Sophia
The air is fresh outside the private club, and I gulp it down into my desperate lungs. I’m alone for the first time since I left rehab, and it feels golden. Swinging my bag over my shoulder I hesitate and frown when I spot my own car tucked alongside the curb.
As far as I’m aware my Jeep is safely located in the garage of my private condo—where it’s been since I lost my right to drive it.
I’m going to rip this bodyguard a new one for touching my stuff. All I want is to sleep in my own bed, to be in my own home and I’m not going to allow anyone to prevent it from happening. Not my mother, not my stupid agent and his plans for my career recovery, and most of all especially not some regimented stiff in a suit.
Bodyguards. I hate them. Suited muscle with an overdeveloped idea of their own importance. I like to make their life as difficult as possible. Not because I’m a total bitch, but just because I don’t want one. There is no need. Maybe once, when that loser with the threatening letters was looming, sure, but now this waning star didn’t require being tailed by steroid fuelled muscles in a suit.
I sigh and shuffle forward, my gaze sweeping from side to side. At least if I’m in the car then I am one step closer to my own bed.
It’s funny because even as I pull on the handle and swing the door wide open, I’m completely, obliviously, unprepared. I’m thinking of Sarah and how I want to drop her a text and tell her I survived my first real challenge. I’m thinking of those crisp white sheets stretched across the mattress of my bed and how they will feel when I slide into them for the first time in ninety days.
If there’s one person I’m not thinking of—for once—it’s the person staring back at me from within the depths of my leather upholstered car. The smell of new leather hits me, the chemical valet stench stings my nose, so strong I recoil, but it’s not the smell stopping my lungs from being unable to inhale air.
No.
Dark blue eyes peek with luminosity from within the shady canopy of endlessly sweeping dark lashes and long fingers drum the steering wheel to a silent rhythm. "Blake?" Saying his name torments my insides. They twist and turn until they resemble baked sourdough and I’m clutching my stomach, pulling at my shirt and twisting my fingers into the material. "What are you doing here?"
"I’m giving you a ride." I watch his mouth move, not quite believing I’m seeing this or hearing his voice again. That he’s here, after all this time.
He’s giving me a ride?
He’s giving me a ride?
Is this some sick, twisted joke?
I stare at his face. It doesn’t look like a joke. His expression is a rigid mask of indifference with his lips drawn into a thin straight line. "Please tell me you aren’t the new bodyguard?" My voice trembles and I hate it. My knees knock together no matter how relentlessly I try to straighten them and my heart… my heart thumps so damn loud against my ribcage a herd of elephants could run past with more secrecy. I fix my hand with a tight grip onto the door of the car, trying to keep myself upright.
Erica has gone too far. First the party. Now this. Now, him.
A huddle of paps notice the open door and attention zeroes in on the unravelling scene. Sophia. My name whispers as if it’s caught on the wind and I cringe as it echoes back to my own ears.
Fuck.
I watch in horror, my eyes wide, as three men lurch forward, cameras slung on long straps as they grapple the lenses into their hands.
"Get in the car, Sophia." It’s a low command and I lurch instinctively forward.
"Sophia! How was rehab?" An unknown voice calls and I stutter, frozen, as they pace closer and then closer still. The call of voices is replaced with a deafening ‘Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.’
"Sophia, get in the car." Blake Henderson’s voice cuts through the empty static in my brain and the rev of the engine urges my feet into action. I stumble head first into the front passenger seat, my shaking hand pulling on the door as he peels away and burns down the street. I don’t sit upfront, not anymore, but I can stress about my seat of choice later. Right now I’ve got other shit to process.
Blake Henderson is here.
"Do your seatbelt up," he snaps, his eyes focused on the road.
Do my seatbelt up? Is he for real? I cast my eyes toward his face and search over every millimetre of his profile on offer. It’s like waking up in a dream, or being stuck in a dream. It’s like I’m fucked out of my head and hallucinating.
Blake Henderson is back. He is back. Just like he left with no word; no goodbye; no fucking, 'Oh, sorry I’ve got to leave you now, but don’t worry it wasn’t because you kissed me and repulsed me with your desperate moves'. Now he’s back with no word of warning and driving my goddamn Jeep.
"Stop the car." My voice is surprisingly calm.
His head lifts a fraction as he glances in the rearview mirror, but he doesn’t ease his foot from the pedal and slow the vehicle. My hand reaches for the handle. Quite what I plan to do, I don’t know. Launch myself from a moving vehicle? The street lights continue to whir past, faster and faster with the silence growing until the car is as suffocating as a sealed coffin. Clutching my head, I try to simmer the boiling cauldron of confusion bubbling within my head—there is no way I can process this, not sober anyway. "Stop the car." I repeat and my feigned calmness is undermined by a wavering note vibrating with the thump of my heart.
Still, he doesn’t speak, doesn’t even look at me, his arms rigid as he glances at the rearview and presses the gas.
This must be Erica’s craziest moment yet. Surely, she isn’t so blind to not see my problems only started after he left.
Is this how little she cares that she’ll let me go through it all again? She’ll allow me to crash and burn, a withering path of destruction with no hesitation or second thought for my wellbeing?
"There’s a black Ford following us," he says, oozing a calm I know for sure I'm notfeeling on the inside. His eyes flicker briefly to my seat. "Do you want me to stop here or do you want me to get you away from the cameras and questions?" He lifts his foot off the pedal to prove his point, and the car slows. Swivelling in my seat I stare wide-eyed as the dark shape of the car behind looms closer. Is that guy leaning out of the passenger window?
"Keep going." I shift my attention to the windscreen, settling back in my seat, my spine ramrod straight.
What is he doing here?
Why is he back?
Where has he been?
Does he know what I’ve done. What I’ve become?
It’s all I can think as the Jeep manoeuvres the nightlife filled streets of Downtown LA.
My eyes flick across the confines of the tight space, like a cat burglar hiding in the shadows as I steal a stealthy glance of the man who was once everything to me. It’s dark, but the approaching headlights of oncoming traffic and the glow of streetlamps whizzing past the window show the same handsome profile I used to watch from the passenger side. His hair’s a little longer, the waves more pronounced, but that’s it. He’s the same.
I’m not.
We’re approaching The Hills when I fumble incoherent sounds into actual words. "I don’t live here anymore." My words crackle into the silence but they don’t receive any movement in response. No glance in my direction, no flicker of his eyes, just a pencil straight set to his mouth and a hard glare at the road ahead.
"I know," he says, eventually, his fingers sliding along the wheel as he turns a corner. "But we are still being tailed." Is that a flicker in my direction? "I’m assuming you don’t want paps following you to your real home?"
"Have you been to my real home?"
"It’s very cosy."
"Fuck you, Blake."
"Delightful."
We don’t speak again until he’s pulling in through the gates of the mansion. "We’ll wait here for ten minutes."
Even though he's no longer driving, he still won’t look at me. My chest implodes like an origami heart crushed within a too tight fist. I turn a burning gaze out the window, biting on my lower lip until the salty tang of blood tingles my taste buds.
"It should be clear now," he says. "They won’t hang around if they think that’s it for the night."
"How do they know this is it for the night? How do they know I’m not about to go hit the clubs, back to my old haunts?"
This time I’m sure his head turns a fraction but his words are clipped. "Because I told them."
The gilded gates swing back open, and the jeep cruises out, Blake not turning on the headlights until we are on the main road. It’s exactly what he used to do.
Fury forms itself into sharp arrows and I want to hurl them all at him. How dare he walk back in like this.
I slink down in my seat angrily and wait for the car to get to its final destination.
It’s inexplicable, but when I see my condo for the first time in three months—the first time since I nose-dived off the edge of life—my eyes fill with tears. I didn’t expect it and the tears muddle my arrows of fury until I’m a jittering wreck of confusion.
I hadn’t had a chance to even think of my own home since the Town Car picked me up from rehab and whisked me back to Erica’s kingdom. Instead I’d been faced with the act of getting myself ready for social viewing for the first time in three months.
No one knows about this place. Sure, there are cleaners, staff, but no one knows who owns the property apart from my driver and Erica.
And now Blake.
It’s like a dirty violation.
I turn to him. His hands are squeezing the steering wheel as if he’s throttling the life out of it. "All staff stay at the main house," I say.
"Yep."
My god is he monosyllabic now?
My pulse races until the blood throbbing in my ears is deafening, and my uncontrollable anger heightens until I resemble a pressure cooker. "I don’t know why you are here, why Erica thought to bring you back." His eyes flicker at the use of my mum’s first name, but he can go and psychoanalyse shit someplace else. "But I don’t want you around me, I don’t want you near me and I certainly don’t want you thinking you can walk back into my life five years after leaving and act like you are still the one in control. Because I can assure you, Blake Henderson, you aren’t."
Slowly, oh so frigging slowly, his eyes fall onto my face. Onto my eyes, my mouth, my hair. When he speaks, his voice is so soft I impulsively lean forward to hear him. "Who is in control, Sophia? You?"
I hesitate, the smell of him swims through the air, making my already thumping head swirl with uncontrollable giddiness. Unlike Jonathan, who reeks of aftershave, Blake's scent is a sharp tang of soap and peppermint.
For a long moment we stare, watching, waiting, reading. For a short moment I think he’s going to reach and touch me. His hands fall on the steering wheel instead.
Sophia, you absolute moron.
I pull on the handle of the car, practically rolling free of the vehicle, my shaking legs carrying me down the pathway from the garage like the hounds of hell are on my tail. The door of the condo slams behind me and I stumble through the gloomy lounge until I hit my bedroom. There I sink onto my own bed for the first time in months, but I can’t enjoy my homecoming for what it is, can’t find any peace in the moment, because all can hear is him moving about in the room next to mine. Him. The man who broke my heart.
* * *
I fling myself back onto the pillows, feeling them whoosh with air as I land. All at once I’m home yet the same, washed out into a vast sea propped only on a life raft strung together out of palm leaves.
The condo is mine, bought with the money made from the loss of my youth.
I don’t want him in it.
He doesn’t belong here.
I can feel him through the door. Why is he back? Is the kettle boiling? Is he making tea now? Why is he back? Can my brain take this? I don’t think I’ve ever entertained this many thoughts all at once—one more and my brain will explode for sure.
I thump back onto the pillows again, a childish motion, reminding me of when I wanted a pony and Dad had laughed, asking exactly where we were going to put it in our old council house. Back before I could buy the entire fricking stables. I roll my neck, shutting my eyes for a brief moment. It doesn’t help, even with them shut I know he’s in the condo, still in my space, still touching my stuff.
Ugh.
WHY IS HE HERE?
Seriously. It’s freaking me out on levels I don’t know how to contend with. Why didn’t he just talk to me in the car? Explain? You can’t leave one day and then five years later rock back up and carry on like you popped out to get a pint of milk. It’s not how things are done.
I roll off the bed and find my suitcase where I’d asked Jacobs to stash it when I went to the party. I did not want my belongings in Erica’s house for a moment longer than necessary. Rooting through the T-shirts and jeans I’d been living in for the last ninety days, I find the phone handed back to me as I left the facility. I haven’t switched it on in months, who knows what messages will be on there? The press? Friends? My parents…?
Maybe I’ll find an emotional journey of expression as I play though one message after another and listen to my friends and family struggle through their concern for my wellbeing.
I hold down the small button on the side and wait. And then I wait. Nothing. Not one message, not one missed call. I click on my emails. They aren’t my thing, I usually have people open them for me. As I wait for my Inbox to fill, I wonder if I've done something wrong. Is there something you’re supposed to press to make them appear, to make the beeping noise I know normally happens? There's nothing.
What the fuck?
I’ve been in solitary for ninety days and not one person has left me a message. Not even Charlie.
For the first time in a while I begin jonesing for a drink.
Just like that.
Bam.
It hits me with this uncontrollable voice I can’t switch off, 'Just a shot. No one need know'.
I hadn’t felt like it at the party, yet here I am in the solitariness of my own bedroom and it’s the one thing I want—oblivion.
I run my finger over the silver ridge on my wrist and tug a deep breath down into my tight lungs. This is his fault—his damn fault for appearing and making everything hurt again. He should have stayed wherever the hell he went.
There’s a rap on the door startling me, and I scramble myself upright. I don’t want him finding me all tucked up in a foetal position looking pathetic. Another knock breaks the silence. It’s not the polite tap of the facilities staff as they 'check in' or call me to my silent group therapy. Every rap on the wood bounces along my edgy nerves and rattles deep inside.
"What?" I call.
Don’t you dare open that door.
He does, poking his inky hair through the gap until his dark blue eyes land on me on the bed.
"You aren’t allowed in here, Henderson." I grind out his surname. Before, before when he’d worked here, he’d hated me using his surname. He’d never said as much but whenever I did it, whenever I’d wanted to rile him and coax a reaction out of him I used to see something flicker in the deep azure pools of his eyes, and he used to gnash his teeth.
I watch his face, but there is no reaction. His gaze just slides over me like I’m a piece of shit he’s been unfortunate enough to step in and bring into the house with him.
His eyes land on my face, his expression blank, and it’s like we’ve never known each other, like we didn’t spend five years side by side while he tried to stop a stalker doing nasty things to me. "I don’t plan to come in, Miss Jennings." There’s no twitch of his lips, nothing. "I just came to bring you this."
He drops an iPhone box into the cabinet by the door. "It’s got all the numbers you need on there. Your other service has been cancelled."
What the hell?
"So, who has my number now?" I don’t even want to talk to him. I’m burning with such an overwhelming desire to punch him smack in the face, hopefully breaking one of his perfectly aligned cheekbones, or maybe his nose that’s so aquiline and set just right over his wide lips.
Fuck him.
I chant it in my head. Fuck him.
"Only the people who need it," he answers, sounding bored. Without anything further he spins on his heel and walks away, leaving the door swinging shut behind him.
I drag a hand through my hair, pulling at the strands as if causing myself pain might help all of this make sense. What the hell is going on?
Is he here to keep me sober? Whose idea was that? Because I think he could turn me back to my dark ways quicker than the local dealer.
Jumping off the bed and marching to the door with the full force of Godzilla I yank on the handle, my fury taking charge as I swing it open. "Blake," I holler after his retreating form. "Don’t ever open my door again without my say so." Motherfucker.
He waves a hand over his shoulder not even bothering to turn around. "Not a problem, Miss."
Slamming the door hard enough to make the whole room shake, I storm back to the bed, grabbing the phone box on the way. When I lift the lid an iPhone 7 plus slides out onto my grey linen and I pick it up, flicking it on. It’s locked. Is this some sort of sick joke? I grumble under my breath and consider lobbing the thing out of the window
There is no way I’m asking him for a pin, no bloody way. I’ll just throw it away and get myself another one at the shops tomorrow.
I laugh—a crazed sound—it bounds off the empty white walls. Who am I kidding? There's no way I’m going to the shops tomorrow, or anytime soon. I’ve never made it around the shops without being mobbed or harassed. So I don’t need to attempt that the day after coming out of rehab.
I stare at the phone, thinking what the numbers could be. I try my birthday, his birthday (the fact I can remember this is desperately sad and I force myself not to curl into a ball), the day my first film released. None of them work. On my last chance before I disable the damn thing I try the day etched in my memory. The day Blake stopped me from mistakenly having underage sex with Johnny Fairweather. The day Blake left.
It works and the phone lights up in my hand. On the home screen is a picture of me collecting my Academy Award. It’s not a picture I’ve seen before, taken from the side of the stage and I stare a little closer frowning at the screen. What is this? Then I remember who was standing there, waiting for me to blabber and shake my way through my acceptance speech. Blake.
I swallow so hard it aches my throat.
On the phone four numbers have been saved.
Marty, my old PA.
Mum.
Dad.
And lastly a number listed under bodyguard.