Blake
"How was that, did it help?" We’ve sat in silence on our way home from yoga. Six days into filming and this movie looks like it will take an age to finish. She’s withdrawing into herself and I can sense the cravings are taking their hold. Her fingers shook on her last cigarette on the final scene of the day. Her big scene with Johnny—I had to leave the room. It took hours.
"Yeah, I think." Sophia pulls her key from the leather tote slung over her shoulder and I zero onto her fingers checking for trembles. "This film, though, it’s just shit, isn’t it?" She grins at me in the twilight but my attention is focused on the door. "What is it?" She fumbles and drops the keys. They scatter onto the pathway making a huge din that seems to tear the air apart. Grasping her elbow, I wheel her round and head straight back to the jeep, almost carrying her as I scoot her feet across the pathway to the garage. Wordlessly I tug on the door and thrust her inside. "Blake, what’s going on?"
"Stay in the car. Don’t get out until I come back to get you."
"What. Why? This is ridiculous, no one knows about this place." Her face pales.
This isn’t true though and I wince with a stab of guilt. "Just do what I say." I could be politer but my pulse is racing a staccato beat. Leaving the door to the garage open so I can see the car at all times, I jog for the front door of the condo. Fine scratch lines etch into the metal of the door. No one else would have noticed, but I did, it’s my job. Someone’s tried to jimmy the lock.
I sense her eyes burning with indignation through the dark glass of the SUV but I ignore her glare and push through the front door. The air hits me. A cloying tang reminding me of burnt breakfast and heady afternoons from my teenage years. Weed. The air is ripe with it, plumes of the bloody stuff just drifting through the atmosphere. What the hell?
The smoke is thickest towards the open planned kitchen. My impulse is to head straight there but I ignore it, centring myself until my instincts take over. Think smart, Blake. I’m guessing the kitchen is where I’m meant to go first so I change course and head for the other rooms. All the bedroom doors are shut, and I know for a fact Sophia wouldn’t have remembered to close hers at four in the morning. I fling my door open first, but it’s just how I left it, bare and monkish, but untouched. Next, I push Sophia’s open. It kind of looks normal as in it’s a mess. I push the en-suite door and see a bath run in the tub. The air is astringent, like Windolene’s been sprayed on the surfaces. Stooping over the tub I dip my fingers in the water. Wine. Someone has filled the bath with wine? I go to pull the plug but then think better of it. There is no way the cops can’t be notified of this development.
With a last sweep through the closets in the bedroom I head back to the smoke den that is now Sophia’s kitchen and lounge. She’s stood with round wide eyes, her hand clamped over her mouth. Her eyes speak volumes, recriminations shout at me from their depths. Her hand drops. "What’s going on, Blake?"
With sure movements, because she needs someone to be in control, I step forward and check in the open oven. A roasting dish is full of dried marijuana, but not the type ready to roll—this has been picked and dried, still bound at the stems into bunches. Bunch after bunch after bunch singeing with a slow burn as you’d smoke a piece of fish or a duck leg, something culinary. Instead, pride of place on the roasting tray surrounded by smoking grass is the biography of Sophia released the year after I stopped working for her. Her young face on the cover has been defaced, the eyes cut out and her lips scored with a sharp blade.
"Shit." I mutter a multitude of swear words under my breath, my reactions kicking in. Catching her in my arms I wheel her around for the front door, forcibly removing her from the building into the fresh air.
Outside, I smooth my hands through her hair, down her face, under her chin. "Sophia, are you okay? Just focus on me" It is a twatty question. She’s shaking from her head to her feet, hard tremors vibrate my hands. Her skin has paled to a deathly pallor. When her bewildered gaze lifts to my face, she begins to cry. In that very moment, that split second, with my hands on her skin, her body shivering next to mine I know I will never be able to walk away from her again.
It’s a dangerous decision to make. But there it is. Done.
* * *
The condo’s lit by blue lights, the rotating colours throwing the front yard and the street into ominously shaded shadows. My eyes flicker over at Sophia huddled on the front seat of the jeep. I can’t drag my eyes away from checking on her every thirty seconds. A female officer, her uniform impeccably tucked into her dark trousers rubs a blanket slung across her shoulders. I wish it was me touching her, soothing her.
I’ve crossed a line—back into my obsession. It’s simmering under my skin, a desperate desire, pulling me into dark places.
I know one thing. My need to protect her is fundamentally linked with my desire for her. The two things are tied together in a twisted knot. It’s in the make-up of my soul.
Make-up of my soul? Fuck Blake. What is she turning you into?.
I run my fingers through my hair and try to focus on the detective. He’s asking who had access, who knew this was Sophia’s place, and the truth is I don’t know. She thought it was private, but this is Hollywood, nothing is private.
Ten seconds later my eyes are back on her. I can’t fight it. She’s on her phone, hands shaking. Then I’m at her side, waiting, watching. The female officer moves away, clearly my Neanderthal protective vibe is rolling off me in waves.
Sophia hangs up, her expression guarded. "Erica is coming to get me." Her tone is flat, and it echoes in my ears as loud as the clash of an out of time marching band.
"Erica? What’s she going to do?" Apart from ring the razzers and get it snapped for the papers tomorrow? I don’t say this though. Sophia is giving off major ‘Don’t fuck with me’ signals. My hand reaches for her shoulder, but she dodges my approach. "Soph, what’s the matter?"
She meets my gaze with a furious anger burning in the depths of her judgemental stare. "You’ve been lying to me, Blake. Lying since you came back, and I trusted you."
A shudder runs through her body and I can see she’s struggling to even stand as tremors overtake her. I sigh, dragging my hand through my hair, pulling at the ends and inflicting some satisfying pain. "It’s not like that, Soph. I’ve just been trying to protect you."
She shakes her head. Her hair, still twisted into frizzy knots from yoga, swings in the night time air. "I can’t trust anyone, can I?"
I clutch her arm, my fingers desperate. "That’s not true, you can trust me."
"No. Blake, I can’t." Her expression closes. The shutters come down and when she looks at me it’s with the same dead eyes with which she looks at all the other people around her. "Go away, please."
Fuck, that hurts. A solid punch in the gut would have hurt less. I hesitate, my feet scuffing on the ground. A fiery determination flares and I step into her space, filling the atmosphere between us. "I’m going to sort this and then I’m coming to talk to you." The words fly into the air like bullets and she flinches under my hardened resolve.
"Is that clear, Sophia?" my voice lowers until it holds a steely note of determination. "I will explain everything."
If she thinks I will let her run away, she’s got another thing coming. I’m going to kill the bastard threatening her, taunting her, when I get my hands on him.
Her face lifts to mine, the sliver of air between us the depth of a feather. "Promise?"
With my next words, I undo every principle I ever held dear. "I promise."
It’s simple really, the fear of having her push me away outweighs my fear of being in the ‘wrong’. What is wrong? What is right? I no longer know.
This is Sophia Jennings and me. It's impossible for us to stay within the professional boundaries expected, we know each other too well.
A car rolls up and Jacobs stretches his bulk out from within the leather interior. "The house has been cleared," he tells me. I give him a firm nod. If I’d known Sophia was going to the main house, I would have cleared it myself. It would need a full sweep. I hadn’t even been there since my return to LA; instead I’d slipped into a comfortable existence at the condo with Sophia. I’d softened my own edge.
It’s too late now.
I move towards him, grabbing his arm tight. "I’ll be there as soon as this is cleared up, and then I’ll make decisions. She can’t stay there, it’s too exposed."
Jacobs straightens his back, his eyebrows pulling up. "There’s a full security team. You don’t need to worry." His eyes skitter to the pool of police surrounding the condo and the crime scene investigators walking with bags of evidence—evidence that’s largely bunches of slow smoked weed.
He wears his thoughts on his face. I haven’t done a bang-up job at the out of the way condo. He isn’t wrong, and it burns me up. I want to rip things apart with my bare hands
"Okay." There isn’t much else for me to say apart from sky write the fact I’ve fucked up. Somehow, I’d fucked up and someone had found a way in.
Jacobs holds the rear door open for Sophia and she slides in without a backwards glance in my direction. Once the car has pulled away, I turn back to the police. This nightmare needs to be over soon.
Then what will you do Blake? Leave her again?
What will I do? When she no longer needs me to guard her? Then what will my role be?