Loving David (15 page)

‘Hunky David King, star of the forthcoming rom-com,
To Have and To Hold,
was holding on tight to his ex, super sexy Olivia Hudson, who just signed on for the female lead in the action flick, ‘
Black Knight, Dark Knight
,’ after a romantic weekend at the Beverly Wilshire. Sources say Hudson checked in Friday afternoon and that King joined her later that night and that the canoodling couple didn’t come up for air until early Monday morning.’

The rest of the article detailed their six-month “torrid romance” and “dramatic breakup”, and “romantic reconciliation”. By the time Charlotte finished reading, she was hyperventilating.

“Oh God,” she whispered as she scrunched up the paper and threw it in the trash. Charlotte sat hunched over her kitchen table for the better part of an hour, sobbing until her insides were scraped raw. She felt like she had the world’s biggest “Kick Me” sign on her back. She couldn’t believe how stupid she’d been to believe in David, to have allowed herself to be swept off her feet by his undeniable charm. Charlotte finally stood and went to splash cold water on her face from the kitchen sink. She threw her groceries in the fridge, not bothering to take them out of the bags. Charlotte draped herself across her bed and cried the rest of the day.

CHAPTER 8

Charlotte’s bedroom was shrouded in darkness. She unglued her eyes from the deep slumber she’d fallen into after crying herself to sleep. Charlotte inhaled and rolled over on her back. She lay there for a moment, her hand splayed across her stomach, the hushed sounds of the house enveloping her. The afternoon’s events came flooding back, stabbing at her chest. David. The tabloid. His ex. Charlotte squeezed her eyes shut, willing the images to disappear. She glanced at the clock on her nightstand and saw she’d been asleep since the early afternoon.

Charlotte slowly raised herself and lumbered out of bed, her body aching from both the positions she’d twisted herself into and the sobs that had shredded her insides. She stumbled to the bathroom to splash some cold water on her face, and she took a long look at herself in the mirror. Her face was puffy from her crying jag, and the wrinkles of sleep lay across one cheek. Charlotte heaved a big sigh and shuffled to her kitchen, it too cloaked in night.

She noticed her cell phone on the counter, the red light blinking furiously, indicating she had messages. Charlotte picked it up and scrolled through to see that she had several voice-mails from Hendra and five texts, all from Karen, inquiring about David. Disgusted and in no mood to deal with anyone, Charlotte tossed the phone back on the counter and opened her fridge in search of a bottle of wine. She poured a glass and carried it and the bottle to the living room where she plopped down on the couch. She took long, slow, swallows and stared in front of her, her gulps the lone sound in the room.

She almost didn’t hear the faint tap. Charlotte ignored it, certain it was a branch or something scratching against a window in the house. The knocking grew louder and more persistent before Charlotte realized it was definitely someone rapping on her door. Charlotte swallowed, afraid. Who would be knocking on her door at this time of night?

Without a word she set her wine glass on the coffee table and tiptoed over to the door, her heart pounding. There was one more knock, and now Charlotte looked around frantically in search of a weapon before she let her shoulders drop and shook her head.

“Would a murderer knock, Charlotte?” she whispered to herself before she flipped on the hall light and looked out the peephole. She could see a dark figure huddled over but couldn’t make out anything else.

“Who is it?” she yelled out.

“It’s David,” came the muffled reply.

Charlotte stood rooted, her feet mired in cement. Her mouth filled with cotton. She licked her lips, unsure of what to do.

“Charlotte, please open the door and let me explain everything.”

Charlotte blinked and found her voice. “There’s nothing to explain,” she shouted. “You got back with your ex. I read all about it. Now go away.”

“I’m not leaving until you let me tell you my side.”

“Why should I listen?”

“Because, Charlotte, I know you’re a fair person. All I’m asking is that you listen to what I have to say. And if after you hear me out, you still want to send me away and never have me darken your doorstep again, I won’t.”

Charlotte groaned and placed her forehead against the door. What was that old saying about giving people an inch and they’d take a mile? Then again, she was curious to hear what he had to say…

Curiosity won out, and Charlotte undid the latch and opened the door. She trembled at the sight of David, his green eyes cloudy, worry and fear creasing his handsome features. His normally lush dark hair was limp and stringy, and it looked like he was carrying about twelve suitcases under each eye. Charlotte looked down and gestured for him to come in. David obliged, and Charlotte shut the door, still unable to look him in the eye. She crossed her arms and leaned against the wall.

“Well, you look like hell,” she said.

“How can you tell? You’ve barely looked at me. Not that I blame you.”

“I can tell.”

David shoved his hands in his pockets before he took a glance toward the living room behind him. “Nice place,” he said.

“I’m sure you didn’t come here to talk about my décor, David.”

David gave her a wry grin and shifted his feet. “No. No, I didn’t.” He sighed. “Can we sit?”

Charlotte pushed herself off the wall and brushed past David into the living room where she resumed her place on the couch. David followed and started to sit next to Charlotte before he thought better of it and took a seat on the overstuffed navy blue chair opposite her. He sat perched on the edge; his shoulders bunched up around his ears, and he rubbed his hands together uneasily. Charlotte picked up her wine glass and waited.

David sighed. “I’m trying to think of where to start.”

“The beginning is usually a good place,” Charlotte responded as she sipped her wine.

“Yes, I suppose it is.” David clasped his hands together.

“Olivia,” he said.

Charlotte tensed up at the sound of her name. “Yes,” she said coolly. “Olivia.”

David hung his head for a moment before he continued. “I met Olivia about two years ago at some movie premiere party. I can’t even remember which one it was now. She was there with her agent; I was there with William. We just started talking, hit it off. I’ll admit, my head was turned by how she looked---- blonde hair, blue eyes, all that stereotypical nonsense. We exchanged numbers, met up a few days later for coffee. It started off as just being fun. She was just fun to be around; up for almost anything, understood the industry. Sweet.” David let out a snort. “On the surface anyway.”

Charlotte watched David and waited for him to continue.

“So we dated, and for me it was just…casual, you know? Someone to hang out with, go to premieres with, have dinner with once in a while. About three months in I realized that she’s just…that she’s just an awful person. Clingy. Desperate. Manipulative. That the reason she’s the life of the party is because she’s got nothing else going on. No depth, no real personality beyond what you see on the screen. Half the time Olivia doesn’t know where Olivia begins and whatever character she’s playing at the moment ends.” David leaned back against the chair before he continued. “And then I found out she’s a total coke head. I mean a straight-on-would-sell-her-mother-for-a-line-then-sell-herself coke-head. Caught her doing lines in my bathroom one day. So I told her to get out,” David said matter-of-factly. “And she starts crying, begging me to let her stay… she loves me so much, she’ll change, blah, blah, blah.”

Charlotte gripped her wine glass. “So then what?”

“She promised she would change, and I told her I would stick by her until she got clean. Which was my first mistake, because she used it to try to keep the relationship going. Always finding a reason to call me ---- she’s didn’t get the movie she was up for and might do a line. She broke a nail, she might do a line,” David shook his head. “But I felt sorry for her. She has no one else. Not one friend, not one family member she can turn to for anything. No one wants anything to do with her.”

Charlotte looked down into her wine. “And you’re the only person she can turn to,” she said sarcastically.

David sighed. “Unfortunately, yes. Anyway, I just got to a point where I couldn’t do it anymore. I cut off all contact, got a new cell phone number and picked up and disappeared to New York for a few months. You can be a lot more anonymous there than you can out here.”

Charlotte let out a small exhale. “What about the other day ---- at the lake?”

David dropped his chin into the palm of one hand. “I saw her number come up ---- I’d know it anywhere, unfortunately ---- and I knew right away it was her. She’d wrangled my number out of a mutual acquaintance. I figured if I ignored it she’d get the hint and stop calling me. But as you saw, she just kept on. Turns out the studio for her next film got wind of some rumors about her using and ordered her to take a drug test. If she failed, it meant they couldn’t insure her for the movie and she’d be fired. Then a big scandal, so on and so forth. Not to mention her salary was going to be bigger than Donald Trump’s ego, and she didn’t want to lose out on that.”

“So she called you.”

David nodded. “Yeah. Begged me to help get her into a rapid detox because she knew it was just a matter of time before she got random tested. That’s why she kept calling me---- she was running out of time. Sure enough, they tested her last night.”
“And?”

David shook his head bitterly. “And she passed.”

Charlotte drained the last of the wine, her head starting to float above her. “Since when does detox take place at the Beverly Wilshire?”

“Ah, yes…the romantic getaway at the Beverly Wilshire. Her agent planted that story. Trying to buy Olivia some time to get clean. I was furious when I found out about it. The truth is, all three of us were holed up at his house in the Hills with a doctor who specializes in rapid detox. I promise you, I was never anywhere near the Beverly Wilshire.”

“I thought you said she didn’t have anyone. If you were at her agent’s house…”

David stood and began to pace the room. “Only because I made him. Truth is, he’s ready to drop her. Of course, I had to remind him that if she didn’t do the movie, he wouldn’t get his cut of her salary. After that he was all too happy to put up his house. Then he repays me by planting that stupid story.” David shook his head. “Lousy son of a bitch,” he muttered under his breath.

“But the picture…”

“What picture?”

“The one on the cover of the magazine. You had your hand around her waist.”

“What was I wearing?”

Charlotte blinked, caught off guard. “What were you wearing?” she repeated.

“What was I wearing in the picture?”

“I… I don’t know jeans and a tee-shirt probably.”

“May I see it?”

Charlotte narrowed her eyes at him for a moment before she stalked into the kitchen in search of the rumpled tabloid she had tossed into the trash earlier. She extracted it from the bin, and brought it into the living room, clicking on the lamp next to the couch. She smoothed the paper out on the coffee table.

“See?” Charlotte thumped her finger against the table. “You’ve got your hands all over her.”

David tried to contain his grin. “First of all, it’s one hand around her waist. Second, that picture is over a year old.” He leaned forward and pointed to the hand that was around Olivia. “Look, do you see that? A big bandage on my hand. Slashed it doing a stunt on the movie I was filming at the time.” David held up both his hands and flipped them back and forth to show they were unblemished and bandage-free. “So if this picture was taken a few days ago, how do you explain this?”

Charlotte bit her bottom lip to keep from laughing and crying all at the same time. She straightened up.

“Okay, so, you were helping her. I don’t understand why you had to stay with her the whole time---- I mean, her agent stepped up when push came to shove.”

David’s eyes pierced Charlotte’s face. “Do you remember what you told me about your husband’s girlfriend when she died?”

Charlotte’s breath caught in her throat, and she looked down at her lap. David sat on the couch next to her and hooked his index finger underneath her chin, forcing her to look at him.

“You said she was all alone and what were you supposed to do ---- leave her?”

Charlotte sniffed, an impending downpour of tears threatening to break free. One escaped and trickled down her face. She wiped it away with her hand.

“And you couldn’t leave Olivia,” Charlotte whispered.

David took her face in both hands. “Sweetheart, believe me when I tell you, you absolutely, one-hundred-percent have nothing to worry about from her or any woman. What did I tell you on your birthday?”

Charlotte laughed in spite of herself and wiped away another tear. “What is this, a walk down memory lane?”

David chuckled and rubbed her tear away with his thumb. “Something like that. Come on now---- don’t leave me hanging. What did I tell you?”

Charlotte’s bottom lip trembled and she then sniffed again. “You told me you love me.”

“I meant it then, and I mean it now.” David searched Charlotte’s eyes. “I love you,” he whispered.

Charlotte couldn’t help it; the waterworks burst forth and nothing could stop them. David folded her into his arms and rocked her gently while she sobbed into his chest. Finally, Charlotte pulled back and laughed.

“You look like you’ve been in another rainstorm,” she said as she wiped her nose.

David looked down at the front his shirt, which was soaked and smiled. “I think you just said the magic word.” Charlotte didn’t say anything; she just fingered the hem of his shirt. David’s hand found hers, and their fingers intertwined. He moved closer and dragged the tip of his tongue along Charlotte’s bottom lip before gently sucking on it. Charlotte responded by pulling him into a full-on kiss, which they both melted into. Charlotte unlocked her hand from David’s and let the fingers of both hands trickle underneath his shirt. She pushed his shirt up underneath his arms and bent back down to his belly button, letting her tongue trail up his chest. David groaned and affixed his hands underneath her armpits and hauled her toward him until they were eye level.