When I was finished, I surveyed my work in the mirror. The girl looking back at me, all big eyes and suddenly prominent cheekbones, looked nothing like the “me” I knew. At a glance, I was starkly different. I thought I would be able to pass undetected in a public place.
I grabbed a mini-bottle of vodka from the refrigerator, hearing my mother’s scolding voice in my head.
Always choose vodka, she would say, making a clucking sound and shaking her head. It’s the skinniest.
She would fucking know, skin and bones, her meals mostly diet pills and booze.
I slid the vodka back into the refrigerator and chose something else. Rum. My hand reached automatically for the diet cola and then I chose the regular one, the one with all of the calories.
It was only after I finally sat down on the bed that I allowed myself to cry. I breathed in deeply, and began to sob, the sound loud in the stillness of the hotel room.
I was selfish, feeling sorry for myself. I lived a charmed life. I was marrying one of the hottest rock stars on the planet. I made an incredible amount of money making films.
A little cheating came with the territory, right? So what if Viper was sticking his dick down my sister’s throat? He was a rock star and I was a starlet. It was to be expected.
It’s not that I was ungrateful for my life. Exactly the opposite. I knew what it was like to be hungry. I knew what it was like to be beaten within an inch of my life, and worse. And now I knew what it was like to have everything I could ever want, and more. I knew what it was to have the adoration of millions of fans.
And yet, I also knew what it was like to be so incredibly lonely that you ached for something - anything - that would make you feel like someone else.
Someone loved.
Someone known.
“Shit, man, you’re not going to pussy out on us, are you?” Adam turned to me and asked. He was the last in the group, headed down to the casino and the strip club and the club to drink and pick up chicks.
I rolled my eyes. “Get the fuck out,” I said. My thoughts were foggy. I knew I was drunk. “I’m going to take a shit. Is that fucking okay with you, mom? I'll meet you down there.”
“Fuck, I didn’t need to know that, you stupid asshole,” he said, and I heard the door slam.
I didn’t head to the bathroom. Instead, I sat down on the bed, leaned my head against the headboard. My leg ached, and I just wanted to take off the fucking prosthetic and stretch out, go to sleep.
I can rally, I told myself. Another drink will perk me up. The guys are right. I should fucking party now, get some lap dances. Get laid. There's not anything fucking waiting for me in West Bend. None of that shit anyhow.
I thought I was out of that place, and now here I was, going back.
I should get good and fucking drunk.
After everything that had happened, why the fuck not?
I pulled myself up to a sitting position. My body felt like it was made of lead, weighed down, tethered to the bed. I was suddenly reminded of why I didn't drink, the feeling of being medicated a painful reminder of then.
Being back in the hospital.
It was like I was immediately transported back there, the smell of disinfectant and the stale hospital smell suddenly invading my nostrils. I could feel the sheets, rough and worn under my fingertips, the sensation of morphine coursing through my veins, making me tipsy and nauseous all at the same time.
And the realization that my leg was gone.
It felt like someone punched me in the gut.
And then I blinked, took a breath, and it passed. I'm here, I reminded myself, in a fucking suite in a hotel room in Vegas.
Fucking lucky was what I was. Fortunate. Not like some of the guys I deployed with, the ones who weren't so lucky.
I had no reason to feel sorry for myself, and I wouldn’t.
I stood up, wobbly on my feet for a moment, and caught myself by putting my hand on the mattress.
So, fuck it. I was going to go down and hang out with the guys, my makeshift family, and thank the man or woman up in the sky that I got home in mostly one piece. I was going to go get ripped and party like a normal twenty-three year old, like someone who didn't have all the worries and dark thoughts that I just couldn’t seem to shake.
I was going to be fucking happy.
I poured liquor into a plastic cup, followed by soda.
Where's the ice? I peered into the ice bucket at a pool of liquid. No matter. I would get some on the way down to the casino.
I walked down the hallway, squinting, looking for an ice machine.
Where the fuck is the ice in this place?
A girl was walking down the hallway ahead of me, her back toward me, wearing fuzzy pajama pants with cartoon characters on them, holding an ice bucket. "Hey!" I called out to her, and she turned slightly toward me, then spun around just as quickly, walking faster in the opposite direction.
Fuck. Seriously? What, she took one look at me and decided I was some kind of threat? Or maybe she just doesn't like fucking gimps like me.
"Hey!" I yelled, this time louder. I was being obnoxious. I didn’t care. "It's fucking rude to walk away when someone's talking to you."
She stopped, and I found myself suddenly a couple of feet behind her. She spun around, and I was face to face with the hottest fucking girl I've ever seen in my life.
She was also pissed off.
And all I could think about was grabbing her and pushing her up against a wall so I could fuck the hell out of her.
She looked up at me with her lips slightly parted, her breath short, and fire in her eyes. "You know what's fucking rude?" she asked, her voice louder than it needed to be for how close I was standing to her. "It's fucking rude to chase down a girl in the hallway of a hotel. Maybe she doesn't want to be chased down by some creep."
I was too distracted by her sweet lips to even register what she was saying. Her tongue flicked over her bottom lip, and in an instant I was hard. Goddamn it. I never wanted to just press my lips down hard against anyone else's lips as bad as I did right then.
I fucking wanted this girl so bad I could taste it. It was instant, some kind of primal thing, like I was a damn caveman.
I had to shake off the image that flashed in my head, the one of me throwing her over my shoulder and taking her to my room.
"Well?" she asked. Her hand was on her hip, the other hand holding the ice bucket. "Are you going to say anything, or are you just going to keep staring at me? Maybe you want a fucking picture? Or my autograph? What the hell is it?"
She seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Her cheeks were flushed, though, and she was unsteady on her feet. She was just as drunk as I was, I realized.
I cleared my throat. "The ice," I said. "Where's the ice machine?"
Her mouth dropped open, like she wasn’t expecting me to ask a simple question like that. I wondered what the hell she thought I was yelling about. Then she laughed. "That's what you want?"
"Why the hell would I want your fucking autograph?" I asked. "I just wanted to know where you filled up the ice bucket."
She laughed, louder this time, the sound melodic. It felt warm, somehow, even though I couldn’t figure out if she was angry or full of herself or just a bitch. She shook her head, then ran her hand through her hair, strands sticking up messily every which way, and looked down at her hand, covered in little pieces of hair.
She caught the look I give her, and shrugged. "I just cut it," she said, wiping her hand on her pajama pants.
"Yourself?" I asked. I didn’t even care. I just want an excuse to keep talking to her, no matter what her hair looked like. Even if it looked a little bit like someone took hedge clippers to it.
She shrugged again. "I needed a change."
"It suits you," I said. How did I fucking know what suited her?
She grinned. Her smile was radiant. It was a complete cliché, but it could light up a room. She could light up a room. She had that kind of presence. Even in a hotel hallway, drunk and wearing pajama pants.
"It does," she said, her hand going up to her hair again, the movement self-conscious. "I think it does suit me." She sounded surprised. She held out the ice bucket. "For your drink?"
I took a few ice cubes and dropped them into my cup. "Appreciate it," I said. Then there were voices in the corridor, and a group of college students, drunk and obnoxious, came closer. A fleeting look of panic crossed the girl's face, and she grabbed my arm, pulled me toward her, her back against the wall, her face close to mine.
She was still holding the ice bucket in one hand. I had my drink in my hand, my other palm on the wall, inches away from her head. I heard the college students from somewhere behind us, hollering as they passed.
"Yeah," one whooped. "Get it, man!"
My lips were nearly touching hers, a millimeter away. I couldn’t think of anything except how she would taste. I wanted her. I had never been so immediately sure of anything. I pressed my lips against hers, lightly for a second, and she responded, her mouth opening, and I heard her moan, just barely. The sound was so soft I was not sure it was her, but she arched her body toward me, and I felt her tongue against mine. I moved my hand away from the wall, grasping the back of her head at the base of her neck, and pulling her into me as I kissed her.
Kiss was the fucking understatement of the year.
I didn’t just kiss her. I fucked her mouth with my tongue, my thrusts insistent. I wanted to rip her clothes off right here in the hallway and press her up against the wall.
She made this little moan again, this sound that I thought would drive me insane.
And then she pulled away, put one hand on my chest, and pushed me back. "I -" she started. "I need to go."
She put her hand to her mouth. Her lips were red, swollen where I'd kissed her. I wanted to kiss her again, leave bruising kisses on her lips, her neck. On her breasts.
Before I could even respond, she had stepped away and was starting to walk down the hall. "Hey," I called. "I don't even know your name."
She turned again, and flashed me a grin. "No," she said. "You don't."
Then she walked away.
Shit. I rolled over and ran my hand over my face, then through my hair. For a second when I pulled my hand back I wondered where the rest of my hair was. Then I recalled taking the scissors to it last night.
Last night.
I touched my fingers to my lips where he kissed me - the guy from the hallway, the one with the red plastic cup in his hand. The one who was so hot.
My heart raced just thinking about his lips pressed up against mine, his tongue on mine. I wanted to feel his hands on my body, touching me.
God, he was sexy. His hair was blonde, buzzed close to his scalp, giving him a military look, and his face was bronzed from the sun. He looked like this delicious combination of a Marine and a surfer. I closed my eyes, picturing him in my head- tall and lean, but his shoulders were broad, and when I pushed on his chest, I could feel his muscles, firm to the touch, under my fingers.
I wanted to slide my fingers up underneath his shirt, unbuckle his pants...
Heat flowed from my core and between my legs, just thinking about him. I had been with Viper for the past few years- had been faithful to him for the past few years, even when the sex dried up last year, even when it dwindled to absolutely nothing three months ago- but I had never had the kind of automatic physical response to anyone like I had to the guy in the hallway. Even with Viper, my fucking fiancé.
I thought it was me, that I was some kind of freak, that my past had made me forever shut off from that kind of thing, from the kind of passion you see in the movies, that you read about in romance novels.
I don't even know his name.
I slid my hand down my stomach and between my legs, all the while reflecting on that kiss, the one that made my legs weak. The throbbing between my legs, just thinking about him, threatened to eclipse everything else...especially the worries about what the hell was going to happen next with my life. I moved my finger over my clit slowly, reveling in the heat that rushed through my body. Sliding one hand up underneath my tank top, I ran my palm over my breast, my thumb lingering on my nipple, which hardened instantly to my touch.
My breath caught in my throat as I touched myself, my movements faster and faster until I was at the brink. In my mind's eye, I pictured him, kissing down the side of my neck, to my collarbone, then to my breasts. I imagined his mouth enveloping me, his tongue flicking over my nipple, sucking me until I was close to orgasm. I pictured him pushing me up against the wall, thrusting his cock inside me, his movements as insistent as his tongue was in my mouth.
I was on the edge, and when I crashed over, it was his face I saw.
Not Viper's.
I walked through the hotel foyer, my bag slung over my shoulder, the few things I had with me stuffed inside the makeshift suitcase. Between the new hair and the sunglasses, I was hoping to avoid being recognized. I hadn't watched television. For all I knew, my mother had called the cops, reported me kidnapped or something.
That would be something she'd do. That would be something my manager would be more than happy to do, cover up the real story, the fact that everything wasn't actually a fairy tale between the poor-little-girl-turned-movie-star and the rocker who had it all. That was the most important thing. Protecting my brand, my manager called it. You must protect your brand. Always.
Damage control, my manager would be advising right about now. I could hear her words, without even having to stretch my imagination. Are there any other girls? She'd ask. Of course there were other girls. There were always other girls.
Never my sister, though.
My manager would sigh. In that case, Viper will go to rehab for sex addiction. You'll stand by him, deliver a teary-eyed speech about how much you've been hurt by his misbehavior. You'll take a primo role - something classy, not trashy, right now, given the circumstances- I'm thinking something about a strong woman persevering despite her no-good man. Too soon? It doesn't matter. You'll do something big, while he's away in rehab. Something meaningful. It's Oscar time for you.
The spin. It was always about the spin. Sometimes it was exhausting.
Poor little rich girl.
It’s how my mother referred to me now. I was privileged, I knew it. But inside, I was still River Gilstead, the girl from the trailer park. I couldn’t quite shake the feeling.
I always felt lost.
I checked out at the front desk, watching the clerk from behind my sunglasses, stealing glances at the other people in the lobby from my peripheral vision. My heart raced, even though there was nothing wrong. I just wanted to slip out of here unnoticed.
I had no actual plan, though.
Get in the car and drive. I could get away, someplace private. I could keep heading East... a small town or something, rent a condo, figure out what the hell I wanted to do now.
Maybe I'll go overseas. I could hang out in obscurity, sip a cocktail on the beach somewhere.
Poor little rich girl.
I'll figure it out tonight, I promised myself. Tonight, I'll get a plan together.
Outside the hotel, I handed the valet my tag.
And then I saw him, coming for me - a man with a camera. "River!" he yelled. "River Andrews!"
I held my bag up to cover the side of my face, but he was taking pictures. He was the only one, but I knew there would be more. I backed inside the hotel door. Didn’t this place have security?
People were staring, and I felt a flush of shame.
Everyone knows, I realized. They have to. It will be all over the TV. I swallowed the bile I felt in my throat.
The photographer followed me inside, persistent, and I shielded my face from him. Then I heard someone shriek, a female voice. "That's River Andrews!"