The Making of Mia

by Ilana Fox

  ‘Way over there,’ Gable slurred, gesturing at the ocean, ‘is England. That’s, like, where you’re from.’ Gable prodded Jo in the stomach and even though she was drunk she still recoiled slightly. She was very aware of the layer of fat that separated her skin from the abdominal muscles she knew she had underneath. ‘Don’t be fooled by the rocks that you’ve got, you’re still, you’re still Jo from the block,’ he sang in an off-key voice and Jo smiled. It was true, in a way: despite her glamorous haircut and expensive dress she was still the same old Jo Hill. They stopped to look at the Atlantic Ocean rippling on the beach, and Jo looked up at Gable as he stared at the sea. It was a perfect romantic moment, and Jo knew it was time.

  ‘Gable,’ she said softly, as she positioned her body in front of his. Jo pushed her hips against Gable’s groin and then she wrapped her arms around him, smiling as Gable hugged her back and drew her into his body to keep her warm. His body was hard against hers, and Jo ached to feel his chest through his T-shirt, to run her hands down his washboard stomach to the top of his jeans. However, the hug was a friendly, platonic gesture, and Jo felt impatience sear angrily through her body. What was up with this man? she thought. Why didn’t he get her?

  ‘One day when I’m old I’m going to come back to the beach and stand right here,’ Gable said in a husky voice. ‘I’m gonna remind myself of how young and ambitious I was, and I’m gonna look back through my life to see how far I have come.’

  Jo shut her eyes to prevent them from rolling in exasperation. She supposed Gable was being romantic, was trying to tap into Jo’s determined, career-hungry side, but it wasn’t having the desired effect. She didn’t want American-style romance that sounded like something from a dumbed-down version of Dawson’s Creek – she wanted sex. She didn’t want to be a twenty-two-year-old virgin any more.

  ‘That’s sweet,’ Jo murmured into Gable’s T-shirt, and she wondered if she should just go for it, if she should kiss him rather than waiting for him to kiss her. Jo stepped back and stared at Gable until he moved his focus from the waves to her, and just as he began to look confused Jo moved closer to him, swooping in and placing her lips on his. Before he had a chance to realise what was happening, Jo was kissing him, and in a moment of absolute daring for her she darted her tongue into his warm, mint-flavoured mouth. Through her drunken haze she briefly wondered why she wasn’t as turned on kissing Gable as she had been with William, but she forced the thought to one side and began to move her hands from Gable’s waist to his bottom, and then to the front of his thighs. She wondered if she would feel his erection through his jeans.

  Gable suddenly pulled away, and he stared down at Jo incredulously. ‘Jo …’ Gable ran his hands through his hair nervously, as Jo felt her heart sink. He didn’t fancy her. He had a girlfriend. He had a wife.

  ‘Oh, man …’ Gable began pacing up and down the deserted road and Jo felt embarrassed. What was wrong with her? Was she still too fat? Too ugly? All of Jo’s drunken confidence fell away and she felt vulnerable and exposed. She felt like an idiot.

  ‘Look, I should have told you, I had no idea you felt that way, that you thought this was a date.’

  Jo couldn’t speak. She could taste bile in her mouth and she wondered if she was going to throw up. Suddenly she felt dizzy. She stared at Gable mutely and burned with embarrassment, and felt stupid for thinking that a man would ever fancy her, and that she could ever pull a man so beautiful as Gable.

  Gable moved slowly towards Jo and reached for her hand, raising it to his lips and kissing it gently. Jo felt her heart leap, and she wondered if she had misunderstood him, if maybe she had just come on too strong. What was it that Americans had? Bases? Maybe she had jumped over some bases and scared him off, she thought. Maybe he did like her but she had just been too brash, too British about it.

  Jo looked up at Gable hopefully, but she could tell by his discomfort that he definitely didn’t fancy her. He looked at her guiltily and tried to crack a grin.

  ‘I’m sorry, babe, but I’m more into men. I’m gay.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jo was people-watching on the beach, comparing the tired, lined bodies of retired domino players to the sleek, nut-brown limbs of roller-bladers. She looked down at her own tanned thighs and wondered why being slimmer than she’d ever been before didn’t make her as happy as she’d hoped. She gazed out to the ocean and remembered how unhappy she’d been in London, how lethargic eating junk food had made her, and how miserable she’d been every time she’d dressed in the morning and found her clothes were tighter than they’d been the day before. Jo admitted to herself that she’d finally learnt the value of moderation – that eating one bar of chocolate wouldn’t make her fat, but that eating as many as she wanted to in a row would ensure that the pounds piled back on. As if to prove a point to herself Jo bought a small ice cream from a man who was walking around with a cool-bag slung low on his shoulders. As she chose her cone he winked at her, and she smiled. If the wedding ring on his finger was anything to go by, at least he was straight.

  Jo’s mouth watered as she ripped of the paper on the ice cream – it had been months since she had eaten anything sugary apart from fruit – but just as she stuck her tongue out to scoop up the soft, gooey vanilla cream she suddenly found she had lost her appetite.

  Gable was standing over her, his head blocking the sun and his blond hair burning like a halo around his head.

  ‘I’ve been looking for you since for ever,’ he said, slumping down on the white sand and looking at her casually. ‘I worried when you ran off the other night, but hey, you’re cool, so I’m glad I didn’t get search and rescue out.’

  Jo wondered if it would be considered rude to just stand up and walk away from him. She decided she didn’t care and started to pick up her brand-new Kate Spade.

  ‘Hey, not so fast,’ Gable said, the sunlight making his eyes glitter. ‘Don’t you want to chat about what happened?’

  Jo looked down at the sand. ‘Gable, look – you’re gay, I didn’t know at the time, but I do now, so what’s there to talk about? Why do you Americans always have to analyse everything? There’s nothing to discuss.’

  Gable grinned, and he leant back in the sand. He looked relaxed and happy and it maddened Jo. ‘There’s loads to “discuss”,’ he said, eyeing a group of twenty-something men who were throwing a frisbee to one another. Jo didn’t think any of them were remotely attractive – they all had arms like pipe-cleaners and thin, brittle chests. ‘The question is, why are you Brits so uptight when it comes to sharing your feelings?’

  Jo’s face burned. She supposed she deserved that, but she was still too mortified from trying to kiss him to admit it.

  ‘Even if we did spend a couple of hours analysing every single part of the evening – right up to the point where I threw myself at you – what good would it do either of us? Or do you just want to relish the memory of an English girl who was too thick to know a gay man when she was speaking to one?’

  Gable looked out at the ocean for the longest time, and just as Jo was wondering if she had offended him he spoke.

  ‘I apologise for leading you on,’ he began, ‘if that’s what I did, but I’m not going to apologise for playing it straight.’ He turned to look Jo in the eyes, and once again Jo was struck by just how gorgeous he was. He was breathtaking, even when he looked sad. ‘If I thought you liked me like that I’d never have gone out with you – I thought you were just a lonely English kid who was looking for friends. I had no idea you were nursing a crush on me.’

  Jo looked at her melting ice-cream cone and she licked it cautiously. Like much of the food in America it didn’t taste of anything – it looked great, but there was no flavour.

  ‘I don’t have a crush on you any more,’ Jo said, and the moment the words left her ice-cream-covered lips she knew it was true. After spending the evening with Gable her attraction for him had begun to wane, and now, sitting next to him and knowing he was gay, she felt nothing
for him at all, just embarrassment at her misjudgement.

  Gable grinned. ‘So can we be pals now?’ he asked her, and Jo thought about it. Since that night, Miami had lost some of its sparkle – it had gone from being a place where you could make all your dreams come true to being just another city, albeit one with palm trees, fantastic beaches, and the coolest laid-back vibe Jo had ever known. As Jo finished her ice cream she realised just how much she would like a friend in the city, and even though Gable wasn’t William he did seem like a lot of fun. She had decided that as well as working hard she wanted to start playing hard, too, and Gable would be the perfect partner-in-crime – especially if he knew all the doormen at the hottest bars in South Beach.

  ‘We can,’ Jo said, ‘but I want you to explain to me why you didn’t tell me you were gay to begin with.’ Gable eyed her warily and Jo could tell it was a subject he didn’t want to talk about. She grinned and decided that if they were going to be friends she needed to know what the score was. ‘You can tell me over dinner.’

  *

  At Tiger that evening – a new Thai place that had just opened up on the beach – Jo and Gable sat at a table and studiously read their menus. The restaurant had fake tiger-skin walls, and the menus were fur-lined to match. Rainbow-coloured spotlights lit up the dark wooden tables, and even though they were thousands of miles from the jungle, the restaurant had an exotic, humid feel to it. Jo had never seen a restaurant like Tiger before, and she resisted the temptation to stroke the wall behind her. She didn’t want to look uncool.

  ‘I’m going to take the beef salad,’ Gable said to the waiter, and Jo looked at him in surprise. The menu was full of delicious-sounding dishes, and Jo could barely make up her mind about what she wanted. The meal Gable had chosen – sliced beef with cucumbers and tomato – was possibly the blandest, most low-fat choice on the menu. Jo had a suspicion that it had been included by the chef for stick-thin blondes – the type that were sometimes forced into eating mouthfuls of food by their partners who got sick of paying for plates of food that were only ever played with.

  The waiter turned to Jo expectantly. He had a sweet, shy smile and Jo beamed at him.

  ‘I’ll have the king prawns with garlic and pepper, the coconut rice, some chicken with lemongrass and a couple of vegetable spring rolls, please.’ Jo’s mouth began to water, and Gable smiled at her.

  ‘I can’t remember the last time I was with a girl who ate a proper meal,’ he said ruefully, as Jo was struck again by how beautiful he was, especially with the hot-pink lights catching his face. But despite his Viking features and striking green eyes, Gable began to look uneasy, and Jo realised that underneath his perfect, polished features there was something inconsolable, something that wasn’t that attractive. She wondered what was wrong.

  ‘So tell me about LA,’ Jo said, as she bit into a complimentary prawn cracker. Almost unexpectedly it tasted of prawns and chilli, and Jo could feel the slight oiliness of the cracker on her tongue. She couldn’t remember the last time she had eaten something fried, and it tasted perfect.

  As Gable thought about LA his face lit up. ‘LA is totally amazing,’ he said, and Jo grinned at his enthusiasm. Maybe he wasn’t in a quiet mood after all. ‘It’s the shallowest, vainest, bitchiest place in the entire world and I love it. I dig the attitude, the fact that if you want to be a waiter you have to pass auditions against other models and actors, the way that even if you’re the hottest up-and-coming actor you’re still treated like a piece of shit by someone higher up than you. It’s dog eat dog and it’s great – so long as you play the game properly.’ Gable looked at the basket of prawn crackers with mild disgust.

  ‘It sounds like hell on earth to me,’ Jo remarked.

  Gable smirked. ‘Oh, it is. It’s truly offensive. The first time I was out there I was eaten alive. It wasn’t cute. But I think I know how to play the game now. I’m heading back soon and when I do I’m going to be a different person, one who has the bright lights of Hollywood chasing him rather than the other way around.’

  Gable picked up his knife and fork and began to cut up his tender grilled beef into tiny pieces. Jo barely noticed him do this as she marvelled over her prawns – they were possibly the most delicious things she had ever eaten; they were succulent, juicy and full of flavour.

  ‘But how are you going to do that?’ Jo said, thinking of her own life in London, and how desperate she’d been to get a job on a magazine.

  Gable stopped eating, and after a pause he flicked a small photograph of a nondescript man across the table and Jo picked it up. She looked at it with interest.

  ‘That was me when I first moved to LA.’

  Jo examined the grainy photograph of a dark-haired man with bad teeth and looked up at Gable. She could see no resemblance between the two – Gable was the complete opposite of the man in the photograph.

  ‘But …’ she began in disbelief. ‘How can this be you?’

  Gable toyed with a piece of cucumber on his plate and sighed. ‘It’s a long story.’ He ate the cucumber and then started cutting up an already sliced piece of tomato. He put it in his mouth gingerly and swallowed. ‘I used to be called Simon.’

  Jo looked at Gable incredulously and he grinned at her, displaying perfect white teeth.

  ‘You remember when we were at Mynt that night and I told you that your life was like a film?’ Jo nodded. ‘What I meant was that your life was almost as bizarre as mine. You see, when I wasn’t washing up dishes in dirty kitchens I was trying to audition. When I say “trying” I mean just that – do you know how hard it is even to get the chance to audition in LA? You get open auditions, where hundreds and hundreds of people go, but most casting people only see people with agents, and getting an agent is practically impossible. Even more so if you’re gay and you looked like I did. So I finally got a meeting with an agent – but she told me that I didn’t have the looks to be a leading Hollywood actor. She picked up that I was gay and told me I’d never be the next Orlando Bloom, only a Rupert Everett, one without the looks, the accent or the talent. She told me all of this in the nicest possible way, and I was grateful, but it didn’t put me off wanting to be an actor, it only made me more determined.’

  Gable took a long sip on his mineral water and assessed Jo. ‘So far so similar, wouldn’t you agree?’ he said, and Jo nodded. His life did have some strange parallels with hers.

  ‘I was nursing my wounds and wondering what I was going to do when a new show – Nip/Tuck – came on TV. It was like a sign from God. I decided to move to Miami, get some plastic surgery, and start acting straight. I told myself I’d sort myself out, turn into a heart-throb and move back to LA to start again.’ Gable’s eyes glittered in the pink light. ‘Because, after all, what is the point of being an actor if you can’t reinvent yourself?’

  The waiter came to take away their plates of cold, uneaten food, and Jo stared at the photograph of Gable in amazement. She didn’t know what to say for the longest time, and just as Gable began to look uncomfortable at feeling so vulnerable and exposed, Jo spoke. Her cheeks were flushed.

  ‘You must want to be an actor very much,’ she said.

  Gable nodded earnestly. ‘I do. I really do. And I am so sorry that I didn’t tell you I was gay, but nobody out here knows. If I was still Simon then I’d have told you in a flash, but I’m Gable now, and as far as South Beach is concerned Gable is a straight, cute guy who is planning on moving to Hollywood to be an actor.’

  Jo smiled. ‘So tell me about the surgery.’

  Gable nodded and took another sip of his drink. ‘I was scouring magazines trying to work out what I wanted to have done, when I came across a photograph of a Swedish soccer player in some tight Calvin Kleins – have you heard of Freddie Ljungberg? Plays for an English soccer team called Arsenal?’ Jo nodded – Freddie Ljungberg was gorgeous, and suddenly Jo realised that Gable looked very much like him. ‘I ripped the advert out of the magazine and took it to my surgeon, who said that if I wanted
to look like him I’d need a lot of work. My chin and nose were first, and then I had my teeth straightened and whitened. After that I had Botox in my forehead, collagen in my lips, and cheekbone implants. I’ve had my ears pinned back, and I work out at the gym for two hours every day. My hair is professionally done so that you can’t tell I’m not a natural blond, and I top up my sunbed tan by spending as much time as I can on the beach.’

  Jo recalled the image of Freddie Ljungberg nearly naked in the Calvin Klein advert and looked at Gable – if anything, Gable was better-looking than the footballer. ‘Do you think it was worth it?’

  Gable nodded at the photograph of him as Simon. ‘I’d say so, wouldn’t you? I knew that if I wanted to make it I couldn’t make it as nerdy little Simon Lynott – I knew I had to look spectacular, and even though it has cost me thousands of dollars on credit and months of pain and bruising I’m happy with the results. I look like the man I feel like I am inside, and now people think I’m straight – as proven by the number of girls at Ernie’s who check me out – I feel like I could take on Hollywood and win.’

  Jo stared at Gable and could feel the beginning of an idea creeping through her body.

  ‘I wonder if—’

  Gable interrupted her. ‘If you’re thinking about having surgery I wouldn’t even go there. Jo, you’re a naturally cute girl. Sure, you’re not a model, but since when have journalists needed to look that hot? I didn’t have a choice – all actors have to be devastating in the looks department – but you do. You don’t need surgery.’

  Jo thought back to Gloss, and how every girl who worked there was stunning, from Rachel on reception to Lucy, who was cool, mysterious and could have been a model with her huge grey eyes and long, lithe limbs.