Bliss (33 page)

Sophia waved that way. “Not David. No one at work.” She made eye contact with Demi, and said, “Six weeks ago, a guy at a bar drugged my drink and I woke up in some bed with no memory of what happened.”

“After the First Night party,” said Demi.

“I couldn't tell you. I couldn't tell anyone. I know I took my anger out on you, and I haven't been a good roommate or friend. I'm sorry.”

“Jesus, you were dealing with this by yourself, all this time? No wonder you were depresso. Did you go to the police? We have to report this.”

“No,” she said. “I can't do that with the show about to premiere. There's no way to prove anyone's guilt. I don't even know what happened. Maybe if I went to the police right after, but I didn't. I went to work.”

“I'm so sorry that happened to you.”

“Me, too.”

“Do you know who he is?”

“I've tried to figure it out, but I can't.”

Demi drew Sophia into a hug. She was shocked by the news, and even more shocked that Sophia tried to bury it. Leandra was proof of that. She tried to bury her feelings about her sister, and look what happened. There was no burying something like this. “I could have helped you,” Demi said.

“How?”

“Just sitting here like this.”

Sophia said, “You would have flown into a rage, and tried to find the guy and kill him. You would have made me take you to his house.”

“So you know where he lives,” said Demi. “What was that address?”

They laughed ruefully. Sophia said, “I just focused on work to get through the worst of it. The weight was heavy, but it didn't crush me.”

“I could have taken some of it off you,” said Demi.

“I get that now,” said Sophia. “I feel lighter already. But you were doing well with the restaurant. I didn't want to put my problems on you. But, yeah, I see that it would have been better for both of us if I told you right away.”

“I'm grateful to know the truth, whenever you're ready to share it,” said Demi. “I'm guilty of trying to bury some secrets, too. I should have told you about Jesse the very next day, and about my DUI. But I needed to hide in a hole for a while and process it before I could stand to hear anything from anyone, even you. I already blamed myself, and felt horrible enough.”

Sophia nodded. “I blamed myself about the roofie night. It was irrational, but that's how it was. That was another layer. I'd yelled at you about the drinking. I was doing shots that night. I felt like a hypocrite.”

“Not the same.”

“I know,” said Sophia. “I wasn't thinking clearly for a while there. I needed to hide in a hole, too.”

“In the future, let's honor each other's holes. Which sounds perverted, I know. We'll honor the holes, and pull each other out of them.”

They sat on the couch like that for hours, Sophia telling Demi everything since the roofie night, the morning after, doing all those tests, the incredible relief to be clean, the challenge of filming scenes while so upset, how she poured her emotion into her performance. “It helped,” she said. “This helps. I feel a lot better.”

“Is there anything else you're not telling me?”

“That's it. What about you?” asked Sophia.

“I'm sleeping with my boss.”

Sophia laughed. “I assumed.”

“But it's only good. If anything gets weird, I'll tell you.”

*   *   *

Demi and Aiden had fallen into a rhythm. When she got to work, they fooled around in the kitchen. When Carole, the newly hired chef, and her staff arrived, they chased each other around his office. When everyone else had gone for the night, they did it in the dining area.

“That's all you need to survive,” he said. “Three hots a day.”

Their fling
was
red hot and hilarious. She'd never laughed so much during sex before. Demi remembered that old adage from Woody Allen, that sex and comedy didn't mix. Wrong. With Aiden, it was another kind of release, from the core, a deep explosion of emotion that worked on Demi like good medicine.

During downtime, they'd disappear into his office and go, as the Aussie's put it, “up to the guts with nuts.” They also cooked for each other, filling the restaurant with aromas and their mouths with flavor and textures. It was the most sensual relationship of her life. He engaged all of her senses—touch, hearing, smell, sight, taste—deliciously.

He seemed to like her a lot, too. A foodie with an oral fixation, Aiden loved to kiss, deep soul passion that left Demi gasping. James, on the other hand, hardly ever kissed her mouth. He kissed other parts plenty, but she understood now that it'd been to make him feel like a master, not necessarily for Demi's sake.

Demi couldn't help comparing her ex with her boss. For the most part, she came up with dissimilarities. The only aspect of the two relationships to worry about: Demi's world revolved around Aiden. In the beginning, any new relationship swelled up and pushed everything else away. The phenomenon wasn't unique to Demi's, although it was her pattern to go to extremes.

She was ever hopeful that it was possible to fall for a man without losing herself. The trick, she decided, was to establish firm boundaries. She and Aiden didn't see each other outside the restaurant—by mutual consent. A couple of times, she asked him to come along on her daily lunchtime beach walk, but he chose to stay behind in his office to catch up on phone calls and emails.

Demi used her alone time to do the daily spot check on her life. She was going places, and not only on foot. After a long and annoying process of sitting through a class, and taking a written and a road test, Demi was the proud owner of a brand-new California driver's license. If she had a car, her life would be complete. Her salary was decent, but Ubering and the California lifestyle was expensive.

“I'm going for my walk,” Demi said to Aiden. They'd just finished a meeting about the soft open with Carole. It was only a week away and the preparations were chugging along.

He said, “I'll be here.”

Instead of going out the back to the beach, Demi snuck into Aiden's office and hid in the closet. Her plan was to jump out, naked, while he was on the phone, and surprise him. She quickly shed her shirt and shorts, bra and undies. Through a crack in the door, she watched him sit behind his desk and turn on his computer. Her perspective was of his back, the screen visible over his shoulder. He tapped away on the keys. The screen turned blue and she heard the sound of a dial tone and a phone ringing. He was Skyping? Okay, she couldn't burst out naked now. The person on the other end would see her.

“Hallo?” A woman's face appeared on the monitor, a pretty blonde around thirty.

“Morning, Sheila,” he said.

“Can't talk long today,” she said. “I'm running late. The transfer came through, so I paid off the contractor. But the washing machine delivery didn't happen. I spent all afternoon on the phone dealing with it…” She kept going, the details of life flowed uninterrupted. Aiden just sat and nodded.

A knock on the door. Carole poked her head in. “Boss? Can you come into the kitchen for a minute? I want you to taste the crab fritter.”

“Two seconds.” To Sheila onscreen, he said, “Got to go. Send the delivery guy's email address. I'll try you later, if I can. Otherwise, tomorrow. Love you.” He made kissing noises. The woman kissed back. He ended the call, got out of his chair, and left the office.

Demi redressed quickly, crept out of the office, and onto the beach without anyone seeing her. Instead of doing her regular stroll, she doubled back to the boardwalk, and went into the nearest bar. She ordered a vodka on the rocks, and sucked it down in one gulp.

The last time she'd done the “Surprise! I'm naked!” ploy was when she found James with that Slavic bimbo. She had learned he was a cheater, and life as she knew it was over. This time, in a twist of fate, she discovered that
she
was a cheater. You could argue that she had no idea that Aiden was married or whatever he and Sheila were, and that he alone was the cheater. But not knowing didn't make it right. Ignorance wasn't absolution. Every lunch hour when she took her walk, he'd been Skyping with Sheila. Afternoon in Los Angeles was early morning tomorrow in Sydney. Aiden was an electronic presence at breakfast back home. If she weren't sleeping with him, she'd think that was sweet.

As close as they'd become, Demi didn't know much about Aiden. Her own fault. She didn't ask. She had the idea that he came as he was, without the encumberance of a past. He must have liked it, too, and didn't ask about hers either. Assumptions had been made on both their parts.

She ordered another drink. Sophia nailed it when she said, “If it doesn't work out with Aiden, you can crawl into a bottle.” Sophia's remark was mean, and prescient. It was a reflex for Demi to reach for a drink to numb the pain. Aiden never got around to giving her a raise for developing the menu. In the end, Carole had changed most of it anyway. Had he flattered her and made her feel important just to get at her “joot”” (his word for it)?

She texted Sophia. “Can you talk?” No reply for ten minutes. She was on set. Since their confessional night, it was like the light behind Sophia's eyes when she looked at Demi was switched back on. That was a relief for them both. They couldn't change what happened to Sophia, but they could talk about it now, and had been every night for days. It seemed to help immeasurably.

Demi would have to tell her about Aiden's wife, girlfriend, whatever, and soon. But right now, she had to talk to someone else. She called Catherine. “I messed up,” she said when her new old friend answered. They'd been checking in about once a week, so Catherine knew all about Aiden. Demi filled her in on the latest development.

“He's in love with someone else,” she said. “So what?”

“That doesn't bother you?”

“Nope.”

“I'm repeating patterns. From one cheater to the next,” said Demi. “I thought things were changing for me, but they're exactly the same. I'm a fucking idiot.”

“Where are you now? Are you drinking?”

“No.”

“
That's
the dangerous pattern,” said Catherine. “You're reacting the same way, the easy way. Did you think this through, really consider your options, or did you run right to a bar?”

“What's there to think through?”

Catherine said, “Do you like this man? Does he make you happy? Are you having fun at the restaurant? Can Aiden help you with your career, which, I can assure you, will last longer and be more important in the long run than any man? Aiden has been a huge positive in your life. You chose a winner this time, Demi. He's good for you. His being a cheater
protects
you. It's like protective covering for your heart.”

Demi started to understand what Catherine meant. She'd been trying not to repeat the mistake of folding herself into Aiden's life, like she'd done with James. When she saw Sheila's face on the screen, a chemical chain reaction swept through her brain cells and reconfigured them. She'd initially felt betrayed and angry. But Demi had the ability, the hard-won self-awareness, not to fall back on easy emotions, but instead find inner strength. How can any situation work to my advantage? How to turn this negative into a positive?

“Do you get it?” asked Catherine.

“Aiden is safe,” said Demi. “His being married or whatever makes him safe.” There was no way she could fall in love with him now. And no chance of losing herself in an obsessive relationship. If she chose it, she could be free of fear, judgment, and ego. It was all gone. Demi could remove expectation from her reality. She'd just exist in the moment, enjoy it, or not, and float. No judgments, no pressure, no thoughts about a future together. Just fun, food, sex, and success. This could be the ideal situation for her.

“Are you too drunk to go back to work?”

“Maybe.”

“Go anyway,” said Catherine.

Demi left her third drink on the bar, and returned to Dory. She found Carole and Aiden in the kitchen, pulling apart the fritters and discussing ardently whether to put them on the menu or not.

“Taste this,” he said, shoving the fried nugget at her.

Demi tried it, and loved it. “These hotcakes will sell like hotcakes.”

“Are you sure?” he asked.

There wasn't a trace of mirth in his eyes now. No funny business about the business. He had a wife back in Sydney to support, so every decision about Dory was serious. If Aiden didn't value her opinion and her work, she wouldn't be here.

“I'm sure,” she said. “But I worry about the oyster stew.”

“Really?” asked Carole. “You never said anything before.”

“I'm saying it now.”

Aiden, Demi, and Carole spent the rest of the afternoon going over the menu item by item, tearing it apart. Maybe her two and a half cocktails freed her to speak her mind. Or maybe it was the revelation, thanks to her secret sage Catherine, that the only person Demi could cheat on was herself. The only way she'd do that was by discounting her worth. Alcohol was tied up in it, but Demi's most dangerous addiction was self-doubt. Her worst enemy was anxiety. She was going to take those traits off the menu.