LIKED - A Dark Romance Novel (Story of Dangerous Obsession and Lust) (2 page)

Flashes did their job and strobed over the red carpet. Gia did her job
and gave her practiced answers to questions where they fit. She made them sound
more convincing than her Splatter Love dialogue ever did. She still blamed the
editing for ruining her performance, but she did not bring that up in any of
her answers. They asked about Gia and Don’s relationship and they gave their
practiced coy looks to each other and their non-answer answer.

As they turned to go inside, she scanned the stands across the street
which were full. Gia stared for a couple beats wondering if Don had paid to
have people to fill out the crowd to make it look full. If he had money for
that, then he needed to pay her.

She saw the pink hat in the crowd and she smiled. What if that really was
Jack the Liker showing up with one moment to prepare after their conversation?
She started to focus on the person wearing it just out of curiosity, but then
locked her attention on the outline of blue bells stitched on the pink front.
They were overlapped and turned at canted angles as if they were ringing just
like on her little league uniform. That hat couldn’t exist. The outlines were
like the foundation of the building from the parking lot where she waited for
the limousine – it was the after image of a life that no longer existed. That
hat couldn’t really exist.

She froze and tried to focus on the face, but the flashes from cameras
kept washing the color out of the world. Don held her arm at the elbow and
said, “We need to go in. Come on.”

She looked toward Don and back into the crowd in the stands across the
street. The hat was lost like magic and she started to wonder if she had seen
it at all. Gia turned and they swept inside.

They circled the room making nice with invited guests with money to
invest and Don moved to the center with Gia as they waited for everyone to
gather and the catering staff to pass out the flutes of Champaign.

Gia whispered, “Will I take your name?”

“Whatever you want,” he whispered back as he took two glasses from the
tray and handed Gia one. “You might want to keep Gia Sorah at this point now
that you are getting real attention and notice.”

She smiled. “Sure, as a screen name, but legally, I mean.”

“You want to be Gia Blackheart?” He smiled and looked away. “That’s not a
bad screen name either. We could be a Hollywood, Horrorwood, power couple,
huh?”

“Would I not be Gina Blanchard in real life though? Like on a marriage
license?”

Don frowned. “You can be whoever you want, but I’m not using that name
anywhere.”

Her real name, her Kentucky name as Don Blackheart aka Donald Blanchard
called it, was Gina Sullivan. Sometimes she looked at her Hollywood name on
posters, on boxes, or online and wondered if her real name wasn’t the better
name in many different ways. She thought about outlines of buildings and bells.

Don rang one of his skull rings against his glass and everyone drifted to
silence.

Ding Dong, the career is dead, she thought.

He looked good in his grey tuxedo with tails. He was smiling in a way
that could have been happiness or anger, but since he was a center of
attention, she assumed he was happy.

He gave his speech about the movie and then announced that he and Gia
were engaged. The crowd made the noise of surprise and clapped. The flash from
cameras increased exponentially and they kissed on cue just like he had
directed.

She graciously took everyone’s congratulations on the way into the screening.
Gia fought the temptation to ask each of them if they had been paid yet. The
movie got laughs and gasps at all the right places. Gia cringed at her own
dialogue. She was going to get blasted by critics. She could feel it. Love
Splatter would have been a better title, she thought again.

They took more questions and congrats afterward and returned to the limo.
A few of the dates of the important men were stumbling on their heels with the
drunk walk of baby giraffes. Don gave them dirty looks as photographers took
their pictures like he was surprised they were acting like that.

The couple gave one more wave and smile before disappearing inside the
limo.

“You want to go back to my place?” he asked.

He was already scrolling for another number.

“I’ll need to go back to my apartment to pick up some things.”

He shook his head. “Just order what you need after we get back.”

She frowned. “What happened to whatever I wanted?”

She expected him to relent, but he said, “Just do what I said. I need to
return these calls.”

She pulled his phone hand down away from his ear. “I’m not sitting around
your place in this uncomfortable dress all night while you talk on the phone.”

He shook her hand off and said, “Stop it. This is important.”

“Just take me back to my place. All the way back. Not to an abandoned
parking lot for me to wait on a stranger.”

“Fine. Tell the driver. I need to take this call.”

“You still need to pay me for the movie,” she said.

He froze. “Wow. Is that what this is about?”

“It’s about giving me more than a brush off between phone calls, Donald
Branchard.”

He grimaced as if she had blown the onion smell into his face. “I’ll take
you home, we’ll talk tomorrow, and I’ll do a proper night out on the town to
celebrate our engagement.”

She smiled, but looked away, so he would think she was still angry. He
saw it though. He said, “That’s my Gia. Put on a nice dress and heels for
tomorrow.”

She frowned and shook her head.

***

He was still on the phone as the driver let her out. The limo pulled away
and she sighed in the dark outside her building. It really did stink. The
actual smell of her surroundings as well as the whole situation she found
herself in.

Gia turned and scrolled through her messages seeing lots of notes from
acquaintances about the engagement, but nothing about the movie. There was
nothing from back home either. She punched in the code from muscle memory and
went inside.

No photographers had bothered to follow her home.

Upstairs in her apartment, the garbage onion smell was still there. She
realized that she had left her bedroom window open and she groaned. As Gia
walked through the dark, unlacing the corset behind her and taking her first
deep breath of the night, she froze staring at the shape of a man’s head in the
open window.

She wanted to scream, but her throat felt tight and she couldn’t find her
air. She was a scream queen with no scream left.

Gia turned on the light and saw it was only a hat sitting on the sill. It
was the pink hat with the outline of the blue bells on the front. It was the
hat that couldn’t exist. She almost wished it had really been a person instead
of this.

“Hello?” she called.

The apartment was tomb silent except for distance traffic noise drifting
in the window on the cool night onion air. She finally made herself walk
forward and picked up the hat. It felt new like it had just been made. She
brought it to her face and smelled the inside for sweat. All she could smell
was the onion odor that was everywhere now.

She closed the window and knew that if this was one of her movies, he
would already be inside and waiting on her. She would need to check all the
closets before she went to bed. Gia wasn’t sure what she would do once she
found someone though.

Not someone, she thought, Jack the Liker and the magic hat maker.

She traced the blue bells with her finger. It was the foundation for a
life that wasn’t there anymore – her Kentucky life. It would be the outline for
her career soon.

Gia moved the hat farther away from her face even though she still held
the thing. She whispered. “Not possible.”

She still held the hat by its brim as she pulled out her phone. As she did,
she intended to call Don to come back and get her, but then she realized she
would never get through his string of calls. He would assume she was calling to
fight and not return her call until morning. She thought about calling the
police like any sane woman would do, but then, she opened Jack’s message
thread.

He had given one more response. It was longer than the screen would allow
and she had to scroll as she read it: “I found the hat. I swear they had one on
the wall in the store. After I bought it, I thought about how weird it would be
if you actually saw me. I left early from the premier and drove by your place.
You have location on for your Periscope videos. You might want to turn that
off. I gave the hat a toss toward your window as a joke, but then it landed on
the sill. I freaked out and almost looked for a ladder, but then thought I had
already crossed all of the lines as it was. I swear I am not hiding in a
closet, although I guess that is exactly what a dude that hides in closets
would say. I swear I’m the harmless kind of creepy. I’ll go away and leave you
alone both virtually and in the real world. Hope you enjoy the weird engagement
gift and congratulations on the movie. I was going to pirate it, but I decided
to preorder the Blue Ray, so you will get your cut like you deserve. Sorry I’m
so weird. – Jack the Liker.”

She looked up and out across her bedroom. “Jack?”

Her voice echoed and rang off the metal in the apartment coming back to
her empty.

“Like ringing bells,” she added and then shivered.

Jack the Stalker was the only one that congratulated her on the movie. He
was also the only one that bought her a present tonight including her own
director/fiancé. He might be the only one in the world that gave a damn whether
Gia got paid at all.

“The movie is already up for preorder?” Gia shook her head.

She tapped the message to give a reply. Her fingers hovered over the
keypad on her screen as she considered the oddity of it all. She typed: “That’s
okay. You don’t have to vanish. Cool gift. We all get creepy sometimes.
Splatter Love, Gia.”

After she hit send, she still considered calling someone. Gia set her
phone and clutch aside. She clawed her way out of her corset and pulled her
dress over her head and cast it all onto the floor.

Gia lifted her breasts and let the tepid air of the apartment dry out the
sweat. The skin around her stomach and sides was a map of red and purple
creases leading to some magical, alien land. She was sure her back looked the
same way. She needed someone to give her a rub down, but she was alone – she
assumed.

Don would be too busy, but she bet Jack or one of the junk pic dudes
would gladly do it for her.

Gia let her breasts drop from her hands and she walked over to her
vanity. She lifted her phone and shut off location in her settings. She
realized she was standing naked by her window, so she turned off her light.

She used the glow of her phone to find her way to the bed. The dress gave
an odd shimmer in the darkness and shallow, blue blaze from her phone. She
could almost imagine a body sprawled on the floor of the bedroom in that dress.

Gia laid down and knew she must be exhausted physically and emotionally
because her bed was not as comfortable as it felt in that moment.

She woke up the next morning naked and staring at the ceiling. She
realized in the morning light that she had forgotten to check the closets. She
was still holding the phone in one hand and the pink hat in the other.

Her memory tried to tell her that she hadn’t been holding the hat when
she fell asleep. Gia got up and held her aching head between the heels of her
hands. She had not drank enough the night before to feel like this. Her calves
were trying to cramp up on her and gave her an odd gate as she walked. She went
to take a shower because she smelled as bad as the neighborhood.

Gia checked the phone and had no new messages from Don or Jack. She set
her phone aside and put on the hat. Gia turned on the shower waiting as she
wore nothing but her pink hat and falling curl ringlets. She took a cigarette
out of a nearly empty pack by the sink and held it between her lips seeing how
long she could go before she lit it.

***

What Do You Have in Mind?

Her heels were more sensible than they had been for the premier. She had
underwear on this time. It was a thong which was barely more than nothing, but
enough to make her wish she was wearing nothing. It matched her bra and silver
dress. She even had a silver purse for this outfit that could hold more than a
key and a phone. That all had to count for something.

Don had put away his phone finally as they ate a corn and crab soup.
Seller’s Creed was a new restaurant that featured southern and Cajun dishes
served with an upscale twist. She had almost ordered the shrimp and grits, but
she assumed that it would be a disappointment. Now she was wishing she had gone
with the shrimp and grits. How often could a person get a grits dish in Los
Angeles?

She dragged her soup spoon through the cream cutting a furrow through the
bottom of her bowl. The town across the bridge from her hometown was called
Mount Seller. She wondered if there might not be some connection. She thought
probably not. LA and Kentucky were on two different planes of existence really.

Don brought her out of her thoughts by saying, “That’s the same dress you
wore to the Hoboken Hellmouth premier.”

Gia looked down her own cleavage as she looked at her dress. If she owned
the dress, she assumed she would have worn it more than once. Isn’t that what
normal people did with dresses? She barely remembered that movie much less the
premier. Gia had been drinking more that night and smoking more than just
cigarettes. She hadn’t exactly gone clean since then, but she had slowed down a
little. In LA terms, slowing down was practically the same as becoming a
Southern Baptist. Don Blackheart had just been an assistant director then and
Gia had been butchered by the killer clown gang at the end of the first reel.
It was a confusing script, but they had gotten the rights to the books cheaply.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe. It’s sweet that you remembered.”

“People are taking pictures, Gia.” He shrugged. “You should wear
something new, if we are out and about the town.”

“Are you serious?” She shook her head. “I thought tonight was about us
and maybe you not being a dick.”

“Ouch.” He smiled and took a drink of the white wine he had ordered. “We
are a power couple now, right? People pay attention to the stupid things like
what we are wearing and where we are going. It is all promotion for us now.”

“Well, then you should have bought me something new to wear.”

He laughed and snorted before wiping his nose with the back of his hand.
“I have a condo on the beach and all my money tied up in the next monster
movie. Am I supposed to buy you dresses now too?”

“Until you pay me, I guess you better,” she said.

He groaned and looked up to the ceiling. “I’m buying a really nice dinner
for us. Do I have to hear this every night too?”

“I thought the dinner was promotion,” she said. “And I am going to get
paid what I’m owed for that movie, right?”

“Yes, it takes time,” he said. “That’s how it has always worked. You
think money comes faster because we are sleeping together?”

“Being engaged is more than just sleeping together, Don. And money coming
slowly is fine, I guess. It is not coming at all that concerns me.”

“Our money is shared, if we are married, isn’t it?” he asked.

“If?” Gia set down her spoon in her soup bowl and raised her eyebrow.

“When,” he said.

“Fine. Give me all our money including my pay for the movie and I’ll
watch it for us.”

He laughed and stopped staring into her blank face. He laughed again and
waved a finger at her. “Okay. I got you. I’ll have your money soon. I’ll put it
in an envelope and tell you the drop point like all the other wannabe gangsters
trying to roll me.”

“Screw you, Don. Asking you to pay me what you owe me for an acting
contract isn’t rolling you. I shouldn’t have to ask at all.”

He held up a hand. “I said, okay. Don’t be like this. I don’t want to
have to live with this negativity every day. Be cool, girl.”

Don brought the phone up to his ear and Gia snatched it away from him. He
sat staring at her with his mouth open and his fingers still curled around the
shape of the phone next to his ear. It was as if he could not fathom that she
would do such a thing and his mouth and hand didn’t know what to do without the
phone.

“What the hell, Gia? That’s a business phone. Give it back.”

She slid it down between her breasts covered in a double layer of silver.
“If you need something to do with your mouth and hands tonight, I’ll show you
what to do later.”

“Give me the phone. Stop playing around.”

“You know where it is. I’ll let you earn it back later … if you are good
and you do a good job.”

He reached for her dress front and she slid around the booth out of his
reach. “Oh, Don, you can’t even wait until we are out of the public eye to have
your way with me?”

Photographers out on the periphery of the restaurant and the dance floor
turned their attention on the commotion in the booth. More than a few of them
lifted their cameras and started snapping shots. She thought they were supposed
to wait outside. Maybe Don had arranged to let them in. Don cut his eyes in
their direction and back at Gia.

“People are watching. Don’t make a scene.”

“I thought this was all about the scene, Don?”

“You are going to give me back the phone one way or the other,” he said.
“Just let me have my phone so we can have a nice evening without all this
childish drama.”

“I want the evening to be nice without the phone in your ear. I had the ‘phone
in your ear’ evening last night, Don.”

“Fine. Give it back to me and I’ll put it away. I promise.”

“Hmm.” She tilted her wine glass and drained it. “The same way you
promised to pay me?”

“Gia …”

“Tonight, I’m Gina and you are Mr. Blanchard. We are a couple on a date
and you are trying to woo me. Your motivation is that you are madly in love
with me and you want me more than anything in the world. Now … start scene.”

Don gritted his teeth. “Damn it all, Gia, just give me my fucking phone.”

“Fucking phone?” She shrugged and stood up from the table. She reached
over and picked up his glass. He reached for her cleavage again, but she backed
away before he could retrieve his phone. She drank down the rest of his glass
of wine and set the empty down next to hers. “If it is a fucking phone, then
you know what you’ll need to do to get it back. Anything less than a head
exploding orgasm won’t be enough. Bring your hands, mouth, and everything else
when you are ready to pay your fucking phone bill, Don.”

“I’m sorry I raised my voice and cussed at you,” he said. “Give me back
my phone, please.”

She shook her head and stepped away. “I don’t care if you are sorry, Don.
Men are always sorry when they want something. You have to do more than be
sorry.”

He held his hands out in front of him over the table. “You want me to
have sex with you to get my phone back. Is that it? In the men’s room?”

Cameras clicked off pictures from across the room.

“Sounds good to me.” She turned and crossed the room.

“Gia!”

She didn’t look back to see, if he was following, but kept walking.
People turned and watched her pass. She wasn’t sure if they recognized her or
they were seeing something in her eyes.

Gia reached the men’s room door and looked around. No one was in the
immediate area. She thought about a bar and dance floor where the payphones
lined the walls outside the bathrooms. She wasn’t old enough to remember when
everyone didn’t have a cell phone. She barely remembered seeing a phone that
wasn’t a smart phone. Still, along that wall when she snuck in with a fake ID
to flirt with married men over the bridge in Mount Seller, there were always
one or two old, fat sad sacks on those payphones like a movie from the 1980’s.
Every movie she had ever been in had some scene where the starlet lost her
phone or reception was out for some reason.

She smiled and thought, you have to isolate the pretty girl with the big
boobs in a world that is connected globally through the phone.

“Isolation is horror,” she said to the men’s room door.

She took up Don’s phone from between her tits and wondered; if her real
life was a movie, would she be the monster that separated the hero from his
phone? Don was coming toward her and was looking back and forth nervously. She
liked seeing him on his heels a little. She waited until he was looking at her
and she made sure she gave an exaggerated wink that he would be able to see
from a distance even in the low light of the restaurant.

Cheat toward camera, she thought. And she slid the phone back into place
down the front of her dress. She realized she had left her purse with her own
phone back at the booth and hoped it would be okay. If he was a good
negotiator, Don would have taken her phone and offered a trade. If he was a
better negotiator, he would have more money and she would already be paid.

Gia pushed open the bathroom door and walked into the men’s room. It
wasn’t as nice as the women’s room. She had been in their once to check her
make-up since they arrived. There were couches and potted plants. The men’s
room was fairly clean, but stark, fake marble. Tufts of toilet paper were
wadded in the floor under the dark wood dividers of the stalls.

This was not going to be quite as sexy as she had pictured. She should
have lured Don to the women’s room. They could have even used the couch. She
supposed that she was less likely to get arrested going into the men’s room
than he would be barging into the lady’s room. She also suspected that Don would
chicken out and wait outside the lady’s room door for her, but he might follow
her into the men’s room like she wanted. He had been the one to suggest the
men’s room, so that thought came from somewhere. Either he fantasized about it
or had banged some girl in a men’s room before.

She looked up and noticed two men standing by the sinks staring at her.
One was older in a suit. The other was younger and wore a black, silk shirt
with three buttons undone at the top. His chest looked smooth enough that she
suspected it was waxed. If this were “that type” of movie, these guys would be
joining in on the fun.

Instead, she said, “If you guys are finished, I’m going to need the
room.”

The older man looked at the younger man next to him and shut off the
water. He shook off his hands and walked around her without saying a word.

The younger man stopped next to her and said, “Are you in movies?”

“This is Los Angles,” she said. “Your waiter was probably in movies.”

He snapped his fingers. “You’re … ugh … Gina Nova, right?”

She patted his check. His face felt as smooth as his chest looked.
“Close, baby. Get out.”

He smiled and stepped out of the bathroom. Before the door finished
closing, it creaked back open and Gia turned to see Don standing with his fists
on his hips like some knock off superhero. Don had his lips peeled back from
his teeth so that it looked like he was smiling, if Gia did not know to look in
his eyes and read the off focus that indicated anger. It was unnerving to see a
man that smiled when he was angry like that.

“Give me my damn phone, Gia. This shit isn’t funny.”

She grabbed her breasts over the silver dress and pushed them against the
phone between them. “I’m getting sweaty in there, Don. You’re lucky I didn’t
oil them up for the big scene. That can’t be good for a phone.”

“Stop it. This nonsense isn’t cute. You’re not cute. You’re being a mean
bitch.”

“Fucking phones and mean bitches,” she said shaking her head. “You have
built quite the life for yourself, Mr. Blackheart.”

He took a step toward her and she took a step back and to the side. He
stopped and held up his hands. “What are we doing here?”

“You are earning your keep, Don. Make me cum and you get to make phone
calls again.”

She walked toward the open stalls. She picked one that was the cleanest
and had no paper on the floor. She waved her hand in front of the sensor and
flushed it anyway for good measure.

Don stepped into the doorway of the stall and stopped. “You can’t be
serious with this.”

“I’m as series as a phone call,” Gia said sitting down on the front edge
of the toilet seat in her silver dress.

“We are grown adults,” Don said. “We can just have sex at home instead of
in some dirty bathroom like a couple of drug addicts.”

“You can use your phone at home,” Gia said, “if you get it back.”

He sighed, but she leaned forward grabbing him by his belt and pulling
him into the stall with her. The toilet flushed behind her. She started undoing
his belt and he rolled his eyes. “Yeah, real sexy, Gia.”

She started to unzip his fly and he pushed her hands away. He reached for
her chest and she thought he was going for it, but then she remembered the
phone there. She shoved his hands away and stood up. The toilet flushed again.