Say You Love Her, An L.A. Love Story (22 page)

“Wait,” she says quickly. “What do you want? Sex?”

“No. I just want to talk.”

She pauses. “Where are you?”

“Across the street from a bar on Melrose.”

“Let’s have dinner.”

“Sure.”

“On you.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Meet me at La Fine in Brentwood in an hour,” she says and ends the call.

An hour is how long it takes to get there. Fucking L.A. traffic—day or night, I’ll never get used to it. I’m ready to ditch this town. I’m exiting stage right the day after tomorrow, and I know exactly where the hell I’m going—New Orleans. I’ll buy a house that looks just like the one Angelina pointed out. Perhaps that will convince her to forgive me and be with me so that both our lives can finally be complete.

I leave my car with the valet.
 

“You must be Charlie Lord,” the hostess says as soon as I walk inside.
 

I’m taken aback. “I’m him.”

Her bright eyes are searching my face, and she’s grinning as if she has a secret she’s not telling. She tilts her head toward the main room. “This way.”
 

The lighting is low, and the crowd’s pretentious. Normally I wouldn’t grace the doorway of a place like this. Monroe is at a table near the window. She smirks. I secretly hoped my stomach would turn flips or something when I saw her. That doesn’t happen, although I am happy to see her.
 

“You’re late,” she says before I can get comfortable in my chair.

I check my watch. “No, I’m not. You’re just early all the damn time.”

“Don’t you know that the world revolves around me?”

I snort. “I know you like to think so.”

We grin at each other.
 

“So what the hell do you want from me if it’s not sex?” she asks.
 

“Remember the girl I brought to the meeting, Lilac?”

Monroe raises her eyebrows in surprise. “You remember her name?”

“Shocks the hell out of me too. I ran into her before I called you. It gave me a chance to say I’m sorry for what I did.”

“You mean use her to make me jealous?”

I throw my hands up. “You caught me.”

“And now you feel like you have to apologize to me?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“What? Are you in fucking Alcoholics Anonymous or something?”

I laugh a little. “No. Actually I haven’t had much to drink in a long time.”

She seems impressed. “A sober Charlie. What a novel idea.”

“Are you going to bust my balls tonight?” I ask, my tone light.

“No…” She shakes her head and wrinkles her nose. “But you don’t have to apologize to
me
. We were in it together. After we first had sex something happened to me. It was a compilation of a lot of shit. Hannah started dating this guy. Maggie got a new job. Cleo and her snobbish boyfriend Perry were getting more serious. I had a new book and movie venture, but it didn’t feel like my life was changing in the same way that theirs was.” She shrugs. “Then we had sex.”

I nod because I do understand everything she just said.
 

The waitress arrives to take our order. The restaurant serves Italian so I order a crusted salmon, and Monroe asks for the seafood-stuffed portabella mushrooms. We also order a bottle of their finest wine.
 

“So what’s going on between you and Shane?” I ask.

She narrows one eye. “Nothing. We’re over.”

I wonder if he found out about what happened between us, but it’s best not to ask.
 

“I was with Donald for a little while. That didn’t work out. But I do want my own real boyfriend. My own Vincent Adams or Perry Livermore.”

“You say that the way you would if you were considering buying a car.”

She shrugs nonchalantly. “Maybe I should buy myself a man? I can afford a real good one.”

“You can buy a male, but you can’t buy a man,” I say.

Monroe takes a moment to consider that. “Shit, you’re right.” She slumps her shoulders. “Maybe I’m just meant to be alone.”

The server arrives just in time to hear a beautiful woman like Monroe say she’s meant to be alone. He keeps sneaking peeks at her as he pours our wine.

“Can I get you anything else?” he asks. He’s really asking her in particular.

“No.” She waves him away without a second glance.

He looks back at her as he walks off.
 

“You’re not meant to be alone,” I say.

“Maybe you are too,” she says. “I heard Angelina didn’t take you back.”

I feel a pinch in my heart. “No, but we’ll see how things shake out.”

“Mm. Not taking no for an answer is very Jack-esque of you.”

I don’t even balk after hearing that. I’m over being insulted when people associate everything I do right with behaving like Jack. Maybe it’s time for me to know myself, and if no one else can see me for who I truly am, then fuck ‘em.
 

“Back to you,” I say. “Here’s something about falling in love that I’ve learned.”

She snorts. “You learned something about love?”
 

“I did,” I say, proud and confident.
 

“And what is that?” She sounds doubtful.

“Love is unpredictable. It has its own preference. It’s just a feeling, and the first time it hits you, it knocks the wind out of you. It’s inconvenient as hell, but it comes exactly when you’re ready. And if you’re lucky, you’ll notice it, claim it, and never fuck it up.”

Monroe watches me with parted lips. I’m waiting for her to say something sarcastic. If she doesn’t buy my outlook on love, that’s her choice, but I wholeheartedly believe what I think I know.

“Holy shit, Charlie,” she finally says with a catch in her throat. “That’s probably true.”
 

I wink at her. “Probably.”

She spends the next hour filling me in on the shenanigans that went on between her and Mandy Hill after I left.
 

“Mandy Hill the actress,” she says loudly enough for everyone around us to hear, “is a crazy bitch!”

“I warned you.”

“I wish I had listened. If she thought any girl was getting attention from any guy that should be paying more attention to her, she wouldn’t stop short of grabbing his nuts. She started fucking Shane after we were over and then Donald. I started a rumor that I was fucking Rupert, remember him?”

“The short gaffer. Really nice guy.”

“Yeah. I figured he works hard, why not repay him by getting him laid.”

“Did she fuck him too?”

“They’re dating!”

I laugh my ass off, picturing all five feet and seven inches of him banging six feet of Mandy Hill, who’s as skinny as a chicken bone. I’ve done her myself a couple of times, and it wasn’t good.
 

“So do you think I’m going to get a solid return on my investment?” I ask.

Monroe tosses her head back to laugh. “Pearl and I are meeting with distributors on Monday of next week. You can come if you want.”

“Hell no. As a matter of fact, you could buy me out if you like.”

“I don’t have your kind of cash, remember?”

I snort. “I just finished working with Jacques and got paid twenty thousand for two months’ worth of work.”

“That’s still a big check in the real world.”

“I’ve never worked that hard in my life. I’m going to work with him again in a few weeks.”

“Shit. So you’re staying in L.A. for a while.”

“No, it just so happens that we’re going to be working in New Orleans.” My smile is broad. Monroe will never be able to guess why. It’s fucking fate.
 

“Well… You’re going to make your money back and then some on the film.” It’s clear she’s changing the subject. “That’s why you paid Pearl the big bucks, right? I have to admit she’s a force to be reckoned with.”

“And you fired her.”
 

“But you re-hired her!”

Monroe and I gaze at each other, smiling. I don’t feel lust for her anymore. I still like her though.
 

“Are we friends now?” I ask.

“Why the hell not? Yep. We are.”

“One down, and Cleo and Hannah to go,” I say.

She bursts out into laughter. “Sorry, Chuck, but you’re unredeemable in Cleo’s eyes. And Hannah…” She flops a hand aimlessly. “You don’t want to go there. She’s stuck on me now, but if I could go back fifteen years to the day when I asked her to take Maggie’s and my picture for the school yearbook and she and Maggie all of the sudden became best friends, then I would ask someone else.”

“I thought you and Hannah were just as good of friends as you and Maggie.”

“We are now! My point is that she’s high maintenance and prone to making silly choices.”

“Kind of like you.”
 

“Exactly! We’re too much alike.”

By the end of dinner, I’m sure about one thing—Monroe and I are not compatible as lovers. She’s not the one. Angelina’s the one for me, and I’m more determined than I was before dinner to win her back. I’ll do whatever it takes, even if it means staying celibate until she offers me entrance into my favorite place on earth.
 

Chapter 16

Aren’t We the Lucky Ones?

The last two months come crashing down on me like a tsunami. At least it’s a good exhaustion. I shower, lower the light-blocking curtains, and hit the hay. A long while later the ring of my cell phone wakes me up. I reach out to grab it from the nightstand.

“Hello?”

“Charlie. It’s Mags. Where the hell are you?”

I sigh. Hearing her voice makes me doubly sleepy. “Maggie, not now.”

“We’ve been at the hospital since yesterday. Daisy had the baby.”

“What?” I wonder if she said what I thought I heard her say.

“We’re at the hospital,” she says again.

“But it’s not time yet.”

“She came early. Daisy lost a lot of blood. They’re both barely hanging on. It’s sad, Charlie. Get your ass down here. Jack needs you.”

“Which hospital?”
 

“I’ll text you the address.”

We end the call. I take a moment to let everything Maggie just said sink in. What the hell? I stop scratching the back of my neck to reach out to Jacques. My call goes straight to voicemail. I leave a message then throw on a pair of jeans and a shirt, brush my teeth, and head out. The Saturday morning traffic isn’t horrendous. It’s a smooth drive down Wilshire Blvd. to Beverly Blvd. I park in the structure and nearly run to the maternity ward where I ask an attendant for information on Daisy’s whereabouts.

“Belmont and Daisy Lord?” she asks, eyeing me curiously.

“Yes.”

“May I see your ID please?”

I retrieve my wallet, take out my ID, and give it to her. She checks my name against a list.
 

“Thank you.” She holds my ID out to me.
 

I take one end, but she still has the other. “One more thing,” I say, grinning.

“Yes?” she croaks. I made her nervous.

“Is there an Angelina Blanchard on that list?”

“On what list?” She’s gazing into my eyes.

I point to the list in front of her. “That one.”

“Oh,” she says and quickly looks down to read. “Angelina Blanchard. Yes, her name is here.”

“Has she arrived yet?”

“No, not yet.”

I knock on the counter three times. “Thank you.” I’m all smiles as I take my ID card back.

***

Angelina

“Apparently no one wants to come see a musical about a box that sits on a wall in the projects,” Angelina said.

“Because it’s depressing as hell,” Lars, her long time friend, replied.
 

They were lying on the red faux-fur rug, watching and mocking a really bad reality TV show.

“Maybe we can produce a musical about this,” Angelina said, shoveling a hand at the TV screen just as one of the very thin, very made-up ladies was calling the other one, who looked ten pounds lighter than the first, a “porker.”

“Aw,” Lars said and pulled her into his arms. Angelina snuggled up against his bare and hilly chest.

The coziness made her sigh. “This entire plan hasn’t worked out like I had hoped. And we danced our asses off! Did we not?”

“What did that reviewer say? ‘The writing is horrific, the dancing stellar, and the concept insulting.’”

“That’s how it read. What a jerk.”

“Hell, at least he said we were ‘stellar,’” Lars said.

“Stellar and currently out of a gig.”

“Just do it, Angel. You know you want to anyway.”

“Do what?” She listened to Lars’s heartbeat. There was something comforting about hearing the life of a person now that her mother was gone. It had been more than two months since Madame Josephine Beauchamp’s burial. Angelina thought living in Manhattan, being with old friends, and dancing in multiple shows a day, six nights a week, would take her mind off of her problems, which included the loop of Charlie and Monroe that wouldn’t stop playing in her head. But none of it had.

“Why the hell are you slumming it?” Lars asked. “Look over there.”
 

She followed his finger to where he pointed. She counted them, three roaches nesting beneath the sofa.

She was living in a flat in Chelsea—two bedrooms, eight people, all dancers and mediocre actors. They kept it clean, though—well, at least she did.
 

“It’s Manhattan, Lars. We live in their town, not the other way around.”

“I bet you won’t find them under your sister’s couch in Gramercy Park.”

“You’re not supposed to say that out loud.”

“You think your roommates don’t know you’re a rich bitch?”

“I’m not rich.”

“Your mother was, and she left it all to you. Jacques Blanchard is your father, and he ain’t poor. Your sister is married to the dude who’s number twenty-eight on the—”

“Okay, I get it,” she said, cutting him off. “But God bless the child who has her own, and I have zilch.”

“You have your family, that’s not zilch.”

She brushed one of his stray dreadlocks off his chest. “I have you though.”

He kissed her on the forehead. “You’ll always have me, but it’s time to take your ass to Broadway and Gramercy Park, and bring me with you.”