CHAPTER SIX
Ian
Kristina snuggles up against my side and coos, “I can’t eat another bite. I’m all General Tso’d out.”
“I was Moo Shu’d about ten minutes ago. I should have stopped eating, but it’s so good. Sure you don’t want a taste? I’ve got a forkful or so left.”
Shaking her head, she says, “No. I’m stuffed. I’m going to struggle to keep my eyes open after eating so much.”
I put the fork down and lean back on the couch, holding her as my back settles in against the leather. “If the story was one of my usual ones, I could understand that.”
She looks up at me with worry in her eyes. “No, that’s not what I meant at all. I love all your work. I mean that.” I hear in her voice the fear that she’s offended me.
“It’s okay. Except for other writers, this part isn’t the exciting stuff anyway. I could understand if you didn’t find it very interesting.”
Kissing me on the side of my face, she repeats that she doesn’t find my work boring. Even if she doesn’t mean what she says, it’s still nice to hear it.
“I want to know about all your writing, Ian. That you can string words together like you do to make such fantastic books amazes me. People always think actors are the great ones, but they only deliver the lines. It’s the people who write them who are truly the great ones.”
I turn and kiss her on the top of the head. “We’ll see if you still think that after I tell you about this new story.”
She brings her legs up underneath her and sits up straight beside me. “I’m all ears.”
“I guess I have a confession to make. I began to write this before we met.”
“I thought I was your muse for this, though?”
“You are. I got the idea for this book after watching your movies,” I say quietly and then wait for her response.
“You did? Something from one of my movies made you want to write this book?”
I look into her eyes and tell her the truth. “Not something. You. You made me want to write this book.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. You.”
I see in her expression what I’ve said confuses her, so I try to explain my creative process without putting her to sleep for real. “You see, for a writer, ideas can come from just about anything. A song. A scene I see outside the cab as I head to a friend’s house. A movie. That’s what happened. I was watching one of yours the other night and the story just came to me.”
This isn’t exactly the truth. I know this. But telling someone I became obsessed with her after watching every single movie she’s ever made isn’t as romantic as they make it sound in romance books.
“So my acting inspired you?”
I nod, choosing not to explain anymore since I’d probably say too much and ruin the moment.
“That’s so wonderful. I always wonder how my work affects others. Usually I think it doesn’t much at all. People watch the films and want to meet me, but it’s mainly because they like how I look. But this shows me that there are people out there who see more than just the outside of me. That the way I play a part can show more of the inside of me. Which movie was it?”
Her question makes my heart skip a beat. I can’t remember what movie it was. I watched every single one back to back for hours on end, but even at this moment I can’t say what any one of them was about and certainly don’t know their names.
“I’m terrible with remembering names and titles,” I lie. An author who can’t remember details. Not very believable. “I think it was the one that was the remake of The Misfits.”
“Oh, I loved that part! Do you know Marilyn Monroe played it first, alongside Clark Gable?” she asks, her eyes wide with enthusiasm.
“I do. That’s probably why I remembered.”
I don’t want to dampen her passion for talking about her job, but a few more questions about why I enjoy her acting and it will become clear I’m not a fan of the acting so much of her. I wait until she says a few more things about the film, and then I gently try to move her back toward talking about the book.
“You’re a lot like the main character in Silk. I think being with you has influenced me a lot already.” It’s a tepid lie, but there’s some truth in it.
“What’s the story about?”
I choose my words carefully because I’ve just said she’s like a heroin addict who uses sex to suppress her urges to get high. “Kate Silk is sensitive and gentle, but she finds it difficult to deal with a lot of daily life because of that. She’s beautiful and giving.”
“You see me as sensitive and giving?” Kristina asks with tears in her eyes.
Kissing the tip of her nose, I smile. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because I’m a Hollywood actress. All people generally see of me is the outside.”
“Well, as an author, I see things other people might not.”
“So what is her story, this sensitive and giving woman?” she asks and I can’t avoid telling her the real plot.
“She’s a recovering addict,” I say quietly. “Every day she deals with the cravings her want for heroin force on her. The only way she finds she can master them is with sex.”
Kristina’s quiet for a long moment and finally says, “I bet it’s way deeper than that, but you don’t want to tell me because you think it would bore me. I bet she fights against those cravings every minute of the day and sex isn’t just a physical act to her but a way to push down the need for something that hurts her.”
Her blue eyes are filled with emotion as she speaks. I can’t help but be impressed with how much she seems to understand addiction. “Have you ever been addicted to anything?”
Shaking her head, she smiles meekly. “No, but my old therapist used to tell me all the time that I’m addicted to people. I don’t think she’s right, but she says that’s why all my relationships fail. Because I get addicted to the other person and he doesn’t get addicted to me back.”
Sounds like typical psychobabble bullshit therapists like to spew. Perhaps a person can be addicted to the feelings someone creates in them or the way they treat them, but addicted to a person? Bullshit.
“I wouldn’t listen to her,” I say with a smile. “She doesn’t sound like she knows much about addiction, to be honest.”
“Do you?”
Nodding, I wonder how much I should tell Kristina about who I really am. If she spends enough time with me, she’s going to find out. It always returns like some ugly demon I push to the background but never really goes away. I could just lie and tell her about the drinking, but that’s only something I use to calm the pangs of need for the real thing I’m addicted to that wash over me most days and threaten to drown me on the worst of them.
“Yeah.”
Touching my arm in a gesture of sympathy, she says, “If you don’t want to talk about it, Ian, you don’t have to. Don’t feel like you have to talk about anything you don’t want to with me.”
This is one of the problems with a relationship moving at warp speed. The sex twenty-four-seven is great, but along with that real life intrudes with all its ugliness and reality.
“It’s not exactly what someone wants to hear the third time they’re with someone, right?”
“Are you worried if you tell me something bad about yourself that I won’t want to see you anymore?” she asks in a voice so sweet I can’t help but want to confess everything about myself to her.
“It’s not just bad. That’s the problem.”
Kristina turns my face toward her and kisses me softly. “There’s nothing you can tell me that would make me not want to see you, Ian. Do your worst.”
As much as I want to believe her, I know the truth. It never leaves me. No matter how much I may look like the successful author my agent promotes me as or the man Kristina thinks I am, the truth is I’m an addict, pure and simple. An addict who when he isn’t snorting junk up his nose searches for something else to become addicted to so he doesn’t fuck up his life again.
“I never did any drugs in high school, strangely enough since that’s when so many people are introduced to them. Even in college, all I did was smoke some pot. Nothing big. It wasn’t until much later that I had my first taste of heroin.”
She says nothing and I know I should stop. If I go much further, she’ll know what I am and will probably want to leave and never see me again. I know this and still I keep going.
“It was my first editor who introduced me to heroin. I was so naïve back then. I thought the only way you could do heroin was shooting up, so when he first asked me if I’d ever done it, I was horrified. I hate needles, so there was no way I would’ve ever used any drug that required sticking myself with something.”
Kristina says nothing, but her hold on my arm steadily grows stronger as I continue confessing who I am.
“The first time I did it all I felt was relaxed for around a half hour. I didn’t think much of it and couldn’t imagine what he was talking about when he said it would make me feel better than I’d ever felt before. Then everything changed. One minute all I felt was relaxed and almost sleepy and then the next minute I was flying. The rush was incredible. It was at that point that I knew just what he meant.”
“Why did he give you drugs?”
“I was a mess with my first book. I knew how to write, but I didn’t know how to handle everything that happens after you get the book written. People think authors get the words down on the page in some kind of magical way and then the book shows up in stores ready for them to read. It doesn’t happen like that. What really happens is an author writes the book and then it goes into edits where it gets torn apart and put back together again.”
“That sounds painful.”
“It can be. We writers get very attached to our work. Our words are our creations, our babies. But then editors come in and carve into those babies. Their job is to make our work better, but it can hurt if you’re not used to it. I wasn’t with my first book. I’d gotten an agent with what I’d written and she’d gotten me a publishing deal, so I couldn’t imagine what the editor would want to change. I was in for a rude awakening.”
Kristina leans her head against my shoulder. “I like thinking of that guy who was so naïve. He sounds cute.”
I look down at her and chuckle at her description of me back then. “I was such a newbie. I got my edits back and fell apart. The editor had to actually sit with me and calm me down, and that’s when he gave me my first taste of heroin. It did what it was supposed to. I calmed down and then I felt better than I’d ever felt before in my life.”
My story makes my addiction far more romantic than it actually is. Beginnings always are. It’s that time after the initial wonder and excitement that shows what something really is.
“Were you immediately addicted to it?”
I think back to the days following that night I snorted heroin with Robert and remember liking how I felt but not feeling some overwhelming need to feel like that again. “No. I liked feeling that way, but I think if I never had it again I wouldn’t have missed it.”
“But you did do it again. Why?”
“I had more edits to do. That’s another misconception about books. Edits aren’t something that just happen in a day or so and then the book’s done. There are rounds of edits and sometimes they feel like they go on forever. So every time I got overwhelmed, my editor made sure I had something to calm me down and get me to a place where I wasn’t overwhelmed.”
“Why would he do that?”
“He’s an addict and knew it would help me, so I guess he figured misery loves company. I got the book’s edits completed and it went on to be a huge seller. But I was addicted by the time the book hit the bestseller lists.”
“Do you still do heroin?” she asks and I hear what she can’t mask. The judgment. The fear.
She has every right to be afraid. Anyone who lets a junkie into their life should be afraid. We wreck things.
I answer truthfully. “No. Do I want to? All the time. More than you can know. But I don’t. I’ve been through rehab three times. After the second time, things got better for a while. For a long time, I didn’t touch it. But then something triggered whatever it is inside me that wants that feeling and I went hard into it. That’s when I went to rehab the third time and got clean. I’ve been off it for eight months now, and I just finished a book without it for the first time ever.”
She kisses my cheek, but I know what I just told her is probably making her wonder if she should run away as fast as she can. She should, but I hope she won’t.
“And that book just hit the New York Times bestsellers list, didn’t it?”
I smile. I’m proud of that book for more than just the writing. “It did. That book showed me I can do it without turning to putting that shit up my nose.”
“Ian, I don’t understand why you’d want to write about a character who struggles with heroin addiction. Won’t it make you think about how much you want it again?”
“It isn’t really like that. I think about it all the time whether or not I want to, and writing a character that deals with what I go through every day of my life has been cathartic, to be honest.”
Then she asks me a question I haven’t thought of. “If the character uses sex to control her urges to do heroin, are you writing about yourself? Do you do that?”
“Yes and no. I have an addictive personality, so I can get addicted to anything. What I usually turn to when I want heroin is alcohol, but I’m not going to lie. I’m already addicted in some way to how it feels when you and I are together. I tell myself that I should keep my hands off you, like when you got here tonight, but then you kissed me and all I could think about was how much I wanted to be inside you.”
All this confessing makes me feel exposed and more vulnerable than I like, so I get up to find myself some scotch to make the uneasiness go away. Kristina follows me and as I pour myself a drink, she wraps her arms around me like she did earlier in the kitchen and whispers against my back, “I know what you mean. I have a hard time being around you without touching you. I’ve never felt like this. I thought it was just me who had this weakness.”
I swallow a gulp of the scotch, enjoying the warmth it spreads as it goes down my throat, and turn to face her. “I’m not sure what it is, but I don’t want you to think I’m using you for sex because I’d rather be high. That’s not it at all.”
She gives me one of her sweet smiles and looks up at me with such caring in her eyes I want to believe she won’t run.
“Your weaknesses don’t frighten me off, Ian. I see in your face you’re worried they do. They don’t, though. As long as mine don’t frighten you off.”
I tuck her hair behind her left ear and trace my finger along her jaw. “That addiction to people your therapist claims you have? I can think of much worse things than having you addicted to me.”
“I want you to know how much I think of you telling me all this tonight. I know you didn’t have to confide in me like this. It means a lot to me.”
There’s no way I can avoid telling her the absolute truth now, so I kiss her and take her hand as we walk back to the couch. I don’t let go of her hand as I say the words I know might make what she just said a lie. “I don’t ever want to go back to where I was, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. I’ve never gone this long without it, but as much as I want to promise you I won’t let it back into my life, it’s something that haunts me every day and night.”
“Will you promise me something?”
“Yes,” I answer, happy to see the kindness in her eyes hasn’t left yet.
“Promise me if you ever do want to go back that you’ll tell me because I can’t stand by and watch someone I care about ruin his life. I know what I’m supposed to say is that I’d be by your side and help you through it, but I can’t promise that like you can’t promise it won’t ever happen again. I’m not strong enough.”
“You’d leave if I went back to it?”
“I’m sorry, but yes, I would. That’s not what people want to hear, but it’s the truth, and I promise I will always tell you the truth. I can’t watch you kill yourself. I care too much about you already to do that, and there’s no way you’ll want me more than some drug. I wish that wasn’t the case, but I’ve been around enough people who do drugs in my business to know I’m no comparison. You’ll choose the drug over me, if you have to make the choice.”
I’m struck by her words. “I’ve never had anyone tell me they’d leave if I went back to using heroin. All they ever say is that they’ll help me through it. Then I go back to it and they try to help, but you’re right. I always choose the drugs over them. I don’t want to do that this time, though.”
Kristina rests her head on my chest and squeezes me to her. “I know, but if you do, you deserve to know what I’ll do.”
I stroke her soft hair and press a small kiss to the top of her head. “Thank you for being honest. Nobody’s ever been honest like that with me before.”
We talk for hours about the book and how I hope the story will turn out, but Kristina’s promise to me that if I choose the drugs over her that I’ll lose her never leaves my mind. That woman I saw on my television is far stronger than I ever could be. As we lay naked in each other’s arms later, I already know there’s no way I could give her up, no matter what.
Unlike my character, the sex isn’t what I’m addicted to. I’m addicted to her, and she’s as much a drug as anything I’ve ever snorted up my nose.