by Lisa Ferrari
Nathan Wellington texts me from New York. He says hi and asks if I want to come to Manhattan. I haven’t heard from him for some time.
“It seems Hamburger Wellington is trying to get into your pants again,” Kellan says.
“You think so?”
“Claire, please. Don’t ignore him this time.”
“Why not?” Ignoring Nathan’s texts was what I did last time and it seemed to work.
“Because it will embolden him. He needs to know.”
I know Kellan is right. As always.
I text Nathan back, saying I’m fine but I don’t wish to do business with him. I wish him well and thank him for his time.
Chapter 22
TIME PASSES.
Kellan and I continue to train, eat, train, sleep, train, and make love, enjoying our new home, (and doing our best to put the vandalism and infuriating B&E out of our minds).
Sheila invites us to a Saint Patrick’s Day party, so we go. She rents out a big room at an event center in Beverly Hills. It’s gorgeous. Everyone is wearing green, of course, and we have the best time.
It’s a stark contrast to the Saint Patrick’s Day party I attended in the pee-pee coat hanging in my closet in my apartment back home.
The notion of home is a misnomer because where do I live? I have had three homes in the past year: the apartment, Kellan’s house in Los Gatos, and our place here in Hollywood.
Interestingly, I don’t feel connected to a place so much as to a person: Kellan. I feel at home when I’m with him. I don’t really care where we are physically or geographically.
Kellan and I take several more trips to Venice to train at Gold’s, and I really start to love Venice. We talk about moving there perhaps.
On the weekends, we sightsee, heading down to South Bay to Manhattan Beach (we stop at the one and only Round Table Pizza I’ve seen in L.A. and we split a small pizza; OMG it’s heaven!), Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach (back to the El Torito right on the pier! I’m so happy!), then down to Long Beach (we plan to come back and tour the Queen Mary one day, as it’s purported to be haunted), then Orange County, checking out Laguna Beach, Newport Beach, Huntington Beach, all the historic beach towns that made California surf culture famous in the 1950s and 60s.
It’s so much fun driving around these cities I’ve never experienced before. Sometimes we take the Range Rover, sometimes we take the Mr. Beaumont (and people go friggin ape-crotch every time), and sometimes we take my Solstice and I drive. Kellan wants me to drive as much as possible so I get to know the geography, the freeways, et cetera.
My library is now bigger and better than ever. People are still sending books, God bless their hearts. For duplicated books, I sign them and auction them on eBay and donate the money to the orphanage Kellan works with each year at the race track. I wind up raising almost $20,000. It feels good.
One Monday afternoon in early April, while Kellan is doing Skype sessions with clients, I take my Solstice to get some groceries and to meet Sheila for lunch at a chic place in Sunset Plaza, a Mediterranean place. We both have a freakishly-delicious halumi salad, which she says is an Israeli dish, with fried cubes of scrumptious salty cheese.
We have a terrific lunch. She tells me Heather and her team are busting their asses getting all the roles cast. And she and Rami and Aaron are pretty much living at the office. They’ve had three beds brought in and have literally been sleeping there. She says we’re going to have a table read next week with all the principals and above-the-line people to go through the entire script. She says everyone loved my video in which I discussed my books being torn up and now people are wearing and selling tee shirts with 10/90 on them to signify what I said.
On my way home, I stop at Trader Joe’s to grab some stuff for dinner, and to stock up on a few of our favorite items (especially the sugar-free chocolate bars with almonds that are on the very very bottom shelves right next to the checkout lanes, where no one ever sees them!).
Once I’m back in the car, heading north up La Brea, some jerkweed in a black SUV drives up behind me, tailgating me. I glance continuously in my mirror, hoping he doesn’t rear-end me.
The driver waves a pair of blue-and-black panties out the window.
My panties.
It’s him!
The sick fuck who was in our house!
He’s wearing a black baseball cap and black sunglasses and has a skull bandana tied around his face.
I play it cool and grab my phone and call Kellan.
He gets pissed and immediately calls 911 on his other phone while he keeps me on the line.
I am forced to stop at a red light. The fucker rear-ends me, slamming my head back against my headrest.
He backs up, whips around, and pulls up on my right and points a gun out the window at me.
I floor it.
I run the red light, shoot between cars, and take off. Somehow I don’t die.
He follows me!
I haul ass down Sunset, turn on Robertson, and go down the hill.
He’s on my ass.
I drive fast, hoping he doesn’t shoot me.
My phone is on the seat. I’m using both hands to drive. With the top down, I can’t hear Kellan on the phone. I wonder if he can hear me. Or if it’s just wind noise and screeching tires, which is what I hear.
I reach out and grab my phone off the seat. “He has a gun!”
I don’t know if Kellan is still on the line, if he can hear me.
I don’t want to die today.
I remember some of the driving techniques Kellan taught me on the race track at Sears Point.
I take a hard right at the last minute and the guy in the SUV misses it. I drive a block, take another right, make my way back to Sunset, and haul ass home.
I wait frantically as the big privacy gate closes behind me. It seems agonizingly slow.
There’s no sign of the SUV coming up the little winding street on which our house is located.
Kellan comes running out of the front door and grabs me, terrified.
A few minutes later, the cops arrive. Several patrol cars and the same detective who was here after the breaking and entering and vandalism.
Kellan goes to my car and roots around under the dashboard. He retrieves and SD card. He explains that he had cameras installed in the car, one in the rear-view mirror facing front and one above the license plate, facing backward.
Uh, what? He could have at least informed me.
Claire, not now.
We go inside with the detective and put the SD card in Kellan’s computer.
It shows the whole thing, even the gun and the guy’s license plate, which turns out to be a plate registered to someone else.
Fucker.
The video also shows the whole car chase, from the front and the back, including the SUV rear-ending me, tires screeching, horns honking, cars crashing into each other, white smoke filling the frame.
“Jesus Christ, it’s like a movie,” says one of the cops. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“The girl can certainly drive,” says the detective.
“Are you going to press charges against me?” I ask.
“I’ll have to talk to the Chief and the D.A., but I doubt it.”
Kellan copies the footage to a USB drive and gives it to the detective.
We begin discussing having a bodyguard escort us whenever we go out.
“Can’t you find the vehicle with the fake plates?”
“No,” says the detective, “there are just too many SUVs that match that description. A couple hundred thousand of them just in L.A. There’s no way. We’ll put out an APB for him. We might get lucky. Maybe somebody saw him changing the license plate. A neighbor, perhaps. We’ll see.”
We hear honking and shouting out front.
News vehicles have arrived, vans with big antennas and satellite dishes on top.
“Press is here,” says one o
f the cops.
“Oh, joy,” says the detective.
It seems people have already uploaded almost a hundred clips of various parts of the car chase that they witnessed, including the part with me actually getting air in my Solstice. It’s actually been looped in slow motion on multiple IG accounts.
“Look at it this way,” says Kellan, “Jeremee will start getting calls from producers wanting you to star in their car chase movies. Fast Eleven, maybe.”
“Great.”
“Don’t worry,” Kellan says, “we’ll hire a P.I. to find this guy.”
“So, it’s not over?”
“Don’t worry.”
“How can I not? Every time I go out, I’m going to have a bodyguard? That’s ridiculous. And… what if…” I can scarcely bring myself to say it. “What if something happens to you? I can’t do this on my own. I can’t afford this house. I can’t be in the movie by myself. I don’t want to do this without you. I won’t be able to. I’ll be back at work, carrying trays. And everyone will look at me funny and talk about me behind my back. I’ll have to move to Minnesota. Or Alaska. Everywhere I go, people will say, ‘Oh, look, there’s that Claire girl who was supposed to be in that really big movie. Boy, she got fat again.’ ”
Kellan takes me in his arms.
“Sshhh…”
The detective and the cops are all silent.
“I won’t have the strength to visit your grave,” I say. The image of a cemetery full of green grass and row after row of ominous grey headstones invades my mind, with me sitting on the grass in front of Kellan’s headstone, with his name and the years of his birth and death chiseled into it. I’d probably go there to slit my wrists or drink Drano or something.
The idea is too much.
I can’t prevent the tears from coming, and I begin to sob, my whole body shaking at the thought of Kellan dead.
Kellan leads me into the bedroom and closes the door.
He sits me on the bed and kneels before me.
He wipes my tears.
“Claire. Calm down.”
This makes it worse. For some reason, his telling me to calm down makes me want to cry harder.
And then I do.
The sobbing really picks up steam.
It’s the stress of the past few hours, the past few months, the vandalism, of seeing my books destroyed, of moving to a new city, of being shit on by my family who gave me no support whatsoever. I’ve pushed and pushed and pushed it down and out of my mind.
Now it’s pushing it back.
Hard.
It comes out hot and wet like lava out of a volcano.
I can’t stop it.
I grab fistfuls of the front of Kellan’s shirt and pull him to me, desperate to keep him close, to never let him go, to never lose him.
Kellan looks down at me. He’s never seen me like this. I don’t immediately recall how many times I’ve cried in front of him, but it’s never been like this.
I don’t know if I’ve ever cried like this.
Ever.
But I guess having a gun drawn on you for the first time and being in a high-speed chase through the streets of L.A. will do that.
I cry and I cry.
Part of me feels stupid for losing control and insists I stop whining like this.
But the greater part of me has already lost it.
Plus, that asshole still has my panties. He flaunted them at me.
This makes everything even worse. I cry harder.
Kellan puts his arms around me and holds me tight.
KELLAN HOLDS ME until I cry myself out.
My body calms, the hitching inhalations of breath subside, the tears stop flowing. I pull back and there are tears and snot all over the front of Kellan’s shirt.
“I ruined your shirt.”
“It’s fine.” He takes off his shirt and lets it fall to the floor.
I place my hands on his bare chest. His skin is so warm. God, I love him so. I want him terribly. I’ve never known fear to translate to libidinous, powerful, lustful intent, but it’s happening to me now.
I undo Kellan’s belt and unbutton his jeans, pushing them down to his hips.
He’s gaping at me in disbelief.
I lean forward and kiss him. My eyes and cheeks and lips are wet with tears. I taste them on Kellan’s mouth.
I reach into his boxers and begin furiously stroking him.
He’s still gaping at me.
Suddenly I want him in my mouth. “Stand up.”
“Claire…”
I look up at him. Something in my gaze communicates to him how I feel in this moment, how much I love him, how unnerved and frightened I am, how I need reassurance, and how much I need to bond with him through sexual contact.
Kellan stands and I attack him with my mouth. I take the entire length of him in my mouth, wetting the shaft. I hear Kellan’s intake of breath, his surprise at my technique, my fervor. I slide my hand up and down his shaft along with my mouth, keeping him slippery, and sucking the head as hard as I can each time I reach the tip.
I sense his reticence. He’s concerned about the small group of people standing in our living room.
“They can wait,” I say.
Kellan nods. Yes, he understands that I need this, I need to feel him close to me.
“Come in my mouth,” I whisper, and resume pleasuring him.
I pull my skirt up with my other hand and slip my fingers inside my bright pink g-string I put on this morning for Kellan, hoping he’d see it at some point today.
This wasn’t entirely what I’d had in mind.
I furiously work my clit. I don’t know how long he needs, but I want us to come together.
“Oh, God, Claire,” Kellan whispers. Both of his hands caress the back of my head. He quickly removes them. “Oh, sorry, I forgot.”
I pause and look up at him. It’s sweet that he doesn’t want me to feel as if he’s forcing me in any way. The last guy I dated, about a year before I met Kellan, always pushed on the back of my head, trying to get me to deepthroat him. It wasn’t terribly difficult given the size of his manhood. One evening after gorging ourselves on Taco Bell prior to his World of Warcraft raid, he pushed on the back of my head while I was fellating him in his bedroom. I choked, gagged, gagged again, and vomited my 7-Layer Burrito and extra-large diet soda all over his crotch. I recall seeing little bits of green onion in his wiry pubic hair.
After I’d been sick on him, he stood from the edge of his bed, waddled over to his computer with his pants around his ankles, put on his headphones, and joined the raid.
We didn’t speak. I let myself out. We never spoke again.
Kellan laughed but was appropriately horrified the night I told him this tale of oral sex gone awry.
Since then, he’s always been very gentle whenever he touches my head or my hair while I’m going down on him. It’s very sweet and makes me love him even more. But I also wouldn’t mind if he got a little rough sometimes and maybe, if we were both feeling it, he could sort of fuck my mouth the way he does my vagina. I’ve never done that before. It seems kinda hot.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I like it when you do it.” I squeeze and pump his erection. It’s huge. I marvel at how this thing fits inside me. Looking at his penis, his beautiful erect penis, so long and hard, turns up the heat on my longing, and I want him to give it to me rough. This is one of those times when I’m feeling it. I hope Kellan is, too. “Fuck my mouth.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretend it’s my pussy.”
I’m not sure if I’ve ever uttered the word ‘pussy’ before, and certainly not in a sexual context. I’ve always found the word to be vulgar or distasteful or untoward in some way (it’s not as bad as the C-word, but still…). But it certainly rolled off my tongue just now in this heated moment. Perhaps it was having the gun pointed at me. Or maybe it was the high-speed chase during which I pretty
much thought I was going to die. The fear that arises when coming face to face with the possibility that your body could be injured or killed seems to put you solidly in your body, making you attune to its functions and needs. Sexual gratification being one such need. Apparently.
Before either of us can overthink this (as is my wont with pretty much everything in my life), I take Kellan’s erection in my mouth and grab his hips with both hands and push them away and pull them back, causing him to thrust into and out of my mouth rapidly. I take one of his hands and put it on the back of my head, guiding him.
Kellan moves slowly in and out of my mouth.
I move his hips faster. But his body is so big and heavy, I’m not really strong enough.
I reach around with both hands and squeeze his buttocks tight. I love his ass. It’s the nicest ass I’ve ever seen on a man. I squeeze and knead, knowing this will turn him on.
Kellan moans in response and thrusts a bit faster and a bit deeper, emboldened. It’s so sweet that he doesn’t want to be too rough, that he doesn’t want to hurt me or disrespect me. Or make me puke all over him.
But I know that is not going to happen. He fits in my mouth in a way no one ever has before. I haven’t exactly given oral to that many guys in my life, but I’m able to accommodate Kellan. Again, how, exactly, I don’t really know.
I pull on his ass each time he pushes into my mouth, encouraging him to go faster and deeper, the way he does when we’re making love.
He’s moaning steadily now as he thrusts into my mouth. He’s getting into it, his body taking over. His erection flexes several times in my mouth. God, I love it. It’s a part of him, a living extension of him, so hot and hard yet simultaneously soft in my mouth.
I reach into my g-string and I’m soaked.
Being chased at gun point, chased through traffic, and fucked in the mouth agrees with me – the dark, fearful, self-loathing part of me that’s probably best left alone.
I wet my finger thoroughly with my own slippery juices and then ease it into Kellan’s anus.
He gasps. “Oh, Claire…”
I slide my finger in and out of him while I work my clit furiously with my other hand.
Kellan picks up the rhythm. He grabs fistfuls of my hair. It hurts a little, but it’s a good kind of hurt, like when he bites my neck or sucks really hard on my nipples.
