by Whitley Gray
Okay, so the idea of going back to Philadelphia had crossed my mind a few times, but usually I could either bury that thought under a distraction, or Aaron gave me a damned good reason to forget.
I looked around, relaxed and feeling at home among his life. He’d insisted he wasn’t a clothes horse, but he did like nice things. I conceded that in the position he was currently in, he needed to look a certain way to impress certain people. I didn’t have to like it, but that wasn’t my job. My job involved overalls, greasy hands, and eating burgers out of the wrapper to keep from smearing grime on the buns.
I turned for the door and noticed a cardboard box on the floor hidden behind the cuffs of his suit pants. The same box he’d brought with him to the mountains.
At the time, I hadn’t peeked inside. Despite having sex with him nearly every hour on the hour, I never asked about it. I hadn’t given it a second thought while we were otherwise occupied. Besides, we didn’t know each other that well yet.
But since then, he’d flown me out to California. He’d almost bought me a car. We knew each other better. Surely I wasn’t a casual fling anymore. Maybe what we had could really go somewhere. Even the idea of something long-term with Aaron didn’t scare me so much as it gave me a warm feeling inside now that I knew a little more about who he really was.
I slid myself into the pullover and knelt by the door, taking a moment to listen for where Aaron might be. Finding me sneaking around his closet this early in the relationship might be awkward, but I’d readily admit to my curiosity. What could he feel he needed to hide?
I poked at the box. Whatever was in there wasn’t light. Maybe he’d taken his baseball card collection with him, fearing that in a fit of rage Gisele might toss them into the Pacific? Sure, that was it or something just as simple.
I raised the box lid and found myself looking at a prescription bottle of pills, a fifth of vodka, and a Glock 9 millimeter.
Chapter Sixteen
Though I was wearing his cashmere sweater, I walked out to the deck feeling colder than before. I’d hoped to play it cool, but apparently Aaron had learned how to read my emotions because as soon as he saw me, his relaxed smile crashed.
“What’s wrong?”
“Why did you bring a gun to my parents’ house?” The moment I said the words, my chest went achingly cold like I’d been stabbed with an icicle.
“Shit,” he hissed, looking away. “I forgot that was in the closet.”
The roar of the ocean was drowned out by the thunder of blood rushing through my ears. Even my brain didn’t want to utter a word, make a guess, or come up with an assumption as to what his reason might be. There had to be one. No one in their right mind walked around with a 9 mil in a shoebox.
“I have a license for it,” he finally said as he turned my way, still not meeting my eyes. “In case you’re wondering.”
“I assumed that. I’m sure you meet a lot of whack jobs when you least expect it. Like on lonely county roads miles from nowhere in a Volvo with a busted water pump.”
He walked over to the grill and shut off the flame before facing me again. “It wasn’t meant for you.”
“Obviously. I wouldn’t still be here if it were.” At the moment I wasn’t sure what I was still doing there either. “So that gives me an idea who it was actually meant for. And why.” My stomach threatened to revolt. I couldn’t believe this had nearly happened to me twice in one lifetime. As if fate thought I hadn’t been changed enough by my experience with Jeremy? Or was it waiting for me to take the damned gun into my own hands?
“It would’ve freaked you out if I’d told you about it then.”
“No! You think?” I yanked my arm away, meeting his gaze even though he couldn’t meet mine. “And the rest? The pills and the vodka?”
“In case I tried to back out. The vodka to help me relax and the pills in case I lost my nerve with the Glock.”
“Always good to have a backup plan, I guess.” I took a step back. “Why would you do that? If your life here is so perfect, why would you want to end it?”
“I never said it was perfect.” I saw a pain in his face so stark that I almost couldn’t bear it. It made me wonder how close his pain was to my own. Under any other circumstances, his confession might’ve made me feel closer to him, but after Jeremy, it made me need to distance myself. Dammit, maybe Mom was right. Maybe hoping for a happy ending was like chasing the gold at the end of the rainbow.
“You took me to that restaurant. The hottest place in town, you called it. You got me dressed up like a damn doll. You wanted to show me off, you said. None of that was real, but you said you enjoyed it. If it’s so great, why would you try to kill yourself?”
He reached for my hand. I let him take it, but I didn’t hold on to him either. “Because before you, it wasn’t always great. I felt like I was dying inside. Like I already had died.”
“Why?”
He turned away, shaking his head. The breeze between us chilled me to the soul. With the droop in his shoulders and a complete lack of spark in his being, I didn’t recognize him.
“Pressure. There was too much coming at me at once. I was killing myself trying to be everything to everyone. Might as well take it all the way.”
“Why not walk away and regroup? Take a vacation. Go hiking and find yourself. What could be so bad that you thought it was never going to get better?”
“Because it wasn’t! At least, not right then. I had to work my ass off to get where I am, and it got me here. That was good, but it was starting to look like there wasn’t any end in sight. This was where my lifetime was going. Work my ass off. Make the money. Lather, rinse, and repeat. That’s it in a nutshell. The hard stuff, the stuff that makes people respect you? I didn’t know if I could do it. I didn’t know if I had what it takes. I didn’t know if that’s who I was.”
“What about who you are?”
“Only you know who I really am.” The anguish in his voice it sliced through me, cutting me in two and making me feel insignificant and small. “You don’t know what it’s like. Everybody wants something from me. All the time. Day and night. It never ends. If you’re going to have a good, solid career, if you’re going to be more than just a flash in the pan, you have to build it yourself like bricks. Only problem is, the bricks are thin and they break easily. It takes forever to build enough of a wall that you can really shelter yourself from all the shit that’s out there. I’m not even close yet. The popularity of Man Cave gave me a jump, but it’s not enough. I can afford things now, but I can’t afford to slack. If I don’t keep working, if I don’t keep putting on a show, I’ll get run over and forgotten.”
He was right. I didn’t know anything about him. I couldn’t relate to his pain, and I couldn’t take it away. I wanted to reach for him, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. Taking on his pain for him wouldn’t solve the problem. It hadn’t before with Jeremy, and it wasn’t going to fix anything now.
“But to kill yourself? That’s not fighting. That’s quitting.”
His voice came as hard as a slap and maybe harder to take. “You think I don’t know that?” He raked his hands over his head. “Maybe that’s why I didn’t do it there by the side of the road, you know? When the car stopped working, it seemed like the world had flipped me one final fuck you. Hell, I couldn’t even kill myself right.”
“You—”
He held his palm out to me. “Don’t. I know. It’s what crossed my mind that day. A lot of thoughts crossed my mind. Gisele wanted to get married, but she didn’t love me. I knew that. It was all for show. She had practically timed the divorce with her next movie release. Abigail was all for the PR of a wedding. She pushed me into taking on movies so they could make good at the box office because my name was on them, even if they weren’t the roles that were going to get me that gold statue. I don’t have my nose stuck in the air like my shit doesn’t stink, but I want to do a good movie, you know? You called it my Best Actor movie. You were right. That
’s exactly it. Honest to God that’s it, but Abigail wasn’t finding me one. She’s only looking for the payday.”
“Why not fire her?”
He shook his head. “You’d think it would be that easy, right? But she was the one who took a chance on me at the start when I was doing community theater. She took me aside and told me I could be somebody. She believed in my dream as much as I did. Sometimes maybe even more. She warned me about all the shit ways I’d have to pay my dues. I had to hustle, but she hustled right along with me. She got me where I am right now. I owe her.”
“But you’re not looking for the same thing anymore.”
He turned, leaning on the railing and looked out at the ocean. “We still are. I think we are. I’m not ready yet. I’ve paid some of my dues, but I’m not all the way there.”
I stood beside him. “Do you still trust her?” After a pause, he nodded. “What does your gut say?”
He glanced my way but only for a moment before looking back over the ocean. “Does it matter? She hasn’t been wrong yet. Look where I am.”
“Right. On the verge of suicide.” My nerves twitched under my skin. I longed to reach out to him, to touch him, and to reconnect with him, but I couldn’t bring myself to take that step closer to him. Not when I knew if I’d been just a few minutes later that Sunday afternoon in the snow, I might’ve found a broken-down car on the side of the road with a dead body in the driver’s seat. For that reason alone, it took all my strength to stay still when every impulse in me said to run.
From his profile he smiled, but a moment later he shook his head, covered his face with his hands, and let out a primal scream that made seagulls turn for Mexico. “Goddammit, would you stop doing that?”
“What, Aaron? What am I doing?” I shoved his arm. He backed away from me. His eyes were glassy and wet. I wasn’t sure who this man was. It scared me to think maybe this was the real Aaron Elias.
“Making sense.” His voice sounded like the words were ripped out of him. “I can’t fire her. She’s got connections. She got me where I am. She can bury me with just a phone call.”
“You look miserable to me. I thought she was supposed to be looking out for your best interests, but this isn’t it. Look at you.”
“Yeah, look at me. In a big house on the beach, my face on half the magazines in newsstands, making movies seen by millions, and with more money in the bank than most people see in a lifetime. Anyone would kill to be where I am.”
Anyone except me. “And this makes you happy?”
He looked at me but didn’t answer. Probably he couldn’t. The answer seemed perfectly obvious to me, but this wasn’t my life. I didn’t own a pair of dress shoes, let alone my own tuxedo. An accidental trip into a yarn store was the closest I’d been to cashmere until I slipped into Aaron’s sweater.
I shook my head. “You look like you’re as lost as when I found you on Route 29.” I turned back for the house and walked in.
* * * *
I looked around the bedroom, feeling sick to my stomach and yet amazed at how easily I’d deluded myself into believing I could ever belong here. I never did. The dream was over, and reality was back like it always was. Time to go home.
I threw my things into my travel bag and then looked around to make sure I had everything I came with. It wasn’t a lot. Story of my life.
Walking back into the closet, I stroked the sleeves of his sweater one last time. He’d said I could keep it, but I couldn’t bring myself to take it with me like a souvenir of something that wasn’t meant to be.
I noticed the shoebox in the corner on the floor again. I stopped and stared. I couldn’t leave it, not if I thought he might get to that point where he’d consider another try. He needed help in dealing with that, but I wasn’t the help he needed.
But if I left him, would that tip him over the edge? Not that I thought so highly of myself, but if living the dream made him hurt that bad, who knew what might happen?
I opened the box and pulled out the gun with my thumb and index finger. I held it at arm’s length while chills rippled up my arm and down my spine. Then I took out the pills. He’d said they were his backup plan, so I couldn’t let them stay either. God help me if I got stopped somewhere on the way home.
I left him the vodka. He might need it. At the moment I was tempted to take a shot.
At the front door I took the keys for the Alfa and looked across the living room to the sliding doors. He still stood there at the railing, staring out at the horizon like he could see Hawaii from Malibu.
“He’s tough,” I told myself or the keys or fate. I opened the front door, stepped out, and shut the door behind me. I had to hope he was tougher than I was.
Chapter Seventeen
Just above my head, a tap on the Toyota’s hood got my attention. I settled the oil funnel in place and peeked around the big sheet of metal to see Jeff, the manager, watching me.
“What’s up?” I said.
His beady eyes gleamed. “Are you still looking for a challenge?”
My heartbeat tripped. “Yeah.” After a four-day drive back from California, I’d come back to work asking for any job that kept me occupied and focused, no matter how long it took. I didn’t bother naming, well, that guy from Hollywood as the cause of my abbreviated vacation and my sudden enthusiasm for work. Luckily Jeff and the rest of the crew didn’t bother to ask. After all, they were guys. They less they knew about women’s emotions, the better.
Jeff thumbed toward the waiting area. “An engine knock just came in. You want it?”
My mind raced with all the things I’d need to check to find the problem. Rods? Main bearings? I’d have to check each one in turn. Or maybe something in the valves? Timing belt? I could be busy for days trying to solve that mystery. “Sure. Let me finish this, and I’m on it.”
He smiled wryly like he couldn’t figure me out. Welcome to the club. Population: men everywhere, now including coast to coast.
“You got it.” He walked away.
I whipped through the oil change, dropped the paperwork at the counter, and drove the Toyota out to the parking lot. I tipped my face to the sunlight, but it didn’t feel like southern California. Maybe because it was December in Pennsylvania. But it was home. At least, that was what I told myself.
As I headed back to the shop, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I dug it out to see a text from Randy at the parts shop.
Meet you at Steppy’s, seven thirty?
Dammit. He’d been texting me every hour on the hour since I had accepted his date offer despite all my internal alarm bells screaming at me. I knew this date was going to end in a wrestling match, literally or figuratively. I also knew that in my current emotional state, he’d lose. I had to hope even a lousy date was better than nothing whatsoever on the horizon. And who knew? Maybe he’d surprise me. And maybe then I’d win the lottery and monkeys would fly out of my ass.
I texted back, K. Busy. TTYL. If I had any luck at all left, that would hold him off for at least ninety minutes.
I grabbed the Beemer’s keys and paperwork at the counter. A tall man in a tailored suit walked up to me. He was as pretty as any of the actors in the room when Aaron took me to the read-through, and like them, he acted like he knew it.
“Will someone be looking at my car today?” I half expected him to check his watch, as if he were on lunch and he thought his car would be perfect again before the ice melted in his soda.
I held up the plastic folder. “Just taking it into the bay, sir.”
“Well, that’s nice, but is someone going to be repairing it soon?”
I pointed to the name tag on my overalls. It brought to mind my studio ID tag. I’d considered bringing it to work to show off. That was when I thought I’d have a trip I could tell my coworkers about when I came home. Instead I buried the tag in a drawer. Then I made some calls and arranged shipment of the Alfa back to Malibu, despite the fact that the registration in the glove compartment had my name on it. In a mo
nth, when I was pretty sure he’d be over me, I’d work out a way to send his gun back too. The pills went down the toilet. “Yes. I’m Grace. How long has—”
“You’re a mechanic.” His condescending smile went right to my nerves. His gaze tried to stray to my cleavage, but the overalls prevented that. Yet another thing I loved about my job. Looking disappointed, I suspected he planned on checking out my ass the moment I walked away.
“I’m certified and licensed, yes, and I’ve been working here for six years. Jeff Zuccarello over there is my boss. He can assign someone else if you don’t think I’m capable of getting the job done.”
His smile went as fake and sugary as his voice. “No, no, that’s fine. You go do what you’ve got to do. I’ll be right here. It’s out front. The gold one. It’s just detailed.” His tone said he was going to watch every move I made. Whether he planned to make sure I didn’t screw up or to enjoy the view, I couldn’t be sure. Maybe both.
Nor did I care. I had a job to do, and I was going to fix the problem if only to watch this asshat eat crow. That and finding the problem would make me feel better. Work kept my mind busy.
“I don’t know how long this is going to take, Mr…” I checked the paperwork. “Mr. Wilson. I might not know right away where the knock is coming from. There’s a list of things I need to check first. Jeff will give you a call when we have an estimate for you.”
“Yeah, okay. My number’s on the sheet there. Call me.” He said the last two words in a familiar Hollywood tone that raked against my nerve endings. If he’d held up his thumb to his ear and his pinkie to his mouth, I’d have slugged him.
