by Imani King
"Don't you worry about Vanessa, I can handle her," Lisa told me with utter confidence.
We planned to move Natasha out of the city for awhile, maybe to my place in Colorado, to give everyone time to forget all about her. A carefully choreographed and tightly stage-managed break-up would then play out for the public, one that would leave all reputations intact as both sides issued proclamations of eternal respect and affection and 'growing apart'.
I wasn't unused to that kind of thing at all - the anodyne, meaningless quotes fed to the gossip press or the arranged trips to the market so the paps, who were to be called in advance, could catch the two of us looking sad and stoic, but it felt seedier that time for some reason. Perhaps it was just my own delayed growing-up process - the emergence of a man who had a problem with the dishonesty inherent in the whole charade? Or maybe it was just that it was going to mean Vanessa getting off scot-free, never having to pay the price for her betrayal and her lies about Natasha? I didn't know.
What I did know was that Natasha had to be informed of the plan and it was going to have to be by phone. I wanted to see her so badly. Even apart, she infused every second of my day, her sweet presence always in the background of my mind along with the memories of her soft ebony skin and her dimpled smile. She wasn't going to be happy about not being able to see me, I knew that much. Was she going to believe that I wanted to see her just as badly - probably more than she wanted to see me? I put the call off as long as I could and finally pulled over on the side of the road on the way to Three Palms that night to make it. When she picked up the sound of her voice alone was enough to have me smiling and longing for her.
"Hi Nat. How are you? I miss you."
There was a brief pause before she answered and I could hear the low-level irritation in her voice when she did.
"Blake. We're OK, I guess. I mean, I miss you, too. I'd be much better if you were here. Are you coming tonight?"
I took a deep, sighing breath and she immediately guessed what it meant:
"OK, you're not coming tonight. When are you coming? How long do we have to stay out here? I'm starting to feel a bit like a prisoner."
"I know, Nat. I know. I miss you so much honey. I miss you so much I'm calling you 'honey'." She laughed at that. "But I need to talk to you about all of this and you're probably not going to like it. I met with Lisa this morning and she said a lot of things that made sense and I just - will you please hear me out before you tell me you never want to see me again?"
She heard me out. When I was finished explaining and justifying and making the stupid little unfunny cracks I always make when I'm uncomfortable, it was her turn to take a deep breath. When she spoke, her voice was wobbly with tears but she kept herself together.
"Oh, Blake. I understand. I mean, my head understands, I know you're trying to protect me as well. But my heart - I just miss you so much. It's so weird, I'm lonelier now that I know you. Lonelier than I was before when I was officially single. How does that work?"
Her words tore at my heart and I actually had to swallow, hard, against a lump of emotion that rose up in my throat.
"I don't know, Nat, but I feel it too. Missing you isn't the same thing as simply being alone - it's worse. And, uh, Nat." Jesus, I was tripping over my words like a flustered kid - "I need you to understand that this is happening because I want to be with you. And I don't want you to be hurt anymore, I don't want any more stories or photos or bullshit in the press about you. I would happily blow up my career tomorrow if it meant you wouldn't be bothered again, but we have to play this game like Lisa says, or they're never going to leave us - or you, or your friends and family - alone."
"OK, Blake," she whispered, obviously still on the verge of tears. My heart swelled with the need to comfort her and I felt it turn into anger as I sat there helpless, miles away on the side of the road where I couldn't wrap my arms around her or kiss away all her doubts.
"Goddamnit!" I slammed my hand down on the top of the steering wheel. "I want to be there with you, Nat. More than anything, my sweet girl. Can we do this? Can we just do this right now, endure this for a little while until things cool down and the media loses its interest in you?"
The sound of soft crying came down the phone. "Yes, Blake. Yes I can do it. Just...please don't be lying to me. Please don't ask me to do this if it's going to be for nothing, or if you're going to forget-"
There was suddenly a new voice in my ear:
"Is this Blake Charlton?"
"Yes," I replied.
I could hear Nat in the background, protesting, and the new voice - I assumed it was Rosa - telling her she just needed five minutes. Footsteps, the sound of the glass door that leads to the balcony opening and then closing again.
"Blake?"
"Yes?" I said again, waiting for the lecture I knew was coming.
"What the fuck are you doing?"
"I'm sorry," I stalled, having heard her perfectly but unsure how to respond, "What?"
"What the fuck are you doing?" She repeated angrily, expecting an explanation.
"Do you want me to answer that?" I asked, aware I was talking to someone who had the same priority that I did - Nat's happiness.
"Yes I want you to answer that. What are you doing with Nat? Why are you keeping her out here like some kind of dirty secret and-"
I cut in, instantly riled.
"Dirty secret? Listen, Rosa, I get that you're pissed at me, I get that you're trying to protect your friend but believe it or not that's exactly what I'm trying to do, too. You've seen those fucking vultures outside your house - they're still there, waiting for Nat to show up so they can get in her face and take photos of her freaking out. Do you really think she should be there?"
Rosa heard me. When she spoke again, her voice was calmer, but I could tell she wasn't convinced - not in the larger sense, anyway.
"No. I don't think she should be there. But the reason for that is you. The paparazzi are there because of you, not her. You're playing with people's lives here. If you can't get work again because you're a scandal-prone idiot you'll be fine. If Nat can't get work again because she's fallen for a scandal-prone idiot, she's not going to be able to pay her rent or buy groceries or any of those things us regular people need to do in order to live."
When Rosa was finished, it hit me that I wasn't upset with her at all. She was harsh, but I didn't have a problem with harshness in defense of Natasha Ray. How could I get it through to her that my feelings for Nat were different - that this wasn't another short-term fling I was going to forget all about in the coming weeks?
"Can I tell you something?" I asked.
Rosa seemed a little taken aback by my politeness but she replied evenly:
"Sure, OK."
"Now, I don't want you saying anything to Nat about this, alright? I need to say this to her myself, in person. But just so you know, I love her."
There it was. Right out there in the open, spoken aloud, the truth that had been there staring me in the face. I waited for lightning bolts and thunderclaps but nothing happened, the world just kept going on in spite of the revelation from Hollywood's number one playboy that he loved someone - a specific someone. I kept going.
"I love her. The things you want for Nat - her happiness, her safety, her privacy - are the things I want for her as well. Me and you are on the same team. You don't have to believe this, but it's the truth. I'm not hiding her away because I'm ashamed of the relationship - that cat is out of the bag - I'm trying to protect her, because I know it takes years to be able to deal with paparazzi in your face and TV coverage of your personal life and she's not experienced enough to deal with it."
Rosa considered what I'd said for a few moments.
"Alright. You say you love Nat. That's good - you better love her if you're asking her to live like this until some unspecified point in the future. But know this, Blake Charlton. You're rich and you're famous, but you don't know me and you don't know Nat's family. If you fuck her over, yo
u're going to be sorry. I hope you're telling the truth, is all I'm saying."
I leaned my head back against the Mercedes' headrest, smiling and shaking my head. Natasha had some loyal friends. I spoke to her again before we hung up and promised to call the next day and then I drove the rest of the way to Three Palms in a much more relaxed state. Nat was going along with the plan. A few weeks, maybe a month or even two and we'd be home-free. Even the prospect of seeing Vanessa again couldn't put a damper on the day at that point.
The house was empty when I got there so I carried my bags into one of the spare rooms and unpacked the few basics I'd brought with me, fantasizing the whole time about that moment in the future when it would be Nat I was coming home to, not Vanessa. She didn't show up for another few hours, it was almost midnight when she walked in the front door and found me at the kitchen table reading work e-mails.
"Hi, Blaaake..."
I recognized that baby-voice at once and kept my eyes on the laptop screen, forcing the feelings of disgust back down.
"Hi Vanessa. How are you?"
Her soft footsteps crept across the slate floor tiles until she was next to me.
"I'm doing good, Blake. I missed you."
She was lying and it was painful. Just a few weeks. That's it. You can do this for a few weeks, it's nothing.
"Yeah, well, I suppose this doesn't have to be torture for either of us, does it? We can be civil-"
Her hand was on my cock before I'd even finished speaking. I looked down, taking note of the distinct lack of a reaction occurring down there. It was surreal. Just a few short months ago she could make me come like that, just touching me through my pants and now there was absolutely nothing, no surge of lust, no stiffening.
"Blake? What's wrong, baby? Are you OK?"
I couldn't believe she was actually doing what she was doing. What had Lisa said to her? She was supposed to have convinced Vanessa to live as roommates for a few weeks so we could both extricate ourselves from our ill-advised marriage with career prospects intact. Vanessa was much earlier in her career than I was and she had a lot to lose if she lost her edge in the PR war, which she most assuredly would if she kept going the way she had been, so her attempt to immediately seduce me wasn't what I'd been expecting.
"Vanessa, did you talk to Lisa?" I asked, trying to keep my tone as neutral as possible.
"Yeah. I spoke to her today, silly. Now come on, Blake, come to bed with me."
She pulled her shirt off over her head and started fiddling with her bra and it was as much as I could take. I got to my feet and awkwardly held her off when she tried to press her body up against mine.
"Vanessa, I'm not sure what Lisa told you, but this wasn't supposed to involve anything...sexual. This is just so we can get the media to leave us alone."
She twirled a lock of blonde hair around one of her fingers and looked up at me, shrugging.
"Whatever, Blake. I just thought we might as well have fun if we're going to be forced to live together for the next little while."
She grabbed her shirt off the table and headed up the stairs to the main bedroom while I stood there with my skin crawling, feeling guilty in spite of the fact that nothing had happened.
She kept it up for days, too, probably driven on by frustration at her inability to seduce me. If there's one thing I know about Vanessa it's that her ability to attract male attention is her trump card and she was probably stumped by my refusals. I was out on the deck one afternoon after talking to Natasha on the phone when Vanessa came skipping out in the skimpiest bikini I have ever seen and pushed her body between myself and the railing. It was just for a second - I stepped away as soon as I realized what she was doing. But a second is long enough to take a photo. And a photo is all it takes these days.
Chapter 15: Natasha
I flew to Colorado on a private plane with Rosa two days after agreeing to Blake's plan. He had insisted that I bring whoever I wanted, while also stressing that trust was of the utmost importance and that I should only invite people I knew wouldn't go to the press. So another close friend from L.A. was due in a few more days and I was even considering having my mother come out. I wouldn't say I have a bad relationship with my mom but she isn't the most forgiving person in the world and both times I'd spoken to her since the scandal had broken she'd been near-apoplectic with a weird combination of pride (my daughter is dating a movie star!) and judgment (my daughter is having sex with said movie star on the beach, in public!). Even after explaining everything, my face burning with embarrassment the whole time, I'm not sure she fully believed that Vanessa's story was entirely fiction.
Your mom is your mom, though. I knew she would judge me, I knew she would be full of crazy advice that I would be expected to follow, but when everything's going badly and you're in a scary situation, sometimes the only person you really want is your mother.
"Nat - oh my God."
It was Rosa - she was sitting in the backseat of one of the black SUVs that seem to breed in the garages of rich people and staring out the window. I followed her gaze and watched as a huge modern mansion came into view. Built on acres of carefully maintained treed land, it was set back from the road and constructed out of wood, stone and glass. It was so perfect it almost looked animated, like something out of a movie. When we got inside the impression continued. It didn't look like anyone had ever set foot in the place before, let alone sat on any of the pale cream sofas or started a fire in the huge stone fireplace that bisected a great room so big it could have been a gymnasium.
We spent over an hour checking the place out, wide-eyed and hopelessly impressed by every little detail. The kitchen was spectacular, as big as our entire apartment in L.A., all gleaming stainless steel and sleek, flat induction cooktops that looked like something out of a sci-fi movie.
"I am totally going to make cookies in here," Rosa said, pulling the cabinets open to reveal unopened box after unopened box of high-end cookware, "I am going to make so many cookies here, Nat."
I giggled at the image of me and Rosa spending our days baking cookies until we slowly lost our minds. Then my phone rang. Blake. I stepped out onto the patio that ran the length of the house so I could have some privacy - and so Rosa wouldn't see how excited I was to talk to him.
"Blake?"
"Natasha. Oh, I am so happy to hear your voice."
He sounded tired. He sounded like he needed my arms around him.
"Are you OK? You sound a little funny."
I heard him sigh on the other end.
"Yeah, I'm fine, Nat. I'm just missing the hell out of you and trying not to lose my shit with Vanessa."
I knew she was giving him a hard time, but he hadn't been very specific about it. I decided not to question him about it - if he wanted to talk about it, he would.
"I spoke to Lisa today - I'm being interviewed by People in a few days, that's going to be excellent, I'm sure."
"People? That's good, right? I mean, they're pretty big."
"Yeah, they're big. I just...Nat, I'm so sick of this. All I want to do is fly out there and be with you."
"I know, Blake," I whispered, aching with his absence, "me too."
Neither of us spoke for a few seconds - we didn't need to, because each of us knew exactly what the other was feeling.
"What do you think of the house, then? You know, I've never even been out there."
"What?!" I asked, laughing. "Blake, you buy houses you've never seen?"
"Vanessa wanted it - she wanted somewhere to stay when we went skiing."
"Oh." I said. The topic of Vanessa was almost unavoidable, even though just thinking her name was enough to have me almost nauseous with loathing. It wasn't all loyalty, either. She'd done her level best to ruin my life - a stranger, someone she didn't know, over a man she lied to and didn't love. "Is that why the kitchen is full of really expensive cookware still in the boxes?"
"Yeah, probably. Is it? Yeah, that must have been her doing. Feel free to use it if you
want. Hell, feel free to give it away, I don't need it."
We chatted for an hour, neither of us wanting to hang up, but he had meetings and an appointment with his trainer, which he needed to get to (the People story was also going to require a photoshoot) so I eventually ended the call and wandered back inside to find Rosa still in the kitchen, surrounded now by a pile of brand new cookbooks and flipping through them slowly. She held one up to me, waving it around excitedly:
"Modernist Cuisine! Nat, this is worth six hundred dollars and it hasn't even been cracked!"
"Yeah - Blake says this is all Vanessa's stuff - he said I can give it away if I want. So...if you want it, have it!"
Rosa looked skeptical. "Really?"
"Yeah, really, he said she won't remember she bought any of it anyway."
Rosa put the book back down on the stack. "We'll see. How was he? What's going on?"
I relayed all the news from L.A. to Rosa and then, when I was finished, realized I was thoroughly sick of talking about the press and the paparazzi and people's reputations.
"Hey Rosa?"
"Yeah?" She looked up at me from where she was sitting cross-legged on the floor, still poring over cookbooks.
"I think I actually do want to make cookies. Do you want to?"
"Well, there's no food in this place at all so we'd have to go shopping but that driver guy can take us, can't he?"
He could. Blake had him on twenty-four hour call. I nodded at Rosa.
"Well let's go then! I'm going coconut and macadamia. What about you?"
"Chocolate chip," I responded at once, desperate to fill Blake's huge, beautiful but eerily unlived-in house with some small sense of normalcy.
We left for the grocery store immediately and then baked into the evening, until the enormous sink in the kitchen was piled high with bowls and measuring cups and the scent of fresh, warm cookies had started to seep out of the kitchen and fill the great room. We didn't bother cleaning up, either, when we were both hit with a sudden sense of tiredness at about two in the morning and couldn't do much of anything but stumble to our bedrooms, so full of cookie dough we could hardly walk.
