“So that’s Alex?” Rebecca’s voice is thick, a little choked. She stands beside me, reverently studying my family’s picture that hangs before us on the wall.
“We were together for twelve years. Andrea’s our daughter.”
It’s such an easy, offhanded explanation, no matter that it sidesteps all the obvious—and awkward—questions about surrogates and the like. The red hair ties Alex and Andrea together like a birthright; that I’m on the outside is apparent to even the most casual of observers.
“So you’re gay.”
I feel the weight of Rebecca’s expectations, her disappointment about the vibe she must have detected between us.
“Well,” I answer, drawing in a breath, “I was with a guy for a long time.”
Rebecca shakes her head apologetically, the golden hair shimmering. “It was a stupid question.”
“Not stupid,” I whisper, turning toward her. “Actually, he’s the only guy I’ve ever been with. Only thing I can say for sure is that I was in love with him.”
“You still are.”
“Can’t get past it, I’m afraid.”
This comment must hit home, because she closes her eyes a moment, then quietly asks, “How’d he die?”
“On impact. A drunk driver…head-on collision. Andrea was in the backseat.” My voice catches; I hesitate, pressing my eyes shut. “It took them more than an hour to get her out of the car.”
“Oh God, Michael.” She covers my arm with her warm hand. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”
She gets it. She gets it all, and I don’t have to color in the pages for her to see what’s happened here, to my family. Neither of us speaks, we just stand there in front of the portrait, like we’re in the National Gallery or something, trying to decipher an Old Master. But she doesn’t move that hand, either; it remains fixed solidly on my arm, tender and true. Somebody is touching me, finally. Someone unexpected.
“He was a beautiful man,” she whispers, and I hear surprising tears in her voice as she leans up on her toes studying his image. “Very handsome.”
Maybe she’s crying for lost youth. Maybe for stolen beauty, her own perhaps—or because a violent stranger can careen from nowhere and rob you of so much. Maybe we’re crying together, for all that we’ve both lost.
I’m not sure, but perhaps it explains why I lean low and breathe a silent kiss against her scarred cheek. A chaste one that I hope conveys all the gratitude inside my heart that she’s come here tonight.
***
“You what?” Marti whispers into the phone. She doesn’t want to wake Dave, who’ll be up at five a.m. for his job as a construction foreman. I can actually hear him snoring in the background, but I promised this wrap-up call, so I’m stuck.
“I kissed her,” I repeat softly. “Made sense, I guess.”
“You’re gay, huh, Warner?” She snickers affectionately. “I knew you liked her.”
“It’s not that way.” I sigh. “I mean, the kiss was like a friend kiss. Kind of.”
“Friend kiss. Kind of,” she repeats. “Good lord, you sound like you’re in high school. I bet Alex is laughing his ass off right now,” she teases me, but I smart at the thought.
“Marti, I miss him so much,” I say. “Y’all don’t understand. You can’t know what it’s like.”
There’s silence, and I hear the rushed intake of her breath. “Sweetie,” she finally says, “I do know how hard it is. But you’re here, and he’s not.”
I’m here, he’s not, but it doesn’t answer the much bigger question looming in my mind tonight.
What am I, precisely, now that he’s gone?
Chapter Five: Rebecca
Good thing Trevor’s a consummate night owl, because after thirty minutes of driving up and down Sunset, gazing at giant billboards of half-naked men in their Calvins, I realize I can’t go home yet. My brain is buzzing too loudly. It’s like some hyperactive Beat poet, tossing words at me ninety miles an hour. Gay. Lonely. Widower. Lover. Sexy. Romantic. Beautiful. Strong. Smart. Lost. Lonely. Gay.
Bi?
Warring to be heard over this Ferlinghetti-style energy are my own gnawing insecurities, whispered taunts about my face, my body, my scars. I haven’t had a date—not a real one—since my attack three years ago. I haven’t wanted one. In fact, I don’t think I’ve even had a genuine crush on a guy since Jake dumped me two weeks after I left the hospital. But this thing with Michael… I’m not sure how to handle what’s going on inside of me after tonight. I’m scared and edgy, and only one person can talk me out of my tree when I’m feeling this way.
Cutting the steering wheel right, I turn onto La Brea, digging inside my purse for my cell. The nighttime landscape of L.A. spreads downhill from me, a glittering panorama of city light and dying heat as I cradle the phone against my shoulder.
“Hello, Rebecca,” comes the cultured, silken British voice. Of course he knows it’s me; he’s as devoted as I am to caller I.D.
“You still up?” I turn onto his side street, heading uphill toward the Spanish-style apartment building where he lives. It’s an old, moss-encrusted dwelling filled with the kind of moody atmosphere my best friend adores. We both moved away from our once-shared apartment building in West Hollywood after my attack.
“For you, I’m awake at any hour, sweetie.”
“I’m right outside your building.” I nose my Honda neatly into an empty space along the curb, then double-check that my car doors are locked.
“I’ll be right there.” Of course he offers to walk me up, since he knows how being out this late unnerves me.
Holding my purse in my lap, I settle in and wait, and as always this late at night, the waiting seems to last a lifetime. I glance anxiously toward Trevor’s apartment doorway, then back at the street again. At that precise moment, seemingly choreographed to terrify me, a man materializes from nowhere, right beside my car window. I give a startled yelp, my heart hammering with fear as he brushes past my door, close enough for me to touch his shirt sleeve if the window were lowered more than a crack. Or for him to grab me, just as easily.
But he doesn’t look back, and instead continues up the street. It must be a lost dog he’s after, judging by the way he whistles and hurries down the palm-lined road.
These are the moments when terror comes shrieking unexpectedly out of my dark past. When I can still find myself held captive by Ben’s butterfly knife, shocked by how easily it slashes into my abdomen. My chest. My face. And I can still feel myself dying with every slice of that blade, one eternal second at a time.
I clutch the purse against my breast, shivering uncontrollably. And it’s not as though I’m out here in the middle of the night. It’s a little past eleven, but I still feel like a victim, buckled and locked into my coffin of a compact car. My lungs pull tight as a drum and I struggle to find air. Slow down, girl. Slow down. If I don’t, I’ll hyperventilate. Then I’ll need the rescue inhaler tucked inside my purse, and my fingers do search it out reflexively, even as I try to normalize my breathing. Stilling, quieting… better.
But then I begin to shake a little. It starts first in my bones, quickening like wildfire to my extremities. I dig my fingers hard into my thighs, feeling the khaki material of my pants bunch beneath my fingernails. Thankfully, Trevor appears below the awning of his apartment entryway, dressed in pajamas, the streetlight bathing him in bluish shadow. He doesn’t wait, but comes right to me, because he knows. Oh, he knows what I live with, all right. And what I remember. That’s why he’ll always come to me first.
One moment I was outside, in the car, quaking and terrified, and now I’m on Trevor’s plush leather sofa, heady scotch curled within my trembling hand. He never goes for wine or anything second-rate, instead he medicates me with the good stuff. The expensive stuff: single malt Glenlivet. Which isn’t surprising, since expensive is the only way Mr. Baden-Powell knows.
I blink, swirling the clear liquid in the glass, staring into it like I might find the secrets of the uni
verse shimmering there. My hands haven’t stopped their trembling, and Trevor studies the glass’s spasmodic movement under my fingertips. He’s sitting at his antique secretary desk, one bare foot tucked beneath his leg, looking regal in his cranberry lounging pajamas. Even in the midst of my panic attack, I still notice how beautiful he is. And how utterly unaware of it. He’s atypical Hollywood, that’s for sure.
“Better?” He brushes a lazy lock of hair away from his dark eyes.
I can’t locate my voice, so instead I offer him a wan smile. My lip trembles, the left side of my mouth rebelling even more than usual. It can’t be pretty. The corners of his own mouth turn downward in concern, mirroring my own expression.
“What exactly happened out there?” You sounded well enough when you rang. He doesn’t add that, thankfully, but we both know the thought’s still there. I wasn’t fine when I phoned him; I was just doing a great acting job.
“Rebecca?” He calls to me from the end of a tunnel, a penumbra of light circling his familiar face. Hang on, sweetheart. Hang on for me. The ambulance is on its way…
“I don’t know.” I shrug one shoulder in my most disaffected L.A. pose.
“Oh, no, no, no.” He shakes a finger slowly. “Thou shalt not lie to me.”
“Huh, that’s an interesting commandment,” I snap, knowing that I’m about to turn the spotlight on him. After all, it’s easier for me that way. “Especially coming from you.” The fear is morphing, becoming uglier, and it’s targeting my friend.
“Yes, well, it’s a good decree to memorize, isn’t it?” he asks, clearly oblivious to the nuclear buildup in my emotional reactor.
“I’m surprised you’re not online.” I jab a finger toward his laptop which sits open on his desk. “Shouldn’t you be instant-messaging with Julian about now?” And now the black eyes do react. They widen slightly, then narrow, until there’s barely more than his raven-wing eyebrows pulling into a dark line.
“Since it’s seven a.m. in London, actually, no,” he answers coolly, closing the laptop beside him.
I lean back against the cushions and study him. “Otherwise?”
“You know that Jules and I stay in touch by e-mail.” Jules. He used that old pet name just to tick me off.
“Is that how he showed you his latest novel? Or did you actually solicit the proposal from his agent?”
A dark, moody groan rumbles out of Trevor’s chest. “Bloody hell, Rebecca, is that what you’re on about?”
“You could’ve just told me.” I leap to my feet in accusation. “Or showed it to me. But you hid it.” Even though blatant anger shifts in his eyes, I also see compassion. Love. “You made me look stupid,” I continue, pacing a bit beside his chair. “Feel stupid! I should’ve known, but instead I just found it there in the freaking submission pile.”
“So you’re upset about that novel?” he presses, louder, cocking his head sideways as he stares hard into my eyes. “That is really and truly your issue right now. Julian Kingsley’s novel?”
“No.” Air almost goes out of the room as my anger deflates, and with it my energy. I drop back onto his sofa hopelessly.
“I didn’t think so.” Carefully removing his wireframes, he folds them together. “You’re in an awful mood. This is toppers even for your worst days.”
“You should’ve shown me the proposal, and I’m still pissed about it.”
“Look.” He rises from the desk, prying my empty scotch glass out of my hand. “I wasn’t being underhanded, all right? I just knew how much you dislike him.”
“I’ve never met him.”
Trevor pads into the adjoining dark living room, finds the crystal decanter, and refills my glass. There’s the sound of tinkling ice cubes, and I realize he’s stocked the bucket just for me. Or someone else? Did Trevor have a date over this evening? Suspicion’s hard to shake once it has taken root.
“You can stay the night on the settee,” he offers as he returns, tapping my crystal glass with his fingertips significantly. In other words, I can drink myself silly if that’s what I want. “But first, I’m going to tell you about Jules and his novel, and then you’re going to tell me all that’s wrong in your world tonight.”
“Absolutely everything.” I sigh, sinking back into the dark brown leather sofa, feeling the familiar dips and mounds beneath me. “And I’m sorry for being such a bitch.”
“Oh, I doubt you’ve a bitchy bone in your body.” He drops onto the sofa beside me. “You’re just complex. Like the rest of us around here, aren’t you?”
“My life might be getting a whole lot more complex.”
“How’s that?”
“I’ve met someone, unbelievable as that might be.”
An elegant black eyebrow shoots upward, questioning as he laughs. “Second thought, let’s start with you and wrap with Jules.”
I try to think of a good way to frame it, but there simply isn’t one. So I just blurt, “It’s Heavenly Handyman,” feeling foolish already. Especially with the way my extremely gay friend stares at me, clearly dumbfounded.
“The lad from electrical construction?”
“That’s the one.”
“But he’s queer.” Not a question or doubt about the facts of the situation.
“Not quite.”
“Not quite?” He coughs. “I’d say it’s a yes or no situation, unless—”
“He’s bi.”
“Oh, dear Lord, no wonder your humor is foul.” He gives me a wry, knowing look. “His sort’s to be avoided at all costs. By both our kinds. Enter not the forest of uncertainty, for demons dwelleth there.”
I smile back at him, my own expression dreamy and naive. “He’s amazing.”
“Yes, well that’s what we all say, isn’t it? Right before it gets bloody confusing as to which way the wind blows.”
“Trust me, his sexuality is the least of the issues.”
“Really? How’s that?”
I wonder if I can describe Michael’s deep grief about Andrea and all they’ve both lost. I doubt it’s possible to put words to what I’m feeling—to what I felt there with them in that house tonight.
So I close my eyes and think like an actress. It hasn’t been so long that I can’t call upon my method technique. My memory searches for a quarter-inch of something from their house tonight, something tangible to help me translate the emotion to Trevor.
What I instantly recall is their family portrait, the one hanging in the hallway. A dreamy photograph of the three of them, sitting together in that sun-drenched backyard, bathed in a diaphanous halo of light. Alex so alive and vital, like he might step out of the picture and talk right to me. Shock of deep auburn hair, broad grin, freckled face. Natural good looks. A good man, obviously. And then the man beside him, too. Strong and handsome, years younger than the one I’ve met in the past few days. Unlike my Michael Warner, that one’s not weary and weathered; the whole world still bows at his feet.
Then precious Andrea curled in front of them on the grass. Still a little girl, though that would soon change, because the Andrea in the portrait is as gone as Alex. And Michael. None of those three live on anymore. There are only ghosts, shades of what might have been.
Yes, the portrait is the key. My eyes well with tears again, and I feel the loss as if it were my own. It already is my own, in some metaphysical way that I can’t pinpoint. My palm finds its way to my chest, and I massage my breastbone, blinking back hot tears.
I picture Andrea’s clear blue eyes staring up at me while we cooked together. Maybe she was as insubstantial as the girl from the portrait; maybe Michael worried because he knew the truth. That she’d vanished, too.
“He’s a father,” I say softly. “They had a daughter together.”
“They had?”
“His partner’s dead…” I think of Michael in my office, his hopefulness that Andrea might open up to me. “It’s been tough for him, raising her alone. She feels like she can talk to me.”
“Of course she
can. You’re a woman, sweetie.”
“I am that,” I say. “I guess that helps with her opening up.”
“How convenient that he’s found you,” Trevor remarks, and I hear an edge to his voice. “Now that he needs a mother for this girl.”
I doubt he even knows what he’s said, but it feels like he’s punched me full-force in the stomach. All the air sucks right out of my lungs, and my head snaps in his direction. I get it now. There’s no attraction. How could there be, when I look like this? What an idiot I am. Michael only wants me because of what I can be to Andrea—not out of any desire for me. Even pure-hearted Trevor can see it from a mile away.
My fingers trace the pattern of scars on the left side of my face. How could it still feel this way after five plastic surgeries?
“I thought maybe there was…something. You know, between us.”
“I’m not saying that there isn’t,” he rushes to assure me, but it’s too late. “Not at all. Just that I don’t want him latching on to you out of some other kind of need.”
“Andrea opened up to me.” I rub my tired eyes. “That’s really all it is, I’m sure.”
Never mind Foot and Cinderella’s slipper. Or the way he kissed me there in the hall, something tender and gentle that somehow burned me nonetheless. Never mind that for some inexplicable reason, I do still dream.
“But what will you do about hottie handyman?” He studies me carefully, protectively. “About this attraction?”
“I’m resisting it.”
He gives a single, affirming nod. “Good. It’s best that way.”
Even better would have been avoiding him to begin with, I think, and close my eyes.
An hour later, and I’ve explained everything, or most of it, at least. Michael’s past, that Alex was his only experience with a man. When I got to that part, I was hoping Trev might root a little harder for my team, but he only offered a dubious look, to which I explained that Michael’s an upfront guy, and I couldn’t imagine him lying about his sexuality. Trevor apologized for his naturally skeptical nature, but I noticed that he didn’t apologize for his doubts.
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