Chapter Sixteen
Jackson
I awoke to sunlight streaming in the living room window. C.J. was splayed out over half the bed, and her cat, Stiles, was sitting on the side table, staring at me expectantly. My stomach voiced some serious complaints about what I’d filled it with the night before, but what C.J. had said about her diet for the next few days didn’t tempt me in the least, so I figured I’d do her a favor and eat before she got up.
I scrambled eggs, heated up some bacon, and emptied a can of fishy smelling cat pate into a dish which Stiles pounced on immediately and polished off before I even got my own breakfast on a plate. I cleaned up my mess quickly, hoping the tantalizing smell of bacon wouldn’t stick around too long, and settled down at the bar in her kitchen to eat. I had to admit, all that time pestering Patty over the years had paid off. I could have served breakfast to the guys, and they never would have known the difference.
“Ah, he cooks!” came a sleepy voice behind me. C.J. was just sitting up in bed, and Stiles, having licked his bowl until it shone, bounded over to her, begging just like he had done to me. “Okay, baby, I’ll get you some breakfast.”
“Don’t buy it, I just fed him a whole can of that nasty stuff.” I finished my last couple of bites and stood to wash my plate.
“Oh, you little stinker. You keep that up, you’ll be a sumo wrestler cat in no time!” She scratched his back and he wound himself around her. “He always has been an opportunist, and he got your number. You should have seen him when my mother came to visit. He had her convinced he was starving. I had to forbid her from feeding him--she had him up to five cans a day.” She poked him in the stomach. “Little porker.”
I started putting veggies and the powder I’d found in her pantry into the blender in the order of the list she’d left out on the counter. “Hungry? I’ll have this done in a minute.”
“You don’t have to do that, I can make it,” she protested.
“Will you, or will you just go without? I remember you talking about this in the past. A few months ago, you realized after almost two full days that you hadn’t eaten.”
“Okay, go ahead and make it. But, don’t go all ‘intervention’ on me. Not eating, for me, was a model-thing, not a psychological disorder thing. Sometimes, they make you go without for so long, you just get used to not eating.”
I turned on the blender, and bit my tongue while it whirred loudly, crushing up the ice and veggies together. I poured it into a tall glass and handed it to her as she joined me in the kitchen.
“First, I’m glad you’re not a full-time model anymore. Second, this one isn’t too bad, from what I tasted. Hopefully that helps. Third. I am really, truly, deeply grateful you aren’t focused on modelling anymore.”
“Well, don’t hate on it too much, there are a lot of good people trying to stop the bad ones from treating people that way anymore. Unfortunately, I got in with the wrong ones at my start. It’s a cutthroat industry, I was lucky in a lot of ways.”
“Whatever you say. I’m used to a different kind of danger, other than starving to death just so I can be skinny, but I’m beginning to think getting trampled by a stampede, or thrown into a fence by a bronco are a lot less scary than I was taught.” I poured the leftover smoothie into her glass, topping it off. “Just don’t you go losing that perfect ass. That would be a tragedy.”
She snorted rudely at me, then held her nose and poured the thick liquid down her throat. She shuddered violently and set the glass in the sink, and I promptly rinsed it and set it in the top of the dishwasher.
“Do you do bathrooms?” she asked.
I laughed and nodded. “As a matter of fact, I am capable of all sorts of domestic bliss-type chores and tasks.” I put one hand on my hip and waved a finger of the other at her. “But all this doesn’t come for free, Honey.”
She giggled and smacked my butt as she walked past. “Taking the bathroom first!” She called out as she broke into a jog down the hallway.
“I thought we could share…”
“Not after yesterday. I’m still a little too sore to be playing games like that again.”
I flushed, embarrassed. I’d finally acted out a fantasy with a woman I really liked. Guess I’d picked the wrong one. I got my clothes ready while she showered, and earned another love tap to my ass as she walked by in a towel.
“That was fast.”
“No point in taking my time when I left the fun out here.”
I rolled my eyes and took my things into the bathroom. The water was hot and the pressure was great, and I stood under for too long. C.J. shortened my shower by turning on the hot water in the kitchen, full blast. I had the whisper of a warning before the heat leached away and ice cold water poured over my neck and shoulders. I heard her howling in laughter even over my unmanly shriek of surprise at the sudden chill.
I turned the water off as fast as I could and opened the shower to see C.J. holding a towel out for me. She had tears running down her face, and she was leaning on the counter, silently shaking with laughter.
“You’re evil.” I snapped the towel out of her hands and stalked out of the bathroom, still dripping. I barely made it out of the room before I lost control of my own face and started grinning. She apologized through her laughter as she followed me through the apartment, collapsing on the bed and shaking as she tried to stop giggling.
“I am sorry, Jackson, it was just a funny idea, and then I did it, and it worked. These days, most places are regulated so that can’t happen, I really figured it wouldn’t work.” I arched an eyebrow at her. “I promise.” She leaned up and kissed me on the cheek while I was halfway in my shirt, so she could run her hands over my bare chest. Even though they were warm, I shuddered from her feather-light touch.
“Hardware store?” I asked when I got my shirt down over my stomach.
“I’ve already ceased to be a distraction, huh?” she pouted and I chuckled.
“Oh, no. If I hadn’t just had a cold shower, I’d be all over you.”
She started to giggle again and walked off toward her converted bedroom. “Give me five minutes to check in with my followers and get some shoes on,” she called over her shoulder. I put the bed away while I waited, and grabbed a beer from the fridge. I set my laptop up on the kitchen counter and checked my email, and shot off a message with the Dean of Admissions at Stanford regarding our meeting Monday morning. I hadn’t seen much of California yet, but what I had seen was worth spending more time with.
By the time I’d taken care of my business, C.J. was done with hers, and we walked to the hardware store to pick up rubber tubing, heavy gauge wire, and the same hinge system I’d used on a glider repair back home.
“So, you’re sure this will still work?” C.J. looked through her bag of goodies as I steered her down the sidewalk and kept her out of traffic.
“It worked on my glider, in a pinch. But, in this case, I think it’s a better idea, since it doesn’t have to hold your weight, but you hold its weight.”
“Well, you are full of surprises. How many good looking, cowboy, computer geek, hang-gliding engineers are there in the world, do you think?” I laughed and shrugged, then steered us into a sandwich shop that looked like it was already getting busy, despite the early hour.
We ordered lunch and took it to go so we could get to work on the wings and restructure them in time for the convention in the morning. C.J. was skilled with her costumes, and she had her largest prize yet riding on her ability to deliver more than she ever had before. Working with her on this, and getting to build something for once, were both exciting to me. But, after watching video of how she had constructed a working grappling gun for her last competition, I knew the stakes were higher than I could even imagine.
Next year, she’d have the assistance of major designers to help with her costumes, but if she stopped being relevant before that could happen, it would be that much harder for her to come back. Doing this competition so close to the last was a huge risk for the sake of her dream career. I wasn’t about to blow it for her.
She put the food and sodas away in the fridge and I went straight to work, carefully undoing the layer of fabric stretched over the frame that held the feathers. I was too scared to lift the feathers off the frame by myself, so I left them in place and began remeasuring the lengths of steel that I’d already measured twice since the inspiration first struck.
C.J. brought the high back barstools in from the kitchen and used them to drape the wing “covers” over, so that the rest of the frame could stay on her mannequin for me to work with. While I replaced struts one at a time with lighter, slightly more flexible wire, C.J. curled up in her leatherworking corner and began working on the extra brace to fit across her ribcage and help distribute the weight that was left.
It was an afterthought, but when I saw her curled up on her wide bench, concentrating over her tooling and leather, I turned my laptop web camera on her. I knew the guys who followed her like only geeky fanboys could would stick around through her absence better if they got a YouTube video or two in the interim. I let the video record for a good ten minutes, then shut it down to be edited and uploaded later
We worked separately, without talking for a couple of hours, until I had replaced every strut on one wing, and was ready to start the second. My stomach growled loudly enough that C.J. heard it on the other side of the room and laughed at me. She stood and stretched, and rumpled my hair before heading out to the kitchen to get my lunch and make hers. I folded the wings and released the catch three or four times, just to make sure I hadn’t made any miscalculations, and popped the first couple of struts off the second wing. It went much faster, once I figured out exactly how to best disconnect and reconnect the pieces, and even with a quick break to bolt down a delicious sandwich and kettle chips, it took half the time to finish the second that it had the first.
Together, we pinned her additional brace into position and she secured it with anchor stitches, and we recovered the wings with the hand-sewn feather overlay. I was nervous for her to try it on, and judging by her hesitancy, I wasn’t the only one.
“Look, it’s a really big deal that you trusted me to mess with this costume,” I began, my voice trailing off as she glanced up at me.
“I can’t explain why I did. I didn’t panic at all until right this moment. I may look all calm and clear-headed, but I am so afraid to put those on and realize that they no longer open.” She shook her head and scrubbed at her face with her palms. “Well, no use in stalling, right?” She removed her top and the little lace bra underneath, and I helped her get her arms through the straps in the bodysuit. I heard a click as she locked the brace across her chest and buckled it up over both the original waist-brace and the new brace across her ribs. She had used the leather from her new hobby to create a bra of sorts to wear under her costume, and stepped out into the middle of the room.
She did a little turn and planted her feet as she had before. She popped her hip and placed her hand on it, flipping the little switch with her thumb as she did so. I held my breath for the briefest moment while everything was still, and just as her eyebrows shot up, the wings opened with a satisfying “whoosh.” C.J. tilted her head to one side, and while she said nothing, I could see her scolding me in her head from the look on her face as she stared me down.
“I know, I know, the pause was a little longer than anticipated. But, it you throw a head toss in there, it will be seamless.”
“Or, you could fix the timing.”
“Or I could fix the timing. Don’t move, I can get to the springs just fine if you leave the wings open.” I knelt behind her and adjusted the tightness of the timing springs, and closed the wings for her to try them again. The second time, they sprang open without a hitch, and she used the tiny motor in the belt of the costume to close them in a fairly smooth motion. I made a mental note to check the motor and make sure it had enough juice for the convention, and to pack extra batteries just in case.
C.J. agreed that not only were they lighter, but the new brace/bra top made her breasts look fabulous. I couldn’t disagree. She looked delicious, from the mahogany wig to her glowing toes. She wasn’t just dressed like a character, she embodied it.
“It feels amazing,” she confessed as we hung all the bits and pieces of her costume up wither on the mannequin or right next to her. “I’m scared I’m going to forget something and lose the competition over some stupid misplaced item, or because one of my boots stops lighting up or something.
I showed her the satchel I had already started, with batteries, wig taming tools, extra insole foot cushions for the hours she was about to spend on her feet, a bottle of Aleve, and a bottle of water.
“They say it’s good to be prepared, so I tried to think of anything you might need while we’re at the convention center. I figured you could add, like, makeup and hair stuff on your own, I wouldn’t even know where to begin with all that.”
Immediately, C.J. started rifling through her cabinets looking for appropriate hair and makeup products to add to the bag. In the end, my “emergency kit” was heavier than the damn wings had been, with theater makeup, more water, an extra red wig in case she changed her mind, feminine hygiene products, because they were good for nosebleeds and smear-free sweat removal (who knew?), and protein bars. The last made me the happiest, glad to see she was open to solid food of some kind, even if it was low-calorie.
“Well, are you ready for a celebratory dinner of kale shake and flavored water?” I mocked as I helped her wrap the costume and put it inside the extra-large garment bag. She gave me a grin, and surveyed the room one more time for any pieces we might have missed the dozen times we already went over the list.
“We are good,” she sighed. “This is so simple with help. I might have to chain you to my bed and make you stay forever.” I knew she was teasing, but the more time I spent with her, the easier it was to see myself here, and not on the ranch. I busied myself with getting everything in the duffel bag in an organized way, and set it on the floor below the garment bag.
It seemed so innocuous, hanging there, as though it might have shirts and suits in it, the grey, drab fabric did nothing to announce the craftsmanship of what it held. Looking at it, I got another idea and started brainstorming. If Carina was going to make a brand out of being C.J. Rivers, it was time for her to have the tools and art that a professional deserved.