by Anna Bloom
"You’re welcome."
The rings spin around again and then again. "So why only four numbers?"
I grind some salt into the noodles boiling on the hob. I’ve already salted the water, but I need to be busy so I don’t look at her too closely. "Because they are the only numbers you need right now."
"You know I don’t talk to Erica about anything other than business, right?"
I shrug my shoulders up to my ears.
"And Dad? Well I think I’ve spoken to you more, recently."
Ouch. That’s dry.
My eyes briefly meet hers. I’m cursing myself but it’s impossible not to look. I want to see her, to read her, to discover how these five years have been on her. She’s been in a mess I know that, but if I can just read her face I could begin to understand why. I ignore my mantra as I absorb the sight of her: the smooth skin; the sharpened cheekbones; the slender neck, slimmer than before. But as I get to her eyes she averts her gaze, pulling the fruit bowl towards her, picking out a green apple, and sinking her white teeth into the juicy flesh. "Marty?" I ask, but she makes a job of chewing so she doesn’t have to answer.
I know she hasn’t spoken to Marty in a year, and the reason I know that is because Marty, Sophia’s PA, was the second person I called on touching down in the LAX. She loves this girl and I know she’ll come back and offer Sophia the stability she needs, but Sophia needs to apologise first and judging by the way she’s studying her apple I don’t think an apology will be coming any time soon.
Once again, I wonder what went wrong after I left, but I block the thought, cranking the volume on my mantra after my momentary lapse.
Sophia’s mistakes are her own. She’s a grown woman now, not a little child. I’m here to keep her from harm, that’s all.
That’s what I’m telling myself. However, I’m not blind, and the fact she’s all woman is staring at me from across the kitchen counter. Her denim shorts hug her hips, which despite the weight-loss of her addiction, still curve. Her T-shirt is on the wrong side of see-through and through it I can see her whisper of a waist leading to the edge of a black, racer-backed sports bra.
If silence was visible, or tangible, it would be floating around us, pushing us into making conversation. Instead, it’s filling the air between us with awkwardness. Hopping onto a counter she watches me as I move around the kitchen. I wish she’d just go back to her room, either that or I want to shake her for doing this to herself. "I really don’t want you here, Blake." Her legs kick up and down higher. "In fact, you are the very last person I want here."
I chew the side of my mouth and curve an eyebrow. "Seems that’s not your decision to make."
Her gaze narrows into catlike slits. I can sense her planning her next line of attack as she purses her lips—she hasn’t changed that much. A realisation I find oddly comforting. I wonder if she knows her changes are only surface deep, that inside she’s still the same girl I used to know.
"Why can’t I add a number?" she asks, waving the new phone at me. "There’s someone I want to call."
My stomach plummets and I cringe inwardly as I realise it’s not the professional response of a bodyguard making me react in that way. "Best you don’t right now." She’s worked out the pin quicker than I thought—she’s far cleverer than anyone gives her credit for.
"So, are you my sober companion, is that what this is about?" Her eyes darken into topaz flints and I hate the hardened planes of her prominent cheekbones.
"Do you need a sober companion?"
She laughs, but it’s a bitter sound ringing in my ears. "I’m a fucking addict, Blake. What do you think?"
I wave the chopping knife at her. Her words make me get hot around the collar of my shirt and I can’t wait to get out of the damn monkey suit.
This day needs to be done fast.
"I think you need to stop labelling yourself and get on with life."
Her eyes widen. "And what the fuck do you know about it?"
I know she’s swearing to wind me up. And hell, it’s working. I clench the vegetable knife—my knuckles straining—and continue to chop the onions ready to throw in the wok.
"What I know about anything is none of your concern. Clean up your act, Soph, and get on with your life."
She scorns me with another angry laugh. "Get on with my life? I’ve got one day before I’m due on set. One sodding day and then the circus begins again."
I stare at her. My chest rising and falling as if I’m partway through a marathon. No chance of that, my lifestyle hasn’t been that healthy of late. I’m just lucky it’s not showing in a flabby midriff yet.
"Don’t do the film then." It’s a stupid thing for me to say, but then Sophia has always managed to drag the stupid out of me.
She snorts with spiteful derision. "Don’t do the film then," she mocks my tone. "Are you mad? If I don’t do that bloody film I’ll be blacklisted. The girl who couldn’t finish a series. That would keep those offers rolling in."
This is interesting. The Sophia I knew before, the teenager laughing her way through fame, wouldn’t give a monkey’s shit about offers.
"Isn’t your boyfriend on set with you?"
Shit, that cut deep to say out loud. I might have been avoiding the gossip pages laden with Sophia Jennings news but I haven’t been under a rock for the last five years.
Sophia’s eyes meet mine, flint hard and ice cold. They pull a sharp intake of air into my lungs. "Yes. I can’t wait." She throws her apple core into the recycling caddy, wiping her hands on the miniscule material of her shorts. "Just as well I have tomorrow to rest and recuperate."
"Actually, tomorrow you have plans." I cringe a little on the inside. There’s about to be the mother of all door slamming events but there’s no point not telling her.
"And what might they be?" Her eyes watch me like a hawk and I despise the hard lines of her face all the more. I want to erase them, to soothe them away with my palm. I shove my hands deep into the pocket of my suit pants.
"Tomorrow you are giving an interview on Good Morning America."
Clearly, I’ve flummoxed her because she just stares open mouthed.
"I suggest an early night. Davies has arranged the interview." The words churn on their way out and I feel like a total bastard. I know she shouldn’t be put in front of the cameras on a live interview—but then I’m not her agent or manager. Her eyes narrow.
"I thought you hated Davies?"
God, how I hate him. I haven’t seen him in five years and the repulsion is still there, piled high and slime thick.
I shrug, smoothing my features into my professional mask. "It’s not my place to judge or hate."
Surprise lifts her fair brows and I’m pretty sure she’s going to choke on her own saliva as she turns a raging red. "It’s not for you to judge or hate? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" Her voice pitches ten decibels louder.
I keep my response cool, despite the fact inside I’m an erupting volcano of bastardness. "I’m just saying it’s not my job to have opinions on anyone." I can’t meet her eyes, my low opinion on Simon Davies screams in my head loud and clear but I can’t let her see that. This needs to be professional and clean. Erica is the hirer and firer; she has been for a long time. It’s why I’m here now, but a few years ago she’d been all too keen to see the back of me when she thought my influence over her daughter was meddling in her affairs. "He says he’ll be here at four fifteen with a car."
"I’m not going anywhere tomorrow."
"I think you are." This time I do meet her gaze which has turned into fiery resentment, and I hold it still with my own. "If you don’t show and do the interview, then it will look worse. The entire world knows you are out of rehab." I hate I’m lying to her. The knife slips in my hand and I place it on the chopping board.
"Of course they do." Her lips twist into a bitter line.
I nod, placating her, and root myself to the spot so I don’t step forward to calm her. The instinct is still there, to give in to e
very whim she has. I fight against it, refusing to allow it to overtake my common sense.
"So they are going to question me, make me spill my guts. If I wanted to do that, I’d have done it in rehab." She wipes her palms down her legs. "Or I would go for the big guns and cry on the Ellen Show. Hell, maybe Oprah will come out of retirement and coax all the nasties out of me."
I roll my eyes. "You are being ridiculous. You just need to show people you want to change."
She laughs, and it does something painful to my insides as my guts twist into a knot. She throws her hands up in the air, her body rigid, her hands clenching into tight fists. "I’m ridiculous now, am I? Of course, I am, I’m still the same ridiculous child you used to protect." Her skin’s a vivid pink. "And people wonder why I want oblivion." She spits her words with bitterness.
I slam my hand onto the counter. Why had I called her ridiculous? It’s the last thing I think. "No one likes oblivion, Soph." My tone softens. I tell myself this daily. I must because I need to believe.
She slides off the barstool and sashays her long legs back towards her room. At the door, she flicks her hair and turns, my eyes have trailed her the whole way, mesmerised. "You don’t know anything about what I like, Henderson."
And just as I predicted she slams the door hard enough, it’s a miracle it’s still on its hinges.
I pick up the knife and continue chopping the veg for my stir fry. I know one thing for damn sure. This is not going to be easy.
Chapter Six
Sophia
The problem with four o’clock in the morning is that it’s an hour that shouldn’t be seen unless you are going to bed.
I’ve been in bed since I slammed into my room at nine o’clock and realised I had nothing better to do than shut my eyes and try to go to sleep. I dreamt of Sarah and cigarette breaks and that awful group session where I’d spilled my guts about being in love with my bodyguard and trying to kiss him. It’s even more mortifying in dream mode because the other recovering users all chanted ‘Daddy issues, daddy issues, daddy issues’ at me as I tried to explain that Blake was nothing like my dad. But then the Blake of my dream had morphed into the old man who’d been my most recent bodyguard and he was telling me to lay on his lap for a spanking.
It’s all very wrong and if I didn’t know better I’d think I was still on mind altering drugs.
Groaning, I stretch and wait for sleep to pull me under. I could do with a nice dream, one about puppies or kittens, not old men trying to spank me.
When a gruff voice clips, "Wake up," and an accompanying finger prods the very tip of my shoulder, I roll away, dragging the coverings with me, tangling myself deep inside them so I can’t be seen.
"I said you weren’t allowed in here," I grumble, my hands rubbing my eyes until they are sore.
Through splayed fingers I watch his shadowy form moving about my room and a strong smell of coffee fills the air. My tummy gurgles as the rich scent does its business, waking me up with the aroma of deliciousness. I didn’t eat last night and my body is missing the regular meal times of rehab. In fact, I think all of me is missing the regularity of rehab.
Lowering my hands, I roll face first into my pillow. In years past I would have been tingling at his close proximity to my bed and the fact he’d made me a drink and gently placed it on the bedside table. But now, now in my new world where everything is hard and brightly coloured and he is annoyingly back again with no explanation, I only want to pull the duvet over my head. I want this day to go do one before it’s even started.
"I’m not going," I say into the pillow. Surely, apart from having your bodyguard wake you—the same bodyguard you used to have teenage sexual fantasies about—there is nothing worse than knowing you must get up and spill your guts to the world on morning television.
"Yes, you are. And in all honesty, Sophia, I would hurry along," his voice drips with laconic sarcasm, "because Davies is going to be here in ten minutes and you need to be ready."
"Why?" I roll and stretch, pointing my toes as my leg slips out from the blankets. I’m dopey with sleep but I’m sure his eyes twitch down to the exposed skin of my thigh. Or, and far more likely, I’m confused from my broken sleep and insane dreams.
"Because," he flicks on the ceiling light and I wince, "he’s trying to get your career back on track. The least you could do is join in with the effort."
What career? My entire career is solely based on a franchise of movies I hate and don’t want my name associated with. Those films have wrecked my personal life more than I’ll ever be able to admit, not just my career.
Trying to salvage what’s left seems a futile effort. Nobody’s interested in a washed-up has been whose career remains hitched to phoney blockbusters at the age of twenty-three. Even I’m uninterested, and that says it all.
I cooked up so many plans in the solitary quiet of rehab. That I was going to buy a cottage, somewhere out of the way. I was going to grow roses and spend my time reading all the books I should have read but never had the time for. To slide out of public view so soon they would forget I ever existed. Three months in, it won’t be long until I’m long forgotten and a new victim takes my place.
Good Morning America isn’t in that plan.
But then neither is Blake Henderson standing by the side of my bed bringing me coffee and scowling with ferocious disdain.
Rolling back over, I glare at the ceiling. None of my plans ever amount to much no matter how hard I try.
"I’ve put some clothes on your chair. They are doing hair and make-up on set." He hesitates, lingering, his hands curling tight at his side. He fills the shadowy depths of my bedroom with his presence. "So, all you have to do is get dressed, drink coffee and get through." His voice softens, and he takes a step towards my bed. My heart hitches a beat and I think he’s going to reach a hand out and touch a lock of my hair like he used to. He doesn’t although I’m waiting with my breath trapped in my throat. His hand remains firmly by his side and I wish his face wasn't partly hidden in shadow, so I could read the expression in his eyes.
The need for his touch pulls deep inside me, twisting my insides. It reminds me of being sixteen and wishing he could be my very first kiss, that his lips would be the first ever to press against mine in a private kiss, one not meant for movies. They weren’t. He was never my first anything, but that longing is still buried there deep inside me, I can feel it banging away with that deep dark box of secrets and memories. The counsellor at rehab would be turning cartwheels over this development. I glare at him through hooded eyelids, defining the shape of him, separating him from the shadows cloaking his form in darkness. Nope. It's definitely not a daddy issue.
Frustration crackles like static electricity.
"What is this, Henderson? Are you my PA, bodyguard, cook, and sober companion?" I snap not wanting him to see my confusion. I flip the covers off my legs, casting a quick glance in his direction to see if he looks at my bare skin. He doesn’t.
His hands curl tight into fists and I watch as his Adams apple bobs in his throat. "No."
"Well, get out then, and let me get dressed. Unless you want to help with that too?"
He turns on his heel and storms for the door. A pinch of remorse prickles my conscience. This isn’t the way I like to behave, but I've bolted it down. He’s the one here uninvited, messing with my plans.
Ten minutes later as he flanks me along the condo’s path I realise that my plans of growing roses and living in quiet calm are flying further away than they ever have and I don’t know how to capture them back and hold them tight in my heart.
"Well Lara, it’s fabulous to be back and ready to film again." I say the words, nodding my head sagely, but truthfully all I’m thinking of are my roses. They will be pale pink and white and smell like heaven.
My actress skills may not be that rusty. Lara, the news anchor, seems oblivious to my daydreaming. The lies rolling off my tongue fall fast and sure.
Lara smooths her blonde hair
with practiced fingers and leans towards me, her eyebrow rising in careful curiosity. "So, what happened, Sophia?" she flutters her hand over the desk and pats the back of my hand. "One moment you were on top of the world and the next you overdosed?"
Well, let’s lay it all out there shall we?
What a bitch. My smile belies the glaring set of daggers I’m launching in her direction. My face aches with the effort.
Again, that swirling black void of nothing taunts me from the depths of my memory and I feel myself sinking back into a horror of blood and vomit.
Shaking myself into the present I offer a tight smile as I try to articulate an answer that doesn’t sound like bullshit.
"I think in this business it’s very hard to focus on who you are." To my horror tears prickle the back of my eyes. Don’t you dare cry. "And I think maybe I’ve never really known who I am because I’ve always been too busy acting other characters to find out." My mind flickers back to the moment in rehab when I’d found the rose garden, when I realised that I’d never stood in one before. That my life of cars, meetings, and organised activities, had never allowed me to stand and smell the roses. Literally. "It’s kind of hard to discover your own identity when constantly adopting others."
I’d said that to Davies and Erica when they were badgering me to sign the five-film saga. ‘What’s a film a year, Sophia?’ they'd said, ‘it will be wonderful, Sophia. It will put you at the top of your game.’
My response had been all too clear, to my own ears, anyway. ‘But what if I want to make something else, do something else?’
Four movies in I guess we found out my what.
Lara pulls me back and I drag my attention to the present. "And did you find out who you were with cocaine?" The question is direct and sharp but her eyes hold mine almost in an apology.
I smile trying to make the tense stretch of my lips seem as natural as I can. "I guess I found out who I'm not." While I sigh, I see my fingers trembling so I hide them under my legs. "I don’t want to be that girl anymore." It’s only a whisper but I know the cameras have caught it. There’s a clap in the background and someone must be thrilled with the viewing gold I’m providing.
