Chelsea woke up alone and she didn’t mind at all. She stretched out fully on the bed as rays of sunlight peaked around the heavy curtains. It was nice waking up alone; she didn’t have to worry about morning breath or the state of her hair or how terrible her mascara looked. She stretched out even farther, taking up far more room than she would have been able to if her stranger had stayed.
She dozed in and out for a few more minutes, but then her need for coffee and a shower became greater than her enjoyment of the bed and she sat up and ran her hand through her messy hair. She took a moment to look at her surroundings. She was in the guest bedroom of her sister’s apartment and pictures of herself and her sister, Jamie, as children lined the walls. She couldn’t help but smile at their old prom dresses and the ridiculous ways they used to wear their hair. Finally, Chelsea climbed out of bed and winced a little at the pleasant soreness between her legs.
Naked, she walked to the bathroom, locking the door behind her and making sure to avoid the mirror. She put the water on blast and once it was blistering hot, she stepped into the shower. She took her time removing her caked on makeup and then slowly lathered up her soap and ran it over her skin. She sighed in the bathroom as she remembered the night before and thought of her sexy stranger she would never see again.
It was for the best that they didn’t meet again. This way their night could forever be just be a one-time thing. The next time Chelsea was sitting in traffic or in line somewhere she could think of that night and have a reason to smile. She didn’t mind being a pleasant memory to her stranger either. It was getting harder for her to go out unrecognized and she knew she soon wouldn’t be able to do something like this without it ending up in the tabloids and ruining her reputation.
“You’re finally up!” her sister exclaimed, sitting at her kitchen table, a laptop open in front of her. Chelsea nodded as she reached for a mug of coffee. Her wet hair was wrapped up in a towel and she was wearing her sister’s bathrobe. “Details please,” Jamie said. “I heard some strange noises coming from you room and then I heard someone leave very early this morning, so you owe me details. Name, biographical info, the works.”
“Yeah...” Chelsea said as she sipped her coffee. “That’s the thing. I was bad last night.”
“How bad?” Jamie asked as she closed her laptop and turned to face her younger sister.
“I don’t quite remember his name or who he was,” Chelsea admitted a blush crossing her cheeks.
“What!?” Jamie exclaimed, her face lighting up in glee.
“I kind of remember us chatting at the bar and then dancing, but it’s all really vague and fuzzy. I do remember inviting him back to your apartment and I do remember the awesome sex we had, but all the other details are getting lost in a haze.”
“So, the sex was good and he didn’t have a personality. Sounds like the perfect man,” Jamie said as the sisters shared a wicked grin.
Chelsea smiled over at her sister, glad to finally be in like-minded company. She had been in LA for so long, surrounded by shallow, money-driven people. It felt good to be her real self again. It felt good to be around family.
Chelsea and Jamie were only a year apart in age and when they were younger people had often asked if they were twins. But Chelsea had, as her label put it, that good-old-fashioned-American look. She was tall and thin with long blonde hair and bright blue eyes. Jamie had dark red hair and was a little curvier than her sister. They were partners in crime and they had always had been.
“You were at the bar with me; you must have seen him. Don’t you remember anything?”
“Hmmm...I remember you talking to a couple of guys, but you weren’t into them. Then there was another guy...” Jamie looked thoughtfully at the ceiling, but then shook her head, “but I can only remember the back of his shirt and then I left with Jason, remember? You said you were okay and that I should go. I do remember us giggling about how hot he was, and maybe there was something else, but that’s all I can remember.”
“Yeah. Oh well. I guess it will have to remain a mystery. He left not too long after we were finished.”
“Our flight leaves tomorrow at two,” Jamie reminded her sister.
Chelsea groaned into her coffee cup and rolled her eyes. “Let’s say the flight was cancelled or delayed. Let’s just hang out in your apartment and go get drunk and party every night instead,” Chelsea pleaded.
“No,” Jamie said, “besides, Chels, the internet exists now and mom can all too easily check out our stories. All it takes is one Google search to prove we’re lying. Besides, don’t you want to know who her new boy toy is? She said he’s taking her to Paris this spring for her birthday. Who in our Podunk town can afford a trip Paris?”
“Ugh, who knows? I just know I am not in the mood to meet another boyfriend of hers. I’ve met more than my fair share and they leave as fast as they come.”
“Oh yeah, remember the last guy who tried to get me to quit my job as a bartender and work for him selling those healthy shakes?”
“Pyramid scheme guy? Yeah, I remember him. He still owes me forty bucks for gas.”
“Remember how he kept telling us it wasn’t a pyramid scheme, despite the overwhelming evidence?”
“Mom sure can pick ‘em,” Chelsea said with a shake of her head. She couldn’t help but wonder who her mother’s new boyfriend was. A cook at the diner, a bartender at her favorite watering hole. Chelsea’s mother lived in a small town and she didn’t have that many options.
“Well, look.” Jamie said, reaching across the table to take her sister’s hand. “We’ll go for the holidays, behave ourselves, and if it goes well we could go an entire year without having to make the trek back to Idaho again.”
“Plus, us going to Idaho is much better than Mom coming here,” Chelsea admitted. “Remember last time when she kept trying to get us to score her some coke? God, that was so embarrassing.”
“You know Mom, anything for a good time,” Jamie said with a roll of her eyes.
Chelsea nodded and took another swallow of her coffee. In truth both she and her sister were far more like their mother than either wanted to admit. Jamie was twenty-four and Chelsea was twenty-three, neither one of them had gone to college and neither one worked a steady job. Jamie worked as a bartender at the hottest club in San Francisco and Chelsea was up in LA where she had been hard at work on the album her label was pushing her to complete.
In a lot of ways the two women were leading their mother’s dream life. They had both gotten out of Idaho and gone on to travel and have adventures. Their mother, Colleen, hadn’t been so lucky. She had become pregnant with Jamie at seventeen and Chelsea at eighteen with their father, a man named Rick who no one had seen in a long time. She told them repeatedly that there was a big world out there and she wanted them to see as much of it as possible. She didn’t want them to end up like her, stuck in some two-bit town. But it was just like a mom. Now that both of her daughters had spread their wings, Colleen was desperate to have them both come home as often as they could.
Chelsea leaned back in her chair and remembered Idaho. They had grown up in a decent sized town. Most of the people there had either been farmers or worked on a farm. It was normal for kids to miss school when it was planting and harvesting, or the first day of hunting season. Most people bragged about their pickup trucks instead of Bentleys or Ferraris. Chelsea could remember the old beater VW Fox she had bought for seven hundred dollars. She had driven that car all over town, had written her first song while sitting on the hood as she stared out into endless potato fields.
She hadn’t been home in over three years. She had seen her mother and sister, but she hadn’t been back to Idaho and something about the trip made her nervous. She wasn’t sure what her old town would look like anymore. Would she fall in love with Main Street and its quaint charm all over again, or would she only see the chipped paint and dilapidated streets? Her memory of her town was bittersweet and some part of her was worried that going back to it as an adult would somehow strip it of it’s charm.
Chelsea went back to the guest bedroom and dressed slowly. She kept it simple with a pair of black skinny jeans and a blue and white striped shirt. But no matter how hard she tried to think of something else, her mind kept going back to her mystery man. He had complete control over her and she could still feel his lips on her neck and hear the low growl he let out when she touched him.
I should have gotten his number, she thought with a shake of her head. Sex that good was too rare a thing to waste on a one-night stand. It would have been nice to have a guy on call every time she wanted to visit her sister. But there was nothing to be done about it. Her mystery man was gone, leaving nothing but a condom wrapper and memories to show he had ever been there at all.
Jamie despised lateness and they arrived at the airport on time. Chelsea was a little surprised to see the blinking bursts of lights from paparazzi as their cab dropped them off. The two sisters quickly hopped out of the cab and grabbed their things and Chelsea pulled a hat low on her head. The paparazzi weren’t here for her; she wasn’t that famous yet, but if they saw her...
“Hey, is that Chelsea Riley? What’s her going rate?” someone shouted out and Chelsea felt her face go red.
“Two-fifty for a photo,” someone else shouted out and before she knew it Chelsea was surrounded by paparazzi as they crowded around her.
“Chelsea, need help with your bags?”
“Chelsea, are you seeing anyone?”
“Chelsea, Entertainment Weekly called you the next All-American Girl Next Door, how does that make you feel?
Chelsea didn’t answer. It was useless to answer them. They were sharks and answering their questions was akin to chumming the water. She smiled and kept her head down as she and Jamie piled their bags on top of a trolley and pushed it into the airport, leaving the paparazzi behind.
All-American girl next door, that was, indeed, what her label was going for. She wondered what the paparazzi would think of her exploits last night; she had amazing sex with a man she didn’t remember the name of and she still wanted more. It wasn’t exactly girl next door kind of behavior, but Chelsea had never really been the girl next door and she was starting to get worried she wasn’t going to be good at playing the part.
Chelsea Riley liked going to parties and dancing; she liked doing shots and smoking the occasional joint. She liked having fun and being around people who liked fun. But if she wanted success she would need to put all of that behind her. If Chelsea Riley wanted to be famous she would need to be the sweetest, most innocent girl next door all of time. No more clubs, no more strange boys, just romance and true love.