“I know.” I frowned while inside panic swirled. I wasn’t ready. Once he left, for the first time in my life I would be truly alone. I nearly choked on fear falling back on inner strength and flexing muscles I rarely used to hold back the avalanche of sadness that threatened to bury me alive. I could do this. I could stand on my own two feet.
I had to. Alex was set to be the romantic lead in a blockbuster action flick that had all the markings to be a huge success: major studio backing, a release date during the highest revenue weekend on July 4th and a big name on the bill. Jessica Roberts. “At least you’ll finally have a co-star who is hot.” I fluttered my eyelashes striving to make my tone sound teasing. It must’ve been a pretty pathetic performance. Alex settled eyes that were devoid of levity on mine. He moved a strand of snarled hair out of my face and tucked it behind my ear. “Hot enough to make Mike jealous.” I continued making a preemptive attempt to remove that worried glint from his gaze by bringing up his current boyfriend.
“No, Shaye, baby. Mike’s a stripper. No one’s half as hot as him. Besides, you know as well as I do that if I was ever going to switch teams, the only woman who could ever tempt me would be you.”
My eyes widened. He was wrong. I’d never known that.
He brushed his lips softly over mine, something he rarely did. “You’ve really got no idea of your sex appeal. Which is charming all on its own, and then there’s that sweetness of yours. It’s almost too good to be real. Don’t you dare let that asshole Jinkins steal that from you or from me, alright?”
When I didn’t reply, he lifted my chin and prompted again, “Ok?”
I nodded. I didn’t want him to worry about me. This role was critical to his career. He wanted to break out of the Pinky thing as badly as I did, if not more so. He needed to go, and I needed to let him.
“You can still come with.” His eyes searched my face.
“No. You’re right. I need to get on with my life.” I flattened my lips together, hoping resolve was what he saw and not the weakness that seeped through the hastily spackled cracks. “And I really need to start hunting for a new manager.” I’d been avoiding the phone calls and emails, but they were starting to pile up. It wasn’t something even short term that I could handle alone.
“Things will smooth out with your dad.”
I didn’t share his confidence, but I nodded.
My cell rang. I froze, heart nearly leaping out of my chest. When would it stop doing that every time the phone rang? I needed to give it up. Quit hoping. It wasn’t him. He’d made his point with me and the hurt had burrowed in deep, a constant aching pressure under my ribcage that made me feel restless and desperate. I began to consider things I never had before in order to remove it, even if only for a little while.
Knowing my voicemail was maxed out I scooped my phone up off the coffee table. I flipped it over and glanced at the lit up display seeing a number I didn’t recognize.
“Shaina Bentley,” a slightly familiar voice rumbled.
“Yes, this is she.”
“This is Bryce Sunderhouse.”
“Who is it?” Alex whispered.
When I covered up the phone to tell him, his eyes went round. Sunderhouse was the young, handsome, and on the rise director of the Joplin film I’d hoped to star in.
“Are you still there?”
“Yes. Yes. I’m here. How can I help you?”
“I’m hoping quite a bit actually.” He let out an exasperated breath. “Our lead just up and quit on us. She got offered another part and we couldn’t work out the logistics. I remembered how passionate you were about the role.”
She’d walked off for a bigger paying part most likely, but she was an idiot. I’d read the script several times. This movie might have a small budget opposite of the spectrum from Alex’s, but I had a feeling that it had the potential to be both a critical and maybe even a box office success.
“You’ve been making a lot of the waves in the news down there in Seattle,” Sunderhouse continued.
Yeah and I bet I moved to the top of the short list because of all that publicity. That kind of media attention was something you just couldn’t manufacture, and it was free which would be a boon for a low budget film like his. I knew how things worked. But I knew something he didn’t. Something more important. I was ready for this role. There were so many things I could relate to in Joplin’s life. The loneliness, the way she always felt like she never fit in. I could bring real life experience into my performance.
“We were supposed to begin filming in Vancouver tomorrow,” Sunderhouse explained. “Is there any chance that you would consider joining us up here?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, you’ll consider it, or yes you’ll take the role?”
“Yes, I’ll take it. I’ll make arrangements to come up to Vancouver tonight.” How telling was it that after being offered the serious role I’d always coveted the one person I really wanted to share the news with most was still Warren Jinkins.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Shaina
“I’m here.” Cell to my ear, I circumvented my pile of luggage and took a seat, fingers smoothing over the edge of the luxuriously appointed silk and satin king bed, wishing it could be so easy to smooth over my troubled thoughts.
“I’m glad,” Alex replied. “I wasn’t sure you’d remember to call.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” I rubbed the back of my tense neck.
“C’mon. I’m your best friend. I know what day it is, Shaye.”
I sighed. He would remember. That’s the kind of friend he was. The best kind. Only I didn’t want to talk about it. Not this year. Not any year really. I reached for the pendant before remembering it was no longer there. I squeezed my eyes shut tight, my heart feeling like a dead weight in my chest.
I stood and listlessly shuffled over to the windows staring out into the darkness outside thinking how perfectly it matched my current mindset.
“Shaye, you still there?” Alex prompted after my uncomfortably long silence. “I can still come up there if I can get the director to rearrange my schedule.”
“No don’t do that. I’m ok.” I wasn’t, but I would be. I was going to make it that way soon… hopefully. “I love you.” Tears threatened burning in the back of my throat. “But I need to see myself through this. We talked about that before I left.” It was time for me to stop being so dependent on Alex. It was good that we had this separation. I relied on him too much already. I needed to stand up on my own for a change. Be self-reliant.
It’s all good.
Good. Good. Good.
If I repeated the blasted words often enough maybe I’d believe them. But Alex was right to be worried. This was the hardest time of the year for me, the most difficult time to make a break for independence and attempt to set a new course for my life. The anniversary of her death was always when the regret and loss hit me the hardest.
I said goodnight to Alex, zipped off my suede Kors half boots, and stepped out onto the balcony, the coldness of the concrete seeping into my socked feet. In front of me the water of the Burrard Inlet lay calm, like inky glass. The lights of West Vancouver twinkled on the other side of it, and the North Shore Mountains loomed like majestic shadows in the background.
I was using my own funds to stay at the Pan Pacific rather than at the motel that had been budgeted for the film. I was on a secured floor and checked in under an alias. I needed those extra layers of protection since it was just me, and I was without my usual security detail. The view of the waterfront was worth the exorbitant price I’d paid though I wasn’t really in the proper frame of mind to enjoy it. My current troubled thoughts eclipsed everything, even my anticipation for the start of filming the next day.
From the thirtieth floor long gossamer tendrils of my hair escaped their confines and were lifted into the air by the steady briny breeze. Here I stood, alone and isolated, a fairy tale princess at the top of her tower without any prince standing by in the wings
to rescue her.
I was at the edge of a radical change. My wakeup call had come. War was right. The things he had said rang true even though the way he had said them had been hurtful. But then again maybe I’d needed pain in order for them to penetrate and take effect.
It was time to rappel down, and stake out my place in the land of the living. No more flitting around like an intangible phantom haunting the catacombs of my grief. Time to start doing what I wanted to do, the way I wanted to do it. No more foolishly giving away parts of myself to try to save others. I was through with all that.
Cass had made her own choice. The wrong one of course, and though I loved her and would always, always miss her I realized now that I wasn’t responsible. I wasn’t the one to blame. No more feeling guilty for the things I couldn’t control. Thought patterns like that had kept me trapped in the dark and prevented me from finding a way forward.
Nor was I going to continue blaming myself for what happened with Warren. I’d made a mistake. I’d let myself believe I’d seen something in him that wasn’t there, but his mistake was bigger. He never even gave me a chance.
Missing him was just a new ache to add to the old. I had to fight my way past it though it felt like I was caught in one of those deadly Pacific rip currents. I could see the shore, but I was afraid I’d never ever get to it.
I couldn’t allow my mind to linger on him. Every breath without him was already laced with too much regret. Destructive thoughts would drag me under if I let them. Who was he with now? Were his ringed fingers skimming over her skin? Was she getting his kisses? Was he making her moan his name?
It never would have worked. I was a temporary distraction. It was better this way. Two jagged edged souls like ours were destined to cut each other to bits.
Being good hadn’t worked out all that well for me. It was time for a new plan, a new way to deal with all the anger I felt at a world that had taken so much from me.
I ran my fingers along the steel balcony railing. I wasn’t going to allow anyone to steer the course of my life anymore. I could be as hard and immoveable as the cold metal beneath my touch. As calculating and callous as the man who’d given me a glimpse of something better then yanked it away from me. No more doomed to fail rescue missions. What good had any of those ever done anyway, except reap a harvest of sorrow and shit fest of pain?
I was turning a new page tomorrow, starting a new chapter in my life. No more sweet innocent girl with tire marks on her back. I was going to channel a little of that don’t fuck with me attitude I had so admired in War. I didn’t need him to do that. I didn’t need anyone. I was going to blaze my own path through this world. The farther off the straight and narrow the better.
If they thought Warren Jinkins was a sight to behold, just wait till they got a load of the new me.
I stepped forward as if to embrace my destiny, leaning my face into the wind, my eyes shining in the bitter cold.
A one way ticket to midnight lay shimmering with temptation before me as black as an ebony heart that I’d once considered claiming for my own.
CHAPTER THIRTY
War
Hello darkness my old friend, I thought looking up at the starless canopy before running a cotton sleeve across my damp eyes. It was the cold and it was that wind that made them water or at least that was the lie I told myself as I lifted the bottle in the air for another macabre toast.
She didn’t lift hers back, but I pretended she did.
This was the third time I’d been back here in the almost two weeks since the funeral. Thirteen days and counting since I’d lost, no since I had thrown away the best thing that had ever happened to me. The media had stopped hassling me, moving on to ride some other poor unsuspecting sucker’s ass. And as far as I could tell given the silence on her end, so had she. Clear of the taint of me.
The physical cuts and bruises had healed in the aftermath of her departure but the impact she’d had on my life I knew now would never go away. It spooked me if I dwelled too long on the changes I’d noticed in myself since my brief but life changing interlude with her.
But trying not to think about her was impossible. How could I forget her, the woman who had wrapped her arms around the pieces that were left of me, accepting and making me feel whole?
“I’m all packed,” I whispered as if there were someone around to really hear me. “Everything’s in the Ghost.” The Ghost is what I called my gray Camaro. I liked to think it blended in with the night. I liked to think a lot of other things now that were just as fuckin’ pathetic. As if I’d ever be lucky enough to have another chance with her or anyone else after all the harm that I’d done.
“I’m heading back to San Fran tonight,” I continued my one sided conversation. “Morris is getting testy about my absence. He wants his clown back. I wish…” I felt the warm wet trickle down my face, but ignored it. “I wish you had talked to me more.” I couldn’t say the rest out loud. So many regrets, so many dreams that were left unfulfilled, the world I thought I knew had been turned upside down. “I feel like I never even knew you, Mom.” I swallowed. “Truth is you never gave me a chance, but then I didn’t give you much of one either. Did I?” My relationship with Lace had been eerily similar to the one I had with my old lady. Had I really known her or even attempted to understand what made her the way she was? I knew more about Shaina and had forged a bond with her that had gone deeper than anything I’d ever formed with my mom or with Lace.
Remorse seemed to be a common thread in all my relationships.
My gaze fell back on the headstone in front of me, the branches above filtering the light from the waxing moon and casting a web of shadows over the scene. But I wasn’t really focused on the setting. My mind was busy sorting through memories, compartmentalizing twenty-one years of them in much the same way that I’d sifted through and packed away the entire contents of my twelve hundred square foot childhood home.
Only one box remained and it was stored in the trunk of the Ghost. All the rest I’d given away. I had signed the last of the paperwork today, too, for the life insurance money and to put the house up for sale. I wasn’t coming back. This was goodbye. There was nothing left to tie me to Seattle anymore.
That small box contained the only two things I cared to keep. One was a cardigan she always put on when she came home from work. The other was a picture album, one that was surprisingly thick with photographs, news clippings and her notations over the past several years. It seemed that she had missed me after all when I left home to pursue my career. Thoughts and feelings I had never known she possessed were all there in black and white scribbled upon and pasted into those pages. Mrs. Footit had been telling me the truth. An unfamiliar feeling fluttered to life in my chest knowing my mother had been proud of me.
“I wish you had told me yourself, Mom.” I sighed, and it was a ragged sound. Though I knew she had done the best she could as a single mother with a broken heart without financial prospects all alone in the world, it didn’t make the pain of regret any less. “I wish we had another chance. I wish I could tell you how much you meant to me.”
I took another long pull. The eighty proof burned going down, but brought very little warmth back to my chilled limbs. I also knew by now that alcohol was no miracle elixir. It didn’t have the power to deaden unfulfilled desires, not even temporarily.
Another thing Shaina had been right about.
I tipped the bottle upside down, pouring the remaining liquid into the recently tilled ground.
I turned my head to the side watching the ribbon of car headlights on the 405, all seeming connected, all moving along in a line heading to somewhere, some destination, some purpose. I didn’t really have one of those anymore. But I was getting ready to start working on it. Talk to Morris. Try to buy my way out of the contract I should never have signed. Then try to get my band and my old friends back. My real friends. The ones I’d lied and manipulated out of my life. It would be hard, my success not at all as certain as it w
ould’ve been if I’d gone with my original self-serving plan, but I wasn’t going to do things that way anymore. From here on out I was going to do things for the right reasons for a change.
Pave the way with good intentions.
Hopefully not the road to hell anymore.
I continued to stare at the traffic till my eyes blurred remembering how everything had clicked into place this afternoon when I’d packed away that final box and put it in the Ghost. Staring at that solitary box that summed up my life so far, that’s when it had hit me. That’s when I’d suddenly known. My goals were important but even more important in the long run was how those goals were achieved. It was time to switch gears. Abandon the old self-destructive shit. Going down in a blaze of glory was not a long term goal, and walking alone through this life sucked balls.
I was sick and tired of the sound of my own frequency. What I needed now was a new set list and the right friends to accompany me. I needed my old crew back: Dizzy, King, Sager, Bryan, and even Lace if she’d allow me to be a part of her life again… as a friend.
“Goodbye, Mom.” My throat felt like it was scraped as raw as my heart. I draped my arms over my upturned knees and leaned forward like I was going to tell her my biggest secret, which in fact I was. “I think you would have loved her, too.”
I brought the pendant I never took off to my lips. I don’t think it meant to me what she had intended it to. It wasn’t a punishment. To me it was my connection to her. It was about possibilities I had never even considered. It was about hopes I had never entertained. I preferred to believe that if a woman with a heart like Shaina’s had seen something good in someone as black hearted as me, then redemption for me and maybe even for us was a dream that was not entirely out of reach.
I raised the pendant up in the air a final fitting tribute before I tucked it back inside my shirt. Slowly, I pushed myself to my feet.
The Complete Tempest World Box Set Page 94
