Selfie (18 page)

But the problem with knowing how to relax your mind and body is that it works. And once you’re relaxed, allowing your endorphins to conquer the pain, it’s hard to keep the truth at bay—from other people, or from yourself.

“We were lovers,” I said into the silent car.

“I know,” he responded gently. I was a coward because I couldn’t look at his face when we did this. I could only see his brown eyes, flickering to the rearview when it was safe.

“From that first meeting,” I said, half smiling, closing my eyes so I could see Vinnie, young and flirty, and irrepressible. He’d done what Noah had done—just kissed me, taken me, because I’d been so obviously ripe and for the taking. It hadn’t occurred to me that I could still be that way.

“You little slut,” Noah said, but he said it with a smile, like he didn’t care.

“You have no idea,” I muttered, and then, because I wanted him to know that it was real. “We . . . we didn’t start out exclusive. We were just fucking around and sharing an apartment.” Unvarnished truth. “But . . .”

“But it stuck,” Noah filled in.

“Yeah.”

“Uh, Connor?”

“
Yeah?”

“
I don’t want you to go.”

“
Oh, thank God.”

“
You’re not just saying that so you don’t have to look for an apartment, are you?”

“
I love you, Vinnie. Jesus, you’re stupid.”

“
You do?”

“
Yeah.”

“
Oh, thank God. I love you too.”

“Connor?” Noah said, pulling me back from that sweet, sweet moment past.

“Yeah?”

“It’s going to be all right. You know that, don’t you? You’re going to be all right.”

I half laughed, but then I thought about it. I’d just wandered through the wilderness and found a friend.
Literally
. And figuratively. And with a hot bath and some antibiotic cream and a wrap, I’d be just fine.

And my heart might survive too.

“Thanks, Noah.”

“I took you to the woods and broke you, Mr. Mazynsky. It’s the least I could do.”

I don’t know why I thought that was funny—but I giggled most of the way home.

After Jillian called the makeup artist and told him to get ready for road rash on Monday, she fussed over me and I let her. Yes, I have a mommy complex; I’m not proud—it felt good to have a mom bring me a milkshake and make sure my ankle wrap was cold and give me ibuprofen. It felt even better to have her come up to my room and watch TV after Noah had left. He’d been remorseful and full of promises to be there in the morning to collect Jilly and her luggage, as well as to check on me and my injured body.

She sat next to me on the bed and snuggled, which was
not
a thing she would have done before Vinnie died, or before the last three weeks. We’d grown closer since that stupid video, clinging harder, because grieving alone had left us lost, but grieving together was just easier to do.

“You sure it’s okay?” she asked for the umpteenth time.

“That you go?” I kissed the top of her head. She needed to get her hair done—her grays were showing through her bleach job. “Yeah.”

“I’m leaving you all alone,” she complained, working on peeling her polish some more.

“Jillian, you have a life. You have four ex-husbands, and kids who need you, and a really thriving business.”

“Yeah.” She sounded so sad. “But . . . but right now, you’re the one friend who knows the worst things about me, and you still love me. Why would I want to leave that?”

I thought about it. Thought about the way we’d left things the night before. My arm tightened around her shoulders.

“Because now that we’ve said the hard things, we’re free,” I told her. “You can go to your kids and say, ‘I’m not a saint. I’ve fucked up. But I’ve faced the hard things and you can too.’”

She shuddered against me. “Will that help?”

I let out a bitter laugh. “Oh, Jilly. You have no idea. None. It’s helped
me
. It’ll help them.”

Was that why Vinnie had ended up in rehab
twice
? Because we’d never said the hard things—not to the press, not to his family, not to each other?

God. That was one question it was too late to ask.

“Connor?”

“Yeah?”

“I want us to stay like this. I promise, you know.”

I looked down at her, but she was pretending to watch
The Expendables 3.
I wondered which of those guys she’d boned, because most of them were pretty rockin’.

“Promise what?”

She returned my gaze, eyes red-rimmed. “If you get a chance to stay here, do it. I promise I’ll come visit. Next time I’ll actually use the clothes I bring. I swear.”

I smiled, thinking of all that luggage, and she’d showed up on set once and hung out in her sweats for less than a week. I kissed her forehead and gave thanks for her.

“Jilly, you are welcome. In any home I live in, you’re welcome.”

She nodded and settled in just a little closer.

The next day Noah arrived bright and early to pick her up. She’d done her face up and was wearing a white pantsuit that was pure LA, along with some four-inch patent-leather platforms that made her look bigger. She insisted on me staying in the bedroom, with the lunch she’d just made me, and the television and Netflix and my Kindle, and she hugged me long and hard before she left.

Noah watched the proceedings with a half smile on his face.

“I promise, Ms. Lombard, I’ll take good care of him.”

And just that quick her cynical agent was in place. “Yeah, I’ll just bet you will,” she muttered, rolling her eyes. “You just make sure the press conference is his idea—I don’t like my girls knocked up or my boys outed without their consent, do you hear me?”

Noah widened his eyes in surprise and backed up, letting her sweep imperiously out the door and down the steps.

“I’ll be back,” he said softly.

“I don’t want to talk,” I warned, because I wasn’t up for that. Not today.

He lifted a shoulder. “Who said anything about talking?” Like he hadn’t been the driving force of my emotional reckoning. “I’ll bring chess.”

“I suck at chess. Bring Scrabble.”

His smile blinded me again. “I rock at Scrabble. Bring it on.”

They left, and I settled in for a nap and a read and some relaxation.

When he got back, we played Scrabble, and then he made me dinner, we watched some television, and he left.

I lay in the dark, alone at home since that first morning after Jilly woke me up with a phone call to say I’d almost ruined my life—almost three weeks ago.

I realized that I didn’t want wine. I didn’t need Jilly. And while the promise of seeing Noah again the next morning made me happy, it wasn’t what kept me from the wine.

It was the promise of
everything
that kept me from the wine. Of Noah, of Jilly as a friend, of the show that started in three days. It was the hope of more mountain biking, and shopping, and maybe some trips out into the sound. It was the idea that I could have friends here, like Carter and Levi, or Cheddar, or Noah’s sisters whom I hadn’t met.

I was lying alone in a dark house, but my thoughts weren’t bleak or lonely.

I had hope. I had promises.

The thought alone let me close my eyes to sleep.

Well, I’d been right and wrong about RICE.

On the one hand, it
had
helped me get my mobility back in a relatively short amount of time—but the ankle was just not as stable as it should have been.

The day before we started shooting, Noah snuck me in to see a doctor
not
affiliated with the show, and he gave me some steroid injections—and told me to stay off the ankle.

Noah helped me set up a gym in one of the spare bedrooms so I could continue to work my upper body and core—but on the condition that I stay off the damned ankle.

And for the first two weeks of shooting, I basically walked in, hit my mark, and dialoged with the girls so we could figure out what to do with our poor pack, displaced out of time and space, and stranded in this strange world.

It was great stuff—stranger in a strange land is one of my favorite bits, and this was made even better by my character’s intensity. He was such an object of pathos that I refused to play him for pity. I wanted people to admire his grit, his need to defend his pack, even as tiny as it was, and his determination to survive.

Man, as long as I could support most of my weight on my right foot, I was loving life.

And the days were long—so long. Nothing like shooting a twelve-hour day to kill your urges for any more soul searching than was absolutely necessary.

Noah was my driver, my employee, and, steadily, he was becoming my friend. But we didn’t even have time to
talk
about those two kisses on the hilltop, much less allow them to happen again, and I was grateful.

For twelve hours a day, six days a week, I got to concentrate on being somebody new—complete with makeup.

For me, the makeup was sort of like the read-through: it wasn’t supposed to be fun, but when you had to do it, it was also my favorite part.

So, Friday morning, as we were shooting outside in the first location, I wasn’t actually stressing about
anything
. I was mostly just getting my full werewolf kit on for the last scene of the week (we hoped!) and bouncing my lines off Noah, since he tended to follow me around the dressing room and the set anyway.

“Oh, Mr. Montgomery,” Junior, the makeup and prosthetics whiz muttered, “your ankle— It’s . . . Are you sure it’s okay if we put a prosthetic on that?” He’d done a bang-up job covering my road rash—if he was worried, I should take him seriously.

I looked down and grimaced. Yeah—still swollen, today especially because I’d been on my feet almost continuously the day before.

“Toldya,” Noah grunted sourly.

I stuck my tongue out at him. “Yeah, Junior—go ahead and wrap an ACE bandage around it and cover it up. I can still walk on it—no big deal.”

“What’s no big deal?” Simon Conklin hopped into the trailer looking revved and excited as only a zealot to his profession
could
look. In the last two weeks I’d seen why Anna Maxwell had gone out of her way to recruit Conklin. Young enough to be energetic and cutting edge but old enough to have the patience to walk his actors through what he needed, I thought he was going to take this next season of
Wolf’s Landing
through the top of the charts. I knew he was directing four of my eight episodes—this pleased me to no end. Yeah, I’d gotten some of my first breaks by blowing the boss—but I’d made up for every blowjob with hours upon hours of craftwork. I’d studied the greats, I’d read their biographies, their books on craft, the critics’ works—you name it. One year, I downloaded the reading list for the drama classes from the local state college and made it my life’s mission to read that shit.

I read plays from Albee to Ibsen, and damn if I didn’t appreciate someone else who thought making science fiction was just as important if not more so than making contemporary drama.

“Nothing’s up.” I smiled at Simon, wanting to
not
be a pain in the ass. A couple of the writers had sounded me out about staying for longer than my established gig. I’d said yes—you bet your sweet ass I did—but the first thing you learn (usually after your first blowjob gets dismissed and forgotten) is that promises aren’t worth jack until you sign the contract.

I really wanted to sign that contract. Being a speshul snophlake who got hurt at the drop of a hat was not the way to have that happen.

“Is Junior almost done here? We’re moving right on schedule to get out of here by nine—just as long as you pretty much come out of the makeup trailer and onto the blood puddle, okay?”

Today’s location shoot was carefully scheduled. First Wind and Swift (Lissa and Brenda, who had been doing an awesome job as my costars in our little pack) had been forced to kill a predator of the male rape-y kind. They’d filmed
their
scene about twenty minutes ago, and Noah’s sister and the other gaffers had been dressing the set to make sure all the details they needed—entrails strewn on trees, tennis shoes ripped in two, that sort of thing—were in place. When the set dressers were done, Carter and Levi would go be the detectives and try to figure out why Mr. Sleezebucket Octopus Hands (as Lissa and Brenda had called him when they were running lines) had to die.