Porn Star

by Laurelin Paige

  I bite back my amusement. It’s the closest she’ll ever get to telling me what to do, so worried that she will stifle who I’m meant to be.

  I love her for that. So much.

  “Thanks, Mom. It’s nice to hear you say that.” But there’s still another subject I’m completely lost on. “And what do I do about Logan?”

  My mother pulls back to look at me, her expression slightly perplexed. “It seems like you’ve already figured that out, haven’t you?”

  “No, I haven’t.” Not in the least.

  She shakes her head, dismissing my response. “You have. When you really want to see it in your conscious mind, you will.”

  I know she’s figured out something that I haven’t yet, either because she’s older and wiser, or just because she’s wiser in general. Or maybe because she’s my mother and she knows me better than I know myself, or because she really is more in tune with the universe than I am. It’s frustrating that she can see an answer that’s still hidden to me, but I don’t press her. Because I trust her when she says I’ll see it when I’m ready.

  Understanding that doesn’t lessen my current anguish.

  I peer up at her, suddenly feeling half my age and very vulnerable. My voice is shaky when I ask, “How can I ever hope to see anything when everything around me is so dark?”

  “Not so dark.” She pulls me tighter into her embrace. “You just have to find your North Star. Let that be what guides you.”

  There’s sharp insight in her words and a comfort in the energy she gives, and though I’m not sure yet what—or who—my North Star is, I’m reminded of the Tarot reading she did for me not too long ago and the star card that showed up in my future—hope.

  And with nothing quite resolved, I cling again to that hope, trusting that the universe will give me the answer soon.

  19

  “Logan O’Toole, you are a god.”

  My head snaps up. I’ve been sitting on my couch staring at my hands, my thoughts racing, but Bambi Roo has just walked in the living room, smelling like baby wipes and with her bag slung over her shoulder, and I become aware that I’ve been sitting like this for almost half an hour.

  I give her a weak smile. “Hardly.”

  “No, really. That thing you did the third time you made me come, when you had me bent over the table? Oh my God, I’ve never come that hard, I swear.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Bambi says, tossing her long, dark hair behind her shoulder with a grin. “I’m telling my agent to make sure I book a thousand more scenes with you.”

  A couple months ago, this is the kind of thing that would have made me proud, made me a little smug. I like knowing my girls are happy when they leave my set, I like having a reputation as someone who’s amazing to have sex with. But right now, all I feel is a churning dread in my gut, a sick feeling of worry and shame—and if I’m being honest, a little bit of self-righteous anger.

  “You going somewhere?” Bambi asks, gesturing at me. I’m fully clothed, shoes on and a baseball cap pulled down over my hair, and I’ve been that way since our scene ended, leaving Bambi to clean herself up while I frantically tried to call and text Devi. She wouldn’t answer her phone, and there was no way in fuck I could wait for her to call me back. So I got dressed and I’ve been waiting anxiously for everyone to leave my house so I can drive to Devi’s apartment and figure out what the fuck is going on.

  “I’m going to my girlfriend’s,” I say, trying to make it clear that I really want to go now and also trying not to be rude.

  But really, lady. Get the fuck out of my house so I can leave.

  Bambi looks simultaneously disappointed and excited to hear gossip. “You have a girlfriend? Was it the girl who was here today?”

  “Yeah. Her name’s Devi.”

  “She’s really hot,” Bambi says approvingly.

  Something twists inside me. “Yeah. She’s pretty much perfect.”

  “Well, I won’t take up any more of your time,” Bambi says, and shrugs her bag higher up on her shoulder, walking toward the door. “Oh, and I saw Raven’s tweet while I was getting dressed. Congratulations, dude. People will fall all over themselves for that.”

  Raven’s name and the word congratulations should not ever share the same space, unless someone is congratulating me on escaping our relationship, and I’m immediately wary and on edge. But I also have to get out of here and find Devi, so I decide to shelve this Raven thing for the moment and make sure Bambi leaves.

  “It was great working with you,” I say, and I think it sounds convincing because she flashes me a big smile.

  “I would say the same to you, except you already know how great it was for me.” She winks, and then she waves and walks out the door, blowing me a kiss before she shuts it behind her.

  And I’m on my feet in an instant, swiping my keys off the counter, jogging to my garage door. As I get in my car and back out of my driveway, I dig my phone out, thinking I’d have to dig to find this tweet of Raven’s that Bambi mentioned, but nope. It’s right there in my notifications on my lock screen.

  New project with @number1Toole CUMMING soon. #staytuned #bignews

  “What the fuck?” I mumble, steering with one hand, my eyes flicking between the empty road and my phone. I swipe at the tweet, opening up the app, and then I see not only Raven’s tweet, but the innumerable number of replies, people shitting themselves over Raven’s “announcement.”

  @theRealRaven does this mean you and logan are back together?????

  @theRealRaven omfg i can’t wait to see you two together again, you guys were my favorite couple.

  I can’t wait to see @number1Toole and @theRealRaven fuck again!!!! #bestcouple #truelove

  I already feel sick, but this actually sends my stomach clenching, and for a minute, I have to will myself not to puke all over the Shelby’s steering wheel. What the fuck is Raven doing? There’s definitely no project and there’s definitely no chance in hell that I would even consider a project with her, so why the public announcement?

  And worse, she’s not doing anything to dispel the rumors that we’re back together. At this point, the mere thought of dating Raven again is enough to make me go Hulk Smash on the nearest building.

  I’m dialing Raven’s number without giving it any additional consideration or caution, because fuck caution. I’m pissed as hell, and she’s going to know about it. She picks up the phone after only a couple of rings, as if she expected me to call.

  “Logan.” Her voice is confident, controlled. “How nice to hear from you.”

  “What the hell are you doing, Julie?”

  “You know if you use my real name, I will use yours, and it bothers you much more than it bothers me.”

  “Thanks for the warning. Now explain yourself.”

  Raven/Julie lets out a long-suffering sigh. “I was just trying to gauge interest in a joint project. We talked about doing one when I was over at your house, remember? I figured why not toss it around publicly? See how our fans react?”

  My jaw is clenched so tightly my head hurts. “You talked about doing a scene together. I refused, if you recall.”

  I can practically hear the one-shouldered shrug on the other side of the call. “You were upset and not thinking clearly. I figured once you saw how much traction a joint scene would get, you’d see that it’s a good idea after all. And now that it’s announced, you don’t want to disappoint all your fans, do you?”

  At the last moment, I decide not to take the highway and turn onto Venice Boulevard, driving a little faster and more aggressively than necessary. “You aren’t going to force my hand by doing this. My answer hasn’t changed. It’s still no.”

  “You’ve changed,” she accuses. “You used to put the business first. Now all of a sudden you’re too good for it?”

  “Don’t try that tactic. Even you don’t believe it’s true.”

  “Then it’s that girl, isn’t it?”

  There’s something r
aw and exposed underneath her bravado, and suddenly my nausea is replaced with something heavier, something tired. Is that what all this boils down to? Jealousy over Devi?

  “You’re the one who left me, remember? Why do you care who I’m with?”

  There’s a pause, and I wonder what she’s thinking, what her face looks like. It’s funny to think that she used to be the closest person in the world to me, but now there’s this insurmountable wedge between us, a wedge so large that I have no idea what she’s thinking and feeling right now. And then I remember what she said, that it was my career that was the wedge that drove her away from me, and my stomach knots in fear. I press down harder on the gas pedal, desperate to see Devi as soon as possible.

  “She’s too young for you,” Raven says. “You should have seen her on LaRue’s set, Logan. She looked terrified.”

  “She is none of your business,” I say firmly. “And neither am I. I’m done with this—all of it. I’ll let you deal with explaining to everyone that there’s no project.”

  “Think about what you’re doing,” she chastises. “Throwing away an opportunity for what? A girl?”

  “No.” I stop myself from saying all the angry things that beg to be said, all the threats I want to make if she ever bothers Devi again. Instead I just say, “It’s over between us, Julie. Emotionally and professionally. And I’d appreciate it if you could respect that.”

  And then I hang up, because I’m driving past the airport and getting close to Devi’s apartment, and also because I don’t think I can keep my temper under control if I talk to Raven a second longer. I turn onto Grand Avenue, trying to process everything that’s happened, but unable to focus on anything other than my quest to find Devi.

  My Devi. It makes me ache to think of her feeling lonely or unsure or scared on LaRue’s set, and I wish that I could have been there, by her side. She is so young, so very young, and maybe I haven’t been careful enough of that.

  She seemed so certain this morning, so confident, grinning at me in my dungeon as she examined all the toys arrayed around the room. But there was something unsettled in her eyes, a question there that I couldn’t find the right words to answer.

  The question haunted me. It had settled under my skin and pricked at me as I finished setting up the scene, as Bambi disrobed and we ran through her no list. I felt Devi’s eyes burning into me as the cameras turned on, as I slid my hands around Bambi’s face and kissed her before pushing her down to her knees. Bambi is beautiful and Latina, with darker coloring like Devi, and so it was easy for me to imagine Devi on her knees in front of me, easy to recall that just a couple hours ago, I’d been buried inside her pussy.

  But here’s the fucked up thing, the thing I don’t know how to deal with. I didn’t have to imagine Devi to get hard, to enjoy the feeling of pushing past Bambi’s plush lips into her wet mouth. My mind drifted between Devi and Bambi as Bambi sucked me off, fantasizing about what Devi was thinking and feeling right then. Was she as turned on as I was when I watched her and Kendi? Was she squirming and wet in her chair, wishing I’d pull her over to me and relieve the building ache in her cunt?

  It had made me so hard to think about her watching me, to think about dragging her over to the table and making her kiss Bambi while I took turns fucking them both. I’d wondered if Devi was even touching herself watching me, crossing her legs to squeeze against her pussy or rubbing herself over her dress. I wouldn’t have been able to handle it, in the best possible way.

  But when I glanced over at her to catch her eye, the chair was empty.

  Devi was gone.

  I panicked. I worried. I even got a little pissed off. And here’s the even more fucked up thing—I didn’t stop fucking Bambi. In fact, I fucked her harder, faster, forced more orgasms out of her than I normally would have, because I felt that question nipping at my heels, chasing and grabbing at me.

  I felt dirty, not in a sexy way, but in the way that I actually felt like there was grime inside my mind, the kind of scum that builds up on shower doors and on the edges of stagnant ponds. I felt ashamed, and yet I also felt angry and unfairly accused of something, even though no accusation had actually been thrown at me. So what if I was fucking Bambi? It was my fucking job!

  Except why did I feel weird about it?

  Except why did I feeling like I was missing something, something vital, when Devi wasn’t there?

  And how, with all this weirdness, this feeling of being bereft, could I still keep fucking Bambi? Not just fucking her, but murmuring all my usual sex words to her—you feel so good, and your pussy is so tight, and don’t you want to make my cock feel good? They were sex words that I’d murmured in so many different permutations so many different times to so many different women, and they should have felt hollow and wrong, but they didn’t. It did feel good to pump into Bambi, it did feel good to have her suck me off. And at the end, when I wrapped my hand around my cock and shot cum onto her uplifted face? Well that felt fucking good too. How can I feel guilty and good all in the same space? How can I love someone as much as I love Devi, and still get hard for someone else?

  God, it’s all so fucking complicated. That restless shame, that empty feeling. It makes me horny and agitated all over again just thinking about it. I flex my fingers on the steering wheel before reaching down to adjust the growing bulge in my jeans.

  I need to fuck Devi. On camera, off camera, I don’t care, but that’s the only way to discharge this fucking mess of emotions that I’ve conjured in the space of a couple short hours. I need her so badly, and we need to fix this, whatever it is. We both have livings to earn, so obviously we have to find a way to make fucking other people compatible with our relationship.

  As I turn onto her street, I see immediately that her car isn’t around, which could mean she’s not home or that she parked in the garage. A pang of frustration almost paralyzes me; I counted on her being here, on being able to start fixing this right away.

  I try calling her again as I pull into her driveway—no answer.

  I park and I knock on her door—no answer.

  I walk around the side of the house and squint up into the window like a fucking creeper—nothing.

  She’s not here. I get back in my car and call again, leaving a message this time.

  “Hey Cass,” I say after her sweet voice finishes delivering her voicemail response and the phone beeps to tell me it’s recording. “It’s Logan. I, um. You left and you’re not answering your phone and so I guess I’m worried is all. I love you. Bye.”

  I deliver it in the short choppy way that a teenage boy calling his crush might, and I don’t even care at this point. I don’t care if she thinks I’m pathetic. I just need to see her and make this feeling stop.

  I wait in her driveway for another thirty minutes, picking up my phone to check the screen every few minutes, even though it would have chimed if she called or texted. But there’s no response, and the late afternoon heat seeps into the car, reminding me that I have work to do at home and a phone call with Marieke de Vries at five.

  Suddenly, I’m filled with an anger so intense I can barely see straight, my vision going static at the edges and my hands gripping tight around the wheel. It’s a fury so displaced and projected and tangled that I’m not sure what I’m actually angry about or who I’m angry with. I’m angry with Devi for leaving and with myself for not realizing she’d be upset watching Bambi and me, and I’m pissed that she won’t answer her phone and I’m pissed that there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.

  Mostly, I’m angry because I’m scared.

  The anger vanishes as quickly as it came and I loosen my grip on the wheel, feeling both empty and pointless. With a deep breath, I reluctantly pull out of her driveway and onto the street, looking in my rearview mirror as I slowly roll away. It’s like I’m leaving my heart in her driveway, and all the tendons and veins that attach it inside of my chest are stretching and snapping as I drive away and leave it there to bleed out and die
.

  Needless to say, it’s not a happy drive home. I walk in the door, knowing I need to go to my office, knowing I need to work, but instead I drop my keys on the counter and wander over to my window. Outside in the bright heat, the pool glimmers clear and cold, and I think about watching Devi swim there, moving so effortlessly, the contrast between her dark bronze skin and the bluish water beautiful and perfect and striking.

  What if I was right last night? What if that first off-camera sex was the best it will ever be for us? What if it’s all downhill from here? What if that perfect moment of shimmering connection can’t last? We’ve defined it now, as love, and maybe love can’t bear this many complications, and maybe our baby relationship is already in its death throes.

  I scrub at my face with my hands and step away from the window. I can’t right now—with any of this. I have too many feelings jumbled too close together, and I can’t even begin to sort them out without my Cass beside me.

  So instead, I try to throw myself into work for the afternoon, writing and filming my monologue for Bambi’s scene and having a ninety-minute phone call with Marieke about Star-Crossed. She loves the footage so far, and since Devi and I are getting ready to schedule our last episode for the season, Marieke and I talk about what another season of it would look like. There are a lot of great, sexy ideas tossed around and we finally settle on one, and I should feel energized by all this but I don’t.

  I feel like my heart is still pulsing in sad, bloody little pulses on Devi’s driveway.

  I feel like I want to drive back to her house and sit on her steps until she comes home.

  I wander downstairs, past the wet bar by my kitchen, and I stop to pour myself a scotch because that is what I do when I’m upset—I process my feelings through my liver. But I don’t actually drink it. I just cradle the glass in my hands and watch the sky darken above my pool. And then my phone rings.

  I practically drop the scotch answering it, my blood spiking with excitement and dread at the same time when I see Devi’s gorgeous face on the screen. I answer, trying to keep my voice from shaking with trepidation and relief.