Just Kiss Me

by Rachel Gibson

  She tried to tell herself that she didn’t want to be with a man who didn’t want to be with her. She was better than that. She deserved better than to get played for a fool by Henry and his mother. She’d been played before. For money or fame but never for the blood that flowed through her veins.

  She hated Nonnie but, in hindsight, she really wasn’t all that surprised. But Henry—Henry had taken their plan one step further. He’d made her fall in love with him, and she hated him for that. She hated him for making her miss the touch of his hands and the sparkly tingles he spread across her skin. She hated him for the warmth of his chest pressed against her as she slept. She hated that each morning she woke and her heart was still broken.

  Most of all, she hated that she missed him.

  She spent the next two months filming in New York and kept herself busy. She had to be on the set at six in the morning and it took two hours of make-up, hair, and wardrobe to be transformed into a theater critic for Vanity Fair in 1918. During the day, she didn’t have time to be consumed by the elaborate lies of her own mother. She escaped into the role, immersing herself in a wit as sharp as a surgeon’s knife. At night though, it didn’t matter how tired she was when she got to her hotel room, the minute her head hit the pillow, her mind would race with questions that could never be answered by her mother. Why the lie? The truth was so much simpler. Did Mamaw Roz know? Did Uncle Richie? Who’d known that her mother had been Fredrickk Shuler’s lover and not the widow of poor Jeremiah Rochets?

  Henry for one, and he’d let her go on and on about the saintly Rochets, lost at sea while saving Cubans. He’d sat there while she’d gone on about how much she would have loved to know her father, and he’d said nothing.

  Nonnie for another. Her mother had obviously legally changed her maiden name. Had it been as simple and serendipitous as an article in the Post and Currier? When had she concocted the story? Before or after Fredrickk’s death?

  And most of all, how could her mother have kept the secret for thirty years? Sometimes, she hadn’t been able to keep days of the week straight, let alone the details of an elaborate lie.

  Although when Vivien thought about it, she was fairly sure that Nonnie had fabricated the story and she’d gotten her mother to agree to it. Somehow, she’d managed to get the woman who hated even the whitest of lies, to go along with her scheme. Vivien didn’t know how Nonnie had accomplished it or what sort of leverage she’d used. Someday she’d confront her nemesis and get her answers, but that someday wasn’t today. It wasn’t tomorrow or next week, either.

  It wasn’t two months later when she wrapped up filming in New York. Her wounded heart had yet to heal, and she might have made a side trip to Charleston to confront The Mantis, if not for the chance of seeing Henry again. In a way, it was worse than the death of her mother. She missed her mother, but she knew there would never be a chance meeting between them. She couldn’t reach out to her. Couldn’t stalk her on Google or Linkedin or search for her public records. Death was final, but this lingering love cut her to the pit of her soul.

  It still lingered the two weeks she filmed in Paris and it continued to linger at parties where she smiled and chatted but felt empty inside. It especially lingered at night when she went to bed alone and remembered Henry’s touch on her shoulder and down her arm, and when she remembered that he couldn’t seem to keep his magic hands off her. She remembered falling asleep with her back against his chest and her behind cradled against his pelvis, feeling so safe and protected for the first time in her life.

  In an effort to understand her confused feelings, she read books about breakups and articles on betrayal on the Internet. She took the advice she read to heart and practiced the art of loving herself more than loving a man who didn’t exist. By the time she returned home in mid-August, her heart didn’t ache quite so much and she didn’t think about Henry all day long. Her tears had dried, and each day she could feel herself loving Henry a little less. Any day now, she expected to feel absolutely nothing.

  The second half of the movie was to be shot at Paramount Studio, and Vivien planned to use the much-needed break in filming to sleep. She was exhausted and jet-lagged and she’d caught a flu bug that made her feel a little queasy at night.

  “I got you some oranges and Airborne,” Sarah said as she walked into Vivien’s room and plopped the sack on the bed by her right hip.

  “Oranges are for colds and you have to take Airborne before you get sick.” She rolled onto her back and looked up into her assistant’s frowning face. “But thank you.”

  “I made an appointment with your doctor. Get dressed.”

  “Now?” She was too tired to go anywhere. “I’m not that sick.” She secretly wondered if she was more depressed than sick. That made her think of her mother and worry about her own mental health. Worrying gave her anxiety, which in turn made her stomach tumble.

  “Chop chop. Pull yourself together.”

  Chop chop? Sarah had turned into a drill sergeant, and pulling herself together meant Vivien pulled on a pair of baggy sweatpants and a hoody.

  “You’re going to die in the heat,” Sarah warned as she pulled out the driveway in Vivien’s Beemer.

  Sarah was right but Vivien wasn’t about to admit it. She hadn’t told her assistant about Henry, not after Vivien had lectured her on man skanks and heartbreak. She was never going to admit to Sarah that she hadn’t taken her own advice. She didn’t know if Henry was a man skank, but he was a heartbreaking A-hole and she told herself she was well rid of him. You’re wonderful, all her breakup books told her. You deserve someone just as wonderful.

  When Vivien and Sarah arrived at the medical complex, they entered through a side door. A freight elevator took them up two floors where Vivien had her blood drawn and she peed in a cup.

  “Have you ever noticed that doctor’s offices smell like medicine and have hideous wallpaper?” Sarah asked.

  “No.” She glanced about the room and took in the vine wallpaper bordered with purple and green grapes. “It looks like Macaroni Grill in here.”

  “So two thousand and two.” Sarah handed Vivien US magazine. “Someone got a shot of you on the set in New York.”

  Vivien didn’t care and lay back on the paper-covered bed. She was either depressed or had some kind of cancer. The kind that made her sleep a lot. Sleeping cancer.

  Her doctor came in and sat on one of the ubiquitous round stools that rolled around on wheels. He opened her chart and looked up. “You don’t have the flu.”

  “That’s good,” she said as she rose to her elbows.

  He stood and grabbed one of those special doctor flashlights from the wall. He shoved a small black cone on the end and grabbed a tongue depressor. “When was your last period?”

  “Period?” She thought back and sat up all the way. “July maybe.”

  “Say ahhh.”

  “Ahhh.”

  He removed the tongue depressor and tossed it in a flip-top trash can. “Could it have been the end of May?”

  She held still as he looked up her nose. “No. I’m pretty sure it was in July because I was in Paris.”

  He checked each ear then tossed the little cone in the trash can. “You’re pregnant.”

  The lid shut and Vivien thought she heard him say she was pregnant. “What?”

  “Eleven weeks.”

  Sarah gasped. “Holy shit!”

  “That’s not possible. I . . .” She couldn’t be pregnant. Eleven weeks? That was almost three months. She’d know if she was pregnant. Wouldn’t she? She thought of her periods, and yeah she’d missed two and the one in July had been very light. She hadn’t given it much thought because her cycle was always wacky, especially when she was under a lot of stress. She’d only had sex with one person and he’d worn a condom . . . except that one time when it broke, but what were the chances? It couldn’t be true. The doctor must have given her a bad test. One of those false positive scenarios. “I don’t believe it.” Yeah, because the t
hought that she might be pregnant with Henry’s baby was impossible to wrap her brain around.

  “You’re pregnant.” He showed her the test results, but her brain still refused to believe what her eyes saw was true.

  “No. It’s impossible,” she scoffed, but just to make sure, she made Sarah run into Walgreens and grab a pregnancy test on the way home. Sarah, being the always prepared assistant, bought three. All different brands just to be certain.

  “Doctors make mistakes,” she said as they watched the three white and blue sticks. “I heard about a man who went in for prostate surgery and got his leg amputated instead.”

  “I think that’s an urban myth, like Bloody Mary.”

  “Or the Slender Man.”

  Sarah laughed. “That one is so lame.”

  Vivien lifted her gaze from the sticks and chuckled. “When I was a kid, I believed that if you ate Pop Rocks and drank cola at the same time, you’d explode.”

  “Oh that one is true. I knew a guy whose cat exploded.” Vivien might have pressed for more information on the possibility of a cat explosion, but Sarah’s big gasp stopped her. “I see a pink line on this one. Oh my God, boss woman, here comes another pink line.”

  “Let me see that.” The second line was so faint it didn’t count.

  “This one has a blue plus.”

  Vivien looked at the second test to make sure. She grabbed it from Sarah’s hand as her face went numb. “It could be faulty,” she said, but the third test was digital and the screen lite up with the words: pregnant, 5+ weeks.

  “You’re preggo,” Sarah announced as she waved the white and blue stick around as if it needed to dry.

  “This can’t be happening to me.” Vivien sat down in a kitchen chair. “I don’t believe it.”

  “I’ll make an appointment with your vagina doc. You’re in denial.”

  Vivien liked denial. It made her life easier, and she decided to pitch a tent and stay firmly camped out in denial. She quite happily lived in the land of denial until the day her OBGYN squirted clear goo on her stomach and the outline of a baby popped up on the ultrasound screen. She saw arms and legs and a beating heart.

  “It’s a boy,” Sarah gasped. “And my God, look at that thing.”

  “You’re looking at the umbilical cord,” the doctor told her. “We won’t be able to determine the sex for a few months.”

  “Oh.”

  Pregnant. She was pregnant with Henry’s baby. What the heck was she going to do? She had no idea, but when she was all alone later, she remembered her conversation with Henry about the choice he and Tracy Lynn had made a long time ago. He’d said he felt more guilt than anything else. Then as now, there were only two choices and she had to make one.

  She sat down with a legal pad and made a pros and cons list:

  Henry’s Lies and Betrayal

  Heart still aches a little at the thought of seeing Henry again—con

  A lifetime reminder that the Whitley-Shulers have made a pathetic fool of me—con.

  No family to help—con.

  Nonnie would be in my life forever—con-con-con.

  Career—con. Actresses with children are hired less often than actresses without.

  Get fat—con.

  Possibility of stretch marks—con.

  The pain of pushing a baby out my vagina-ouch!—con.

  Henry Whitley-Shuler is an a-hole—con.

  Henry Whitley-Shuler is a gigantic a-hole—con.

  When she was through, Vivien had a whole list on the con side and nothing on the pro. Not one thing. She thought of the tiny white outline on the ultrasound. She thought of how impossible it was to have a baby at this time in her life.

  She reached for the phone.

  Henry reached for the key on top of the door frame and unlocked the door of Vivien’s pink row house. Everything had been restored to the satisfaction of Charleston’s Historical Society. The house was ready to be put on the market. He walked through one last time and was flooded with memories. The garden reminded him of the afternoon he’d found her digging in the mud, of her drinking tea in the kitchen, and of her green eyes looking across the table at him. She’d complained about the stench of his lucky coat after he’d run outside in the rain to get it for her.

  In the parlor, he recalled her narrowing gaze as she looked at the renovation work and her calling him a sneaky bastard for taking advantage of Macy Jane. He remembered the day she’d walked in the parlor wearing red shoes and blouse. He remembered having sex and breaking a condom. He remembered every word and touch, but three months after she’d disappeared from his life, the memory no longer felt like a knife slicing his heart. Now it was just a dull, manageable ache.

  Henry backed out of the French doors and put the key in the pocket of his jeans. He needed to drop it off at the realtor’s office on his way home, but first he made a quick stop at the Kangaroo Express for a fill-up and a six-pack. He grabbed a king-sized Twix and headed to the checkout. Third in line, he called Hoyt to talk about a dilapidated tobacco barn he’d found in Marion County. It was in rough shape, but still salvageable. “I got it for two grand,” he said as the woman at the front of the line paid for a Rock Star and a pack of Camels. “But we have to do the demo and haul it away ourselves.”

  “No problem. I like demo.”

  Which was one of the reasons Hoyt made such a valuable employee. He was built like a tank and loved grunt work. “It’ll take a few trips to haul it all back.”

  The kid next in line paid for a Slurpee with a handful of change. He dropped a quarter on the floor, and Henry’s gaze followed him as he bent to pick it up. “I can sell it as . . .” his voice trailed off, his attention caught and held like glue by the National Enquirer in a rack at the checkout counter. The kid stood and blocked Henry’s view.

  “Excuse me,” he said and reached in front of the boy. He pulled the tabloid from the rack and stared at the picture of Vivien, walking down a street somewhere and eating ice cream. The paparazzi had caught her eating, but it wasn’t the ice cream that caught his attention. It was the enlarged red circle around her stomach and the red arrow pointing to it. “Baby Bump?” was written in bold black letters. Henry stared at the red circle and Vivien’s belly and he felt the blood rushed from his head. He thought he might pass out. Right there in the Kangaroo Express.

  “Boss? Are you there?”

  “Yeah. I’ll call you back.” He disconnected and stepped out of line. Balancing his six-pack, he thumbed to the center of the magazine. The same picture was blown up even bigger, and he could see a slight bulge, like she’d eaten a grapefruit. He studied the photo and it looked to him like she’d gone on an ice cream bender, like when she was a kid.

  “Sources close to Vivien will neither confirm nor deny that the actress is pregnant,” he read. Tabloids made stories up all the time. Like him fondling her bra in the sports bar on King Street.

  He slid his gaze to her beautiful face and big dark sunglasses. There had been a bit of truth to the bra story. He had been holding it on his finger and . . . Henry’s brows crammed together over his eyes and he brought the paper closer to his face. Right beside Vivien, as if he didn’t have a care in the world, strolled Henry’s missing brother.

  While Henry had been going through hell in Charleston, Spence had been living it up in Hollywood.

  Chapter 19

  The Diary of Vivien Leigh Rochet

  Keep out! Do NOT read under Penalty of Death!!

  Dear Diary,

  I’m supposed to write a paper on my family roots for history class. I know some of the kids have family that arrived on the Mayflower and others when South Carolina was still a colony. Their people have cities and streets named after them. I traced my momma’s roots back as far as 1870 and found out my family is from Tennessee and they were sharecroppers. Momma showed me a picture of them standing in a dirt patch. Some didn’t have shoes but all the men wore suits and ties and even hats. None of them smiled. ☹ I wouldn’t have s
miled either. Mamaw Roz said I should write about Great Uncle Cletus, who lived in a chicken coop. Uck!!! I didn’t want to write about my momma’s family standing in dirt and sleeping in chicken poop.

  Dear Diary,

  Proof Spence Whitley-Shuler has a mental defect. Just today, Momma and I were in the big house with the Episcopal ladies. They were praying and talking about the Bible and I thought I might die from boredom. The only good thing about the Episcopal ladies is they bring cookies and tea. Yucky Spence and Butt Head Henry are home from spring break and Nonnie made them come down from their rooms and say hey to the ladies. They were all “pleased to meet you,” and “how’s your mama.” All polished and polite until Louisa Deering asked if they wanted to try some of the ladies’ special sugar cookies. Spence started to laugh so hard I thought he was going to give himself an internal injury. Henry’s lips kind of twitched and he hauled his brother out of the room, probably to find a straitjacket somewhere. What’s so funny about sugar cookies? I love sugar cookies. I would eat sugar cookies every day if Momma let me. Yummy!! ☺

  Dear Diary,

  No Fair!!! I wrote my history paper about the Rochets, but I had to make some stuff up. Stuff like I traced my daddy’s roots all the way back to the Boston Tea Party. It isn’t a lie because it could be true. I would have totally gotten an A if I hadn’t messed up today and forgot what I wrote. ☹ The teacher asked me if my great-great-granddaddy had been a member of the Sons of Liberty. I forgot all about the assignment, I said Daddy died rescuing Cubans and I’d never met anyone in his family. Now I have to write the paper again. ☹☹ My momma was mad and said big or small, lies are lies and Jesus hates lies.

  Dear Diary,

  I got a cramp in my stomach this morning and I wasn’t running anywhere. I think I’m going to have my period any day.

  Dear Diary,

  I’ve been thinking about boys again. If I want to get married, I have to think about who I might pick. Momma says I have my whole life ahead of me to think about it, but I think I should start now.