by Robin Leaf
“The question is will she see me?”
“Well, she’s not at home yet. She took her grandmother to the movies. It’s supposed to be over in about,” he glanced at his watch, “15 minutes.”
“I have a plan, sir. Will you help me execute it?”
Officer Taylor smiled, and when he did, Riley marveled at how much Vanessa really did look like her father. “Just tell me what you need me to do.”
TWENTY SIX
“Dad?” Vanessa called when she opened the front door, catching Jesse’s front paws as he jumped at her, excited at her arrival. “We’re home.” She stopped short in the living room.
“That’s a good way to get run over,” Gram said. “What in the hell’s going on in here? Do you think your dad is trying to get lucky?”
Both women scanned the room while Riley watched from the shadow in the hallway. Riley focused on Vanessa’s face and had to fight the urge to run to her. He saw her take in the room full of flowers. Candles danced their light around the room. A small table had been set up in the center. Two place settings awaited service of her favorite meal from the local Mexican restaurant. She looked at the ice bucket to the left that chilled two Dr Peppers and a pint of Bluebell Homemade Vanilla ice cream.
“Daddy,” Vanessa called. “What did you do?”
“He didn’t,” Riley said, stepping out of the shadow. “I did.”
Vanessa closed her eyes and took about three deep breaths.
“Damn, Nessie, who’s the hunk?” Gram, all of five-foot nothing, walked right up to Riley. “I’m Vanessa’s grandmother,” she said, taking his arm. “But you can call me Gram. Everyone else does, even the ones at Bunko. You know, some of those bitties are older than I am and they still call me that? Probably think it’s my name or something. Gosh, some of ‘em are so stupid. If my mind wasn’t going, I’d give ‘em a piece of it.” She tapped her temple. “But from what they tell me, I ain’t got much to spare. I gotta keep all I can.”
“Gram!” Vanessa tried.
“I’m not too dim to see that you’re a catch. Whuddya want with my Nessie? You wanna get in her pants? ‘Cause if I were her, I’d let you.”
Vanessa gasped. “GRAM!” She walked toward her grandmother and gently guided her toward the hallway. “Remember, you said you wanted to watch your trashy show?”
“Oh yeah, that’s where I’ve seen you.” She brushed past Vanessa and stood next to Riley. “You were with my Nessie in that picture they flashed on TV the other night. You’re the one my son was so upset about.”
“Yes,” Riley conceded. “That would be me.”
Gram squinted her eyes at Riley, as if to read his face. “So, I’m betting you already got in her pants and you want some more. Hey, don’t let me stop you.”
Gram grabbed Jesse’s collar and started down the hall, but she turned back to Riley. “Hey, weren’t you in that movie with all those boys taking off their clothes, shakin’ your goodies?”
Riley laughed. “No, ma’am. That was…”
“Yeah, I think it was you.” She walked around the back of Riley, surveying his body. “Well, maybe not. I’d never forget a butt like that.”
Vanessa covered her face with her hands. “Oh my God, GRAM! ENOUGH!”
Gram turned to face Vanessa. “Jeez, that could have been awkward. We would’ve both seen your Honey’s naked tushy.” Vanessa groaned. “You go ahead, Nessie. He’s too studly to pass up.” Riley jumped and let out a laugh when she patted Riley’s butt and waddled down the hallway, following Jesse, shut her door after his tail cleared the doorway.
Riley watched Vanessa watch her grandmother disappear into her room. He became a little impatient when she didn’t turn to face him or even look at him. He stepped gingerly toward her and reached out to grab her hand.
“No,” she stepped away and held her hand up.
“No?” He blinked, thinking he misheard her.
“Don’t. And don’t speak. I appreciate that you came all this way, but I just can’t. Please just go.”
“Really?” He waited again, hoping she would say something else. He decided he’d try lightening the tension and try to get her to smile. “I was just sexually harassed and molested by your grandmother. You kinda owe me at least eye contact.”
She didn’t answer. He waited, but she didn’t even move.
“You’re serious?” Riley could feel his emotions rising to the surface, just not the ones he expected to feel tonight. “This is how you are going to play this, Vanessa?” He grabbed her arm and spun her around to face him. He almost backed down when he saw the surprised, almost fearful expression on her face, then he thought of how they ended up here, and he got angrier. “You are going to hear me out, Vanessa Lynn Taylor.” He let her go and began pacing. “Now you’ve really pissed me off. I tried all these lame romantic gestures,” he motioned toward the table, “but I see they did no good. Why? Because you are so friggin’ stubborn. You will believe what you want to believe. But know this: I have given you NO reason to think the worst of me. Charles, who I fired right before I punched him in the nose when we figured out what he said to you, does not speak for me. You didn’t even give me a chance. You didn’t wait for me to tell you that he was totally wrong. You didn’t ask. No. You just left. So I guess I just came to tell you that you broke our deal. The one where we PROMISED to never believe the worst of each other again.”
“You really didn’t expect me to…”
“I didn’t expect for you to tell me to leave!” he screamed. Then his pacing started. “It doesn’t matter how perfect we are together, does it?” He paused briefly to look at her, surprised that she showed no emotion. “It doesn’t matter that we fit, that we are comfortable.” He stopped and grabbed her chin, forcing her to look up at him. He softened his features and continued. “It doesn’t matter that I think about you every second of the day, or that I can’t sleep or eat.” He released her chin and grabbed both hands. “It doesn’t matter how amazing I think you are. All the other times I told you what you meant to me, it didn’t matter, so why should it now?” He dropped her hands and continued pacing. ”No. YOU get to be selfish! YOU get to run away. To hell with MY feelings! To hell with ME!” He jammed his thumb in his chest. “Look around, Vanessa. Does THIS look like the workings of a man who doesn’t give a FUCK about you?” He waved his arms around the room. “Granted, I had help with the details, but if I truly didn’t care, I wouldn’t be here at all. I would have let you walk away forever, even though I KNOW you are in love with me.” He threw up his hands and lowered his voice. “But no. I had to have some harebrained scheme to come here to convince you that I love you, too.” He focused on her face. Her hand covered her mouth and her eyes widened and eyebrows raised.
“Oh. My. God.” Vanessa breathed.
“What? You can’t be shocked by that information.”
“Melvin Riley Tate. You cursed. Your momma would be so pissed.”
He looked at her disbelievingly. He looked around the room at the ridiculous attempt he had made to woo her. He looked back at her face, and it deflated his anger. “I sincerely hope that’s not all you heard.” He saw a change in her expression, but she quickly covered her face with her hands. When she turned away from him, he added, “Do you really not have any faith in me?” She didn’t answer. “Well then, I see this was a really bad idea.” He took a step and reached out for her but dropped his hand quickly. If he saw that she was crying, it would kill him. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly like she had done countless times before.
“You might want to have a talk with your dad,” he said finally. “Oh, yeah. By the way, I met him, and you know what? The world didn’t end. And he seems to believe that I love you. And it took less than ten minutes to convince him.” He swallowed. “Talk to him. You two have a lot to discuss.” He paused, reached into his pocket and pulled out a couple of folded up pieces of paper. “Here, I think it’s time you had my number. Please make sure you
look at it.” He walked over and dropped the paper on the table, then headed toward the door and opened it. “You know, you didn’t tell me goodbye when you left, so I’m not going to say it, either. Vanessa, when you allow yourself to believe what I just said, you can come find me.” He looked back at her one last time. “I really hope to hear from you soon.” He took two steps, then paused and ran his hands over his face in exasperation. “Please, God, just believe that I love you.” He walked out and gently closed the door.
He walked toward where he parked the car behind the house, and found Emily, Darby and Officer Taylor sitting on the back porch.
“Come on. We’re going home.”
Darby stood and walked toward the car. “Without Vanessa?”
Riley opened the car door. “Yes.”
“I think I should stay here to talk to Vanessa,” Emily said.
“If you want to stay, fine. But please don’t try to convince her of anything.”
“But you said that…”
“I know what I said, but it’s not going to work right now. She will resist anything you have to say. Anyway, I don’t want to have to convince her that I love her. Either she has faith in me,” he started the car, “or she doesn’t. She has to figure it out on her own.”
“I don’t know, Riley. She’s pretty stubborn,” Emily said skeptically as she climbed into the back seat. “Are you sure you want to leave?”
“I think he knows my daughter better than I thought,” Robert Taylor added, obviously impressed.
“Just so you know, Mr. Taylor, I told her you had some things to tell her. Please tell her what you told me about you and her mom. I think it will help.”
Officer Taylor shook Riley’s hand, and Riley closed the car door and drove away.
***
Never had Riley been so glad to walk into his home. The real-life emotional roller coaster was bad enough, but reliving it for Darby and Emily was equally no fun. The explanation came with doubts that he handled things correctly and fear that he made a huge mistake. Then after almost three hours waiting in the Houston airport, two flight changes, getting recognized four times, one of which did not end well, and taking both Darby and Emily home, he was completely exhausted. At almost six in the morning, he walked straight to his room. He considered diving into bed, but something about airports and airplanes and the grime associated with both convinced him to shower quickly. He dried off, turned off his alarm and fell into bed without bothering to get dressed.
He’d hoped for restful sleep, but his hopes were dashed. He tossed and turned, dozing intermittently; the dreams were horrible, whether they were good or bad. If a dream was good, he’d wake up disappointed that it was a dream. If it was bad, he’d wake thinking it was real. Finally, he decided to take a shot of tequila, a trick he used in college when he had an exam the next day he worried about failing. But this time, he took a double shot to really get the job done. And then two more double shots. It worked like a charm. By seven, he finally passed out, unsure he ever wanted to wake up.
TWENTY SEVEN
Riley opened his eyes and looked at his bedside clock. 12:13 in the afternoon gave him five solid hours of sleep and a wicked headache, probably from the tequila. It had been a long while since he used the tequila trick, and he now remembered why he stopped using it. His flight for Miami left later today, and he still needed to pack, which is what he planned to do yesterday before he got sidetracked. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, trying to decide if he wanted to go back to sleep or go ahead and brave the day.
Crazy thing about braving the day is that if a person sees it that way, that’s how it becomes, a day to be braved. To brave the day means to suffer through it or endure it, but it can also mean to face it or to stand up to it. Perception of the word was key to how the next two weeks in the Caribbean would go. Riley’s perception had changed after his tequila-induced slumber. He was no longer going to endure or suffer through each day. This time, he was going to face the day with a positive attitude. No more Mr. Broody Pants, as Darby called him.
He was going to focus on the good things in his life. He was in great health. He had great friends. His job was kinda cool; he made enough money to create a pretty good-sized investment portfolio. And he could cling to the small hope that he didn’t completely screw things up with Vanessa. Plus, his shoot on the Caribbean island was scheduled to begin tomorrow. Repairs to the island didn’t take as long as planned, which he had learned at the production meeting on Sunday. Two weeks working would distract him enough to gain a little focus. He would try Vanessa in Texas again on his way home, but for now, he had packing to do. He just had to get out of bed. Positive thinking took a while to travel to the rest of his body.
On the plane ride home yesterday, he told Emily and Darby where he would be if Vanessa came looking for him, but he decided to write her a note in case she showed up while he was gone. He had to ignore the feeling that crept around his thoughts that Vanessa may never want to be with him. It was too soon to think that way. However, when he picked up his phone to see no missed calls or texts, the feeling hovered like an ominous cloud. Packing and reviewing the script was just what he needed to distract him. He just hoped it worked.
***
The climate change slapped Riley in the face once he stepped out of the tiny airport of the small Caribbean island off the coast of Florida. At almost midnight, the temp was still in the eighties.
The balmy mid-seventy-degree temps he left in L.A. were traded for a soupy, upper-ninety-degree mugginess. The next few days setting up scenes and shooting seemingly endless take after take, filming from different angles, was comforting. It was only during the down time that he thought of Vanessa. Still no texts or phone calls from her. Each day he didn’t hear from her made it difficult to hang on to the hope that he ever would see her again.
Since he had planned for her to come with him, he had a hard time not imagining what they would do together if she was here: walk along the beach, have picnics, lay by the pool, have sex. He both loved and loathed those fantasies, but loathing won out, so he decided to keep as busy as possible. When he wasn’t running lines with the other actors, he offered his help with everything from setting up to cleaning up.
Because of his helpfulness, he made friends with the crew members, and they offered to buy him a drink at the resort’s outside bar. The production company had rented the entire west side of the very large Pelican Resort for the crew and actors, and they could interact and move around without any interference from fans, curious onlookers, or paparazzi. The crew sat by the pool telling their favorite stories about other movie sets and embarrassing tales of other actors’ mishaps. Riley, grateful that they could lounge in privacy, laughed and kidded with them. He much preferred to be around these guys than the other actors, who all seemed to be a little full of themselves.
“So, Riley,” Joey, one of the camera guys, began over his third beer, “who’s this mystery girl the press is so obsessed with?”
Darby had informed Riley that the paps were snooping into Vanessa’s identity. She assured him they knew nothing, and another actor’s drug-induced swing at a cop diverted their attention.
He looked down into his bottle. “Can we talk about something else?”
“Wait,” Sandy, Joey’s wife and head makeup artist, leaned forward, “what is this all about? A week ago the buzz was that you two were head over heels for each other.”
“A week ago, we were.” He leaned back in his chair and told them most of the story. He didn’t tell them the circumstances surrounding their meeting other than Charles introduced them, and he protected her identity. However, he told them everything else: how they met, how she sustained her injuries, how she came to live with him, how connected he felt to her, how she freaked out, how Charles sabotaged things, how she bolted, how he found out what Charles had done, how her best friend told him about the step mother, and finally, how he flew to Texas with disappointing results. Blame it on the beer, but it k
inda felt good to get it off his chest to truly objective ears. When he was finished, the rest of the table sat speechless.
“Wow, I’m sorry I dumped all that on you guys,” he groaned, slightly mortified that he had admitted so much to almost complete strangers. His normal commitment to his privacy seemed to be out the window.
“She will come around, Riley,” Sandy said reassuringly. “You’re a great guy.”
“I wouldn’t have stopped at punching that jerk in the nose,” Gabe, the sound guy, added. “If you want, my cousin is connected.” He put his finger next to his nose indicating that his cousin had some questionable connections. “He can help you out with this Charles guy. No one would ever know what happened to this guy.”
Riley laughed. “Whoa, that’s a… hmmm, I’m not sure how to respond to that. I mean I did fire him, and I made him a lot of money that he will not be making anymore. Plus, I might still tell his wife. That’d hurt him way more than anything your cousin could do. But I can’t help thinking that if it weren’t for Charles, I wouldn’t have met her. I kinda can’t help owing him for that. Thanks for the offer, though.”
“So, what are you going to do, Riley?” Sandy asked.
“Wait, for now. I was thinking about stopping by on the way back home next week, but now, I just don’t know.”
“I’d get a lap dance,” Mike, some sort of technician, slurred. “It’ll make you feel better.”
“That’s your solution to everything,” Joey said. “He got a lap dance when his grandmother died.”
“And it made me feel better.” Everyone laughed.
After another thirty minutes of stories and laughter, Riley got up. “Thanks for the drinks, everyone. I have an early day tomorrow, and it’s a long one. Good night.” He walked away.
