Rebecca swats him on the arm, giving me an apologetic look, and he adds, “But if there’s a
real
queer in there, as opposed to the quasi-straight kind, I plan to chat him up.”
So that’s my answer, the big one I’ve been searching for all year. With Alex gone, I’m nothing but a quasi-queer of the somewhat straight variety.
Marti’s right—I’ll bet Al
is
laughing his ass off right about now.
***
Thank God I’m in permanent possession of a key to Casey’s Malibu beach home, and that he reminded me of that fact. And thank God that even though my friend can be a definite jerk, he’s also from big-time money, so that he owns said beach home. The doorway is shadowed and pitch-black, and I have to fumble with my keys for what feels forever, cars whirring past us on the coastal highway. Like most of the houses on this narrow strip of coastline, Casey’s abuts the road with only a thin wedge of asphalt in front. The world out here keeps washing away, one infinitesimal grain of sand at a time.
“Just take me a minute,” I assure Rebecca, glancing at her sideways. She’s slipped off her high heels, and they’re dangling from her fingertips. I can’t help imagining stripping her out of a lot more than those shoes—every last morsel of fabric, as a matter of fact. Can’t help dreaming about running my hands over every inch of her svelte, feminine body. God, it’s been too long. Too long since I’ve made love that way and now that it’s close, I’m practically coming unglued.
Surely she can see how my hand trembles as it turns the key in the lock. Whose great idea was it to drive out to the beach? We could have been back to her place in half the time, but I wanted to woo her in a serious way. Wanted to take her here for that first glorious kiss, to the beach, the quintessential romantic place any two lovers can be. No accident it’s where Alex and I had our commitment ceremony. No accident we’re standing here at Casey’s dark doorway at nearly midnight on a Saturday night.
“Got it,” I assure her, my voice deeper and rougher than I mean.
“Good,” she says, leaning close so that I catch the scent of her perfume, and I wonder if she realizes how dangerous I feel tonight.
Get yourself under control, Warner. She’s not a guy. This is going to take time.
Slow, slow down, boy. It’s just a kiss tonight
. But my darker side whispers seductively, promising of a near future I’ve yet to possess,
But you’ll have her soon enough
.
We enter the house, my dress shoes clicking on the smooth tile floor, and I flip on the recessed lighting over the fireplace, revealing a vivid painting of Laurel’s. It’s Santa Fe red and burnt orange, like the fire I feel smoldering inside me right now.
“Geez,” she says, brushing past me. More perfume and feminine allure that makes me go a little crazy. “This place is gorgeous.”
“So are you,” I whisper in a low, appreciative rumble. She turns to me, surprised. Maybe she doesn’t get what she’s been doing to me all night. Shyly, she brushes a loose strand away from her cheek. “I mean it, Rebecca. You are so beautiful in that little black dress.”
“Every girl should own a little black dress.”
“Every boy should see his girl in one.”
“And you look beautiful in your suit,” she tells me, tipping her face upward to really meet my gaze. Without her heels on, I’m a relative giant beside her, big and clumsy, all male to her delicate female. I’m not used to this. Not used to being so rangy and awkward when all I want to do is kiss; I’m used to reaching
upward
for my kisses, to a man nearly an inch taller than me.
Before I can sort out what to do, she slips past me, and my opportunity is missed. “Can we go out on the deck?” she asks, gesturing toward the sliding glass doors, and I swallow hard, following with a silent nod of acquiescence.
“Good,” she says, dropping her shoes on the hand-woven rug, “I want to see the moon tonight.”
And I want to see the moonlight in your eyes, sweet Rebecca.
***
Rough out here this evening, the wind all kicked up and the waves rolling hard, nothing but foamy chop. We’ve been outside on Casey’s deck a while, not talking, just quiet together. Me reclining on the lounge chair, watching her watch the sea, her knowing that I’m watching, and letting me.
“What was your first kiss with Alex like?” she asks contemplatively, staring out at the pounding waves, hands clasping the metal railing.
I notice that her shoulders are small but strong, like fine porcelain gleaming in the moonlight. Her long hair sails on the breeze, blowing around her face, and after a while, I move behind her. She glances back, wondering why I haven’t answered, and I’m right there. My large hands cup her waist, because I need to feel how soft she is, how different her body is from my own. Languid green eyes track upward, meet mine, and one glance causes a sharp tightening in my groin.
Brushing a few wild strands away from her lips, I murmur my answer. “Like this,” I breathe, leaning low to feel the velvet softness of her mouth beneath mine, the satin of her cheek. But kissing Allie was never like this; this is something virgin and new. This is a first kiss, what all first kisses should be, as her warm mouth opens completely to mine. She folds into me, effortless; I cup her face within my rough palms, drawing her inward. It seems to last forever, this dance of becoming one.
“I was wrong,” I finally gasp against her mouth, desperate to get my bearings with her.
“About what?” She stares up at me through golden lashes, still holding onto my suit lapel.
Alex is receding behind me, like the beach, with us turned out to sea.
Forgive me, baby.
I brush my thumb over her lower lip, absolutely aching, inside and out. For him, for her. Then I whisper, “I don’t think I’ve ever had a kiss quite like that one.”
Exactly what I thought when I shared in that first forbidden kiss out on a darkened dance floor. The first time I realized just how cunning and swift love could be.
***
As soon as Andrea’s sitter pulls out of the driveway, the remorse begins. Before I can lock the door, it descends like a wily vulture on my blissful date night. That I stayed out so late—well past midnight—that I kissed someone. The
first
someone other than Alex since his death. Oh, I feel lousy all right; so bad that I think I could be sick now that I’m here in our house. Surely he knows, right? Surely he knew the minute my heart opened up to her. I pace the length of the living room, feeling frantic and nauseous. I walk down the hall and stare through the thinly cracked doorway at our sleeping angel of a daughter, all curled up like a tiny Botticelli with her feet flung on top of the covers. She’s an eight-year-old microcosm of so much that I loved in her daddy.
Closing the door, I lean my forehead against it, listening to my own breathing, waiting for something, though I have no clue what that something is. Pacing back into the living room, I notice a picture in the bookcase, of the two of us at Casey’s beach house—on the same damn deck where I kissed a girl tonight.
“I’m sorry.” When the words electrify the air, only then do I realize I wasn’t just thinking them. That I’d given them life that way.
Sinking onto the sofa, I bury my head in my hands and wait for his answer. It’s irrational, but it’s what I do, like a child praying in church, expecting God to bellow down a reply. Do I think Al’s going to exonerate me? Not damned likely.
Pressing my eyes shut, I feel tears burn behind the lids because I really am falling for Rebecca, and it’s like I’m cheating on him. The one thing I would
never
do to him, my soul mate, I’m doing just by living on without him. It’s inevitable. If not Rebecca, someone else—but the problem is the locomotive intensity of this thing with her.
There’s the answering quiet of raindrops on the roof right at that moment, icy fingertips tapping out a sonorous rhythm, and it takes me back. To years ago when he and I were first getting involved, and were lying in bed together one night early on. I was staring at the ceiling. Wondering what the hell I had gotten into, all tangled up with my best friend like that.
I told him so, too. That surely I’d come unglued or something, no matter how damned sexy he was. I’ll never forget what he said next, or the sound of the raindrops pattering on the roof of his apartment that night. How hushed the midnight bedroom seemed when he rolled onto his side, staring at me with those honest, beautiful blue eyes.
“Michael, this doesn’t have to be so hard, you know,” he said, searching my face.
“Don’t see how not,” I answered, staring away from him—anywhere but into those eyes. “Falling for you is pretty damned hard to deal with.”
“Maybe you could just open up your heart and see where it leads you,” he replied with a forgiving laugh. “Instead of always fighting everything so much.”
I doubt any single statement ever changed me more. Because my lover knew me well, already—I’d been fighting and running my whole life. Alex was only the latest in a lifetime of battles. And my uncertainty about things didn’t fade automatically after that, but it was like I sighed. Or relaxed. Or began to trust. I’m not sure, but I stopped fighting
him
so damned much.
Open up your heart and see where it leads you…
Opening my eyes, I stare across our living room, startled that Alex isn’t standing right there grinning at me, because I swear I actually heard the words. Maybe that explains why I glance toward the kitchen. I’m looking for him, expecting him to be right there. That’s when I notice the message light blinking on the kitchen phone, and slowly rise to my feet.
From the first syllable, I know who it is on the recorder. I would recognize her voice anywhere, any place, because even though he was a man and she’s a woman, there’s something eerily similar in the timbre of their twin voices.
“…I wanted to see how you are, Michael. I’ve missed you,” Laurel is saying, her soft, cultured voice making me shiver. “I was sorry not to see you last weekend. Like we’d planned.” There’s a strange pause and I can tell she’s taking a quick drag on her cigarette. Still hasn’t kicked that habit, not even after all these years. Then she says, “I’m coming to Los Angeles in a couple of weeks, Michael. I’d like to stay with you, if that’s okay. If you’ll have me.”
The shivers are becoming terrified shakes. Laurel can’t be coming, not here, not to my turf.
Open up your heart and see where it leads
, Alex whispers in my ear again, and I want to shout at him, to tell him to leave me alone. Stop pushing me so hard; stop taking me to the edge like he always fucking has.
And then I think of how much Laurel meant to him, of the nearly frightening twin-bond they shared. That she was already crying when I called her the night of his death; that she knew he was gone.
If Alex is still roaming my world, maybe it’s because he needs resolution. Not just resolution between the two of them, either—maybe he needs to know there’s resolution between us all.
Reaching for the phone, my hands sweaty and trembling, I hope to God that calling her is the right thing to do.
Chapter Thirteen: Rebecca
Early summertime is downtime in the world of filmmaking. Producers leave on Friday for the beach, execs motor out to Palm Springs, television shows are on hiatus. The whole studio lot feels like a college campus during summer school, as everyone breathes a little easier and daydreams a little longer. There’s no sweeter time to fall under the spell of love.
And I’ve been doing my part, floating from that first Michael Warner kiss for nearly two weeks now—or floating from kiss to kiss, I should say. There have been luscious handfuls of them, including a tussling session on Michael’s sofa last night that reached fevered, limb-tangled proportions before we called “cut”. With Andrea asleep in the next room, we both knew it was time to pull away before we wound up in a
completely
horizontal position. He sat there on the edge of the sofa, raking his hand through his disheveled hair, and I sat on my side, listening to the rush of blood in my ears. Even in the darkness, I could see the rise and fall of his chest, and I didn’t miss the way he tugged at his jeans, adjusting them when he stood to help me up.
But then afterwards, as he walked me quietly to the car, I sensed him withdrawing. He offered no more kisses, not even one of his trademark flirtatious grins with “Night, Rebecca” tagged onto it for sexy measure. Just a wave and a faint smile as he opened my car door. But if he thought he’d concealed his thoughts from me, he was mistaken.
While a part of me felt insecure as I drove back over the darkened hills to my apartment—I even wondered fleetingly if he’d seen my scarred chest during the tusslefest—I also suspected the real issue. One Alex Richardson. He’d passed between us like that before, right in the middle of some intense moment of connection, changing the mood unexpectedly. Michael doesn’t talk about him much, but he’s often there, sometimes broad and tall, other times ghostly and whispering,
always
an eerie form of romantic competition. He’s the hero, the one who got away, the first love, the soul mate. Thousands of threatening definitions could apply—and yet I’m fascinated with him. After all, he’s a legend to the map of this world I’m cautiously entering, a clue to what once held them all together.
And a clue to what’s keeping Michael and Andrea apart.
See, it’s those secrets again. I feel them, tugging at the edges of their family like the draw and release of the tides. There’s a definite rhythm to their melancholy; sometimes it’s flat, and other times it swells intensely, unexpectedly lifting away. Joy is there, too, like last night when Michael chased Andrea around their patch of backyard until they both collapsed in the grass, giggling, red-faced, and breathless. But then there’s the crashing wave of memory, and Andrea pulls in tight again—she’s angry, features set like cold granite against her father, sulking away in her room.
I do have my questions about their relationship. Like if he’s her adoptive father, then why does she call him by his first name? I know she called Alex “Daddy”, but didn’t she call Michael something similar—like Dad or Papa or even Father? I am curious about the reasons for that, and also about Andrea’s birthmother—the agency-provided surrogate Michael told me carried her for nine months—but I know enough to wait for all the facts. Not to push Michael when he’s obviously not ready to talk. I haven’t gotten this far in show business without knowing when to stay quiet, that’s for sure.
Still, watching their wounded dance from the outside is tough. After she stormed off last night, he sat there on the ground, looking stunned and hurt. Then he finally stood, brushing away bits of freshly mown grass from his hands and knees.
“I know that has to be hard,” I said, moving to clear the dinner plates from the table on the deck. “When she opens up like that, and then closes off again.”
“I keep trying to figure it out. Our counselor says to give her time.”
Andrea had placed a dandelion by each of our glasses, and I sniffed mine, saying, “You don’t exactly strike me as the patient type.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m pretty fucking ready for a breakthrough,” he said, staring at the patio door through which she’d just vanished. “I can tell you that.”
“And you don’t strike me as one to mince words, either.” I laughed, handing him the dandelions from around our plates. Thankfully, he began to smile then too, rolling the flower stems between his fingertips.
“She talks to you,” he said after a moment, contemplative. “She tell you anything I should know?”
The hopeful expression in his brown eyes pained me, but I had to say, “Not really, but maybe she will. If we give her enough time.”
He nodded seriously and bent down, kissing the top of my head. And for that moment, despite all the heat that usually stormed between us, I’m sure I became a stand-in for one closed-off, absent little girl.
***
So here I am, poolside on Friday afternoon, playing hooky from my job before the day’s even done. That earned me a standing ovation from Trevor as he watched me leave my office, armloads of scripts clutched in both hands. When I explained that Michael was dropping Andrea over to spend time with me by Mona’s pool late this afternoon, his smile faded.
“Stepmother already,” he observed coolly, then lowered his voice. “How convenient for Heavenly Homo.”
“Shut up,” I snapped, feeling unusually irritable with him.
“Just be careful, all right?” he cautioned. “Michael’s a nice lad, I’ll grant you that, but there’s a reason his type’s dangerous.”
He was standing inside my office, so I plopped my skyscraper of scripts onto the chair and closed my office door. I really do need to get a Kindle. “Trevor, I appreciate you looking after me, really I do, but he’s a good,
decent
guy.”
He folded his arms over his chest, the muscles flexing beneath his cotton T-shirt. “Always the most dangerous type, aren’t they?” he said. “Those decent-seeming ones.”
“More dangerous than the naughty celebrity types?” I was referring to both our romantic histories, but he clearly mistook my remark as a personal jab.
“Touché, my dear,” he said in a soft voice, and opened my door without another word.
“Trevor?” I called out, following him to his desk. “I was talking about both of us, silly. I’m the one who’s spent the past two weeks avoiding Jake calls.”
“I’m aware of that,” he said, grabbing the phone as it rang from Ed Bardock’s office. “Go. Have fun.” Making a shooing motion with his hand, he urged me reluctantly out the door, and that’s when I noticed his latest screensaver brilliance:
Don’t mind me, I just flirt here.
Maybe that’s a sign he’s ready to move on past Julian, I thought fleetingly, leaving the bungalow. Or maybe it’s a sign that he’s ready to move on from this job as my creative sidekick.
***
Andrea sits on the edge of the pool by the steps, dangling her feet in the chilly water. It’s still cool this early in the summer, with the ancient palms that line the backyard shading the water year-round, and Mona doesn’t like to spend the money to heat her pool, either, especially since she never uses it herself.
So Andrea doesn’t look entirely out of place wearing her spring suit, a short-sleeved, short-legged version of a wetsuit, which Michael whispered to me was the
only
way he’d gotten her to agree to come swimming today. Otherwise, she was too self-conscious about her scar—ironically enough. Sitting beside me now, splashing her toes around in the water, she looks the part of a true surfer girl in her sleek black suit, auburn hair pulled into a loose ponytail.
Noticing the O’Neill logo on her sleeve, I remark, “How long have you been surfing?” It’s important to her, I know, as much because she loves the sport as because she loved surfing with her dead father. Michael’s clued me in to that much.
At first I think she might not answer me as she stares at her feet, bobbing them up and down in the water like a pair of buoys. Then she says, “My daddy was a great surfer.”
“I know, I heard.”
“He won contests and stuff. His whole life.” She looks up at me, intent. “Did you know that?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yeah, and he taught me how. He even let me ride on his long board with him sometimes. Except that always scared Michael a lot, when we did that.” She pauses, revisiting some private memory, then adds with a dimpled smile, “But Daddy just told him not to worry so much.”
“Was it dangerous?” It perplexes me that Alex would have done anything to intentionally place Andrea in harm’s way.
“No, just fun,” she says, serious again. “We only did it in the shallow waves.”
“Then why did it scare Michael?”
She shrugs matter-of-factly. “’Cause Daddy’s always worrying about stuff like that.” I thought she’d just said
Alex
was the one who took her out on his board—not Michael—and am about to remark on that, but before I do, she catches her misstep. “
Michael
,” she amends firmly. “Michael’s always worrying about all kinds of stuff.”
“About you,” I add, and after a moment she nods, staring at the lapping waves of pool water.
“Yeah, especially since…” She wraps her pale arms around herself in a hug, shivering, not finishing her thought.
“Especially since the accident,” I supply, knowing I may be pushing too hard. She doesn’t answer, but leans forward, trailing her fingers through the water in a raking motion, leaving my question unanswered.
“Daddy liked to touch the waves when he rode. He’d just reach out and touch. Kinda like this.” She combs her fingertips across the chlorinated surface, looking back over her shoulder to make sure I see, adding, “I always thought that’d be really cool. To touch my wave.”
“You haven’t?”
She chews on a fingernail. “I can’t ride the really big ones yet.”
“Maybe you will. One day.”
She shrugs, utterly indifferent all of a sudden. “Yeah, whatever.” She slides off the concrete lip of the pool, dropping into three feet of water, spring suit still on. Slowly, I begin unbuttoning my Polo men’s shirt, the one I’m using as a poolside cover-up. I’m deliberate and slow, slipping each button through the hole, hoping she’ll turn and see. See what I look like in a one-piece; that even this much material can’t hide all my scars. It’s why I invited her—without really explaining my plan to Michael, without telling him how it was I thought I might get through to her today.
The starched men’s shirt falls open, slipping off my shoulders, and at that instant Andrea turns in the water to stare up at me.
And she sees. She definitely sees, and I see the way she nearly gawks at the long scar peeking out of the top of my suit. I know that it looks like I had open-heart surgery or something dramatic like that. Then, aware that she’s staring, she drops her head.
“You can look,” I encourage, popping into the pool like a heavy stone beside her. The water splashes a bit, circling us both in radiating waves, and she bends low until her ponytail floats on the surface.
She blows bubbles, then stops. “Rebecca, can I ask you something?”
“Of course.” I bend my knees until I’m looking right at her, eye-level, meeting those clear blue eyes with all the reassurance I can muster. “Fire away.”
Her auburn eyebrows draw together tight, freckled nose wrinkling. “What happened to you? How come you have all those scars?”
I can only wonder how to translate such a raw act of irrational violence into terms that an eight-year-old can process. I’m wrestling with that when what has to be my mother’s euphemistic gene kicks in, and I hear myself say, “I had an accident.”
“What kind of accident?” Andrea’s small mouth purses into a hard, desperate line, and sudden blotches of color stain her face.
“Sweetie, it wasn’t like what happened to you.”
Her face falls. “Oh.”
“But I do understand,” I hasten to explain, brushing a damp lock of red hair off her cheek. She jerks away, swimming toward the steps fast, and I nearly beg, “Andrea, please listen. You can talk to me, sweetheart.”
She shakes her head, climbing the steps. “You just said. It wasn’t the same kind of accident.”
“Andrea, I almost died.” Now this gets her complete, earnest attention, and slowly she pirouettes on the steps until she’s facing me. “I spent an entire month in the hospital. Getting better.”
She runs her tongue over her upper lip, just watching me, and I can tell she’s making quick mental calculations. Deciding if she can trust me with her own secrets or not. “How?” she asks, clutching the metal railing as if her life depends on it.
“How did I almost die?”
“No, no,” she says hurriedly. “How come you didn’t?”
And this is the answer I’ve contemplated for three years running. All I know is to give the best one I’ve come up with in all that time. “Because I wasn’t supposed to die yet.”
She nods knowingly, and I understand that she’s considered these same thoughts on her own time. “But what if somebody else died, and they weren’t supposed to either?”
“Like your daddy?” I supply tentatively, afraid I’ll send her scurrying away for good just when we’re making serious progress. I swim closer, until I’m at the foot of the steps.
“Did Michael make you do this? You know, talk to me and all,” she explains with a tired sigh. “’Cause you don’t have to.”
“Andrea, sweetheart, I’m not doing this because of Michael. All I’m trying to say is that I understand.”
Tears brim within her eyes, and she whispers, “Nobody else does.”
“Well, I do.”
She nods, saying in a small voice, “I think maybe I’m the one who should’ve died.”
“Oh, sweetie, no. No, that’s not true.” She plops onto the top step, planting her chin in the palm of her hand thoughtfully, avoiding me, but I press her. “What even makes you think that?”
“Want to see my scar?” she murmurs, looking up at me with doleful eyes. From Michael, I know this is the touchstone, the scar that she won’t show anyone; what I say next is critical to her knowing she can confide in me.
It’s as if God whispers right in my ear, offering a thought. “How about I show you my scars,” I offer resolutely, “and then you show me yours? That sound like a plan?”