Honey Moon (13 page)

Someone flicked a lighter. A chair creaked softly.

One of the men tapped a pencil on his notepad. "Why don't you tell us about Eric?"

"There's nothing to tell."

"We hear things."

She stiffened in her chair. "I'm not talking about him anymore."

"Don't hold out on us, Honey. That's not a good idea."

Honey's hand clamped tighter around the soda pop can. "Why should I tell you anything? I don't even know why I'm here. I don't like you people!"

Unmoved by her rebellion, they picked up their notepads. "Anytime you're ready."

And because she had no one else to talk to, she told the writers everything. . . .

EXTERIOR. THE LANDING OUTSIDE BLAKE'S APARTMENT OVER

THE GARAGE—NIGHT.

Janie stands on the landing looking at the door of Blake's apartment.

Nervously, she tucks her T-shirt into her pants and then tries to tidy her hair with her fingers, only to realize the task is hopeless and mess it up again.

Finally, she loses her nerve and begins to go back down the stairs, then changes her mind and returns. Summoning her courage, she knocks on the door. When there is no answer, she knocks again.

JANIE

Blake? Blake, are you there?

BLAKE'S VOICE

What do you want, Janie?

JANIE

You—uh— You said you'd help me with my arithmetic homework one of these nights. The— uh—the fractions. Oh, man, those fractions are really hard.

Blake slowly opens the door. He is dressed in jeans, his chest bare. Janie stares at him and gulps.

BLAKE

I'm sorry, Janie, but tonight's not a real good night for me.

JANIE

(disappointed)

Oh . . . Well, maybe . . . You want to play some cards instead?

BLAKE

Not tonight, kid.

JANIE

How about some TV? The Cowboys are playing tonight.

DUSTY'S VOICE

(coming from inside the apartment)

Blake? Is something wrong?

Janie's face falls as she absorbs what is taking place.

BLAKE

(gives Janie a sympathetic smile)

Maybe some other time.

As he turns to go back inside, Janie's heartbreak changes to anger.

JANIE

You toad sucker! Dusty's in there. I heard her voice. You got Dusty in your apartment!

BLAKE

Now, Janie . . .

JANIE

(furiously)

Does your mama know about this? Because if your mama knew, she'd kill you! I'm gonna tell her! I'm going right down there and pound on her door and tell her that her only son is a low-life, scum-suckin' womanizer!

Dusty appears behind Blake's shoulder. She is wearing Blake's robe and her hair is rumpled.

DUSTY

(not unkindly)

Hey, Janie. What're you doin' here?

JANIE

And you! You should be ashamed of yourself! All this time I thought you were a nice person! Now it turns out you're nothing but a—a—slut!

BLAKE

(coldly)

I think you'd better calm down, Janie.

JANIE

(hysterically)

I am calm. I am completely calm.

BLAKE

(steps out on landing and shuts door)

Janie, you can't talk to Dusty like that. There are things you don't understand. You're still a kid, and—

JANIE

I'm not a kid! Don't ever say I'm a kid! I'm almost fourteen and I'm—

Janie bursts into tears . . .

Silence fell over the set as they all waited.

Dry-eyed and furious, Honey rounded on the cameras. "This is stupid! I'm not doing this!"

"Cut!"

Eric slammed his hand down on the railing. "Aw, for chrissake. This is the ninth take."

The director stepped forward. Although the landing to Blake's apartment was supposed to be above the garage, the set rose just a few feet off the studio floor.

While one of the wardrobe assistants handed Eric a shirt, the director gazed up at Honey.

"Do you need makeup to get the crystals?"

Honey had been working on the show for six months, long enough to know that he was talking about menthol crystals that could be blown into her eyes to make them tear. She shook her head, imagining Eric's disgust. Real actors didn't need menthol crystals. Not if they had prepared properly. Not if they'd done their sensory-awareness exercises. But doing this scene was like pulling at an open wound, and all she wanted was to get out of here.

Eric clenched his teeth. "For God's sake use the crystals. We don't have the time to wait for you to do it right."

His callousness destroyed the last vestige of her self-control. "Janie's not some damn crybaby! And she sure as hell wouldn't waste her time crying over a damn peckerhead like Blake!"

Lisa stuck her head out the door. "Are we going to take a break? Because I have to pee."

"No!" Eric shouted. "No goddamn break. It's six o'clock. If Honey doesn't get it right this time, I'm walking. I've got things to do."

"And everybody here knows exactly what kind of things!" Honey shouted.

"That's it. I'm out of here. I don't have to take this shit."

Eric vaulted over the railing to the studio floor. He worked out daily and there was no reason for him to be breathing so hard, but the panic that gripped him couldn't be cured by physical conditioning. From the beginning, he had hated working with her. He couldn't stand the way she looked at him, the way she followed him around. If he'd known about her in the beginning, he would never have signed the contract to do the show. Even his growing fame wasn't worth being forced to stare into those big, needy eyes, that face that begged for his attention.

"Hold it, everybody," the director exclaimed. "Things are getting a little out of control here. One more take, Eric. If Honey doesn't get it this time, we'll start fresh tomorrow. Come on, Eric, cut me some slack. It's late and everybody's nerves are shot. Makeup, get the menthol crystals."

Eric ground his teeth. He wanted to tell all of them to go to hell, but if he walked out now, he'd have to work with the little pest first thing tomorrow morning, and he had enough trouble sleeping as it was. Sometimes in his nightmares her voice was starting to get mixed up with Jason's.

Begrudgingly, he threw off his shirt and climbed back up the three steps. She stared at him, hurt and adoration making her light blue eyes huge. They wanted to suck him in, eat him up. He tried to distance himself from her by studying her face objectively. She was going to be a knockout one of these days, when she stopped looking like a kid.

His small flash of objectivity faded, and all he could see was someone who reminded him far too much of his pain in the ass little brother.

He set his jaw and spoke in a nasty snarl, hoping to make her hate him. "Next time do your homework first. You're getting paid to be a professional. Start acting like one."

She sucked in her breath as if he'd hit her. Her eyes grew luminous with misery, and her bottom lip sagged with vulnerability. He felt the impact of her hurt in his own gut.

The director spoke up. "Let's take it from Janie's close-up. Positions, everybody."

The makeup man blew the crystals in her eyes, and they began to tear.

"Quiet, please. We're rolling. Marker. Action."

The camera came in for a close-up. One fat drop rolled over her bottom lashes and trickled down her cheek, but her expression remained mutinous.

Eric told himself that it was Blake who had to touch her. Blake. Not himself.

Stepping forward, he put his arms around her and pulled her to his chest. Her head didn't even reach his chin. She was just about Jason's height, and like his half brother, she only wanted his attention.

The squeal of brakes shrieked in his mind, the sound of a scream.

"Cut. Print it. Good. We can all go home."

"Asshole!" Honey shoved hard against his chest and ran from the set.

He stood at the top of the landing looking after her, his eyes dark and tormented.

Take me with you, Eric. Please.

8

Despite her determination to keep her head up, by lunch-time the next day Honey was in desperate need of a quiet place where she could go to lick her wounds. Everybody who hadn't been on the set the day before had heard about her fight with Eric, and she knew all of them were whispering behind her back.

They were shooting on location today, but she rejected her motor home as a place to escape because her tutor was waiting there with a trigonometry lesson.

Instead, she slipped behind the catering wagon to an outcrop of man-made rock. But as she stepped into the cool shadows, she realized that even here she couldn't be alone.

Thirty feet away, Dash Coogan leaned against one of the boulders with his hat pulled low over his eyes and one knee drawn up. She knew she should leave, but despite Dash's coolness toward her, she was enveloped with the sensation of having stumbled into a safe, secure place. If only she could crawl into his lap like Janie did. Knowing how impossible that was, she sank down in a shady spot about twelve feet away from him, drew up her knees, and dug the heels of her cowboy boots into the dirt. Maybe if she

sat here for a little bit without talking, he wouldn't mind.

A minute ticked by, each second lasting forever. She tried to hold back, but the words spilled out anyway. "I hate people who don't have anything better to do than gossip about other people."

He didn't respond, even though he had to have heard about what had happened.

She told herself to keep quiet. She already knew that Dash didn't like talky women, but she was going to burst if she couldn't confide in someone other than that pack of jackal writers who took her deepest secrets and spread them out for all of America to see. And who better to confide in than this man who was sort of the closest thing she had to a father?

"Eric's a real peckerhead, if you ask me. Everybody thinks I've got a crush on him, but what kind of idiot would I be to have a crush on a conceited jerk like that?"

Coogan tilted up his hat with his thumb and stared at the horizon in the distance.

She waited for him to give her some advice like adults were supposed to give teenagers. Like a father might give his daughter.

She prodded him. "I guess I'm not stupid enough to think that somebody like him would look twice at a girl who looks like me."

Her muscles tense, she waited for him to respond. If only he would tell her there wasn't anything wrong with the way she looked. If only he'd tell her she was a late bloomer, just like he always told Janie.

But as silence ticked away between them, she decided she shouldn't expect him to read her mind.

"I know I'm not exactly pretty, but do you think—" She picked at a small hole on the knee of her jeans. "Do you think I might be—You know. Maybe a late bloomer?"

He turned to her with cold, dead eyes. "I came back here to be alone. I'd appreciate it if you'd take off."

She sprang to her feet. Why had she ever thought for a moment that he'd understand? That he cared enough about her to try to make her feel better?

When was she ever going to admit that he didn't give a damn about her?

Cocooned in her misery, she looked for a way to punch right back at him, to hurt him

as he'd just hurt her.

Sucking in her breath, she glared at him, her voice crackling with hostility.

"Who wants to be with you anyway, you old drunk?"

He didn't even flinch. He just sat there looking out toward the San Gabriels.

The brim of his hat shaded his eyes so she couldn't see their expression, but his voice was as flat as the Oklahoma prairie.

"Then how about you leave this old drunk alone."

All her hurt turned to venom. Never again would she confess her true feelings to any of them. Beneath a black scowl that camouflaged her broken heart, she spun away from him and stalked back to her motor home.

Behind the outcrop of man-made rocks, Dash Coogan had sweated through his shirt. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the craving that had hit him so hard he felt as if his skin were being stripped from his bones. That little girl would never know how close her taunt had hit on the truth. He needed a drink.

With a trembling hand, he reached for the roll of LifeSav-ers he kept in his shirt pocket. These past few years, he'd begun to take his recovery for granted, but lately he'd realized that his complacency was a big mistake. As he shoved two of the spearmint candies into his mouth, he reminded himself that he'd long ago given up blaming his alcoholism on other people, and he wouldn't do it now.

But it was an undeniable fact that every time that little girl came running after him expecting him to be her pa in real life, the urge to drink hit him like a slap in his face. He hadn't even been a decent parent to his real children, and he sure as hell couldn't be a parent to her.

Those first few days when they'd begun reading through the scripts and talking about the show, he'd been friendly, but it hadn't taken him long to see that he was making a big mistake. She followed him everywhere, not giving him an inch of breathing space. He had realized right then that he had to keep his distance. He had too many empty spaces inside himself to be able to fill up hers.

He knew how badly he was hurting her, but he told himself that she was a strong little cuss, just as he'd been when he was a kid, and she'd survive his rejection the same way he'd survived being shuttled from one foster home to another the whole time he was growing up. Maybe she'd even be stronger for it.

She'd be better off learning right now that she shouldn't expect so much from other people, that she should stop wearing every one of her feelings right out in the open where anybody who came along could stomp all over them.

But damn, there was something about her that tore at his guts, and that, more than anything else, was the reason he had to stay away from her. Because when he felt vulnerable, he wanted to drink, and nothing on earth, not even that feisty little kid, was going to make him ruin six hard-earned years of sobriety.

* * *

Honey saw the house in early March, right before the show went on its four-month break, or hiatus, as