Starlight (Peaches Monroe) (Volume 2) Paperback – September 2, 2013 (35 page)

“Maybe goodbyes shouldn’t be so serious,” I said to Keith. We both stood beside the cab as the driver waited patiently inside.

Another cab pulled up behind it, and the older woman I’d seen near the courtyard pool stepped out. It was eight in the morning, and she wore a black cocktail dress and spike heels. She gave me a wave and an embarrassed smile as she entered the courtyard.

“Walk of shame?” Keith said.

“I’d say so. Good for her.”

“Yeah! Good for her.”

“Peaches, I want to tell you something.”

I shifted back a few steps. “I should go.”

He took my hands so I couldn’t slip away. “I used to struggle with my addiction, but I found my cure in the truth. As long as I always tell the truth, and take care of myself, I’m not tempted to start using again.”

“I can’t imagine you doing drugs. I keep forgetting, because you’re just so… you.”

“Everything ends eventually,” he said, gazing down at me, his gold-brown eyes serious. “I’ll get older, whether I have birthdays or not. This career won’t last, and the next one won’t either. But maybe things that are brief are better, and brighter, and sharper.” He took my hands and held them to his chest. “I feel you, in here. Like a diamond.”

My eyes burned, and I gritted my teeth. “I feel you, too, and… I don’t know what to say.”

“Bright and sharp,” he said, and he leaned down to kiss me.

My whole body was trembling, even my lips.

I pulled away after the kiss and fumbled with the door handle of the cab. Keith reached down and pulled the door open easily.

I got in the car, before my shaking legs collapsed.

Keith closed the door, tapped the roof of the car twice, and the driver put the car in gear.

We drove away. I raised my hand and watched out the back window as Keith waved back. I watched him until we reached the end of the street and rounded the corner.

Why did the driver have to drive so fast? What was the hurry? I turned back around and frowned at the back of his head.

Sharper and brighter.

Like a diamond.

I heard Keith’s words echo in my mind.

Home
, I told myself.
Think about home.

I’m pretty sure I saw Gwyneth Paltrow at the dry cleaner when I was dropping off Luscious Hilda Mae Sparkles’ dress. This skinny blond lady in granny boots and black leggings was chatting with the woman at the cash register when I came in.

I looked around at the array of autographed glossies lining the walls and tried not to get paranoid about my taxi abandoning me.

The skinny lady turned around, gave me an apologetic smile, then turned back to finish putting her wallet back in her purse.

Holy fuck, that’s Gwyneth Fucking Paltrow.
The room started to swirl. My mouth dried up, and my heart started pounding like crazy.

She finished and started to leave, but I was blocking the door.

“I’m a big fan!” I said, which wasn’t even true. I mean, I like Gwyneth, but someone gave me her latest vegan cookbook as a joke gift. I wasn't a
big fan
, not really.

She gave me a gracious smile—almost regal—and walked out with her dry-cleaned pantsuit over one arm.

Such is life in LA.

I dropped off the dress, pre-paid, and returned to the waiting taxi. The whole way to the airport, I mused over my reaction to Ms. Paltrow (assuming it was her).

I would have thought that the whole experience with Dalton Deangelo would have changed me more, made me less starstruck when I met other celebrities. But, apparently, a brief affair with one famous person hadn’t inoculated me against other celebrities. I was, after everything that had happened over the last few weeks, not that different after all.

Or was I?

There were moments, like when I walked through the crowd at the airport and didn’t care that people were staring at the big girl in the red shirtdress—moments where I felt something harder over my entire surface, like that skin Jell-O gets after a few days in the fridge.

Seated on the airplane, I nodded my head to the right and gazed wistfully out the window. There was nothing to see but pavement, but I liked the idea of how I thought I might look to a casual observer—like the girl at the end of a movie who has grown in some way and is an adult now, which you can tell because she does something different from how she did it at the beginning of her tale.

We got in the air, and the flight attendant offered me a beverage. I’d had a Ginger Ale on the flight down, which was my third flight ever. This was my fourth flight, and I was different now, so I ordered a Bloody Mary. I’d never had one before, but people in movies order them on airplanes, and the words just came out of my mouth.

The flight attendant nodded curtly and came back with the tomato-juice-based drink. “Matches your outfit,” she said.

I paid, and she walked away, without having asked to see my ID. The nerve!

The girl sitting next to me said, “That smells so good.”

“You should get one. Call the attendant back, my treat.”

She laughed and looked pointedly down at her stomach, quite clearly swollen with a baby.

A chill went through my body. “How long?” I asked.

“Two weeks.”

“And they let you fly?”

Her lip started to tremble, then she put on a big, fake smile. “Short flight. Even if I went into labor…” She trailed off, as if she didn’t have the energy to finish the thought, to tell the lie that everything would be fine, no matter what.

She looked young—about as young as Amy, the sixteen-year-old girl who’d been my employee until recently.

I pulled out my phone and looked for a good photo of Kyle to show her.

“This is my son,” I said, showing her a picture of him pretending to eat two slices of pizza at the same time.

“Wow,” she said, looking back over at me.

“I was fifteen when I had him.”

She nodded, her eyes getting wet before she blinked them clear.

Her words burst out of her. “I’m scared. I don’t like pain.”

I patted her on the knee. “Nobody likes goodbyes, or labor pain. And it’s okay to be scared. I was, too. But I had a good doctor, and my parents were beside me the whole time. We’re so lucky to live in a time of hospitals, and medicine, and epidurals.”

Her chest rose with a deep breath I could hear, even over the whooshing white noise of the airplane.

“What about down there?” she asked, looking embarrassed. “Did everything go back to where it had been?”

“Yes, and everything works fine. No complaints.”

“Were you scared during labor?”

My skin started to tingle all over. I grabbed my Bloody Mary and shot it back.

“No,” I lied, smiling. “Your body kicks in with all the right hormones at the right time, and maybe there are a few moments where you get tired or frustrated, but you’ll know what to do. Everything’s going to be fine.”

Her face relaxed and she leaned her head back against the armrest.

I pulled a magazine out of the pocket in the seat in front of me and pretended to be engrossed in an article about natural fibers being trendy come autumn.

I felt bad about lying to the girl, but I also knew telling her the truth wouldn’t help either of us.

Me.

That night.

It’s Friday, and my stomach’s been acting up all day, but Mom and Dad are out of town I am ready to party! And by party, I mean I am going to order pizza with the money they left for groceries, and I’m going to eat it in the formal sitting room, where Dad and I aren’t allowed to eat.

I have it all planned out. I’ll put down one of my bedsheets like a drop sheet for spilled crumbs. I won’t even need to vacuum.

I wish Shayla was here, but it’s her loss, and I sure hope her babysitting money is worth it.

The pizza guy arrives, and I pay him for the pizza, plus two dollars for a tip. The look on his face tells me two dollars is on the cheap side, so I dig around in my pockets and hand over my loose change, which is humiliating for both of us. My guts are killing me with first-day period cramps. I’m sweating so much from pain, the change in my hands is wet, and he makes a face.

After he walks away, I lock the door, throw the pizza on the coffee table, and run up to the main bathroom, which I then murder with an epic poo.

I walk back downstairs, feeling pounds lighter and thinking my problems are over. I open the box and the smell of the double-pepperoni pizza nearly puts me off, but I push myself to take a few bites, thinking I’ll feel better any minute. I’m usually hungry for salty, greasy food when Aunt Flo comes to visit, but I’m strangely disinterested tonight.

I turn on the TV and begin my planned marathon session of re-watching the entire first season of
Veronica Mars
.

My guts are really killing me by the second episode, and I’m pretty sure it’s punishment for eating pizza in the formal sitting room. My mother has hired a gypsy to put a curse on the room, and now I will pay, in pain.

This idea of a curse gets less funny over the next few hours, as I toss and turn on the sheet-covered sofa, unable to get comfortable. My lower back hurts like someone’s kicking me in the kidneys with pointy boots.

These are the worst period cramps I’ve ever had, and the weirdest part of all is that I haven’t started bleeding yet. I go to the bathroom to check, and my tampon has only watery stuff in it.

My ankles are swollen like crazy, either from the salty pepperoni or my mother’s gypsy curse. All this from eating pizza in the living room. Can you imagine what would have befallen me if I’d touched the dandelion wine? My head would have just split right open.

It’s only ten o’clock, too early for bed, so I lie down on my parents’ big bed, still wearing my clothes. They have a zillion pillows, which I use to make a comfy nest for myself.

I wake up to the sound of myself whimpering. The house is dark and quiet. I’m curled up, and my hands are balled up in fists. I punch the bed a few times, but the sharp pain in my back is relentless. Did I herniate one of my discs today during my epic, naked, interpretive dancing? Fuck me, but it doesn’t seem so hilarious anymore, all the hip wiggling and towel snapping.

Still whimpering, I slide off my parents’ bed and start to crawl toward their en suite bathroom on my hands and knees. Technically, I’m not allowed to use this bathroom, unless it’s an emergency. I’m getting an urge to push, though, so I think it’s an emergency.

The phone rings. I know it’s my parents calling to check up on me. The ring just has that sound, and nobody else would call the land line at this time of night.

The pushing feeling has faded to more of a general ache, and my back feels better now, strangely. Maybe I just needed to get some crawling exercise.

I shuffle to the bedside table and pick up the ringing phone.

My father says, “Peaches? Is that you?”

Oh, right. I forgot to say hello.

“Yessssss,” I say.

“Are you drunk? What the hell’s going on? Are you having a party?”

I groan. “No, Dad. I was just having a nap.”

“Why were you having a nap?”

A sharp pain sends a tremor through my body, and I feel heat between my legs. Moisture. I put my hand on the crotch of my sweatpants. I did not just piss myself, did I? Holy shitfuck how embarrassing.

“Uhh. I think I have, like, a stomach thing.”

“Oh.” He does not sound like he’s buying it.

I shuffle into the en suite bathroom, praying I didn’t get any of the carpet wet.

“What’s really going on?” he asks.

“I have the worst period cramps of fucking all time, if you must know. And I just made a mess, okay? Aren’t you glad you have a daughter? Because I’m sure happy to be a woman on days like today.”

“Did you take a Midol?”

“Dad, I—” The pain in my back returns, and I curl up on my side on the tile floor in the bathroom, panting.

He says, “You should take a Midol before the pain gets really bad. Pain-killers work better if you take them right at the beginning.”

My voice pitches up like a squeak. “Okay.”

“And try taking a hot bath,” he says, repeating what my mother is saying in the background.

“Yup.”