Marbella Twist

by Camille Oster

  This was actually a nice way to avoid the psycho phase where all she could think about was his intentions and if he was going to absolutely smash her heart. This way, they weren’t totally invested, but had a solid companionship. Because Esme knew from past experience that she turned into a mad woman whenever a guy actually liked her. It was all just too much pressure. She didn’t feel that with Inns. It was all very companionable. And the sex was great.

  By the look of his face when he arrived, he wasn’t exactly ecstatic with the summons to appear, but he was there.

  “Here he is,” Aggie said as if relinquishing responsibility for him, and Esme slipped her arm into the crook of his.

  Their table was on the balcony of the restaurant and the usual crowd was there, including Felix and Shania for once. Felix did a double take when he saw her walking in with Inns. There was sheer confusion written on his face.

  She sat down in one of the spare seats down the end of the table, and Inns took the next. What she hadn’t managed to do was make much of a dent on his wardrobe. He still had the most horrendous taste, but he refused to budge in that regard. Those bland and dull clothes were firmly part of his identity and he refused to relinquish them. Well, he was a work in progress.

  They ordered drinks and then food. Aggie was at the middle of the table, Jasper telling her some anecdote. Felix and Shania were sitting closely although quietly paying attention to the table and the conversation.

  Drinks came, meals came and they ate.

  After dinner, Simon, who Esme hadn’t seen for a while, came over and introduced himself. Simon loved meeting new people, but he generally didn’t live in Marbella these days. He had done at school, but had returned to Holland for University and never truly returned.

  “How are things?” Esme said, glad to see him again. “I understand you work in advertising now.”

  “Good, good,” Simon said. “Yes. I have started my own agency.”

  “Really? I might have to talk to you about something I am working on while you are here,” she said, her mind kicking into gear with regards to her marketing strategy. Simon having his own agency might be a nice alignment. She would see what he had to say. If nothing else, she could learn from an expert.

  “Simon,” he said, holding his hand out to Inns, who reluctantly shook it.

  “Inns Whiting-Cross.”

  “You are Aggie’s cousin, I understand,” Simon said.

  Inns didn’t answer.

  “How are you enjoying Marbella?”

  “It’s hot and messy,” Inns said. “Full of people trying to pretend they’re more than they really are.”

  Simon didn’t know how to take the comment.

  Esme shook her head and turned to Inns.

  “What?” he said. “It’s true. Do you want me to lie? Every person in Marbella is caught up trying to convince us all they’re part of the crowd.”

  “And you’re not?” Simon challenged.

  “Not this crowd.”

  Simon looked awkward for a moment, before asking Esme about some people they knew. Then, before long, he turned his attention down the other end of the table.

  “Mr. Congeniality,” Esme accused quietly—not that she was entirely surprised.

  “Were you expecting that I had changed in some way?”

  “No, actually, I hadn’t,” she said. “You see no purpose for getting on with people.”

  Inns shrugged. “People desperate to impress.”

  “Simon is really nice.”

  “Simon’s a twat,” he said with challenge in his eyes. “Look at his hair. Is he in a boy band?”

  “He’s Dutch.”

  “A Dutch boy band, then.”

  “You’re impossible.”

  “Just because I don’t bend over and kiss arse.”

  “You’re not even cordial. But you don’t think about yourself the same as you accuse other people. Some would say that’s pure arrogance.”

  “Because I don’t bow down to people who think they’re due it. What have they got to be so proud of? Running around with their ludicrous cars, gaudy houses and tasteless and ridiculous clothes? Not a single one of them can think for themselves. I’m just pointing out pathetic behaviour when I see it.”

  His opinion hadn’t really changed from what it had been before. “So why are you so entitled?”

  “I never said I was entitled.”

  “Even that word implies that you are, being titled as you are.”

  “Being titled means being responsible. It comes with responsibilities, and you just have to accept that. It has very little to do with what you want to do.”

  “For God’s sake, Inns,” Aggie said down the table. “We don’t want to hear about how you’re burdened. Sell the damned house.”

  “I can’t, Aggie,” he said and Esme could feel him actually turning angry now. “I’m responsible for it. It isn’t mine to sell. It belongs to the family.”

  “You’re holding onto something that died a long time ago.”

  “Because you turned your back on it doesn’t mean we all can. What are you responsible for? What are any of you responsible for? Anything? Just abdicate any obligation. Do you have any purpose whatsoever?”

  “Neither do you, Inns. You’re holding onto vapour, some glorious vision of the past.”

  The table was silent now, everyone watching the exchange. Esme wasn’t entirely sure what they were talking about, but knew it had to do with the Bennington estate and the traditions of bygone eras. She hadn’t intended for things to blow up like this.

  Aggie looked away in disgust. Inns mouth was drawn tight and he withdrew into himself.

  “I’m sorry,” Esme said. “I didn’t intend for there to be a blow up. Do you want to go?”

  “No honour in running away,” he said. Again, it was an attitude she didn’t quite get. In some ways, he was so different from her, seeing walking away as defeat. There was a different rulebook he lived by. There was also some substantial chasm between him and Aggie that ran much deeper than Esme had realized.

  Chapter 42

  Itchiness prickled along Roan’s skin. It wasn’t truly itchy like a rash, more that he just couldn’t get comfortable. It had started a few days ago and his discomfort had only grown. It wasn’t that he wanted to absorb himself back on a film set. That would be running back into the old habits he was trying so hard to leave behind, but things weren’t working either. But something wasn’t right.

  He was living in a hotel for starters, which wasn’t helping. They had worked around it, to make it seem comfortable, but it just wasn’t. It was a hotel. On some level, he was hankering for home, but when he thought of his life back in LA, he knew he didn’t want that. In fact, he couldn’t seem to face it. What the hell was wrong with him?

  It wasn’t that he hated what he did. The fame hadn’t exactly been as exciting and all-encompassingly joy-inspiring as he’d hoped. The more famous he got, the emptier every achievement felt. The buzz of winning a new role got shorter and shorter. The accolades more meaningless. Work had taken every moment of his life, and it had left him more and more dissatisfied. He didn’t exactly know what he needed, but he’d been heading in the right direction.

  Now he was here, in this strange little enclave with people who all chose to come here, it seemed. They chose to live together in this place where no one seemed to actually belong. It had everything and it was set up for people who didn’t really have anything to do. Everything he could possibly need was here, even some degree of anonymity on a daily basis. There weren’t photographers outside his door, waiting for him to come out.

  When he’d left LA, he’d just wanted a chance to breathe and he’d got it. It had actually taken a couple of months to just slow down, not feel like he needed to be doing something every five minutes. But now he’d slowed and new questions were cropping up. Now what?

  Cheyenne was still running a hundred miles a minute. She was on the game, working to achieve whatever it was
she felt she needed. And she was under the impression that he wanted that too. The truth was that he couldn’t bring himself to care about these people, which might be linked to the sorry state he had got himself into in LA. He should care about the people around him, want to hang out with them and know how things were with them. When had he completely lost that?

  It was uncomfortable to admit that perhaps he had been completely self-absorbed. Other people had been a problem when they’d made things hard for him. Beyond that, his co-workers were a means to an end.

  Cheyenne sat across the breakfast table from him, eating melon pieces out of a small bowl. The movie night with her had been a disaster. She’d born it with ill hidden contempt. Snuggle time on the couch just wasn’t her style. “Do you think I’m shallow?” he asked. If he were honest, there had been times when he’d shown her no loyalty or even consideration.

  “I guess that depends on your definition of shallow,” she said after swallowing. “Do you care about what is best for you? What is healthy for you? Some would say that’s commendable. If you aren’t going to take care of you, who is? Look, you’re going through a thing. It’s a process. Call it a fundamental readjustment.”

  “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “You seem to be working an agenda.” He finally admitted something that had been preying on his mind.

  Cheyenne put her fork down. “You mean: am I watching out for my best interests? Yes, I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “And you’re using me to get what you want.”

  “I’m not using you. We are both trying to find places we belong.”

  “I don’t belong here,” he stated.

  “Then where do you belong, Roan?” Her temper was starting to show. “You just about begged me to get you out of LA, and now you’re complaining about actually being away.”

  Was he complaining? He had been more than willing to follow her lead, seeing it as a way of escaping. “Maybe we used each other.”

  Cheyenne sighed and frowned. “What do you want from me, Roan? Is this about staying in some evenings. If it’s that important to you, we can stay in,” she said with an exaggerated shrug.

  “It’s about wanting to stay in some evenings, and you don’t.”

  “I like going out. I like going to parties. It’s not like that has changed from the moment you met me.”

  That was true. She was a party girl and now he was asking her to be a home body. Perhaps he was being unreasonable. “You’re right. I accept that’s unfair, but I also need to acknowledge that we want different things.”

  “How do you know?” she said pointedly, clearly getting angry now. She slapped the napkin from her lap down on the table. “You have no fucking idea what you want, Roan,” she accused and rose. She walked away towards the bedroom before turning around again. “Where do you get off looking down on me for what I want? I love this town; I belong in this town. You haven’t got a clue whether you’re coming or going. You hooked yourself onto my bandwagon because I actually have a purpose. Maybe you just need to get over yourself. On closer inspection, you’re not all that you’re cracked up to be.”

  Cheyenne certainly turned vicious when pressed, rephrasing this argument as a personal attack.

  “I’m going out. There is no reason I need to hang around a listen to this shit. Grow some fucking balls, Roan.” She slammed the door to the bedroom.

  Roan didn’t know whether he had touched a nerve, or maybe he was getting on her nerves more than she let on, but this was quite an overreaction. What is bad that he wasn’t all that bothered? It probably said a lot.

  Well, the good thing about being in a hotel was that he could easily check out. He hadn’t intended for his discussion with Cheyenne to go nuclear like this, but it had. Obviously, they were not the kind of couple where you could discuss what was underneath the surface.

  Cheyenne was using him, and maybe she was right and to some degree he’d been using her, too.

  Frowning, he watched the light play on the pool surface outside the window. Maybe this was inevitable. Him trying to force this relationship into something it wasn’t.

  If he wanted to, he could probably run in there and smooth this over with her until she forgave him, but was it worth it? This relationship wasn’t what he wanted. He knew that now. This was something else entirely, and what was the point of carrying on or dragging this out? The answers didn’t lie in Cheyenne’s thighs, as delectable and distracting as they were.

  Chapter 43

  “Can I come over?” Roan said down the phone when Cheryl answered. Cheryl was stumped, unable to think of anything to say. Why?

  “Sure,” she found herself saying, more out of that incessant requirement to be polite in face of such a blatant request. What reason had she to say no? It wasn’t like she had anything else to do. The boys were at school and she was bumping around a big house all on her own. “It’s pretty hard to find.”

  “I have the best SatNav money can buy.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  “I’ll see you in however long it takes to get there.” He hung up and Cheryl stood looking down at her phone. What did this mean? Why was Roan-the-movie-star coming to her house? Well, they’d had some candid conversation and he did seem like a person going through a bit of transition. Still, this probably wasn’t a good idea. She could certainly not deal with any drama at the moment, and particularly not any insecurities about whether some guy liked her and what his intentions were.

  That was plain off the table and she would have to let him know if he had any intentions in that direction. Then again, she laughed at herself. Why would someone like him, with a girlfriend like Cheyenne Terpa, be remotely interested in her? He just needed someone to talk to. He had, after all, been itching to talk since the moment she’d met him, even as she’d tried to keep him at arm’s length.

  Well, she wasn’t going to get spruced up for this. If he was going to insist on coming over at ten in the morning on a weekday while she was having a life meltdown, he could take what he got.

  Cheryl picked up her discarded mug of tea and sat down. Actually, a distraction from her own thoughts might be just what she needed. She refused to feel nervous about Roan coming over to her house. She had enough problems to deal with without inviting new ones.

  The map of the southern Spanish coast lay on the coffee table in front of her. She’d been reviewing the towns along the coastline, trying to see if anyplace particularly called to her. Packing everything up, particularly the kids, seemed such a daunting task, though.

  It took about twenty minutes before the crunch of gravel was heard in the driveway of her rural, traditional finca. A spear of panic momentarily pierced through her brain. She loved this house with its orchard and space for the boys. But then rural fincas shouldn’t be that hard to find wherever she ended up going.

  Walking to the door, she opened it and saw Roan getting out of his sports car. He was recently showered and wore a navy linen jacket. This sight could have been the shoot for a high gloss advert. He looked gorgeous and stylish. “Hey,” he said and approached. How the hell had it happened that a guy like him was coming to her house to hang out?

  “Hello,” she said and stepped back. “Come in.”

  “This is nice,” he said, looking around.

  “It’s very traditional. A typical farm house. It’s been done up a bit.”

  “It looks really comfortable.” Was that a euphemism for drab and boring, she wondered.

  “We like it.”

  “You and the boys,” he said as if getting it straight.

  “Going somewhere?” he said and Cheryl was confused until he pointed at the map on the coffee table.

  “Oh, just looking where we should head next.”

  “Time to move on?”

  “Yeah. The salon finally went bust. Do you want a coffee?” It still hurt to admit it, but it was the truth.

  “I would love one.”

  Cheryl walke
d over to the kitchen island and turned on the percolator. “Nothing fancy. Just coffee.”

  “That’s alright.”

  It was silent and awkward for a moment while Cheryl waited for the machine to produce his coffee. Perhaps she should have one, too.

  “I split up with Cheyenne,” he finally said.

  Cheryl hadn’t expected that. “I’m sorry.”

  “Cracks were starting to show—ones too big to paper over.”

  Cheryl poured the coffee. So he did want to talk. That was understandable in a situation like this. “That’s awful.”

  “We just didn’t have that solid foundation, you know? She was using me to get into the right crowd. I was perhaps using her a little, too.”

  “So what are you going to do now?” She brought two cups over to the sofa.

  “I have no idea. The reason I left LA has nothing to do with her and those reasons still stand. I’d completely lost direction.”

  “I know what that feels like.”

  “I guess once I had a chance to slow down and asked what I was doing, this relationship with Cheyenne just didn’t fit.”

  “You seemed really happy together.”

  “On the surface, maybe we were, but there was nothing underneath. Absolutely nothing. I don’t even know if I know who she is. There’s this person sleeping next to you and you don’t know who they are. That’s a bit freaky when you think about it.”

  “And what does she say?”

  “Basically, not to think and just go with it.”

  “But you can’t?”

  “No, I can’t. I want more than that.”

  “I think you’re refusing to sell yourself short.”

  “Problem is, I have no idea what I want. I know what I want, kind of. I think I had it once, in a way.”

  “Lauren. Every time I speak to you, we end up talking about her.”

  “She with the makeup. You look great without makeup, by the way.”