Starburst (14 page)

“Fuck…fuck…fuck…” she
shrieked while her hips squirmed beneath him. Trevas didn’t want to lecture her
about her vulgar language. That was his Alley, that was what she did, and he
loved her just the way she was.

“I need you inside me
Trevas,” she begged, and he was more than happy to accommodate her wishes.

He moved into her and
she stopped him by placing her hand on his bare chest. “Wait a second,” she requested,
wanting the quavering of her orgasm to stop. He ignored her request and moved
into her with excessive force and she cried out again. Trevas didn’t know where
his impudence was coming from, and it was far from what he had planned, but he
took her with so much aggressiveness and power, thrashing in and out of her
until he was sweating and breathing like he had just run a marathon. The next
time she cried out he was right there with her, and both their bodies relaxed
synchronized at precisely the same moment and they lay panting in each other’s
arms.

Trevas was swiftly
over it when he heard something.

“What Trevas?” she
asked, when he abruptly moved off of her and came to his feet.

He looked at the clock
reading eleven p.m. and went to the door.

“Trevas what are you
doing?” Alley asked, trying to figure him out.

“Don’t talk Alley,” he
warned.

He cracked the door
and shut it quickly.

“Your dad is here,” he
turned and whispered to her, and she jumped up too and started putting her
clothes on as quickly as she could.

“Trevas he is going to
go straight to my room. It’s is routine, he always does”

“Fuck…” Trevas said,
running his fingers through his hair, trying to come up with a plan. “Do you
ever sleep on the couch?” he asked.

“Uh, no…why?”

“You are now,” he said
and took a blanket out of the closet. “I will tell you when, and you go out and
lie on the couch and pretend to be asleep.”

Alley took the blanket
and waited for her Q.

“Now,” he whispered as
he watched Fletcher go upstairs opening the door.

Alley stepped out and
turned right back. “Simon is there,” she explained.

“Shit…okay, plan B,”
He replied, trying to think of what plan B was. “Go out my door and sit in the
lounge chair and tell him you couldn’t sleep.

Trevas opened the door,
and she stopped and laid her hand on his chest. “Trevas are you going to
leave?” she asked, and it pulled at every aching, nerve in his body.

He kissed her quickly.
“I love you Alley,” he told her, and she knew that he was going to go.

“Trevas,” she
whispered frightened.

“Alley, go baby,
please,” he begged and kissed her one more time.

She did what she was
told, just in time for Fletcher to pound on his door. He quickly pulled on a
pair of sweats and looked around to make sure there were none of Alley’s
clothes lying around.

He opened the door and
Fletcher started going off on him. “Where is Alley?” he screamed.

“I’m sure she is
around here Fletcher, she just went up to bed maybe an hour ago.”

Trevas went into the
living room and started barking orders. “Simon, you go check the theater and
the gym. Fletcher go look in the garage.”

Trevas stopped
Fletcher before he got to the garage door.

“Fletcher,” he called.
“She’s out here.”

Fletcher went to the
sliding glass door and opened it. “Alley what are you doing out here?” he asked,
and she jumped up. She had forgotten how mad at him, she was and as soon as she
saw him it all came back to her.

“Fuck you,” she
screamed, and Trevas shook his head, dropping it as he did.

“Alley, come inside,”
her dad pleaded.

Alley got up and
stormed past him. She looked at Trevas with begging eyes and he smiled, and she
knew that it was a goodbye smile.

“Sorry Trevas, I
didn’t mean to wake you. I just get nervous if she is not in this house.”

Trevas wanted to
scream the same profanity words that Alley had just spoken to him. “I wasn’t
asleep yet. I think I will take off now since you are home.”

“Come into my office,”
he spoke, and Trevas followed him.

“Fletcher wrote him a
very hefty check and shook his hand, thanking him for a job well done.”

Trevas thought about
telling him that she would probably be in the tabloids in a few hours if she
wasn’t already, due to the fact that she had flipped off the papz, but for
whatever reason, he didn’t. He needed to get out of there and put this all
behind him.

Alley made it to her
bathroom, cried and got sick at the same time. She lay on her bed and buried
her face in the pillow, biting and stuffing the softness in her mouth. She
screamed into it, waling in agony as she tried to grasp the fact that Trevas was
gone. As soon as she thought she was okay and could breathe again, it would
come back. She was suffocating, and although she wasn’t cold at all, she
shivered as if she was standing naked in a wintery snow storm.

Trevas had never felt so
alone in his life when he entered his empty apartment, he felt like he had lost
a vital organ, one that he needed to stay alive and breathe. He slouched in the
only chair in the room with both hands resting on the arms. He couldn’t
remember the last time that he had cried, but his heart was so full of misery and
pain at that moment, he knew that if he let himself he could cry very easily.

They both had the
longest nights of their lives. Trevas woke from the chair and kicked his
sneakers off, rubbing his sore neck, from sleeping crooked in the chair. Alley
opened her eyes and could see the sun coming through the crack of the curtain
over the French doors. She didn’t think she had a tear left, but as soon as she
was awake enough to remember, they involuntarily began to fall again and she
wondered how long it took to heal a broken heart, and how much of this she
could take.

Trevas got up and
willed himself to stop thinking about her and move on, but that lasted for
about as long as it took him to tell himself to stop. He took a shower, cleaned
up and went to the kitchen and got a pack of chicken from the freezer to thaw.
Chase called, and he ignored it, his mom called, and he ignored it, his sister
called, and he ignored it, and he had the hardest time ever ignoring the next
call from Alley. He had his finger on the button that would allow him to hear
her voice, but couldn’t do it. He didn’t think he could stand to hear her voice
for one, and for two, he didn’t think she could handle hearing his.

He waited for the three
beeps that would let him know that he had missed a call and then dialed the
voice mail. As soon as it told him that he had one new message, he hit the
number seven, which erased it, without listening to it.

Alley threw her phone
to the bed after leaving the message of her begging him to talk to her and brought
her laptop to her bed. She opened the email of the pictures of her and Trevas
that she had sent from her phone. She printed the two that she wanted and was
cutting them out to fit into the pendant when her dad opened the door. She slid
a pillow over the pictures and gave him a dirty look.

“Don’t you know how to
knock,” she shouted.

Fletcher could see how
swollen her eyes were, and the dark circles that had him concerned.

“Alley, is everything
okay?” he asked, worried about her.

She didn’t look up
from her laptop. “Yes, everything is just fucking awesome,” she said in one
flat tone.

“Alley, I’m sorry, I
did what I did. It was stupid of me, and the first thing that I should have
thought about was you, and I didn’t. I’m so sorry Alley.”

Alley stared at him
through squinted eyes. “Don’t worry about it, I’m fine,” she said un-convincing.

“Come down and eat,”
Gloria will make you something.

“I don’t want to eat,
just leave me alone, please,” she begged, and he did as she wished with a deep
sigh and the door closed behind him.

The day was long for
both Alley and Trevas, and she never came out of her room. Her dad did have the
cook bring her a plate, and although her English was pretty broken, and she
could have understood her better if she would have just spoken in Spanish. Alley
understood her say that her dad wanted her to eat.

She sat up and looked
at the salmon that made her think of Trevas and picked a piece off with her
finger, tasting it. She made a face, and instantly thought about Trevas being a
way better cook.

Trevas hadn’t eaten
either, and when he entered the kitchen late in the evening he noticed the
bloody pack of chicken that had thawed hours earlier, leaving a trail of blood all
over the countertop. He picked it up and smelled it and then tossed it into the
trash.

The night was not much
better for either of them and seemed to be worse for Alley. That was when she
cried the most, in the dark motionlessness night, where her thoughts were too
loud and echoed in her head.

By the third day,
Fletcher was really starting to worry, and went to her room late in the
afternoon when she still had refused to get out of bed and come downstairs. She
was lying in her bed with the pendant squeezed tightly in her fist. He went
straight to the French doors and pulled the curtain back, causing her to quint
at the bright light.

“What the hell are you
doing?” she asked, hastily.

“I’m making you get
out of this bed. Get up and go take a shower. You have been in the same clothes
now for three days, enough is enough,” he demanded.

“I don’t need you to
tell me when I need to take a shower,” she snapped.

“Apparently you do.
When was the last time you ate? You haven’t eaten enough to keep a bird alive,
now get up, and I will be back in thirty minutes. Get dressed you are going
with me to watch some auditions.”

“Like hell I am,” she
protested.

“It’s not up for
discussion, now get up.”

Fletcher left, letting
the door slam a little too hard when he did, causing Alley to jump. She sat up
and pulled the pendant apart and looked at the pictures. She had left Trevas
nine voicemails and even more text messages, but he wasn’t responding and she didn’t
understand it. How could he just walk away like she was nothing? Why was this
easier for him than it was her? Would he ever talk to her again? Would she ever
see him again? She had so many things going through her mind, so many memories
that wouldn’t stop, and he was treating her as if she never existed. She sat
there for ten minutes and pulled the two magnets apart, letting the attraction
snap the two pieces back together over and over.

She jumped up like she
had remembered something, took the bowl from her army green backpack and packed
it with the little bit of weed that she had left. She walked out to her balcony,
smoked the bowl and then took a shower. She dressed and met her dad downstairs,
reluctantly.

She wore a pair of
camouflaged shorts that came past her knees, a black t-shirt that fit tight and
showed her midsection and of course the prize winning combat boots, and her dad
could only shake his head at her attire.

Trevas was in no
better shape by the third day either. He hadn’t shaved and was barely eating
himself. He still wasn’t taking calls and ignored them all, including the
hardest one of all.

Fletcher
and Alley got into it again in the backseat of the SUV because she didn’t want
to sit through his stupid auditions.

“Why
are you doing this anyway, isn’t this the casting directors job?” she asked.

“It
won’t take long Alley, these are call backs, and there are only five girls.”

“What
is the stupid movie?”

“It’s
from a book called ‘Handbook.’

“Really?”
she asked intrigued, which got a look of hope from Fletcher. “Handbook, by
Tabitha Long?”

“Yeah,
you know it?” he asked, and was glad that they were speaking. She looked a lot
better with clean hair and a little makeup to cover the dark circles, but she was
still bothered by something and he could tell.

“Yeah
totally, I love that book. I have read it like three times.”

“Damn,
I should have just asked you about it instead of reading it.”

“What
part of the auditions are you doing?” she wanted to know.

“Um,”
he thought, flipping through the script. “Christy Silks is having a
conversation with a guy named milk, about coming to his youth center.”

Alley
kind of chuckled. “She is only called Christy in the first parts of the book.
Once she joins the army she inherits the nick name Peanut Silks because she is
so dainty and small.”

“Why
did she join the army?”

“She
grew up in a bad part of New Orleans, and her mother was a drug addict and she
pretty much raised herself. When she was thirteen one of her mom’s boyfriends
raped her and then another one raped her when she was fifteen. Milk caught her
spray painting the side of his building and instead of calling the cops and
making her pay for it. He made a deal with her that she had to come to the
youth center at least three times a week. She ended up being there six and
seven days a week. He taught her to fight and talked to her for hours about his
years in the army, and all of the adventures that he had been on. The next time
one of her mom’s boyfriends tried to rape she put him in the hospital. She
enlisted her senior year and as soon as she graduated she was off to boot camp.”

“Why
did they call this guy milk?”

“Because
he was a big… very black man with the whitest teeth ever.”

“Maybe
you can help us out and give us some pointers on the best girl.”

“I
don’t know about that, but that is one of my favorite books. I will
unquestionably tell you if it’s the wrong one. I wouldn’t want it screwed up
because you guys can’t pick the part.”