Sophia
The problem with four o’clock in the morning is that it’s an hour that shouldn’t be seen unless you are going to bed.
I’ve been in bed since I slammed into my room at nine o’clock and realised I had nothing better to do than shut my eyes and try to go to sleep. I dreamt of Sarah and cigarette breaks and that awful group session where I’d spilled my guts about being in love with my bodyguard and trying to kiss him. It’s even more mortifying in dream mode because the other recovering users all chanted ‘Daddy issues, daddy issues, daddy issues’ at me as I tried to explain that Blake was nothing like my dad. But then the Blake of my dream had morphed into the old man who’d been my most recent bodyguard and he was telling me to lay on his lap for a spanking.
It’s all very wrong and if I didn’t know better I’d think I was still on mind altering drugs.
Groaning, I stretch and wait for sleep to pull me under. I could do with a nice dream, one about puppies or kittens, not old men trying to spank me.
When a gruff voice clips, "Wake up," and an accompanying finger prods the very tip of my shoulder, I roll away, dragging the coverings with me, tangling myself deep inside them so I can’t be seen.
"I said you weren’t allowed in here," I grumble, my hands rubbing my eyes until they are sore.
Through splayed fingers I watch his shadowy form moving about my room and a strong smell of coffee fills the air. My tummy gurgles as the rich scent does its business, waking me up with the aroma of deliciousness. I didn’t eat last night and my body is missing the regular meal times of rehab. In fact, I think all of me is missing the regularity of rehab.
Lowering my hands, I roll face first into my pillow. In years past I would have been tingling at his close proximity to my bed and the fact he’d made me a drink and gently placed it on the bedside table. But now, now in my new world where everything is hard and brightly coloured and he is annoyingly back again with no explanation, I only want to pull the duvet over my head. I want this day to go do one before it’s even started.
"I’m not going," I say into the pillow. Surely, apart from having your bodyguard wake you—the same bodyguard you used to have teenage sexual fantasies about—there is nothing worse than knowing you must get up and spill your guts to the world on morning television.
"Yes, you are. And in all honesty, Sophia, I would hurry along," his voice drips with laconic sarcasm, "because Davies is going to be here in ten minutes and you need to be ready."
"Why?" I roll and stretch, pointing my toes as my leg slips out from the blankets. I’m dopey with sleep but I’m sure his eyes twitch down to the exposed skin of my thigh. Or, and far more likely, I’m confused from my broken sleep and insane dreams.
"Because," he flicks on the ceiling light and I wince, "he’s trying to get your career back on track. The least you could do is join in with the effort."
What career? My entire career is solely based on a franchise of movies I hate and don’t want my name associated with. Those films have wrecked my personal life more than I’ll ever be able to admit, not just my career.
Trying to salvage what’s left seems a futile effort. Nobody’s interested in a washed-up has been whose career remains hitched to phoney blockbusters at the age of twenty-three. Even I’m uninterested, and that says it all.
I cooked up so many plans in the solitary quiet of rehab. That I was going to buy a cottage, somewhere out of the way. I was going to grow roses and spend my time reading all the books I should have read but never had the time for. To slide out of public view so soon they would forget I ever existed. Three months in, it won’t be long until I’m long forgotten and a new victim takes my place.
Good Morning America isn’t in that plan.
But then neither is Blake Henderson standing by the side of my bed bringing me coffee and scowling with ferocious disdain.
Rolling back over, I glare at the ceiling. None of my plans ever amount to much no matter how hard I try.
"I’ve put some clothes on your chair. They are doing hair and make-up on set." He hesitates, lingering, his hands curling tight at his side. He fills the shadowy depths of my bedroom with his presence. "So, all you have to do is get dressed, drink coffee and get through." His voice softens, and he takes a step towards my bed. My heart hitches a beat and I think he’s going to reach a hand out and touch a lock of my hair like he used to. He doesn’t although I’m waiting with my breath trapped in my throat. His hand remains firmly by his side and I wish his face wasn't partly hidden in shadow, so I could read the expression in his eyes.
The need for his touch pulls deep inside me, twisting my insides. It reminds me of being sixteen and wishing he could be my very first kiss, that his lips would be the first ever to press against mine in a private kiss, one not meant for movies. They weren’t. He was never my first anything, but that longing is still buried there deep inside me, I can feel it banging away with that deep dark box of secrets and memories. The counsellor at rehab would be turning cartwheels over this development. I glare at him through hooded eyelids, defining the shape of him, separating him from the shadows cloaking his form in darkness. Nope. It's definitely not a daddy issue.
Frustration crackles like static electricity.
"What is this, Henderson? Are you my PA, bodyguard, cook, and sober companion?" I snap not wanting him to see my confusion. I flip the covers off my legs, casting a quick glance in his direction to see if he looks at my bare skin. He doesn’t.
His hands curl tight into fists and I watch as his Adams apple bobs in his throat. "No."
"Well, get out then, and let me get dressed. Unless you want to help with that too?"
He turns on his heel and storms for the door. A pinch of remorse prickles my conscience. This isn’t the way I like to behave, but I've bolted it down. He’s the one here uninvited, messing with my plans.
Ten minutes later as he flanks me along the condo’s path I realise that my plans of growing roses and living in quiet calm are flying further away than they ever have and I don’t know how to capture them back and hold them tight in my heart.
* * *
"Well Lara, it’s fabulous to be back and ready to film again." I say the words, nodding my head sagely, but truthfully all I’m thinking of are my roses. They will be pale pink and white and smell like heaven.
My actress skills may not be that rusty. Lara, the news anchor, seems oblivious to my daydreaming. The lies rolling off my tongue fall fast and sure.
Lara smooths her blonde hair with practiced fingers and leans towards me, her eyebrow rising in careful curiosity. "So, what happened, Sophia?" she flutters her hand over the desk and pats the back of my hand. "One moment you were on top of the world and the next you overdosed?"
Well, let’s lay it all out there shall we?
What a bitch. My smile belies the glaring set of daggers I’m launching in her direction. My face aches with the effort.
Again, that swirling black void of nothing taunts me from the depths of my memory and I feel myself sinking back into a horror of blood and vomit.
Shaking myself into the present I offer a tight smile as I try to articulate an answer that doesn’t sound like bullshit.
"I think in this business it’s very hard to focus on who you are." To my horror tears prickle the back of my eyes. Don’t you dare cry. "And I think maybe I’ve never really known who I am because I’ve always been too busy acting other characters to find out." My mind flickers back to the moment in rehab when I’d found the rose garden, when I realised that I’d never stood in one before. That my life of cars, meetings, and organised activities, had never allowed me to stand and smell the roses. Literally. "It’s kind of hard to discover your own identity when constantly adopting others."
I’d said that to Davies and Erica when they were badgering me to sign the five-film saga. ‘What’s a film a year, Sophia?’ they'd said, ‘it will be wonderful, Sophia. It will put you at the top of your game.’
My response had been all too clear, to my own ears, anyway. ‘But what if I want to make something else, do something else?’
Four movies in I guess we found out my what.
Lara pulls me back and I drag my attention to the present. "And did you find out who you were with cocaine?" The question is direct and sharp but her eyes hold mine almost in an apology.
I smile trying to make the tense stretch of my lips seem as natural as I can. "I guess I found out who I'm not." While I sigh, I see my fingers trembling so I hide them under my legs. "I don’t want to be that girl anymore." It’s only a whisper but I know the cameras have caught it. There’s a clap in the background and someone must be thrilled with the viewing gold I’m providing.
A flash of blood and vomit fills my memory again, but I block it, shoving it towards the swirling dark the rest of that night contains. I focus on the sticky residue of hairspray in Lara’s blonde locks.
"And what would you want to say to any young girls watching who may look at your actions and be influenced by them?"
The blood drains from my face. Even my mistakes aren’t my own. Even they belong to someone else, to the public. "I’d say always talk." I try to smile wider, but just can’t find it within me. "Always talk to someone."
That’s all I have; my throat closes and any further words I may have are stuck in my throat. Lara, seeing I’ve reached my limit delves for one more question. If she can break me, it will boost their ratings for days as it goes viral. I know this. It’s just business.
She opens her mouth but a sharp clap fills the air, and my eyes scan to the shapes lurking behind the cameras. Crew mills about, watching the interview, drinking coffee. My eyes skim across them until they land on one person. Blake’s face is set in a thunderous mask and my stomach responds by racing like a rollercoaster on the downwards bend.
Not that I’ve ever been on a rollercoaster, but I have imagination to utilise.
Davies has his arms folded across his chest, his expression unreadable. The car ride to the studio hadn’t been comfortable. I didn’t know what Erica had said to get him to come back onto the team. My parting words when I sacked him had been colourful, but judging by his expression, whatever she had promised him, tempted him with, was barely enough to put up with me again.
With the wave of his hand Davies motions to Lara to continue her questioning. My pulse stutters and my skin slicks with sweat, prickling until my body is moist under my clothes. The lights are hot, and I run my tongue along my top lip, horrified to find a beading of sweat. I don’t know what to do with myself. I pull my hands out, to play with my rings, but they are still jittering, so I push them back under my thighs. And then the unexpected happens. Blake steps in front of Davies, blocking his view and shakes his head, his arms folded across his wide chest. Lara’s eyes flick between my bodyguard and I before stuttering, "Well thank you for joining us, Sophia. We wish you every strength in your recovery." Reaching forward she shakes my hand and applies a gentle squeeze as someone shouts 'cut'. Sighing when the lights dim she wipes at her brow with the back of her hand. "Sorry, Sophia. I didn’t want to take it there."
I smile, almost a genuine stretch of my lips. "It’s okay. I understand."
Lara reaches for my arm and wraps her hand around my wrist. "I’m glad you are okay though."
"Thanks." I push from my chair, standing. My legs stumbleweaken with the effort and wobble like jelly. Not wanting to show my weakness, I turn and take one step in front of the other until a hand grips my biceps, holding me up almost like a doll.
"You okay?" Blake’s breath whispers across the skin of my throat like the flutter of a tropical breeze.
I shake my head. Deep within a dark ugly craving begins to raise its head, roaring with a shattering intensity, making me lose awareness of my surroundings as it calls out to me, begging for something to take away the sharp sting of reality. I tryied to push it away, but it makdes my mouth go dry and body twitch. If I could just get a drink; a drink would do. It would help cool the angry burn of the beast.
"Breathe." Both of Blake’s hands wind around the tops of my arms, his fingers squeezing into the skin under my armpits.
"I can’t," I gasp, the air clawing in my lungs as I fight the cruel craving.
"Course you can, in and out," his words are sure but I can’t raise my eyes to look at him. I can’t focus on anything accept the need burning in my veins.
I shake my head, suffocating.
He presses his chest alongside mine. Firm and hard it’s as supportive as an ancient fortress. "With me, Soph. Breathe with me. One. Two. Three."
His chest rises and pushes against my body and with every movement of his, I claw at the air, begging it to enter my body and chase away my need.
"I can’t, it hurts." The irrepressible need for something, of what I don’t even know, just something to help, to ease the strain. My mouth is so dry I can barely move my tongue and my body trembles as I gain control of the cravings.
"You can." His words wash over my desperate, raw edged desire, replacing them with a need for something else, the same thing he’s always provided me with. Safety. We stand like that for a long moment and I don’t care who can see. I’m breathing. The itch to search out a fix ebbing as swiftly as it arrived.
"Okay?" he asks. Slowly, scared of what I’m going to find I looked up into his face. His lips are pulled into a tight line and a sharp-edged frown runs between his azure eyes.
"Yes."
"Good." He pulls away and I force myself to keep breathing with the absence of his touch.
"What now?" I ask.
A slow smile twitches the corner of his mouth. A spark of the man I used to know. "Come with me."
He grabs my hand, ploughing us toward the door. I ignore the woman with the clipboard who looks like she has questions, and the call of Davies my useless agent as he asks how he’s going to get home. Instead I follow Blake.
I just follow him.