Sophia
"Sophia, where the bloody hell are you?" I should have known never to pick up the unknown international number.
The girl in the mirror looks different to the one who’d got on the plane a few days before. My hair sits in a knotted, wild beehive on the top of my head and my eyes are bright. And well, I don’t want to look too closely at my cheeks; they are so flushed I look like I’ve been slapped a few times.
"I’m away."
Johnny Fairweather is going to kill my buzz quicker than anything, which is ironic considering he used to be the one to provide it. I offer a polite smile to Amanda perched on the end of the bed in Blake’s not quite bedroom. I follow the ridiculously impersonal smile I normally offer to press, not the sister of my possible boyfriend—I can’t think of the possible boyfriend status it’s too much for my brain to contend with—with a full eye roll. She giggles and continues to rifle through the few bits of makeup I brought over from LA. When I left Blake to get ready for our date, with him muttering about needing to do some things, it had only taken a few minutes for Amanda to make her way to my room and plop herself on the bed. It’s nice.
"What do you mean away? We are supposed to be on set together, now. Like in five bloody minutes. Please tell me this is a fucking joke?"
I don’t answer. I don’t need to. He carries on.
"Please tell me this isn’t about the other night? You wanted to get high, Fee, it was your choice. You need to get over yourself and accept who you are."
"It’s not the drugs," I snap, my voice reverberating around the bare walls. Amanda raises an eyebrow but keeps whistling to herself as she tests my face creams on the skin under her eyes.
"Is it me?" His voice tightens like string on a violin.
Spinning away from Amanda I muffle my response. "It’s not clear cut is it, Johnny?" I sigh. "It’s not right, what we do. You know that."
"It’s just fun, don’t be so bloody precious. We all need to escape this hamster wheel we’re on."
Fun.
"That’s not fun. Can you even remember the night we overdosed? Do you know what happened?"
There’s a deliberate pause, I can sense it. Hesitation hangs suspended between us. "No, do you? We were out of it." Johnny gives a nervous laugh and the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention.
"Listen, I’m just taking some processing time. I need to be clean, you know? I don’t want to lose control."
There’s another pause. "Sure, babe. I get it." He breathes out and I can all too easily envision the plume of smoke surrounding him. Is it cigarettes or weed? I’m beginning to think Johnny’s idea of clean is very different to mine. But then I’m also thinking his moral set is on a different level too.
I need to work that out.
I wish I could remember. Then I could just deal.
"When are you coming back to finish this movie, Fee? You know I can’t do it without you, we are the golden ticket."
My lips meld into a tight smile. I don’t want to be anyone’s golden ticket. "Well, I’m in Wales so I don’t think I’m going to make it to filming today."
"Motherfucker, fucking Wales?"
"Listen, Ted Stein knows. It’s all in hand."
"Sure, Sunshine," he sounds dejected and for a moment I almost feel bad. Then I recall the night neither of us can remember.
"You know, Johnny?"
"Know what?"
"You know that night. You know I was trying to kill myself?" I don’t care if Amanda hears, I want him to know. I want him to know how desperate I’d been lying on that bed, lost.
Amanda’s dark blue eyes land on my face, but it’s the response down the line I’m waiting for. My fingers slip against the phone. "I know."
That’s it.
I have nothing left to give the conversation and I stare at the screen, hitting the red button.
"Sophia?" Amanda walks across the mattress on her knees. Her face is covered in various shades of make-up, a rainbow of beige but it can’t quite make me smile. Instead I dash at tears as they splatter along my cheeks. "It’s okay." She gathers me tight into her arms. Being held by a stranger should be weird, but then real affection is something I so rarely experience it’s strangely soothing. "That explains so much."
"What does?"
"Why he ran back." Her fingers rub my arms with that soothing pattern I always imagined a parent would give.
"What do you mean, ran back?"
"The woman who came here… after she left, he grabbed his stuff and said he didn’t know when he’d be back."
I struggle from her embrace. "He left straightaway?"
Amanda nods. "Yeah, he had a job lined up, but he bunked it."
"Bunked it?" This isn’t an American expression I’m used to. In any other circumstances, I would have found it funny—I’m not even bloody American.
Amanda’s expression draws into pensive lines. "What happened, before he came back here? When he left you, the first time. It must have been bad. Mam would never tell me, all I knew… I mean I was only a teenager, the same age as you I guess, but he was mad. He didn’t talk to anyone for weeks when he came home."
That wild thrumming in my heart returns, fluttering at my ribcage until the bones could snap with the pressure.
"I kissed him." I whisper it low. "Then I ran away, and he found me." That look on his face as he’d dragged me from that bed, it haunted me, not dissimilar to when he’d pulled me from Johnny a few days ago. What had I done to him? "He beat up Johnny Fairweather, broke his nose trying to protect my childish virtue. It was the last time I saw Blake."
So many secrets of the mysterious Blake Henderson slot into place. But the fact he would leave, would just up and go because he knew I was in trouble. That. That very fact. It blows my mind.
"Where’s this date?" My demand is loud and shrill, excitement pitching my voice.
Amanda startles but then a slow grin spreads across her face. She’s a softer version of Blake, her nose a feminine upturn, her lips a natural blush. "Sophia, this is the smallest village in Wales."
I’m backing towards the door with her words. "So, I don’t need to get dressed up, worry about my make-up, hair, clean jeans?" I run a hand down the dirty jeans I’ve been wearing for two days straight.
"Uh, no. You are Sophia Jennings. You’re going to cause a traffic standstill, regardless."
"Good." I pull on the door, pacing down the hallway and sliding down the stairs.
"Don’t tell him I told you anything," Amanda calls after me but I’m too busy running to answer, too busy running to Blake.
I slip out the back door of the kitchen, surprised to find the room empty. Since I’ve arrived the only place the Henderson’s seem to sit is in the old farmhouse kitchen filled with the warmth of the range cooker. A blast of wind sweeps my cardigan back and I struggle to catch the edges and wrap it tight around my body.
Down the end of a sloppy muddy path I find a courtyard surrounded by outhouses which must have once been stables. Only one of the converted buildings has a light on so I pound on the door. "Blake, let me in."
A heavy thud echoes from inside and the door swings open, the shape of Blake looming in the door frame surrounded by the warm glow of naked artificial light like a guardian angel.
"Sophia? What’s the matter?" He steps forward, his expression creasing with concern but I grin it away.
"You came back for me?" It’s stupid standing here in the wet gusty courtyard saying such a thing but the revelation has changed the very foundation of my life.
He lifts an eyebrow, a small smile hitching the left side of his lips. "You know I did." He slides his hands into the pockets of his jeans. His T-shirt clings to his chest and his nipples harden through the thin material in the chilled air.
God, he’s hot. But that isn’t the crux of my epiphany—I already know he’s hot. I’ve known that since I was a young teen and used to fantasise about him kissing me, making love to me. Those fantasies have come true. He’s mine because he came to find me when I needed him.
"No, I mean, you found out I was in trouble and you came without any other thought. And it wasn’t to do with the letters either. It was because of me and what I was doing. What I did to myself. Why?"
In one stride he’s gathering me into his arms, his lips delivering the powerful answer. I know what that answer is. As my mouth opens under his, willingly welcoming him, my arms cling tighter and tighter until I hold him in a death grip of a hug. His own arms tighten, his hard body pressing against mine until we are all meshed together.
He loves me.
He always has.
When he pulls away his endlessly deep blue eyes gaze at me, their depths swimming with emotion. "Don’t you dare say it until I’ve taken you on a date."
I love you.
The words tingle my tongue but I grin and hold them in. "Take me on that bloody date, Blake. Please."