What To Read After FSOG: The Gemstone Collection Part Two (51 page)

In a way, I both dreaded and looked forward to Monday morning equally. I knew I couldn’t skip work, no matter how badly I wanted to avoid looking like something was wrong and having Kevin ask me about it. The flipside of the coin was that I’d have something aside from streaming movies to focus on, and not think about how stupid I’d been to go that far with Max.

Kevin called shortly after I opened the office and told me he’d be out all day. I breathed a sigh of relief. I could ease back into my work for a day.

I finally got in touch with Krystal when eating my lunch salad at my desk.

“How was your weekend?” she asked.

“Okay.”

“What happened with Max?”

The floodgates opened and I told her the whole story.

When I was finished she said, “What an ass! See, this is what I was telling you to be ready for.”

“I know, I know.” I didn’t want a lecture.

“And he didn’t call you all weekend?”

“Nope.”

“Ah, forget him,” she said. “I know you have a working relationship with him and all, but just keep it at that.”

I didn’t say anything.

Krystal said, “So…was it good?”

I sighed. “Best ever.”

She chuckled. “Okay, so you just chalk it up as the best sex ever and move on. Gotta keep moving in this town.”

“Speaking of which, what were
you
doing all weekend?”

“Oh, God. I met these two guys…” She went on to tell me the story of spending the weekend with two men, complete with the raunchy details of her first threesome.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I said.

“Nope.”

“Damn. And here I was thinking you were working and I just kept missing you or something.” It wasn’t really what I thought. How would I have missed her between shifts? I was starting to figure out that Krystal had some kind of wild and quite unique lifestyle. And I was starting to puzzle together that her lifestyle didn’t involve working in a restaurant and going to auditions. But I didn’t want to pry. Not yet, anyway.

We didn’t talk any more about it for the rest of the week. I only saw her on Wednesday night, anyway, and just for a few minutes as I was heading off to bed when she got home.

I called my parents for a few minutes on Tuesday to let them know I was doing better, working, and everything else was going fine. Grace happened to be there when I called and we talked for a few minutes.

She lowered her voice at one point and said, “I ran into Chris at the gas station.”

Hearing his name sent a shiver down my spine and brought back the imagery of the dream I’d had over the weekend.

“I don’t even want to know.”

“Well,” she said, “he wanted to know about you.”

“What did you tell him?”

There was a pause. Total silence.

“Grace? What did you tell him?” I asked, a stern tone in my words.

“I told him you moved to California.”

“Uh huh. And?”

I heard a door close, and then it sounded like wind wooshing across the phone. She’d gone outside to get out of earshot of our parents.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know it was stupid. I just wanted him to know that you were doing fine, and even better, without him. I wanted to make him feel like crap.”

I gritted my teeth. “If he calls here—”

“He’s not going to find out where you work. LA is huge, right?”

I leaned back in my chair. I didn’t want to argue about this. “You still shouldn’t have told him anything.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“But,” I said, “I do want that asshole to know I’m not crushed without him. It’s kind of my only sense of…victory or something, you know?”

We got past that little issue and she caught me up on the baby and other things going on in our little hometown. For the first time, and rather strangely, I felt a little tug of nostalgia. Not quite homesickness. Not yet, anyway. I figured it was simply an easy fantasy escape coping mechanism to deal with the fact that I hadn’t really adjusted to the hustle and bustle of LA and Hollywood yet. Kind of a yearning for the slower, simpler times.

T
here was nothing slow or simple about the way the rest of the week played out.

When I got home Wednesday after work, I found two dozen red roses on my doorstep, along with a card that said:
Sorry I’ve been so busy. Thinking of you and want to see you again soon. I’ll call. –M

My initial thought was gratitude that he’d had the sense not to send it to my office.

My second thought was how to tell him I just wasn’t ready for something so intense, especially something fraught with so much possibility of letdowns.

I had come to the conclusion that I wasn’t ready to date. Nor was I ready for a fuck buddy. And I really wasn’t—and might never be—ready for a high-intensity relationship with someone like Max.

My self-esteem kept chiming in and telling me I wasn’t pretty enough, rich enough, or sophisticated enough for someone like Max. The really depressing thing was that I felt like I was only good enough for someone like Chris Cooper. He’d done a real number on me, and while I had been able to break away from it for a while and enjoy the powerful seduction of Max, I was still drawn back to that self-defeating belief.

It seemed like a nearly impossible thing to admit to him, but there was a part of me that figured once he heard even half the story he would probably be gone in the blink of an eye.

So be it.

He called around 8 p.m. that night. I was putting some clothes in the washer when my phone rang. I looked at the caller ID and let it go to voicemail. I heard no voicemail alert, and then the phone rang again.

I took a deep breath and answered it.

He said, “Hey, babe.”

Babe?
I might have taken that as a cute term of endearment had the situation been different, and had I not talked myself into this frenzy of doubt over being his latest score.

“Max, I—”

“Before you say anything, I’m on the way over.”

“What?”

“I’m about ten minutes away from your place. Thought I’d stop by.”

“I wish you’d called before,” I said.

“I just did, but you didn’t answer.”

“You know what I mean.”

Screw it. I might not be ready for the talk, but it had to happen sooner or later. And since he was on his way over, it looked like this was going to happen sooner.

Ten minutes later, just as he’d promised, Max knocked on my door.

When I opened it, he somehow looked even better than he had before. Or maybe it was just my subconscious reminding me what I was about to do—tell this gorgeous, rich man to take a hike because I couldn’t deal with the jealousy, distrust, and doubt.

He wore black slacks, with a blue button-down shirt. Simple. Understated. But damn, so sexy on him. He had one hand on the doorjamb, the other behind his back, striking a relaxed pose.

After our phone call, I had rushed into my room and changed out of my ratty sweatpants and t-shirt, back into the clothes I’d worn to work that day. It may seem kind of silly, trying to look my best and not wanting him to see me so casual, when this was going to be the last time we’d ever be around each other casually. From this point on, it would be all business. And that’s why the professional attire worked.

“Ready for work?” he said, going for light-hearted.

I forced a smile. “We need to talk.”

I moved aside and he stepped across the threshold. “Those are never good words.”

As he moved past me, Max brought his hand around from behind his back and produced a bottle of wine. Great. He’d come here thinking that we’d have a few glasses of wine, loosen up, and have a roll in the sack.

“Your favorite,” he said.

I looked at it for a second but made no move to take it.

“What’s wrong, Olivia?”

I looked down at the floor. “Let’s sit down.”

He followed me into the den. I sat in a chair as Max took a seat on the couch. He put the bottle of wine on top of a magazine on the coffee table. “Not even going to sit beside me?”

“Max…I’m sorry. I can’t do this.”

“If it’s a bad time—”

“No.” I sighed, dropping my head into my hands.
Breathe, Olivia. Gather your strength and get this over with.
“I can’t do this. Us. What we’re doing. I’m sorry.” My words were coming out in nearly incoherent sputtering.

“Is this about the other night?”

I nodded. “But not the sex. It was the brush-off.”

“I wasn’t brushing you off.”

“Max, please. Let me finish.”

“Sorry. Go on.”

I took a slow, deep breath. “I shouldn’t have let things go as far as they did. It was my fault. I should have trusted my instincts.” I looked down at my hand as though examining my fingernails, then looked back up at him. “There’s something you don’t know about me. I have some…baggage, to put it mildly. Things that happened before I moved here. I’m not ready for a relationship, or dating, or any of this.”

Max leaned back on the sofa and put his arms behind his head. “Tell me.”

“I just told you.”

“Tell me what happened,” he pleaded.

“I don’t want to go into it. The details aren’t important.”

He sat forward quickly, then got on the floor on one knee. It was too close to looking like a proposal.

“Don’t,” I said, sliding back on the chair.

He put his hand on my knee. “We all have baggage, Olivia. You think I took you home the other night for no reason?”

“What do you mean?”

“Baggage. I have it, too.”

I looked at him through the tears that were welling up in my eyes. “Tell me.”

He gave me a half-smile. “I asked first.”

I laughed.

“I’ll tell you,” he said. “And I’ll go first. I’ll share with you if you share with me.”

“Okay.”

He sat on the floor, extended his long legs out, and leaned back on his hands. “I’m not going to lie; I’ve had my share of flings. All Hollywood cliché bullshit. All of it. Sometimes I wonder if there’s a single person in this town who’s real. I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that everyone here is playing some part in their own little film of their life. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had a meaningful conversation with a woman?”

I shook my head.

“Me either,” he said. “I gave up trying to remember the last time. The worst part is, everyone’s after something. A part in a movie. Money. Being seen on a red carpet. It doesn’t matter what it is, if I have it, someone wants it, and there’s no shortage of women who’ll do anything to get it. I’ve played the game long enough. It’s not interesting anymore. There’s no challenge, no mystery, no romance.”

“Wow.”

He was speaking with such conviction, he almost looked pissed off about it.

“I’m not even doing what I love anymore,” he said.

“Making movies? But you’re at the top now.”

He threw his head back, and I felt kind of silly, like I’d missed something. And I had.

“That’s a whole different issue for another time. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“But I want to know,” I said, getting on the floor next to him. God, I wanted to know. What was in the mind and heart of this man?