by Lee, India
After rehab though, the notion of freedom suddenly felt a lot closer to loneliness. She needed people around to distract her, to make her laugh, to listen to her stories about the people she’d met while in treatment. She hated that she was suddenly keeping a diary, cataloguing every feeling, every trigger, all the emotions she used to pride herself on not having. She hated that she needed those brunches and manicures and reality shows marathons.
Especially since Zoe was in Los Angeles. Either there or somewhere overseas, shooting her Bond girl role. Wherever she was, it wasn’t New York. And being her best friend – as well as her least booze-dependent one – Harper had found herself free but alone and desperately craving girl time.
Fortunately, that was where Nadine came in, finally stepping into her role as a mother – even if it took Harper’s overdose to push her into it. And to Harper’s surprise, delight and mortification, her mother became the twenty-four-hour best friend she so desperately needed. Together, they took classes of every kind so she could continue to focus on growth, moving forward rather than looking anywhere in the past. Pottery, oil painting, dance, jewelry making, language classes – they took them all until finally landing on the cooking classes that Harper had initially refused to take. But she finally relented and combined with her new interest in detox, the classes led to the eventual opening of Agno.
Straight from Elsa’s studio, Harper decided to head over to the restaurant. Hopefully, just being at Agno would knock her out of her funk. After all, it was where she was most in control – of not just herself but her staff and her kitchen and her beloved garden on the roof. No one knew it but she often snuck up there just to hang out. On occasion, she spoke to the raw snap peas and basil and zucchini flowers. Not full conversations or anything, just complimenting them on their growth.
“Thank God,” Harper murmured to herself as her Audi reached Fifth Avenue and the grandiose front doors of Agno. She was still feeling buzzed, dizzy and on top of that, her heart had begun beating rapidly during the ride over, which puzzled her but at least she could burst through those front doors soon and be in her place of peace.
But just as she reached to open the passenger side door, Harper jumped, yelping in surprise as her phone vibrated in her pocket.
“Sorry,” she apologized hastily to a startled Ron. “One second. Sorry.”
Grabbing her phone, Harper stared at the text notification on her screen. She didn’t recognize the number but it was a 310 area code, which meant Los Angeles. Unlocking her phone, Harper then stared at the text.
I dreamt about you yesterday
Her heart twisted.
Hand clamped over her mouth, Harper suddenly recalled her dream from the morning – the one that had made her giggle while changing, even when she couldn’t at all remember what it’d been about.
Now, the images flooded her mind again, repeating in a loop as she stared at the text from the unknown number that her heart suddenly knew belonged to Levi. The Levi whom she had seen in her slumber early that morning, reliving the day on which they’d met – at the famous Westin estate in Beverly Hills, when she had broken into the so-called back house and run her fingers along all the spines of those books.
Her fingers composed a response before she could tell them not to.
I dreamt about you too.
“Christ, Harper,” she hissed at herself the second she hit ‘Send.’
“What?” Ron asked, confused.
“I’m an idiot. It might not even be his number.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” Harper tried to give Ron a look of apology for her curt tone but she couldn’t take her eyes off her screen. She knew it was him. Levi. She could feel him – she had been feeling him all morning. I should’ve known, Harper scolded herself, her heart slamming in her ribcage the second she read his reply.
Was it about the day you broke into my house?
Harper’s neck tensed as her breath locked in her throat.
Yes.
~
It had been nearly ten years ago when she’d gone on that trip to L.A alone. Any time she looked back on it, Harper wondered if it ever should have happened. But it wasn’t as if she hadn’t had an excuse. Technically, it had been for work. The modeling agency that she had signed to at fourteen had finally booked her a job. It had come as a surprise considering she had gotten absolutely no prior work as a model – not even a damned catalogue shoot. Harper had made her peace with the fact that she’d probably been signed as a favor to her mother, which was why it had shocked her when the agency actually booked her the role of “Cool Girl #2” for an insanely popular tween show at the time. Called Outta This World, it starred then-reigning teen queen, Zoe Mercury.
“Hey. I need you to use your peripheral vision.”
Those had been Zoe’s first words to Harper. They had been on set and she had strutted over to her and the other extras, fresh from hair and makeup and wearing a tight, pink sequin dress for some party scene. Initially, she’d approached the other blonde casted as “Cool Girl #1,” but when the girl had looked startled and asked, “I’m sorry – what?” Zoe had walked away, instead approaching Harper with her out-of-context request.
“’Kay. What am I looking at?” she had responded, unfazed, keeping her dull eyes locked on Zoe. TV shoots, as it turned out, were boring as all hell and repeated the same takes over and over despite the fact that they all seemed pretty similar and usable.
“Marco Donovan. You know which one that is?” Zoe asked.
He was the actor who played Zoe’s love interest, Justin. Harper hadn’t known him by name but she could guess who he was and why Zoe was asking. “Yeah, he’s looking at you,” she responded before the question could even be asked. When Zoe grinned, Harper couldn’t help snorting. “He looks like a douche. Why does he wear sunglasses between takes?”
Zoe burst out laughing. “Dude, I have no idea, but he’s hot.”
“If you like guidos.”
“I’m kind of in that phase right now.”
Harper wrinkled her nose. “I hope he’s really good in bed or something.”
Zoe’s brows shot up. She looked at Harper with wide eyes and a crooked smile, seeming taken aback. “Uh.” Her glossy lips parted to say something else but she decided against it, snapping her mouth shut. Suddenly, Harper felt as if she had the upper hand in the conversation. She smirked.
“Oh. You’re a virgin.”
Zoe’s eyes went wider as she shot her a look. “Jesus, be louder. I don’t think Cool Girl Number Five heard you.”
Harper opened her mouth, faking as if she might actually repeat herself. Before she could, Zoe made a squeaking sound, pressing her finger to her lips and grabbing Harper by the arm, dragging her off set and toward her trailer. “Taking fifteen – sorry!” she’d called breezily to her sputtering director.
“Dude,” Harper laughed once she’d been successfully shuffled into Zoe’s trailer. “Stop freaking out, you’re supposed to be a virgin right now. Aren’t you like, fourteen?”
Zoe shot daggers. “I just turned fifteen. How old are you?”
“Almost sixteen.”
“When did you lose it?”
Harper hardly wanted to answer. Even she felt as if she’d lost it too early. It had happened shortly after Hudson and Nadine divorced. Mortified over her parents’ pictures on the front page of every tabloid, Harper had gone to stay with Joie, her best friend from The Cabot School whose older brother she’d been eyeing for a year. To him, she had lost her virginity and since, she had been with three other boys – which even she found excessive.
“I lost it, that’s all you need to know,” Harper responded to Zoe’s question.
“Seriously? You suck.”
“I don’t know you. At least buy me a drink before you start asking such personal questions,” Harper joked dryly.
Zoe gave her another curious look. “You act older than fifteen,” she said with narrowed eyes, as if she believed Harpe
r might actually be lying about her age.
“I feel older.”
“Does… that happen when you lose your virginity or something?”
Harper gave a laugh – a genuine one, though that didn’t make it any less mocking of Zoe. “You act way younger than fifteen.”
Zoe gave a laugh of her own. “And you act weirdly dickish for someone who doesn’t even know me.”
Harper tried to suppress her smile. “Speaking of dicks, how old is Marco, anyway?”
It was Zoe’s turn to want to keep mum.
“I’m just going to Google it if you don’t tell me.”
“Almost twenty.”
Harper stared, her face contorting with disgust. “I will literally call the cops if you have sex with him.”
“You didn’t strike me as someone who cared about the law,” Zoe snorted.
“I care when I want to.”
Zoe cooed. “Does that mean you care about me already?”
The question actually made Harper think. She was already more interested in Zoe than she was in her friends back home but maybe that was because she was sober. And because Zoe was younger than her and already independent, with millions of dollars that didn’t come from her parents. Harper shrugged. “I mean I definitely don’t want to see you have sex with that douchebag,” she finally answered.
“I mean I wouldn’t want you watching, anyway.”
When Harper stared, Zoe stared back, deadpan for a second before bursting out laughing. “Joking. That was a joke. I won’t have sex with him, okay? Jesus,” she said. “But if I don’t, that means you have to find me a hot guy to lose it to.”
“What do I get out of it?” Harper asked with a smirk.
Zoe barely needed to give the question any thought. “I’ll bring you to a really good party tonight. Like, really good. You haven’t been to a party unless you’ve been to this party.”
“I’m from New York,” Harper said skeptically.
“Yeah, where places close at 4AM. Everything closes early in L.A so we have to have good house parties. Wait for me once you wrap for today. I’ll have my driver take us there together.”
~
The virgin was right, Harper thought to herself wryly.
No party in New York could be anything like the one Zoe had taken her to – though it perhaps had to do with the sheer amount of space available. Behind the gate and never ending driveway was a European villa of nearly twelve thousand square feet sitting upon a two-acre lot.
“You know Oro Records?” Zoe asked, referring to one of the top four recording companies in the music industry. Harper gave her look as if she’d asked an utterly stupid question. “Okay, yes, duh. So, you know the head of Oro? Cliff Westin?”
“Yes.”
“Well, this is his house.”
Harper raised her eyebrows. “Nice,” she said, sounding less enthused than she was. Her voice never seemed to convey its actual excitement. “So.” She looked around at the house teeming with about a hundred teen actors and models and people who, if they weren’t actors and models, certainly looked the part. Pretty much every last one of them held a beer or drink of some sort in their hand. “Why is Cliff Westin throwing a party for a bunch of teenagers?”
Zoe snorted, hooking her arm into Harper’s and weaving her through the crowd of people saying hello, taking her through the opulent white great room and out onto the deck. There, on the outdoor onyx countertop, she fixed Harper a surprisingly good martini with a twist.
“You didn’t look like a beer drinker and this is the only cocktail I know how to make,” Zoe explained when Harper accepted the glass with a lifted eyebrow. “Anyway, Cliff’s obviously not the one throwing this party – he’s in Paris right now. Levi’s the one throwing this thing.”
“Levi?”
“His son?”
“Was I supposed to know that?”
“Yes?”
Harper gave Zoe a look as she took a swig of her martini, her expression asking, “Why?”
“Ugh.” Zoe shook her head as she made a drink of her own. “I guess you have an excuse not to know him if you’re from New York but basically, he’s king here. Like, throws the best parties, knows the best people, is gorgeous.”
“Then why don’t you go after him?” Harper asked.
“Aside from not wanting to deal with that?” Zoe asked, nodding across the pool and over at the open cabana. All Harper could see was a gaggle of about a half dozen girls in bikinis or underwear but she assumed the famous Levi Westin was somewhere under there.
“Yes.”
“Well, aside from not wanting to deal with that, I still have a weird boner for Marco Donovan.”
“Ugh.”
“I’m sorry. Sometimes dirty crushes turn into real crushes, okay?” Zoe said, playfully defensive. “Besides, if you don’t want me to jump Marco’s bones, go mingle and find me another boy to like. Your challenge starts now.”
Within hours, Harper fulfilled her mission, having struck up conversation with a stunningly good-looking, jet-haired model named Steven or Stephan, who was signed to the L.A branch of her agency. It explained his overwhelming prettiness. He was actually a little too gorgeous for Harper’s taste but that didn’t matter when she wasn’t scouting him for herself. And it certainly didn’t matter with Zoe looking so pleased with her pick upon introduction, quickly whisking Steven or Stephan off to some secluded part of the house – or at least a spot where Harper couldn’t watch her and laugh.
Damn it. Suddenly without the entertainment she’d anticipated for the night, Harper groaned inwardly, swatting away the drunk guys with cheesy lines before retreating back into the house to fix another drink or two, hoping they might make her a little more tolerant of the wasted partygoers. Having consumed probably double the alcohol they had, she couldn’t help looking at them with disgust. Amateurs.
Quickly giving up on finding company that she could stand, Harper soon found herself at the backdoor of the empty-looking pool house that was perched at the end of the shimmering blue pool. She had heard passing guests mention that it was under construction and thus off-limits, which made it perfect for her purposes of hiding out until Zoe emerged from wherever she had gone with Steven.
All she had to do was break in.
That would be easy enough. It was just a pin and tumbler lock. She’d worked those a dozen times in the past year alone – generally with the doors of the Lilac wine cellar and Joie’s parents’ room, where they kept hashish from their trip to Morocco.
After retreating back into the Westin mansion on a material hunt, Harper returned with a safety pin from the office and a wrench that she’d sent one of her male admirers to find since she had no idea where the “maintenance room” was.
Going straight to work, Harper stuck the wrench into the lock, twisting it as much as she could to keep tension while using her makeshift pick – the safety pin, straightened and hooked at the end – to feel for the pins inside the tumbler. Within fifteen seconds, the door was open.
Closing the door quietly behind her, Harper stepped onto the shiny hardwood flooring of the pool house, looking up at the high, beamed ceilings. It was bigger than her floor in Hudson’s Upper East Side townhouse. It was probably bigger than the entire townhouse. What is this place?
Before her was an open kitchen of white tile, oak and stainless steel. Harper wandered over to the wall that was comprised from floor-to-ceiling of square oak shelves. Filling each compartment were books. Harper ran her finger along their spines, her eyes scanning their diverse array of topics. Motorcycles, choppers, Henry Ford, South American cooking, World War II, bourbon, Japanese tattoo art. Considering those subjects, Harper couldn’t help but laugh when her fingers reached the spine of a giant coffee table book simply titled PUPPIES.
Continuing down the line, she eventually pulled out a book titled Willpower Through Yoga & Meditation.
“Haven’t read that one yet.”
For some reason, Harper wasn�
��t startled by the sudden voice behind her. Perhaps because it sounded so calm and unfazed by her presence. Or perhaps because she had somehow felt him before he’d said a word. Still holding the book, she looked over her shoulder.
Standing there was a shirtless boy with close-shaven brown hair and far more height and muscle than Harper felt was normal for somebody his age – assuming he was eighteen or so. In his left hand was a half-empty bottle of whiskey. Running up the arm of that hand was a black tattoo of roman numerals. Harper didn’t even care that she was staring.
“Not a fan of willpower?” she asked.
He kept his green eyes locked on her as he swigged from the whiskey bottle. He wiped his mouth with the top of his inked wrist. “I like excess. If I can’t have all of it, I don’t want any.”
“So, if someone said you could only have one glass of that whiskey, you wouldn’t have any at all? I’m pretty sure that’s called willpower,” Harper snorted.
“The all-or-nothing kind, I guess,” the boy said, going into his kitchen and opening the fridge. “Did you break in?” he asked casually while perusing the compartments.
Harper watched him from in front of the shelf. He had additional roman numerals going down the right side of his ribs. “Yes.” She wondered if she should sound more apologetic. “I needed to escape the people out there,” she offered her explanation. It seemed to suffice.
“Yeah. I always forget that they get sloppy as shit after three or four drinks,” the boy said, taking out a slab of raw, red skirt steak. “I don’t know what’s wrong with them. I have more in my system than any four guys out there combined and I’m walking.” He grinned. “Cooking, too, apparently.”
