sleeping with Natasha, which offended me.
"I haven't slept with anyone since Vanessa - you know that, it's the truth."
Lisa shrugged. "Oh, I know, Blake. I just - well, it hasn't been long has it? I need to be prepared for any slip-ups."
'Slip-ups.' Lisa was the same age as me but she always managed to talk to me as if I was an adorable but impulsive toddler. I was annoyed at that point and I didn't bother trying to hide it.
"Lisa, this is my first marriage. I'm not sure it's entirely fair of you to be judging how I'll be as a husband to how I was as a boyfriend - or a single man."
She gave me another shrug and held her hands up in a casual, conciliatory gesture.
"No need to get upset - I'm just covering my bases - which is why you hired me, if I remember correctly."
I took the reprimand.
"I'm sorry - I'm in a bad mood today. Do they still have that raspberry sorbet on the menu? If that doesn't cheer me up I'm going to have to hike all the way up Runyon Canyon and I really don't want to do that."
